#226 – Dick Bernard: Winning Last

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I arrived late for the Dakota County Softball League Championship Picnic on August 17, and as I got out of the car I heard the beginning of the singing of the Star Spangled Banner. I turned around and in front of me was the American flag, backlit by a brilliant sun, and as much instinctively as intentionally, I stopped in place, took off my baseball hat, and paid attention to the national anthem as beautifully sung by two young women somewhere in the park.
It was a perfect start to a perfect three hours on a pleasant Tuesday afternoon at Aronson Park in Lakeville MN.

During the Star Spangled Banner August 17, 2010


The event was, I guess one would say, the “World Series” for a bunch of truly exceptional adults, one of whom is my daughter, Heather (photo below). The program listed a dozen teams, roughly half in the “A” League, the other half in the “B”. Heather’s team was vying for 5th Place in their Division.

Heather Bernard August 17, 2010


After the national anthem, and before the games, came the picnic for about 400 of us: players, coaches, families and friends. Fried Chicken never tasted so good! Heather’s sisters and their families were there, as well as the family in whose home she lives with two other exceptional adults. We sometimes joke with Heather being “the Queen”. For sure, on Tuesday, she was! Her own cheering section was “in the stands”.
After the picnic came the game. Every player came to bat, and spent time as fielders. Can’t say I saw any double plays or ‘out of the park’ home runs, but I was truly at the World Series! Heather is a big sports fan. When she came up to bat, she did the routine, “knocking” the dirt off her sneakers; doing the stretching exercise with the bat before coming to the plate – the whole nine yards. She rapped a couple of near-hits. While in this particular game she didn’t actually reach base, it made no difference at all to anybody, including herself. She’d shown up and taken a cut!

The mighty Heather taking a cut at the Plate


Game over – each game lasts an hour – Heather’s team, Rave Red, was on the short end of an 8-4 final score. The way some people would see it, they came in last in the league.
But you wouldn’t know it from the players, the coaches, the fans in the ‘stands’. They were winners, as they congratulated the opposition, and ran the bases one last time for this season, and received their trophy for a truly winning season.

Heather receives her award


Before the game, I made a side comment to Jeff, who’s a good friend of mine, one of the volunteer coaches, and parent of one of the athletes.
“Without volunteers, this country of ours would collapse“, I said. He agreed. We are bombarded daily with all sorts of very bad news about us; it is good, sometimes, to take time to identify the good – and there’s lots of that, too.
So to all the unsung heroes, especially those folks who make things like the Dakota County Softball League happen, including the players on the field, I offer my heart-felt thanks and Congratulations!
You make my day.

Coach Jeff gives an Award to one of his players after the game.


Seen at a game in July, 2010


The sign on the car door says this: “Kate was born with a serious ability“.

#222 – A.J. goes to Teach

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In the next few days A.J., a young woman I’ve gotten to know at my local coffee shop, leaves town for a new assignment and career as a 5th grade teacher in a Montana town. Today there was a farewell party, a going away sendoff, for this young woman. The kids she’s been assigned will be lucky. She joins the millions of other young people over the years who have nervously taken their first full-time teaching assignment. (As I know, from having been a junior high school teacher myself, and knowing from conversations with many others, it is the rare teacher who is not nervous on that first day of the school year. After all, for the most part they have new students, and the certainty that this year will be different than last.)
So, A.J.’s heading west, and I went to the gathering today to wish her well.
My parents were both public school teachers, beginning their respective careers in North Dakota country schools in the 1920s. I was a teachers kid. I have some idea how the business works.
I’ve been thinking of a send-off message for A.J. and mostly I’m drawn back to a memory of my Dad, long after he retired from classroom work.
In the late 1970s Mom and Dad bought a small home in San Benito TX, a Rio Grande Valley town. Their home at 557 N. Dowling was directly across the street from Berta Cabaza Junior High School. They had retired from teaching in the very early 1970s.
Nothing is certain in life, and in 1981, about this time of year, my mother died of cancer, leaving Dad alone, far away and very lonely.
He had a life decision to make, literally, and at some early point he went across the street to the school and offered to volunteer.
San Benito is basically a border town, and many of the kids had a first language of Spanish. It was the language they spoke at home and with each other. The teaching was in English, and the kids just couldn’t keep up.
Dad’s volunteer job was to tutor some of these students in English. It was not a glamorous job, but it was an essential one. The below photo, taken when Dad was 77 years old, shows some of the students he worked with in one school year. Other photos from 1983-86 H Bernard & Stu 4-22-85002:

Henry Bernard with Berta Cabaza students he helped tutor April 22, 1985


Dad and Mom liked to travel, most often by bus, and in their trips they would usually bring home a few postcards, usually non-descript ones, like a free one of a little motel they had stayed in somewhere. Dad kept these “postals” as he called them. One would never know when they’d come in handy.
Dad hit on an idea: he decided to ask his kids if they wanted to hear from him when he went someplace, and a number of them were interested and gave him their home address.
So, out on the road somewhere, say Salt Lake City, Dad might take out a random postcard from his cache, say, California, and write a little note to his correspondent in San Benito.
As it was described at the time, these simple little postal messages were a hit. For many of the kids, it was the first time they had ever received a letter from anyone, much less someone traveling elsewhere in the United States.
A.J., what my Dad did was the essence of teaching. It doesn’t need to be grandiose, or expensive, or time consuming.
Knowing you, I’m sure you’ll ‘catch the wave’ and do a great job! Have a great year.
A.J. has set up a blog to chronicle her first year. Check in once in awhile.

A good card, methinks, for a 5th grade teacher. The card is from Kate Harper Designs, Box 2112 Berkeley 94701. She solicits designs kateharp@aol.com.

#220 – Dick Bernard: Target, MN Forward, and the other side of "Branding"

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Breaking news on this issue. The remainder of this post was written before this news bulletin was received.
In recent weeks Target Corporation has found itself in the national Bulls eye for corporate sponsorship of a “business as citizen” political action committee called MN Forward.
Pipsqueaks, common citizens like myself, can’t impact on such a behemoth…or can we?
I keep thinking back to a surprise snowstorm around Thanksgiving, 1983. I was enroute to Duluth, and at tiny Canyon MN, the snow on four-lane highway 53 became so heavy that I and other motorists were literally stopped in our tracks, and had to be rescued by snowmobiles.
Salvation for me was being able to stay overnight in the tiny store/gas station/home which is pictured below. The proprietors harbored myself and an over the road trucker who was, like me, stalled on the freeway. We had beds to sleep in, and a simple macaroni hotdish – under the circumstances a gourmet meal.

Canyon Standard Oil Station Spring 1984


The Canyon store had been, and continued to be a good way stop for me as I traveled from Minnesota’s Iron Range to Duluth. I’d get gas, maybe a candy bar, and engage in some conversation.
The first credit card I ever had was a Standard Oil card, and it was used exclusively for gas and oil – this was in the days before full service convenience stations. Standard Oil had my loyalty – a positive brand image. Not only did I have their card, but one of their stations had gone the extra mile to give me exceptional service.
But all was to change, probably less than a year after the Thanksgiving good deed.
I stopped by the station as I always did, and the owners told me they were no longer going to be carrying gasoline. Standard Oil higher-ups had decided they were too small, and they were taken off the distribution list for fuel products. Their only sin, best as I could tell, was their small volume. They weren’t worth the trouble. Ultimately the store closed.
When the Canyon Store stopped selling Standard Oil products, I stopped going to Standard Oil, and I never went back, even as the brand changed names as the company was bought and sold. If the sign said “Standard Oil”, wherever I was, I went to the next station down the road….
Twenty years after Standard Oil had issued me one of their credit cards, I stopped patronizing Standard Oil. Their branding had become a negative for me.
I’m not naive.
My petty amount of business would not bring Standard Oil to its knees.
Similarly, my not shopping at Target will not seem to have an impact.
But image is critical to a company like Target, or like Standard Oil in an earlier day.
You cannot rebuild a reputation simply by hoping people will forget.
I never did….

#218 – Dick Bernard: Infrastructure

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This morning is a hot and sticky one here in the Twin Cities.
An hour or so ago, I was about a mile into my usual 2 1/2 mile walk when I met another walker who seemed to be in some distress. I said “good morning“, and he said “I don’t think I’m going to make it back“, and sat down with a nearby garbage can as his backrest. Sweat was pouring off of him.
We were a ways out in the woods, so to speak, though not that far. “Do you have a cellphone?“, I asked. “No“. Neither did I. Lesson #1.
Where do you live? He gave me his address. Neither of us had a pencil or paper. Lesson #2.
There was nothing I could do for him just staying there, I had no idea when or if there would be other walkers coming by, so I told him I’d go to get help, and I backtracked my route reciting over and over his name and address: “2531 __ Unit __, J__K___”
Back at the road and closest neighborhood – perhaps a half mile – I walked to the nearest house and rang the doorbell. No answer. People were at work. Should I go to the next house, or the one across the street, or “catty-corner”?
I was walking across the street when I saw a mini-van driving towards me and I waved it down. Thankfully, it stopped. A young woman, Jenny, with a small child in the back seat rolled down her window and I described the situation and said it looked like a 911 call was needed. She immediately dialed her cell phone. “I’m in Nursing School“, she said, willing to help, and she proceeded to drive down the walking path to the man, who was still sitting beside the garbage can. She talked to the man, all the while on the phone.
An ambulance was on the way. The man’s condition was such that he could get into the car, and she drove back with him to the nearest road. All seemed under control, and I went on…but shortly changed my mind and backtracked to make sure all was okay.
I arrived at the road, and along with Jenny there was a State Highway Patrol and a City Police vehicle, and an ambulance was just pulling up. JK was being assisted from the car to the ambulance, and as I write I have no idea how he is doing: whether it was a heart episode, or dehydration, or something else that he was experiencing when I met him at that garbage can. But I know the situation was extremely well covered by the responders.
All the walk home I kept thinking of lessons learned from this episode, and the primary one was how lucky we are to have an “infrastructure” which includes, especially, people who care about each other, including the ones they do not know; and how important it is to have well trained and available municipal services.
I also was reminded, this morning, that I am part of this infrastructure, and if I am lucky enough to have a cell phone, a pencil and a piece of paper, they will, along with my hat and personal ID, be essential parts of my preparation for my daily walk.
Our infrastructure is also a very fragile thing…easy to imagine that it is really not all that necessary, and a drain on our finances: a good topic for political bashing. But this morning on a local walking path, was evidence to the contrary.

#217 – Dick Bernard: "Way Out Here"

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Every year or two I get re-hooked on Country-Western (CW), and in recent months I’ve had the radio set on the local radio station that plays only CW.
It is interesting to listen to CW music, now and then. There is a particular dark side to the often simple down home laments. Like the guy whose preacher told him to pray for his ex-girl friend, and so he prays that’ll she’ll have a blow-out while goin’ 110 – themes like that.
Probably the anthem that grabs me most right now is Way Out Here by Josh Thompson. It speaks for itself. Listen, but also look at the video and the comments.
In my hearing, at least, there ain’t much hope in many of those country anthems. The one who sings about “rain is a good thang” cuz it makes corn and corn makes whiskey which makes his “baby” a little frisky…. As with Way Out Here, listen and look at the video and the comments.
Basically, it seems, if you ain’t got much, and not much hope of getting more, enjoy what little you’ve got. Quit complaining. I guess there’s some merit in that. But the next logical step is to give up, and accept a bad status quo.
All this plays right into the hands of the really Fat Cats who are quite content to have poor people be happy being poor and downtrodden.
“Way Out Here” seems to be set in coal mining country. The relatively recent tragedy in coal country, where 13 miners were killed, likely due to coal company negligence and flagrant ignoring of many safety regulations, doesn’t seem to have strong “legs” of outrage against the company among the local population. The mine, after all, is their livelihood, dangerous as it is. The multi-millionaire boss of the mining company can go around and publicly blame the government regulations for his problems, and get away with it. He knows how to get the choir to sing against the very (and only) entity that can help them out – government. Even “the good Lord” comes in second to their “gun” in protecting them from the outsiders “way out here”.
Does the Red-Neck CW represent a part of the Tea Party base? Mebbe so. Though it seems the true Tea-Partiers are more to the establishment Fat Cat side of society.
But not necessarily totally so. The difference between feeling hopeless and hopeful is only a few letters.
And CW ain’t bad. Even putting the links into this post is fun. Here’s Dierks Bentley. Dierks is a guy I actually saw in person at the North Dakota State Fair in 2007, and liked, a lot. I’d never heard of him before. You only get a sample here. Here’s the total song. And while you’re there listen to “What Was I Thinkin'”

#216 – Dick Bernard: "Wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta"

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Sunday one of my favorite Catholic Priests, Fr. Joe Gillespie, was recalling a 1994 visit to Mother Teresa’s Sisters of Charity in Calcutta.
At the time, he was a university professor in the United States, and he came by unannounced during a heavy monsoon rain. He knocked on the door and a Nun answered. “Would it be possible to see Mother Teresa”, Father Joe said. “Yes, she’s been expecting you.”
So, off the street he came, and face to face with Mother Teresa for a 35 minute conversation, puzzling all the while at the “she’s been expecting you” comment.
Visit nearing an end, she said to him, you should come here and work. “I can’t”, he said, “I’m under contract at the University”.
She understood, but as he departed, she said, “wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta”. No more needed to be said.
This particular Sunday we had a visitor, a Priest from the Parish of Ste Catherine d’Alexandre de Bouzy, about 60 miles and four hours west of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on the north side of the long peninsula. We had expected this visitor, Fr. Claude-Renel Elys’ee.
After Mass Fr. Elys’ee met with those of us who were interested, talking about the usual things one would expect when talking about Haiti: their infrastructure was damaged, not destroyed, needed to be replaced. What they need is actual money – they can get the materials and they have the people who can do the work. They need medicines and school supplies. It was good to have him there, as it was a chance to reconnect directly with Haiti which has, six months after the quake, essentially gone invisible to most of us.

Fr. Ely'see at Basilica of St. Mary Minneapolis July 25, 2010


“Wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta” came to mind often during his talk (in French, with interpreter).
We each can do much. We just need to exercise our imagination, and have the will and determination to follow through.
The question kept nagging at Fr. Joe after he left Mother Teresa. “How did she know I was coming, when I had done nothing beforehand to announce my visit?”
Back home in St. Louis he asked an older colleague about this.
“Oh”, he said, “she tells everybody that.”
But what a neat, neat, neat idea of a welcome.
And what a doable concept: “Wherever you go, you must find your own Calcutta”.

#214 – Dick Bernard: Exploring a Cultural Heritage

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There was a particularly remarkable moment at the closing program of the Initiatives in French Annual Conference in Bismarck ND July 10.
We had been treated to an evening of wonderful music and dance with a French flavor. The performers were Metis, Native American, African, and Caucasian. They performed ancient and modern music from West Africa to the North Dakota Indian Reservations to the traditional music and dance of the French-Canadian settlers to the Midwest. In common, they celebrated elements of the French culture, which they either represented, or were part of by native language or ancestry. It was a very rich evening.
The final number brought all the groups back to the stage and they improvised together. It was absolutely delightful. Here’s a photo (others from the program are at the end of this piece):

Metis fiddler Eddie King Johnson leads the improv at Belle Mehus Auditorium, Bismarck ND, July 10, 2010.


The U.S. is without any question a multi-cultural nation, in a multi-cultural world. Every world culture is represented within our borders. Increasingly, this is true of other nations as well. This reality can complicate relationships and, worse, can be used to fuel division and dissension through fear. The IFMidwest aim is to celebrate this diversity, and build bridges across boundaries of geography, language, race, culture, tradition….
This bridge building is not easy. On that single stage on Saturday night were performers from Togo, Cameroun, Congo (Zaire), and Cote d’Ivoire – all African countries whose official language is French. (One of the performers – I believe from Cameroun – said that in her country alone there were 218 different tribal cultures, each with their own dialect.) Within my French-Canadian extended family, I have cousins whose first language in Canada is French, including some who have considerable difficulty communicating in English. Then there’s me, who was never exposed to French, even in a school elective course, and is thus language handicapped when someone chooses to speak French, as happened on occasion on Saturday night.
The organizers of the Bismarck conference sought to implement the idea of Heritage as defined by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).
As identified in the conference program “1. …Heritage consists of the worlds natural environment, its history and social institutions and its human spirit to imagine.
2. Examples…in the natural environment are the prairies, bodies of water, wetlands, mountains, oceans, buttes and bluffs, etc. In our social institutions and history, they are schools, families, businesses, farms, ranches, parishes, libraries, and museums, etc. The third heritage, that of the human spirit is found in paintings, stories, drama, the interpretation of history, politics, in moving speeches, music, sculpture, architecture, and daily customs we cultivate from cuisine to gardening.
3. Living heritage…consists of reflection on our past and the pursuit of relationships with the elements that constitute Heritage. Study in genealogy or other aspects of Heritage develop our curiosity, causing us to raise such questions as where our ancestors lived, how they fit into the society of their time, and what motivated them. Living heritage leads to new relationships among the three areas UNESCO defines as heritage.”
During the year preceding the conference, indeed for the previous 30 years, I had been delving into the “living heritage” component of my own family, culminating in a 500 page family history I brought to the gathering. So, the issue was very fresh on my mind.
At the end of the conference, I delivered to the Director of IF Midwest three large boxes full of material I had used for my book. They now reside in the IF Midwest archives at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks.
As I picked up one of the boxes, in which my father’s papers had been stored for many years, I noticed on the end of the box something I had never seen before: whichever company had made the box included instructions about its contents. The instructions were in English, in French, and in Spanish. American business has, for some time, really, come to grips with a reality that we all need to face as Americans. We are not, and will never be, a place where one language and one language only will dominate. Best for us to learn how to make the best of the abundant riches that come with our diversity.

African Arts Arena of Fargo and Grand Forks joined by a member of the audience.


Members of the audience join the on-stage performance


Dance Revels of the Twin Cities performs traditional French-Canadian and Metis dances.


Additional photos here.

#210 – Dick Bernard: A Farm Freezer, Haiti, the Oil Spill and US

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Monday, July 12, was the six month anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that devastated Port-au-Prince and area in Haiti.
That same day, I spent a few hours helping my Uncle and Aunt, out at their now-empty North Dakota farm. (They’ve lived in a nearby town for several years – an option they don’t like, but the only reasonable option they have. They are at an age, and their medical conditions are such, that they could no longer survive independently on this place where they lived as brother and sister for over 80 years. My uncle is 85, his sister, my aunt, turns 90 a week from today. Their house remains much as they left it, but they don’t live there, only frequent visits.)
One of Monday’s tasks was to empty their freezer which included frozen produce from their garden, some of it ten years old. They knew it had to be done: my uncle, in fact, brought up the idea. That produce in that freezer would never be used by anyone, including themselves. But the notion of wasting this food was reprehensible to him. He was nine years old during the worst year of the Great Depression in ND, 1934, and he knows what it is like to have nothing.
We unloaded the freezer, and put its contents on the back of his old pickup truck, and drove down to the family garden – a one acre plot, used by the family for many years. The garden is still used by the couple, but only a tiny portion of it is planted. They don’t have the energy to garden more, and even if they did, the produce would go to waste: for them, it is unusable.
During the Depression and other bygone years, there were eight people or more who depended on that garden, but the prospects of even a small crop to harvest and process for the winter were not always good. Once experienced, one tends not to forget such experiences.
Those bygone years, the normal process was to pressure cook and can the food, in sealed glass jars. There was no electricity and thus no freezer; there were no plastic bags – a product of the petroleum industry. Kids now-a-days would be hard-pressed to even imagine the planting/growing/harvesting/preserving process which people of my generation grew up with. Forced to live that way again, most of us would not survive, literally.
Down at the garden we emptied the plastic bags which had held the frozen produce of the farm: spinach, corn, beans, peas, broccoli, onions, apples, and on and on and on. Considering it was ten years worth, it really wasn’t a lot of, as my uncle would say, “wasted food”.
While he was sitting on the tail gate of the truck, opening and emptying the bags, he was lamenting the waste, here, while so many people were starving elsewhere. No, he didn’t think that frozen bag of kernel corn should be sent to Haiti; more so, the notion of waste was on his mind. He wants to help, but how? People his age get endless appeals for funds from all manner of agencies. My advice to him: throw them away unless you know the group is good. So many are simply scams.
I doubt that he – or I, for that matter – thought about the amount of electricity that had to be consumed to keep that food frozen….
Haiti, and that waste at the farm unexpectedly came together for me a little later in the day. Back at my temporary home in the local motel, I flipped on the television, and happened across a CSPAN program recorded earlier that day: a panel discussing Haiti six months after the earthquake. The program is well worth watching. It had not occurred to me till that moment that July 12 was indeed the six months anniversary of that humanitarian disaster.
Back home in the Twin Cities the next day, there were several e-mails with varying perspectives six months after the quake in Haiti. Mostly, though, Haiti is out of sight, out of mind, even for people like myself who have a great interest in Haiti.
More on our minds, currently, is the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico: hundreds of millions of gallons of crude oil befouling the Gulf: oil which was to be used for the fuel that got me out to that North Dakota farm, and back; and which was used for to manufacture those plastic bags we had just emptied.
Mostly, for most of us, life goes on. “Don’t worry, be happy”. We’ll always have it all.
Don’t count on it.

From the garden, back to the garden


The farm garden, before an acre, presently only a small plot.

#209 – Richard Bigelow: Thoughts on Attitudes towards Immigration and Immigrants

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Mr. Bigelow lives in border country Texas and grew up in rural Colorado. He responds, here, to one of those ubiquitous basically anti-immigrant – if you’re not “white like me” rants that whiz around the internet – anonymous hate speech.
“Yes, I have some different thoughts on immigration than those in the letter you sent. My thinking is in process and I don’t purport to have very many answers to the many difficult issues involved but I am happy to share some of my thoughts.
As you know, I am a middle class, white, mostly Anglo-Saxon, protestant, male, born in the United States of America. That makes me part of the most powerful group of people to ever walk the planet. I love my country and believe we have done and continue to do more good in the world than any other nation. Our laws and system of justice while not perfect are the best the world has to offer. I am a proud citizen of the USA. That said, I believe that there are some major problems at home and in the world that we as a great and powerful nation have a human, moral and Christian obligation to address. Poverty and racism are two of those problems that are core in the immigration debate.
One doesn’t have to go back too far in history to realize we are all immigrants maybe including even the “Native American” population. Being part of the English immigrant group that became the dominant group way before I was born it is easy to understand some of the ethnocentric feeling articulated in [the internet] letter. However, as a teen I became aware of the melting pot myth. As you know there were not many minority families in [my Colorado home town]. My first Black and Hispanic friends were from [a nearby larger city] and not only did they not want to melt but would not have been allowed had they wanted. They were considered by much of the dominant culture as inferior and were treated differently. In my first minorities class in college we talked about the tossed salad analogy as opposed to the melting pot. This allows for a wonderful multi cultural society where we live together with many common issues but maintain and even celebrate the differences. This idea continues to guide me in my life journey. I can and sometimes do celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, Cinco De Mayo, Kwanzaa, Passover, even tried to fast during Ramadan one year (that sucked). I love to dance the Chicken Dance in Fredericksburg, visit China Town in S.F, little Italy in New York and Boston. Anyway you get the idea.
In spite of my pride in the USA I believe we have a lot to answer for. We have allowed those immigrants who look and sound kind of like us to assimilate while exploiting the Black, Brown, and Yellow “immigrates”. I don’t think I need to rehash civil rights stuff here or the history of how we provoked a war with Mexico so we could lay claim to land from Colorado to California. Nor should I have to review the immoral treatment of Japanese and German Americans during WWII. I also hope that most people are aware of how many of us have in the past and continue to encourage and even help bring workers here illegally so we can build our own wealth and that of our great nation by paying meager wages and limited benefits.
I have chosen to live in an area close to the border where I am a minority. When I go to a store and no one speaks English and those ethnocentric thoughts begin to kick in, I only have to remember that many of these families have been right here since before the Pilgrims made it to New England. You would be hard pressed to find a more patriotic group of people ready to serve this great nation than among the Mexican/American community here.
I think you know that [my wife] is from here but I am not sure you know she is a descendant of the Solis family, part of a big Spanish land grant from the 1500’s that was on both sides of the river. Her grandparents only spoke Spanish and she only spoke Spanish when she started 1st grade. Her well meaning Anglo teachers punished her when she spoke Spanish even at recess and when asking to go to the bathroom. She learned her lessons well, lived in Houston for 10 years and is much more urbane than me. With my last name and her light complexion people think she is Anglo. My red neck friends in Abilene would try telling her Mexican jokes. I cut them off if I saw it coming but didn’t always see it coming. She only smiled but in her heart she is really not sure that she is not some how inferior and she still feels guilty speaking Spanish even though she uses it everyday in her work with veterans. It breaks my heart.
While it is hard to generalize about such a large group of people, I believe that most of the documented and undocumented immigrants are here because they already have family here and or they are unable to support themselves adequately in their home country. I think that the reason we don’t have a big problem on the Canadian border is that their economy is good, they look and sound more like the dominant culture and I am told it is not too hard to get a work visa especially if one has a needed skill. I understand it is very difficult and time consuming to get a work visa in the US if one is from Mexico or Central America and especially if one doesn’t have a professional credential. Again my ethnocentric self thinks “good, we have enough problems with out importing a bunch more poor unskilled laborers that will further stress ‘our’ economy“. However, there is data that suggests that if the undocumented were able to earn a fair wage and pay taxes it might actually help the economy. Also my Human and Christian ethics kick in and I am reminded that God put the river there but we made it a border. If I couldn’t feed my family on the other side I would try to cross anyway I could. I do not want to tear down the Statue of Liberty or besmirch the Ellis Island folks [a suggestion in the letter to which he responds]. But there are other stories equally compelling.
There are no easy answers to the immigration questions. We have made great progress in the civil rights arena in my lifetime but racism is still alive and well. Ethnocentric pride in ones country can be a close cousin to racism. One need only to read all the anger and hate on the internet as people post regarding anything Obama does or on the new Arizona law. People who think there are easy answers like tougher laws, fences, or militarizing the border are at best naive at worst racist. I would like to see policies developed with love of neighbor as the guiding light, and more money spent on improving the economy in other countries even if we have to sacrifice more. To whom a lot is given a lot is expected. There is something wrong in a nation who spends more on a cup of designer coffee than some workers make in a day, or where we spend more on pet care than the GNP of some nations. I am not sure open borders is the right thing but I am not sure that it is not. I do think we need some kind of amnesty although I am not yet sure what it should look like. I believe in the ideal of one world with equality for all but I’m not naive enough to think we will get there any time soon. However, I never thought I would see a woman or black president. I am now hopeful I will see a woman.
　
On the subject of the Arizona Law I would think every American, liberal or conservative should be worried. I don’t want to live in a society where I or anyone else has to carry papers. Even under current law when we leave our home heading north we have to go through check points about 60 miles from the border. They are multi million dollar facilities with all kinds of electronic equipment and usually dozens of border patrol agents on duty. I must turn off my cell phone, wait in line, usually less than 5 minutes, they sometimes check my undercarriage with a mirror, and frequently have dogs who sniff the outside of my car. They usually only ask “are you a US citizen” and wave me through. [My wife] gets even less hassle because she is so pale and I’m so swarthy. Sometimes they ask “where are you going today”. Now I can either tell them, lie to them or say what I would like to say which is, “none of your xxx business” but then I would be there awhile so I lie to them. The woman agents seem to like to hear “I am headed to Dallas to visit my grand-kids”. Minor hassle for me but I assure you that some of my dark skinned heavy accented brothers and sisters have much more hassle including the dog inside and some times even pat downs. I don’t like it and I damn sure don’t want to empower or require the local or state police to do the same stuff. To those who say “they are only enforcing the law” I would remind them the this great nation was founded by a bunch of law breakers (as in tea party).
Unjust laws need to be challenged.
Everyone must find his or her own ethic and act accordingly. I am not always sure what to do but I pray about it a lot. For now I plan to continue offering food and shelter to those headed north with or with out papers when I can. I would help them get through the check points if I could but I don’t know how without getting arrested. I will pay them the same with or without papers to cut my grass etc. so they can eat. I will support my sister-in-law, with my tax dollars, who takes care of badly damaged babies who were lucky enough to take advantage of the law that lets them become a citizen because the mother crossed for delivery. I will not report the husband of friend who is spending 3 years in prison at tax payers expense who was formerly making a living for his family by day labor and who will be deported when he is released and then be back with his family within a week. I will support and applaud my friend who teaches ESL [English as a Second Language] to the undocumented children of fishermen from Central America and takes them to UIL competitions where they usually excel. I will continue to travel to Rio Bravo (30 miles into Mexico) as part of my church mission to help at a deaf school even though travel is kind of risky right now with the cartel wars.
I know you like to read / I recommend the following:
Manana (don’t know how to make the ~ over the n) by Justo Gonzales the Methodist Clergy, Cuban born, who I think is still on faculty at the International Seminary in Atlanta.
The Great River by Paul Hogan (a History of the Rio Grande but reads like a novel)
Rain of Gold by Victor Villa Senor (again with the ~ on the n another story of immigration not via Ellis Island)
Thanks for letting me share some of my thoughts. Reasonable people should reason together.”
My love to all / Dick

#208 – Dick Bernard: The Deer

/in , , /by

We had just settled in along the July 4 Parade Route in Afton MN, but I decided to walk back to the car to get rainwear, just in case.
It was a short walk up the street, going up hill, and I was on the left side of the street when I noticed something very, very odd: a deer head – only the head- was looking around from behind the rear wheel of a parked car. It was totally out of any normal context for me.
As I got closer, I saw that it was indeed a deer, and a live one, trapped between pavement and the underside of the trunk of the car. It was terrified. It was doing what a deer would logically do to get up, but this only made its predicament worse – you can’t stand up underneath a car. It made a ghastly sort of sound, as a desperate and frightened deer would do.
There were plenty of people around – this was the main route to the Parade, and the Parade was set to begin only a half block away – so I was not needed. Someone said the deer had slipped on the pavement, and fell, sliding under the car. The police had been contacted. I went to the car, got the rain gear, and on the way back took a couple of photos of the deer.

Afton MN July 4, 2010


I knew the deer was being cared for, but what I had just seen stuck with me during the entire parade.
Parade over, we walked back to the car, passing the still parked car.
No deer head; no deer. But lots of evidence that a deer had been there, particularly lots of scraped off fur on the pavement.
The first couple of bystanders I asked didn’t know what had happened to the deer, but thought it wouldn’t have been able to survive the trauma, and probably had to be put down.
At the parking lot, someone who had seen it all said that three law enforcement people had worked together and freed the deer, which had escaped back into the woods from which it had come.
Apparently there was a happy ending.
The parade? OK. But no match for what I had seen.