#568 – Dick Bernard: A short visit to Montrose SD

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A friend just wrote an excellent book, and in it a town was mentioned, Montrose SD, just 20 miles from Sioux Falls.
Since I was going to Sioux Falls anyway, I decided to pop in on Montrose, just to see what it was like.
It was a bit like going back to the old days. I kept thinking of Mayberry RFD and recently deceased “Goober” from that popular show. Also entering my mind was the old Garrison Keillor saying about Lake Wobegon: “the little town that time forgot, and the decades cannot improve”.
Montrose is surprisingly invisible on the South Dakota prairie. It is only two miles off the freeway, but you could almost go past it without actually seeing it. It is nestled in a valley and there are no tall buildings, not even grain elevators.
Best I know, no train tracks go through Montrose.
Montrose’s less than 500 residents are hidden in plain sight.
Thanks to google maps you can sneak a peak at Montrose via satellite.
Driving the streets of Montrose, it was easy to become nostalgic about the “good old days” that I remember in even smaller towns in long ago North Dakota.
There were the little, older houses, and some more impressive ones, none of them cookie cutter suburban development homes. They had yards. These were the yards of ordinary folks.
The downtown, such as it was, was a few stores on a sleepy main street. No traffic jams or traffic lights or even stop signs, here.
St. Patrick’s Church, in this community that seemed to have a pretty heavy Irish ‘cast’, was an anchor.
A gaggle of young people on bikes, gathered on the edge of a street.
But this was 2012, and it didn’t take much imagination to know that the people in this little town were connected to the larger world much more so than when I was growing up in similar little towns in the 1940s and 50s, before television, the internet, etc., etc., etc.
Indeed, I had booked my motel in Sioux Falls by doing a google search of Montrose SD.
Every place with a name seems to have an entry these days, and while there were no motels in Montrose, the web offered a garden variety of options in nearby Sioux Falls, only (in my case) 23.8 miles away.
Back in the day of WWII, when I first became aware of the world outside my little town, 23.8 miles was a pretty long trip, not taken without good reason. Here I was, 275 miles from home, on what was essentially a single day trip on mostly four lane highway in two states.
Times have changed. Have we?
(click to enlarge photos)



St. Patrick's Cemetery, Montrose SD

#566 – Dick Bernard: National Teacher Appreciation Day 2012

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Today is National Teacher Day, a day with a long tradition. Since 1985 the first Tuesday in May has been the specific day, but the tradition goes back to an idea of a teacher in the 1940s.
More so than in any recent years, Teacher Appreciation Day is an essential one this year.
Especially since January 2011 there has been an organized assault on teachers and their organizations that I’d consider unprecedented. I knew it had been unremitting in the last year, but the extent was revealed by one of Governor Dayton’s veto messages here. (See CH 274 HF 1870 Veto Message). And this was just Minnesota.
Thankfully Governor Dayton, from a very well known Minnesota family, knows of what he speaks. Early in his adult life he spent two years teaching in poverty ridden public schools in New York City. A month or so ago I heard him speak about that experience at the Education Summit of Parents United, an independent non-partisan public education advocacy group.
The Governor related, among other things, his businessman Dad’s admonition that you must “inspect before you can expect”. For Mr. Dayton, this involved visiting the homes of his students.

Gov Mark Dayton at Parents United for Public Schools April, 2012


I come from a lifetime in teaching: my parents were career public school teachers. For nine years I was a teacher, then for 27 years I represented public school teachers in teacher union work. Even in the dozen years subsequent to retirement I’ve had close and continuing contacts with public education and educators. Today, May 8, 2012, one daughter will go to her job as Principal of a large Middle School; and seven grandchildren will be off to their Minnesota public schools with hundreds of thousands of their peers.
I’ve written about some of them recently: here and here.
But the assault on public ed is real, and at least here in Minnesota the battering rams apparently didn’t quite work.
Perhaps stability will begin to return.
I wasn’t a perfect teacher, nor a perfect union representative, nor are my union or its members perfect, but without equivocation the attack on Minnesota’s public workers has been unwarranted and unnecessary. Of course, the attack is all under the guise of “reform” or other high-sounding labels. But the intent was destruction and not reform, and you can see it in the morale of public employees under siege.
But even in the blitzkrieg of attempted destruction, there are good examples, not difficult to find. They are in those school programs that I wrote about a few days ago (see above), and in other sometimes unusual circumstances.
Some weeks ago I was driver for a 91-year old friend who wanted to attend his club meeting. He has for many years been a member of a well known men’s club, whose members are all prominent in their particular fields of endeavor. It is a by-invitation only group, and you can attend only as a member or a guest of a member. He’d long ago ‘paid his dues’ – both he and his Dad before him had been President of this Club.
Each month a featured part of the meeting is a talk by someone with particular expertise.
At this particular meeting, the speaker was a man whose first name is Erik and who is more and more well known among a certain twin cities and regional affinity group: his business is “Erik’s Bikes and Boards“. His website is here.
He gave his personal history – how it was he became successful – and among others he gave very specific credit to one unnamed public school teacher in one of the public schools he had attended as a young person.
I don’t know the teachers name, and it is unnecessary to find out who he or she was at this point. I know the school district, and it has always had a very strong teachers union, and most likely the teacher was part of that union. And more than just the teacher, the administration and the school district itself allowed the flexibility that helped launch Erik into his career.
Whatever the specifics, somewhere in the background of almost all of us is someone we remember as “teacher”. It only takes one, and all of we teachers know that. Someone, some time, we touched, even if we may never hear it directly.
Thank you all. And take a moment today to thank some teacher that you know who made a difference in your life.

#564 – Dick Bernard: Another Birthday.

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Today, all day, I was 72 years old.
I got a head start on a great day on May 3 with a short trip across the Mississippi to Lincoln Center School in South St. Paul MN. There granddaughter Addie (she’s the one in the black and white polka dot dress you can see if you look at center in the photo) and her colleague first graders entertained other students, teachers and assorted parents and grandparents with a program with a Caribbean theme. Louis Armstrong had nothing on these kids when they sang a snippet of “It’s a Wonderful World”. “Entusiasmo” as the Spanish word for enthusiasm spoke for them from the wall beside them.
(click on photos to enlarge them)

Lincoln Center First Graders May 3, 2012


I thought of first grade for me. It was 1946-47, at St. Elizabeth’s in Sykeston ND. I still have the report card. It’s been awhile since I was in First Grade.
As birthdays go, 72 is nothing much to talk about. For me, it has more meaning, this year.
My Mom turned 72 on July 27, 1981. Three weeks later she passed away. She’d been very ill the preceding year (cancer) and there were no miracle cures. For more reasons than Mom’s death, 1981 was an important year for me. Among other things, Mom and Dad helped jump-start me into a family history ‘career’ which has gone on, now, for 32 years. (You can never really retire from family history.)
Being 72 – born in 1940 – means I missed the Great Depression, and was out and about when World War II began for the United States. Recently the 1940 census was released, and I looked. I missed the cut. The census taker in Valley City ND came around in April, 1940, and I was just thinking about arriving on the world scene. It was the census taker who came early, not me!
Of course, when the odometer of life turns over one more digit, it is always a reminder that you are actually a year older than your birthday cake shows. So today I completed 72 years, and begin my 73rd. Such is life.
It’s been a good day today which, for someone my age and temperament, means a reasonably laid back retired person day.
About noon-time today I was at Jefferson High School in Bloomington watching goings-on at the schools annual Diversity Day.
Like the First graders on Thursday, the high schoolers on Friday gave me some sense of optimism about the future IF we adults don’t mess things up too badly. It’s up to us to leave them a future to build upon.
My friend Lynn Elling gave his annual talk, an “old bird” of 91 (as he describes himself) with his spouse of 68 years, Donna, with him.
His talk always focuses on the WWII that he experienced at places like Tarawa Beach, and a 1954 visit to Hiroshima which has had a lifelong impact on him.
In the kids he sees our future, and I like that.
Forward into my 73rd year!

Lynn Elling at Jefferson High School, Bloomington MN May 4, 2012


Kids listen to Lynn Elling May 4, 2012


Martha Roberts, Donna and Lynn Elling at the World Citizen Table May 4. Martha is President of World Citizen, Lynn founded the organization in 1982.


UPDATE May 8, 2012

Happy Birthday to ME, at a gathering on May 6, and ...


... and Grandson Parker, who shares May 4th as birthday, albeit 62 years later.

#562 – Dick Bernard: Jamie Nabozny. Bullied.

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My friend, Lynn Elling, founder of World Citizen, is fond of a particular quotation of Gandhi: “If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”
I kept thinking of that phrase, and looking at the young people in the audience, when former student Jamie Nabozny gave a powerful presentation on his youthful experience of being bullied, as a student, years ago in Wisconsin.
(click on all photos to enlarge them)

Jamie Nabozny, April 28, 2012, St. Michael's Lutheran Church in Roseville MN


The Gandhi statement became all the more relevant when one member of the Panel, a State Senator, was unable to attend the Saturday night event because the State Legislature was in session – and lawmaking these days has become a public war of sorts over how to deal with issues, controversial or not. He could not be absent from the legislature because politics these days is not a matter of truly resolving disputes, rather of who “wins” and who “loses”, or who can be pinned with the loss.
It’s not “bullying”, of course, but we do have a societal pattern of waging war as a preferable option to seeking peace….
The Senator was there only by name and empty chair.
His was definitely an appropriately excused absence, but it emphasized for me the essence of our problem as a society. We Big People can be terrible role models for getting along and resolving issues, and if we’re going to learn a new way, it will have to be Little People, the children, who will do the teaching. And their teachers, not only in the classroom, who will have to role model. World Citizen is one of those working with helping teachers teach more constructive behaviors.
There were perhaps 150 of us in attendance at the gathering in Roseville. Joining Jamie was an expert panel: Julie Blaha, president of the Anoka-Hennepin Education Minnesota teacher’s union; Heather Kilgore, PACER/National Bullying Prevention Center; and Shiloh O’Rourke, Senior, Bloomington Jefferson HS.

Michael Bergman moderates responder panel of Julie Blaha, Heather Kilgore and Shiloh O'Rourke


The difference between bullying now and when Jamie Nabozny went through his times of terror in Middle and High School is that a spotlight is now on the problem and it will not go away.
And todays kids and those associated directly with them are the ones who will diminish the problem, which will probably always exist, so long as our society continues to talk, as it does, in warfare terms about most everything including, for just one example, whether or not there will be a Vikings Stadium bill, and who will be blamed for it if it passes, or doesn’t (probably a main reason the State Senator couldn’t be with us.)
With Jamie, we watched the film, Bullied, which is his story. At one point he mentioned that over 90,000 copies of the film have been distributed. Schools can get a copy of the DVD free from the organization Teaching Tolerance.
We were reminded that in every bullying scenario there is a victim, perpetrator(s), and bystanders. Bystanders do not get a pass, whether adults or children.
We were also reminded that to ‘win’ at bullying is in the long run to ‘lose’: one of the main actors in Jamie’s trials at school has been in prison three separate times for the kind of behavior that he got away with in high school.
As the q&a session was about to end, two educators from Clear Springs Elementary School in Minnetonka rose to surprise Jamie and all of us, and gave Jamie several gifts including the shirt shown in the below photo. The saying is simple, and cleverly stated: “I stand tall. And you?”

Sandy Curry (at left) and Melanie DeWitt present Jamie with a shirt saying "I stand tall. And you?"


Donna and Lynn Elling, April 28, 2012


Part of the audience April 28, 2012


For more information on peace education through World Citizen, click here. For Jamie Nabozny, here; and for PACER/National Bullying Prevention Center, here.

#560 – Dick Bernard: The Chicks

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Saturday morning a few of us were waiting in line at the Woodbury Post Office. A woman was waiting at the counter, and the clerk had disappeared. An educated guess was that the woman was picking up held mail.
Of course, the few of us were feeling impatient – places to go, things to do….
Presently the clerk came out with a box from which sounds came: “Peep”, “Peep”, “Peep”…. It was a delivery of live chicks.
Immediately the sourness in line changed perceptibly.
There was no grousing when the clerk opened the box so that the woman could inspect the precious freight. They were all okay, being as little chicks are wont to be.
This started a little conversation in line, remembering when people raised chickens. Somebody said that an ordinance had been passed in Woodbury allowing such activities. NO ROOSTERS, however!
I got to thinking back to days of old when we lived in tiny towns in North Dakota. In fact, I had done a blog post about the post office in one of those towns a few months ago.
Someone I knew from that town wrote a comment. Her Dad had been a rural postal delivery driver for years, and she said this, in part: “In the spring, he often had live baby chicks making lots of noise in the back of the vehicle. That meant going up to the houses to deliver them. There were also times when the post office was alive with the sounds of live animals.”
In the same comment she added what we of a certain age and circumstance all know about the post office in small towns: “The post office was definitely a social gathering place when many people waited for the mail to be sorted to the various boxes. There was no delivery in small towns – perhaps there never has been. You often read that people fight to keep their post office as it is a distinction to have ones own address and a time/place to find out how your neighbors were doing.”

Early 1900s postcard from rural Wisconsin to rural North Dakota


I don’t think I was the only one in the line on Saturday who noticed that when those chicks appeared, the tone of conversation of those of us in the line perceptibly changed.
For just a moment we again became neighbors, not quite so much in a hurry.
I’ll remember the care with which the woman and the clerk handled their precious cargo.

Woodbury MN Post Office April 21, 2012


UPDATE April 24: Here’s a little known but crucial piece of information about the contemporary “problems” of the U.S. Postal Service.

#558 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #14 – "The Catholic Vote" and "Making Hay While the Sun Shines"

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UPDATE May 5, 2012 at end.
This afternoon I attended the first of three sessions called “Forming Our Conscience” in the Undercroft (church basement) of the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis. I was most positively impressed. There were 50 of us in the room – more than I expected.
Linked is the outline for the “Forming our Conscience” session I attended, as well as the topics for April 29, and May 6: Basilica Workshop001.
Stop by Basilica the next two Sundays if you wish. I found todays session an excellent use of my time.
There is no need to interpret the words, questions and opinions of speaker and the 50 or so of us in attendance today. The attached outline speaks for itself. That’s the outline for the modified dialogue that Dr. Evans capably led. A surprising amount of ground was covered in the short 1 1/2 hours.
It is no secret to anyone who knows me that I’m lifelong Catholic. Put Basilica of St. Mary or Catholic in the search box on this blog, and you’ll find many references. I’m Catholic.
I go to Church, I usher frequently (as I did again today), and I’m not passive when it comes to expressing a point of view, including to those among my non-Catholic friends who think that there must be some monolith of “typical” Catholics.
When all is said and done, I contend there are really two Roman Catholic Churches, at least as I experience them today: one is the official Church, the power people like the Bishops who are quoted by the major media. Then there’s the rest of us.
We ordinary Catholics seem roughly divided into camps, much like the population at large. So, if we comprise, as we do, perhaps 20% of Minnesota’s population, on our typical days the so-called Catholic view might represent, at best, 10% of the state’s population, and not all of these think alike either. This is a rough estimate, but I think fairly close.
We ordinary folk get little attention, but we have a lot of power and we exercise it in many ways.
The American Bishops attempt to dominate certain kinds of public policy debate and thus impose religious beliefs and doctrines on the rest of the population and this troubles me, even though I’m Catholic.
This dynamic is worse now, than I remember before.
But there is no single ‘Catholic’ point of view. We Catholics adults act like other adults. The Church itself admits that only one-third of us are actually in Church on any particular Sunday.
It is likely not easy to be the Parish Priests who have the job of getting unsolicited ‘advice’ from both ‘sides’, and being leaders, message carriers and diplomats at the same time.
There is, no doubt, tension within the Catholic community about many things. This tension was not on display this afternoon. There were perhaps a dozen different opinions expressed through questions, and we all learned in the back-and-forth.
An observation I had, but didn’t have an opportunity to articulate at the meeting, is the real dilemma when religion dances into the political sphere: politicians make promises they have no intention of keeping. They all do it, as a political survival skill, but it’s incumbent on ‘we, the people’ to be aware of this natural and very practical tendency of the persons who are running for office, and look for the most reasonable alternative.
And my Church hierarchy has a different dilemma that it seems to want to ignore.
In the good old days, whether merited or not, the Church had considerable spiritual power over its flock.
Dr. Evans recalled his days in rural Minnesota when “keep holy the Sabbath day” was still the religious rule. As anyone who’s farmed knows, good weather doesn’t just happen when it is supposed to, and you “make hay while the sun shines”. In the good old days, if it looked like a good day for haying would be Sunday, the loyal Catholic farmers would troop to see the Priest after Sunday Mass to get permission to do the haying. Of course, permission was granted: it was common sense. But the Priest was asked, first.
As recently as 50 years ago this still worked pretty well.
No more.
We are adults, we need to act like the adults that we are.
(click on photo to enlarge)

Part of group April 22, 2012


For past and future posts related to Election 2012, simply enter those two words in the search box and click. A list will come up.
UPDATE MAY 7, 2012:
The April 29 and May 6 sessions were equally strong, with the attendance higher than at the first, approximately 60 at each. The outlines for the subsequent sessions is here. Basilica Workshop002.
It would be nice if everyone could see how a civil dialogue can take place within a church as diverse as my Catholic Church. Dr. Evans outline and remarks were consistent with official Church teaching, while respectfully listening to questions and noting other points of view within this large institution. Most of the 4 1/2 total hours was devoted to dialogue.
We do not all think alike. There is not a “Catholic bloc”.
During dialogue time I raised a single question, essentially as follows: “The 2012 election is exactly six months away. The only objective of any political party is to win, and to do this they and their candidates and supporters will make false promises and false charges against the opposition. We will be inundated with this. What are your thoughts?“
I didn’t expect a definitive answer, and I didn’t get one. There are assorted factcheck websites, and Dr. Evans mentioned one or two of his own. He was justifiably nervous (it appeared he was a bit nervous) about recommending specific news media, so I won’t go there. These days it is probably impossible to find a truly objective media source. All that differs is the degree of bias towards one pole or the other….
One lady mentioned the possibility of checking the actual record of persons actually in office.
I thought to myself, as others brought up their own issues, that even voting records are not a surefire way to the “truth” since in this polarized political world, there is almost no legislation that is politically “safe” to vote for or against: it usually includes some component with which the lawmaker will disagree. “Poison pills” are often inserted in legislation so as to be used against a sitting politician later. In addition, far too many of us don’t think of the consequences of our vote, or even know why we’re voting a certain way, or vote based only on our interpretation of a single issue: all very dangerous practices.
All we can do is urge people we know to pay attention to what is really the most important decision one has to make in a democracy like ours: who we choose to represent us.
We are, after all, the very “politicians” we despise, or more hopefully, respect.

Directly related post here.

#554 – Dick Bernard: Parents United for Public Schools, looking forward

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Towards the end of yesterday’s most stimulating conference of Parents United for Public Schools, a slide appeared on the screen:
“I skate to where the puck will be,
not to where it has been.”
Wayne Gretzky
Gretzky was the almost superhuman hockey player who made it all look easy. I had the privilege of seeing him in person, one time, at the old Bloomington Met Center in the mid-1980s. We were at center ice perhaps a half dozen rows up, and when Wayne Gretzky was in the neighborhood, you knew you were in the presence of greatness, even amongst other great National Hockey League players.
“I skate to where the puck will be….” What a great metaphor for success in anything. Possibility replaces impossibility.
Our guest speakers were truly a dynamic duo: Dr. Tom Gillaspy and Dr. Tom Stinson. They’ve been advisors to the high and mighty in Minnesota and even folks like me have been privileged to hear them speak in other settings. Their specialties tend to make the eyes of mere mortals glaze over: economics and demography. But like Gretzky and his hockey puck, they make it all make sense, and make it interesting to boot!
In fact, much to my surprise, this mornings Minneapolis Star Tribune gave Tom Gillaspy page one treatment in the Variety Section. Imagine that: a demographer featured on page one of the entertainment section of the newspaper! (And I can say that Tom Stinson deserves equal time and treatment.)
I wish their message were on film. But it isn’t.
(click on photos to enlarge them)

Mary Cecconi, Tom Gillaspy, Tom Stinson, April 16, 2012


Second best is that their entire Power Point presentation is accessible at the Parents United website. It is here (click on “keynote presentation”), and very well worth your time.
We were also privileged to hear brief and inspiring messages from MN Gov. Mark Dayton and Education Commissioner Brenda Casselius. Sen Al Franken appeared on video.

Mn Governor Mark Dayton, April 16, 2012


Mn Commissioner of Education Brenda Casselius April 16, 2012


Two veteran retiring legislators were honored yesterday: the first time Parents United had made such a presentation. The Awards went to two long-term Legislators: Republican Senator Gen Olson (Minnetrista), and Democrat House of Representatives member Mindy Greiling (Roseville).

Rep Mindy Greiling, April 16, 2012 - courtesy Parents United for Public Schools


Sen. Gen Olson, April 16, 2012


It is always interesting to watch how people like these leaders, who we in the public are taught to view as combatants, treat each other: with respect. Senator Olson, who I knew as a public educator in long ago Anoka-Hennepin days, received her Award from former Democrat Senator and current lobbyist Kathy Saltzman (my former Senator); and Rep Greiling received her Award from Roseville School Superintendent John Thein. Sen. Olson got her start in public education; Rep Greiling got her political start on the Roseville School Board.
We saw, Monday, and we need more of, these highly visible lessons in political competition and respect as opposed to vicious political combat and loathing. There is a big difference.
We saw it in Roseville, yesterday. Absent teaching, we need to learn this skill ourselves.

#549 – Dick Bernard: Part Two. The slow but certain suicide of Capitalism

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I’m not an enemy of Capitalism. From my earliest years some deference was paid to the person who lived in the biggest house in town; who occupied a position of status or rank; the most “successful” relative…. Right or wrong, they were thought to be deserving of being a bit better off.
Today, Capitalism funds my retirement pension (unless its most ruthless advocates achieve a goal of destroying my Union which provides the funding to assure my private pension solvency.)
I also have no apprehensions about Socialism. Indeed, without very strong elements of Socialism in the American economy, Capitalism would die, and Capitalism knows it, but doesn’t have the common sense to know when to quit bludgeoning the middle class and government, which are largely creatures of Socialist largesse – public schools, health and the like.
Examples to debate are endless. The Bible quote in last Sunday’s Passion (see it here) was a most interesting one, cutting the apparent Capitalist of the day considerable slack in how she spent her money.
Oh, if it were so simple.
If I were to pick an exemplar of unfettered Capitalism it would be desperately impoverished Haiti, once the jewel of the French Empire. You can find many examples of extreme wealth there; elite families benefit by friendly laws and have destroyed competition. As one gets richer and richer and richer, defeating a potential competitor is easy.
Poor as it is, I’ve heard post-earthquake Haiti described as a “goldmine”. So, somebody has a monopoly on cement; someone else on school uniforms, etc., etc., etc. And the wealthy in Haiti can enjoy their lifestyle wherever in the world they wish, while the overwhelming vast majority of the people subsist. It is a society of, by and for Capitalism; and in the last 100-200 years it is largely of the American variety. Its cruel circumstances were imported from France and the U.S., largely.

In our own U.S., the Capitalist impulse towards self-destruction is harder to see than in Haiti, but nonetheless it is apparent. We are killing ourselves.
The accelerating imbalance in wealth in America (and elsewhere) is apparent to anyone who cares to look. Last Sunday, 60 Minutes had a segment on burgeoning art markets for the super wealthy.
The wealthy have far more than enough. But, it seems, the more they have the more they want.
A friend of mine, a retired corporate manager and no friend of government or taxes, described this dynamic a few days ago, without intending to do so.
He and his wife spend February and March at one of those Florida Gulf Coast condominium complexes, and they had just returned home.
We were chatting, and the topic got around to where they stay each year.
They rent: $5,000 a month. Two bedroom, 9th floor, Gulf side.
We chatted: The owners of their condo have three or four homes. The 19 floors of their condo has over 100 units; only 6 are year round residents. The condo they rent cost $1.3 million when purchased a few years ago, and probably on a good day would now sell for $600,000. Monthly Association fees are $891, and my friend guessed that the place is rented perhaps four months a year. Most of the year it is empty. There are additional costs for upkeep. There are numerous other similar buildings in this community….
One can gather how a conversation about government, taxes, liberals, unions, etc., would go at dinner in one of the restaurants in this wealthy ghetto. Likely the owners pick as their legal residence the state which has the lowest taxes, and extract every entitlement that they can.
Yes, we have always had the better off, and mostly they were accepted and respected.
But like the semblance of balance necessary to keep a tub of clothes on spin cycle from ruining the wash machine, the obsession with more and more wealth – escalating inequity – is ruining everyone, including the very wealthy.
The wealthy are already a victim of their own greed – imprisoned by their own wealth – but its all they know. The rest of us will just tag along as their (and by extension, our) self-destruct mission continues…unless we decide to do something about it in our still free elections.
Happy Easter.
(Part one is here.)
UPDATE April 4:
John Borgen: Yes, we are a country of the corporations by the corporations for the corporations. Making profit is our holy grail. So many believe they will strike it rich, win the lottery, inherit the big bucks. Consumerism is our religion. Our citizens are drunk on TV, sports, video games, alcohol, drugs, sugar, gossip, blame, selfishness, American elitism.
Ah, the rugged individual! The entrepreneur who cashes in. Only in America!
I heard on the radio,according to the Gallop organization, the top three happiest countries are Denmark, Norway and Finland. The USA
is # 11.

#546 – Dick Bernard: BULLIED. Jamie Nabozny and a panel of experts: A unique opportunity to learn about the issue of Bullying. Saturday evening, April 28, in Roseville MN.

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The issue of Bullying has been a very high profile one recently. Here is a unique opportunity to learn more.
Saturday, April 28, 7 p.m. at St. Michael’s Church in Roseville MN (map here), there will be a unique opportunity to hear not only from a nationally known speaker on the issue of bullying, Jamie Nabozny, but to hear a responder panel of people with expertise in various aspects of the issue, comment on their perspectives on the issue.
Parents and students are especially encouraged to attend.
All details are in pdf format here.
Full disclosure: I am a member of the Board of World Citizen, the organization sponsoring the event. Our focus is on more peaceful relationships between people, in schools.
When Jamie Nabozny was recommended as our speaker, I was not aware of who he was. I have come to learn that he has an extraordinary story and he presents it extraordinarily well.
As Jim Smrokovich, Principal at Grand Rapids MN High School, and President of Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principals affirmed in a March 6, 2012 e-mail to me and his colleagues (reprinted with permission): “I just had Jamie Nabozny at my school. We showed the video during our advisory period prior to Jamie coming to our school. You could have heard a pin drop while the students watched this tragic story. Jamie then came to our school and it was by far the best presentation that I have ever brought to a student body in the 13 years that I have been a principal. I highly recommend this to our Minnesota schools. We had over 100 students contact Jamie the day after the presentation on Facebook. We now also have a group of teachers meeting to determine ways to keep the message alive.”
Confirmed panelists for April 28 Julie Blaha, President of teacher union Anoka Hennepin Education Minnesota; Scott Dibble – MN State Senator; Heather Kilgore – PACER/National Bullying Prevention Center; Shiloh O’Rourke – Senior, Bloomington Jefferson High School. World Citizen Board Member Michael Bergman will moderate the Panel. The evening will be rich in content with a great opportunity to both gather information and hear assorted points of view.
All details are at the above referenced pdf. In summary: On April 28th, 2012 at 7 pm, World Citizen and Jamie Nabozny are hosting a presentation, film screening, and conversation with educators and experts at St. Michael’s Lutheran Church at 1660 County Road B West in Roseville (just west of Har Mar Mall). Everyone is welcome to attend. Tickets are $5 for students and $10 for adults. Those who are interested can learn more and RSVP online here, or call 651-695-2587.
(click to enlarge below poster)

#544 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #5. Health Insurance responsibility for all?

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UPDATE March 29, 2012: If you are interested in the ‘national health care’ issue, “My favorite blogger” (see below) has perhaps 10,000 words of summary about the three day circus surrounding the Supreme Court earlier this week (A normal newspaper column is perhaps 600-700 words. My comments below are about 500 words). I’d appreciate your reading my comments, and if you read nothing else, note the first and last full paragraphs of the final (March 28) post of Just Above Sunset. Here are the links: March 26, March 27, March 28. These will take awhile, but are worth the time, and Just Above Sunset is worth subscribing to (it is free, one per day).
My 500 words: If you looked at the subject line and have read this far, you’re interested in and literate on the debate which has culminated in oral argument at the U.S. Supreme Court this week.
My favorite blogger, Just Above Sunset, summarizes at considerable length the views on issues of the day, and his morning post late yesterday, “The Supreme Court Disaster”, as the day before and (probably) tomorrow, will cover all manner of definitive speculation about everything related to the case. Everything said by anyone may be meaningful, or, as easily, meaningless. We don’t know.
But the issue is of huge importance, regardless of the ultimate ruling, and I decided to weigh in with the following comment on this piece of text nearing the end of the March 27 Just Above Sunset post: “But Paul Waldman points out something far more absurd, that Americans want something for nothing.”
So true, so very, very true. We Americans generally have one priority: ME, NOW. Makes no difference our ideology: ME, NOW. We’re used to demanding our way, or no way. I’M RIGHT. YOU’RE WRONG.
My wife and I are senior citizens, with accumulating seniority on Medicare. We both have pensions and we’re on Social Security. We live modestly, but don’t have to live frugally. We’re in reasonably good health. We’re the very fortunate ones in this society.
Today (March 28) we visited the tax man. We itemize: in the medical box is $12,705.66 in premiums and out of pocket expenses for a great assortment of insurances and expenses which we feel are necessary, including Long Term Care. Even Medicare has a premium, automatically deducted from our Social Security. It isn’t “free”….
We have no complaints.
I frequently think back to another day, back in 1963, when I got out of the Army and began teaching school. My new wife had also just begun teaching. We were just beginning our life together. She was pregnant with our first child.
I was back home for less than a month when she began to feel sick. She went to the doctor, and had to quit teaching. It was a steady downhill slide from there. She died of kidney disease two years later, only 22.
We had no hospital insurance. Group insurance was unusual in 1963.
Individual insurance was available. Like today’s kids, we couldn’t imagine ever needing insurance at our young age. By the time we did, it was too late. (Most likely, then as now, my wife would have been un-insurable due to her pre-existing conditions we didn’t realize existed.)
We were saved by public charity (several public and religious hospitals), and later I was saved from bankruptcy by public welfare, and embraced by a caring community.
The hell we went through long ago – our son just turned 48 – created my attitude forever. A caring society matters far more than the “free” individual.
But concepts like insurance for all are abstract concepts for our “me, now” generation. We are an immensely wealthy society (even with the laments about unemployment), and we have difficulty imagining that the others, and the future, matters.
Those wishing for the defeat of “Obamacare” might be careful what they wish for.
(I prefer it be called more accurately “Obamacares”.)
Dick and Barbara Bernard March 1965. Barbara died four months later. We were sponsors at a Baptism of our friends first child.
Photo is of Dick and Barbara Bernard in early March, 1965. Barbara died four months later. She was very ill. We were sponsors at a Baptism of our friends first child.
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