#21 – Dick Bernard: Heather and a salute to "Community"

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Last night, shortly before 7 p.m. at Ballfield #5 in Lakeville MN, Heather Bernard came up to the plate, wearing an Ohio State pullover, and holding and jiggling her bat like she’d doubtless seen countless batters on television prepare for the pitch. (She looked pretty good, actually!)
The pitcher lobbed the softball towards the plate, and ultimately Heather swung and connected, a well hit ground ball. She dropped the bat and took off towards first, running harder than I’d ever seen her run, and she made it: an earned single. That hit was something to be really proud of, and I’m talking also about me, her Dad.
At that moment between home plate and first base, something else came together for me: the abundant good side of not only America, but of people generally, regardless of where they live, or how directly or indirectly they might be positively involved in others lives.
Heather is my daughter, 33 now, Down Syndrome. We think she was probably on the right team last night, but as I write I’m still not certain of that. Regardless, the coach fit her into the lineup, and she took seriously her position as short left-fielder, and like her teammates she had her turn at bat in the one-hour game.
Left alone in this game of life, Heather’s odds of even survival were never good. She was born with a serious heart defect which required several surgeries before she was five years old. She lives because a heart pacemaker keeps hers ticking!
And when I saw her running to first base last night, it was a testimony to modern technology: her first pacemaker allowed only a single level of activity; currently, the pacemaker adjusts to the level of exertion, and consequently Heather could actually run to first base, rather than slowly walk as would have been the case over 30 years ago.
Heather was playing ball last night because another community, likely primarily parents of similar special needs “kids” like Heather, who have organized and support a once a week league. Out of such leagues, come participants in the long well-established Special Olympics program. Indeed Special Olympics exists because of special needs kids. http://www.specialolympics.org/
Last night someone, likely a parent of one of the other participants, approached us with a flier from a local Pizza establishment who had agreed to make a large match, up to $5000, for contributions to this local activity. We live a long distance from the town, so I wrote out a check instead.
I gave thanks, last night, for something I’ve been aware of for years, but which only infrequently bubbles to the surface: we are bombarded every day with bad news, and all manner of political positioning on supposedly major issues of the day, but at the end of the day the big news is taking place in millions of settings across our country and across the world: settings like that Ballfield #5 in Lakeville MN last night.
It is useful to keep that in mind. We are the good – and the bad – of the huge community in which we all live. And we have a great capacity to make life better, or worse, depending on how broadly or narrowly we choose to define that word “community”.
A public community, very large, and largely invisible, has nurtured Heathers life over all these years.
There are lots of Heathers, and lots of communities. As we know, it’s not too many decades ago where her fate, realistically, would have been to end up in a School for the Feeble Minded somewhere…. I remember seeing one of these schools, frequently, when we went to visit our grandparents in a particular town in the 1940s and 1950s. The mentally deficient of the state were ware-housed there, and on pleasant days you could see them gathered on the lawn behind the fence, and we could look at them like one would look at animals in a zoo.
Our society looked at Heather’s kind differently then. That’s just as it was.
Hopefully in these troubled economic times we won’t be tempted to backslide….

#17 – Dick Bernard: Don Bartlette, Macaroni at Midnight.

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Today was Diversity Day for Bloomington MN high schools and I went out to Jefferson High School in Bloomington to staff a table for a group in which I am active called World Citizen www.peacesites.org.
I had the written program for the day, but wasn’t certain when I was supposed to be there, so I went out early. The first two periods of the day featured an assembly talk by a “Dr. Bartlette, Speaker”. I had no idea who this person was, and the program didn’t say any more about him or his topic. It was a very nice day outside, and the choice between listening to somebody give a speech to a bunch of kids captive in a school auditorium, and enjoying some fine spring weather seemed a no-brainer.
But something drew me into the auditorium for the second talk. Still, rather than sit down, I stood in the back, much like a teacher on duty. At least I had an escape route.
Dr. Bartlette was given a very low key introduction, and walked up to the podium, a short man, wearing a short sleeved dark shirt, very plain appearing. He began to speak, quietly, and with something of a speech impediment.
He quietly told his life story, born in a small log cabin up the hill and in the woods outside of a town, born with severe facial deformities, unable to speak, growing up shunned as a native American in North Dakota, but also shunned by his own father who had expected him to be normal at birth, and he wasn’t. He was shunned by virtually everyone except, it seemed, his mother, and ultimately a wealthy woman in the town of 1700 people became something of a guardian angel. She saw something in him, or perhaps it was her sense of his worth as a human being that led her to help him thrive. His life began to turn around. In his high school years someone, perhaps the wealthy woman (I don’t recall off-hand), prevailed on the most popular high school kid to befriend him, and the youngster did, and Don blossomed, becoming class and student council president and valedictorian of his class.
He had his audience completely engaged. I was standing back there, choking back tears, choking back tears, choking back tears. And he continued to tell his story.
He continued to learn, and ultimately achieved his doctorate and now, as his business card says, he is a “Public Speaker”, worldwide. He now lives in Ohio.
Doctors went to work on his face, replacing the deformed half-nose with which he was born with a plastic nose that serves him well. Other major facial and other defects needed correction as well. He got his degrees, and one of his first jobs was as Human Rights Director for the city of Bloomington MN in the late 1970s. It was not a time, he said, where diversity was celebrated.
He finished his talk to great applause from the young people in attendance. He came back to thank them for their attentiveness to his story. He left the stage, and I thought I’d not see him again. But my 45 or so minutes in his presence profoundly impacted me.
After the talk I saw him walking a short distance away. I went up and shook his hand and thanked him for a powerful witness to possibility. We compared notes: he had graduated from his North Dakota high school the same year I did: 1958. He knew my small towns; I knew his. We will likely stay in touch. There is much for us to connect about.
I looked him up on the internet. Material about him can be found by searching Don Bartlett Macaroni at Midnight (yes, there is a story to that). A movie about him is apparently now in production.
If you ever hear that he is in your area, make it a point to stop in.
You won’t regret it.

#11 – Dick Bernard: Swine Flu, Fear, Hype and Hysteria

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During 1918, my mother almost died in the WW I flu epidemic. I know because she wrote about it in her memories, thusly:
“I think one of the most traumatic experiences I had happened when I was about nine years old and got the World War I flu. Many people were very sick and some died. I had a very rough siege with that flu and remember when Dr. Salvage came out in some very cold winter weather, in the middle of the night, to keep me from bleeding to death. I don’t remember what he did but I had a very high fever and was bleeding from the nose and I spit out chunks of blood. I think they thought I was gone for sure. I recovered though and it took a long while for me to regain my strength. I can remember having some wild dreams and nightmares and must have been out of my head at least part of the time. .”
Esther Bernard, Jan. 1981, page 116 of Pioneers: The Busch and Berning families of LaMoure County North Dakota.
I was seven years old when I got hepatitis and had a very rough time with that. There was no simple way to handle yellow jaundice and it had to work out of the system. I think they give blood transfusions now. I had an upset stomach for several years after that which is probably why I had such a rough time with the 1918 flu
I thought of Mom’s recollection this morning with the breaking news about the Mexican Swine Flu fears. It became big news yesterday; today’s paper had much front page coverage, including a map of the United States which showed 8 cases in Ohio, 7 in California, 2 each in Texas, , Kansas and Ohio. “It’s not a time to panic,” the White House said”, while suggestions were about that we were at a time of possible epidemic, or global pandemic. 1918 came up, as did 1957 and 1968. I wasn’t around in 1918, but I don’t remember anything about 1957 or 1968 so the grim reaper must’ve passed us by. (By the winter of 1918 Mom’s family included her parents and six children. As best as I can tell, she is the only one who got sick with the flu. The 1918 pandemic apparently mainly impacted on young adults – people 20-40. My grandparents would have been in that general age range; neither got sick.)
I don’t know all the details about 1918 and the flu epidemic. I know my grandparents had telephone then; that Dr. Salvage was in a town 10 miles away, that roads were good enough for a car to get through to most farms IF they weren’t blocked with snow, or impassable due to mud.
I don’t know what Dr. Salvage had in his medical bag when he visited Mom; I don’t know if something in that bag helped her turn the corner, or if Mom just got lucky and slowly got better. It does appear, though, from the history she and her siblings recited that at her farm the grim reaper had picked her, and only her, for attention during that awful time period. And I know, too, that in that long ago time the odds of medicine making any difference at all were much lower than today: if you got sick, you either got better or you didn’t. Other than the phone and the newspapers and word of mouth, there were no other media to really fan up the fear, such as there is today.
So, today, lots of newsprint and air time is expended to emphasize the possibility of a dire threat from a flu that has so far affected 21 people in the entire United States. (As I write, the MSN home page has updated the number to 40). People are assessing who they know who’s been to Mexico recently. I took a couple across the driveway to the airport a month or so ago, as they were enroute to a two week vacation in Mexico. A good friend recently came back from a vacation in Mexico. Should I steer clear of them till the threat passes? Will I start to see people wearing masks in grocery stores? Should I buy a mask, or get in line for Tamiflu?
What I do know is that fear sells, and sells well; and fear can rapidly turn into hysteria. And there are many who benefit from the hype, selling fear and hysteria. Of course, fear and hysteria solve nothing, but are certain realities.
Is it useful to exercise prudence in these times? Absolutely. But making it into front page news at this stage?

#10 – Marion Brady: An affirmative response to Corporate America's big "RIGOR!" push

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Note from Moderator: I’ve known Marion Brady since the mid-1990s when I joined a national Quality Education listserv. For many years, Marion has been a consistent and articulate spokesperson for substantive change in how young people are educated. He was a regular columnist for a major newspaper in his home state of Florida. Recently he sent to his mailing list a most interesting power point summarizing his case. It is about 12 minutes, and the link is below. Even more recently, the same power point has been posted on YouTube. That link is also noted. Following the Power Point and YouTube links is a letter he recently sent to the new U.S. Commissioner of Education, Arne Duncan. In that letter, shared with his permission, he well defines himself.
Marion Brady’s is a voice worth listening to, and worth sharing with the public education community in the United States.
http://www.marionbrady.com/Powerpoint/WhatIsMissing.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIi_EQsQFJI
Marion Brady:
To: Dr. Arne Duncan, Secretary, U.S. Department of Education
Sir:
Respectful of your busy schedule, I’ve pulled together in summary form and am enclosing a very broad-stroke “big picture” of where I believe the social institution [public education] that’s now your responsibility has been, is now, and appears to be heading.
I’m hoping my 77 years in education as, at various times, a student, middle school teacher, high school teacher, college professor, teacher educator, textbook author, county level administrator, professional book author, publisher consultant, contributor to academic journals, paid education columnist for Knight-Ridder/Tribune, visitor to schools across America and abroad, and partner in conversations with respected educators on every continent, will prompt you to bring to the enclosed a mind open to ideas lying outside Washington’s conventional wisdom on educational matters.
What prompts me to write is the current drive to nationalize standards and tests for school subjects. For reasons I believe the enclosures [see above power point for summary presentation] make clear, if that effort is successful, among its unintended consequences will be a gutting of the ability of schools, including charter schools, to innovate sufficiently to adapt to social change and prepare the young for what will surely be a complex, challenging, and dangerous future.
I’m copying the material to others outside the field of formal education. I’ve chosen these individuals because I respect their work and their obvious commitment to the public good, and because they have what working, experienced educators no longer have-a public voice.
I can be more specific about the reasons for my choices. For me (an author of three textbooks), Jon Stewart’s “history textbook,” America (Warner Books, 2004), did for American education what his confrontation with Jim
Cramer did for CNBC, albeit with considerably more subtlety. In President Clinton’s case, he and I share an admiration for the work of the late Carroll Quigley, a professor at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service, whose explanation of the dynamics and dangers of the process he called “institutionalization” is currently being ignored in education policy, a fact America will come to regret. I “knew” Quigley through a student we shared in the early 1960s. One of the enclosures, taken from the introduction to a forthcoming book I was asked to write, summarizes that institutionalization process and its applicability to the last century of education in America.
I’ve no idea whether or not these people might be willing or able to help, but I’m hoping their appreciation of the centrality of public education to societal survival, combined with perhaps a better understanding of the current educational situation, will prompt them to give serious thought to the issue and act in ways that move us closer to the goal I’m sure we all share of improving public education.
Thank you for your attention.

#9 – Tom Bernard: Columbine 10 years ago, and 10 years after

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Note from Dick Bernard:
On April 20, 1999 – it was a Tuesday – I was at a meeting in suburban Minneapolis. Driving back to my office after the meeting, on the car radio, I heard about some shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton CO. I didn’t know anything about Columbine, but I knew my son, his spouse, Jennifer, and my 12 year old granddaughter Lindsay, lived in Littleton. I tried to get a map location of Columbine on the then-primitive on-line maps, and the location which came up on computer turned out to be a few miles away from what turned out to be the actual location. I was soon to learn that Columbine High School was one mile due east of their home, separated only by a park and a few streets of homes in their subdivision. That afternoon, Jennifer called to say that Lindsay was okay. Later that week, I went ahead with previous plans to take a hiking vacation in Utah the next week, with a scheduled return stopover in Littleton on May 1 and 2. During the time in Littleton the four of us spend several somber hours in a rain-soaked line going up what had been dubbed as “Cross Hill” to view the crosses erected at the top of a dirt hill dedicated to each of the victims of the shootings. It was a powerful time. We reached the crosses at the same time as the celebrated TV preacher, Dr. Robert Schuller. I had huge respect for Dr. Schuller. Sixteen years earlier his sermon, Tough Times Don’t Last, Tough People Do, had saved my emotional life, literally.
The day after the shootings, my son Tom Bernard, wrote his immediate impressions of April 20, 1999. They appear below, with his permission, preceded by a short commentary written by him on April 19, 2009.
Here are his comments, the most recent, first:
Tom Bernard
Littleton, April 19, 2009
GAZING INTO THE MIRROR
Ten years ago, our family walked with hundreds of neighbors to the hills surrounding Columbine High School. It was surreal and intense. Everyone that was touched by the event, so close to home, carries the hurt from it to this day. The shared tragedy brought everyone together for a short time, as we all wrestled with the magnitude of the days events. We needed each other, not to discuss, not to blame, just to see in a strangers eyes the same confusion and fear that we were feeling. We needed to know that we were not alone. Columbine was a shared tragedy like many before it, unique to the human experience. We can look back to grainy black and white photos of Lincoln’s funeral procession and see in the eyes of the mourners a very real and profound connection with ourselves. The deaths of Kennedy, King, Kennedy again, Lennon, The crew of Challenger, all the way to September 11, 2001, were common in their effect on society. For a moment, we all stopped yelling and rushing, ignoring and patronizing, judging and blaming. For a time far too short, we stood together quietly and accepted our shared loss. The lessons ignored in these tragedies is not contained in the event itself. The lessons reside in everyone around them. The quiet of the shared pain is quickly and inevitably replaced with yelling and rushing, ignoring and patronizing, judging and blaming. The community splinters into its preferred cliques, all smug and self assured that they are not the problem, its obviously the other guys. As time speeds by, the time of quiet community grows shorter with every passing shock. Columbine was story of youthful alienation, rejection, and social separation. It was the end for the casualties that day. And for the rest of us, it could be a new beginning, or it could be the beginning of the end.
Tom Bernard
Littleton, April 21, 1999
Today was anything but usual. The sun rose and was bright as ever, the sky was a brilliant blue, and the foothills to the west were coming to life in subtle greens. Puddles, our new puppy, woke me as usual, warm snout on my cheek. I rose slowly and went downstairs. The television was still on the same story, 8 hours later. Katie Couric was welcoming the new day from Clement Park, a short 5 minute walk from my front door. The long night had given the television crews plenty of time to sift thru interviews, footage and facts. The whole country (and most of the world) needed to know. I hoped to myself they were ready to listen.
Yesterday was April 20, Tuesday, senior skip day. I was locked into a 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. shift at Piccolos [the restaurant Tom managed]. Lunch was uneventful, very slow…Around 1:30 I noticed a group of employees standing under the television near the bar. I looked up. The trailer at the bottom of the screen stopped me in my tracks…”GUNFIRE AT LITTLETON HIGH SCHOOL…POSSIBLE HOSTAGES.”
My jaw dropped. I was not worried so much about Lindsay, she is still in Middle School. It was the area. I didn’t know which school it was at first…but my fears were realized. This was less than 1 mile from my front door. For the next two hours I paced, sat, tried to keep occupied as the story grew worse and worse. I tried to equate the situation with some past experience to make it easier to take. I found nothing to hide behind. This was new. This was bizarre. This was….
The next few hours were a blur. We had a busy dinner, the casual attitude of the diners upset me. Few people showed any interest in the news reports. I heard some reports and said almost nothing to anyone. A young hostess was laughing and joking around. She told me to smile and it will all be fine. I snapped a bit and said “I have too much on my mind…I will smile later, I promise!” She huffed a bit and walked away. The night finished and I went to pick up Lindsay at [sister-in-law] Julie’s house. I drove in dead silence. I could not bear the sound of another voice, and music was out of the question [Tom loves music and is a musician]. Lindsay was fine. She didn’t have much to say about the shooting. I doubt at 12 she really understands the magnitude of the event. We talked a bit and Lindsay went to bed. I sat up awhile and went to an AOL chatroom to talk, and listen, and maybe make some sense of it all. I met a couple of nice people in the room, and stayed up till 2.
As I said, today [Wednesday] was anything but usual. The stories, one after another, left me in tears. I knew these people. I did not know their names, but they live in my subdivision, shop in my stores, eat at my McDonalds. On a side note, last week I went for lunch at McDonalds and sat in a booth next to who I believe were the two killers and a friend.
The television was on nonstop coverage all day. President Clinton considered a trip here, but declined because it would be disruptive. Gov. Owens announced that all weapons bills before the legislature had been shelved indefinitely. The blood bank turned away 200+_ people and asked that they return another day. Makeshift memorials appeared everywhere anyone had been seen in pain. Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and at least 2- remote news feeds from various cities were broadcasting from Clement Park. I was still not convinced that anything would change.
About 6 o’clock, we decided to go lay some flowers at the memorial at Clement Park. The storm was moving in fast, wind and rain kicking up, and I had never felt so cold. The traffic was backed up, so we parked at a nearby restaurant and walked the ½ mile to the memorial. The lake was cold and angry, the sky dark and colourless. The people walked together, old, hippies, yuppies, trench coats, and jocks to the site of the memorials. Closer to the memorial there were news trucks from at least 15 cities, wires taped everywhere. I counted at least a dozen cameramen going about their business, and an equal number of well coifed anchors preparing to do their gig. I was not prepared to be there.
I read some of the messages on the paper chain surrounding the memorial. There was no anger, no hate, no blame, only hope and love. I saw a young girl, no more than 16, emotionally broken and crying on the shoulder of her friend. I saw a teachers car, covered with flowers, surround by students huddled and praying together. I saw students from 20 different schools, together in the knowledge that it could have been any of them. I saw, for the first time, hope.
[A writing apparently read by Denver Mayor Wellington Webb]
“No one can make sense of a thing like this.
No one can make the pain go away
All we can do is this:
Pray for those who have lost their loved ones
Hug your own child a little tighter
Hug another child who may not get enough love
Hug someone who is different from you
Teach your children to do the same.”
The storm is rolling in, pray for those who will never share the warmth of home with family again.”
Postscript from Dick Bernard, April 20, 2009:
The same day Tom wrote his account, April 21, 1999, I was at an all-day training session in a Minneapolis suburb with perhaps fifteen school public relations professionals. As I recall, the topic of Littleton did not come up until the end of the day when someone remarked that they were relieved that their assignment did not include the public relations nightmare that was Littleton (Jefferson County School District). There was agreement round about, until I mentioned that my son and family lived only a mile from the high school. It was at that moment that one of many learnings took root with each of us: there are no boundaries in this world of ours. The crisis at Littleton did not stop at school district, town, state or country lines. We were all in this together.
Shortly after the tragedy, someone from another state constructed simple large wooden crosses to remember the dead from April 20. The crosses were planted atop a pile of dirt just to the west of the school building, between Clement Park and the schools athletic fields, and became “Cross Hill”. The crosses themselves became controversial in that the builder planted crosses not only for the victims of the shootings, but for the two killers as well. By the time I walked up Cross Hill more than a week later, the two crosses for the killers had been cut down and removed. A message remains from that happening as well….