#377 – Dick Bernard: The Fargo Tornado of June 20, 1957

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Two grandsons and I were enjoying a major league baseball game at Minnesota Twins Target Field on May 25. It was a perfect day for a ballgame at this new park, which is at the very edge of downtown Minneapolis. (click on photos to enlarge them)

Downtown Minneapolis from deep left field, May 25, 2011


I couldn’t help but think that a few days earlier, perhaps three miles to my right, a disastrous tornado hit one of Minneapolis’ poorer neighborhoods* causing immense destruction, though nothing like the massive death and destruction in Joplin MO several hundred miles to the south.
I also got to thinking of a memorable tornado in North Dakota June 20, 1957. I was about to begin my senior year in high school that year, and we had just relocated to a town about 200 miles from Fargo. That storm had such an impact on me that I still have all of the newspaper clippings from the Fargo Forum from the day after that memorable storm. Fargo Tornado Jun 1957003

Fargo ND June 20, 1957



Storms came with the territory in ND and elsewhere in 1957. Out there on the prairie you could see the weather coming, and the prudent person had some kind of a storm cellar to retreat to just in case. I experienced one memorable close call in August, 1949: the roof of my grandparents barn blew off less than 100 yards from where we were sleeping late at night. Straight line winds were the problem; a shelter belt behind the house probably saved us from death.
We knew, then, that there was a tornado belt, its epicenter Oklahoma. We knew there had been a Dust Bowl, and where that had been, and when. We did have some history at our disposal.
I got to thinking of compare and contrast between 1957 and now: commonalities, differences.
1. WEATHER FORECASTING and COMMUNICATION about the weather was evolving but relatively unsophisticated then, unlike the nearly pinpoint accuracy of today’s forecasts. Now you can watch disaster developing. Then you were more likely caught by surprise.
2. Strong local COMMUNITY and GOVERNMENT existed as it does today*. But community was more isolated and independent then. It was still possible to imagine that your little space was the center of the universe and you could get along without others beyond your horizon. You were not immersed in a global system as we are today. Imagine being dropped, today, into a place without grocery stores and cars and such. For most of us in 2011, such a fate would be hell on earth. We are dependent on outside goods and services to an unfathomable degree. Local support systems are no longer enough.
3. In 1957, HUMAN INFLUENCED CLIMATE** CHANGE was not even the tiniest of concerns. People could remember the droughts of the Dirty Thirties, but hardly anyone thought (as they should have) of human impact on such phenomena. People, then, did not have to worry about denying reality. Now we do. Out of ordinary weather** incidents, as severe flooding, seem more frequent, and ordinary.

Sheyenne River Valley City ND post threatened flood May 14, 2011


A new reality has taken shape: we humans, particularly in the industrialized countries, are a major cause in the matter of climate change…even if many deny such. (Here, and here for some recent opinions. The topic deserves both attention and action.)
4. I’m not sure how VISION impacted in 1957, nor how it compares with today’s looking at the future. What I do know is that in 1956, the Act which led to today’s U.S. Interstate Highway system was easily passed and funded by Congress through then-huge increases in gasoline taxes, whereas today’s political and even business decision making seem short on consideration of the greater good or the longer term. Things like those then new freeways of the late 1950s and 1960s are at the end of their lifespans and and the ubiquitous shelter belts planted in the 1930s and 1940s are dying, and there seems little interest or attention to their renewal. Too many of us have been convinced that short term wants count more than long term needs.
5. POLITICIANS (who accurately reflect our best and our worst attributes) do not make us look very good in the present day. They, particularly those in Congress, truly reflect us.
It’s never too late to change behaviors. We need to.
* – How could 30,000 of us be sitting in a stadium enjoying a baseball game when there was a disaster area just a few miles away? I’ve asked myself that question. We are a city of 3,000,000 people, and government was doing more than an adequate job organizing etc as we watched the game. That is why we have government. Had we all descended on the disaster area, it would have been chaos.
** – Succinctly, as I understand the terms, “Climate” is the long-term average condition; “Weather” is localized incidents. “Weather” and “Climate” are directly related, and their phenomena often deliberately confused. They really don’t care about human rhetoric or denial; they do depend on human behavior.
#
AN END NOTE: It is ordinary, these days, particularly in nostalgic e-mail forwards, to paint the 1950s as an idyllic time in our history. Early in 1950 I turned 10; early in 1960 I turned 20.
There is a great deal truly positive to say about the “Baby Boom” years of the 50s, like the Presidencies of Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, but there are ample bumps in this road as well.
The 50s had hardly begun when the witchhunt for “Un-American” people began. At the Congressional level, it was the House Un-American Activities Committee; in the Senate, Senator Joe McCarthy. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was hardly a saint. A lot of damage was done. The 50s were the time of bomb shelters in school basements and backyards to protect against the certain Soviet attacks with ICBMs. Fear always sells well; it sold well, then.
I would suspect that African-Americans, Native Americans (“Indians”) and other people who were ‘different’ than we whites would have a slightly different view of these times than people of my race. The 50s were ‘back of the bus’ times for “Negroes”; and a time when the Indians always lost in “cowboys and Indians”.
Even Catholics and Lutherans didn’t get along well, then.
It is useful to reflect on what the 50s brought to us, good and bad, as we continue into the 21st Century.

#372 – Dick Bernard: Spring inches northward.

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Today, May 10 in suburban St. Paul MN, the leaves on the trees have burst out, and the leafy green of woods in spring has returned once again.
Exactly one month ago, in suburban Albuquerque NM, I was taking a solitary walk along the Rio Grande River, and noticed a simple tree which intrigued me (click to enlarge photos):

It was about the identical stage of leaf development as the trees I saw on my daily walk today.

Carver Park Woodbury MN May 11, 2011


Further north of here, other trees will leaf out in coming days.
Further south of Albuquerque, somewhere, trees were leafing out precisely on the Vernal Equinox of March 20.
So it goes.
Spring brings with it the predictable; the only unpredictable is the precise timing for such events as the first leaves of summer.
Across the driveway, a duck has set up a nest beside a neighbors house.

With some luck (the family has a cat and a dog) the ducklings will hatch and follow Mom to some pond a few blocks away, and survive, and life will go on.
Walking along this morning, I was momentarily surprised by someone coming out of the adjacent woods.
Not to worry. Just a gray-haired lady who bent over to inspect some green foliage. “It’s milkwort” she said, excitedly, and walked on in the opposite direction.
Happy Spring.
I’ll include a photo from Babbitt MN to be taken on Friday, May 13….

Sandia Mountain Range east of Bernalillo NM Apr 10, 2011


Some Minnesota wild flowers May 11, 2011:

The much-maligned Dandelion (my Dad's favorite "wild flower")



Remembering a life as spring begins at Bear Lake near Babbitt MN May 13, 2011.

#248 – Dick Bernard: Awaiting a new season

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One of the duties on a quick visit to the home farm near Berlin ND was to harvest the last of the land falls off the apple tree beside the house.
This was a good year for apples – at least for three of the four trees on the homestead – but very few of the apples were salvageable, mostly landfalls that either rotted or were partially eaten by one critter or another. Produce from nature doesn’t wait around to be attended to. My uncle and aunt couldn’t get to the task, much, this year.

Apples at the farm September 19, 2010


I picked what seemed to be usable apples and temporarily placed them in an old washtub – a relic of the days before washing machines – and mowed the grass.
My uncle and aunt knew that most of their apples would end up spoiled, and that was distressing. In some other year there was a lot of apple juice, etc., coming from these trees.
This year, almost nothing from the trees would actually be consumed.
While I mowed, my mind wandered back to a long ago visit to a relatives home in Mt. Angel OR, not far from Salem. It was 1971, and I was in a summer program at an area college. We went out for dinner at this families home. We’d never met before.
I remember nothing about the visit except for the huge Bing Cherry tree beside the house. This was an undisciplined tree, reaching so high that the fruit on the topmost branches was unreachable. In fact, most of the cherries were rotting on the ground. This astonished me, a kid from the midwest who grew up when perhaps once a summer a truck would come through with these same luscious cherries for sale, and my parents might buy a lug or two for canning purposes. And here I was seeing these riches of the earth rotting on the ground – no doubt a smelly nuisance to the homeowners.
As I completed my mowing, I put together a small pail of the best apples and went back to town, and then back home to the Twin Cities.
My thought process changed as time went on.
From the point of view of the apple tree, those apples aren’t wasted at all. They are simply the end point of the apple trees job: to provide seed for a potential new apple tree sometime in the future.
Those apples rotting on the ground were simply the fruit of its labor.
Next year is another season. Maybe lots of apples, maybe few, maybe none.
Hopefully I can give back at least as much as I took out as my own cycle of life continues.

Prairie fruit near Berlin ND September 19, 2010


Today Fall begins.
Make it a productive season.
**
Vince and Edith’s garden was as productive as ever. There were immense numbers of green tomatoes, and some great muskmelons still thriving. No killing frost yet, but this is the time of year when that is bound to happen on the North Dakota prairie. Everyone, the natural world included, begins to hunker down for Fall and then Winter.
Muskmelons at the farm September 18, 2010

Green tomatoes September 18, 2010


Uncle Vince checking out the garden September 18, 2010

#230 – Dick Bernard: Lynn Elling, A World Citizen and Witness for Peace

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Every now and then, if one pays attention, someone wanders into their life and makes a difference just by being who he or she is.
For me, one such person is Lynn Elling, Minneapolis, closing in on 90 years young, and 67 years of marriage to Donna.

Lynn Elling at Big Sandy Lake August 21, 2010


Lots of us want to make a difference. Lynn’s experience as an LST officer in the War in the Pacific 1943-45 compelled him to seek a better way to solve problems than war, and a visit to the Hiroshima memorial in 1954 cemented his “driving dream.” I’ve previously told most of his story at a website I dedicated to one of his major accomplishments. It is here. I am privileged to be on the Board of the organization he founded, World Citizen, whose mission is Peace Education for teachers, as well as Peace Sites, Peace Poles and the Nobel Peace Prize Festival at Augsburg College, Minneapolis, for school children. The Nobel Peace Prize Festival is an annual event in the Twin Cities which honors the Nobel Peace Prize Laureate. Next years date: March 4, 2011. The laureate is President Barack Obama.
Lynn was, it seems, born to lead. I was at Big Sandy Lake near McGregor MN last Saturday, at his invitation, for the annual gathering of the Big Sandy Lake homeowners association – a 500 homeowner group which has Lynn’s palm prints all over it. At the picnic he and Donna were recognized for their leadership, particularly in establishment of a Big Sandy Community Foundation to help preserve the lake environment as well as contribute to the greater surrounding community. A week or two earlier he had been honored for his work on Peace at the Concordia Language Villages camp near Bemidji (in the above photo, he’s holding a memento he received at that event.) I know he was President of his Church Congregation in Minneapolis, and on and on.
No question, he’s been a driven man, driven by his driving dream of Peace amongst all peoples and nations.
Outside the door of their cabin – a place he’s known as his lake home since he was two years old – is a symbol of his dedication to Peace.

The designation of the Elling's cabin as a Peace Site


Anyone, any place, can become a Peace Site. The information is here. Check it out. The importance of being a Peace Site is symbolic, yet substantive. It gives witness to a place of Peace.
Thanks, Lynn and Donna, for your witness to Peace over many years.

Lynn and Donna at the Big Sandy Lake homeowners annual picnic August 21, 2010

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

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

From the garden, back to the garden


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

#199 – Dick Bernard: A New Cuyahoga Moment?

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Previous posts on this topic: here and here.
For years, when I’m “out and about” in our world I’ve made it a practice of picking up the local newspaper, however humble or exalted.
So, when we were about to leave Denver on June 6, I picked up the Sunday Denver Post, and when I wasn’t in the drivers seat, took time to read the news. Colorado and mountain west personalities and U.S. Energy Policy are very close kin, and the Post had two most interesting articles which can be accessed here and here and speak for themselves. Tidbit: The first words in the Post lead article say “[from] its creation in 1982, the Minerals Management Service…has been a conflicted agency.” In 1982, Department of Interior was headed by James Watt in the administration of Ronald Reagan, but it is impossible to find this most basic fact in either the articles or at the MMS website.
But as the deepwater catastrophe continues in the Gulf of Mexico, my memories go back to a memorable trip I took in early August of 1968.
I was a junior high school geography teacher back then, and the opportunity arose to get in my Volkswagen and take a solitary tour through parts of the northeast U.S. and southern Canada. I set a goal (which I met) of spending no more than $10 a day TOTAL for food and lodging, and off I went, with my starting and ending point of Columbus, Ohio. I wanted to see some of the geography about which I was teaching. I remember the trip vividly. Here is the thumbnail synopsis: (I was young, then, and I could accomplish a lot in what were some very long days of trying to see everything possible).
First night, Charleston W Va, including seeing a giant chemical plant on the Kanawha River
Second night, Fredericksburg VA on the Rappahannock, after seeing giant coal trains just into Virginia, driving by the military complex at Norfolk-Newport News; Colonial Williamsburg
Third night, some unremembered town in the exhausted Anthracite mining district of Pennsylvania, after driving through Washington DC, which was not recovered from the 1968 riots after MLK’s assassination; Gettysburg; a tour of the Hershey Chocolate Factory (we watched Hershey Kisses being made!)
Fourth night, Elmira NY, once a home of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain)
Fifth night, some forgotten tiny town near Lake Ontario in northern NY after a day of mostly just driving, after a morning visit to Corning Glass Works in Corning NY. (My vivid memory here was checking in to the hotel, and asking for a room key, and getting a blank stare. They didn’t have keys…. This was just one of many examples of my high quality accomodations.)
Sixth night, Pembroke, on the Ottawa River in Ontario, seeing rural Ontario to and from, and log rafts on the Ottawa River.
Seventh and probably last night, Lockport NY, on the old Erie Canal, and not far from Niagara Falls.
The last day I drove along Lake Erie very early in the morning, and reached my destination of Oil Creek State Park near Titusville PA when no one was around. This was ground zero of American oil in 1859. Much to my surprise, a pump was running and a trickle of oil was coming out of a spigot. I rummaged in a garbage can and found an empty Iron City beer bottle, and filled it with Pennsylvania crude, turned on the screw cap and went on to see United States Steel in Pittsburgh before finishing the last leg to Columbus and home.
It was a warm day, and I forgot a basic physical fact: heated oil expands. I came back to my car and the oil had exploded the beer bottle, and I had a mess on the floor of my back seat. It was my first oil spill….
But that doesn’t explain the title of this post.
A year later, in Cleveland OH, the Cuyahoga River caught fire. In the same time frame, Lake Erie became almost a dead lake, and concern was raised about those wonderful phosphate rich detergents that not only were remarkable cleaners, but devastated the environment. We were killing ourselves. The American People Noticed.
In 1972 Congress passed the Clean Water Act.
It occurs to me that my little jaunt as a young geography teacher in 1968 was a look at the beginning of the end of the good old days of our business as usual U.S. industrial history. But changing habits is a terribly hard exercise.
Maybe the deepwater catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico will be the U.S. “Cuyahoga moment” of 2010. We are the ones who can make it so.

#198 – Dick Bernard: The President, BP, and Energy Policy

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I clicked on “publish” on #197 – Taking Responsibility and went to watch President Obama speak to the nation from the Oval Office Tuesday night.
The speech is short, well worth watching.
As I anticipated in #197, the instant analysis – and criticism – began immediately after the lights went down in the Oval Office.
I watched the speech on my favorite news outlet, and the fancy highly paid version of “armchair quarterbacks” or “sidewalk superintendents” weighed in immediately, slicing and dicing the Presidents every word and gesture and inflection.
I lasted about ten minutes, and left to do other things. There are better ways to spend ones time than listen to talking heads talk.
Then this morning the slicing and dicing continued on-line.
And I’m just paying attention to what President Obama’s “friends” are saying. I can imagine how his enemies are spinning this.
No doubt the President and his advisors were well aware going in that this would be a no-win kind of evening for him.
Everyone has their own particular grievance or expectation. Almost nobody truly believes that it is their problem to solve, or at minimum, most folks don’t consider themselves to have any clout beyond complaining to their friends and disciples.
My own interpretation of his brief, calm, direct remarks was, to borrow a suddenly publicly utterable word: “foks, if you want something to happen long-term, get off your collective a*sses and get to work. I can’t do it by myself.”
He wasn’t talking to his opposition: he knows they’re in it to have him fail, for their own political advantage.
He was talking to the tens of millions of us who said, a year and a half ago, that we wanted to be part of “Change we can believe in”. And the work has to be done locally and state by state, with local lawmakers, and state and national elected representatives we send to Washington.
Without our active involvement – and carping about a speech is not active involvement – our nation will continue the slide on the slippery slope to at best irrelevancy and at worst oblivion.
We cannot survive, living in the manner to which we have become accustomed, relying on the ever more elusive fossil fuels, found in ever more dangerous places, that we’ve gorged ourselves on over the last century.
I believe that most people, including those who hate Obama, know that we’re in a major crisis; that without major change we’re doomed.
Now is the time for us to act in our own self interest and help our nation change its far too long accepted self-destructive course.
President Obama advocated, last night, for moving away from our addiction to fossil fuels, and said it was possible, much like new-President John Kennedy said, years ago, that we could land a man on the moon by the end of the 1960s.
I had just turned 21 when Kennedy made his “man on the moon” speech in May, 1961, and nobody believed him, but the goal was attained with an outpouring of national will, July 20, 1969*. Granted, Kennedy had fear – of Sputnik, and the Soviet Unions nuclear adventures – in his corner then; but our crisis. now, is even greater.
Change can happen with energy policy in this decade as well IF we work to make it so. We can’t wait.
* – I notice the YouTube link invites a re-direct to the BP channel – something I had heard about. Ah, the information age….

#197 – Dick Bernard: Taking Responsibility

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In an hour or so President Obama will deliver an address that will be closely watched world-wide. Afterwards, as he and his advisors know, every word (or lack of same), expression, inflection, will be analyzed and isolated to suit the purposes of endless numbers of observers, who will then cast judgment, positive or negative, on what he says or doesn’t say. This is how the game is played.
I’ll watch the address. That’s about it.
I choose to focus, rather, on some random events, starting with an e-mail from a friend about 9 this morning. This friend is in international business, an exporter of USA and Canadian food and feed grains and seeds. He said: “To be honest business is just terrible. I do not see how the world can avoid a double dip recession as consumption is down in all areas with inventories not moving as anticipated.”
My friend is an astute veteran international business man. What he observes is not some abstract thing. It’s where he lives, literally.
What he said this morning ties in, I think, with what the President faces tonight when the camera rolls at the White House.
From May 31 through June 7 we were on the road to a family wedding in Colorado. By the time we left on our trip, the President had accepted responsibility for taking care of the oil spill. When we got back, one of the first film clips we saw on evening news was of Elizabeth Cheney asserting on one of the Sunday newsmaker programs that since this thing happened on Obama’s watch, it was his responsibility. There was not any acknowledgment that her Daddy, the former vice-president who’s been silent as stone on this issue, might share some responsibility. Their behavior reminds me of something I once heard from an ordinary person: “Mom taught me never to apologize“.
President Obama did what we expect of him: take on our responsibility. The Cheney’s, on the other hand, did what we too often expect of ourselves: nothing.
Every now and then on our trip out west (we were two couples in a Prius) we talked about whether or not this 2500 miles was a frivolous trip. Even at a pretty amazing 40mpg, we wondered, should we be doing this.
Occasionally we’d ask business people about their business, and in each instance, business was down: fewer people travelling; those people spending less.
During the past week, we’ve now begun to hear the expected refrain from the British, whose pensions are in many ways depending on the economic health of the mega-corporation, BP. “Make the corporation responsible and it’s going to damage all of us“, so goes the refrain. I think it was yesterday that Haley Barbour, the political genius who’s Governor of Mississippi, seemed to begin to make the case that drilling ought to resume, regardless of what had just happened. After all, the saw goes, people need jobs. “Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”.
And so it goes. Personally, I’m inclined to be moved by my friends comment earlier in this post. If we can afford to do so – and most of us can – I think now is a time to put money into the economy so as to help allay a darker and deeper recession. Sure, make choices of where you spend that money, but best to put some of the treasure in the money bin into circulation. I won’t buy a bushel of my friends soybean seed, but the money multiplier does work. And we’re the base for this.
I’m glad we made our trip. So is my son and granddaughter and daughter-in-law. So are the motels we stayed in. So is the girl from Russia who waited on us at a restaurant in Wall SD.
President Obama will be on stage tonight. But everyone of us, in the wings, has our own important and constructive part to play.
For those interested, here’s a link to the White House, related to the Presidents address.

#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.

#140 – Dick Bernard: 500 years

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Happy New Year, and new Decade!
2009 ends today. Much of this past year my personal endeavors have been around family history projects.
Since late summer, I’ve been tackling an immense task: trying to summarize 400 years of the recorded history of my average and ordinary French-Canadian families experience in North America. (My father was French-Canadian, his ancestry going back to the early 1600s in what is now known as Quebec.) I’m nearing completion of the project, which I’m entitling “The First 300 Years”, summarizing the most difficult to access part: the 300 years preceding my Dad’s birth December 22, 1907. (Quebec was established in July, 1608.)
Of course, those 400 years are just a moment in the existence of humanity; 400 years in France is modern history. But in North American and American history, 400 years is a long, long time.
Normally a family history project about an ordinary family is plagued by a lack of data. For me, I was plagued by so much data it was difficult to know where to start, and what to include or leave out. I finally broke that psychological log-jam, and I think the end result (which ultimately will be on the web, perhaps in February of 2010), will probably be about 150 pages of work.
I thought I had completed the project of summarizing those 300 years in mid-November, 2009, and, in fact, I printed the first copy in mid-November, and sent out the draft to 35 people during that same week.
During that very week in November, it happened that the television was carrying a series of commercials produced by a natural gas producing association, and a couple of times their ad featured a young Mom and her little girl invited, by her Mom, to blow out 100 candles, each symbolizing a year of natural gas left for we consumers. Of course, blowing out those 100 candles would be quite a chore for a little girl, and that was noted by the Mom.
The point of that commercial, and the other companion ads, was that there is at least 100 years worth of natural gas left in this country; suggesting this to be a long, long time. “Not to worry.” I watched the screen, which is next to our natural gas fireplace, and I thought of this little girl and her Mom in context with the 400 years I’d been reviewing for the prior few months, and the hundreds and thousands of years of earlier human history.
What a distinction.
My Dad was born 102 years ago…when he came on the scene there was scarcely any use of that resource, natural gas. In fact, his ancestors (and mine) in North America likely didn’t know there was such a resource until late in the 19th century, 250 years into their arrival in the New World.
Now the ad was saying that we had about 100 years left of that single resource, and directly implying that 100 years is a very long time.
I wanted to see that ad again, so that I could write exactly what the screen “Mom” was saying to her “daughter”, but it didn’t air again. Perhaps someone thought better of the idea of using that little girl as a prop for a resource that was rapidly disappearing. I don’t know.
Having looked at my family history from 1608-1907 – I’m 12th generation in North America; and knowing my family history from 1907 to the present; and knowing how we have become a society that lives for the moment, and really relies on fantasy views of the present and future reality, I wonder what’s ahead for us as a society in the next, very short, century.
That little girl in the commercial, and most likely her stage Mom, will own the results of our helter-skelter squandering of our earth.
Meanwhile, that natural gas fireplace by the television continues to bring warmth….
We can live in the past; we can pretend that today and tomorrow are all that matters; I hope we all look far more to the future consequences of present actions.
We can start by demanding that our lawmakers take a long-term and global view as they make policy that will affect the generations that follow us.
Then, we might have a Happy New Year.
And give those who follow some chance for many Happy New Years to come.