#448 – Dick Bernard: Ken Burns "Prohibition"

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We watched the first segment of Ken Burns latest documentary on PBS last night. (Part 2 of the 3 part series is tonight at 7 p.m. Sunday nights program here. More details including archived material here.)
I very highly recommend watching the entire series…and doing more than just watching: it is a natural for very serious reflection.
Disclaimer: I am not a tee-totaler. On the other hand, if I was the statistical average for consumption of beer, wine and spirits, the alcohol industry would scarcely exist. My parents were, I believe, tee-totalers. They never said why, but my guess is that for both of them, their opinion was formed through earlier family experience. I’m the family historian. I can speculate.
As I watched Prohibition last night, I kept thinking of the arrangement on my office bookshelf, which has been directly behind me whenever I’m at this computer screen, and has been the same for many years (you can click on the photo to enlarge).

Front and center is a Crucifixion in a bottle, one of several made by my Grandfather Bernard at some point in his life. The bottles, all the same, were said to be whiskey bottles. Grandpa in his early life was a carpenter, a lumberjack and miner, later in life chief engineer in a flour mill. According to my Dad he did these creations himself. They are rough yet precise works. It is unknown when he crafted them. He died in 1957.
To the left of the whiskey bottle is a goblet made of shell casings by my Uncle Frank, Grandpa’s son and Dad’s brother, in the machine shop of the ill-fated USS Arizona (where Frank died and his burial place). Behind the goblet is a model of the Arizona. To the right is a mini-Peace Pole given to me by my friend Melvin Giles some years ago. And behind all of them is a portion of an American flag. Invisible to the right is a model of the Destroyer Woodworth, on which my Mother’s brother, Uncle George, was an officer in WWII.
As I say, all of these have a long history at this particular place in my office, behind my computer screen. Together they evoke “America”. And at the center of it all is a Whiskey Bottle and a Crucifixion scene….
Part One of “Prohibition” recounts the nearly 100 year effort to ban alcohol in the United States. It is a story full of personal tragedies, zealots, charismatic evangelists, superb lobbyists, and the usual collection of political characters, saloon keepers and charlatans.
Prohibition became the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States in 1920.
Part two and three of the series will detail the failure of this campaign prohibiting a behavior and the ultimate repeal of the Amendment – the first (and last) such action ever in the 224 year history of the Constitution. What good it might have done was likely exceeded by the negatives.
The learning opportunity from this film comes, in my opinion, not from the event itself, but how it relates to all manner of schemes and causes to require this, forbid that, or condemn the other.
The list is very, very long. Pick your particular bias – something that you think should be done, and required of everyone. It’s on my list. And there’s some charismatic leader who can sing a mean song, and some passionate zealous followers who cannot conceive a country or a world without their passion being enacted to their satisfaction. The cause is their crusade.
As prohibition proved, such things never ever work. The experiment in prohibition should be an object lesson.
But, you say, “that was then, and this is now”?
Sure it is.
Think.
UPDATE October 5, 2011: We watched Parts 2 and 3 of Prohibition on Monday and Tuesday evening.
I’d highly recommend the entire Prohibition series for stone-sober viewing and then deep reflection about what will (not “can”, but “will”) go wrong, for any zealots, ideologues, moralists, etc. who think they can successfully manipulate American diversity by their own scheme or design. This includes the ones who claim to have the objective truth, not to mention God firmly on their side.
As the five hour series demonstrates, you can reach a peak in power and influence, but it is a long and certain fall from the pinnacle in ways you could not anticipate, and in the process you inflict considerable damage upon the very society you proclaim to save.
As I mentioned, I am neither a tee-totaler nor a drinker worthy of the label.
Makes no difference, I’ve seen the ups and downs of this and many other issues over the years. The ideals collapse upon very different realities.
I never studied the subject of alcohol (and tobacco) consumption, other than by observation during my adult life. Legally mandated notice about such as the dangers of alcohol and tobacco use certainly did have a positive impact. But, I think, the greatest impact on the body politic was simple changes in the way people were, together. It used to be, for instance, that you could find accommodation for smoking everywhere. Today smoking is by no means an endangered vice, but it doesn’t hold a candle to what it used to be, and nobody had to pass a constitutional amendment to make that so.
This will not stop the power people from attempting to move their own political agendas, from attempt to outlaw certain kinds of marriage, to mandating war without end, to perpetual and enduring peace, to ridding the world of abortion, or to rendering irrelevant certain political factions which hold different opinions from the temporarily dominant majority. Dreams ultimately collide with reality.
All the carefully concocted schemes will, at minimum, collapse over time, leaving rubble in their wake.
Will our societ collapse along with them?
Go to the link at the top of the page to rewatch the series, or check with your local PBS station.
Don’t miss it.

#439 – Dick Bernard: Walter McFadden, Jr.

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Today is the funeral Mass for my second cousin Walt McFadden. Walt died Sept 13 in an accident on his farm on the edge of Dubuque IA.
Our condolences to Mary Lou, daughters Dena, Angela, Marla, their families, and Walter’s siblings Phil, Marianne, Paul, Jerry, Carolyn, Hugh, Kathy and Richard.
The last time I talked to Walt was a couple of weeks ago: a phone call. He and Mary Lou had been at the Minnesota State Fair. The last time I saw him was July 10, when I took this photo of him on the family acres. (click to enlarge all photos.)

Walter McFadden Jr. July 10, 2011


Walt was a picture of good health and spirits when I last saw him.
He and I didn’t know each other well. I was in Dubuque for a family reunion put together by Walt and his siblings in early July. Before that, the last time we’d met was in 2005 at another reunion. Walt’s mother was my mother’s first cousin, less than two years younger. In fact, they were double cousins: their parents, sister and brother who married brother and sister in Grant Co. WI about a year apart, took up farming on adjacent farms in ND in the early 1900s. As happens over 100 years, my branch more or less centered on ND and Minnesota; Walt’s branch in Iowa and Illinois. I know them basically through family history.
So I can’t wax eloquent about Walt’s gifts to family or to society at large. His obituary suggests they exist abundantly.
What the sudden death of this apparently very healthy 74 year old man demonstrates once again is the importance of doing relationship things now, rather than waiting for a better time – next month, next year, sometime….
As best I understand, Walt died only a very short distance from the farm home in which he grew up. He and his wife Mary Lou lived just down the road a mile or so. One of his brothers, Dick, and spouse, lived between the two houses. Other siblings in the large family live elsewhere.
In July, Walt took me into the old house, which he had been gutting, with uncertain plans. It had been a farm home. Now, across the street both north and east all of the property is urban development.
Change.
Walt is at Peace. May all of us learn from him.

The Walter and Lillian McFadden House, Dubuque IA, July 10, 2011



The old home, many a footstep up and down....


A family gathers at the McFadden home July 10, 2011. Walt is at right in the photo.


PS: Yesterday’s Sunday Bulletin at my Church, the Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis, had a column by Johan van Parys which seems to apply directly to today’s sad event in Dubuque. It is copied here: Van Parys Sep 18002. Dr. Van Parys is a native of Belgium.
PS2: I note in his obituary that Walt was a letter carrier. I wrote recently about the U.S. Post Office. It is here.

#437 – Dick Bernard: Sykeston vs Goodrich, 1957; Us vs Us, 2011: How are you on the field, or not?

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Soon after 9-11-11 I received a “real” (with postage stamp) letter from a great and long-time friend: “Enough 9/11 already. [My son] contends that if we put the same energy into remembering victims of battering and child abuse, it would be well served. I am not unsympathetic, but where is the energy for other injustices? Am I being a cynic I wonder.”
Fair enough. In fact, I agree. My 9-11-11 post is titled “The first day of the rest of our life as a people“. My comment on 9-11-01 itself is titled “Have we learned anything these last ten years?”
The letter caused me to reflect on a long ago event and how it applies (I feel) to today’s world.
In 1957 we moved back to Sykeston ND. It was my senior year in high school, and we’d been elsewhere for the previous six years.
For the only time in my life I was in a school having enough boys for a football team, though only six-man.

Sykeston Football 1957


As the photo shows (I can remember almost all of the team members, I’m in front row, third from left) we did not look terribly impressive. The yearbook says we only played two games, winning the first against Goodrich, 26-0, and the second against Cathay, 40-2. The other two games were “postponements”. At any rate, when we played we apparently did all right. I had one touchdown, the yearbook says.
Ah, Kenny Chesney’s “The Boys of Fall”. Undefeated.
I remember vividly something during the Goodrich game (we were the visitors). At some point in the game I found myself running towards a big horse of a kid running towards me down the field. All I remember is that he was BIG, and I hit him head-on, and it hurt bad.
Nothing broken, or even bruised, but I knew he and I had met. At minimum I stopped him cold.
That was the Goodrich game: 26-0, Sykeston. It was no Kenny Chesney moment, but it was a moment.
But how about “Us vs Us, 2011”?
I know there are readers of this blog who don’t like football, and that’s okay.
But the U.S. body politic is very seriously fighting against itself these days, and just like that big horse of a guy and me in 1957, either you’re on the field, or you’re on the sidelines, in the stands, maybe not even showing up to support the team, but only being a “Monday morning quarterback”. Absence from action is dangerous for us all.
We’re a Nation of One’s and we’re at risk. It’s the rare person I talk to who doesn’t have his or her sole first and primary priority for this country, and bases his or her judgments on this single priority. All too often, deliberately, problems are cast as President Obama’s fault.
It’s not President Obama’s game to win or lose, it’s ours as a society.
And the function we can serve in the winner-take-all fight that faces us is to be on the field, getting bruised up.
If we’re on the sidelines, or not at the game at all, the opposition has free rein, and we’ll all suffer, including the people who think they’re winning.
Here I am, 54 years from 1957.
In that long-ago game, I met the bruiser head on and we won 26-0. Sure, that’s meaningless…or is it?
Where will Kenny Chesney’s “Boys of Summer” be 54 years from now?

Directly related posts: Sep. 9(Reflecting on Sep. 11, 2001, and the ten following years); Sep. 11 (39 comments to date about the Sep. 9 post); Sep. 14 (Vietnam Vet Barry Riesch); Sep. 15 (But/And); and Sep. 16 (Political models).

#433 – Dick Bernard: "I DID IT!"

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Sunday we were at the “Annual Mass for Persons with DisAbilities”. one of whom was my daughter, Heather.
It was a very special afternoon, confirming eleven adult disabled in the Chapel at the St. Paul Seminary. The Church was filled with friends and family members.
The confirmands had assorted disabilities – for Heather, it is Down Syndrome.
It is folly to typecast a “disabled” person, but I think it can be safely said that those with relatively low mental ability tend to be less repressed than we so-called “normal” people.
So the kind of decorum a Bishop might usually expect in a church was not necessarily the order of the day Sunday afternoon.
There were many special times before, during and after the Mass.
My favorite came during the second reading, from St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans 14:7-9.
A woman sitting in the front row came to the lectern to do the reading, and in a slow, steady but certain way, she read every word. To my hearing, she read the words perfectly.
Reading finished, she headed back towards her pew, and about half way there she loudly exclaimed “I DID IT!” Hardly ever had I heard such a joyous expression of joy and accomplishment.
Nothing later in the service, even the Bishops homily, or Heather’s part in the service, came even close to matching the reader’s expression of joy at her accomplishing her task.
After Mass we gathered for refreshments outside the Church.
Heather, who had performed her own part of the Mass first-rate, was proud and delighted.
I felt I was among persons far greater than I.
We can learn so much from the disabled.

Heather Bernard, September 11, 2011

#429 – Dick Bernard: Let's have some kind words for the United States Post Office

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UPDATE Sep 10, 2011: There have been some interesting comments particularly relating to my comments about the Sykeston ND postoffice. They are included at the end of this post. At the time I knew Sykeston, its population was perhaps 225-250 fine people.
UPDATE Sep 12, 2011: Subsequent to this post, I was made aware of an interesting explanation of this supposed problem which has not been publicized. It is here.
UPDATE Sep 20, 2011: Yahoo news plus related items
*
Yesterdays news about the travails of the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) was no surprise.
I could see it coming earlier this summer when our normal mail delivery time changed from early afternoon to early evening. One day I was at the mailbox when the postman came by, and I asked about the change. He said that the length of their routes had been drastically increased and that they had no choice in the matter.
As to mail he was delivering, increasingly it has been what we would consider “junk” – and that’s not the mail carriers fault. You know what shows up in your mail box. “Real” letters, with handwritten addresses and stamps are very rare these days, replaced by e-letters, which themselves have been replaced by facebook entries, by twitter, by this or that or the other electronic means. Because there are so many mysterious alternative means to communicate, as an older citizen I lament that we have more ways to communicate less….
If it weren’t for junk mail and bills (we haven’t gone paperless yet), there would seem to be little need for a post office.
It is a sad development for me and, I think, for us.
I happen to be a big fan of postal workers and of ‘real’ letters.
I spend a lot of time in line at the local post office (Woodbury MN), and after a while you get to know the folks behind the counter. Theirs is not always a pleasant job. Those of us in line can be a real pain. I much prefer the human face and voice of the postal worker to the machine that dispenses postage (after you correctly follow its orders). I use the machines also; I prefer the people.
Ironically, coincident with the news of the USPS travails I have been mailing the first copies of a just completed 475 page book which consists almost entirely of handwritten letters from my grandparents relatives in rural Wisconsin in 1905-06 (letters) and 1907-13 (postal cards). All of these had been carefully kept by Grandma. They helped alleviate the loneliness of a new home on North Dakota’s rural prairie.
Those were the days when posting a letter was a serious and frequent business: it was a main means of personal communication. Telegraph could be used to deal with emergencies. During 1905-06 the Wisconsin folks got telephone, but it would be some time before that became part of rural North Dakota.
This ordinary farm family of my ancestors, mostly grandma’s sisters, but others as well, hand-wrote over 100 legible and literate letters in 1905-06. Those letters are the essence of the book.
They always wrote in pencil, often by candle-light. One letter revealed that the 600 mile trip of a letter from one farm to the other took only two days. In those years, the mail was carried to and from the farm by horse and buggy, then by railroad, and carried very efficiently.
A 1913-14 pocket calendar kept by my grandfather, incorporated into the book, said a letter mailed in New York City would reach St. Paul MN in 34 1/2 hours; from New York to Seattle, 94 3/4 hours. New York City was the apparent center of the universe. (The chart includes Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco, but not Los Angeles or San Diego.) PostalRegs1913001
Postage was 2 cents an ounce; 1 cent for a postal card.
There were formal procedures, but others were quite casual. It must’ve taken a creative postal worker to decipher exactly where some letters were to be delivered – persons often had rather casual notions of what was a proper mailing address – and usually there were no return addresses. No doubt many dead letters took awhile to reach their intended destination.
Until about 1907, postal regulations did not allow writing on the address side of postal cards. When those regulations were changed, enterprising letter writers wrote almost microscopically to fill the available tiny space. It probably helped that the receivers of these letters were mostly in their 20s, better eyes.
Now the Postal Service is in apparent crisis. It will survive, largely because of the hard-working and dedicated men and women who put up with us every day.
I wish them all well.
(A story about the postcards can be found here.)
A brief memory: my first memory of a real post office is right after WWII, when I was perhaps six years old. We had moved to the tiny town of Sykeston ND, one of those places with a grain elevator on a spur railroad line, seven miles or so from the neighboring towns.
A single train came through this town each day: westbound in the morning; eastbound in the afternoon. It delivered packages and implements and such for farmers, hauled grain cars, had room for a few passengers, and on-board was someone who sorted the mail.
Our neighbor, I believe his name was Mr. Spitzer, was the designated person to meet the train for the local postoffice. He had a very large (or so it appeared to me) push cart, with two high metal wheels and a flat carrying surface. It was designed such that it could be easily pushed or pulled by a human.
When the train came through, a number of sacks of mail were off-loaded onto his hand-truck. In my memory, these were fairly large gray canvas bags with an open end secured with a draw string. They were much like duffel bags we later had in the Army. There might be several of these filled bags, depending on the day.
Mr. Spitzer would roll the cart the block or so to the Post Office, and the postmaster, Mr. Sondag, would begin the process of distributing the mail into the individual post boxes. These were boxes with small glass windows, and as I recall, combination locks. One could see when a letter popped into the box!
Townspeople would gather to see if they had any mail. It was a rather exciting time of day.
At some point, Mr. Sondag would finish his work, people would see if they had any mail, and everyone would go their separate ways, the days anticipation (or disappointment) over….
UPDATE:
Anne Curtin, whose Dad was a rural letter carrier in the Sykeston area for many years during the time period described, sent this response:
I did enjoy your blog and agree with your assessment. Our legislators have not helped keep the post office solvent.
Since my dad was a rural mail carrier from about the time I was born, my memories of the role of the post office meant occasionally waiting for him to finish sorting the mail and then we could ride with him on the route. In the spring, he often had live baby chicks making lots of noise in the back of the vehicle. That meant going up to the houses to deliver them. There were also times when the post office was alive with the sounds of live animals. Often at Christmas time, there would be a ham or other gifts at the mailbox for the carrier.
The post office was definitely a social gathering place when many people waited for the mail to be sorted to the various boxes. There was no delivery in small towns – perhaps there never has been. You often read that people fight to keep their post office as it is a distinction to have ones own address and a time/place to find out how your neighbors were doing.
From Bruce Fisher:
The handwritten envelope is indeed a rarity. But once in awhile I get a letter in a hand written envelope. Its usually some sort of hate mail directed at me for a letter or comment I sent to the Strib [Minneapolis Star Tribune] that was published. It usually pertains to something I wrote about the Iraq or Afghan wars or man made global warming.
The letters usually do not have a return address, although I do have one admirer who does supply a return address. He’s from Sandstone [MN] and has several times sent me scripture and verse on going to hell for my political beliefs. Because he supplies a return address, I’m not too concerned about him. Its the one’s who are anonymous that trouble me.
Even though they are troubling, its still nice to receive a handwritten envelope.
From Duane Zwinger, a classmate in Sykeston days:
The story was very accurate. Uncle Eddie was the postmaster. My view of the postal service was somewhat different as I was a “farmer”. We got our mail delivered to us by the “mailman” in our post box that was run over many times. “We lived on the highway three miles east of Sykeston). I would say that Dad had to repair the mailbox two times a year. The mail usually came to the farm about 2:00 PM. It was a mad dash to the mailbox to get the MAIL. (Most items in the mailbox were important). A comment on mail nowadays. I cannot remember the last time I got a just plain letter from someone Bo things have really changed. I hope we do find a need for the Post Offices of today.
From Charlie Rike
I have to say you had some great memories of the postal service in your thoughts today. I am blessed to live in a small [east central Minnesota] town, the postal workers are really great out in the small towns. I am only home here about 1/2 the time so I have my mail stopped a lot for a few days at a time or a few months if I go south for a while.
My lady mail carrier is so very thoughtful, she gave me her cell phone number to call her in case I forget to drop a stop mail form by the office. If I am gone for any length of time the PO here will allow me to designate someone to pickup my mail once a week, which is usually my sister & brother in-law, they pick it up, go through it & send me any first class mail I need to see. So I really do appreciate our small town postal service.
In a past life when I worked as a depot agent / telegrapher for the old Northern Pacific Ry both here in Minnesota & western Montana, I handled lots of mail bags, loading them & unloading from the mail car of the passenger trains of the day that hauled almost all of the mail. I remember how much more mail there would be to load & unload over Christmas time each year.
From Gloria Bougie, who grew up in Sykeston:
I can so remember mail and the post office in Sykeston, my dad”s dental office was right next door. The post masters at that time were Martin Kremer and his sister, Lena. It was always an occasion to “go get the mail”. You are right, the boxes had glass fronts and combination locks. In Sykeston, I think mail time is still a time of gathering and visiting which isn’t all bad. Nice to read your blog and nice to hear from others. I think the junk mail of today is obscene, who needs all of that, I don’t write letters anymore because my sister, Sister Jean, and I call on the phone.
Thanks again for the article, I enjoyed it.
(later) I also remember that when the mail came, every one gathered in the post office waiting for [postmaster] Martin to get it sorted. While he was doing that all the windows for buying stamps et cetera were closed.

#428 – Dick Bernard: A Mutiny aboard the Ship of State

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I hear all sorts of opinions in the course of an average day, from all sorts of people. Part of this is due to being retired, and thus having more varied opportunities. A larger part is a desire to hear, and engage with, more points of view than one gets as a ‘bird of a feather’ in some special interest constituency or other.
While I’m a hopeful optimistic kind of guy, things look hopeless in this country into which I was born, have lived my entire life, and will likely die. It seems that we’re all involved in a collective mutiny on the ship of state; we want what we want; and we’re rapidly killing ourselves in the process.
Just in the last few hours we were at a political fund raiser for a Congressional candidate, a Minnesota Democrat, and a small group of us were in quite a passionate discussion of what will happen in 2012, and why. Before leaving for that fundraiser, came an e-mail from a good friend on the political left, who said about the President: “I think his brand of politics doesn’t inspire confidence. I’m not confident in him. In fact I’m leery and distrust him, but will vote for him because a Republican would be worse.” What he was saying is that President Obama isn’t progressive enough and ‘don’t expect much help from me to help reelect him’. And this friend is moderate as left-wingers go.
I ask folks like my friend, “so, what is the viable alternative?” There is never an answer to this question. The hard word is “viable”.
The strategists for the polar right, the opposite of the progressive left, and the Republican strategists in particular, understand the left-wing animus towards Obama, and expertly manipulate it.
The issue is winning, after all, not our country surviving: “Divide and conquer.”
Early this morning came a New York Times column about a moderate Congressman, long in Congress. It’s excellent and a tiny piece of hope. If you’re not into reading columns, at least consider reading the last three or four paragraphs of this one which convey a little hope. The rest of the column reminded me of our own visit to the U.S. House of Representative gallery Halloween night in 2000.
Politically, we are a very odd and self-destructive bunch as we enter into the political warfare of the next 14 months.
Many of us despise our system. Can it get much worse? It will get worse, unless we collectively get a grip.
It is not unusual to despise a leader, especially one who has to lead warring factions who despise each other.
For 30 years I’ve done family history, and among many others, I’ve recorded the stories about what some influential family members – all of them common folk – thought about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At the same time FDR was about the business of saving the country from itself, he was loathed by some of the very people he was helping save, often for emotional and not rational reasons. And my family was likely very typical back in the hard times of the 1930s.
What was the viable alternative then? I submit that the FDR haters wouldn’t have liked the alternative, and our country would not have survived to be what it is today had their loathing become reality….
What is the viable alternative now? If by some awful chance the mutiny succeeds, and we throw the bums out and start over, there will be no captain of the ship, and we passengers on this mutinous craft, along with the misfits who pulled off the mutiny, will collectively sink.
Do we want this? I hope not.

#399 – Dick Bernard: A Family Reunion of the Berning Bunch

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The McFadden family of Dubuque IA hosted a Berning family reunion this past weekend and I attended. There were about 130 of us in attendance. It was a perfect demonstration of the old adage about effective gatherings of any kind: “Food, Fun and Family”. (An uncaptioned photo gallery is included with this post. Family members in the know, will know!)
As years pass, such reunions are more and more difficult to organize. My common roots with the McFadden’s are great-grandparents August Berning and Christine Vosberg Berning of rural Louisburg, WI, perhaps ten miles northeast of Dubuque. In their “day” – they were born in the 1840s, in Germany and Wisconsin respectively – family reunions happened at least weekly, if not more often. Everybody lived in the same community, were the same religion, were the same nationality (in this case, German), had the same traditions, etc. And getting places away from ‘home’ was unusual.
Today such gatherings bring together people who meld many places, beliefs, traditions, etc., etc. What is normal today would have been unthinkable 100 years ago.
But we came together, and there was certainly FAMILY, and far more than enough FOOD, and a great plenty of FUN on a hot, sunshiny, Iowa day. At this gathering ages ranged from the really young, to 94.
We gathered at Swiss Valley Park near Peosta IA, an excellent venue. The entrance I used has cars drive through the Catfish Creek. It is designed that way. Signs remind people not to drive through in high water, but I’m sure there have been mistakes. The crossing is a focus for families – a variation on the ole swimmin hole. (Click on photos to enlarge them.)

Catfish Creek crossing at Swiss Valley Park July 9, 2011


There was a serendipity element to finding we were at Catfish Creek, since I have a very old postcard from the family files of another setting of that same Catfish Creek where it enters the Mississippi River.

Catfish Creek on postcard mailed November 8, 1908


Catfish Creek has an interesting history in and of itself. One description is here; a photo at the road crossing at the Park is below.

Catfish Creek marker at Swiss Valley Park, July 9, 2011


Formal reunion over I retraced some historical steps, including one with sentimental value for me: at the last reunion, in 1994, my Dad and we siblings went up to the Julien Dubuque monument overlooking the Mississippi. It is after Julien that Dubuque is named. Like Dad, Dubuque was pure French-Canadian.

Julien Dubuque monument and gravesite, south side of Dubuqe IA July 9, 2011


This time, at the monument, I read the descriptors, and found that Peosta, that town with the odd name, was the Indian Chief whose daughter Dubuque had probably married ‘back in the day’ in the late 1700 or early 1800s (Dubuque died in 1810).
Sunday Mass at St. Joseph’s at Sinsinawa and breakfast at Marion Placke’s, then a tour of the old McFadden place in once rural Asbury (now Dubuque) ended a great weekend. Those with an interest, the old home place can be seen at Mapquest at the southwest corner of Radford and Pennsylvania(Middle) Road. The acreage to the south and west remains open and is still in the family. To the east, what appears as open acreage has now been built up.
Family history is harder and harder to maintain. As the old tightly knit communities disappear, as they already have, it is ever more important to built and maintain a family identity, one that reaches far beyond the traditional bounds our ancestors knew.
Thanks, McFadden’s, for a great gathering.

#398 – Dick Bernard: Day 8 of the Minnesota Shutdown; 25 days to D-Day in Washington D.C. Going to a Family Reunion

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At 7 a.m. I leave home in my trusty 2003 Toyota Corolla, enroute to a family reunion in the Dubuque Iowa area. I’ve decided to do the trip on the slower but much more scenic and interesting Mississippi River Road. Weather is supposed to be good, and this is always a beautiful trip. I’ll be traveling alone, which gives lots of thought time. I never travel with computer, so there will be a hiatus at this space. I return Sunday night.
I’ve done this route before, several times in fact. The Mississippi was rolling long before there were humans around this place, and its done its work carving and molding the beautiful countryside for eons before there were towns and roads and such.
Human encroachment, in the way the history of our planet is mentioned, hardly merits a nanosecond, if that. But in that nanosecond we’ve unalterably changed the landscape and the resources which feed our voracious appetite for things like the gasoline that will make it possible for me to make this trip in relative comfort.
My people have been in the Mississippi Valley since, most likely, the 1700s (the French-Canadian side); and the 1840s (the southwest Wisconsin German side). Some of them were already there, farming, when the Grand Excursion of 1854 gave well to do tourists their first view of the upper Mississippi Valley, ending at later to be St. Paul and Minneapolis and the settlement floodgates began to open. It was not until the late 1860s that railroad would actually reach the new twin cities of, then, St. Paul and St. Anthony/Minneapolis.
As I drive, I’ll likely be shielded from the current hubbub and insanity in Washington and St. Paul. I have a few favorite CDs along to keep me company, from Mozart to folks songs. Life is too short to seek out the local radio stations which too often feature national talk radio.
In Viroqua, if I’m lucky, I’ll have coffee with a good friend who went to prison during the white hot times of Vietnam War protesting in 1970, but that may be the only contact with politics as such. Family reunions are no place to get into arguments about national policy. In fact, I won’t invite these encroachments. Just me. Life is a bit too short. There are other times to do that.
Most likely, typical for me, I’ll catch up on the news through the local newspapers in places like LaCrosse, Prairie du Chien, Dubuque…. It is always interesting to get the local perspective, at least such as it is printed in the local journals. Also, typically, I won’t watch much television. I don’t do that at home, either, but even less on the road.
(Click on photos to enlarge them. The entire set, from early 1900s postcards, can be seen here.)

The bridge at Dubuque in the early 1900s - a postcard rendition


Julien Hotel, Dubuque, 1908 - postcard


1933 on the Mississippi at Davenport IA - a postcard


I’ll deliver a couple volumes of my family history to the Dubuque Public Library later today. The most recent one I just had printed a few days ago: 475 pages largely of letters and postcards written from Wisconsin farm to North Dakota farm between 1905-13 or so. A story and pictures introducing the postcard section of the book is here. The longer, and in my view more fascinating, section of the book is over 100 handwritten letters found in a container at the old deserted farm house in 2000, Mostly they were sister-to-sister, talking about ordinary rural life near Dubuque from April, 1905, to June, 1906. They are literate and they are fascinating, from a time when people actually put pencil to paper.

Dubuque Carnegie Library in 1910 - from a postcard


In the course of these letters came the first telephone to the rural folk of Grant County Wisconsin. A description of an encounter of a horse carriage with an unexpected automobile is hilarious. The letters were oft-written by candlelight in the farmhouses of that day and occasionally brought news of tragedies too, such as the distraught young housewife in rural Kieler WI who in 1905 killed her four young children, ages 1 to 4, with a butcher knife, and then used the same instrument to kill herself. I’ll see if I can find their common grave – the name is Klaas – which is supposed to be in the churchyard at Kieler, near where a relative of mine lives. Oh, the stories.
Back at this space on Monday.
Have a great weekend.
NOTE: This is part of a continuing series of commentaries on the political problems we’re now facing in this state and nation. The first was published on June 23. Each hi-lited date on the calendar at upper right has a column behind it. By placing the cursor on the date, you can read the title of the particular column.

#388 – Dick Bernard: Gay Marriage in New York State

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Early last evening I was watching my usual news program and a guest was talking about how New York Legislature was about to pass a law authorizing same sex marriage in the state of New York. I’ve been around political decision making for long enough, and closely enough, to question the judgment of a premature announcement of a bill which would be, but had not yet, passed and was still questionable…one doesn’t announce a victory with ten minutes left in, say, a basketball game.
But announced it was. And it happened. And it apparently has already been signed into law by its architect, Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
There will be countless opinions flooding the news on this issue. Here is my small ‘squeak’.
This is great news, long overdue. As I understand the law, my Catholic Church doesn’t have to marry Gays; neither can it block Gays from getting married.
This is a very big deal on a great many levels. To me, it is one more piece of evidence that sanity is beginning to return to the political conversation – and by “politics” I mean “people”, generally.
I’m straight, and I thus have no direct personal “frame” to understand the Gay perspective. But that’s the most important reason why such a Law as this is good.
Even most religious leaders who despise what they consider the Gay lifestyle seem to agree that God approves of Gays – at least they admit this on paper. But they don’t understand how it is to be Gay, thus they attempt to throw the theological “Book” – their interpretation of the Bible – at it. “Belief” is made to reign.
I really don’t care if my local Archbishop doesn’t like this new Law, or if my local legislator recently went with the majority to deliberately bypass Minnesota’s Governor and authorize an initiative on the 2012 election ballot to enshrine into our Constitution a provision making gay marriage unconstitutional.
New York went with common sense last night.
(I wonder if our Legislature rules are similar to those in Roberts Rules: where decisions made can be reversed if people who voted on the prevailing side move and second to rescind their previous action. If so, maybe this is still a possibility. In fact, I had this as one of my possible questions at a Forum with Legislators a couple of Mondays ago.)
What happened in New York State overnight was a huge big deal. It won’t make the issue go away in other places. But it will be instructive; and it will empower people like ourselves to speak more confidently and informed about this issue.
I think of two evenings ago, at our annual suburban political party picnic.
This years event was in relative terms lightly attended, largely due to chilly and uncertain weather. We had the usual political speakers, but the first one was very unusual for us. Teresa Nelson, Legal Counsel of the Minnesota branch of the American Civil Liberties Union, addressed us about two issues she felt were absolutely critical for basic civil rights in the upcoming year.

Teresa Nelson, June 23, 2011


The first issue was the proposed constitutional amendment on marriage; the second was another proposed constitutional amendment on a voter id bill whose only purpose is to suppress citizen right and ability to vote. Both are, among many others, national initiatives appearing in many places in slightly different forms.
We citizens have work to do in the coming months. Too many of us have not been engaged. If this applies to you, now is the time.
I offer one last thought on the marriage issue:
My hobby for 30 years has been family history.
In the course of researching my French-Canadian side I came across the marriage contract between my first Bernard ancestors in Quebec, in the year 1730. The translation of this contract is Quebec Marriage Cont001
It is worth taking the time to really analyze this contract: who it was with, what it says, etc. (Here’s the summary: the 1730 document was a civil contract, between the parties and the State, to be followed, two weeks later, by the religious Matrimony….)
Of course, Quebec then was an exclusively Catholic country, so the marriage ultimately had to be finalized in the Catholic Church.
But the U.S. is not Quebec. And the Catholic Church in today’s Quebec is, I’m told, all but completely irrelevant….
UPDATE: This over nite blog post does a good job of defining what’s going on with the political decision making on this and other issues as well.

#374 – Dick Bernard: Amazing Grace for Cousin Vince

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A week ago today I was walking in to a place called Tar Paper Annie’s, a recently collapsed shack in the woods overlooking Bear Island Lake just north of Northern Lights Lodge near Babbitt MN.
The occasion was the farewell to my cousin, Vincent Busch, who passed away in January of this year. The shore of the lake would become one of the final resting places for his ashes.
I hardly knew Vince. I was nearly 11 when he was born; by the time I was in college, his family had moved hundreds of miles away and our paths rarely crossed. In the circle after the Memorial, at Tank’s in Babbitt, where we introduced ourselves, I identified myself as Vincent’s cousin, but I had no specific memories to share.
Such is how it often is in these days where we live separated by many miles, differing interests, and all the rest. Even “family” can be and are virtual strangers to each other.
But the ritual of saying goodbye is an important one. Death is always a time for reflection: looking back (memories); but more importantly (I’d say) looking at ourselves. Such gatherings are a time to realize that our turn is, inevitably, coming.
At Tar Paper Annie’s, a few feet beyond the ruins, near the shore of the lake, facing the lake, sat a solitary man, sitting on the ground, playing a harmonica. It seemed a sacred place and time for him, so I didn’t interfere.
As we gathered to remember and to say farewell, it became more obvious why he was there. Roger Anderson had been one of Vince’s close friends in high school, and long afterwards. Vince’s sister, Georgine, remembered “Vince would always speak with joy of the times he and Roger would get together and play music“.
As Roger sat in the doorway of the collapsed shack that Vincent had once called home at a very difficult time in his life, Roger played a profound rendition of “Amazing Grace” on his harmonica*. It was, truly, as good as it gets (click on photo to enlarge).

Roger Anderson, Amazing Grace, Tar Paper Annie's, May 13, 2011, Babbitt MN


As we concluded our gathering, Roger played “You Are My Sunshine” at that same place, on that same harmonica.
Yes, it was as good as it gets.
Farewell, Vince.
You made a difference. That’s the best any of us can expect.
My photo gallery of the Babbitt events remembering Vincent Busch is here.
* There are many harmonica versions of Amazing Grace on You Tube. Simply enter the words Amazing Grace Harmonica in the search box. In my opinion, none can compare with Roger’s version on May 13.