A couple of weeks ago a friend, a retired educator, happened across me at a coffee shop and we took some time to catch up on this and that. The conversation drifted around to teachers we had known, and George recalled the time when he had met with two other classmates who’d attended school together […]
I’m not long returned from a most remarkable nearly two hours at Washburn High School in south Minneapolis. The reason several hundred of us were in the auditorium tonight was an unfortunate event that happened January 11 at the school, and still looms large in the local news in this large metropolitan area, and even […]
(click to enlarge photos) Dick Bernard: The Gun Issue is on the table, and that is good. Unfortunately, much of the conversation is as much based on reality as the above painting, which I saw in the Seward Cafe on Franklin Avenue in Minneapolis today. The painting does get at a reality, however…. The ladies […]
Yesterday at Mass at Basilica of St. Mary visiting Priest, Fr. Pat Griffin, in his homily, included a snippet of Martin Luther King’s writing: “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly….” I wrote enough snippets of the quote so […]
It was thirteen years ago today, January 18, 2000, that my staff colleagues at Education Minnesota bid me adieu at my retirement after 27 years attempting to do my best to represent teachers in a collective bargaining state. I was not yet 60 when I cleaned out my office, handed in my keys and walked […]
In my opinion, Wednesday, January 16, 2013, will go down as President Obama’s John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King moment. It took an immense amount of courage for him, January 16, 2013, to confront our nations culture of violence, particularly the fringe – it’s really only a fringe – which worships the unrestricted “right […]
This is the one month anniversary of Newtown CT massacre. It seems a good time to look back, and ahead. The day of Newtown – it was a Friday – I wrote a blogpost in this space, which was also carried in the local Woodbury Patch. There were 45 comments on that post. They speak […]
Recently, enroute to finding something else, I came across a mysterious 8×10 photograph, unlabeled. (click to enlarge) I remembered when I first saw it, in my mother-in-laws effects. She had passed away in 1999 at 84 or so, and it certainly wasn’t her fan memory. Her children have all passed on as well, the most […]
UPDATE Jan. 7, 2013: note comment at end from Garry Davis. UPDATE Aug, 2013: Garry Davis passed away at the end of July, 2013. See this post. Sunday [Jan 6,2013] I was privileged to be among nearly 100 people invited to a private preview of a very special eye-opening film, which has the potential to […]
(click to enlarge photos and graphic) The Jan. 2 musing about Valley City State Teachers College 1958-61 became longer and longer, but as I completed it, it didn’t feel complete without finally, after over 50 years, dealing with the Viking News I had the privilege of editing in 1960-61. All 13 (and 76 pages) of […]