Minnesota – Page 5 – Thoughts Towards a Better World

#1091 – Jerome Meyer* and Dick Bernard: At Christmas Season 2015. The Old Red Barn; and The Cottonwood Tree

December 12, 2015/0 Comments/in Community, History, Immigration, Minnesota, North Dakota, Quietings /by dickbernard

As 2015 ends, all best wishes for peace and kindness embracing everyone, everywhere. As sung so movingly at Pope Francis’ visit to the Twin Towers Memorial in NYC some months ago, “Let there be peace on earth, and let it begin with me.”
Here are two stories to help bring perspective as 2015 comes towards an end.
Pictured, the old Ferd and Rosa Busch barn between Berlin and Grand Rapids ND, built about 1915; unused since 1997. (Photos by Tom Maloney on May 24, 2015.) The Cottonwood tree (link at the end of this post) remains, about a half mile east of the old barn.
(click on any photo to enlarge it)

The Busch barn, rural Berlin/Grand Rapids/LaMoure ND May, 2015, by Tom Maloney

The Busch barn, rural Berlin/Grand Rapids/LaMoure ND, May 24, 2015, by Tom Maloney

Psst! Hey you. Yeah, I mean you.
It’s me speaking. The old red barn. I’m guessing very few of you have ever seen me because I’m tucked away on an old abandoned farm acreage near a seldom used township road a few miles from the main hiway and somewhat hidden by a large grove of trees.
So, why am I talking to you?
Well, I just heard from a reliable source that I will be torn down, smashed and buried in a big hole and finally covered up by the Mother Earth I was built on. I’m sure my demise will not show up in the death notice column in the local paper; and there probably won’t be an obituary.
So before I’m no longer around I would like to say a few things to you.
I probably have had three or four farm owners in my life time. And sad to say the current owner no longer has any use for me, I’m so obsolete. I knew my time on Earth was getting short, as so many of my barn friends have disappeared from the local landscape.
For most of my life I could see up to 10 barns over the horizon. Now I can only see one across the barren field and that one has it’s days numbered too. I’ m sure my current owner needs a little more land for a larger farm profit.
I probably was built in the late 1930’s. I’m too old now to remember the exact year. This makes me well into my 90’s.
I’ve seen many good productive farm years and a few bad ones and years when the owners struggled just to exist and make bank payments. Some how we all survived. I’ve felt summer temperatures of more than 100 degrees and winter temperatures of 20 degrees below zero with very strong winds.
I’m still standing. Very few metal nails were used when I was built from local timber because most of my wood frame was held together by wooden pegs.
Boy, was I a beautiful sight when I was built. I thought I was a castle. For awhile I was the best looking barn in the township with a bright coat of red paint, white trim, a shiny roof, four tall lightning rods, and a big weather vane on top of a large dome shaped cupola.
I had new pulleys and a long trolley under the roof to hoist the bales up in the hay loft from the wagons.
In the early days, similar to all my fellow barns, I was the farm building with the most activity. I was used seven days a week 365 days per year. I provided shelter and a home for 12 cows that were milked twice per day. The mornings were started early as the farmer milked at 5 am in the morning, then came back at 5 pm for the evening milking.
There were always a few calves in the pens, sometimes a few pigs, and in the early days, four work horses that were used for field work before modern tractors took over.
There were always about a dozen cats that called me home. They couldn’t wait until the milking started because they always got a good supply of fresh, warm milk. I also had a large storage area in the hayloft where bales were stored for the milk cows to eat and straw for their bedding.
I even got electricity sometime in the early 1940’s. Then, the old kerosene lanterns were only used when electricity went out during storms.
I still can hear the faint sounds of laughter of the children playing games and swinging on the ropes hanging from my wooden beams. Believe it or not, I even had a barn dance when one of the farmer’s daughters got married.
Sometimes people made fun of my name by asking “were you born in the barn?” if you left the door open in the house and the cold air came in. Or if your fly was down on your trousers, people would say “your barn door is down”.
What glorious memories I hold onto. I’m now old, tired and spent. My wood frame is bending, my foundation is crumbling, and I’m about to fall over. The cold North winter winds continue to shake my whole body.
However, I have no regrets, I have served my owners well, and I’m proud of it. I haven’t been used in the last 20 years. My roof now is battered and has a big hole in it, so I sometimes get wet inside when it rains and when the snow blows in.
My once bright red paint now is faded, most of my windows are broken, my wood frame is leaning, the lightning rods are broken off and my weather vane is rusted in one position.
The original farmyard light no longer is on electricity and has been disconnected for many years. The only light I have now is nature’s sun and an occasional bright moon.
I still have a few feathered friends visiting me and a couple of cats that seek shelter. I wonder where they will go when I am gone.
So, I guess this is the last time you will hear from me. The few area farmers I still have around me probably will give me only a quick glance and then go on with their daily work when the big rigs arrive to take me down, bury me and cover me up.
I can’t complain though, because I have had a good, productive life. Hopefully there will be a few people who will remember me. But that soon will pass as new generations farm. My only regret is I will have no marker where I will be buried, and no one will ever visit my grave site. But I guess that’s okay – I was just an old barn.
Summer corn fields will now hover over me, and winter ice and snow will cover me.
Well, I’ve got to go now because I see the sun is setting in the West, and the end of the day for me has come.
By Jerome Meyer of Albert Lea Minn.
Our generation was lucky to have lived and enjoyed these things.
It’s sad the next generations will not have these memories.

The Busch Barn, the morning after the roof blew off, late July, 1949

F. W. Busch farmstead, with brand new barn, 1916.

The original barn at right, circa 1907. This first barn was just to the north of the second barn.
Busch farm harvest time 1907. Rosa Busch holds her daughter Lucina, Others in photo include Ferd, behind the grain shock; Rosa’s sister, Lena, and Ferds father Wilhelm, and young brother William Busch. It is unknown who was unloading the grain in background. Possibly, it was Ferds brother, Leonard, who also farmed for a time in ND.

ABOUT ANOTHER FARM VETERAN: an essay I wrote about a Cottonwood tree on the same Busch farm, here.
* – The cast of characters for the stories, above:
Someone named Jerome Meyer apparently wrote the story about a barn near Albert Lea MN, which is above. As yet, I have been I unable to verify, or get permission from, the author, or know when the article was written, but his story, from my own childhood experience, rings so very true. It came to me as an e-mail, forwarded by a long-time good friend. My thanks, and if necessary, apology, to the real author of the Old Barn.
All blessings to everyone, everywhere.
COMMENT:
from Madeline, Dec. 12: While I was in Sweden, I learned why barns are traditionally red. Scandinavians brought the concept with them to the US: link here.
from Christina: I so enjoyed the piece about the old barn. It brought tears to my eyes. I forwarded it to my brothers and sisters and my kids. My youngest son bought my folks’ farmstead about two years ago. It’s a different house but still the same old barn. One of my brothers said he thought it would be OK to tear that barn down. I think he just wanted to tell us if we want to tear it down it would be OK. When I forwarded this piece I said I hoped [my son] would let the barn die and fall on its own. My Dad’s name is still written on the milk separator door. The barn has so many memories. Thank you for sending it. I copied the piece so I could keep it.
A Blessed Christmas to you and your family.
from Norm: Like all oldies, even the barn has added a few years: [from the post] “I probably was built in the late 1930’s. I’m too old now to remember the exact year. This makes me well into my 90’s.” We like hearing, “Wow! You don’t look a day over 75.” Wonderful piece Dick and makes me want to do something similar for some of the memories around.
from Larry: Having grown up on a farm, I, too,have have memories of our old barn. I was about 4 when our barn was brought across Bald Hill Creek (which ran through our farm) from somewhere south of us. Playing in the hay mow, milking cows since I was about 7, turning the cream separator before we got electricity in 1947 or ’48. Our old barn “died” when I was a grown man, and my mom had it buried. Now the old house is gone, too, so it is too difficult to visit my old home.
from Jerry: I enjoyed the story of the red barn. I have watched many barns end their life too, including one on the farm where I grew up. As a kid, some of those barns seem enormous and stately.
from Norm: A great observation from the old red barn!
We had two similar barns on our farm, one of which is still standing albeit eight feet lower than it was when originally built on an adjacent farm that my Dad bought many years ago. The thing was toppled by the wind before it could be anchored down on its new foundation and had to be jacked up, that is, primarily the roof, with new sides put in place and some roof damage repaired before it could be used again.
I am sure that it has lots of stories to tell as well and I will have to seek them out the next time I am at the farm that is now owned by one of my brothers and myself.
The other barn was knocked down and buried many years ago just as apparently is the fate of the red barn whose story you shared with us.
Ah yes, lots of good memories, Dick, of growing up on a modest farm (by Iowa or North Dakota standards) albeit with lots of hard work and toil often for very modest returns. On the other hand, we raised our own beef and chickens so we never starved and, of course, never thought that we were poor or whatever.
from Jane: Thanks, Dick. We have an old barn here on our farm, built into our hillside in 1901. Luckily it has had a metal roof for about the last 50 years, so it is doing pretty well. We saved it from pushing out and down the hill about 20 years ago. Our barn was built by Ole and Lena Waage, so we have Ole and Lena’s barn! We’d love to renovate it, if Santa leaves the where-with-all!

#1090 – Dick Bernard: Muslims

December 10, 2015/0 Comments/in Community, History, Immigration, Minnesota, North Dakota, Peace & Justice, Politics /by dickbernard

“Seek First to Understand, Then To Be Understood“; Stephen Covey, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

A mosque and cemetery on the North Dakota prairie, July 28, 2007

(click on photos to enlarge them)

A place of Peace, the Ross Mosque, July 28, 2007

My growing up was in the tiniest of communities in various parts of North Dakota. The population density of ND, then, was roughly ten persons per square mile. Today it is really not much different.
We lived in eight different places in my first eighteen years, twice, literally, in the country. Five of those eighteen years, our closest neighbors were farmers. Sometimes the towns were mostly Catholic (my “brand”), sometimes mostly Lutheran, with a few other Protestants tossed in. If there were atheists (and there were atheists, I’m certain), they kept quiet….
There was almost no cultural diversity of any kind worth noting in those small towns of my youth.
Then there was 1953-54, my eighth grade year, in the “blink of an eye” town of Ross where I met the only childhood friend I still keep up with regularly, 62 years later.
I knew him as Emmett, a farm kid; the official records record his first name as Mohammed. I am forever grateful that he and I met, and have stayed in contact ever since. He was and is a great gift to me.
The rest of this part of the story is here, from Sep 5, 2010.
For those who are all stirred up about Muslims these days, but really have never actually known a Muslim, I’d recommend this, my own, story about a Muslim kid and his farm family and kinfolk in my tiny North Dakota town.
Many years have passed by since 1953-54.
I have known many Muslims in many contexts over the years.
Just last year I spent a couple of months with Ehtasham and Suhail, from Pakistan, whose project was to film Americans who professed peace.

Ehtasham interviewing Native American author and Vietnam War veteran Jim Northrup, Memorial Day, 2014, Vets for Peace gathering.

(Ehtasham Anwars Facebook page includes two video summaries of his interviews of 10 Minnesota Peacemakers. Take a look. Scroll down right hand side.)
Sometimes I see amusing things, like the time, in my town, when I saw a tall Catholic Nun in the traditional black habit, coming out of the local FedEx. She brought back old Catholic school boy memories for me. She was out of place, that’s for sure. Then the person opened the car door and when she turned I saw that she had her face covered, in full hijab.
The only generalization I can make about Muslims is that they are just good people, like anyone else.
Occasionally, certainly, a rotten apple can be found in the barrel of life – it is no work of genius to find an example.
But we Christians, and those who are Jews, don’t have to look very hard to find our own very bad examples. Start with supposed “leaders” who gin up fear and resentment of some “other” for political advantage.
But at its essence, all of us, all of humanity – share common roots; and we are generally good people.
Take the time to really appreciate others you may not know, and appreciate their own customs and traditions which are very rich.
There are many positive websites. Here’s one to begin with: Islamic Resource Group. Another is Unity Productions Foundation.

Ruhel and Lynn, Dec. 2, 2015, Bloomington MN

When we went to visit our friend, Lynn Elling, in the Nursing Home, Ruhel Islam of Gandhi Mahal Restaurant in Minneapolis brought along soup and bread from the restaurant, and helped feed Lynn. It was a very tender time.
It will always stay in my mind that at the very time Ruhel was helping Lynn eat the soup he had brought, the two killers in San Bernardino were preparing to press the trigger in their insane rampage. We had no way of knowing that. Ruhel’s action represented the very best of humanity, what we see most. The killers in any places represent the murderous fringe of all societies.
Who do we wish to recognize and empower?
POSTSCRIPT:
There seems considerable fantasy thinking when the emphasis is on the belief that terror can be kept out, by refusing to allow people who might theoretically do bad things in.
Not only can we not keep terror out, but the very hysteria of labeling people or groups as somehow evil only magnifies the threat to us.
I have a small personal example from a dozen years ago.
I was invited to join a delegation going to Haiti in 2003. I was the oldest in the group, and I went only as an opportunity to learn. That was my sole agenda.
On a particular day, we were invited to visit with a group of men and women from a slum, all of whom had been victims of political oppression, including rape, and the like. It was plausibly believed, at the time, that the United States was behind a move to oust the democratically elected President of Haiti, whose constituency was the poor, the very constituency we were visiting. The U.S. had previously supported the long-time brutal dictator of the country and, paradoxically, was not enamored of “democracy” in that impoverished country.
I just sat and listened as people described the outrages that had happened to them some years earlier. I had nothing to say. I took a few photos.
Afterwards, after a lunch provided by us, we went around the group to shake hands.
One of the men – I remember this vividly – refused to shake my hand.
I reminded him of something. Perhaps my age, my race, my nation, my demeanor reminded him of something offensive, probably related to the historical long time dominance over his country by the United States of America.
The “blowback” these days for dissing someone else is very likely and deliberate.
In even the poorest countries there are cell phones and television and networks now. People are aware.
What happened in Haiti sticks in my mind whenever I’m reminded of the gracious invitation of my friend in Pakistan to come and visit his country. Who is it who will see this American if I visit, and I remind him of something?
In other words, we make bad things much much worse by our “better than thou” attitude.
Our national arrogance is not helpful.

#1089 – Dick Bernard: December 7, 2015, "War" to Peace: Changing the Conversation.

December 7, 2015/0 Comments/in Family History, International Relations, Media, Minnesota, North Dakota, Quebec/French-Canadians, War /by dickbernard

Grandpa’s Flag, 1957

Today is Pearl Harbor Day.
Anyone who knows me, knows my Uncle Frank Bernard went down with the USS Arizona Dec 7, 1941.
A year ago, Dec. 7, 2014, was especially emotional. I was given an opportunity to speak publicly about my Uncle at the December 7 observance at Landmark Center in St. Paul.
The talk was easy to prepare – I know great deal about my Uncle’s life and death, and I have no trouble in front of people – but actually speaking the words was very emotional for me that day.
(My notes for that talk, and a few added photos can be seen here: Uncle Frank Dec 7 14001).
*
Fast forward to two days ago.
I noted the box labelled “Henry Bernard Artifacts” in the garage.
Henry, my Dad, died 18 years ago.
I hadn’t looked inside the box for years, and on a whim, Saturday, decided to take a look.
There were two artifacts: one an empty hand-made box, likely made by my Grandpa Bernard, Frank Bernard’s Dad.
The other was the flag (above) which covered Grandpa’s casket when he died in 1957. Grandpa Bernard earned his flag as a veteran of the Spanish-American War, 1898-99 in the Philippines. The flag, used but rarely, has 48 stars.
Grandpa died at 85, before Hawaii and Alaska entered the U.S. as states.

Henry Bernard, upper left, at Presidio San Francisco, Summer 1898; his future wife’s cousin, Alfred Collette, is at lower right.

*
Revisiting history.
We are headed for Hawaii on Dec. 17, and the first weekend we’ll take Grandson Ryan, 16, out to Pearl Harbor, and Uncle Frank’s tomb on the USS Arizona. I plan to take the flag along, symbolically bringing a family back together.
*
War to Peace, Changing the Conversation

My family, like many others, has “War” imprinted in its DNA. I can directly “trace” my own families history with war back 200 years, to the days of Napoleon’s dreams of conquering Europe and Russia. My relative who gives me my last name came to Quebec from France 285 years ago, likely connected with militia.
There are common elements to all wars; the uncommon element is that War is ever more deadly in each succeeding rendition.
We are not fighting with “swords” any more.
*
The 9-11-01 Generation
Our response to 9-11-01 brought our nation into a “war” mood, bringing us into what has become a permanent state of war…on “Terror”, with attempts to make that word synonymous with a major world religion.
But away from the media and political spotlight, something has been changing in our national mood, rarely public, but very evident.
You won’t see it on the news, but there seems a basically more rational response among our populace to tragedy. Rather than demanding more war, or more and deadlier guns to kill each other, hideously easy to acquire, and division as a default response to any disagreement, the vast majority of us, nationally, person to person, seem to be embracing decent relationships among peoples as the highest value.
*
A reality.

There will always be evil in our world, including among our own citizens.
Incidents, a Roseburg, Colorado Springs, San Bernardino, must be confronted.
But we don’t need to make things infinitely worse, as we’ve done after 9-11-01, in the process becoming birth parents, almost literally, to ISIS or whatever radical groups are called; and going insane over alleged “rights” to weaponize ourselves.
Collectively, everywhere, common citizens of the world seem to get this. But we can’t implement a firmer peace and more rational gun policy without working together towards them, including being willing to accept incremental improvements, rather than insisting on instant peacefulness.
Let’s learn from the endless series of mistakes that have led so many, combatants and civilians, to premature deaths and dislocation everywhere. Let’s deal with issues as issues.
*
Looking back to the day before 9-11-01
I close with a single sheet from a file of about 2000 sheets of paper generated by myself and others between the time of 9-11-01 and the end of November 2003*.
It is a simple family letter I wrote on September 10, 2001, the day before 9-11-01: Here it is: Sep 10, 2001001. It is nothing special, just a family letter on an ordinary day, the day before we chose a violent path.
Most of us have some memory of that day prior to “The War on Terror”. Why not take a moment to recall your own memories of that ordinary day in September, 2001, when life was going on without war. Here it is, again: Sep 10, 2001001
A better world is possible. It is up to us.
I wish us peace.

March 15, 2013

Grandpa’s flag, being raised at the Apartment Community, Our Lady of the Snow IL, Memorial Day, 1998.

POSTNOTE:
1. President Obama’s Speech on Sunday Evening
2. A summary of 2016 Presidential candidates response to the speech.
* – The 2000 sheets referred to above are being submitted to the Minnesota Historical Society on Tuesday, as a hoped for addition to the archives of an important time in history.

#1079 – Dr. Joseph Schwartzberg; Ehtasham Anwar: Videos and Papers presented at the Workable World Conference October 9&10, 2015 in Minneapolis; and Ehtasham Anwars Video Interviews of Minnesota Peacemakers, May – June 2014.

November 5, 2015/0 Comments/in International Relations, Minnesota, Peace & Justice /by dickbernard

PRENOTE from Dick Bernard:
This post contains links to talks by 11 speakers at a recent conference on the United Nations system at 70; and to two videos which summarize thoughts of ten peace and justice advocates on their experiences in the United States.
(Content for these is accessible in the section labeled “THE VIDEOS”, below.)
1) The outstanding Workable World Conference organized by Dr. Joseph Schwartzberg relating to the United Nations was subject of an earlier blogpost, Oct. 12, 2015.
The content of the entire conference is preserved within the professionally prepared videos and accompanying papers presented at the Conference by many experts (link to the talks below). My recommendation: Watch and/or read one at a time. This is a several-day post.
2) Ehtasham Anwar, a career Civil administrator in one of Pakistans largest cities, conducted ten interviews of Minnesota peacemakers in Minneapolis/St. Paul in May and June, 2014. The videos are useful in that they give summary comments divided into threads of conversation which are amenable to discussion groups.
Ehtasham produced and filmed this project hear the end of his year as a Humphrey/Fulbright Fellow at the Human Rights Center of the University of Minnesota Law School. He did an expert job with this project.
In my opinion, both projects deserve broad viewing, can easily be viewed in “bits and pieces”, and would be excellent subjects for group viewing and conversations. Ehtasham’s interviews is an idea easily replicated.
Full disclosure: I was on the Advisory Committee of Joe Schwartzbergs Workable World Conference (#1 below); and in #2, I’m one of the ten interviewed by Ehtasham Anwar a year ago, and the person who had the honor of assisting him in setting up the interviews.
*
THE VIDEOS:
Dr. Joseph Schwartzberg
We are pleased to inform you that video recordings of all Workable World Conference sessions, as well as most full-text conference presenters’ papers, are now available from our web site:
This gives each of you a chance to view any of the presentations (and the Open Forum) for a second time, or perhaps catch ones that you were not able to attend during the conference weekend. We encourage you to share this link with others, so that the valuable content spreads beyond those that could make to the Humphrey School that weekend.
We would also like to take this opportunity to thank you for your participation, and invite you to share any input you may have. Feel free to REPLY to nancy2@ATdunlavyDOTnet.
In the very near future we plan to upload the winning Youth Essays and other outcomes of the conference. We’ll stay in touch about future Workable World actions and opportunities!
From The Workable World Trust (WWT),
Joseph Schwartzberg, Nancy Dunlavy, and all WWT Advisory Board members
*
Ehtasham Anwars 2014 interviews
Post containing link to the ten video interviews is found here. There are two 25 minute videos, with summary comments of ten Minnesota Peacemakers.
There are roughly ten segments, each preceded by a brief question. Each person interviewed was asked the identical questions. Thus, the interviews are easy to correlate, and to replicate, if you have an interest.
Videos are accessible only to those who have Facebook access. Luckily, these days, everybody knows somebody with a Facebook account. Ask them to help you out.

#1075 – Dick Bernard: A Prairie Home Companion comes back home to Anoka.

October 23, 2015/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, Minnesota, Quietings /by dickbernard

POSTNOTE Oct. 25, 6 a.m.: Here’s last nights program at the Anoka High School Fieldhouse: Prairie Home Anoka001. You can listen to the program here. It was a phenomenal evening. More comments later today.
(click to enlarge photo)

Anoka High School Seventh Avenue Singers with Garrison Keillor October 24, 2015

*
Tomorrow, tickets in hand, we’re off to see the Prairie Home Companion (PHC) – I’ve had tickets for weeks. This time the show is at Garrison Keillors Alma Mater, Anoka Senior High School, in a town and school community in which I lived and/or worked from 1965-81.
If you can read this, you can listen to the show on Saturday, here, regardless of where you are in the world.
I first happened by PHC in 1977, thanks to my friends Don and Laura. You could walk in off the street then, and find plenty of good seats. Things changed when they went national.
Keillor, of course, plays off the old and familiar of rural America, and Anoka was the big town of his youth, where he went to Junior and Senior High School. That then-small County Seat town, along with the rural precincts between St. John’s University and Freeport along I-94 west of St. Cloud (Lake Woebegone Country) gave Garrison the base for his always rich stories.
Saturday will probably be a particularly rich show.
Though I rarely see or listen to his show these days, I’ve seen it in person at all phases of its evolution, most recently back in January 17, 2015 at the Fitzgerald Theatre, and at the day long celebration of its 40th anniversary at Macalester College in St. Paul in July, 2014. On that particular day I watched the “yarn spinners” do their magic in person, unfortunately without master sound effects man “Jim Ed Poole” (Tom Keith) who died a few years ago. (His replacement, Fred Newman, is right fine, as you’ll hear!)
(click to enlarge)

Garrison and yarn-spinning gang at Macalester College St. Paul July 4, 2014

Fred Newman, July 4, 2014

I was lucky to live and work in Anoka when it was germinating the ideas for part of Garrisons “little town that time forgot but the decades cannot improve”.
When I go out to Anoka on Saturday I’ll be thinking of Ralph’s Grocery along the east bank of the Rum River, which I got to know in the 1960s. Garrison would deny Ralph’s begat Ralph’s Pretty Good…, doubtless, but how else would his “Ralph’s Pretty Good Grocery” get its name? There Ralphs sat, just a block or so north of Main Street.
Then there’s Pastor Inkqvist, and Father Emil. They have to be Pastor Hyllengren of Zion Lutheran and Father Murphy of St. Stephen’s; the latter my elderly Parish Priest in the old Church and rectory downtown; both powerhouses in their respective competing religious communities a few blocks apart.
And Anoka was the home of the Pumpkin Bowl, the school football field, and the big Halloween Parade, and the “Tornadoes”. It is most appropriate – planned, doubtless – to have the show in Anoka right at the edge of Halloween.
Back between 1965 and 1981 I either taught, or represented the teachers, in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, already a sprawling school district encompassing thirteen then-largely rural townships. By 1971, Anoka High School had come to be Fred Moore Junior High, when the massive new high school was built north of the tracks. We’ll see the show in the fieldhouse of the now old “new” high school….
Garrison was gone by the time I came to Anoka, but there were a fair number of school teachers who survived and live on in one or another of his phenomenal stories. They were names familiar to me.
I can live those days vicariously now.
But anyone who tunes in can tune in on their own growing up, wherever that happened to be.
Some of the laughter you’ll hear tomorrow night will be my own, and I plan to go decked out in my 40th anniversary Prairie Home Companion T-shirt, and my Powdermilk Biscuits baseball cap (“Has your family tried ’em? Heavens! They’re tasty!”
POSTNOTE:
Is William Keillor Garrison’s root? From the History of Anoka County by Albert Goodrich, 1905
(click to enlarge)

History of Anoka County by Albert Goodrich, 1905

A FEW WORDS AFTER THE SHOW:
Monday, October 26: Since the entire show is accessible on-line (at beginning of this post), the sounds are all there for anyone who’s listening.
I taught in Anoka-Hennepin district from 1965-72, then represented the teachers there, including Anoka Senior High School, from 1972-81, and my son did his Sophomore year there about 1979-80 or so. So I experienced the evening quite intensely. Lyle Bradley and Coach Nelson were very familiar to me. I did get one photo of Lyle Bradley, 90, and still vibrant.

Garrison listens to Lyle Bradley, about this and that….October 24, 2015

This was a very personal program for Garrison. That was obvious from the beginning when he came down into the audience and led the few thousand of us in several songs before the show began, including the Star Spangled Banner and America the Beautiful, as I recall.
There was reverence shown to public schools and teachers, particularly Anoka, his alma mater. I’ve followed Garrison for years, and there were some serious speed bumps a few years ago between himself and public education, but it appeared that was in the past.
His family, his schools, and his community were the relationships that made him what he is today.
I was particularly struck by his reference to growing up autistic. It was an affirmation to any who struggle in any way with autism or its effects.
It was amusing to hear the skit about the Homecoming game between Anoka and Visitation (a Catholic girls high school in St. Paul). Anoka won 6-0, of course, but he softened the edge between zealots for no holds barred competition, and those who emphasize team play and empathy for the underdog. (In the skit, Visitation was the hard-edged competitor, and Anoka the softer feelings oriented team.) It came across especially well, knowing that Anoka-Hennepin has gone through some rough years lately over LGBT issues. There was a “you factions can get along” sense that I was left with.
School people were heavily involved in the program, from kids, to teachers, to the librarian, to the Principal. A school is a social system which, in our society, everyone can enter and have an opportunity to find their muse.
I left renewed and buoyed in lots of ways. When you’re aging, you lose essential touch with the systems of youth. And this show was important for me – though I hasten to acknowledge that we have nine grandkids, and the day after PHC, we went to a wonderful vocal concert in Bloomington which involved two of them, grades eight and ten.
Still, it was great to see the greater community of kids as well.
Thanks, Garrison. You done REALLY good!

#1060 – Dick Bernard: The First Day of School

September 8, 2015/0 Comments/in Community, Education, History, Minnesota /by dickbernard

Roosevelt office area from the front lobby August 23, 2015

This year is rather unusual in Minnesota. A very late Labor Day means that there have been some deviations from the normal mandatory day after Labor Day start to the 2015-16 school year.
Nonetheless, the evening just past was doubtless a nervous one for K-12 students and their teachers and other school staff as the new school year begins. Everything happens at once. Returning to school is much like going to a family reunion; you know what to expect, but you’re not sure how you’ll perform, regardless of your particular role. I’d guess there was more than normal incidence of fitful sleep last night.
For reasons laid out in a previous post, this year, for me, is much more significant than usual. My early career, I was a junior high school geography teacher, and in 1965, in my third year, 50 years ago this week, probably on September 8, 1965, I met my first classes of eighth graders at Roosevelt Junior High School in the Minneapolis suburb of Blaine MN.
It was my first year in Minnesota*.
I remember very little of the month of August, 1965. I still work at filling in blanks of that month, through mining the memories of others. August, 1965, was a traumatic time for me.
I do remember, as one of many new teachers in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, taking a bus trip to see the Districts schools at the beginning of workshop week. In those years, this already massive district was growing by over 2000 students a year, and each year brought newly built schools, and lots of new teachers.
Roosevelt Junior High School had just opened. Everything was new.
The school, then, was out in the country, literally, bordered by farmland, and reached by a two lane road. The nearest housing development was about a mile south. That was a long time ago. Here’s a photo I took of the school about 1968 (my brother was piloting the plane, and, remember, I was a geography teacher!)
(click to enlarge all photos)

Roosevelt Junior High School from the northwest, Fall, 1968

A couple of weeks ago I stopped by present day Roosevelt and took a few photos, all of which were reminders about 1965.

Photos August 23, 2015, Dick Bernard

August 23, 2015 (the hallway looks almost exactly the same as 50 years ago.)

The classroom I started the school year in 1965, pictured August 23, 2015

In the lobby, was a display case with some history of the school building itself:

History of the Roosevelt Jr. High School – display, August 23, 2015

Back in 1965, Roosevelt was grades 7-9; at some more recent point it became a Middle School, and at various point a new wing and a swimming pool were added, and the 10 acres were developed from the bare ground there when we opened the building.
In the course of 50 years, tens of thousand of students, and well over one thousand staff members have shared space at Roosevelt. Personally, I was there for seven years.
I was amazed at the wonderful condition of the school, so many years after it opened for business.
Today Roosevelt Middle School opens again for another year, and the faculty and staff greet a new crop of kids. Those quiet halls I walked a couple of weeks ago will teem with life again.
Each student will will receive a student planner with the “rules for the road” for the “town” that is Roosevelt Middle School. At the end of the planner are several pages we all might review. Here they are: Student Planner 2015-16001
My best wishes to the Roosevelt crowd, and to all school personnel everywhere.
Have a great year.
* POSTNOTE: My first August in Minnesota was in Anoka, then a country town, the county seat of Anoka County, perhaps 20 miles from downtown Minneapolis. The road to Minneapolis was two lane, down what was called the West River Road, alongside the Mississippi River.
I had been to Anoka once in my life, probably 1956, with my parents and siblings, when we stopped at Rum River Park. I know this only because I have a photo (which apparently I took). We would have been enroute to Chicago on U.S. 10 visit my Uncle and Aunt who had recently had their first child.

At Anoka MN, summer 1956, from left: Henry, Frank, John, Esther, Mary Ann and Florence Bernard.

In 1965-66, my son and I lived at 1615 South Ferry Street, a block from the Mississippi River Bridge, “catty corner” from the Embers Restaurant across the street. Where the house stood is long gone. The Smarts, Mom, Dad and two kids, lived there, as did my son and I and perhaps one or two others who roomed upstairs. I don’t recall the others.
Being in a new town is a lot like being a young child again: one’s range is very limited.
For me, Anoka meant that house, an old corner cafe at the southeast corner of Ferry and Main Street, the old St. Stephen’s Catholic Church and Fr. Murphy. Much of that first month I drove into St. Louis Park to continue working in the original Lincoln Del. I worked there until early January when the toll of two jobs brought pneumonia to my door, and I had to quit. That broadened my horizon a tiny bit: the Mork Clinic and Goodrich Drug Store entered my sphere. But otherwise, mostly, Anoka was home, to work, either at the Del, or at Roosevelt Junior High School down then rural and two lane Co Rd 42, 125th Ave NW, 7 miles east of Anoka.
Anoka remains recognizable to me 50 years later, but like all places, particularly suburban, it is greatly changed by the passage of years.

#1056 – Dick Bernard: A 2015 Demonstration for Black Lives Matter at the Minnesota State Fair in St. Paul; and a flashback to Peace Island in 2008

August 30, 2015/1 Comment/in Community, History, Media, Minnesota /by dickbernard

NOTE: I include my own followup comments after Judy’s comment at the end of this post.
Had I not had a schedule conflict on Saturday, August 29, I would have wandered over to the Minnesota State Fair to see the Black Lives Matter demonstration at the Fair.
As it was, all my information came from the local TV news, and this mornings newspaper. From a news standpoint, it was apparently a pretty boring (as in lack of mayhem and blood) event. While it had the most prominent placement on the Minneapolis Star Tribune front page, the sub-headline said “Police made no arrests during mostly peaceful Black Lives Matter rally”. Those who wanted “action”, on all sides, were probably disappointed.
Peaceful things don’t have much to offer a “news” cycle; there is one shot at a headline.
Actually, the Demo caused me to think back to another St. Paul event on Sep 2-4, 2008. It was an event called the Peace Island Conference, and I was one of the organizers. Three or so miles away from our venue was the 2008 Republican National Convention, which lives in history for the John McCain/Sarah Palin Presidential Ticket.
My personal favorite photos are these, taken mostly by myself on Sep 1-4, 2008, at assorted peaceful gatherings at varying venues in St. Paul.
(click to enlarge)

A peace kid and a gunboat at the Mississippi River, St. Paul, September 4, 2008

Closer view of the gunboat on the Mississippi Sep. 4, 2008

Police waiting to repel the assault of protestors, Sep 1, 2008

Those who were there in 2008 will remember all of these.
The assorted police forces from all over (it seemed) were mobilized to prepare for war against a rabble of crazed peaceniks who would certainly descend on St. Paul to disrupt the Republican National Convention in downtown. Bizarre weapons, like the gunboat on the Mississippi, appeared to protect citizens from the rabble. Police dressed like transformer characters were an ominous presence everywhere. The media focus was on occasional incidents.
I was in the rabble demonstrating on Sep 1. Doubtless there were people wanting to be arrested, and vandals, but they were few and far between. The vast majority of us were just demonstrating for peace, that’s all.
Down the street about three miles, the next day, we convened Peace Island: a “Solutions Driven Conference”. There were several hundred registered for the event; 23 speakers with impressive credentials from all over.
From a nutrition point of view, there was a lot of nutritive value at the many sessions at Peace Island. From a news viewpoint: apparently no value at all.

Peace Island Conference, September 3, 2008

In a hard American news sense, Peace Island conference was boring. To my recollection, Peace Island did not attract a single reporter nor a single news story, much less something on page one. It was, in that sense, an utter failure.
Much better had there been a violent call to revolution of some kind.
But, still, Peace Island was a huge success of its own.
Saturday, August 29, at the State Fair Grounds seems to have been a somewhat boring event from a news standpoint. “…no arrests….”.
Cool heads prevailed all around.
The Black Lives Matter group certainly got the attention they were hoping to get, but neither side threw a punch to make “news”.
That is very good.
I’ve often wondered if Peace Island accomplished anything.
I do think it lives on, in a positive sense, a message to present and future activists.
Black Lives Matter is in itself a movement to keep in the public eye a necessary conversation.
I don’t know any of the youthful movements leaders, but I congratulate them for their efforts.

Celebrating Peace at Peace Island Sep. 4, 2008

Larry Long (center) and Tao Rodriguez-Seeger (left)perform at Peace Island Sep 4, 2015

Sign beside a St. Paul Street, late August, 2008

Comment from Judy, Minneapolis, Aug. 31:
Yes, it was peaceful, but huge numbers of racist comments on their facebook page. our church has been studying racism this summer with two interim pastors while our pastor was on sabbatical in south Africa studying racism. This fall we are reading Between the World and me and a couple of years ago we read the Grace of Silence by Michele Norris. Our church sits at the corner of 4 south Minneapolis neighborhoods.
Black Lives Matter (BLM) has come out with their platform in the last week or so and we copied it for people for an adult forum yesterday. We are thinking about putting up a banner and had a couple of pastors come and talk about their experience in doing so. We are, of course, dealing with the conflict of All lives matter versus black lives matter….I finally got it this summer partially based on these statistics:
“A black person is killed extra-judicially every 28 hrs, and Black men between ages 19 and 25 are the group most at risk to be gunned down by police. Based on data from the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, young Blacks are 4.5 times more likely to be killed by police than any other age or racial group.
African-Americans have comprised 26 percent of police shootings though we only makeup 13 percent of the U.S. population, based on data spanning from 1999 to 2011.
Shootings fell to 35 per year in the 2000s though the risk is still higher for Black Americans than it is for whites, Latinos and Asians. My people are killed at 2.8 times the rate of white non-Latinos and 4.3 times the rate of Asians.” Source of preceding paragraphs here.
BLACK LIVES MATTER PLATFORM
1. End broken-windows policing
Broken windows policing refers to the theory that if you don’t go after minor crimes (i.e. broken windows), then it sends the community a message that they can get away with more serious crimes. Campaign Zero says this form of policing disproportionately affects minorities.
2. Community oversight
Campaign Zero suggests establishing a civilian-run commission that can make recommendations for discipline following a civilian complaint of police misconduct. They say this is better than relying on fellow officers to punish their own colleague.
3. Limit use of force
Campaign Zero wants officers only to be allowed to use deadly force when there is an imminent threat to the officer’s life or the life of another person. Currently, officers can use deadly force when they perceive a deadly threat. The group also calls for stricter standards for reporting the use of deadly force.
4. Independently investigate and prosecute
To avoid conflicts of interest, Campaign Zero calls for state governments to establish independent prosecutors who will investigate instances of police violence and killings. The group also wants to reduce the standard of proof for federal civil rights investigations of police officers.
5. Community representation
The campaign calls for police departments to be more representative of the communities they police by having proportional amounts of women and people of color on staff.
6. Body cameras & filming the police
Campaign Zero wants all police officers to be equipped with body cameras and for police to be banned from taking recording devices from civilians without their consent.
7. Training
Campaign Zero suggests that police officers be required to undergo training four times a year on a variety of issues including racial bias or prejudice, community interaction, crisis intervention, and de-escalation of situations.
8. End for-profit policing
Campaign Zero recommends police departments do away with quotas for tickets and arrests as well as limit fines and fees for low-income people and have stricter standards for civil forfeiture (seizing of civilian property).
9. Demilitarization
Campaign Zero suggests ending the federal government’s 1033 program that provides military weapons to local police departments. The group also says there should be greater restrictions on police departments attempting to purchase and use military grade equipment.
10. Fair police contracts
Campaign Zero believes police union contracts have given police unions too much influence and give officers too much protection in the instances of misconduct. Campaign Zero wants to eliminate barriers put in place by the union contracts and make officers’disciplinary history accessible to the public. In addition, they suggest that officers’ shouldn’t be paid if they are being investigated for seriously injuring or killing a civilian.
On their website, the group also offers policy agendas for how to implement their reforms on the local, state, and federal level. The group also published a fact sheet detailing where each presidential candidate stands on these proposals.
Information above taken from here.
POSTNOTE from Dick Bernard: Black Lives Matter and the Minnesota State Fair, like the Peace activities at the 2008 Peace Island and Republican National Convention, both in St. Paul, are extremely complex “organisms”, involving reason, emotion, many, many individual “actors”, and on and on. When I observed what appeared to have happened at the Black Lives Matter demo at the State Fair, I basically was reflecting on the relationship between the State (Those who direct the Police) and the People (the demonstrators).
In 2008, it appeared, all of Minnesota was in “lock down”, and I was among the demonstrators affected. In every way the message was, “behave, or you’re in deep trouble”; that everyone was a potential danger. It was an over the top totally paranoid response to people who wanted to demonstrate. The tone of what happened between People and State at the Minnesota State Fair area on Saturday seemed very different. Sure, there were examples on both sides, but the tone was very different.
Back on August 22, a week before the State Fair demonstration, there was a burst of conversation on one of the lists to which I subscribe. One member was irritated by what he saw as the disruption of the Fair by the demonstrators. His statement was a fair one, but I responded as follows: “Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, and on this one I’ll disagree with you.
My career was as a teacher union representative (Education Minnesota), and when we were asserting our rights to bargain and such, it was necessary to get people’s attention, and we sometimes did it in ways that got elements in the community irritated. But it was necessary to get people’s attention, first. Then the conversation, or argument, or whatever, could begin.
Some years before that career, in the mid-60s, I remember driving in southern Minnesota during the time the National Farmers Organization was asserting its rights to organize, putting up blockades once in awhile to hopefully assert themselves. It seems to me that the issue, then, for them was milk supply and demand. Of course, farmers are independent cusses, and there were some problems. But I have a vivid memory of at least one intersection where several farmers in a truck were making sure it was inconvenient for their fellow farmers to get by.
Further back still (I found just recently), my North Dakota farmer grandfather (Ferd W. Busch) was a founder and apparent organizer for a local chapter of the newly formed ND Farmers Union. In 1928 he wrote a letter to the editor of the local paper: Busch FW Farmers Union001. The non-partisan league was history by then (he’d been part of that, too), and Farmers Union, now Cenex, I believe, was a new and more durable rendition.
Scratch organizing is never easy, and oftentimes those who do the organizing are not well versed in all the niceties and make mistakes. Maybe what will happen at the State Fair will materialize, maybe not, it certainly will get people talking. As it has got us talking, here!”
Coming as I do from a long history of labor union work, organizing is never perfect. Stuff happens, or doesn’t happen. It is always the dramatic (bad) stuff that always gets the publicity in the media. The boring (good) stuff happens, but only over the long term.
What I will be looking for is the long term stamina and negotiating savvy of the Black Lives Matter leadership. Too many groups succeed and then fail because of lack of follow through. The event is the only result. This was the unfortunate after effect at Peace Island, A Solutions Driven Conference. It was a great conference, and people went home….
Perhaps, a final note: Another reader, Ray, called to suggest a book that I think I might actually order. It is Trance formation of America by Cathy O’Brien and Mark Phillips. If nothing else, read some of the reviews.

#1051 – Anne Dunn: Meeting Billy Mills

August 13, 2015/0 Comments/in Anne M. Dunn, Community, History, Minnesota, Native American, Peace & Justice /by dickbernard

The item which follows from Anne Dunn*, was forwarded to me by my sister, Flo, June 8, 2015. We had been trying to decide on an appropriate Native American recipient of a financial gift in honor of our Aunt Edithe. Edithe had been especially attentive to Native American fundraising appeals.
Anne’s commentary was originally on her Facebook page, and is forwarded with her permission. It helped Flo and I decide that Billy Mills organization “Running Strong“, was a good recipient for a family gift in memory of Aunt Edithe.

Possibly Aunt Edithe’s introduction to Running Strong, a Date Book. This one had no website. The 2004 edition includes a website.

*
I HAVE BEEN TOLD
Anne Dunn
Billy Mills, Running Strong
Billy Mills is the second Native American to win an Olympic gold medal. Jim Thorpe had won two gold medals in the 1912 Stockholm Olympics. Mills ran the 10,000 -meter competition at the 1964 Tokyo Olympics to become the only American to ever win the gold in this event. His victory has been considered one of the greatest Olympic upsets.
A former United States Marine, he is a member of the Oglala Lakota Tribe. He was born (June 30, 1938) in Pine Ridge, South Dakota He was orphaned at age 12 and raised on the reservation by his grandmother. He took up running while attending the Haskell Institute (Haskell Indian Nations University) in Lawrence Kansas.
After he graduated he joined the USMC. He was a First Lieutenant in the Marine reserves when he competed in the 1964 Olympics.
He later set US records for 10,000 m (28:17.6) and the three-mile run, and had a 5,000 m best of 13:41.4. In 1965 he and Gerry Lindgren both broke the world record for the six-mile run. They finished in a tie at AAU National Championships, running 27:11.6.
On February 15, 2013, Mills met with President Obama at the White House to receive the Presidential Citizens Award for his work with Running Strong for American Indian Youth. His broad based nonprofit humanitarian organization has international ties. The medal is the nation’s second highest civilian award
In 1983 a movie was made of his life. “Running Brave” features Robby Benson in the starring role.
I met Billy Mills many years ago. We were standing over a garbage can at a school picnic on the Red Lake reservation. I was working for the Bemidji school district and had been asked to chaperone a group of Native American students that had been invited to the event.
He was disposing of his paper plate, plastic utensils and milk carton when I asked him for his (already been used) spoon. He was a bit unnerved by the unusual request but he put the spoon into my waiting hand. Then I asked for his milk carton, too. Now he was curious.
“Why do you want these things?”
“I will donate the carton to the school athletic department,” I told him. “I’ll ask that it be displayed in the trophy case. The spoon I will keep for a memento of the day I met Billy Mills.”
I suppose he was mildly flattered for he smiled and asked my name. Then he shook my hand and walked away.
The milk carton was accepted and placed in the trophy case where it stood for several years. Then, one day it disappeared! I suppose it looked like old garbage and someone had tossed it into the trash.
At first, I showed the spoon to everyone. But almost no one believed my story. The problem was that it looked like a hundred billion other plastic spoons. So one day I put it in my jewelry box and didn’t take it out for several years.
Then Florence Hedeen called to tell me that Billy Mills was going to speak at the school in Park Rapids. I decided to attend and to take the spoon with me. My friend LeRoy Chief, also from Pine Ridge, said he would ask Mills to autograph the unremarkable spoon.
The next problem was… would Billy Mills remember? Would he think I was just some old groupie trying to get his attention?
I arrived at the high school to find several friends waiting. They had saved a front row seat for me. Afterwards I approached the world-renowned speaker and asked if he would sign my spoon? He smiled and greeted me like an old friend! I took the spoon from my pocket. He whipped out his sharpie and wrote: “Billy Mills Olympic 10 K Gold.”
The event made front page news! There we were above the fold! A blurry black and white image of me with Billy Mills and the remarkable plastic spoon!
Years later he would visit the Bugonaygeshig School and run with students and staff. My daughter Annie was working there at that time. They were both former marines and ran together. After a few minutes she asked if he remembered her mother and the plastic spoon. He stopped in his tracks and gasped, “That woman is your mother?”
Mills, also known as Makata Taka Hela, lives in Fair Oaks, California, but still travels for his non-profit agency as an inspirational speaker.
I met him again when I attended a wellness conference for seniors at the Black Bear Casino Hotel (June 2010). Marlene Stately and I were sharing room 339. When I saw Billy Mills eating alone in the dining room, I dragged Marlene to his booth and introduced us.
He was so gracious! He pretended to remember me but was actually quite baffled until I mentioned my Marine daughter and the plastic spoon. Then he offered us a hearty smile and invited us to sit with him.
We sat with him for about 30 minutes and we spoke of many things. It was exciting to hear this famous man speaking with passion about helping his fellow Native Americans.
He likes to quote his father: “Follow your dreams. Every dream has a passion. Every passion has its destiny.”
His father also told him, “Know yourself and find your desire.” With desire comes self-motivation. Then comes work. With work comes success.
He ran a 5k fun run on New Year’s Eve about three years ago. Not only his daughters but his wife beat him! He saw them waiting for him to come in. I’m sure he thought about his glory days.
When had he become an old man with bad knees?
Let me leave you with more encouraging words from my hero, Billy Mills:
“God has given me the ability. The rest is up to me. Believe. Believe. Believe.”
“My life is a gift from my Creator. What I do with my life is my gift back to Creator.”
“What I took from the Olympic Games was not winning an Olympic gold medal but an understanding of global unity through dignity of character and pride of global diversity. And global unity through global diversity is also the future of mankind.”
“The ultimate is not to win, but to reach within the depths of your capabilities and to compete against yourself to the greatest extent possible. When you do that, you have dignity. You have the pride. You can walk about with character and pride no matter in what place you happen to finish.”
* – 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 several previous posts at Outside the Walls. You can read them all here.
A personal story about Red Lake, experienced in August, 1988, can also be found here.

#1046 – Dick Bernard: 50 years ago today. A personal memory. Remembering a death.

July 24, 2015/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, Health, History, Minnesota, Peace & Justice, Quietings /by dickbernard

(click to enlarge all photos)

At the Busch farm, August 1964. Barbara at right, Dick next to her. Grandma and Grandpa Busch at left.

Yesterday afternoon, enroute to a meeting, I stopped to take a couple of photos:

3315 University Avenue SE, Minneapolis MN July 23, 2015

University of Minnesota Hospital, Minneapolis, July 23, 2015

Fifty years ago today I lived in a rented upstairs room in this house, just a block from KSTP-TV; and my wife, Barbara, was in the University Hospital less than two miles away, my memory says on 8th floor, in intensive care, .
It had been a very long two months since we arrived in Minneapolis in late May, when Barbara was admitted for a hoped for kidney transplant, her only remaining option to live.
This particular Saturday morning, 50 years ago today, she had fallen into a coma, and at 10:50 p.m. she died. The previous day there had been a brief rally, not uncommon for those critically ill.
Among the whisps of memory was my going to the Western Union office in downtown Minneapolis after she died, sending a telegram to relatives.
Communications was not instant, then. Mine was a very succinct message.
While death is never expected, particularly in one only 22 years old, there really was little hope left: three major operations in two months, no kidney transplant.
July 25, alone, I drove west to Valley City, North Dakota, where the funeral was held on July 29.
In a family history I wrote for our son on his 18th birthday in 1982 I remembered the day of the funeral this way: August 1965001
It was a very lonely time, I have never been able to recall many specifics of particularly the first month after her burial, but life went on for 1 1/2 year old son Tom and I.
It was very early in my life too – I was 25 – and I grew up in a hurry. It has informed my life and my attitudes ever since.
I became very aware of how important and how broad “community” is in society.
There were, out there, among family, friends and many others, people who in diverse ways helped us get through the very hard times. By quirk of fate, the funeral was one day before President Lyndon Johnson signed into federal Law the Medicare Act, societies immense gift to the elderly of this country, one of whom is now me. Here’s Grandpa Busch’s first Medicare card, dated July 1, 1966: Medicare card 1966001
Today in our country we debate whether or not everyone should have a right to medical insurance; whether it is a responsibility of the individual, or of society at large.
Medicare was debated then, too.
It was not on Barbara’s or my radar screen. Debate is a luxury when survival is the only issue.
Our married life was very short, only two years, and almost 100% of the time distracted by the progression of a finally fatal illness. We never really got to know what a “normal” marriage might have looked like.
I think we would have done well together, but that is sheer speculation. The inevitable tensions of a normal marriage were something we were never able to experience.
Three weeks ago I made a visit to Barbara’s grave in Valley City. It is in St. Catherine’s Cemetery, high on a hill just east of town.

June 29, 2015, Valley City ND St Catherine’s Cemetery

St. Catherines Cemetery, Valley City ND June 29, 2015

Yesterday I went briefly into the University Hospital, including up to the eighth floor, which is now used for other purposes than 50 years ago.
In the lobby area I lingered for a moment by a plaque recognizing the founding of University Hospital in 1916, near 100 years ago.

University of Minnesota Hospital, July 23, 2015

Elsewhere, in the medical wing of University Hospital, doubtless were patients for whom yesterday was, or today will be, the last day of their lives.
It is the single immutable fact that we all face: at some point we will exit the stage we call “life”.
Take time to enjoy the trip. The Station001
My public thanks, today, to everyone who helped Tom and I, in any way, back then in 1965, before and after, especially the public welfare system and public and private hospitals.

#1043 – Dick Bernard: Going to Peace. A Reflection on Detente with Iran.

July 16, 2015/0 Comments/in Family History, History, International Relations, Minnesota, North Dakota, Peace & Justice, War /by dickbernard

POSTNOTE, July 18: see “The Women in the Yard. Looking for Clara”, here.
Going through old papers and photos of a deceased relative can be tedious, but occasionally something pops up, as did this photo a few days ago.
(click to enlarge)

A farm family, the summer of 1943

While not of my town, or my family tree either, I have some knowledge of this farm family in the summer of 1943. Sr. Victorine, of the Sisters of St. Joseph of Carondolet in St. Paul, was a good friend in her last years. She passed on in October, 2010.
I never knew that her brother was Francis, at right in this family photo taken in the summer, 1943, in rural ND. (The entire family is in the photo, save their mother, Clara, who was probably taking the picture. On the back of the picture are written the names of the Charles Long family. From left, as identified by a family member, they are: Leonard, Clem, Marcella, Charles, Sr. Victorine, John and Francis Long.)
The 1976 town history (Berlin ND) says that Francis was “Killed in Saipan, July 2, 1944“. A short article from, likely, the Fargo Forum, says that Francis dropped out of high school to go in the service. In the Berlin history, he is listed as “deceased” in the class of 1943.
A letter from my Grandma Rosa to her son, my uncle Lt. George W. Busch, officer on the USS Woodworth in the Pacific, dated August 20, 1944, sums it all up well: “[W]e had a Memorial Mass for Francis Long killed July 2 on Saipan in action Sister Victorine was here to come to visit us on Fri afternoon is done with school now has one test to take then she has her Masters Degree in Science she did very well looks so good too but all felt so badly….”
So goes war, willing heroes, full of all of the brash confidence and invulnerability of youth. Francis was probably 19, just starting life, when he died.
I think of Francis and family this day because this week a major agreement was reached between U.S. and Iran negotiators.
The media is full of commentary about this agreement, and people who stop by this blog can find far more than adequate information in other sources, on all sides about the technical details, and dead-certain positions and opinions about it.
President Obama framed this pretty well, yesterday: “Either the issue of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon is resolved diplomatically through a negotiation or it’s resolved through force through war.”
Either we figure out how to get along, or there will be more and more people with names who perish, and not only ours.
This won’t stop the drumbeaters for War, for unconditional surrender of the Enemy, whoever that happens to be at the time.
Peace is a very hard sell in this country.
Peace is, I think I can fairly say, considered by the traditional Power People in our country to be an instrument of terrorism…It threatens their prosperity or their authority.
For the media (and the people who watch or read it) Peace is boring as a generator of revenue (just watch your local and national news and see what is prioritized for coverage.)
Peace is costly – a competitor – for the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower so correctly identified as a big and looming problem way back in 1961.
For others, an enemy is absolutely essential to retain power and control. It is useful to keep people in fear, and portray yourself as the only safety buffer between “us and them”.
Eisenhower was as military as they come…he knew, however, a reality to which we’ve paid too little attention.
My friend, Tom White, who spent a great deal of time for many years establishing accurate numbers concerning military and other costs in this country always estimated that over half of the U.S. discretionary budget related to military.
He’s out of the card business now, but the general information on his last one is still pretty accurate.
All that military money goes somewhere, and the vast majority not for the peace and general welfare of our or other citizens.
We live or we die by our priorities.
Francis and millions of others have died defending the premise that war is necessary for peace.
*
A postnote from the present:
I’ve been a member of the American Legion for years. I’m a vet. The Minnesota American Legion seems to enroll perhaps 1 1/2% of Minnesota’s population. It is a small, and decreasing in membership (old soldiers do die), but still a powerful entity.
In the most recent American Legion newspaper, announcement was made of the 2015 Minnesota American Legion Convention, including the Resolutions it would be considering, among which was this one.
(click to enlarge)

Are our (America’s) priorities:
“Constitution
Military Power
Faith
and
Capitalism”
as stated in the Resolution?
The drafter of the resolution seems to think so, and I can predict that this resolution will sail through. Look carefully at the four pillars of the resolution.
If we choose survival, we choose peace: that is my opinion.
And I thank the administration of President Obama for forcing us to begin this conversation, since an alternative to his forced choice is a third way, which he did not mention: to stay the course of our dismal reality of fear of anything and everything but war.