#256 – Dick Bernard: The Chilean Miners

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The rescue of the 33 Chilean miners after 69 days underground grabbed and held on to me today.
I got up about two a.m. to see the 4th miner reach the surface, and I watched intermittently today, and for an extended period tonight as the final miner reached the surface.
For me, personally, the entirety of the drama centers around community. The men in the mine became and nurtured community under conditions I cannot even begin to imagine.
The country of Chile rallied around its citizens and their families; and the rest of the world was invited in, and participated, in a moment of unity of purpose.
We saw, I think, what the world can be when it is allowed to reflect the unity of humanity – our commonality more than our differences.
It was interesting, and I suppose expected, that we, through the media, would, for some odd reason, marvel that Iranians might be human beings just like the rest of us, and that these Iranians would be gripped by the same story in the same way through the same media as we. It certainly should not be odd, but the political investment has been in our differences, rather than our similarities, and the differences are magnified, and similarities diminished. But we really are not different at all. We are simply human beings in different places, each of us with our own stories, our own frailties, our own strengths and weaknesses.
The end of this 69-day story in the Chilean high desert is far away and unknown.
One can hope that the survivors and their families can reestablish some sense of normalcy in an environment where that normalcy will be all but impossible to re-establish.
But at this moment, on the day the rescue was accomplished, it is truly a time and an event to celebrate and cherish.
Perhaps we can learn something of value from this moment in history.
One can hope.
UPDATE October 17, 2010: here

#254 – Dick Bernard: A DVD Drama at the Basilica of St. Mary

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Last Sunday on the way into Minneapolis’ Basilica of St. Mary for Mass I stopped by a small group of people collecting a DVD Archbishop Marriage001 earlier sent to all Archdiocese Catholics. The DVD lobbies against the supposed threat of Gay Marriage, and promotes a Minnesota Constitutional amendment mandating that marriage be restricted to one man and one woman*.
I dropped off my DVD and asked Lucinda Naylor, who ordinarily sits near us in the Basilica, if I could take her picture (below).

Lucinda Naylor, at right, October 2, 1010, Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis


Lucinda had unintentionally become famous a few days earlier when she had written a Facebook entry about the DVD. The entry came to the attention of her employer, the Basilica of St. Mary. There was a meeting between the Pastor and Lucinda, and the result was her suspension from her part-time job as artist for the Basilica. Her liturgical art work for years has been a staple part of the Mass booklets distributed each Sunday by ushers like myself. The DVD issue, I am convinced, was not created by either the Pastor or Lucinda. It was dropped on both of them from outside.
The suspended employee, Lucinda, established a website which gives people an opportunity to recycle the DVDs into a sculpture she plans to make. The collection of the DVDs began Sunday, October 2. Similar collections took place at other churches.
At this writing, the drama continues. I have a great deal of respect and admiration for Lucinda; and for the Pastor as well. I know both people. She acted courageously on her convictions; the Pastor, whether he can admit it or not, was without doubt caught between “the proverbial rock and a hard place”. Basilica is not ‘his’ Church, after all: it is, like all Catholic Churches, real estate of the Archdiocese, and the Archbishop is the Pastor’s boss.
After depositing my DVD in the curbside box, I went inside for 9:30 Mass. More on that in a moment.
The next day, Monday, a very large photo, taken from the identical vantage point and essentially identical to mine, appeared on page A11 of the Minneapolis Star Tribune. The headline said “Taking a Stand Against the Church“, and showed Lucinda Naylor waving on Twin Cities Marathon Runners as they passed by the Church. The accompanying text included the phrase: “A spokesman for the Archdiocese of St. Paul and Minneapolis called [her action] a publicity stunt.”
Sunday morning, inside Basilica, the Mass booklet said that the presider at all of the six weekend Masses would be Pastor John Bauer. This is highly unusual. Normally there are two or three presiders.
I am sure the vast majority of us in Basilica on Sunday were waiting to see what the Pastors Homily would be. There was little doubt about the topic; the only unknown was exactly what he’d say.
Basilica is a welcoming and diverse place, and Fr. Bauer made specific reference to the greeting at every Mass: “Whatever brings you here and wherever you are at on your faith journey, you are welcome here.” It is a theme that the Basilica lives. It fits my Parish.
The rest of his brief message spoke gently to the issue that had Lucinda out on the sidewalk: “Parishes are much like families“, he said, alluding again to something he’s said before: that in his own family, members tend to cancel each other out in Presidential elections. He pulled a quotation from, he recalled, James Joyce: “The word ‘Catholic’ means ‘here comes everybody’ “. And then he quoted from an e-mail someone had sent him during the tense few days preceding this Mass: “I stay [in the Church] because I want the Church to be the Church I want the Church to be.”
Finished, Fr. Bauer received warm applause (unusual in our setting, regardless of the preacher or message). I was among those who applauded.
But that applause doesn’t mean this issue is over; by no means.
As I was drove home I thought in particular about Fr. Bauer’s “family” analogy.
In this case, there is a huge difference: the Archbishop, with the help of what had to be a huge anonymous donation, sent out hundreds of thousands of these DVDs which spoke from Power to Peasant, as it were.
Lucinda is one of those Peasants; I another.
The Archbishop didn’t ask our opinion. He didn’t care. His wealthy financial benefactor hid in the shadows of anonymity. So be it.
For some reason I thought about action organizing in such a case of power versus powerless and I thought back to a favorite book from childhood, Gulliver’s Travels. Gulliver, as most will remember, traveled to a place called Lilliput, which was inhabited by ant-size humans who were no match in any way for the gigantic normal sized human, Gulliver.
At least, the Lilliputians were no match for him on his terms.
But one night Gulliver fell into a sound sleep, and the next day when he woke up, he was tied to the ground, and couldn’t move.
The Lilliputians had put Power in its place.
“Publicity stunt” indeed.
Go, Lilliput!
Postnote: a YouTube link from a friend, a Dad, whose son is Gay.
*The Archbishops DVD can also be found on YouTube.
Watch this space in coming days for a commentary on a Marriage in Quebec in 1730.

#252 – Dick Bernard: "Waiting for Superman"

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UPDATE: February 7, 2011: see end of this post.
Were it in my power, I’d require every American adult to spend the one hour 42 minutes needed to watch the documentary “Waiting for Superman“; then I’d assign them to a working group with ten of their peers of differing points of view, with the assignment to dialog at length about what they’ve just witnessed and then try to come to consensus on how to remedy the problem.
Such is not in my power, and in contemporary society people don’t much like to dialogue with people who might disagree with their view, so my idea is just a fantasy. But it would be nice….
My entire life has been in and around public education. I grew up in a family where both parents were public school teachers; I went to a great, tiny, teacher’s college; I taught junior high kids for nine years; I represented public school teachers in one of those “teacher’s unions” for 27 years; in retirement, I’m still engaged, with children and grandchildren still hanging around public education as employee or student. I know something about the topic.
Still, when I was waiting for show time at the Uptown Theatre in Minneapolis yesterday, I almost passed on going into the theatre, almost opting to sit on the bench outside and watch the world go by on Hennepin Avenue. It was a beautiful day, too nice to waste on a movie that I had heard emphasized bashing public schools and teachers unions. Life is too short.
I’m glad, though, that I went in.
There was much to learn beyond the reviews.
There was a surprisingly large crowd in the theater for the 1:30 showing of Waiting for Superman. This was not a film to allow distractions. We were a quiet and by all indications attentive bunch. When we filed out at the end of the showing, there seemed to be a pretty general reflective silence:
“What does this all mean, and what do we have to do?”
Yes, unions, including mine, were bashed, and I thought the movie overreached. But this film has villains in abundance, including our supposedly great society. What had me in tears for the last few minutes of the movie is what our society has created and nurtured particularly in the last forty years in this country, and then blamed on some ‘other’ (take your pick).
Go ahead, eliminate the teachers unions and take a shot at the “bad” teachers…but don’t think that will solve the problem. There’s a great plenty of other culprits, including some of those who seem to have been anointed as saviors in the film. Take a look, for instance, at the 100,000 or so local superintendents and school board members running America’s 14,000 or so school districts, and the abundant opportunities for dysfunction and malfunction. Or the politicians who play politics with the very large target that is presented by perhaps 45-50 million school age children and the people employed to work with these children in public schools. Or the citizens who pay zero attention to who they elect to make or implement local, state and national education policy (see end note four).
We’ve all created the disaster that made the film possible. We need to do a whole lot more than just talk about it, and find scapegoats.
But I’m not looking for miracles. Finding solutions takes work and compromise. Who wants to work…or compromise?
Please. Do. It’s our kids futures.
*
End note: I was curious about the title, “Waiting for Superman”. The answer comes at the end of the film. You need to see it for yourself.
End note two: I’d invite readers to visit the website of my friend, retired educator and writer Marion Brady, to see his ideas about solutions and reform of public education. Marion takes this issue seriously.
End note three: Here’s what I wrote about the topic of community and school four years ago. This writing is within a website I created eight years ago, specifically to convey ideas to public educators about better connecting with we folks “outside the walls” .
End note four: I live in a community which would be considered suburban and affluent. In the school board election one year ago, with four openings, the top vote getter among the ten competitors, was elected by 3% (1 of 33) eligible voters in the district. The total turnout was less than 10% of those eligible. Nine out of ten residents didn’t even care enough to vote. And our district has a large student population. It is a disgrace.
UPDATE February 7, 2011:
1984 Program ideas for “Ah, Those Marvelous Minnesota Public Schools”: 1984 Revisited001. This program was a cooperative venture involving private and public sectors which commenced with a kickoff event in August, 1984, featuring Astronaut and Willmar MN native Pinky Nelson as keynote speaker.
1984 Report of Mn Business Partnership “Educating Students for the 21st Century”: 1984001.
This report was issued as a criticism of Mn Public Schools and to my knowledge has never been assessed in terms of long term outcomes.
Personal Observations on Firing Bad Teachers, by Dick Bernard, blog post and Minneapolis Star Tribune column March, 2010: https://thoughtstowardsabetterworld.org/?m=20100318

#251 – Dick Bernard: Campaigning.

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Yesterday our local candidate for state legislature was door-knocking in our neighborhood – at least I know she was, since there was a flier with a handwritten personal note from her in our door.
Campaigning for office is brutal work, not for the faint of heart, and I sometimes wonder what would happen if all of those who collectively run for all offices would just say, in unison, ‘forget about it, life’s too short, I’m outa here”. Then we might come to some appreciation of the largely thankless labor our representatives provide, regardless of party, regardless of position, regardless of level.
Our representative is running for a third term. Best as I’ve been able to see, she’s run as a centrist – a survival skill in her district – and she’s ably represented the interests of her district and the state of Minnesota, her state.
“Her district”, in Minnesota, means basically about 40,000 people in part of one suburban city. Conservatively, this is 10-15,000 households, minimum. Trying to balance the interests of just her constituents is one thing; trying to represent her constituents while at the same time entering into endless negotiations with colleagues and assorted interests at the state level is something else again. There is an endless barrage of competing priorities, and at the end there is a record, gleefully dissected by an opponents apparatus who, these days, is not constrained by that quaint concept, honesty. (And who, further, is not constrained by a record – the opponent has never run for office before, to my knowledge.)
So…about the time our candidate was knocking on our door, our mailman was delivering a piece of what I would call “hit lit” from the opposition. It was, of course, attractive, with lots of flying feathers, saying that the opponents had “ruffled feathers” over our Representatives reckless spending which was, they cutely said, “for the birds”.
One enterprising friend did the research on this claim. She found that the expenditure referred to was from a fund established by Minnesota voters 18 YEARS before our Representative was in office, and furthermore, it was fully funded by lottery ticket sales and mandated for the specific use to which it was put. In other words, our candidate had nothing to do with either the fund or the expenditure.
Another mailing from the same source “complained about an alleged expenditure from the Nongame Wildlife Management Account which…is totally funded by those who check the box on their personal or corporate tax returns saying they wish to donate $1 or more to the fund, plus by private donations.” (quote from my friends letter to the editor, likely to appear in the local paper next week.)
The damage, of course, is done. More people will at least glance at the fliers in the mailbox, than will read the letter to the editor. Allegations will trump facts…with some voters.
So, our legislator walks on, neighborhood to neighborhood, doing her best to knock on every door, while trying to keep some semblance of personal life together – dealing with her mother’s recent death and other things. One cannot be a real person and run for office, either. That’s why so few are up to the task.
In the warfare that is politics, there is no time for letting down, of taking things for granted.
We’ll do what we can to help our candidate, and candidates, as will many others.
But we all need to pitch in.

#242 – Dick Bernard: A School for the Feeble-Minded

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When I was growing up in the 1940s and 50s, we would occasionally go to visit my Dad’s parents in Grafton ND.
While there, one of the certain trips was to the city park, Leistikow Park, on the bank of the Park River. It was an awesome place in the eyes of small town kids in the big city of Grafton (which probably was well on the short-side of 5,000 residents in those years).
Approaching the park we always passed what we knew as the State School for the Feeble Minded. There was one particularly large building that I remember, and on summer days the lawn was crowded with people we knew were very different from ourselves. Even in those years, when there was at least the beginnings of recognition of special needs, the perception was that these people were more-or-less warehoused, much as they would have been in an insane asylum. The financial resources and the political will were not yet there to help these persons who were very different from we supposedly normal folk.
We looked at those people behind the fence much like someone would look at animals in a zoo.

Undated photo of the main building at Grafton


By the 1950s enlightenment was beginning in states across the nation. Apparently, even though I remember the school only as the School for the Feeble Minded, its name had been changed even before I was born to the less descriptive “Grafton State School”.
By bits and pieces, everywhere, came new programs and attention and funding for “MAXIMIZING human potential for greater SELF-SUFFICIENCY*”
I’ve come to know about the importance and richness of the special needs community in the years since my youngest child was born Down Syndrome in November, 1975.
Heather is nearing 35 this year, and is a phenomenal human being.
This week I drew the pleasant duty of picking Heather up at her daytime work facility, Proact*, in Eagan MN. (It is Proact’s operating philosophy which I quote above.)
Off hours she lives in a pleasant suburban home with a couple of other special needs adults.
I’ve written before about her active engagement in after hours athletic activities most recently last month.
Last night, Heather watched the Vikings and the Saints at her sister’s home. She’s an avid sports fan.
It is easy to take for granted the safety-net we have constructed in this country for those less capable of competing on their own. It is easy to say they’re a waste of precious resources.
In a bygone day my Heather could have been one of those behind the walls of that School for the Feeble Minded. I sometimes wonder how it would have been had she been child, and I parent, 100 years ago. What forces would have worked on me, then.
Those were not the good old days.
And as for going back…when I picked up Heather yesterday, one of her workmates gave her a hug as she was leaving. Then this friend, named Mary, reached out her hand and said to me, “hi, I’m Mary”.
Can’t get any better than that.

Dick and Heather as photographed by the Smooch Project www.thesmoochproject.com

#239 – Dick Bernard: Reflections on Labor Day

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Most Sundays the patrons of “my” local coffee shop will hear a somewhat odd trio in conversation along the east (street side) wall. Commanding one table is a retired middle manager of a major international corporation, someone who was fairly high up in the food chain in an important division of his company. At the middle table is a union guy who comes in most every weekend and is, by every indication, a very gifted “key” employee of his corporation, and (perhaps) sometimes a curmudgeon in his own union. Then there’s me, a retired Union organizer – one of “those” people – someone who spent 27 years trying to make sense out of nonsense – “the man in the middle” of assorted disputes and conflicts between working people and their managers.
After the usual bantering back and forth, when the conversation wanders back to the more reflective and serious, we three tend to agree much more than we disagree. The specifics of what we talk about are not as important as the fact that we are not as odd a bunch as we might seem to be. We might see problems and their solutions a little bit differently, but not as differently as one might imagine. We talk about things most people might talk about these days: work, workers, money in (or not in) the economy, how the national organism needs everyone to thrive to survive….
Sunday, as usual, I left coffee, went home, got set for the trip to my Church, the Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis.
Driving out of our town home development, we saw some cut firewood on a lawn, with a little sign – “Firewood, $5”. It was a small deal; somebody had been cleaning up a neighboring tree lot. My spouse, who’s President of our Homeowners Association, noted that somebody would complain about this little neighborhood enterprise – our Association has rules against that sort of thing. Then she said that the guy had lost his job recently, making the neighborhood enterprise make more sense – even if it was against the rules.
At Church, I picked up the Sunday bulletin. The front page commentary was by Janice Andersen, whose full-time job with us might well translate as “Social Justice”. The headline of her column: “Imagine being able to move out of homelessness with absolutely no furniture“. She then succinctly summarized the story of three anonymous people who had benefited from our Church’s St. Vincent de Paul Thrift store “gently used furniture” program: #1 – “Bill” finally has an entry level job after being out of work for some time…He makes enough money to pay for his rent and food….”; #2 – “Mary”…who lived in her car for two years…participating in a program that teaches interview skills and is looking for work”; #3 – “Ann” is a disabled senior who recently received custody of her grandson. She had no furniture other than a mattress on the floor….”
The visiting Priest, Fr. Greg Miller from St. John’s Abbey, pulled it all together for this Labor Day weekend, basing his comments on Luke 14:25-33, a key section of which says “anyone of you who does not renounce all his possessions cannot be my disciple.”
Using a symbol familiar to all Catholics – a Rosary – Fr. Greg demonstrated the difference between Grasping (Greed) and Receiving (Generosity). In the first instance, a clenched down-turned fist, holding and hiding that Rosary; in the second, an open up-turned hand, receiving, then giving. Pretty dramatic.
“What we love is what we become“, he said. And he asked us to be especially cognizant, this Labor Day, of those who are “Unemployed, underemployed, and those who have given up looking for work.”
Good messages.
As a nation, we become together, exactly what we are individually. Period. Our “community” is much, much broader than what most of us might define it.

#238 – Dick Bernard: A close encounter with a Mosque

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Related post Nov. 14, 2010 here.
The abundant insanity (that’s what it is – insanity) around the proposed (and approved) Islamic Center in lower Manhattan caused me to revisit a significant time in my youth.
In the summer of 1953 I was about to enter 8th grade. We had moved to the tiny village of Ross, North Dakota, hardly even a wide spot in the road between Minot and Williston; on the main line of the extremely busy Great Northern Railroad.
This was the first oil boom in the Williston Basin and housing was at a premium. I was the oldest of five kids, and the only housing for our parents was next door to the school in which they both taught. The “teacherage”, as such buildings were called, had two rooms and a kitchen. As I recall, we showered in the basement of the school building, and that was where the telephone was. Our conditions were primitive.
But 1953-54 was a rich one for me. Among other happenings was meeting a farm kid whose name was Emmett. Emmett and I became friends as kids do, and while I don’t recall that we spent a lot of time together I have kept in contact with him to this day, 57 years later.
One time during that year I was invited out to Emmet’s home in the country. I rode my bike out there, met his parents and his sisters and brother, had supper, saw the barn and the horses, and went home. Driving down that dirt road seemed like a long trip then, but three years ago I revisited the town and the now deserted farm, and it was perhaps two or three miles at most from my home to his.
Emmett was a little darker complected than I with somewhat different facial features than most North Dakota country folks. I might have known then that he and many families around the town were of Syrian ancestry, but it really never registered with me – it wasn’t important.
Similarly, at some point somebody must have told me that these Syrian folks with unusual names were “Mohammedans”, but I don’t remember who, or when, that might have been.
We moved on after a single year in that tiny town and went somewhere else.
It was years later that I came to learn that along that country rode I’d biked sometime in 1953-54 was probably the first Mosque in the United States of America; and later still that someone – probably Emmett – told me that his Mom (both parents and the current Mosque are pictured at the referenced website) was one of the key persons in keeping the Moslem faith alive in outback North Dakota.
Dad was the Superintendent of the tiny school at Ross, and he tended to keep records for posterity. In his papers I came across the attendance records for the Ross school in the year I was there. Typewritten on the roster was the name of my friend, Emmett ____. Handwritten to the left of Emmett’s name was “Mohomed”, more like Emmet’s true given name. Even then, perhaps, there was no desire to raise any unnecessary “red flags”.
I visited the Ross Mosque and the Cemetery in the summer of 2007. I recognized many last names and it was an emotional experience for me.

The first Mosque near Ross ND from Plains Folk, North Dakota\’s Ethnic History , Playford Thorson, ND Institute for Regional Studies 1988, p. 360

Intolerance is one of our many inheritances in this country.
I hope that the powers that be do not cave in to intolerance in New York City or anywhere else.

Ross ND High School Graduates 1954

Update November 13, 2010:
This evening I have been invited to give a very brief presentation concerning this blogpost. The above blogpost itself will be in the groups program booklet.
Following are some brief notes in addition to what is already described above.
In addition to having a one year and very positive encounter with the Muslim community of Ross ND in 1953-54, I also have family experience of having lived in many small towns in North Dakota in my youth. Both my father and mother taught in the schools of these communities. In recent years I have had a great interest in family history so that has also given me more reason to pay attention to things most people might not notice.
In 1991, I inquired about the Ross school, and the then-County Superintendent provided me with my Dad’s year-end report for the high school which that year had 30 pupils in grades 9-12. In 1953-54, the report shows, there were at least six and possibly seven members of the Ross Syrian Community in the public school. Two were seniors, one from Emmett’s family.
We, on the other hand, were clearly religious outsiders: our family was Catholic, and I would doubt there were any other Catholics in the community. We attended church in the nearby trade center of Stanley.
A 1988 book, “North Dakota’s Ethnic History: Plains Folk” (ND Institute of Regional Studies, North Dakota State University, multiple authors), has been a frequent resource for me in my family history work. Pages 354-363 of this book discuss Syrians (Lebanese) and their presence in many parts of North Dakota. On page 360 is this quote, particularly relevant to this discussion: “In Mountrail County, near the village of Ross, other Syrians put down roots during the homestead rush at the turn of the [20th] century. Sam Omar, probably the first settler of Arabic background, in 1902 took land on section 26, Ross township. Later in that year, twenty-two other men came to Ross Township and nearby Alger Township. Within several years almost seventy Lebanese men had taken up land in Ross, James Hill, and Alger townships.
The Mountrail settlers were unique in that, with two exceptions, everyone was of Muslim background. Their descendants today remember two home towns “in Syria”: Bire (Berrie) and Rafid. These villages, in eastern Lebanon adjoin each other and lie only three miles from Ain-Arab. Beirut is twenty-eight air miles to the northwest.
Families in the early days came not only from Lebanon and eastern American seaports, but also from settlements in Nebraska as well….”
I saw these families through an eighth graders eyes in the single year of 1953-54.
I don’t recall so much as a thought or a mention that they were ‘different’. They were simply part of the community.
Lest I be accused of seeing the world through rose-colored glasses, North Dakota was no less immune to prejudice than anywhere else. In my own Catholic case, for instance, in the late 1920s there was a Ku Klux Klan movement that was anti-Catholic in its focus, led by a Protestant minister, and was very damaging. In the late 1940s an anti-garb law was passed prohibiting Nuns in habits to teach in public schools. And, of course, there was the shameful matter of treatment of American Indians.
With the coming of the mid-1950s came two major Air Force bases, at Minot and Grand Forks, and large numbers of African-Americans. I am sure this was an occasional matter of concern.
But in my interlude in Ross, meeting a Muslim kid named Emmett, and experiencing the hospitality of Emmett’s farm family, I developed lifelong affection for these fine rural folks in northwestern North Dakota, and an appreciation for the religious tradition which they held.

#235 – Dick Bernard: The "sustainability" of Rage

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It was a bit over a year ago – July 24, 2009 – when I wrote my first blog post about Health Care Reform.
It was about that time when I got the first of many forwarded e-mails raging about intrusion of the government into health care policy, citing chapter and verse from some huge draft bill then beginning to float through Congress. The intention was to “kill the bill”.
August, 2009, became the “days of rage” when Congresspeople came home for recess, and were tarred and feathered by hostile loudmouths, whose performance was duly reported in the media.
It was a very nasty time.
In due course, a few months ago, a Health Care Reform actually passed Congress and was signed by the President. It was by no means adequate, but under the circumstances it was the best that could be done.
Since then, the focus of the Rage has been turned to other things, most recently, once again towards Muslims and their places of worship.
Rage, as it usually manifests in Anger and Fear, is no doubt a good seller. Rage, and its ‘children’, has a good market.
Sometimes I do wonder, however, how sustainable or even useful rage really is.
Endless rage is really debilitating. Worse, even if its aims are realized, its results are rarely positive. So…you defeat Health Care Reform – you “kill the bill” -, or burn down the site of a proposed Mosque. What do you really accomplish?
I don’t have the data, but I think I can very safely say that in vast numbers of murders, the killer initially feels a positive rush of accomplishing something really good*. “Take that, you ____ .” Often the victim is someone well known and close to the perpetrator – I’ve heard police say that intervening in “Domestic disputes” is among their most dangerous duties. A 911 call to somebody’s house is not one approached casually.
Up until now, it has been easy to identify the angry and rageful in the political debate. They appeared at rallies with outrageous placards and quotes. They despise and they hate, openly.
Last Saturday’s gathering in Washington D.C. marked an apparent change in tactics by those behind the organized rage: it was described as a gathering of nice down home folks; all polite, no signs. A very family friendly event.
It was all a tactic.
The rage continues, only it is better hidden. The smiling person without the sign is the same person who had the hateful sign in public a few weeks ago. All that is different is the marketing image.
As the righteous killer always finds out, the pleasant rush of success at his or her accomplishment is short-lived. There are negative consequences to killing someone or something.
Rage is difficult to sustain, and it is very unhealthy to the person who carries it, particularly long term.
The current campaign of rage, even if it appears to succeed short-term, will not last. But it can do an immense amount of possibly irreparable damage to our society at large.
It is up to us to be the witnesses for positive and continuing change.
* – A number of years ago I attended a very interesting study series on the “Ten Commandments”, conducted by a Catholic Priest and Jewish Rabbi. One of the text references said this about the Hebrew law on Murder: “The Hebrew text does not state “you shall not kill”… but “you shall not murder”. The Sages understand “bloodshed” to include embarrassing a fellow human being in public so that the blood drains from his or her face, not providing safety for travelers, and causing anyone the loss of his or her livelihood. “One may murder with the hand or with the tongue, by talebearing or by character assassination [emphasis added]. One may murder also by carelessness, by indifference, by the failure to save human life when it is in your power to do so.” Etz Hayim, Torah and Commentary, The Rabinical Assembly The United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, p. 446
By this standard, contemporary American Politics would cease to exist, or have to be considered a society of murderers.

#231 – Dick Bernard: The Minnesota Orchestra; Preparing for the BBC Proms

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August 20 we spent a delightful evening at the Minnesota Orchestra Guarantors Concert at Orchestra Hall.
We’re long-time subscribers, so the superb music was no surprise. Beginning Friday night, August 27, 2010, the same Minnesota Orchestra performs in London at the famed BBC Proms – the only American orchestra on this years Proms list.
Over the years we’ve seen lots of conductors and guest conductors at the podium at Orchestra Hall. They are all leaders. But they are part of a team – an Orchestra – extraordinarily talented musicians who work together to bring to life music composed, most often, by long dead composers. Friday night we listened to Barber, Beethoven and Bruckner. (Minnesota Orchestra is a union orchestra, but this adds to its functionality. Conductors and Union members work within the rules to fashion brilliantly presented music.)
A few hours before Saturday’s concert, thanks to a couple of tips, I went to page 288 of the September, 2010, issue of Vanity Fair magazine to read a long article “Washington, We Have a Problem”, outlining the extreme dysfunction of our current political system in the United States.
Sitting there in row four directly behind Conductor Osmo Vanska at Orchestra Hall, I couldn’t help but compare/contrast the performance of a superb Orchestra against our own U.S. of A. as played out by its leaders in Washington and most especially the huge lobbying corps behind the scenes.
One might say that we in the U.S. have selected a Conductor for our National Orchestra. He is called “President of the United States”.
We bring our Conductor to a podium, facing an unruly mob of orchestra members (we can call them “Congress” and “Senate”), many of whom have no interest in anything other than the conductors failure. Within this Orchestra are people who not only do not practice the music for the performance to come, but feel it is their right to play whatever tune they feel like playing during the concert, if they even bother to show up. There is hardly any discipline in this motley crew; they are ‘hired’ by voters often with little interest in other than their own limited parochial issues. Some see their sole role as sowing discord.
Meanwhile, out in the audience of this national “orchestra”, we’re chatting up a storm, texting, cell phones out and at the ready, arguing with the people in front, behind and to the side, some of us trying to listen, but most of us immersed in our own worlds and needs. We feel no need for restraint or cooperation. I want country western from that bunch up there; you want 70s light rock; somebody else actually came for the dreadfully boring music we’re hearing up there – old, dead music. And we have to pay [taxes] for this?
What I describe isn’t much of a recipe for “success”.
Yet we extol our system of government as being the best that ever was or will be: a shining model for the world.
Friday nights concert at Orchestra Hall was superb, as expected.
And likely, at the BBC Proms in London on Friday night, August 27, our Minnesota Orchestra will be a superb representative of the very best that is America. Follow the tour here.
We deserve better from our own government.

#228 – Dick Bernard: Making the Change from "Swords into Plowshares"

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This post relates directly to #227 – The Last Truck Out.
My guess is that there are relatively few who truly believe that Perpetual War is the path to Perpetual Peace. Even those who recite the assorted ‘might is right’ mantras probably doubt the wisdom of this position. Tens of millions upon tens of millions of war dead, especially in the last hundred years, testify to the insanity of war as solution to problems. We know we need a different formula for living together on this planet or we’re all dead.
Still, ours is a nation built on the value of military might and conquest, and huge numbers of us, including myself, have very close familiarity with the military system. So, when in doubt, the path to peace is usually more war: it is a national mantra, difficult to change. Sometimes it seems impossible to change.
Wednesday night I was heartened when that last combat truck came through the gate from Iraq into Kuwait. I was heartened even though 50,000 U.S. troops remain in Iraq, which is still an unstable country, politically.
I was heartened because possibly, just possibly, the scales have tipped from a military solution to every problem, to more of an emphasis on diplomacy: the possibility that a Department of State can play a larger role against an immense Department of Defense. I will continue to believe that what happened yesterday was an immense step forward, rather than a petty and unimportant one.
“We, the people” are key to encouraging this transition. How?
As I write, I have in front of me a dog-eared copy of Martin Luther King, Jr’s 1964 book “Why We Can’t Wait“. It was a used book when I received it – a plus not a minus! – a most welcome gift from my friend Lydia Howell in December, 2006. It is a book I urge everyone to read reflectively. My edition, from 1968, is the reprinted and identical edition still available at bookstores and on-line.
MLK wrote the book when he was 34 years old, and it was published shortly after his 35th birthday; and a few months after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, who he knew personally. He recounts the sorry history of race relations in this country, with an emphasis on the more recent history of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s, and particularly the watershed year of 1963, the year of his Letter from the Birmingham Jail (which is reprinted in full in the book.) (MLK was responding to a letter from prominent Alabama clergymen who were urging moderation. It is very difficult to find their letter on-line, even today, so I have attached it Alabama Clergy MLK 63001.)
King’s true genius was not only his rhetorical skills, in my opinion.
King knew grassroots organizing, and the politics of possibility as well as the realities of politics, formal and informal. He richly recounts the struggles in his book.
In the book he gives great credit to a minister most of us have likely never heard of: a man named Fred Shuttlesworth who built the Alabama base for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. “The courageous minister’s audacious public defiance of Bull Connor had become a source of inspiration and encouragement to Negroes throughout the South“, King says (pp 51-52).
The hard-hearted Bull Connor also receives some of the credit for the successes of 1963.
At page 132, King goes further: “I am reminded of something President Kennedy said to me at the White House following the signing of the Birmingham agreement. “Our judgment of Bull Connor should not be too hard,” he commented. “After all, in his way, he has done a good deal for civil-rights legislation this year.” King continues: “It was the people who moved their leaders, not the leaders who moved the people….”
King and the Civil Rights Movement worked with different issues at a different time in history than today’s Peace movement.
The Civil Rights Movement was fighting centuries of oppression; in the War and Peace environment of today, Peace leaders need to recognize that War has been successful, and re-fashion their arguments around the ultimate failure of War as a solution, especially in today’s and the future environment.
It is a difficult transition which we all have to make.
War kills.
Peace and justice are the only long term solutions.