History – Page 18 – Thoughts Towards a Better World

#892 – Dick Bernard: Meeting General William and Mary LeDuc

May 31, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, History, Minnesota, Quebec/French-Canadians /by dickbernard

COMMENTS INVITED, both on-line and in e-mail form. Will be added at the end of the post.
Sometimes life brings fascinating surprises. Some weeks ago a lady was photocopying something next to me at FedEx, it looked interesting, and I took the bait.
It was a tour of the life and times of General William Gates LeDuc and his wife Mary at the archives of the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Upper and Lower Landing areas of riverfront St. Paul.
Many thanks to Joan, Heidi and Linda for a great day today.
(click on any photo to enlarge it)

Heidi Langenfeld expertly led the tour group, here speaking to us at Irvine Park, St. Paul.

Sample of one of the LeDuc “crazy quilts” in the archives of the Minnesota Historical Society.

Linda McShannock of Mn Historical Society showed the back of a Crazy Quilt square, which was labeled by the maker of the quilt with the source of the pieces used.

Several additional photos are at the end of this post.
The LeDuc’s were a very interesting couple. William was grandson of a French Navy Officer who served in the American Revolution leading to the creation of the United States. The article at this link is an interesting read about the man, William Gates LeDuc.
He came to St. Paul in 1850, when the present day city was just a tiny town; became a General in the Civil War, and moved with the movers and shakers, though great wealth eluded him. He and his wife married built their mansion at Hastings just southeast of St. Paul (more here), and it was a group of friends of this house that I joined for today’s tour.
What attracted my attention initially was the obvious French name, LeDuc. I’m French-Canadian. It took little time to ascertain that LeDuc was American, descended from (grandson of) a French Naval officer in America’s Revolutionary War. French, not French-Canadian: to some, an important distinction.
Beginning about 1760, before there was a United States of America, there was a rather unusual relationship between the French, the English, the French Canadians and the United States.
In a very few words:
The British defeated the French at Quebec in 1759; Quebec had already been French since the early 1600s, and had built a vibrant French-Canadian society.
In the American revolution beginning 1776, the French-Canadians became de facto allies of England, saving Canada for the English.
At the same time, the French allied with the Americans to defeat the English, resulting in the United States of America.
Of course, in 1803, the United States doubled its size through the purchase, from France, of the immense territory called “Louisiana”.
This very odd coupling led to very complex relationships, including some perceptions of French-Canada towards France, which exist to this day.
In the days of immigration to the United States, French-speaking Canadians were distinguished from Canadians. “Canada” meant Canadians who spoke English. French speakers were another category.
Suffice, there have been books written, and endless arguments….
LeDuc was American, of French descent, and an important character who came to St. Paul at the very beginning of its development, and he was an important man. But he was American, through and through.
In all, we spent nearly five hours on the tour, learning a great deal from the artifacts, and visiting the places and hearing about the people known to the LeDucs in early St. Paul. The characters came to life.
When I left the Historical Society, I began to think of “footprints” left by these early settlers to our area: tangible items, like furniture, a sword, a dress worn to a White House formal gathering, some letters – the kinds of things you see in museum.
What would be our footprint on history, I wondered?
In a way the answer came in the gazebo at Irvine Park pictured above. It was threatening rain, and the three persons in the Gazebo invited us in. They were two adults, white, and a young girl, very dark skinned African-American, who seemed to be their daughter. They were sitting behind Heidi, who was reading from an actual letter written long ago about a young man with a hatchet in St. Paul who lied about his misdeed, and blamed a “nigger boy”, but was caught in his lie and appropriately punished. [Note Fred J comment at end of post.]
The paragraphs she read were directly from the long ago book.
The use of the word, with the young girl sitting directly behind Heidi had shock value to all of us, and Heidi acknowledged that, including to the family behind her.
It occurred to me that we are leaving footprints, and many are positive ones: a descriptor routinely and derogatorily used 150 years ago was no longer acceptable language in our society.
It was an uncomfortable and awkward moment in that gazebo, but a powerful one, with lots of room for thought. Sure, Heidi could have left out the sentence, but I’m glad she didn’t. It was another learning opportunity for us.
Thanks, Heidi, and everyone, for a wonderful afternoon.

A Mary LeDuc formal gown worn to a White House function, as shown online at the MHS

The same gown in storage in the archives of the Historical Society.

Re Mary LeDuc’s dress (two photos above) more information here. Note Facebook, etc., at the end. You are encouraged to “like” this link, and share it!

A Civil War battle flag captured by a Minnesota soldier during the Civil War, held in the museum archives.

One of St. Paul MN’s oldest houses, built by Alexander Ramsey’s brother in early 1850s, now part of Burger Moe’s at 242 W 7th St, just a block or two from Xcel Center.

COMMENTS
from Fred J, June 1, 2014: I would make an addition to your blog commentary regarding the very interesting story you note. The tendency of those accused of crimes to blame an anonymous “black person” [the ‘N” word is no longer used] as the scapegoat culprit persists in present-day culture. It is modern racism on two fronts: 1) the accused assumes his accusers are more likely to believe him/her because of the racist belief that black people are more likely to be criminals and 2) what does it matter if an innocent black person goes to jail for the crime—they’re black after all.
Response from Dick: I appreciate Fred’s response. I recall so well the famous quote of George Santayana, given most prominent status at the entrance to the hideous Auschwitz which I visited in May 2000. “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. Denying the past is as dangerous as remembering it, sometimes.
from Heidi Langenfeld, tour leader, June 1: Your blog is very thoughtful and I am okay with the reference you chose. Race and our attitudes toward how we speak about “others” is something we continue to modify as we learn. I believe it is important not to white wash history (pun not intended). But, as one of your stories in the newsletters you sent said, “victors write the history”. Doesn’t that put even more responsibility on researchers to include examples of attitudes, customs and values when we report the past?
From Jerry F. June 1: Thanks, Dick. Nice blog about General LeDuc. I’ve seen the house many times from the road but have never visited it.
From Jane P. June 1: Very interesting, Dick!

#889 – Dick Bernard: Working Towards Peace: A War Well Worth Fighting

May 28, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, History, International Relations, Minnesota, Peace & Justice, Politics, War /by dickbernard

RELEVANT ADDITION TO THIS POST, added May 29, Just Above Sunset, here.
UPDATE to May 26 post, first paragraph, here.
NOTE: Previous 889, Dad’s Flower, will be 890 for May 29, 2014
(click on photos to enlarge them)

Bill McGrath, Northfield MN, sings Pete Seegers “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” May 26, 2014

Today, President Obama speaks at West Point. The previous days he’s been in Afghanistan and at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. My intention is not to report on what’s already been, or will be, said. You have many independent sources. The White House website will have the actual words. My favorite re-capper of the previous days news six days a week is Just Above Sunset, including the May 27, 2014 post, “Most Likely to Succeed”, from which I take the below pull-quote from the 5th paragraph playing on previous and following paragraphs about graduating from high school, and our propensity to self-select into “tribes” and persist in the insanity of talking “war”.
“…there are no quiet nerds who no one noticed in politics, or not many of them. The job is to display the tribe’s norm, and personify them. For example, Democrats don’t like wars, on principle – we should fight them when we have to, but not fight the when we don’t have to. Obama, long before he ran for president, famously said he wasn’t opposed to all wars, just dumb wars. He had Iraq in mind, not Afghanistan, but even that was heresy to many…Democrats see the sacrifice of our soldiers as worthy of great honor, but often sad. This appalls Republicans. In a nation of warriors the heroic cannot be sad. War makes us who we are, and feats of derring-do to overcome evil [is] pretty damned cool – and we can’t show weakness. That’s a tribal norm and also Obama’s problem. Putin has walked all over him. Everyone has walked all over him. McCain would have bombed Iran the day he took office. Mitt Romney would have eliminated capital gains taxes and then bombed Iran the day he took office. Obama is talking to Iran, and it seems they will end their nuclear weapons program, but he’s doing it the wrong way. Obama should have bombed them. Our military is awesome, from awesome individuals to our whiz-bang secret gizmos – the tribe has said so. We are a Warrior Nation after all – not a nation of diplomats and thinkers.” (emphasis added)
The U.S. functions as a two-party country, Republicans or Democrats, much to the chagrin of purists who’d like more options, but when we watch, listen or read commentary about moving away from deadly combat to solve world problems to something more rational, like negotiations, the commentary will be spun one way or another: Fox News vs MSNBC, etc. And the conversation becomes “Warrior” versus “Diplomat”, or other softer words.
My natural affinity group is “Progressive”, which in days past counted amongst its ranks legions of high profile and highly respected Republicans; but these days seems an outlier on the left who seem to consider both Republicans and Democrats to be twin evils against Peace when, in fact, there are huge and substantive differences (“warriors” versus “diplomats and thinkers”).
The right wing warriors, the Tea Party, have essentially frozen the Republican party in a perpetual radical mode: progressive types need not apply.
On the left, there will be scant celebration of a move to a new reality in our relations with the world: Obama has sold them out; there will still be troops in Afghanistan; and until every sword is beat into ploughshares the protests will continue.
I’m a ploughshares guy who, on the other hand, can see little common sense in not accepting that incremental improvements in a dismal status quo are, indeed, improvements, not simply the lesser of two evils. Since the beginning of his term, I’ve been impressed with President Obama’s skill in managing this impossible to manage country.
Today, most my friends on the Left (and that is where my friends are, mostly), will say about Obama’s words “there he goes again”. You can’t compromise with evil”. Of course, the other side says the exact same thing, though they define “evil” a bit differently. But the Right is more entrenched in positions of power in politics; while those on the Left migrate to fringe groups which have no power at all, except the purity of their position – a story we know all too well.
I’m sure I’ll find disagreement….
My good friend, Ehtasham Anwar, who’s just completing a year of study in the United States before going back to his South Asia home country sees this pretty clearly, I feel. He is troubled by the dichotomy he has experienced: at home in his country, signs of the U.S. “hegemony” are everywhere – us meddling in their affairs in sundry ways. Here in the U.S., on the other hand, he sees a population full of marvelous, peace-loving people. It’s a troubling contradiction to him.
Why the difference?
Can we as a country truly export our best and truest “face”, the face of Peace?
Working towards Peace: it’s well worth truly dialoguing about, often, very seriously, friend-to-friend, opponent-to-opponent. Read Just Above Sunset for a start.

Barry Riesch at the Veterans for Peace Memorial Day at the Vietnam Memorial at the MN State Capitol May 26, 2014

COMMENTS:
Joyce D, May 28 (commenting on a Letter to the Editor in the St. Paul Pioneer Press May 28)
Original letter follows this response.
Just some quick addenda and a correction to “Blaming Obama” (Letters, May 28.) I would add to the writer’s defense of President Obama the facts that Obama successfully got the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks (GWB, it should be remembered, declared he really wasn’t all that interested in getting Osama bin Laden,) ended our heinous policy of torture, ended the misbegotten war on Iraq and is in the process of ending the war in Afghanistan. At the same time, President Obama used diplomatic means to rid Syria of most of its chemical weapons and to halt nuclear development in Iran, without committing us to more wars. He improved America’s standing in the world, he enabled millions of Americans to access affordable health care for the first time and, though the VA still has an unconscionable backlog, that backlog was dramatically decreased under Eric Shinseki’s leadership, despite the influx of war veterans and the refusal of Republicans in Congress to fund the VA adequately.
The correction: Obama did not vote against invading Iraq as a US Senator. In fact, at that time Obama was still a member of the Illinois legislature. He did, however, speak out forcefully against attacking Iraq, something few politicians had the courage to do. Our current Governor, Mark Dayton, was one of the few brave legislators who had the guts to vote against that damaging war of choice.
The Pioneer Press letter: Blaming Obama
James R. LaFaye, St. Paul
It is impossible for me to read the diatribe in Monday’s Pioneer Press “Opinions” and remain silent. The author is typical of so many hardcore anti-Obama dissidents — long on opinion and short on facts. Ever since Barack Obama became our president, his critics have been dead set on blaming everything but the Civil War and Lincoln’s assassination on him. I am sure the letter writer is able to afford his own health care coverage unlike the millions of uninsured Americans who benefit from the Affordable Care Act. Its critics insist on calling it “Obamacare” simply to engender disapproval among like-minded individuals.
“Our foreign policy is a joke.” I guess he would prefer that we return to the policies of the previous administration whose response to the 9/11 tragedy — which occurred on their watch — was to invade Iraq under false pretenses when the perpetrators of this greatest domestic terrorist attack in American history were not even from that country. Maybe the letter writer is upset we haven’t invaded any more countries during Obama’s presidency, like Syria or the Ukraine, to demonstrate America’s invincible might.
Finally, although I am as deeply saddened and upset about the VA debacle as any American, to blame this situation on Obama and the Democrats is absurd. A cursory investigation of the VA’s (or its forerunner’s) history in providing health care services to our Veterans will quickly reveal a long history of malfeasance going back to the Civil War, WWl, WWll, the Korean War and Vietnam, which obviously included many Republican administrations. The current tragic conditions at the VA are only aggravated by the great number of returning disabled veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which wars are attributable to our current president. In fact, as a senator he voted against invading Iraq.
Bruce F, May 28: I agree with you and the Sunset guy about the tribal differences between Democrats & Republicans, Obama & McCain /Romney. I also understand the incremental differences that pass for progress, which displeases me more & more as I move into the last quarter of my life. I think what your friend Ehtasham doesn’t understand is that the friendly American people don’t make foreign policy. That policy is made by corporations through officials that are elected by the friendly American people. The corporate interests are seen as our national interests. It appears to me that both Democrats & Republicans, Obama & McCain/Romney understand that. The hegemony your friend sees is directed through soft power(Obama & the Democrats) or hard power(McCain/Romney & the Republicans). Whether hard power or soft, they are meant to dominate America’s competitors. Make no mistake, hard power will be used by both Democrats & Republicans when soft power options are not effective. Although, the Republicans are less patient.
Peter B, May 30: There are competing narratives gushing at us from every screen and earbud and woofer and tweeter in our environment as the “news cycle” cycles. There is a flavor of opinion for every taste, and a level of sophistication, of nuance, of validation, to satisfy the most rigorous intellect. And not a byte of it makes any difference: let me know when the wars end, the hungry are fed, and the refugees returned. And I’m not being cynical, that is the possible future in which I live and work. I’m just not holding my breath.
Because. Because, you see, all this patter, these “competing narratives” are competing, but not for credibility, as one might assume. but solely for attention. And quantity is what matters, not quality. Any attention, as long as it is of sufficient focus and duration to pay off the advertisers and provide marketing data. That amounts to about a nanosecond apiece, about the amount of difference one person’s opinion makes in any of this. The system does not care what you think, or how you respond; they have what they want before you blink one eyeball.
This system is terribly effective at disabling any seriously dissenting view, that is, any contagion of thinking that might interrupt the parasitic extraction of wealth, by converting any such expression into yet another contender for eyeballs, drowning in the waves of professional reaction to the previous set of reactions to the carefully shallow and belated stories on the Feed. If you have trouble with this notion, get some app like Ghostery on your browser, and see how many marketing analysis ‘bots are tracking you on your favorite political websites.
Omitted from entertainments like NPR and Fox is any insight into the background of this endless repeating sequence of purportedly unrelated disasters; that, or a pale simulacrum of it, is the purview of bloggers in the hierarchic layers of op-ed websites, or bestselling authors flogging this week’s disposable insider look at the Real Deal, or indy filmmakers exposing the seamy undersides of fatcats. By the time one burrows down into the dense language of psuedo-academic think-tanks or even actual academic research, even if the funding trail is transparent, there are only about forty people in that space who can grasp such complexity, or simplicity maybe. And they’re only talking to each other.
All this is quite integral to the machinery of our modern corporate feudalism, because the main purpose of this segment of the enterprise is to entertain us. That means, occupy our attention, encapsulate public discourse; it is far more valuable commodified in the Attention Economy than for any informative content it may hold. And if you wonder how to tell if you are in one of the back-eddies or blind alleys or dead-end sinkholes of irrelevancy for intellectual discourse referred to here, don’t worry, you are: that is what the publishing industry, the telecommunications industry, the entire higher education system, and the internet, have become: that’s where you can still get paid by the word, or actually, the letter.
While we argue over whether Obama is what we think he is, or does what we think he’s doing, the global oil and banking extraction industries grind on, now seamlessly integrated with “our” government, which provides infrastructure and military backing. This is not some sinister world domination scheme concocted by some secret fraternal order. Or maybe it is: but this does not matter at all. As with all such machinery, its highest purpose, the driving force behind it, is no more than to preserve and perpetuate itself, at all costs. It has no functioning awareness or concern for humanity, its creators. Now that it is set in motion, it will run until we stop it, or until there are no commodities left to exploit. And like some retrovirus, it is very, very good at extracting energy even from serious attempts to disable it. We work for it, we feed it, and it feeds some of us, more or less.
This is a problem.

#888 – Dick Bernard: Memorial Day and Disabled Survivors of War

May 26, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, History, Minnesota, North Dakota, Peace & Justice, Politics, War /by dickbernard

UPDATE May 27, 2014: Here’s a Facebook album of photos I took at the Veterans for Peace Memorial Day observance at the MN State Capitol Vietnam Memorial yesterday.
A very worthwhile summary of the tension which seems to surround the Memorial Day observances (Pro-War or Pro-Peace) can be found here. It is long, but very worthwhile.
TWIN CITIES READERS: join with the Veterans for Peace today at 9:30 a.m. at the Vietnam Memorial area on the State Capitol Grounds for the annual Memorial Day reflections. I have attended this observance for years. It is always moving.
May 29 UPDATE: Thoughts after the Memorial on Monday May 26
After the annual Vets for Peace Memorial on the Minnesota Capitol Grounds Vietnam Memorial, I went home to try to reconstruct my attendance at these events over the years. Almost certainly they go back to 2003, which was about when I was becoming an activist for Peace, and was a new member of Vets for Peace. I didn’t make all of the Memorials: sometimes I was out of town; but if in town, I’d be there. Ditto for Armistice Day each November 11, most often at the USS Ward Memorial in the same neighborhood; the first one, though, at Ft. Snelling.
2014’s observance was better than last, which was better than the year before, and the year before that…. Slowly, surely, the observance grows in attendance and in quality.
My friend, Ehtasham Anwar, from Pakistan and a Humphrey/Fulbright Fellow at the Human Rights Center at the University of Minnesota, counted 150 of us at the observance.
From the first Pete Seeger song by Bill McGrath of Northfield, to Taps at the end, the one hour event was its usual quiet, powerful self, with memories, both of the structured sort (reading the names of the fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan), to individuals recalling their own victims of war, both living and dead.
Jim Northrup, Objibwa author and Vietnam vet spoke powerfully about his personal family history with the Vietnam War. It began with memories of watching Albert Woolson, the last survivor of the Civil War in parades in Duluth, “surrounded by pretty girls” – pretty cool for young Northrop. Then memories of the War itself, abstract demolished by reality. Seeing John Wayne appear and as immediately disappear in a cameo appearance on a battlefield somewhere over there….
One of the vets rang a hand-made bell eleven times, remembering 11 a.m., on the 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, when Armistice was declared in the “War to End All Wars”.
We adjourned, quietly, and went our separate ways.
There were no gun salutes. It was all about Peace.
At the wall, at the end, organizer Barry Riesch and myself found that we both knew, in different ways, one of the names on the wall, Joseph Sommerhauser, killed 1968. He was Barry’s classmate; and he’s my long-time Barbers brother. Tom, my barber, was also a Marine in Vietnam.
So is how it goes with circles, only through gatherings like this can dots be connected.
(click to enlarge photos)

Barry Riesch identifies name of Vietnam casualty, Joseph Sommerhauser, May 26, 2014, at the Vietnam Wall, MN State Capitol Grounds.

Original Post for Memorial Day 2014
About three weeks ago, my wife and I stopped downstairs after 9:30 Mass at Basilica for our usual coffee and conversation.
This particular day we joined a man sitting by himself at a table. He was a very dapper older gentleman, well dressed, wearing a boutonniere.
We introduced ourselves. He gave his name. I’ll call him Roger.
Roger, it turned out, grew up in an eastern state and was drafted during the worst parts of the Vietnam War. He was a Conscientious Objector, and went into alternative service aboard a Hospital Ship just off of Vietnam during 1968, one of the deadliest years of the Vietnam War.
He told his story that morning at coffee. He came home from the war, and went to work in the medical field. All went okay for something over 20 years, then PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) took hold. His personal hell was compounded because no one would believe him; he was, after all, “normal” for over 20 years. It took a long and very frustrating time to verify his career-ending disability.*
We shared contact information before leaving coffee.
Later in the week, came a packet from my new friend, including several photos, three of which are below.

Hospital Ship Sanctuary late 1960s

“Roger” is in this picture, 1968

Gen. Westmoreland visiting the ICU on the Hospital Ship.

I’ve seen him each Sunday since, and each Sunday he’s wearing that boutonniere, dressed very well.
This day, Memorial Day 2014, at 9:30 a.m. at the Vietnam Memorial on the State Capitol Grounds, I may see Roger, who I invited to the annual Vets for Peace Memorial Day observance. Each year this observance grows in numbers of participants. It is always impressive. Whether or not he chooses to come, I’ll dedicate the day to him.
I’ll also bring to the observance two new friends from Pakistan, Humphrey/Fulbright Fellows in the University of Minnesota Human and Civil Rights Center, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. I have been assisting them in identifying Americans to interview on the topic of Peace. The interviews, their stories, and their perceptions of America both from at-home and here are most interesting, and perhaps a topic for a later post.
But these are tense times in the issue of care of the desperately wounded coming home from combat oversees, particularly Iraq and Afghanistan veterans.
This evening 60 Minutes had a powerful segment on PTSD programs. You can watch it here.
There is a great deal of political controversy, lately, about the Veterans Administration Hospitals. My Grandfather Bernard died in a VA Hospital in 1957; so did my physically and psychologically disabled Brother-in-Law, who I spent time with at three different VA hospitals during assorted confinements. A VA Nurse I know is an outspoken advocate for better funding of health care in the system. Etc.
Still, the entire system, especially the Director, former Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki, and, of course, the President of the United States, is under attack as this Memorial Day dawns because of assorted outrages at a number of VA Hospitals in that immense system. Rather than fix the problems, the political strategy is to demand that the top guy be fired, and blame the President (and Democrats) and reap political points in the process.
Disgusting.
If you’re interested (I hope you are) a long post on the topic I would urge you to read is here. There is a short comment of my own at the end.
I close with this personal comment: we are a nation that seems to revere war, when war has never and will never solve anything; and it is war that will ultimately kill us all. We have created and continue to refine the monster that can kill us all.
What I look for is the day when we can celebrate the death of war: now that will be a cause for celebration!
We Americans, indeed the vast majority of all citizens everywhere in the world, are a peace-loving people. Just look around at your friends, neighbors and communities. The vast majority of us do not celebrate war.
But it will take our individual work to end our national obsession with it, and to reduce the numbers of our fellow citizens killed or mortally and permanently wounded by it.
Let us make Memorial Day a day to celebrate Peace.
* – POSTNOTE: My barber, a retired man, is a Marine veteran of Vietnam. His brother died at 18 there; his name is on the Wall in DC and Minnesota. In Vietnam my barber was one of those who went into the tunnel system constructed by the enemy – he was willing and had the build for it. This was in the 1960s.
Tom and I talk a lot while I’m in his barber chair, and in recent years he’s talked about claustrophobia as a fairly recent and disabling issue for him. It sounds odd, coming from him, a former tunnel rat, but it is truly a problem for him, and he receives treatment from the VA for it.
War, it turns out, never ends.

#876 – Dick Bernard: The new Saints…and the real ones.

April 28, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, History, International Relations, Peace & Justice, Politics /by dickbernard

Two recent Popes were officially declared as Saints on April 27. Here is the flier which we Catholics could pick up yesterday at Mass, probably at all churches: Sts Jn XXIII and JP II001.
They’re very different folks, these two new Saints. John XXIII would be my fave by far. He became Pope five months after I started college, and gave meaning to the word “ecumenical”. Back in those good old days of the 1940s and 1950s, being Christian didn’t mean getting along in any sense of the word. Denominations emphasized the differences, and did things to ensure that their young uns had little to do with each other. Until mobility started mixing nationalities, even Catholic Churches (and others, too) were largely ethnic: Norwegian Lutheran; French-Canadian Catholic, etc. Times have changed, thank goodness. Things aren’t perfect by any means, but better, in my opinion.
I got closest, physically at least, to John Paul II. In the fall of 1998 I was in Rome, and managed to get a place next to the Pope’s route through St. Peter’s Square and got a closeup view of this increasingly infirm man. Two years later, late in the evening of early May 2000, enroute to Krakow Poland with a group of Catholics and Jews on pilgrimage to holocaust sites, soon to include Auschwitz-Birkenau (at Oswiecim), I convinced the tour leaders to have the bus go through Wadowice, Poland, to the very near proximity of the place where John Paul II grew up.
We didn’t stop, of course, it was late at night. Later I was to learn that Oswiecim (Auschwitz) and Wadowice (John Paul II’s home) are only 20 or so road miles apart, with Auschwitz actually a few miles closer to Wadowice. Of course, the Polish Jews were essentially obliterated by WWII; Polish Catholics were also killed by the millions. And after the war, Poland became a satellite Communist state of the Soviet Union.
One can understand how JPII’s attitudes developed (and were, in my opinion, manipulated) by the anti-Communist forces. He was never viewed as a particular friend of Liberation Theology in the Global South, for instance; and his ultimate successor, Benedict XVI, then Cardinal Ratzinger, was even less so. As I say, “Communism” was a useful word….
But that’s a debate for someone else, some other time.
There are two new official Saints in the Catholic Church, both with their fan clubs.
Another publication caught my eye at Basilica yesterday.
It was the usual weekly newsletter and the cover story, by Janice Andersen, Social Justice coordinator, bears reading. Jackie under the bridge001.
We lose something in the adulation of certain individuals who are set apart to symbolize something or other, as is the case with the two Popes who were just canonized.
In small and large ways, every day, everywhere on earth, there are endless examples of ordinary people, Christian or not, doing extraordinary things, and thinking nothing at all about it. It is just who they are.
My guess is that most all of us once in awhile are in this category of “saint”. There are no books of miracles attributed to us; that’s not the point.
We put one foot in front of the other and do our best.
That’s sainthood to me.

#875 – Dick Bernard: Visiting History…including in the making

April 26, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, History, Minnesota, Native American, Peace & Justice, Politics /by dickbernard

NOTE: See postnote about Hubert Humphrey at the end of this post.
Friday I decided to attend the Panel and Global Webinar “Living the Legacy of Hubert H. Humphrey” at the University of Minnesota Law School. The event celebrated the “35th Anniversary of Humphrey Fellowship Program..web-streamed for access by the other 15 Humphrey campuses and for Humphrey alumni around the world.” I expected an interesting program – previously I had attended the 25th anniversary in 2004 – but this years was particularly interesting.
The old history was recalled in a video by President Jimmy Carter (1977-81). The program was established in honor of Hubert Humphrey after his his death in 1978. In addition, Fridays program also recognized “the 50th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Act. Hubert H. Humphrey regarded the Act’s passage as a crowning achievement of his political career.” Seven of Humphreys family circle spoke as briefly as any Humphrey can speak (which is to say, 5 minutes means 10!) But everyone’s remarks were very interesting about their Dad, grandchild, uncle….
Two Humphrey alumni spoke (more a bit later).
Leading off the second panel was Bill Means, Lakota Elder and Board Member, International Indian Treaty Council.
(click on photos to enlarge)

Bill Means, April 25, 2014

Mr. Means, a powerful Native American leader, had just come from the Minneapolis City Council, which had just voted to change Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples Day in Minneapolis. It was, he said, the culmination of 50 years of effort.
I was always aware of the American Indian Movement, but never an active part of it, but I recalled a May, 1990, Pow Wow I’d attended in Minneapolis, and a page of the program booklet from that day which I published in a newsletter I edited in the summer of 1990. It speaks for itself: Heart of the Earth My 90001
I had taken quite a few photos that day, 24 years ago. Here are two. I believe the lady in the wheelchair is the legendary Meridel LeSueur. The event apparently recognized The American Indian Movements Heart of the Earth Survival School

Possibly Meridel LeSueur, May 26, 1990, Minneapolis MN

Speakers at Pow Wow May 26, 1990, Minneapolis MN. Is that Bill Means speaking?

Part of the backdrop behind the speakers, May 26, 1990

Mr. Means gave a short but powerful talk on April 25. He along with other powerful Native American leaders like Leonard Peltier, Dennis Banks, the Bellecourts and many others, brought attention to the native community ‘back in the day’ 50 or more years ago.
He said, I recall, that there are about 375,000,000 Indigenous Peoples in the world today. That would be about 5% of the worlds population, and more than the entire population of the United States.
Another speaker, Kaka Bag-ao, a Humphrey Fellow from 2006-07, powerfully talked about her post Humphrey career in the Philippines, including a powerful video of a 1700 kilometer (about 1000 miles) walk to Manila by many indigenous farmers successfully protesting seizure of their small farms for use as a golf course. At issue, it seemed, was 144 hectares of land – about 344 acres. The powerless got the attention of the powerful, but it wasn’t easy. Hopefully, I will be able to include the link to the video at this place soon.
Edmon Marukyan of Armenia (Fellow 2009-2010) had a similarly inspirational message to this and previous years Humphrey Fellows.
Among the many Humphrey family members, the one who impressed me the most was the youngest, Jordan Humphrey, Humphrey’s grandson. He was born a number of years after Humphrey died, and he’ll be a worthy representative of his grandfather.
It was a good day.
I’m glad I went.

Jordan Humphrey, April 25, 2014

POSTNOTE: About the time of the 25th anniversary of the Humphrey Fellows program in 2004, I came across an old recollection about Hubert Humphrey, and his reflections on politics, competition, and compassion. It became my 2004 Christmas message, and it can be read here. (The link is immediately after the painting at top of the page.)
The three visitors were visiting then-Senator and previously Vice-President Humphrey about compassion in politics. They recalled Humphrey saying this: “Senator Humphrey walked back to his desk, picked up a long pencil with a small eraser at its end, and said in his famous high-pitched voice, “Gentlemen, look at this pencil. Just as the eraser is only a very small part of this pencil and is used only when you make a mistake, so compassion is only called upon when things get out of hand. The main part of life is competition, only the eraser is compassion. It is sad to say, gentlemen, but in politics compassion is just part of the competition….”
Humphreys was a powerful message: it takes more than being compassionate to implement a policy of compassion. Politics, with all of its nastiness and competition, is a necessary part of the process of successfully implementing compassion. Walking the talk can be messy.
But Humphrey lived compassion through his deeds, not just his words.
One family member recalled that when HHH was nearing death, he made a point of calling his archrival, President Richard Nixon, urging Nixon to come out of self-imposed isolation and attend Humphreys funeral. Nixon had for a short time been Humphreys U.S. Senate colleague and later defeated Humphrey in the 1968 election, and resigned from the Presidency in 1974.
It was not mentioned, and I do not recall, if President Nixon came to the funeral in St. Paul, but the point is that the gesture was made. Humphreys “eraser” never hardened.
RESPONSE FROM LINEA PALMISANO, 13TH WARD REPRESENTATIVE, MINNEAPOLIS CITY COUNCIL April 28:
Thank you for this message, Dick.
I took some time here to read your blog post.
Frankly, I worry that the way this has been “messaged” in the media, and even shown through your blog post about we have ‘changed’ the day for the city… we are adding to Columbus Day at this point, to add recognition of Indigenous Peoples. We haven’t changed it the way most people outright said. These small increments will take some time, and a part of me fears that the actual language of what was approved last Friday is not what a number of the public speakers in the indigenous communities have made it out to be. I hope that come October, folks don’t feel anyone has pulled the wool over their eyes, so to speak.
I really, really liked reading about the Humphrey event and your pencil message. I have written it down and taped it beneath my computer screen. “… it takes more than being compassionate to implement a policy of compassion. Politics, with all of its nastiness and competition, is a necessary part of the process of successfully implementing compassion. Walking the talk can be messy.”
Thanks for reaching out.
Yours in Service,

#874 – Dick Bernard: Craziness around….

April 25, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Guns, History, Technology /by dickbernard

PRE-NOTE: I had completed the entirety of the below post on April 16, but decided to hold off publishing till after Easter. Recent events, particularly in the Nevada ranch situation, make this a timely post. The overnight Just Above Sunset has a good summary on the current state of affairs.
The recent incidents in Nevada (the rancher refusing to pay rent on public land), and Kansas (the gunman who hates Jews and blacks who killed three white Christians bring back some happenings and thoughts from a while back. (Anyone interested in a longer post about the meaning of the above, here’s a useful link.)
There’s always been the crazies around.
The first one I paid serious attention to was a guy named Gordon Kahl who told the national government to go to hell, and ended up dead in 1983. His particular road to infamy covered only a few months in 1983, when he got in a shootout somewhere between the tiny towns of Heaton and Medina ND, killed a policeman and escaped, to live on for a few months till he met his own end.
I suppose the box score favored Kahl: three lawmen dead, and himself. But in the end it doesn’t make any difference. He was dead, too, only to be followed by new generations of deluded crazies destined for the same fate.
Kahl interested me because he came to national notoriety as a farmer somewhere outside Heaton ND in 1983. “Back in the day” Heaton was a hamlet seven miles or so west of Sykeston, where I graduated from HS in 1958, and the place where my Dad and Mom banked. Even then, Heaton was all but non-existent, and Sykeston was not much bigger, but for me, the word “Heaton” made Kahl noteworthy.
These days, of course, the first and greatest amendment to the U.S. Constitution is considered by some to be the 2nd amendment, to keep and bear arms. We’re at the stage, now, where every citizen is always vulnerable to somebody packing heat, who’ll shoot you on purpose, or kill you accidentally. It makes no difference if you have your own arsenal. Usually, the element of surprise prevails.
There is a big problem, however, for those who, these days, think they are above the Law, and can act with impunity whenever and wherever they wish, especially with their arms.
In 1983, not that long ago, really, communications and intelligence were primitive compared with today. It was still a paper world, and help was still a phone call away, and bad guys (and gals too) could more easily blend in out in some woods somewhere, and possibly not be found. Evidence gathering and analysis were also pretty primitive.
There is also a fatal flaw in the argument of the gun rights promoters: if you actually use that gun to kill someone you run the risk of being tried for homicide. This is another set of laws not likely to ever be repealed.
Recently I’ve been re-listening to a Willie Nelson CD, which includes the ballad of the Red-Headed Stranger, who goes free after he kills a woman who was, it is said, trying to steal his recently deceased wife’s horse. Execution preceded Charges and a Trial….
Of course, Red Headed Stranger is just a ballad, but in the days of the wild west, probably not very far-fetched.
In the end, the rancher will lose his case and, probably his ranch as well. It will just take a while. He’ll have his 15 minutes of fame, and his fan club will be on to other supposed outrages.
As for the guy in Kansas, well, he was after Jews and he killed Christians, but in the end it will make no difference. He won’t be going free.
We are a country which is an imperfect community, but it is a community, and community is where Rule of Law still means something, imperfect as it is and will always likely be.
POSTNOTE:
These days the public “conversation” seems dominated by people on the ideological fringes. Makes no difference who’s position is “winning” at the time, all is lost if there is no conversation towards reaching common ground. And even then, making positive change is never easy….
My great friend, Peter Barus, sent a link and a comment about this a couple of days ago. It seems to relate to the above, if you’re interested.
April 15, 2015
Peter: Uncharacteristically I send this link.
The writer and those he cites are, I think, experienced, active pioneers in new ways of being and living in community. His focus is on culture as the basis of societal conduct. Like Howard Richards, he is saying, can’t change behaviors without changing the cultural rules.
He comes close to, but falls just short of, explicitly distinguishing two aspects I think hold the best hope for human survival in these late times.
One is “in here/out here,” which refers to effective performance. If one wants to play a game or hold a conversation – or change the world – it works to be “out here,” among other players. “In here” is (even neurologically, or especially so) less likely to produce anything but re-runs.
The other is “way-of-being-and-acting” as correlate of “our occurring worlds.” That is, we behave according to our lights. Seeing is believing. To change behaviors, I must see the world differently. We have access to this through the ways in which we speak about life.
We experience life through language, and through language we can make substantive changes to our own perceptions, and hence our own behaviors.
What sort of language? That’s the intriguing part, and the article contains a good many examples, but you have to pick most of them out for yourself.
Love
Peter

#872 – Dick Bernard: Listening to Adama Dieng, and A Musing about the United Nations in our ever more complex World

April 16, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, History, International Relations, Minnesota /by dickbernard

This evening I attended a talk by Adama Dieng, UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. As the speaker biography describes him, Mr. Dieng “is an internationally renowned human rights lawyer and expert who has spent his career working to establish and defend the rule of law.” A native of Senegal, “in 2012 he was appointed United Nations Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide…Mr. Dieng served as the Registrar of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda from 2001-2012.”
(click to enlarge photos)

Adama Dieng in dialogue with Barbara Frey of the UofM Institute of Global Studies.

This month is the 20th anniversary of the horrors of the Rwanda Genocide in which, according to Mr. Dieng, “one million people were killed in the first 100 days”, and that was just the beginning of the tragedy. Introducing Mr. Dieng, Eric Schwartz, Dean of the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, reflected on his 25 years in public service positions, noting that more time needed to be devoted to “scanning the horizon”. As I interpreted his phrase, more of us need to have the vision to anticipate and mitigate problems before they happen; rather than be in a reactive mode as we so often seem to be.
Genocide is a prime example of recognizing a problem too late….
Mr. Dieng was most impressive, as one would expect a person of his credentials, and in his position, to be. His native language is French, a very common official in many African countries, and he would express his homey saying first in French, then translated into English. His English was impeccable.
As I sat there listening to this obviously brilliant and diplomatic representative of the United Nations and his native Africa, I mused about a question I’ve never heard asked: “what if the United Nations had not been created in 1945 or didn’t exist today? Where would we all be, now, in this increasingly complex planet?”
Ordinarily, if the UN comes up in conversation, it is the subject of general criticism, from being some sort of sinister world government scheme to at best being an ineffective representative on the world stage; a worthless collection of bureaucrats.
It is so often caricatured by use of bad examples of what it supposedly represents. This is not hard, because where the UN is found, there is often trouble which it did not create in the first place: Rwanda, for example, in 1994.
If there was no United Nations at all would we all be better off, or not?
Sitting there, just reflecting on bits and pieces I’ve seen and heard over the years, the United Nations has been a crucial instrument to help coordinate international efforts, and to act as a buffer, indeed, to act on occasion as a punching bag, in this ever more complex world. Let the UN pass away, and we would soon see what we were missing. Surely, it represents the imperfections of the world, but that is a main reason it exists.
It is an ever more essential entity in our ever-more global society of over 7 billion people.
People like Mr. Dieng deserve our thanks for their efforts to make this world a better place, one tiny bit at a time.

Adama Dieng, April 16, 2014

Giant Globe, Boston MA, 1972

Late June, 1972, the United Nations NYC

#871 – Dick Bernard: "The Mountaintop", revisited

April 13, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Education, Health, History, Minnesota, Politics, President Obama /by dickbernard

Sometimes seemingly unrelated events just fit together, like random pieces of a puzzle that together make a confusing mess make sense.
For me, such a convergence happened on Friday in three bits; preceded by two larger and more publicized national events.
I just happened to be at an intersection where they came together, connected, at least to me.
The events:
Friday morning, first, a briefing about education legislation at the State Capitol by the Executive Director of the outstanding parent public school advocacy group, Parents United.
Two hours later the appointment with the Tax Man, to square accounts with the IRS and the State of Minnesota for 2013.
Seven hours later, attending a powerful play about Martin Luther King’s last evening alive, “The Mountaintop”.
A day or so before came the resignation of Jean Sibelius of the Department of Health and Human Services. This was a hate feast for some; a celebration of the alleged failure of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), when the actual results have been very much the contrary: millions more Americans now have health insurance despite desperate attempts to kill the beast labelled “Obamacare”.
(Of course, in these kinds of things, facts really don’t matter. I heard report of a recent survey done on the street: when asked to compare ACA and Obamacare, ACA was the winner – even though both are the exact same thing….)
And about the same time, the recognition of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, passed 50 years ago this year.
All these events fit together, at least in my seeing them converge on me.
The tax man told me that State and National government wanted about 20% of our taxable income (which differs, of course, from actual “income”).
Minnesota is a relatively high tax state: about a third of that 20% went to Minnesota; the other two-thirds to the United States of America.
That tax doesn’t seem excessive to me. Before the tax appointment, the early morning event talked about the state of legislation for Minnesota’s children in public schools – about one of every six persons in our state of well over 5 million.
Those kids range from those tiny few who recently got perfect scores on the ACT, to the 13 year old in our town who is in jail today for violence against someone in her family and hasn’t been in public school but a few weeks all this school year and whose self-made future is very much in doubt, out of control.
Triumph or Tragedy: all of those kids are our future, regardless of their ability or disability or where they happen to live. And this goes for most every other service to which we allocate tax dollars.
Certainly there are inefficiencies – show me the system, including the most outwardly perfect nuclear family, that is completely efficient…I doubt, frankly that such a family exists.
Government of, by and for the people makes for a civilized society; the opposite is anarchy, hardly a recommended route.
Which brings me to “The Mountaintop”, which has been to four cities now, and if it comes to yours, do see it. It’s at the Guthrie Theatre through April 19.
The 90 minute play explores what might have transpired on the evening of King’s last day alive, April 3, 1968, in a motel room in Memphis, between King and a hotel Maid.
Of course, no one knows what might have happened had MLK himself lived on – he would now be 84, by my arithmetic.
The fact is that he didn’t live on, except through all of us who learned from his message and need to carry it forward.
These are not especially good days for the Civil Rights ideals expressed back in 1964 and before.
But there is a base built, and with some conscious effort by those of us who care, there will never be a return to the terrible old days, even given the immense gulf now existing between rich and poor – far worse than then.
But it is each of us who need to be on that “Mountaintop” MLK left, April 4, 1968.

#870 – Anne Dunn: I Have Been Told. Advocates for Peace

April 9, 2014/0 Comments/in Anne M. Dunn, History, War /by dickbernard

Ed. note: Anne’s always meaningful thoughts arrived at my in-box a couple of weeks ago. They are in synch with some other events upcoming in the near future: Shadow War information is here. Forty Years After Vietnam series begins April 10, details here. Also, just a couple of days ago, I learned of a book detailing a 1971 incident involving anti-war draft resisters and J. Edgar Hoovers FBI. The book is Burglary. A movie about the book apparently opens in limited markets on April 18.
Directly related, especially the section about Padre Johnson’s sketch with story (about mid-post), here.
*
click to enlarge

Storyteller Anne Dunn (center) with friend Patty Kakac (at left), Ashby MN, Aug 31, 2013

Anne Dunn
I often write letters to prisoners of conscience, incarcerated because of civil disobedience. I believe their jailers should know their prisoners have widespread community support. I began preparing these missives of encouragement when I worked for Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC), Minneapolis.
In October 1965, 100 clergy members had met in New York to discuss what they could do to challenge U.S. policy on Vietnam. Some of the founding members were: Dr. John C Bennett, Fr. Richard John Neuhaus, Fr. Phillip Berrigan, Fr. Daniel Berrigan SJ (Society of Jesus), Dr Martin Luther King Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. They believed that a multi-faith organization would lend credible support to an anti-war movement often labeled as Communist.
When the group opened its membership to laypeople, they became Clergy and Layman Concerned About Vietnam (CALCAV). In April 1967 King used the organization’s platform for his “Beyond Vietnam” speech, condemning the war.
Following King’s assassination CALCAV increased civil disobedience activities, protesting against Dow Chemical (producer of napalm) and Honeywell (maker of anti-personnel weapons, designed to incapacitate people rather than structures or vehicles).
“The war has come home like a stalking corpse, trailing its blood, its tears, its losses, its despair – seeking like an American ghost, the soul of America. We want peace, but most of us do not want to pay the price of peace. We still dream of a peace that has no cost attached. We want peace, but we live content with poverty and injustice and racism, with the murder of prisoners and students, the despair of the poor to whom justice is endlessly denied. We long for peace, but we wish also to keep undisturbed a social fabric of privilege and power that controls the economic misery of two thirds of the world’s people.” Daniel Berrigan.
Daniel was born in Virginia, MN, May 9, 1921. In 1967 he and his brother, Phillip (both Catholic priests), were put on the FBI 10 most wanted fugitives list for their involvement in antiwar protests during the Vietnam War. Phillip was arrested that same year and sentenced to six years in prison.
Daniel traveled to Hanoi with Howard Zinn during the Tet Offensive in late Jan. 1968 to “receive” three airmen, the first American POWs released by the North Vietnamese since the US bombings of that nation had begun.
The Tet Offensive was a series of coordinated surprise attacks by North Vietnam National Liberation Front on all provincial capital cities of South Vietnam. Tet refers to the date of the Lunar New Year.
By 1971 CALCAV had turned its attention to other social justice issues, including supporting the popular struggle in Latin America and struggles against colonialism and apartheid in Africa, challenging US military involvement in Central America and the role of corporations in US foreign policy, and changed its name to Clergy and Laity Concerned (CALC).
In 1980, Daniel, Phillip and six others began the Plowshares international peace and nuclear disarmament movement. Phillip died in 2002.
“We spoke out, committed civil disobedience, and went to jail because the peace hangs precariously upon weapons costing billions to build and billions to improve – weapons which become more useless as we add to their destructive force. With this money we could have fed the world’s people. Half the children of the earth go to bed hungry – millions have retarding and stunting protein deficiencies. Instead of building peace by attacking injustices like starvation, disease, illiteracy, political and economic servitude, we spent a trillion dollars on war since 1946, (the cost of war has increased greatly since this was written) until hatred and conflict have become the international preoccupation.” Daniel Berrigan.
My dear friend Larry Cloud-Morgan was imprisoned for participating in the Armistice Day, 1984, Silo Pruning Hooks Plowshares disarmament action, in MO. Also sentenced were: Fr. Paul and Carl Kabot and Helen Woodson. For this, and other non-violent direct actions against war, Woodson has served 27 years in prison. She was released Sept. 9, 2011.
Larry was an enrolled member of the White Earth Band of Ojibwe, born February 1, 1938 in Cass Lake. He also used the name Wabash-Ti-Mi-Gwan (Whitefeather).
While a student at Marquette University, Milwaukee, he was encouraged to become a priest and was, for a time, a seminarian at St John’s University (Collegeville, MN). Eventually he chose to pursue his artistic interests and moved to Chicago to study at the School of Art Institute. He returned to Minnesota in the early 1980s and devoted much of his time and energy to community involvement, social justice causes, spiritual mentoring, peace and disarmament activism. He was also a member of CALC.
Plowshares continued nonviolent but confrontational protests and acts of civil disobedience.
For his role in the Armistice Day disarmament action in MO, Larry was incarcerated at Federal Prison Camp, Terre Haute, IN, April 1985. He was transferred to Wyandotte County Jail, KS and released in March 1987. On Jan 27, 1989, he was convicted of violating the terms of his probation and sentenced to one year in prison. He was sent to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners at Rochester, MN, and released on Nov. 13, 1989.
Following his release he divided his time between Minneapolis and a small cabin near Ball Club [MN]. He died on June 8, 1999 (age 61) and is buried in Morgan Cemetery, Wilkinson Township.
I was one of many who accompanied Larry on several politically charged adventures. We were insulted, ridiculed, harassed and threatened. Larry was my mentor. His was the voice of reason. His was the heart of love. He laid his gentle hands on volatile situations and restored calm. If ever there was a peacemaker, it was Larry.
At his wake he was laid in an open casket made of simple pine boards, in the middle of the Leech Lake Veterans Memorial Center on a bed of cedar boughs. Chairs were arranged in a circle around him. He wore his ribbon shirt, beaded medallion and new moccasins. He was wrapped in his Four Direction Pendleton blanket. In the casket was a china plate with a painted horse on it, a doll, a stuffed black bear, his pipe and carved walking stick. He’d lost a foot and several toes to diabetes.
As I sat near his casket, I considered the items he’d selected for his journey to the other side. The plate was provided so he would have food for the 3-4 days it takes to get to that far place. But I also remembered a story he’d told me about his grandmother. When Larry was a small child she would put him on the arm of her rocking chair and he would pretend it was a horse. She told him if he wanted “cowboy cookies” he had to help her, by riding his rocking chair horse.
He’d made the doll himself and stuffed her with the bandages from his severed toes. When his dressings were changed, he’d kept the gauze, washed, boiled and saved it, until he had enough to make the doll.
At Ball Club he had a family of black bears that he fed. They came to his house for sanctuary and enjoyed feasting on large quantities of sunflower seeds. The stuffed bear represented his animal friends.
We all get a new pair of moccasins when we go to the other side and he never went anywhere without his elegant walking stick.
The lid for the coffin lay on the floor along the left side of the coffin. It had been padded and covered with a dark fabric. On the fabric were the dusty tracks of children who had stood on it when they said goodbye to their kind and beautiful friend. I thought it was a wonderful testimony of loyalty and love, of confidence and trust. I think Larry would have written a poem about those little footprints.
Minneapolis attorney Miles Lord said of Larry, “He had a dedication to freedom and free speech. He opposed tyranny.”
Larry… a patriot… a hero… a mentor… a friend.
Anne M. Dunn is a long-time and wonderful friend, an Anishinabe-Ojibwe grandmother storyteller and published author. She makes her home in rural Deer River, MN, on the Leech Lake Reservation. She can be reached at twigfigsATyahooDOTcom. She has three previous posts at Outside the Walls. You can read them all here.

#868 – Dick Bernard: A Declaration of INTERdependence

April 7, 2014/0 Comments/in History, International Relations, Minnesota, Peace & Justice, Politics /by dickbernard

It was a nice day on Saturday, and I had gone to downtown Minneapolis at the invitation of my friend, Lynn Elling, who gave a brief talk to Business students at St. Thomas University’s downtown campus.
(click to enlarge all photos)

Lynn Elling on April 5 at St. Thomas University Minneapolis

His is a near life-long passion for peace, for survival of the human family. This was born of his experiences as a WWII and Korean Navy officer; later viewing Hiroshima in the 1950s.
He walks the talk. His is a story with many chapters, and hidden pieces continue to be revealed as he goes through the archives of his 93 years.
This particular day he had along a recently re-found Declaration of INTERdependence, authored by Henry Steele Commager in 1975, and co-signed in support by the bi-partisan political and civic establishment of Minnesota May 1, 1976: Decl of INTERdependence001. (Click on the document to enlarge it; a link with some of the history of Interdependence can be seen here. Scroll down for the Commager declaration, the one affirmed in the Twin Cities in 1976.)
This was not the first Declaration signed by these leaders or others. The first one he showed me back in 2007 was a Minnesota Declaration of World Citizenship (1971) 1971 film produced by Lynn Elling is here). In 2012 it was a Declaration of World Citizenship for Minneapolis and Hennepin County (1968). And the most recent earlier discovery was President Lyndon Johnson Declaration of the U.S. as a World Citizen (1965), also affirmed by Minnesota leaders of the time. All of these were largely the doing of Lynn Elling and another Minneapolis businessman, Stanley Platt. In the case of the Hennepin County, Minneapolis and Minnesota Declarations, the United Nations was given special recognition, accompanied by the flying of the UN flag at the Hennepin County Plaza (1968-2012) and also over the State Capitol in St. Paul.

Supporting signatures on May 1, 1976 Declaration of Interdependence

What has struck me about each of these new (to me) discoveries, is that they happened at all, all coming during the era that we call “Vietnam”.
While the focus then was on making war (or anti-war); there was more than lip-service given to peace by political leaders, in this case, through acknowledging and building upon our InterDependence with the rest of the planet.
Today we remain mired in the era of presumed self-reliance, freedom from other than personal responsibility, victory by the strong, the vestiges of American “exceptionalism”. It is no accident that I publish this on the day of the NCAA Basketball Championship – celebrating the best of the best; only one in a series of such celebrations in our society, where individual or group excellence is rewarded, and national strength and dominance is hi-lited for a single winning team for one moment in time.
Commager and others back in a very difficult time in our national history set about to hi-lite another course; find another way for planetary survival.
We need to re-energize this ethic, for our survival as a planet.

Lynn Elling April 6, 2014

After Saturdays meeting, I crossed the street from St. Thomas to Target Corporations World Headquarters, I paused to take a quick snapshot of downtown Minneapolis. Many of the conversations which led to those older declarations took place in downtown Minneapolis amongst business, political and civic leaders.
Back in that St. Thomas classroom, Mr. Elling reported later, many students wanted to meet him, having photographs taken with him.
Such conversations need to happen over and over again….
We have no choice. The survival of more than simply the human family is at stake.

Minneapolis MN April 6, 2014

A final thought: we are a country basically run by what is called the “business model”, primarily of, by and for the benefit of business.
There are many aspects to this “business model”. Ascendant, especially today, is power through competition – “winning”. Money is the primary value.
Between 1965 and 1976, in the Twin Cities and Minnesota in particular, a very large group of businesspeople and others apparently embraced the intent of the declarations cited above. For a moment in time there seems to have been more highlighting of the power of positive relationships, local, national, international
There remain, doubtless, very large numbers of businesspeople and others who would still embrace this, but a much harder edged individualistic winner take all ethic seems to have taken control, at least for the moment.
Here’s to a new Declaration Generation, where action goes beyond simply declaring intent.
I think the base is available for getting back to this idea….
POSTNOTE: the model which took substantial root in the Twin Cities and elsewhere back in the 1960s and 1970s was inspired by a national group called United World Federalists – not a political party, rather a philosophy of national cooperation. You can read the history of this national organization here (see WFA 1947-97 History). GlobalSolutionsMN.org is the local successor of WFA.