Today, Sep. 18, 2026, is the first day open to in-person voting in Minnesota.  The final day of voting is 46 days away, Nov. 3, 2026.

For Minnesotans everything you need to know can be found here, the website of the Minnesota Secretary of State.   If you happen to live in my community, Woodbury MN, check SD47 for Democratic candidate information.

For those from states other than Minnesota,  Vote.Gov can direct you to the official website of your state.

PERSONAL OPINION:

First, I did an epilogue to my 9-11-01 posts on September 12.  if interested read here.

We voters have all of the power in our society.  Each of us have equal power.  In my opinion, citizens who do not vote, effectively are potentially ‘voting’ against their own self interest.  Unfortunately we can easily be our own worst enemy, by not voting at all, or voting uninformed about candidates on our ballot, or voting for someone with zero chance of success.  An instant decision – who to mark our ballot for, or even whether to vote at all – can have major consequences for us, as we are learning in real time.  You cannot undo that single action, often for years.

There are many offices up for election this year, including every member of the U.S. House of Representatives.  My local ballot includes candidates for over 30 positions. Write-ins are authorized in all cases.  A few positions are non-partisan. (20 positions are for District Court Judges where there is only one candidate; one, which represents my area, has two candidates.)

I never ask a person how or if he/she voted.  All that matters in the end is the collective result.

Personally, every post I’ve published at this site since 2009 – over 2000 posts in 17 years – has my personal declaration at upper right.  I am a moderate pragmatic Democrat (“DFL” in our parlance: Democratic Farmer Labor)

A MAGA friend once challenged my “pragmatic” descriptor.  There are a number of definitions of pragmatic.  This definition fits for me.  Pragmatism comes from work and life experience.  I respect differences of opinion, and prefer resolution of problems over win-lose strategies (which I consider to be lose-lose in the long run).

I am a moderate Democrat, whose main political mentor was a progressive Republican Governor (Elmer L. Andersen), and whose hero was a Democratic President (Jimmy Carter) who was progressive but carefully conservative..

I will vote for Democratic (DFL) endorsed candidates this year as in the past because the. DFL party, generally, most closely subscribes to the “we” aspect of political thought on issues that matter: we all matter, not only the have’s.  We know that reaching agreement can be messy.  Life is not “king on the hill” game of our childhood.

The main opposition party has become totally subordinate to “me” – someone in control.  “We” is essential for survival as a country like ours, born of liberty and freedom and a hard-won tradition of inclusion rather than exclusion.  “Me” – winner take all – is antithetical to  what we are as a country.

I will vote before Election Day, knowing who I am voting for and why.  See you at the polls.

Vote as though your and our very future depends on how you vote, because it does….

COMMENTS (more at end): 

from Carol: Great writing, Dick.

Friday night, after I published comments about 9-11-01,  I took time to read the eight additions to the conversation.  It occurred to me that the eight reflections were probably a good cross-section of  millions in the U.S. and elsewhere, who in similar ways tried to make sense of the insanity we all witnessed in real time in a few minutes beginning early 9-11-01 in New York City.

We are – we cannot deny it – a global community.  Even 25 years ago, we were not alone.  The casualty list for 9-11-01 speaks to that reality.  Many from other nations died in the carnage.  And 9-11 was only chapter one of a continuing tragedy.

Here is my attempt to fill in some personal blanks in my experience of that awful day and the days following.  This is only a tiny summary.

AFTER SEPTEMBER 11, my first vivid memory was the silence.  We live relatively near the Twin Cities  and St, Paul airports, and their flightpaths.  Those days I walked outdoors, and before 9-11 there was often a plane heard or seen overhead;  September 12, and for a few days following, nothing.

It was a new and very unusual day in America.

By September 24, it was becoming obvious that peace was not to be forthcoming.  There were other plans being discussed about the future.

Some time earlier in the summer we had booked a flight and accommodations for a week or two in London, England.  We decided to go ahead with the trip, and were glad we did.  We were treated very well.  We flew home from Gatwick on Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 2001.  At 11 a.m. that day, on the dot,  the PA announcer in the terminal asked for two minutes of silence, and the busy airport fell completely silent. I don’t recall even a babies cry.

At home, by November, 2001, the mood had been changing.  By late September a strategy was developing to avenge the injury inflicted on the United States, and by early October came a poll  where 94% of Americans supported bombing Afghanistan where Al-Qaeda hung out.  I don’t recall similar retribution plans against Saudi Arabia or Egypt, where Osama bin Laden and most of the airplane high-jackers were from.

I made my first visit to an antiwar protest in early October, 2001.  I didn’t know any of the speakers, nor the organizers.  My dominant memory, even today, is of a very vocal antagonistic group of U.S.-flag-brandishing anti-protestor protesters….  WAR on Evil was their message to the gathered peaceniks.

I became a peace activist.  For three years, 2005-07,  I was President of a group of organizations, the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers; and was part of the organizing committee for a major “Peace Island” Conference at the time of the 2008 Republican National Convention, both in St. Paul MN.   I became very aware of the seductive beat of the drums of war in competition with the gentle sounds of peace.  Maybe it’s part of human nature to revel in conflict, especially if you win by domination.  We desperately need peacemakers.

Feb. 5, 2003, Secretary of State Colin Powell had solemnly told the UN that Saddam Hussein was going nuclear, and Powell  was trusted.  The focus had switched from al Qaeda to regime change in Iraq.  Game on.  First came “Shock and Awe” over Baghdad in March.  May 1, 2003 came the now-infamous Mission Accomplished speech on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln by President Bush announcing the victory over Saddam Hussein.  Aside from the press releases, there was never a victory, as we all know.  (Saddam was captured in December, 2003, and executed in December, 2006.)

For awhile after 9-11, I climbed aboard the 9-11 conspiracy train, which became very active and had reputable representatives and supporters.  Many of their arguments made sense.  That movement lasted quite awhile.  Finally the movement largely evaporated, as much from media leaders accepting the administration line that there was “no there, there”; joining in ridiculing those who suspected less than clean hands of others in the success which came from the chaos.

Of course, then, it really made no difference.  The damage was done.  There are those still carrying the torch, but they have no audience.  and in this media dominated society, it is easy to bury problems, just by not mentioning or making it possible to effectively debate the issues. It is justly said that history is written (or buried) by the victors through the official story – a major concern in todays assault on what history will say about the present in which we are living today.  About the best that we might be able to do is to keep the memory alive at least to the distinct possibility that there is more to the story than we will ever learn.

In the 25 years since 2001, a particularly low point for me came in the summer of 2009 when I visited the International Peace Garden on the North Dakota/Canada border.  The story is in a blog of mine posted in summer 2009.  It was as if War had vanquished Peace at the Peace Garden.  A long-standing Peace symbol had been converted to a War monument by the governing Board of the Peace Garden.  Parts of the World Trade Center wreckage were displayed on the grounds; newspaper accounts of 9-11 were on display in the chapel.  I don’t know the current status there….  It was jarring, then.

And on its gone for 25 years.  Each of us have our own stories, worth remembering and sharing in our own circles.  We can learn by listening to ourselves and to others.  What will we make of the 25 years ahead?

*

There is one further story, important to me, personally, from another time in our history.

This day, I recall another horrific day in the life of America: Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.  Every December 7, this years 85th anniversary no exception, we will all see the USS Arizona blow up spectacularly on TV clips or newspaper photos, etc., one of the consequences of an attack by 353 Japanese aircraft.  Each time I see this, I’m watching my Dad’s brother, Uncle Frank, who I actually met as a one year old in early July, 1941, die in the explosion.  He was a ship fitter, his entire six year Navy career was aboard the USS Arizona.  Here’s one of over 20 photos I have of him.  He died at 26 years of age.

Frank Bernard, sometime between 1936 and 1941, USS Arizona

This year two of my daughters are going to be at Pearl Harbor, representing Granduncle Frank’s family..

A couple of years ago I got a letter from a Department of Defense subgroup that had received funding to attempt to match flesh recovered from the Arizona after Dec. 7, but till DNA impossible to match with any casualty that awful day.  Male descendants were invited to give DNA samples for analysis, and I did.  Uncle Frank is one of the unknowns.

This summer came a followup letter: Arizona Battleship disinternment

To my knowledge, no match has been found to my uncle…at least not yet.  But several other unknowns have been identified through the process, and this year will be the first such commemoration, and I’m glad that Frank’s grandnieces can be in attendance.

Let’s have a conversation, all of us, everywhere.

Dec. 8, 1941, Japan and the U.S. became deadly enemies to each other.  At the end, four yers later, two horrendous bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki officially ended WWII.

Those of us old enough can remember the details of the ensuing years rebuilding relationships between Japan and the U.S., and the lesser known details of what may have been the reasons the Japanese chose to attack America’s outpost at Pearl Harbor.  War is simple, yet very, very complicated.  Might does not make right.

“Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”

Each and every one of us is the solution, one action at a time.

POSTNOTE Sep 13: At Basilica of St. Mary this morning, the new Pastor, Ralph Talbot, commented on 9-11-01.  His was an on point homily, and mirrored his comments in the Sunday newsletter, copied here: Basilica Ralph Talbot Sep 13 26

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS;

from Larry Sep 11: Wow…Dick! What a fantastic piece of work you did on this whole project in two parts. Excellent commemoration of this day we will never forget. I too thought it was a small plane hitting a building in NYC. I was on the treadmill at the time. Then the whole thing started hitting me. Got to work and my dept. set up TV sets in the cafeteria so employees could follow this on their breaks.  Horrible, unprecedented day that changed the world.  I see the link to the interview with John. Works great!  Nicely done – your entire work on this…thanks!  LG

from Joyce Sep 11: This is an excellent compilation of experiences of 9/11. I was thinking, just now, of how we have abandoned, even demonized, expertise in this country. In the weeks before the 2000 presidential election I watched a man being interviewed on TV, and he said he was voting for GW Bush because, he said, Bush was just an ordinary farmer. Of course Bush was nothing of the sort, he had bought his ranch when he decided to run for president, and he sold it soon after leaving office, but aside from that, since when is an “ordinary farmer” a better choice for president than someone with years of experience and accumulated knowledge and expertise? Consider the incompetents running our government right now because people just couldn’t vote for a woman with years of experience in all three branches of government.  Consider all the newspaper articles interviewing Trump voters in rural diners, and the absence of interviews with educated people who voted the other way. I will never understand this lionization of ordinary, inexperienced, poorly educated men, and I use the word men deliberately.

from Larry J Sep 11: Attached for those who want to get it and those to whom I wish to send it.  When we heard the announcement that JFK was assassinated, I was in Mr. Ruud’s physics class at Bloomington High, using slinkies to learn about the wave theory of light.  When 9/11 happened, I was teaching storytelling and video in a Minneapolis school.  The maintenance person barged in and said, “I told your group shooting video they had to get back in here.  A plane just crashed into the World Trade Tower.”  Today I just want all of us to come together in love.

Larry added his recent column in the northwest Minneapolis newspaper Sun Post: Larry Johnson Sun Post 9 10 26

from Fred Sep 11:  Find the Jimmy Kimmel interview with James Talarico on You Tube. The Federal Communications Commission torpedoed Kimmel’s efforts to use it on his live TV show

Pre-note: 9-11-01 was hugely impactful for me.  This blog is probably the best evidence.  I began writing what came to be this blog in the wake of 9-11-01, and in the past 25 years there have been over 4000 posts on a great variety of topics.  But it started because of 9-11-01;

My intent, leading to this post and the one following, is to simply review what I remember from that awful time, trying to make sense of it in our history as a country.  I invited  others to share some of their memories, and these follow, below.   The several reminiscences come from friends.  I have not read them, but will after I complete and publish my own thoughts. My preference is that you read these first,  then in the following post dated 9-11-01 where I’ll share my own thoughts on this difficult anniversary.

Hopefully what somebody said will resonate with you.

There was an unexpected bonus to this process.  Last night, we were among about 100 in a St. Paul theatre, joining thousands of others around the country, in the premier of an important film, ‘The Work In Progress“.  I’d urge attendance when it becomes available to you.  Check it out.

Following are some memories of 9-11-01.  There are eight so far.  Ground Zero impacted far beyond Ground Zero in 2001

My reflections follow in the post for September 11, “25 Years after 9-11”. The followup post includes e-mails from the time including a family letter from the day before, September 10, 2001.

from Joyce Sep 7:

from Gramee, Sep 8: On September 11, 2001, I was well into my 15th year of not watching television. Family and friends. Boggled the minds of family and friends.

Phone rang early that morning. My adult daughter, Beth, didn’t even say “hello.” She said, “Mom, I know you don’t watch TV, but I think you should turn it on, right now!! Something awful has happened.” She sounded very upset.

I took the phone with me to the TV I’d covered years ago with a small table cloth. Whipped off the cloth and turned on my abandoned TV to a news station.

“And what to my wondering eyes should appear…” A scene I couldn’t grasp at first. There was absolute chaos in New York City
Yelling. Fire. Smoke. Police and fire fighters. Ambulances. People fleeing on foot, away from what was left of the twin towers. Why? Because the towers had been destroyed by an airplane flying directly into them.

At first, I thought there must have been some kind of horrible accident. A plane in a desperate situation. That was bad enough. But Beth, who was still on the phone with me, said word had it that the crash was likely intentional. An attack. I remember that as the moment my brain went all WTF. We watched together via the phone, without saying a word,while we watched the horror evolve.

This is already an over-long recital of what turned out to be the beginning of our country’s most disastrous thing until Donald Trump came along. Our lives were/are never the same from 9/11 forward.

Never.

from Kathy Sep 8: The Sept 11th attack was monumental – changed the way we look at security and folks ‘different’ from us – particularly those of brown skin with foreign accents. I recall getting a phone call from my penpal’s daughter in Japan that morning just before leaving to teach kindergarteners – the 2nd wk of school. Kyoko yelled, “Mom! Look at the t.v.! Someone is crashing airplanes into the Twin Towers in NY!” I watched in disbelief…Oregon is a long way from NY and DC! I still think the impact of those events were greater felt by folks closer to the East Coast where the tragedy was occurring.

What I noticed most was the effect this had on our local Oktoberfest the next week. Ofest is 61yrs a folk fest this year…Ofest is where thousands of folks descend upon our little town to celebrate for 4 days. The year 2001 was to be different. We still held the festival but a sadness prevailed over all. Normally joyful people of all ages would be dancing, singing, eating, drinking but this year a pall covered our little town. I was scheduled to give concerts in St. Mary Church – big neo-gothic church built in 1912 by local parishioners..a jewel of a building reminiscent of cathedrals in Europe. The Ofest board decided to hold the fest and continue the activities so my concerts went on as scheduled.

I sang songs of old & well known hymns… people cried as they sat or knelt in prayer – I ended the concert with Edelweiss and God Bless America….Each concert’s end that year I received a standing ovation – something I’d never experienced before or since, but I know I was addressing the tragedy with songs from the heart and that folks needed to be in that safe sacred space I was honored to provide for them.

from Carol Sep 8: I think 9-11, for those of us old enough to have experienced both, is like the Kennedy assassination in that we all remember exactly what we were doing when we heard the news.  I was talking on the phone with my daughter-in-law who interrupted to say that she’d just seen on TV a plane fly into a tall building – somewhere in Europe, she thought.  Then she said the World Trade Center, and since at that time there was a downtown St. Paul building with that name across from where I worked, I totally freaked out.

I of course joined the rest of the country just frozen in place in front of our screens watching the unfolding horror for hours – forgetting to get dressed or even eat.  The fact that foreign terrorists had dared to hit us so brutally on our own turf was nearly impossible to process.  It shattered a sense of safety for Americans that we have never gotten back.

But also what I so clearly remember was the sudden overwhelming realization on the part of Americans that we were all in this together.  All one country.  OUR country.  I had never experienced that before in my life, and certainly have not since.  Strangers hugged strangers in the street.  We attended a hastily organized memorial service that evening, complete as I recall with a huge American flag.  I hope it doesn’t take another similarly catastrophic event in order for our country, which again appears hopelessly divided, to once again remember that we ARE all in this together.

from John, Sep 9:  I was working, and my first home repairman stop of the day was at a house in the newer part of town to fix a balky toilet… The homeowner was watching some morning TV program, and the breaking news update was that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. As I recall, all the commentators thought that was just basically a random accident, morning will likely loss of life, etc.

I finished up, and the homeowner and I left it about the same time. I didn’t turn on the radio or anything else like that during the rest of the morning, and was only at unoccupied houses.

Sherry was at home, but she was also not in the habit of watching TV or listening to the radio;  and was likely just reading books or busying herself with stuff like that until  time for her afternoon soap opera to come on. At this point, it was probably three hours later.

That’s when we realized the full extent of what was now being called a terrorist attack on New York. Not much was done the rest of the day– I had no more appointments with people the rest of the day, so I just canceled everything and we were glued to the TV into the night.

I do remember initially, having to deal with a lot of fear both and myself and in Sherry, but the reality that we were literally 3000 miles away from all the incidents, with nothing else being reported, eased the panic quite a bit.

from David:  Hi Dick,

I’m looking forward to your blog. My 9/11 memory began with me driving into school that morning. I was, as usual, listening to NPR on my drive in from Wisconsin. The news broke that an airplane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. Details were scant, not even what type of plane was involved. I recalled that as a kid I was fascinated by the story of the 1945 crash of an American bomber into the Empire State Building and assumed that this was a similar accident. How could this happen with today’s navigation?

By the time I arrived at school, details were coming out that the crash involved a commercial airliner and there was talk of a possible terrorist attack. When the second plane crashed into the tower, that was pretty much confirmed. Televisions were turned on at school and by now the kids had arrived. The staff was told that classroom televisions should be turned off to avoid traumatizing the students. Some teachers were angry about this decision, while others had already made that decision. As events unfolded during the day, the news kept getting worse. We made it through that day and, as they say, the rest is history.

from Fred:  Actually, 9/11 fell on the Tuesday I felt officially retired from 35 years of teaching. I knew I would not return to classes in September, 2001 but had counted the summer months as being in limbo. It wasn’t until the first school day, September 11, 2001 kids and teachers were in school, and I was not. That the golden years began.

I was listening to radio news and just finishing breakfast when an announcer issued a flash that one of the NYC Twin Towers was on fire. I turned on the TV to see live coverage and, sure enough, there was a tower billowing smoke. It wasn’t known for certain, but it appeared an aircraft might have crashed into it.

There was no talk about it being anything but an accident. Some bystanders claimed they saw a plane hit the tower. Conjecture continued and I kept watching. Some cameras were alwaysfixed on the burning tower, while reporters tried to get a handle on what was going on. Firefighting crews arrived. They rushed into the building and were seen heading up staircases. Brief interviews with people at a command center in the lobby or a basement area brought a sense of what their crews were doing.

I looked on when what appeared to be a large four-engine jet aircraft hit the second tower. Theories quickly evolved that this was an attack on both buildings and concerns more might follow. Then came the hit on the Pentagon and word of a plane crash in Pennsylvania had also occurred. It was a long time before I saw another passenger plane in the air, and we live near the Twin Cities’ International Airport. Occasionally, I spotted F-16 fighter aircraft I overhead.

Naturally, I continued to watch operations. Interviews with fire fighters inside the command center, revealed people above the collision points were trapped on upper floors. Firefighters continued walking up flights of stairs to get at the flames. Some people above the flames had found staircases still open and fled, but the large majority were waiting for help.

By now millions were watching the unfolding disaster on television. Camera crews had stayed inside near the fire fighting command centers at first, but now needed to get out.

Some experts began theorizing that the heat of the fire might be too much for the buildings to stand. A collapse had not been on my mine. I figured firefighters would somehow get control of the situation. The first tower began to waver and then collapsed. We knew everyone still inside, fire crews included, had been killed. When I see film of that event, I quickly turn away.

We viewers saw some ghastly scenes in the aftermath, which I prefer not to describe. But I will mention images that punched viewers in the stomach. Camera crews drove by the city fire houses. The doors were open, but……you know the rest.

Dick Bernard post on 9-11-01

Twin Towers New York City late June 1972. At this point, one of the towers had opened, the second was near complete. Photo taken enroute to Statue of Liberty by Dick Bernard.

I’ve lived in Minnesota all but a single year since 1963  (excepting only 1964-65).   Most of that time is in what we know as the Twin Cities, population nearing 4 million); 26 years of that within 15 minutes of the Minnesota State Capitol in St. Paul, and a similar distance from Wisconsin on Interstate 94.  I have been an active citizen all that time.

As the election season ratchets up, the political dark side powers that be have apparently determined that Minnesota is the seat of all evil, rampant crime and corruption and ineptness, generally, and all of this is the Democrats fault.

People like myself (a Minnesota Democrat) know better about our state.

So does Dane Smith, a Minnesotan with solid reporter credentials earned over many years.

Last night Jeff forwarded this long article published Aug 6, 2026 (no paywall) by Dane in Minn Post (founded and on-line since 2007), .  Here’s a snip from his article: “With street crime rates declining, the disastrous ICE invasion and the Iran War proving unpopular, with gas and other prices rising, and with Minnesota showing up near the top in national rankings on quality of life….”

Wherever you live, take time to read this article, not only as it applies to Minnesota, but to your own place in the country or the world.  Note that the article links to the rest of a series of articles from Dane Smith on the general topic.

*

POSTNOTE: I plan to post on the 25th anniversary of 9-11-01 on the anniversary, and I would invite reflections from others as well.  If interested in contributing, deadline September 10.

Meanwhile, it is reasonable to expect that the political chaos machine will continue and likely even increase in coming months.  This is no time to go into hiding.

Yesterday Heather Delaney Reese, a longtime blogger with a huge following wrote about  how she “became part of the story” of ICE in real time.  Her account is riveting.  I subscribe to her as well as others, and this is a shared post.  But I encourage your financial support for such writers.

There is lots of credible information out there.  Take the time….

COMMENTS

from Gramee:  Redundancy: I was on Tim Walz’s campaign team the first year he ran for MN congress. No longer remember how that came into being. I do remember driving back and forth from Mankato and learning some strategies from a pro. Most of us were rookies. Tim was in and out of the office a lot, and I came to like him very much. I still do. And the massive amount of sh*t that Donald’s world has piled on him (and on MN) is the stuff of regurgitation. Lots of it. Imperfections? Yes, seems that way. But having the Mar-a-Lago Mafia plus the sordid likes of DeMuth and Emmer on Tim’s butt all day, every day is beyond the beyond. Meh!