#38 – Dick Bernard: Seeing Community (it's all around us)

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Last night I was at a celebration dinner for an organization, World Citizen http://www.peacesites.org .  World Citizen is a good group to get to know.  It’s Mission Statement: “Empower the Education Community to Promote a Just and Peaceful World.”
At the celebration, one of my table mates was a new acquaintance, Abby, irrepressible, four years old, an aspiring ballerina with a tee-shirt to match: a ballerina dress and ballerina shoes on the front. 
Abby was the only small person at the meeting, a fact she doubtless noticed.  Her great-grandpa, Lynn Elling, who founded World Citizen in 1982, got up to speak.  Lynn, now 88, still strong in voice and vision and ideas, remembered again how he began his quest for world peace, for the children of the world.  He remembered being a young officer on an LST, arriving at Tarawa  beachhead some weeks after the carnage there in November, 1943.  He remembered walking on the beach, finding the horrific remains of some Japanese soldiers killed by napalm; he remembered GIs bringing back remnants of the battle: clothing, skulls, etc.   It was there his life changed, and his commitment to peace for coming generations was sealed.
Abby danced around a bit.  At one point she said a bit too loudly that great-grandpa’s speech was “boring”, though that certainly didn’t change her obvious love for great-grandpa.  Such is how it is for youngsters.  For Abby, dancing was much more fun than listening to a speech!
A little later in the program, Rebecca Janke, herself a grandmother, who’d been awarded the Outstanding World Citizen award, rose to speak.  Lynn’s memories brought back her own: her father, she said, was also in WWII, and one of his duties was to put dead bodies in body bags.  He never really recovered from the trauma of that duty.  His war-time experience haunted him his entire life.   He was one of those countless uncounted casualties of war.
The program over, I reflected on the last few days which were full of “community” kinds of experiences: people, often  unknown to each other, getting together for one reason or another.  The organizing mantra: “food, fun and family” usually identifies essential components of these successful events, small and large.
Last Thursday, for instance, in the afternoon I was at a gathering to recognize volunteers at an elementary school in a nearby suburb.  I met, there, a lady who likes to dress up in costumes, and read to first graders.  My grandkids go to that school.  Thursday, the kids had to wait while the elders had first pick at the assorted goodies…the storyteller knew this wait was excruciating for the tykes, and parcelled out some of the M&Ms in a dish at our table.
A couple of hours later, I was with about 30 parents of school age kids who have organized a growing organization to lobby for adequate support for public education – a difficult issue these days.  These were people who truly care about the future for the Abby’s of the world, their own and others. http://www.parentsunited.org .
There were other events as well, before and in between, which basically helped, once again, to define “community” for me. 
“Community” is all of us together, working for a common good.
A final note on World Citizen, whose celebration I attended last night:  I first attended its annual celebration just two years ago.  I went there on a whim, when I heard about it at another meeting I had just attended.
At that celebration, the same Lynn Elling got up to speak, and led us in a rendition of a song John Denver made memorable in the 1960s: “Last Night I had the Strangest Dream”, (ca 1950 Ed McCurdy).  I was hooked.
The song, sung by John Denver, and Lynn Ellings dream, live on at http://www.amillioncopies.info .  Take moment to visit.  And, again, visit http://www.peacesites.org.
And speaking of “food” and community, here’s a gift recipe received yesterday from a friend:
Carol’s Caramel Corn (use big kettle)
2 cups brown sugar
1/2 cup light syrup
2 sticks oleo (margarine)
1 teaspoon cream of tartar
Stir/boil for 5 minutes
1 teaspoon soda
Pour over 5 quarts popcorn.  Mix.
Put on cookie sheets and bake at 250 degrees for 45 minutes.
Dump out.  Break apart.
(The recipe doesn’t say what to do after it’s prepared.  I guess I can figure that out!)

#36 – Dick Bernard: President Obama builds a wall behind U.S. (and everyone else)

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For previous posts mentioning President Obama, see Categories.
A reader comment follows this post
Today President Obama is at Normandy; yesterday at Buchenwald; Thursday at Cairo….
The analysis of the Presidents words is and will be unending, but one particular piece of analysis by a single “special interest” group, and some more general articles about what the speech meant have most caught my attention:
At Cairo, the President, glaringly,  seems to have not used the “T” word, not once.  This has caused great distress in certain circles in our country and elsewhere.  Symbolically, I felt, with his speech he seemed to deliberately end the War on T, the war on a word and the war on everybody, everywhere….
Also, in more than a few instances in that speech, he had made promises – commitments – such as closing Guantanamo, which are politically extremely difficult.  And he challenged others in other countries to figure out  how to solve their problems, with our help.
President Obama’s rhetoric is solutions driven, not problem centered.  Solutions by their nature require cooperation, working together towards a common goal.  They do not presume delegation to someone else or defending the status quo.
The more I think of his words during, and the symbolism of, this most important trip to Europe and the Middle East, the more I am convinced that his administration is consciously and deliberately building “a wall behind” all of us, to at minimum make it more difficult for each and every one of us to retreat back to the familiar, of what was, however dismal that past might have been.
For those whose reputation was made, and whose future relies, on the war on “T” , that “wall behind” has a certain meaning.
For those who railed against that mindset, the same “wall” is as certainly built behind them.  They can choose to take the risk of moving forward into an uncertain future, learning new ways of engagement; or to turn around and try to tear down that wall to go back to the comfort of what was.
Likely each of us can remember some time or circumstance when we built a “wall” of some kind behind us which forced us to go forward, doing something we didn’t want to do.  (Sometimes this is also referred to as “burning bridges behind us”).  This is a good time to reflect on what our “wall” (or “bridge”) might have been, and how we grew when forced to move forward rather than able to go back.
George Santayana was correct in his famous statement “those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it“, but there are certainly equally persuasive arguments about the folly of becoming mired in the past and refusing to move on.   It is hard to move forward while always looking back.
We need to look forward, and personally own the future we’re all creating.  The future for ourselves and our fellow world citizens is a future that we build, together.  We depend on this forward looking and acting; even more so, the future of the generations which follow us depend on us.

#35 – Dick Bernard: President Obama speaks from Cairo

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Yesterday afternoon I made a spur of the moment visit to an administrator at a Minneapolis college.  I found his office.  Luckily he was in.  I knocked.  “Come in”, he said.  He was looking at his computer screen, watching a replay of the President Obama speech in Cairo from some hours earlier.
My visit to this college office was not to talk about Obama or the Middle East or such.  I did the business I planned to do, and departed.  We didn’t even mention the speech.  He and I have never talked politics.  I don’t know what his politics is. 
But one of my enduring memories of Obama’s speech in Cairo will definitely be walking into that office, and seeing Tom watching the President speak on his computer screen.  It will remind me of those iconic photographs of families sitting around their radio listening to President Roosevelt address the nation on some critical issue or another in the 1930s or 1940s.  Roosevelt, too, was a master of the art of communications with a distant public. 
My guess is that the scene I witnessed yesterday was repeated  in countless and varied settings here and around the world, particularly in the Muslim world.
As is predictable, every word, every facial expression, every single nuance of the Presidents long speech will be dissected, analyzed and interpreted for its meaning.   The interpreters will focus on their own particular favorite issue, whether he said the right or wrong thing about it, and then “spin” it to their particular preference.
It was an international speech, to the Muslim world in particular, and because of the miracle of technology it can be watched and re-watched over and over and over again.  What Obama said, yesterday, he knows he will be held to.  This was not a campaign speech; rather it was the leader of a powerful country speaking to the entire world. 
Personally, I think the key facets of this speech, yesterday in Cairo at about this time of day U.S. time, were its symbolic aspects:
A.  that it was specifically addressed to the Muslim world;
B.  that it was given in the Muslim world, in Cairo;
C. that it specifically acknowledged and honored the Muslim tradition and the people who are part of that major world religion;
D. that he chose specifically to publicly acknowledge the role of the United States in the overthrow of the elected government of Iran in 1953.
Yesterday, today and beyond there will be endless analysis of the Presidents speech. 
While there are endless and immense problems which no speech can pretend to solve, my own prediction is that President Obama’s speech in Cairo on June 4, 2009, is historically very significant, and can give impetus to a major shift in global relationships.  It provides a floor for new conversations; an opportunity to think in different ways.
He was speaking to world leaders, yes; but he was speaking even more to those ordinary people who in many settings throughout the Muslim world were watching his image on television and listening to his words, perhaps much like common Americans listened to Roosevelt during the Great Depression and World War II, and then went out and contributed to the necessary effort to accomplish the tasks at hand.
My hope is that all of us will use this speech as an opportunity to move forward, rather than to get mired in the “same old, same old” of focusing on what was or wasn’t said, and how precisely the administration follows through on the text, or not.  Certainly it is important to be vigilant, and to even be critical, but this speech was an entire “book”, more than simply a chapter or a few paragraphs.   
http://www.whitehouse.gov to access a video or transcript of the entire speech

#34 – Bruce Fisher, Carol Ashley: The Conversation about Climate Change

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A reader comment follows this post.
Note from Moderator: On the local evening news on June 1, the weatherman noted that May, 2009, was one of the driest on record, exceeded only by May, 1934, a year of great drought.  Is May, 2009, just an unusual month of weather, or a looming manifestation of serious climate change problems to come?  Are those concerned about climate change simply worry-warts, or are those unconcerned denying an unpleasant reality?  Do we live in the moment, or act for the long term?
In early April, I publicized a website that features a 20+ section “Crash Course” to help understand the possibilities of the future, and by understanding help deal with those possibilities.  The website is http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse for those interested.  In my opinion it’s well worth the three hours it takes to view the sections. 
Carol Ashley took the time to view the series, and commented on it in #19 on this blog, May 11, 2009.
Bruce Fisher also took the time and on May 25 posted the following, to which Carol filed her own response.
Bruce Fisher: I’ve been thinking about the “Crash Course” and the significance of its concepts for our environment and economy.  A few days ago, [an] article by George Lakoff appeared in the Huffington Post and it struck me that framing is understanding and the environment and economy need to be framed together (the [political] right has done this for years with the emphasis on the environment as material resource for the economy).  As a cognitive scientist, Lakoff knows this best.  For those who have taken the “Crash Course”, [the Lakoff commentary at http://tinyurl.com/08pwon] is an especially relevant article.  [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/why-environmental-underst_b_205477.html ]
Carol Ashley:  From Lakoff’s article “…one of the things Westen and Lake get right is in an incomprehensible diagram on the back page: an explanation of why discussions of climate fail.  It is hidden in a discussion of “associations,” an inadequate way of discussing the public’s frame-based logic.  Climate and weather are usually understood as beyond immediate causation, something you are subject to, but can’t just go out and change right away.  Climate is not directly and causally connected to the values that underlie our concerns about our planet’s future: empathy, responsibility, freedom, and our ability to thrive.  They try to say that in the diagram, but the arrows and lines don’t communicate it.”
What I see in my rural area is that people are prone to see the weather as a daily event: at the most, a weekly or seasonally based phenomena.  It’s kind of the same problem in government…no long range vision.  So people are prone not to see the effects of short term actions, not to see the actuality of broader patterns and rather base assumptions on climate on a cooler than usual spring season, for example.
Rural people and those in small towns often value community and their particular environment.  (Their community tends to be very small comprising only their extended family, church and friends.)  They don’t value getting rich.  They also don’t trust government and haven’t for years. They vote and expect who they voted for to do the work of politics.  They tend not to stay informed.  They don’t have the time and the access to information.  And their lives are often a struggle to survive.  They, therefore, don’t make policy so these observations may not apply to others, but I think some applies to just being human and there are plenty of poor people in cities who for racial reasons are also mistrustful of others and rely on their communities.
There is also an issue of “delayed gratification” here, I think.  That ability to do what needs to be done, sacrificing what one wants for what one will have in the future and even forgoing what one wants for the sake of one’s children and grandchildren.  It’s easier to do that for one’s own children than to consider the world’s children.  I think, in order for delayed gratification to be possible for an individual, one has to have some basic needs met, like food, shelter and some measure of health.  Long-term poverty undermines that.
The reason this may be important is that those on the extreme right are often rural and poor.  People in cities who live in poverty are often focused on basic needs, too, and need framing that applies to them more immediately and practically.  The difference between the rural and city poor, I think, is the very fierce independence of the rural and their valuing of that independence and the rural environment over the desire for wealth.  Either way, the best way to reach these people is through major media and through churches.  (Even then they tend to be pretty independent minded and hold to what they have always believed.)  The framing has to reach them that way.  So the first step is back to square one, in my opinion.  Get corporations out of government and create an avenue for non-profit media.  Is that even possible any more?  Like most rural people, I doubt it.  The super rich are in control and will be.  Haven’t they always been?  Even in the beginnings of our country?
I suppose my pessimism comes partly from being rural and poor.  I have little ability to be an activist.  The poor and rural always seem to be at the mercy of others.
Note from Moderator: Essays from others on this topic are solicited.  Watch future entries.

#32 – Dick Bernard: Health Care Reform ("Good Morning Vietnam")

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Yesterday was spent with a group of about twenty persons.  We were having our annual meeting.  It could be fairly said that with very few exceptions, we all knew each other reasonably well.
Someone observing us from the outside would quickly note that we were about the same age.  We would appear to be homogeneous in composition,  of roughly the same economic status, all accustomed to being leaders in one context or another.  And we would even agree  on the major issue facing our constituency, and that issue was Health Care Reform.
Near the end of our meeting the group was presented with a proposed statement of position on Health Care Reform.  The draft was very brief and general: two paragraphs, one-half page.  
Rather than simply approve the draft and go home, there ensued a vigorous debate and a number of amendments to the contents of the fifteen lines of text.  What two pairs of eyes had thought would be a relatively simple action statement became considerably more complicated when 20 pairs of eyes looked at the same sentences.
And we were all basically similar in our points of view on the general issue.
It took about a half hour of vigorous discussion, but finally a generally acceptable draft was approved and we went home.
It occurred to me that if our little group had so much trouble agreeing on a general framework, how much more difficult it is when the constituency is over 300 million, as is our U.S. population.  Change does not come easily.
But change does happen, and that’s why the “Good Morning Vietnam” addition to the subject line of this post.
I was in the Army in 1962-63, the beginning of the Vietnam era.  So I saw the entirety of the Vietnam conflict as an adult American. 
Vietnam was a long, destructive, contentious and divisive war among the American people.  Wounds still fester 35 years after the conflicts official end.  
But there is a lesson from that era that is directly applicable to today’s debate about Healthcare reform.
Years ago, very slowly but very surely the national conversation about Vietnam changed.  People can key in on different events which led to the change – there were many such events – but that part of history is less relevant than the ultimate fact that at some point a tipping point was reached, where the status quo of continuing the War became politically unacceptable, and the politicians sensed the change, and the war ended.
In my view the same general dynamic is in play today regarding health care reform.  The tipping point either has or soon will be reached in the debate.  Unlike the unfortunate end to the Clinton initiative in 1993-94, today’s efforts are not as clouded by public rigidity to change in the inefficient status quo.  People know that something needs to be done.
But as evidenced by the debate over a small statement of position by a small organization yesterday, the process of moving from the status quo to a new standard will be extraordinarily messy, and the initial outcome will be unsatisfactory to most who will legitimately see this defect or that in the resulting creation.
The very least we can do as individuals is to make certain that our personal positions are made known to our elected leaders at state and national level.  And, in addition, to enter into the debates in our organizations – as we did on Saturday afternoon – to take organizational positions on the abundant issues as well.
At the same time, we need to acknowledge the reality that this will be an extraordinarily difficult and imperfect process. 
As we enter this debate, I offer my favorite song from “Good Morning Vietnam”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc.  Louis Armstrong went up against long odds.  He was not a quitter.

#30 – Marion Brady: A very serious and comprehensive look at the need for Public Education Reform

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Note from Moderator:  For 77 years Marion Brady has been immersed in public education in numerous roles, from student to teacher to text book author to informed commentator on public education.  In blog entry #10, (April 24, 2009), Marion laid out a very simple, but very essential prescription for necessary change in Public Education practice to fit the present day and future needs.  He contends that modern public education policy originated in the 1890s, and has inadequately changed in the well over 100 years since.  Below Marion Brady provides more specific context.   

 

Marion Brady: For more than forty years, in books published by respected presses, in a great many articles in education journals, and in newspaper columns distributed nationally by Knight-Ridder/Tribune, I’ve maintained that there will be no significant improvement in learner performance until problems with the deeply flawed “core curriculum” adopted in 1893 and in

near-universal use in America’s schools and colleges are recognized and addressed.

 

My criticisms have been myriad and specific, and have been articulated in simple, straightforward language, but education “reform” efforts from the local to the federal level continue to assume that poor performance is primarily a “people problem” rather than a system problem.

 

Until problems with the 1893 curriculum are addressed, rigor, raising the bar, trying harder, bringing market forces to bear, and so on — the reform strategies being promoted by corporate America and state and national politicians and policy makers — won’t just fail but will be

counterproductive.

 

For a summary of major problems with the familiar, traditional core curriculum, see:

 

www.marionbrady.com/powerpoint/NationalStandardsII.ppt

#27 – Dick Bernard: The Webinar on Fear, and related happenings, May 21, 2009

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 In #26, May 21, 2009, I mentioned an adventure on which I was about to embark: hooking into something called a webinar on “The Fear Factor: A briefing on communication and messaging from U.S. in the World”.   This session was taking place in some conference room in Washington D.C.

Apparently at roughly the same time, in the same city, President Obama was making a major speech on essentially the same topic relating to Guantanamo; and former Vice-President Cheney was trying to blunt the Presidents case in yet another speech at the American Enterprise Institute.  It was an interesting day, yesterday. 

 I am of the doofus generation, at least in a technological sense: a Webinar was something novel and largely incomprehensible to me.

 

 Nonetheless, I managed to follow the appropriate instructions, figured out how to put my cell phone on speaker mode, and got my computer linked so that I could watch the speakers power-point, including her occasional small errors in going to the wrong slide, or such.

 

(The power-point, with captions, can be accessed here http://www.connectusfund.org/resources/managing-fear-factor-briefing-us-world) 

 

That the speaker and in-house audience was invisible to me and sounded somewhat tinny was a relatively small problem.  I got the gist of it.

 

 The time on the webinar was well spent, though there are only so many new ways to make a presentation about Fear.

 

Fear is obviously a saleable commodity, and a dominant emotion in homo sapiens (and other vertebrates) brains.  It is survival mode, the bare basics on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. 

 

The speaker described as the “stone age brain”, and it is tempting to ascribe to the others whose views I oppose the inferior intellectual status of Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

 

But I have seen plenty of fear-based behavior amongst the good (and intellectually superior, of course) people with whom I most often associate.  And I’m in the same kettle as everyone else….  We’re all susceptible to Fear.  We just fear different things in different ways.

 

So, the speaker talked about “fears world view”, a view in which the “stone age brain” assesses situations as it would if its owner was in a schoolyard tussle with a bully; in a rough and tumble “wild west” scenario; or as it sees or imagines things out there in the “urban jungle”.  These are all examples of places “where the normal rules don’t apply” and where everyone has to watch out for him or her self.

 

In these kinds of situations, the sense of community is very restricted: trusting even the good next door neighbor might be a stretch.  “Me against the world” might be a good phrase.

 

The message I picked up from the Webinar is that the best course is simply to acknowledge that fear is a reality for all of us, and it is nothing to lecture or belittle people about.  People who are fearful are not stupid or crazy.  Fear just is.  And other tactics need to be explored to deal with the political tendency to rachet fear up as a useful “us vs them” tactic.

 

There is plenty of good material available about the topic, beginning with those references noted in #26 for May 21.  Do take the time to take a look at these references.   

#25 – Dick Bernard: Thoughts at 25

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#25 – Dick Bernard: Thoughts at 25

 

Today is an anniversary of sorts: I’ve reached the quarter century mark in the world of blogging.  Twenty-five posts is tiny, nonetheless, a good time to do an initial review…and encourage people like you to become contributors of your words.

 

Today is the 57th day this blog has been on-line, and this is the 25th post.  I’ve averaged one post roughly every two days.  (it is very easy to “cruise” this site: the calendar dates for which there have been posts are underscored, and there is no need to open any post to see the title.)  I didn’t know what the frequency of these posts would be when I began.  My long-term goal is a single post per day.  There will be holes from time to time since I’m not chained to this computer, and do not carry it with me when I’m away.

 

In the first 57 days, there have been six authors other than myself on this blog.  This is fewer than I’d prefer; but more than I expected at this stage.  My hope is that this blog will become a community of writers, holding forth on many topics.  (Each who posts two or more times will earn their own category.  In addition to myself, there are three others in this category thus far.)   

 

Those who know me well know that I am no stranger in the world of writing imperfectly.  Those who don’t know me at all, and are curious, can go back to blog post #1 on March 25, 2009, to find out more about the personal history of this blogger.

 

I paid a fair amount of attention to the makeup of this blog: what I decided to call it (“Thoughts towards a better world”); how I decided to describe myself (“moderate, pragmatic, Democrat”); what photos I wanted to use (rural North Dakota; myself out for a walk at the cusp between winter and spring in Minnesota).  I’m small town, and big city.  To me, at least, all of these identify what I wanted this blog to represent.  Early on I included a category called “Quietings” to move away from the seriousness and the shouting so endemic in todays political conversation.

 

I want this space to talk of many things in a manner which may attract reasonable people of assorted points of view.  Unfortunately, we tend to be a polarized society, so that the words I use above, or some of the content I choose to print from “left” or “right”, may drive away some very good thinkers.  So be it.  It will evolve.    

 

The blog community is an immense one.  I actually thought there might be credible statistics on number of blogs but so far, no reliable data.  Depending on one’s definition of a “blog”, it is possible that everyone who tweets once on Twitter can be considered a “blogger”.  At the moment, anyway, it appears that anything from the internet version of school kids passing crude hand-written notes through the most learned commentaries are considered, by some, to be in the “community” called “blogs”.  There’s likely a dividing line somewhere between thought out writing and idle chatter but I haven’t found it.  I’d like to think this space will be more serious effort than simply fluff.  Someone else will judge that over time.

 

It is clear from my own experience with the internet, that this medium has huge potential for good or mischief.  Anything I write in this public space can be accessed by anybody, anywhere, any time.

 

Most recently, two days ago, out of the blue came a short e-mail from someone who had come across something I wrote in another forum over two years ago.  I had written about someone he knew, a person he’d lost track of.  (The posting he came across is in two parts, November and December, 2006, part one accessible at http://www.mapm.org/presidentsmemo/2006/11/.   It referred to a 1989 Hunger Strike at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul MN, and the role of a man I had met, Jesus Hurtado.)  Out of curiosity I wrote the individual to inquire where he was from, and how he happened to find the commentary.  He is a teacher at a west coast University and he said “a student of mine found the article while researching a topic relevant to a book we are reading: Tom Mertes’s A Movement of Movements (Verso 2004).” 

 

After hearing from him, I entered the words “St. Paul Cathedral Hunger Strike 1989” and sure enough, up came my blog post, first on the list.  I got the same result entering the words Jesus Hurtado.  It reminded me of the first time I had met Mr. Hurtado and then tried to find out something about that Hunger Strike: there was nothing at all on the internet.   In a sense, I added to history, and helped some student, and can now help a couple of guys renew acquaintance. 

 

It makes this project – this blog – worth my time.  Consider submitting your own posts.  My guidelines are simple.  See the “about” page.    

#23 – Dick Bernard: President Obama at Notre Dame University May 17, 2009

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A beautiful Sunday afternoon was very tempting for a good long walk, but I knew that the long anticipated appearance of Barack Obama at Notre Dame was soon to begin, so I delayed the walk and watched the proceedings live on Notre Dame’s website, from the procession of graduates into the fieldhouse, to the remarks following President Obama’s speech.

 

It was a truly remarkable afternoon: grist for an entire semester course condensed into less than two hours of time.

 

I would diminish the event by trying to summarize it.  The most gifted commentators and film editors will similarly diminish it.  It has to be watched. 

 

Those who wish can likely view, or view for a second time, the entire proceedings at the Notre Dame website http://www.nd.edu/.  To get the entire perspective, you really need to watch the proceedings, including the opening prayer, and the student valedictory by a remarkable student, E. Brennan Bollman.

 

For those unable to see it all, it included a history lesson or two or three: the President noted (to no applause – doubtless because it caught a young audience unawares) that today was the 55th anniversary of Brown vs Board of Education, the landmark civil rights case.  And at the end of his speech, the President was presented a photo of former Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh with Martin Luther King in Chicago in 1965.  Hesburgh was one of the giants of the civil rights era.  He was at the commencement, nearing his 92nd birthday. 

 

As a lifelong Catholic I could feel pride at the long history of my Church as a champion of social justice.  At points in my life I benefitted from that role.  As a person who brushed up close against the possibility of abortion during my first wife’s last months on earth in the spring and summer of 1965, and is unalterably pro-choice because of my personal experience, I listened closely for, and heard, acknowledgement of the difficulties inherent in adopting absolute right and wrong positions.  But I heard respect for differing opinions from both Obama and the University of Our Lady (Notre Dame).

 

Obama used the Abortion word on the Notre Dame stage, and handled the sensitive matter in a sensitive way.  But he was no less classy than the Notre Dame officials. 

 

There was one – or was it several – very loud hecklers early in the speech.  An overwhelming student led chant drowned them out. 

 

I was distracted early on by a grim looking professor like figure behind President Obama on the stage.  This guy had on all the robes, but when others applauded, he stood stone-like.  I finally decided that he was probably Secret Service.  Maybe someone will expand on that presumption of mine.

 

Knowing a little about such things work, my guess is that all of the VIPS, Obama, the President of Notre Dame, Father Hesburgh and others, knew before a single word was uttered what at minimum the gist of each others talk would be.  This was not a time or a place for surprises.

 

Going in everyone doubtless knew that this wasn’t a serious issue within the Catholic Church.  Only about 20% of the Bishops united in opposition to Obama’s appearance; over 60% of Catholics approved.  In my own Catholic Church, this morning, there was not a single word verbally or in print about the conflict, nor did the local diocesan paper in its most recent edition carry a single word about it (though I suspect the local Archbishop was among the 20% who were against Obama’s appearance).* 

 

And to the best of my knowledge Rome was silent.   Its silence spoke volumes.

 

For those who value Hostility around a controversial and difficult issue, today was not a good day.  For those who are interested in Healing, today was a solid start.

 

I went for my walk.  And saw a little kid with his Mom, wearing a Notre Dame tee-shirt.  A good omen.

 

One day later – May 18, 2009

 

* I went back to the Archdiocesan paper and found I was in error on this sentence.  Indeed the Archbishop’s column mentioned the event without mentioning either the speaker or the institution, but one had to be a very diligent reader of the weekly newspaper and interested in the event to figure out what the Archbishop was talking about.  The meat of the column was buried in the inside back page of the newspaper.  Such placement was likely intentional.  The entire column is accessible here http://tinyurl.com/ovhszz. 

 

In his column, the Archbishop appears to acknowledge the need to dialogue “with those who disagree” with the Church’s stand.  The continuing dilemma is how there can be “dialogue” with someone who not only claims the truth but claims that the official position of the Church is the only correct one and says that “[t]here can be no compromise”.  Dialogue does not presume closed minds in a conversation, or “lines drawn in the sand”.  But no openness to other points of view is conveyed whatsoever. The Archbishop who wrote the column for his newspaper has chosen, apparently deliberately, to hide his position from all but those who most likely fervently agree with him.  He can demonstrate that he took a hard position on the issue, without much risk that anyone will notice.

 

Two days later – May 19, 2009

 

Out of curiosity I decided to look at the several issues of the Archdiocesan newspaper which were published the last several weeks before the speech.  I picked up a sense of editorial meetings concerning “what shall we say about this?” with an answer “as little as possible”, from the small amount of newsprint devoted to the Obama appearance.  The most interesting, and perhaps most revealing, article was a short one on April 16, where it was reported that the local South Bend Bishop “advised Catholics to not attend [the] demonstrations”.  Whatever the real intent was, my own perception was that, even by early April, the powers-that-be knew that the general church membership was not with them regarding Obama’s visit to Notre Dame, and the advisory was a clever PR creation to provide a cover story.  But that is just my individual perception.  I have learned over the years that it is useful to have a healthy skepticism about official versions of events and their meaning.

 

Four days later – May 21, 2009

 

The Archdiocesan newspaper carried two front page “below the fold” stories about the events at Notre Dame.  They were equal in length: one focusing on Obama’s remarks; the other on the protests.  On page 6 was a half-page “Guest Editoria” “It’s not only Obama who needs to examine conscience” which, first, acknowledged what every Catholic knows: that the church is not a monolith where everyone thinks alike; but nonetheless contended that genuine Catholics must follow the official Church teaching. 

#22 – Dick Bernard: Johnny, Carl and Elmer L.

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Yesterday’s post on Heather (#21, May 13) got me to thinking back to those “good old days” about which people my age tend to recall so fondly as we face these troubled times. “Wouldn’t it be nice”, we tend to say, “if only we could be transported back into those good old times when life was simpler.” Indeed, on occasion, around will come some e-mail talking about those past-times when government didn’t intrude so much, and self-reliance was more a value. “Wouldn’t it be nice.”
After I posted the column, my memory went back to the time between 1945 and 1951, right after WWII, between age 5 and 11, when we lived in a little town not far from the Hawk’s Nest pictured on the front page of this blog.
In this town was a kid named Johnny, older and bigger than the gang I ran with, but on reflection, obviously retarded, often with us. In my memory, Johnny couldn’t talk, and lived at home down the street. He hardly had ability (as we measured such), but occasionally we could get him enraged, and then he would be fearsome. Nothing ever came of this rage – we could outrun him. The next day he’d be back.
I wonder whatever happened to Johnny.
It was at this point in time when I remember those visits to the town with the School for the Feeble Minded, briefly described in #21. (The 1982 History of that town headlines the section as being about the “State School”, and says it was established by State Government in 1903 as the “Institution for the Feeble-Minded”, and that it was, by 1982, “the largest employer in [the] County”.) In a recent conversation, a friend remembered an Aunt who had been confined there for some reason and “used the rope” (hung herself), likely to escape the misery of her confinement. Such facts don’t often appear in official histories.
In those same good old days, Carl, in another context, was growing up, retarded, on a farm in Minnesota. He was able to work, and he was worked, hard. In today’s context, his treatment would be called “abuse”. What happened on the farm stayed on the farm. I knew Carl for several years when he lived with my sister and her family. He lived to an unusually old age for someone with his disability, and at the end lived semi-independently in a community up north. He could not have survived on his own. He benefitted from a more enlightened day.
Our society was very late in the game of engaging in the reality of special needs and needs for special education and other special services.
I come from a life-long environment of public education, but even so, it was late in the game when I became fully aware of how slow we were in acknowledging the reality of unmet special needs.
In the early 1990s I became good friends with a former Governor of Minnesota, Elmer L. Andersen. He was a conservative Republican, and I met him through reading his columns in a community newspaper which he owned, and to which I subscribed, largely so I could read his columns on sundry topics.
I liked his philosophy, as expressed in his opinions, so much that in the spring of 1995 I decided to nominate him for the Friend of Education Award from my union, the Minnesota Education Association. I didn’t live in the state when he was in government, so my nomination was based solely on his opinion pieces. It became obvious, quickly, that there was much more to Elmer than what I knew of him.
He won the Friend of Education Award in the fall of 1995, and here I let my former colleague and good friend Judy Berglund complete the story as she wrote it for the MEA Advocate in October, 1995: Then-state legislator Elmer L. Andersen was “the architect of Minnesota’ special education program in 1955.
“At that time, one in 12 children was born with disabilities, and unable to benefit from a normal school environment,” he says. “I thought the Legislature ought to do something about that.”
The Legislature set up an interim commission, which he chaired. Every one of its recommendations was adopted by the 1957 Legislature, which established one of the best and most comprehensive special education programs in the nation. Families with retarded children got financial help to enroll their children in school, training programs and scholarships were provided for aspiring special education teachers.
That was 20 years before federal special education laws were passed, laws Andersen thinks hampered the program by encumbering it with extensive regulation. “Nevertheless, Minnesota took the lead in recognizing that all children have potential, all have God-given gifts, all have special needs,” he says….”
Mr. Andersen never wavered from his commitment to quality education for all, regardless of abilities or circumstance. Our friendship continued until his death during Thanksgiving week, 2004. He and many others are heroes for today’s and tomorrows Heather’s.
But todays most vulnerable citizens are most likely to be on the “chopping block” in tight economic times. Their budgets are easy to cut. They have little voice, only us.