#154 – Dick Bernard: Haiti…and Power

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Two weeks ago today, 4:53 p.m. Haiti time, Port-au-Prince (Potoprens in Kreyol) and area were devastated by a massive earthquake. Today, two weeks later, coverage of the disaster is decreasing; finding fault or blame is increasing; and the attention of the world and U.S. body politic is shifting back to more mundane things, like the Super Bowl.
It will take years for Haitians to recover and the international community will be central to their recovery, but how long will people care? It’s an important question.
Long before the latest catastrophe struck Haiti, I’ve been thinking about what I believe is a pertinent and basic “conversation” in, particularly, westernized society…and that is the conversation about Power.
Boiled to its essence, I believe there are two classes of people: those with Power, and those without. Those in Power presume they have the right to control agendas and conversations. They do this in sundry ways: controlling information, money, and on and on and on. You can be born into Power, work to get into Power, or be identified as useful to Power. But it’s a club entered by invitation only.
The official Haiti conversation is almost totally dominated by traditional Power.
Power isn’t a partisan deal, and it isn’t Republican or Democrat either. It can be cliques who through one means or another control access or agendas. It can be seemingly out of Power people who have a following. Power is ubiquitous. One way to stay out of the Power circles is to diss Power…. Power people prefer followers.
In Haiti, most of the people are about as Power-less as any people are anywhere in the world. Most are illiterate (I’d maintain this is far more by design of the Powerful rather than lack of motivation of the Powerless). Educated people can be troublesome. The language of the ordinary Haitian is Kreyol; the official and international language of Haiti is French…. Even language disenfranchises the ordinary Haitian.
Of course, there are decent Power people, and indecent ones. It is a complicated process to identify the difference, so usually everyone in a particular class is typecast in various ways, as “good” or “bad”. Such simplicity is not helpful.
The out of Power people far, far outnumber the people in Power, and the Powerful know this: thus the strategies to disempower those not in the inner circles, by disinformation, or discipline or otherwise. If one’s neighbor ends up in jail for no good reason, one notices.
There’s a way out of Powerlessness and that is by no longer being willing to play by the rules established by Power. If the folks in the neighborhood were challenged to play a National Football League team, using NFL rules and criteria, one knows the result…but if the NFL rules and criteria were thrown out and replaced with the neighborhood rules, the results could be very different. But one first of all has to believe that there are other rules of engagement than those mandated by the Powerful.
I’ve long been enchanted by the mantra I hear at demonstrations: “Ain’t no Power like the Power of the People, like the Power of the People, say WHAT? There ain’t no Power….” The chant is delivered with gusto, but I have come to believe that the chanters really don’t believe their own message. And they leave their power on the street, unrealized.
The ordinary Haitians, the ones who will disappear soon from the media screen, but are there in the neighborhoods, will be the salvation of their country. All one can hope is that the commitment of the Powerful will be a bit more towards Justice than the traditional Charity*.
Stay engaged. If you feel you have no power, try to look at your Power a bit differently.
It’s 4:53 p.m. Haiti time. Time to click on Publish.
* My own very brief interpretation on Charity vs Justice was written on return from Haiti in December, 2003. It is accessible at this link page 17.

#148 – Dick Bernard: Harry Reid and me.

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So, Nevada Sen. Harry Reid is being drawn and quartered for remarks made about candidate Barack Obama in the run-up to the 2008 Presidential election. “There but for the grace of God go I”, and probably most everyone else, of any ethnicity, anywhere.
As a good friend of mine is wont to say “give me a break!”
Let’s take two days ago, just for instance.
It was Sunday, and I was at Church, this particular day taking care of a social justice table about my particular passion, Haiti.
A few of us were visiting at the neighboring table, including a man of, shall we say, very dark complexion, and an interesting accent to his English. “Where’re you from?”, I asked, since I was curious.
“Minnesotan”, he said…and it took awhile for his puckish grin to appear. He’d heard this one before.
It was awkward for a bit. He was Ethiopian, he finally said, had been here for quite a long while. There are plenty of Christians in Ethiopia, and also, as I began to insert foot in mouth once again, Jews as well – I’d seen a group of these black Ethiopian Jews in Israel in 1996….
Upstairs in church my long-time and great friend John was ushering. We said ‘hello’ as usual, and I got to thinking back two or three years ago when he and another friend of mine in another state were helping me set up an earlier rendition of this blog. I sent a brief e-mail to the other guy about my African-American friend, John, but by mistake I copied John on the e-mail.
I immediately apologized to John for the stupidity – his ethnicity had absolutely nothing to do with anything I was talking about with the other guy – and the matter was over in an instant. My guess is that John is used to gaffes like mine on the race issue. But it has stuck in my mind. And perhaps in his, too.
The one who says that they’ve never thought, or talked, negatively or apprehensively about someone who looks different than they do is not being truthful. I’ve been to homogeneous countries where most everybody looked alike (except for we tourists) and we were all white.
We grow up with said and unsaid messages that are imprinted.
I do family history, and I was taken aback when Aunt Mary on my German side, born in 1913 and lifelong North Dakotan, wrote in the early 1990s about the horses she remembered on the North Dakota farm. King, Queen, Kernal, Sally, Nelly, Sylvia, then “I think Old George and Nigger were part bronco”, Prince, Lady…. Horses were truly a part of the family in those old days, and, I suppose, “Nigger” was a black horse, but….
(I picked these words out of the family history I wrote. Initially I was going to edit out that word, but I’m glad I didn’t…some years later we found a batch of letters from 1905-06 from the farm kin in Wisconsin where on occasion “nigger” and “Jew” popped in as well.)
It’s a problem, and Harry Reid will survive it – since, after all, it’s rank hypocrisy for anyone to cast judgement on the man for such a statement in our still race-sensitive society. Similarly, it is unfair to “judge the book by its cover”…being white, or black (or blue or green or whatever) is no criteria for goodness, or badness.
This goes all ways, and it’s no fun to experience it first hand.
I remember my first trip to Haiti in 2003. I’d been there all of two days, and we were being briefed by victims of heinous crimes in the slums of Port au Prince during the 1991-94 coup time. It was very, very powerful. At the end, we went around to shake hands with the participants, men and women. One of the men refused my hand. I hadn’t said a word in the presentation, and I knew nothing about Haiti. I reminded him of someone, I’d guess. I wonder who.
Best we all learn by bits and pieces. It’s all we can do.

#147 – Dick Bernard: Avatar

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UPDATE January 12, 2010: I have been most intrigued by the assorted interpretations, on all “sides”, about the real meaning of most everything about Avatar. About all I can say is that it serves a useful function in causing thought and (hopefully) conversation. Now, if the assorted “sides” could dialogue with each other about the diverse meanings of the film, now, that would be something. It is now a blockbuster status film. I think it deserves its status. And it is an opening for serious conversation about, particularly, American society and its relationship to the rest of the planet.
A few day ago I made reference to the new film Avatar in this blog.
At the time, I had not seen the film. I went yesterday. I would highly recommend the film as food for thought and for lots of reflective discussion for anyone with even the slightest interest in or concern about the past, present and future of humanity and the planet in general.
Avatar is a high-tech 3D film set far in the future on a planet populated by humanoids similar, I would say, to the indigenous peoples who populated this country and hemisphere 500 years ago, pre-Columbus.
The planet has been targeted for exploitation of an essential new element by a force from the late, great planet earth (to borrow somebodies phrase from long ago.
The earthlings do not, shall we say, represent us as we would like to be seen…on the other hand, they represent us pretty accurately…at least the exploiters who have moved from one objective to the next over the centuries who, in turn, have enlisted our support for things that lay waste to a decent, balanced relationship between the earth and all of its creatures, only one species of which happens to be human.
As we watch the “transformer generation” in Avatar, we are watching ourselves, today, and in especially the last 150 years or so in the U.S., far longer in exploited places like Haiti, where European exploitation began with Columbus over 500 years ago. It is not a pretty sight.
On the other hand, those who we dismiss as Third World, presumably worth less than ourselves, are portrayed well, particularly as their relationship to the earth and each other is concerned. One is reminded of the intimate relationship between the Native Americans and their environment in the time before the introduction of the things that have brought us domination and prosperity.
One can wonder who will get the last laugh as humanity lurches down the road to some final probably destructive destination, perhaps sooner than we like to imagine. Perhaps Jesus’ Beatitudes, the first of which is “Blessed are the Meek” (defined in my grandmothers Bible as the “poor”) are the ultimate inheritors of heaven, to contrast with the present hell on earth visited on so many of them.
For the rich among us, which is most Americans, even those of us who are fairly poor, perhaps we’ve got it as good as it’s going to get…in the end we may trade places with those we now dominate. Nobody knows, just a thought….
Avatar is a long film, nearly three hours, but it is gripping. I found myself wanting popcorn, but not wanting to leave the theatre should I miss something. Those with me in the theatre were equally glued to their seats. Avatar is certainly not an escapist film.
People watching this film can come to their own conclusions. It will be difficult, however, to come to the conclusion that the reality of our lives will serve future generations well.
I recommend this film.

#144 – Dick Bernard: Looking to the future, by looking at the past.

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We haven’t seen the just-released blockbuster “Avatar” as yet. This review has increased my interest in actually seeing the movie.
Of course, Avatar is not “real”, as in reality, but sometimes films like these are helpful to think more seriously about the longer term. It apparently is a fantasy encouraging people to really look at a new reality.
Coincidently, during the month of December I have been reading an on-line book written by my friend Loren Halvorson. A while back, I posted his book “Hidden Roots: the Basis of Social Regeneration” on this blog. The book is accessible in its entirety here.
On page 51, in the third chapter, Loren succinctly described where we’ve been as people (First and Second Settlements), and where we might be heading (Third Settlement), since we have no option within the First and Second Settlement rules. These are his words:
“The “First Settlement” is the pattern still found among the so-called “Primitive” societies which live close to nature. For them nature and grace are not in opposition. The rhythm of their life style is set in accordance with their natural environment. For such communities the earth and all its forms of life was part of a family. Mother Earth nourished all the creatures who were related. Therefore,one lives gently on and with the earth and with all its forms of life. Humans are neither superior to nor “over against” other life forms but members of the family. I have in mind not only the Indians, the “Native” Americans, but also Spanish speaking peoples and Africans who preceded most of the white settlers but who viewed land differently than the land owners.
The “Second Settlement” came with the modern age that viewed nature as an object to be exploited. Nature and grace were in opposition, even violent opposition at times. Waves of immigrants set out to conquer nature, including nature’s people, the “Primitive peoples” (Now called the “Third” or “Fourth” World). In North America this happened rapidly with the Western movement of pioneers who brought their old community and culture with them to a new land. They brought with them their “little publics” with which to undergird the establishing of a larger republic. When other settlers appeared and crowded their space they moved farther West. As long as an open frontier was available, this settlement pattern persisted. Some see this period ending with the Civil War when the Western frontier was closed and Paradise was lost. But I believe the mentality lingered on. Even after the open spaces were all settled the next frontier to be conquered became the rich resources of the land. Somewhere around the end of world War II the last wave of settlers found themselves crowding into southern California with nowhere else to go. It is no surprise that Watts in Los Angeles was the first urban area to go up in smoke. That was the end of the American dream of private space away from strangers. The “Second Settlement” came to an end.
The “Third Settlement” began with the burning of Watts. people began to recognize that there was nowhere else to flee from one another except the outback in Australia or Antarctica. The “third Settlement” does not mean geographic exodus to another place as much as it challenges us to remain in place in an increasingly urban society and build new community out of the differences of race, religion, sex, economic class, age, culture, marital status:all the difference that had previously separated us. Certainly it cannot mean another Oklahoma “land rush” for this time we must proceed at a pace commensurate with the patterns of the environment. Land is not to be conquered but rather to be lived with as a vital member of the wider community. The settlers of the “Second Settlement” rushed too quickly into new territories ignoring the lessons to be learned from the earlier inhabitants and creating tools before they knew how to use them or understand the consequences of their use (e.g. nuclear power). it means to live with the land and deal with its resources not as owners but as partners. it means to view the land to its various life forms as part of the community with “liberty and justice” for all that make up the shared environment….”
Halverson’s book was written in 1991, and his key concepts were discussed by him as early as the 1960s. It is far more current now, than it was then. He wrote with a keen mind about the future in which we are now living.
There is rich food for thought and conversation within his perception of stages.
Our collective problem, in our still affluent society dominated by things like advertising and mass media and wants vs needs, seems to be that we prefer to live in what has for some time been a fantasy “Second Settlement” mind-set…and, practically, “Second Settlement” no longer exists. We’ve killed it.
Movies like last years “Wall-e”, and, apparently now, “Avatar”, are trying to put a new and more constructive spin on fantasy.
Halverson’s book is well worth a read, and it’s accessible right here.

#143 – Dick Bernard: YouTube, Elders and Youngers

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UPDATE January 7, 2010: Representative comments follow, plus a followup observation from the writer of the original post. (I have disabled comments due to an avalanche of ‘spam’. My e-mail address is on the “About” page.)
Yesterday afternoon an e-mail announced that I was on YouTube. Since I’ve not been on YouTube before (at least to my knowledge), I rushed to the link. Indeed I was there, the last minute and a half or so.
When I opened the movie, there had been no views at all, not surprising since only my friend, Lynn Elling, and I, had received the e-mail announcing it. Besides, when the young man, who was one of the founders of YouTube in 2005 (and a few years earlier a student at St. Paul MN Central HS), put up the first link of himself at the San Diego Zoo, I suppose he was the first and among the very few viewers of that famous YouTube video, too. ( I looked just now, and there have been five viewers of my ‘show’; I doubt my performance will go viral, like Minnesota Wedding, with over 37,000,000 views since last summer, but one takes what fame one can get!)
The three of us who speak on the Dec. 21 video were at a local school, rededicating it as a peace site. Lynn Elling who founded World Citizen has campaigned against the horrors of war since he witnessed the aftermath during three years as a Naval Officer in the Pacific in WWII. He’s a hero of mine. Martha Roberts is current President of World Citizen.
I wasn’t listed among the speakers, but was called on near the end, and expounded for a bit on a disconnect I was feeling in the class room of 15 year olds.
The feeling came when Mr. Elling talked about a workshop that changed his life in the late 1940s. Leader Maxwell Maltz (Psychocybernetics) convinced Lynn, then a floundering insurance salesman about to quit the trade, that if he could visualize any goal “in three dimensions, technicolor and stereophonic sound”, that goal could come to life – and it did for Lynn, who became very successful in his financial products business.
But as I was listening to Lynn, along with the 30 15 year olds, it occurred to me most of those kids had no idea what, at minimum, “technicolor” or “stereophonic sound” were; and were it not for rare movies like the current Avatar, “3 dimension” (called 3D, of course) would be equally foreign to them. So, when I was unexpectedly given an opportunity to speak, that disconnect is what I expounded about. (Most of that portion is edited out, but the reference to computers also applies.)
Lynn was in college when I was born; 40 when I graduated from college. To those 15 year olds, mostly born in perhaps 1994, I realized I was well beyond ancient as well.
Their view and their vocabulary and their skill-sets are entirely different than those of myself, or Lynn, or Martha. More so than any time in history, Elders and Youngers have relatively few life experiences or expertise in common. We live in different worlds.
It is obvious, but too seldom considered, that there exists a big generation gap between today’s Elders, who care a lot about the future for the Youngers, and the Youngers themselves.
I tried to point out to the kids I was talking to that we want to help them achieve their future, but in reality, their future is in their hands, not ours. I was speaking from the emotion of the moment, without holding back.
We have to learn how to better communicate between generations.
We’ve got a long ways to go.
Take a look at me in the movies. Enjoy the show. It’s less than 5 minutes in all, 1 1/2 minutes of me, so no time for popcorn.
(Truth be told, I looked again at the Minnesota Wedding. Now that’s interesting!)
Comment from Carol Ashley Jan. 4, 2010: You said “their future is in their hands, not ours.”
I have often heard this at graduations and it bugs me. We’ve created their future by our own actions and we still (or did before the corporate takeover) have a lot of effect on the world. I think it wouldn’t hurt if we took our cues from younger folk as we age.
If we tell young people only that the future is in their hands, do they believe it? I doubt it. Or at least not totally. They’ve not had much power up to that point. If we say it’s in their hands and we want to help them make the kind of world they want to have, then we not only let them know they have to create their future but indicate we will help. This, I would think, would be more apt to motivate them. It also focuses on a communal effort.
Better communication between young and old and in between certainly needs improvement. I so often see parents and other adults minimizing teen experience…first love, first breakup…all that stuff. If we took them seriously at all ages and really listened to them, I think they might listen to us, too. It’s easy to minimize the experiences of youth, but if we examined ourselves, we could see that those experiences are part of what makes us who we are. They are formative (to use a psychological term) and therefore very important. So I think we need to start by respectful listening. I think that applies to the split in our country, too. It’s not an easy task to listen to some one of a different political persuasion, especially if what we hear seems so untrue, but it is the first step.
This is all on the micro level. You, Dick, often have talked about those incremental steps. I’m sure those steps are important. It just doesn’t seem like they can work fast enough for the crises we see in the world today which is why I’m not very hopeful. Still, I think those steps are important wherever and whenever we have the opportunity or can make the opportunity.
Comment from Judy Berglund January 5, 2010: I took a few minutes to review the video, and I think you guys are on to something. I wish your remarks hadn’t been edited. You recognize something that few in our generation recognize: that we aren’t talking to our kids enough and we aren’t doing enough to understand how they communicate. Our kids are idealistic, and we can tap into that idealism through efforts such as your presentation. They feel powerless, and we can empower them through such presentations. Let’s do more to understand them and to help them understand us. Here’s to YouTube!!!
Comment from Lynn Elling (the other man in the video) to the person who made the video January 4, 2010: WOW!!!
Dick: It has been most interesting to review these and other comments, including the most recent one from a good friend who’s a retired teacher: “I was trying to guess their interest. Sometimes older people don’t connect with younger students so I was curious about the interest level.”
I was more “primed” for this than usual, since only a few weeks earlier I’d been to an excellent all day workshop entitled “Coming Forth as Elders: Heartening Community with the Vision of Elderhood“, facilitated by Kaia Svien and Eric Utne. Thirty or more of us had a day to sit with this topic, most of us in my age range – some a little older, most a little younger….
My audience on Dec. 22 was 10th graders. Their next stop after my little talk was lunch. I taught 8th and 9th graders for nine years, years ago so I know the species. A rock star would have his or her work cut out…! But I didn’t see anybody “cutting and running”…they were polite and well behaved. Perhaps I was sufficiently passionate so that they wondered, “where is HE coming from?” As Judy mentioned, I, too, wish that the rest of what was said was on the DVD (about 5 minutes in all, I’d guess.) But probably it is best as it is, the rest of the remarks left to each imagination (including my own).
The DVD has helped, already, to lead to conversation.
There is a communication gap between youngers and elders these days that is far greater than in the good old days, when the youngers worked the farm with their parents and were blessed (or stuck) with an environment where everybody lived life in common. With variations, other environments were similar.
Today there is a canyon between elders and youngers. Acknowledging it, and talking about it is the step to resolution. It will be slow and difficult, but it needs to happen.
Our generation has left a mess for the youngers; and while I didn’t feel at all empowered when I was 15 (in 1955); at the same time a future was being held for me when I matured. Today we are truly “spending our kids inheritance”, shamelessly. They don’t have the luxury I did.
In the e-mail exchange with the classroom teacher, I learned about an important event happening in San Jose in late March. The details are here. Check it out. Don’t be terribly surprised if you hear from me about the conference, if I can figure a way to attend…. (Find the upcoming events box and take a look, and let others know about this opportunity.)

#142 – Madeline Simon: A New Years Day Reflection

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It’s New Year’s Day 2010, often a time for reflection, and I guess I am feeling a little “bloggy.” That’s not foggy or hung over, and no, I am not going to start a blog.
A couple of things I pondered today:
First, I thought of a couple of wonderful large black raspberries I ate last night which had been brought by someone at the party and included in a fruit mix. Normally, we are looking at or considering a lot of issues, which I don’t need to explain, about where food comes from and how, etc. I thought today about those raspberries and pictured the sunshine, the plant, its environment, and other things necessary for the raspberries to have grown. Throughout most of human history, including our country’s, and as an important part of my own personal history, people have always known where their food came from and most often they saw and raised and picked the product themselves.
As a child I picked berries on my grandfather’s North Dakota farm, and those berries we kids didn’t eat while picking were put in pint/quart containers and loaded into the transport box lift on the back of my grandfather’s small tractor and hauled to the small grocery store in the small town some few miles away.
I also recalled my experiences sitting on a fruit crate with my babushka riding on that lift behind the tractor into town.
New Years Eve, 2009, I didn’t know where those berries came from.
We do indeed live in a “Global Village.”
Second, I was talking recently with the gardener who does tree trimming in the winter about having seen a couple of young deer in my yard with antlers engaged in practice for the first time. He told me of two deer during rutting season who were found drowned with their antlers still stuck together.
I guess nature can also tell us that you might win the battle and still lose your life.
Happy, Healthy and Peaceful New Year!!!

#141 – Dick Bernard: Invictus

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New Years Eve we decided to go to a movie at the local theatre.
We finally chose “Invictus”, a new Clint Eastwood film about Nelson Mandela and the sport of Rugby and the 1995 World Cup, held in South Africa not long after the fall of Apartheid and Mandela’s release from many years of imprisonment and his election as President of South Africa.
I knew relatively little about those turbulent times in South Africa, nothing at all about Rugby, and, of course, Invictus is simply a film – a dramatization – of a real event.
But Morgan Freeman is a wonderful Mandela, with a great supporting cast, and every aspect of the film was inspiring. Through and after the film, one has to really work to stay stuck in the negative attitude of the impossibility of deep change, forgiveness and reconciliation.
A good review of the film is here.
The text of the poem, Invictus, is here.
If Invictus is accessible in your area, consider going to see it; or keep it in mind for later rental. You will likely leave the film as I did, inspired.
And, personally, think in terms of possibility, rather than impossibility, when considering matters of necessary deep change.
Happy New Year.

#134 – June Johnson: A 1940s Country School Christmas

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NOTE: Each year I’m drawn to this essay, written in December, 1985, for the teacher union newsletter on Minnesota’s Iron Range. June Johnson was then a teacher at Bigfork High School.
CHIPS FROM THE NORTHERN BRANCH by June Johnson
From somewhere in the deep recesses of my mind, I have plucked a Christmas memory which will be forever important to me.
Christmas on the North Dakota prairie was a time of anticipation and joy, a welcome respite from the hard times and unrelenting toil of everyday existence. Families were extremely impoverished and no “store-bought” gifts were imminent for most of the children who attended Souris #1. Excitement filled the air as mothers baked once-a-year “goodies” and sewed and baked and built gifts to be opened on Christmas morning.
The Christmas program at school was a yearly social event for the entire community No special lights or decorations were needed to enhance the appreciation of this day. The kids had planned, practiced and revised every noon hour for a month and were ready. A tree fashioned from prairie junipers decorated with strings of popcorn and thorn apples, and various homemade decorations was in place and a few small packages were already under it.
All year I had tried to get Frederic, a reticent second grader, to talk to me. An unusually polite youngster, he always had his work done but spoke to no one if it could be avoided. After the program was over, gifts were distributed and I was singularly impressed with the ingenuity displayed in the homemade gifts which were given to me. Coffee, hot cocoa and cookies were now being enjoyed by all. At this point, I felt a tug at my sleeve and found Frederic looking up at me. As I knelt down, he quickly placed a package in my hand. While he looked on, I opened it and found a sling shot and a bag of smooth stones. As I held out my arms, he hesitated only a moment before coming to me. Then he said, “I made it for you because I love you.”
In my cedar chest (which holds all my “treasures”), I have a box which holds a sling shot, a bag of stones, and the memory of a very special little boy.

#133 – Dick Bernard: The Dust Bowl

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COMMENTS follow this post.
Last evening I watched most of a History Channel program on the horrors of the Dust Bowl of mid-America in the 1930s. Interspersed with film and commentary from the actual events, were recollections of survivors of the Dirty Thirties, as well as a fascinating effort by scientists to reenact in the present day what people living in farm houses back then would have actually experienced.
The present day experimenters could turn off the wind and dust making machines at will, and did. They could not tolerate what the residents in the 1930s either survived, or didn’t, when the horrible winds and dust storms and plagues of insects and rabbits and on and on destroyed much of the midwest, especially in Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas, but all throughout the northern plains as well.
My uncle, soon to be 85, remembered what he recalled as the worst year, 1934, in North Dakota. He was 9 years old. It was horrid. There was no escape.
To have gone through it was to be seared forever…or was it?
I was born in 1940, young enough to miss the worst years of the Depression, and to remember some things about the last years of World War II.
Memory or not, I was totally immersed in the attitudes generated by these life-altering times in American history.
The 30s and first half of the 1940s were times of self-sacrifice, and a need for working together. The nature of humans was no different then than now…the assorted attitudes that plague us now, plagued them then. The difference was that there was, for them, no real choice but to concentrate on survival. Prosperity for the masses was not an active dream. Surviving the dirty thirties, and then getting the war over with were the priorities. People had to pull together. Those who didn’t were noticed….
1945 brought the end of the war, and after almost 20 years of hardship, life began anew. The baby boom began. Today, one of my cousins is 63 – she was one of the first of millions of baby boom babies.
That boom was to last until the end of the 1960s.
An attitude began then that, I believe, has become our fatal flaw as a society.
Those who’d been through the Great Depression and World War II in sundry ways made a pledge to their kids and grandkids to protect them from all that was bad in those years. The boomers made a similar contract with their kids.
A consequence of this new contract, in my opinion, is to diminish the values that allowed America to survive the bad times: a collective will to sacrifice and to work together. Looking out for #1 became a primary value.
In the 1930s, it was not until a dust storm reached Washington D.C. in the later 1930s that the then-Congress began to enact crucial legislation for the dust bowl states. It was a classic “NIMBY” (“not in my backyard”) response to a huge problem. Until the problem was virtually unsolvable, the Congress was essentially an inert mass. The rains came almost before the actions of the People’s House in Washington. Even then, a sense of unity among the “united” states was tenuous.
In a lot of ways we are in a similar quandary today, only much, much worse in long-term implications.
We dodged a financial catastrophe by a whisker this year, and we’re now living as if there wasn’t – and won’t be – a problem later.
Many pretend that climate change is no longer an issue, because some pilfered e-mails allegedly prove it isn’t a huge future problem.
We dismiss a coming crisis as fossil fuels become ever more scarce…and expensive; we ignore water tables receding due to use for irrigation – water resources that cannot be replenished by putting a hose in the ground.
Too many of the same heroes who are extolled as part of the Greatest Generation are now saying that the benefits they have reaped, like Social Security and Medicare, are too expensive to provide for the generations following them. Ironically many of today’s generation seem to agree: it is every one for him or herself. The youngsters too young to decide – our children and grandchildren? Their problem.
We are back to the individualism that led to the ship sinking with the late 1920s financial catastrophe (my Dad’s parents experienced the bank closing at the same time as Grandpa’s employer shut its doors in 1927, two years before 1929.) Both my families were casualties of the Great Depression. It took a long while to recover, somewhat.
Only time will tell if I and people like me are “chicken littles” saying “the sky is falling”.
My guess is we have a pretty clear view of the future if societal attitudes do not dramatically change: not pleasant, indeed, grim. Indeed, even deep change now may be too late…but its worth a try.
Bob Barkley, Dec. 20, 09: In regard to your piece, “Dust Bowl,” it occurred to me today, as I was once again trying to make inroads with my right-leaning sister, that attitudes have context. They don’t occur in a vacuum. For example most Americans believe what they were taught about the nations history, but that version most of us were exposed to was seriously skewed. Consequently I sent my sister two books — both by Howard Zinn: The People’s History of the United States, and A Power Governments Cannot Suppress.
Your story regarding the dust bowl provides part of your context. I was raised well into my teens in Jersey City, NJ during the Boss Hague days. I was in a Republican household in a Democratic stronghold. And my Dad was a Lutheran minister in an overwhelmingly Catholic community. Those were two strong components of the context for my beliefs.
Until we know the context in which people think we will not understand their beliefs. Your rural upper Midwest context is foreign to me. This why we must listen deeply to really understand others. It’s hard but essential.
Dick’s response to Bob: Excellent. We’ve ‘talked’ a bit before about the Jersey City days. Don’t recall the exact context, but something I’d written or sent around jogged your memories of the tense years in Jersey City. I think the primary relevance of your comment is that we all need to ‘farm’ our own circles, since our group experiences are so unique…’city slickers’ out east have not a clue what farmers in the midwest are about, and vice versa.

#132 – Dick Bernard: The Christmas Call, and an encore for Susan Boyle

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Last night about 8 o’clock or so the phone rang. There was an irrepressible, unmistakable, voice on the other end.
It was Danny, calling to wish us a Merry Christmas.
Danny is one of those memorable characters one comes across once in awhile; people who brand themselves into our memory bank.
I met Danny during the last few months of my brother-in-law’s life in the summer and fall of 2007. Mike, more or less a recluse, mentally ill, and paralyzed from the waist down, moved into the assisted living facility where Danny lived, a high-rise in one of North Dakota’s few cities. Mike had only two or three months in the high rise before cancer took him back to the hospital, nursing home, and the release of death.
I think there would be consensus among the people that know him, including his fellow residents, that Danny is an odd duck. He was very short, and very round, he certainly wasn’t graceful in his movements, and he basically wore the same clothes every day, and they were not clothes that would win him any awards.
And he could be a pest. I think even his fellow residents tended to tire of him at times.
At first, I thought he might be mentally handicapped, and I suspect that in some ways he was, but that didn’t deter him. He was just fine with himself, thank you very much.
Mike died in early November, 2007, with few friends. He’d spent a life wary of relationships, generally.
It was Danny who called me up and said he wanted to arrange a memorial service at the high-rise for Mike, and I said OK, not thinking that he’d ever pull it off.
But near Thanksgiving in 2007, Danny MC’ed the most marvelous memorial service I’ve ever attended. He had a minister there, and he had a pianist, and he sang a couple of the hymns as solos. There were a goodly number of us in attendance. If Mike’s spirit were anywhere around, it had to feel very good.
And it was Danny’s gig.
The minister later told me later that he based a sermon on Danny’s service: that’s how impressed he was.
Recently Danny celebrated his 50th birthday. He invited us up, but we didn’t go. Now I wish we had.
There are special people who come into one’s life, and Danny is definitely one of those, for me. Last night, he and I talked for only a short while, bid each other Merry Christmas, and so it went.
And speaking of Special People: Last night I heard that Susan Boyle’s YouTube videos from last spring have now been seen over 100,000,000 times – the most popular video of the year (here). (My two earlier posts about her are here.)
Today I bought Susan’s first CD, and started listening to it. It is wonderful. Look for it. She, too, was viewed as something of an odd duck in her village years ago…. She too was irrepressible.
She and Danny have that certain something…something we can all aspire to.