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

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

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

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

#35 – Dick Bernard: President Obama speaks from Cairo

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

#29 – Dick Bernard: Memorial Day 2009: A snapshot of the last year of WWII as experienced by two ND farm families

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Taps:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wn_iz8z2AGw

Today is Memorial Day, with all the varied meanings attached to it, all of which are deemed by their interpreters to be the proper meaning, all of which commemorate the tragedy of war. 

An e-mail from Mel in California on Friday, May 23, led me back to a treasure trove of copies of old letters I’ve had for years.  Most of them were written on my grandparents kitchen table, which would have been within the grove of trees included in the photo on the cover page of this blog.  The others would have been written on another kitchen table on a farm about three-fourths of a mile to the right of Sam and his photographer, myself. 

These letters were all written in 1944-45, and provide a snapshot of the impact of one war on one tiny community in the United States.  The quotes were interspersed among mundane bits of news: harvesting, cold weather, going to town and church.  I could have included more than these, but they suffice.  Grammatical and punctuation errors are as they were.  No editor was looking over the shoulder of these writers.  They wrote from the heart to their son, brother, cousin….

My correspondent, Mel, my mother’s first cousin who grew up on the neighboring farm in North Dakota, wrote about “Francis [Long] (marine killed in Tarawa)”.  I knew of Francis; Tarawa particularly interested me, as my friend, Minneapolis businessman Lynn Elling, was a young Navy officer, early in his tour, when his LST arrived at the gosh-awful remains of the Tarawa campaign in late 1943.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Tarawa  His experiences there, and later, seared into his memory, led him to a life long and still continuing quest for peace. http://www.amillioncopies.info .

Mel had his facts slightly wrong: his Aunt, my Grandma Rosa, wrote her son, George, an Officer on the USS Woodworth in the Pacific Theatre, on August 20, 1944: “Fri we had a Memorial Mass for Francis Long killed July 2 on Saipan…”. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Saipan

George kept letters he received in WWII, and a few years ago I incorporated all of the letters from home into a family history of two neighboring farm families, the Buschs and Bernings, rural Berlin, ND.

Deadly World War II comes alive simply from pull quotes from a few of the letters written to George from the kitchen tables.  Following are a few samples:

Grandma, September 22, 1944: “I must give Francis Long a spiritual bouquet yet in a Mass they feel so badly.”

September 22, 1944, Uncle Vince writes his brother: “Threshing is coming along fine…[one hired man], a ex-marine from Guadacanal.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Guadalcanal

October 22, 1944, Aunt Edith: “[our sister Florence] wrote they were afraid they were loosing their hired man to the Army.  He got his 1-A….”

Also October 22, Grandma Rosa “[my neighbor and sister-in-law Tina and her daughter Agnes] are going out to Whyoming… to see [their daughter and sister] Rose as Pinkey [Rose’s husband George Molitor] has to go across now too she expects a baby in Nov. so its to bad he has to go at this time.  Mrs. Heim says Elmer is in Holland now was in England & Belgium driving a tank so is in the front too at times Delores is in Italy….”

October 30, Grandma writes “[Vincent] got a card from the draft board saying he was in class II-C till Feb… How I wish it were all over.”  (II-C was likely a military deferment for essential work at home.  Vincent was needed on the farm.)

November 5, Grandma: “The Bernings are well Aug[ust] is still at camp LaJeune NoCar…  Ruby is in cadet nurse training in [Rockford] IL.  Rufina is in training at Iowa City.”

January 1, 1945, Grandma writes “[three] are leaving for the service soon…[another Long] is in Class A 1 now too….”

There is “radio silence” on the letters until June, 1945.  Doubtless letters continued, but don’t remain for posterity. 

June 11, 1945, Aunt Tina, Rose’s mother, writes “[daughter] Ruby has gone on to Montana to cheer up Rose a bit as her hubby is missing now for a month or so.  I hope…that he turns up liveing.”  (George Molitor KIA over Italy April 4, 1945, leaving Rose with two daughters, aged two and six months.)

July 25, 1945, Grandma: “…had a letter from [Marine Captain] August [Berning] is on Okinawa he had a bad battle there got shot through his jacket…The boys were to a show last night in LaMoure “30 seconds over Tokyo”….”  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa

August 8, 1945, Grandma: “Lorin H____ is at home now again they say he is nervous and has some shrapnel in his body but I bet he is glad to be home and will soon mend.”

August 26, 1945, Grandma:  “Hurrah! The old war is over I can’t say what that means to me….”

The surrender documents were signed by the Germans on May 7; and by the Empire of Japan on September 2, 1945.

War continues.  “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me.”

#28 – Mary Ellen Weller: French-Canadians in the American Civil War: A Book Review

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Note from Moderator: Mary Ellen filed this review of a book about the Civil War over a year ago.  It seems particulary pertinent as a memory for Memorial Day, 2009.  A companion to this article might be a recent talk by Howard Zinn on America’s “Three Holy Wars” at the 100th anniversary celebration of the Progressive magazine.  The Civil War is one of those wars.  His 35 minute talk can be viewed at http://www.commondreams.org/video/2009/05/18-0

Mary Ellen Weller: Riding the bus was an essential part of the French Heritage Tour sponsored by the IF Midwest May 2, 2008 [http://www.IFMidwest.org] . Essential because of who was sitting in those seats. Some were on the program and many were authors of books related to French-Canadian heritage in the US. What follows is a review of one of those books, a fascinating look at the US Civil War as an engine of French-Canadian immigration. It is not yet available in English.

Les Canadiens Français et la Guerre de Sécession, 1861-1865, une autre dimension de leur migration aux Etats-Unis

(French Canadians and the War of Secession, 1861-1865, another dimension of their migration to the United States)

by Jean Lamarre, Professor of History, Royal Military College of Kingston, Ontario

Quebec: VLB Editeur, 2006.

Americans of French-Canadian descent are likely to find their first immigrant ancestor arrived here between 1840 and 1930. In those 90 years more than a million French-Canadians came south of the border. The numbers are especially high during the time of the American Civil War. Exactly why young men of 15 to 49 (average age 25.2) (p. 51) would choose to fight in a neighbor’s civil war is addressed in Mr. Lamarre’s intriguing book and the answers are surprising.

The facts and evidence on which this work is based represent months of often tedious research in the National Archives in Washington D.C. where military records for each and every enlisted man are found. Lamarre used Record Group 94: the Adjutant General’s Office, Civil War (Union) Compiled Military Service Records. “The researcher who wants to consult the personal file of a soldier must fill out, for each one, a form on which he indicates the name of the soldier and his regiment.” (p.26)* Using such a laborious process Lamarre gathered a sample of 1320 Union soldiers of French-Canadian origin, of whom 1142 were born in French-Canada and 178 in the US. He concludes that they represent about 10% of the total French-Canadian participation in the Union Army.

In addition to the challenge of submitting the necessary forms one by one to establish this sample, was the challenge of recognizing French surnames from approximate homonymic spellings in English. The recruits often could not spell their own names. More than 90% of these men could not sign their contracts and simply made a cross at the bottom of the page (p. 53). Check Mr. Lamarre’s appendix for the name Duquette and you will get a quick lesson in the challenges he faced. Remember, he had to order each record individually by name.

Once accessed, the record shows the soldier’s age at enlistment, his home, his place of enrollment, date of enrollment, and assigned regiment. The appendix which lists this information for the entire sample of 1320 French-Canadian Union soldiers will certainly be useful to anyone doing a family history. Thirty regiments from Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New York, New Hampshire and Rhode Island are represented. Additionally, the record might note injury, hospitalization, discharge at the end of his contract, re-enlistment, or status as a prisoner of war. Lamarre has re-created the stories of many individual soldiers and tells them with great care within the body of the text.

The first wave of (over-)confidence and patriotism that brought volunteers to the Northern Army swept many French-Canadians with it. An early victory was expected. Some joined for adventure, some for patriotism, some to combat slavery and some for the security of food, shelter, and a small salary. Those French-Canadians already living in the US were often pressured to show their allegiance to their new country by enlisting. In some communities there was violence against immigrants.

The situation at the border echoes the years of the Revolution. Just as Loyalists headed north to avoid the Revolutionary War, many, many French-Canadians returned to Canada alongside Americans seeking shelter from the conflict.

Lamarre notes that seasonal employment in both logging and farming, from New England to Michigan, had become a way of life for many French-Canadians. Some were motivated to enlist to protect these very personal economic interests. They reasoned that if the South won the war, they could lose these jobs.

That very line of reasoning reveals a lack of employment opportunities in French-Canada. Between 12,000 and 20,000 French-Canadians enrolled in the Union Army and Lamarre states that “it is above all the financial advantages accompanying enlistment that attracted the French-Canadians”(p. 49). At first, the “assurance of a monthly salary of $13” seemed “preferable to the idleness and poverty that awaited them on returning home” p. (48). As this most deadly of all American conflicts dragged on, with tens of thousands of Union soldiers dying in battle after battle, and few enlistments to replace them, Congress voted signing bonuses as part of the Militia Act of 1862. French-Canadian enlistments went up again. In 1863 a draft was established and “enlistment became even more profitable”. (p. 49)

Lamarre brings out three very important aspects of recruitment and enlistment that were new to me. One, under the draft it was legally possible to pay a substitute to enlist in your place. 14% of the French-Canadians who enrolled, did so as substitutes (p. 58) Two, recruiters for the Union Army operated in French-Canada openly before the British enforced the Foreign Enlistment Act (which forbade British subjects from fighting in foreign wars), and clandestinely as ‘job recruiters’ even after Britain’s declaration of neutrality. Three, the payment of Bounties to new recruits after 1862 led to a pattern of desertion and ‘bounty jumping’. 

Enlisting as a Substitute was dazzlingly attractive. “The sums paid varied between $100 and $300 in 1863 but they later reached $600 and even $1000. These amounts represented the equivalent of one to two year’s wages in Eastern Canada, a regular small fortune” (p.59).

The British and their colonies north of the border were understandably nervous at the assembly of large armies in the States. Among their fears was possible invasion by a victorious Northern Army. It was thought that the army would be used to pick off territory or whole colonies and annex them to the US. Among the results was the British North American Act of 1867. Huge territories recently opened by the ending of the charter of the Hudson Bay Company in 1860 were indeed causing comment and machinations in the US. Eastern and Western Canada (French and English) pulled together and became a confederation and a country rather than a collection of colonies. Many other factors led to confederation, but the American Civil War had its influence.

With Bounties at amazing levels, the fraud that was called Bounty Jumping is no surprise. Despite the risk of court martial and possible execution, some individuals signed up in several different regiments and collected several bounties, deserting each time, or simply not reporting for duty. Amazing as it seems, the recruits were paid their Bounty and then given time to put their affairs in order at home before reporting for duty. How much temptation does a poor man need? The number who reported honorably for duty is all the more impressive.

The individual stories that Jean Lamarre has reconstructed for this fascinating account of Civil War experiences are a great treasure. Alongside the important facts related to French-Canadian Union Army soldiers as a whole, each individual story humanizes and verifies those facts.

With illegal immigration ever before us as a 2008 campaign issue, with a fence going up between the US and Mexico, consider just this one fact: 25% of the Union Army were immigrants. At that time, if you were here and you were not born here, you were an immigrant. Simple as that. At the end of the war Union soldiers were granted a free homestead of 180 acres in remote places like Minnesota and Dakota Territory. It solved two problems at once: what to do with thousands of men seeking work, and how to populate a continent.

*All translations are mine, mew.

Note: This book is not yet available in English translation, but the valuable appendix is easily accessible with a minimal knowledge of French. An earlier work by Professor Lamarre, The French Canadians of Michigan: Their Contribution to the Development of the Saginaw Valley and the Keweenaw Peninsula, 1840-1914 is available in English from Wayne State University Press.

Mary Ellen Weller is retired instructor of French at Mesabi Range Community and Technical College, Virginia MN.  maryellenwellerATaolDOTcom