Entries by dickbernard

The Middle East and Ukraine

In the Vice-Presidential debate last night, the first question related to the Iranian missiles into Israel, the latest chapter in the latest ongoing crisis in what is usually referred to as the Middle East. Of course, Ukraine is also very much a part of the political conversation as well, This is not an analysis or […]

Tim, Jimmy, Lyndon et al….

ELECTION INFORMATION: Minnesota related; and National information.  My position on 2024 election, here. Today, Tuesday, October 1, is the Vice-Presidential debate.    It is also the 100th birthday of Jimmy Carter, 39th President of the United States. I am a Tim Walz and Jimmy Carter supporter.   I’ve also lived in Minnesota for 60 years, […]

Conspicuous Consumption (and a taste of the past)

Three times in the last couple of weeks, I’ve seen  very unique appearing automobile in my city of 83,000.  Twice it has quite obviously been the same car; the third was the same vehicle, but this one an advertisement for some company. Since each of these encounters have come while I was driving, I couldn’t […]

Moms Demand Action….

This morning, Tuesday, Sep 24, was a perfectly clear weather day.  At 7 a.m. CDT, I was heading east on a local street, and was greeted by a spectacular, albeit blinding sunrise straight ahead.  The Autumn Equinox was almost exactly two days earlier, so what I experienced made sense.  Nature is, as nature is.  Humanity’s […]

Vote 2024

46 days.  The National portal for all the states: Vote.org Today is the first day for Minnesotans to vote in the 2024 election.  The website is here,  If you are a Minnesotan, I would recommend that you download and print a copy of your ballot.  The contents vary, of course, dependent on where you live, […]

Cornell West et al

I’ve printed out my sample ballot for Nov 5 2024. At the beginning are listed nine candidates for President/Vice-President of the United States.  I don’t think this is especially unusual.  In addition to the usual Democrat and Republican are the usual others as Libertarian, Green, Socialist and others, including “write in”. Rarely does some maverick […]

Sohlzenitsyn

September 5 I footnoted the following suggestion in another post: Yesterday, came a link to a 1978 commencement speech at Harvard by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn .  I printed out the 16 pages, read them, went to the  “Reflections on Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address” from October 26, 2020, and also looked up Solzhenitsyn’s wiki-bio.  This is not light […]

The City Manager

Friday I was at a meeting of the Roseville MN Optimists (Roseville Optimists ).  I’m not a member, but came as a guest, interested because the program was a group of Ukraine students, here for a short visit under the auspices of YouLEAD (Youth Leadership Engagement and Development Program: YouLEAD. This was a large meeting […]

The Great Peace Race

See important postnote #2 at the end of this post. The ‘meat’ of this post is the link in the next line.  But see the postnotes as well. This link, Peace Race (1) (3), opens to a very interesting 8-page commentary on a very noteworthy citizen initiative through the 1960s calling attention to, and mobilizing […]

Winder, Georgia

25 years ago – it was April 20, 1999, I was returning from a meeting and a bulletin came on the car radio about a school shooting in Littleton, Colorado.  I paid attention: my son and family lived in Littleton. The day and week unfolded.  The incident was at Columbine High School. I had no […]