North Dakota – Page 5 – Thoughts Towards a Better World

#964 – Dick Bernard: Thanksgiving? The implications of Ferguson MO

December 1, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, Guns, Nature, North Dakota, Technology, War /by dickbernard

This will be one of a series which all begin “Thanksgiving?”
Thanksgiving for me was at a nursing home in North Dakota, with my last remaining relative from my Mom or Dad’s generation – her brother. His health is such that he’s confined to a wheelchair and is on oxygen, and while he is very sharp mentally, in relative terms, he’s in the Peace Garden Suite – the place where people with Alzheimers and the like live. He has no short term memory to speak of.
Lately, joining him in his unit have been an attorney with a long history and strong positive reputation in the town; and another man, an excellent musician, who until recent months was living in the Assisted Living portion of the Nursing Home complex.
Such is life for all of us. Here today, then gone. We can pretend that we’ll beat death, but however we beat the odds, some day it certainly will catch up to us, as it has, already, with one-fourth of my cousins.
But that isn’t what has me up at 4 in the morning on this day.
More, I’m thinking about the national insanity facing us: the aftermath of Ferguson MO.
Ferguson MO is todays Selma, Alabama, 1965, and I wonder what we’ll do about it, as a society.
None of us are expert on this case, certainly not I.
But enroute home from North Dakota last Friday I kept thinking of the “Un-indicted Co-conspirators” in the case. There were three of them, to my way of thinking: Michael Brown, teenager, unarmed, who’ll never be able to speak for himself, dead on a Ferguson street in August; and Darren Wilson, police officer, who killed the teenager, also un-indicted, with the opportunity to prepare a perfect case before a Grand Jury. He could tell his story to the world.
Michael Brown can’t.
Just before Thanksgiving, in my Nov. 25 post, I described what possibly was going on with Michael Brown that day in August, 2014: “stupid kid action”.
This wasn’t about what happened in the street – we’ll never know for sure about that; rather about the snip of convenience store video and the cigarillos. There are only conflicting witness accounts of what happened in the street. Wilson had plenty of opportunity to defend himself, but Brown never had that chance, dead with six bullets striking him.
I’ve known plenty of “stupid kid” situations in my life. Any of us who are honest would admit to our own “stupid kid” actions in our own pasts. Somehow we lived past them; stuff we didn’t tell our parents about…that, likely, they don’t want to know.
Overnight I thought of one scenario similar to the street scene in Ferguson MO. It involved one Byron Smith in Little Falls MN, who shot and killed two local teenagers who were up to no-good in his home; in fact, they had a history. All of the actors in the Little Falls scenario were white, and Smith was indicted, tried and convicted, and is now serving a life sentence.
Above, I mention three un-indicted co-conspirators.
The third: the sacred Gun*, most always the accessory to the crime of killing someone in our society.
I struggle with how to personally stay engaged with both of the issues Ferguson again identifies: active racism in our society; and insane reverence for the Gun.
Without the Gun placed in action by Officer Wilson, no one would have been dead, and “Ferguson” would not now be a household name.
This is far beyond a simple Second Amendment issue (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”)
We have embraced violence by weapons in this country. We are the lesser for this.
* POSTNOTE: This is no anti-gun rant. If somebody likes to hunt, the gun has its place. The Uncle referred to above still has six common weapons, safely stored. They were valued by him – very much a part of his life on the farm, always for hunting.
I brought along several albums Vince had kept over the years, and he became particularly animate about three photos like the following:
(click to enlarge)

Vincent and Art with the catch of Jackrabbits sometime in 1941-42. At the time, jackrabbits were numerous and a nuisance. He had similar photos with skunk, and ducks, etc.

Guns had their place in the rural areas. Not like today, when the right to kill another human in supposed self-defense is viewed as almost a sacred right by some.

#963 – Dick Bernard: The First Sunday of Advent, 2014

November 30, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, History, Minnesota, North Dakota, Peace & Justice, Quietings /by dickbernard

Today, at least for Roman Catholics, is the First Sunday of Advent. It will be noticed today at my Church, Basilica of St. Mary, Minneapolis.
As with most everything in our diverse society, there are many definitions of the meaning of this liturgical season, the four Sundays between now and Christmas Day, December 25. Here’s “Advent” as found in google entries.
I happen to be Catholic, actually quite active, I’d say. This would make me a subset of a subset of the American population.
In all ways, the U.S. is a diverse country. The Statistical Abstract of the United States, published by the Census Bureau, says about 80% of adult Americans describe themselves as “Christian”; 25% of this same population says they’re “Catholic”. (The data is here.)
Of course, if you’re a “boots on the ground” person, as I am, raw data like the above pretty quickly devolves. As the most appropriate mantra at Basilica of St. Mary in Minneapolis (my church) is stated every Sunday: “welcome, wherever you are on your faith journey….” The people in the pews know the truth of this phrase, and know that on every given Sunday, two-thirds of them are not even in the pews.
Regardless of specific belief, the vast majority of us, everywhere, are good people*.
I’m drawn to this topic a bit more than usual this weekend since I just returned from a visit to my last surviving Uncle, Vince, winding down his long life in a wonderful nursing home in a small North Dakota town.
Thanksgiving Day I decided to bring to him, for hanging in his room, the below holy family** (which had not yet been hung, and appears sideways, as it appeared in his room, prior to hanging.)
(click to enlarge)

Nov. 27, 2014

For many years this image hung in the family farm home, and Vince seemed glad to see it come to visit. I asked him how old it was, and he said it was his mothers (my grandmothers) favorite, and it was probably older than he, in other words pre-dating 1925.
When next I visit, I hope to see it hanging on the wall he faces each day, and as such things go, it will likely bring back memories, and perhaps other emotions as well. Images tend to do this.
Of course, even in the religious milieu, an event like Advent is complicated. It is observed (including not being observed at all) in various ways even by people within the Catholic Church. A constructive observance, in my opinion, is to attempt to use the next 25 days to daily reflect on something or other in my own life. A nominally Catholic but mostly inspirational book of Daily Reflections given to me years ago by my friend Les Corey comes immediately to mind**; and very likely I can “tie in” Uncle Vince through letters this month. (It helps me to make a public declaration of intention on these things – a little more likely that I’ll follow through!)
Of course, there is, always, lots of side-chatter in this country at this season: “Black Friday” rolled out two days ago. We are a financial “bottom line” nation, I guess. Profits trump most anything else.
But, be that as it may, perhaps my essential message is that the next few weeks can be helpful simply for quieting ones-self and reflecting on a more simple way of being, such as greeted that icon when it was first hung in that simple North Dakota farm home perhaps even more than 100 years ago.
Have a good Advent.
* – A few hours ago, we experienced a good positive start to Advent. After a party for three of our grandkids who have November birthdays, we all went to a Minnesota based project called Feed My Starving Children where, along with 115 others adults and children, we filled food packets whose ultimate destination is Liberia. It was our first time participating with this activity, and it was a very positive activity. Hard work, but a great family activity. Check it, or something similar, out. Special thanks to one of the birthday kids, 8-year old Lucy, who apparently suggested the activity.

Nov. 29, 2014, Addy, Lucy, Kelly

** – Of course, I don’t know the exact origin of the print which so captured Grandma. Almost certainly the real holy family of Bible days was not European white, as I am, and she was; rather, most likely, middle eastern in ethnicity and appearance.
*** – The book I’ve dusted off for the next weeks: All Saints, Daily Reflections on Saints, Prophets, and Witnesses for our Time by Robert Ellsberg.

#948 – Dick Bernard: North Dakota's 125th Birthday; remembering a farm as part of that history

November 2, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, History, North Dakota, Quietings /by dickbernard

Today, November 2, 2014, is the 125th anniversary of the admission of the State of North Dakota to the United States of America.
I previously wrote about the history of this event, and the relation of my Grandparents Busch farm to that history on October 1. You can read that here, with numerous links.
The genesis for todays post came early Friday morning, in the hall between the North Dakota Nursing Home where my Uncle lives; and the Assisted Living facility where he lived until a year ago. I was walking down this hall and saw this photograph on the wall. I had seen it before, but this time it spoke to me in a new and deeper way. It was my Uncles farm, and he is the last of nine members of the family who called it home. I “borrowed” the photo and brought it home so I could scan it for posterity. The photo was taken, I learned, in the winter of 1992, hung in the hallway by someone I don’t know. Below is a marked version of it.
(click to enlarge)

The Busch farm, Henrietta Township ND, winter of 1992.

Every one of us have our own stories about places familiar to us. Recently I had occasion to revisit Eric Sevaried’s 1956 classic story in Colliers magazine: “You can go home again”, about the always real and imaginary relationship between place, our past and the present.
For Eric Sevaried, the place of his childhood was Velva ND. We lived in Karlsruhe, not far from Velva, in 1951-53, just three years before he came home again.
Memories.
Then there’s the Busch farm, above pictured:
Grandma and Grandpa Busch, Rosa Berning and Ferdinand Busch, ages 21 and 25, came to the little knoll, the farmstead for their little piece of heaven, as winter ended in 1905. North Dakota was bustling, not yet a teenager, 15 years old. Like a teen, it was growing fast, full of dreams and dilemmas, perhaps like todays western ND oil patch. The future was not yet known, the good times or the very bad, like the death of a child on the farm; or the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Theirs was virgin land, and the new house they soon built overlooked their surrounding acres. There was nary a tree in sight, in any direction.
To the northeast (upper right on the photo), about four miles distance down the hill in the James River Valley lay the older town of Grand Rapids. Within eyeshot, less than five miles to the southwest, was what would soon officially be the town of Berlin.
Grandpa’s Dad, my great-grandfather Wilhelm Busch, had purchased the farm for his son from the owner of the property, the father of later U.S. Senator Milton R. Young. Most likely they were steered to this land by Grandpa’s uncle, B. H. Busch of Dubuque, a budding successful land entrepreneur. They would be followed by other Buschs and Bernings, as Leonard, Lena, Christina, August. August and Christina Berning took up the neighboring farm to the SE about a year later, and farmed there for many years. Leonard and his wife came to Adrian for a few years; Lena married Art Parker, and before they returned to Dubuque, they were early caretakers at the Grand Rapids Park, the first residents of what we all know as the caretakers house.
The Busch house (marked “A” on the photo), initially was simply the standard two story prairie box. The kitchen was initially detached from the house on the west side; later added to the east side of the house; later an addition was built on the west side. In this house were born nine children; all but one lived to adulthood there. Rural telephone service came to this house in 1912, about the time Verena, the third child, was born in 1912. Ferdinand was right in the thick of things with Lakeview rural telephone from the beginning; Vincent did lots of work on rural telephone issues. Verena died of illness at 15, in 1927.
The Buschs, along with many others in the area, founded St. Johns Catholic Church in Berlin in 1915.
Vincent and Edith, brother and sister, never married, born 1925 and 1920 respectively, both lived on the farm until health issues led to a move to town in 2006.
Grandpa died in the old farm house, in 1967. Grandma was said to be the first person to die in what is now St. Rose Care Center in August, 1972. The torch was passed.
Another original building, which still survives at the farmstead, barely, is the granary labeled as “C” on the photo. The first barn was approximately at the letter “D”; another building, which I knew as the chicken coop, was later replaced by the metal shed labeled “G”. A new barn was built at “E” in 1916 for some unrecounted reason. In 1949, the roof blew off this barn and was replaced by the new hand-made roof, which the local Catholic Priest, Fr. Duda, himself an expert carpenter, declared wouldn’t last. That roof is what presently keeps the barn below it from collapsing. Early on, my Dad participated in the reconstruction; Uncle Vince did a huge amount of the work, including the shingling.
In 1957, Grandpa bought the old depot in Berlin and moved the freight house and the depot agents portion of the depot to the farm. They are F1 and F2 on the photo. F2 collapsed about 2006. F1 is at the end of its life.
In 1992, Vincent bought a new house, “B”, which they planted on what all of us descendants knew as the front lawn, a few feet from the old house, which remained there until we took it down in 2000. Most every gathering at the farm ended with a group picture on the same portion of lawn which is now occupied by the new house, presently being renovated.
There has been, now, 109 years of life on this farmstead, though at the moment no one lives on the property (soon to change). The farm is no more or less typical than any farm or town neighborhood anywhere. It is a place full of tradition and memory, especially for this grandson of the place.
There are endless memories in these few acres, as there are in every farmstead; in every block, in every town and city, everywhere.
There was Grandpa’s hired man, way back, who likely slept in the granary. One year, he didn’t come back, killed in WWI. George Busch was a naval officer in WWII; youngest brother Art, went in the Army at the end of the War; Vince stayed home to do the necessary farming. Music was a constant in the house, and probably elsewhere, all “homemade” music, sung and played by the inhabitants….

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.

What are your memories, about your places?
Happy Birthday, North Dakota.
More about the Busch farm here.

#944 – Dick Bernard: Rightsizing.

October 18, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Environment, Family History, Minnesota, Nature, North Dakota /by dickbernard

This past week was a phenomenal early fall day in our area, easily matching the postcard vistas featured for Maine on the evening news. A couple of days ago, I took this snapshot along my walking route: just some brush along the shore of a storm drainage pond. Whatever the source, it’s a nice pic, and I invite you to click on it to enlarge.
(click to enlarge all photos)

October 16, 2014, Woodbury MN

The photo doesn’t match at all the title of this post, nor the content to follow, except that this kind of scene would have been seen by my parents and grandparents and all generations before in their times in this part of the world. The only difference is that we can now take photographs of them, and even amateurs like myself can do an okay job with our equipment (mine a Samsung).
This post was, rather, spurred on by a headline I saw in the Business section of the Wednesday Minneapolis Star Tribune: “Earlier Black Friday spreading” (Oct 15, 2014). Shortly, the “Christmas” music will become a constant at my coffee shop, and the “shop till you drop” drumbeat will begin, to buy more than you need, with money you may not have, to give to someone who may not want the gift given. I suspect there are plenty who will be just as happy when this “joyous” season passes, as will be the merchants…and churches…for whom this two months or so is a major generator of money in the till.
There is no “Christ in Christmas” here in our country, at least not publicly, or it has to wrestle in to get any genuine attention.
This summer I’ve had much more than a normal opportunity to reflect on how material goods diminish in value (and interest) as the twilight of life comes.
We’ve spent the summer dealing with the treasures of a 109 year old farm in North Dakota, where everything had a use, or future use. My Uncle and Aunt kept everything.
Leaving aside assorted large goods, like an old farmers dining room table, the first cut of the treasures in the house and farmyard occupies a small portion of storage. There are really valuable things to me, an historian, like photos and books, but the essence of the residue shows in this picture from inside my garage, taken this week.

October 16, 2014

I do not worry about these boxes being stolen. A self-respecting thief might ask “why did they keep THAT?” But I certainly won’t fault my Aunt and Uncle. They were being prudent stewards of what they were given, even if most of it had no earthly use for them, or anyone who follows.
I retired fourteen years ago, and in the same year moved from one suburb to another.
When I left my last work career of 27 years, I took home two boxes. The one I use quite often is pictured below. The second I’ve never opened and thus should be sent for recycling.
The ten years of living in a condo yields this box of “knick knacks” (also pictured). It hasn’t been opened since I moved, and likely won’t be until someone goes through my stuff and asks “why in the world did he keep THAT?
I could show my Dad’s two boxes, same story.
You get the point, I think.
Why not give more attention to downsizing, than getting more and more? Profits are okay, but there can be other priorities as well.

Oct 10, 2014

October 10, 2014, in a suburban garage.

October 10, 2014, Woodbury MN

#940 – Dick Bernard: The 125th Birthday of North Dakota

October 1, 2014/0 Comments/in Family History, Minnesota, North Dakota, Politics /by dickbernard

NOTE TO SUBSCRIBERS: An earlier version of this post has been updated below,including more content, links and photographs. This post was picked up by Twin Cities on-line newspaper MinnPost on Oct. 1, and can be read here.
After publishing this blog, I received a note from the coordinator for North Dakota Studies at the State Historical Society of ND. Neil Howe noted “We provide print and online resources to teach North Dakota history, geography, and citizenship in the schools of ND. You may know that teaching North Dakota Studies in ND is required at grades 4, 8, and high school. We are one of only a few states with this requirement — and we take pride in that.
You may want to visit the North Dakota Studies website here. I think you may find lots of interesting information about ND.”
*
November 2, 2014, is the 125th birthday of North Dakota – the 32nd state of the U.S. Today, October 1, 2014, is the 125th anniversary of the day North Dakotans ratified their new Constitution in 1889.
Happy Birthday!
(click to enlarge all photos)

North Dakota State Capitol as pictured in 1911 North Dakota Blue Book.

North Dakota is my home state. Many North Dakota towns and cities have earlier celebrated their 125th. Sykeston, where I graduated from high school in 1958, celebrated its 125th in 2008.
Some serendipity happenings cause me to give focus, this day, to the original Constitution of the State of North Dakota. (History of the North Dakota State Capitol buildings can be read here. The original building was built in 1883-84, burned down in 1930, and was replaced by the present skyscraper of the prairie in 1934.)
Most of the text and illustrations which follow come from the 1911 Blue Book of North Dakota, which I found this summer amongst the belongings at the LaMoure County farm where my mother grew up. In the books illustrations (below) you see evidence of pencil scrigglings. Most likely, they were made by my then-two year old mother, Esther: she was born in 1909, and by the time this book was at the farm home, she was probably at the age where a pencil and paper had some relationship together. (The final picture, at the end of this post, is of the first page of the book. Likely an Esther Busch original!)
(click to enlarge)

The cover of the “red, white and blue” Blue Book of North Dakota, 1911

The official story of the history of North Dakota, as told in 77 pages of the text of the 1911 ND Blue Book is accessible as follows:
1. The 1889 Federal Enabling Act leading the Constitution is here: ND Enabling Act 1889001 (13 pages)
2. The text of the 1889 Constitution of North Dakota is here: ND Constitution 1889002. (57 pages) At page xxviii is the vote by county for and against the Constitution.
(North Dakota’s Constitution, when completed, was over 200 handwritten pages, a fact I didn’t know till I was trying to locate a copy of it.)
3. The summary history of the state and Dakota Territory, its predecessor: ND TerrHist writ 1911 002 (7 pages) [See note at end of this blog].
North Dakota’s history, like all places, then to now, is complex.
For anyone interested there are a great many sources and observations interpreting North Dakota’s early history and the torturous course of its Constitution pre and post 1911. Between statehood in 1889 and 1911, when this book was published, there had been great changes in ND, with extremely rapid growth. It was doubtless an exciting time on the prairie; a time of transition.
Elwyn Robinson, author of the definitive history of North Dakota, gives this description of the beginnings of the ND Constitution Convention in 1889: ND Constit – Robinson001.
Complex as it was, it seems that the ND process was very civilized compared with the earlier Constitution deliberations leading to Minnesota statehood in 1858. Secretary of State Mark Ritchie, in the 2009 Minnesota Blue Book, has this account of the Minnesota Constitution Convention: MN Constitution Hist001
Of course Constitution history does not end with enactment. Re North Dakota, Dr. Jerome Tweton much later wrote an interesting commentary on a later effort to redo the oft amended original Constitution of North Dakota.
The rest of us.
Of course, such recountings as shared above, tend to overlook the ordinary human element – people like ourselves. The recounting is of power transactions, in the old days, virtually all made by educated white men, setting the ground rules for the society in which they lived.
In 1910, North Dakota had 577,000 or so population (today, approximately 700,000). That would mean 577,000 individual stories.
Here, very briefly, are snippets of four human stories, those of my grandparents.
The person who acquired and then saved the 1911 Blue Book was my grandfather Ferdinand W. Busch.
He and his wife, Grandma Rosa (Berning), came to the pioneer farm between Berlin and Grand Rapids from extreme southwest Wisconsin (a few miles from Dubuque IA). They married Feb. 28, 1905, and the next month came west to virgin prairie.
Grandpa Fred Busch seems always to have had an active interest in politics, and it is probably thanks to him that I now have this precious old book. (Rosa would have little of this political stuff: there were mouths to feed, after all. When Grandpa ran unsucessfully for County Auditor in 1924, my Aunt Mary once said, Grandma, now with the franchise, campaigned against him!)
Their farm was purchased from the father of Milton R. Young, long time ND U.S. Senator. Fred knew Milton well, personally. They are buried, literally, across the road from each other just outside of Berlin. My mother worked at one point for Milton and his wife at their farm on the edge of Berlin.
Fred became a Non-Partisan League advocate, and later in life especially liked Sen. Bill Langer.
Dad’s side of my family preceded ND statehood.
My grandmother Bernard, then Josephine Collette, was born eight years before statehood at St. Andrews, where the Park and Red Rivers come together in Walsh County ND. Her parents came to ND in 1878; several uncles and Aunts came west about the same time, just before the great land rush.
Her uncle, Samuel Collette, who migrated to the St. Paul MN area from Quebec in 1857, was the first family member to see North Dakota. He was part of the Minnesota Mounted Rangers in 1862-63, a soldier in the so-called Indian War, and likely was with that unit in 1863 when it reached what later became Bismarck. This was a few years before Interstate 94.
I don’t recall much talk of politics by Grandma or Grandpa, though I think Grandma had a Collette Cousin who was a ND State Senator for a long while.
In the reverential description of the ND flag in the book (see below), I found most interesting the many references to the Spanish-American War in the Philippines 1898-99.
Grandpa Busch, Mom’s Dad, would not, in 1911, have had any idea that his future brother-in-law, my Grandpa Bernard, Dad’s Dad, who came to Grafton from Quebec about 1894, was in at the beginning of that long war, spending an entire year in the Philippines, part of Co C, Grafton.
Where that ND flag was, there was Grandpa Bernard.
I have visited Manila, Pagsanjan and Paete, all mentioned in that description.
North Dakota was one of the earliest enrollees to support that war in the spring of 1898. Of course, the “Roughrider”, Teddy Roosevelt, had spent two important years in ND in the mid 1880s, living in the Badlands not far from todays Medora. In a way, by 1898, Theodore Roosevelt had become a North Dakotan.
Without knowing it, the two ND families were already “tied” together.
(Another book found at the Busch farm is one about the Spanish-American War written at the time of the war in the grandiose style of the time.)
Every family has their own stories. These are only five small snips.
And every state has its symbols.
Here are the 1911 descriptors of the Wild Prairie Rose, North Dakotas State Flower, and the North Dakota Flag: ND Flower Flag 1911 002. These are the only state symbols within the book.
There is no descriptor of the North Dakota Seal in the 1911 book. Here is a more current interpretation of that Seal.
(click to enlarge)

ND Flag, as presented in the 1911 North Dakota Blue Book. Scribbles likely compliments of then 2-year old Esther Busch.

ND State Flower, the prairie Wild Rose, as presented in 1911 ND Blue Book

Great Seal of North Dakota in 1911 ND Blue Book. Scribbles likely contributed by then 2-year old Esther Busch of Henrietta Township, rural Berlin ND.

Likely artiste, Esther Busch, in the 1911 North Dakota Blue Book.

Happy Birthday, North Dakota!
POSTNOTE: Esther Busch went on to Henrietta Township School #1 near Berlin ND, thence to St. John’s Academy in Jamestown, thence Valley City State Normal School. She became a North Dakota Public School elementary school teacher in the late 1920s, met her future husband Henry Bernard at Valley City State Normal School, and together they taught a total of 71 years in North Dakota Public Schools.
re ND TerrHist link (#3 above): At page four of the link you’ll find the population of ND by decades until 1910. Succinctly, the population grew by 75% from 1890 to 1900, thence 80% from 1900 to 1910 to a 1910 population of 577,000.
That more or less remained the population of North Dakota until the recent oil boom.
They say ND is now about 700,000; In the 1960 census, when I was a junior at Valley City State Teachers College, ND population was about 630,000. When I did the Busch family history some years ago I looked up the population of Berlin, which was platted in 1903 and incorporated in 1906. Berlins highest population ever was in 1910, 137 people. It was all downhill from there. The current population of Berlin, ND is about 35. Here’s how it looked about 1910: Berlin ND early pre-1910001
A small photo album.
click on all photos to enlarge them

Ferd and Rosa Busch with first child, Lucina, in yard of their farm home likely Fall 1907

Josephine, Henry, Henry Jr and Josephine Bernard, Grafton ND 1908

Esther and Lucina Busch, rural Berlin/Grand Rapids ND 1910

Henry Bernard (top left) and Josephine’s cousin Alfred Collette (lower right) ready to embark for Philippines from Presidio San Francisco summer 1898.

(If you enlarge Alfred Collette’s head (lower right) you can see that his hat is emblazoned with 1st North Dakota text.)

North Dakota State Capitol June 1958 photos by Henry Bernard.

#937 – Dick Bernard: A Look Back at the History of the State of North Dakota as it approaches its 125th birthday.

September 17, 2014/0 Comments/in Family History, History, North Dakota, Politics /by dickbernard

Today, September 17, is Constitution Day in the United States. This year the U.S. is 227 years young.
Happy Birthday!
Some serendipity happenings cause me to give focus, this day, to the original Constitution of the State of North Dakota.
North Dakota is my home state.
This year, November 2, is the 125th birthday of North Dakota – the 32nd state of the U.S. (South Dakota is 33rd). Elwyn Robinson, author of the definitive history of North Dakota, gives this description of the beginnings of the ND Constitution Convention in 1889: ND Constit – Robinson001.
Most of the text and illustrations which follow come from the 1911 Blue Book of North Dakota, which I found this summer amongst the belongings at the LaMoure County farm where my mother grew up. Her parents came to that farm from extreme southwest Wisconsin (near Dubuque IA) in March of 1905. Her Dad, my Grandpa Fred Busch, seems always to have been interested in politics, and it is probably thanks to him that I now have this old book. In the books illustrations (below) you see evidence of pencil scrigglings. Most likely, they were made by my then-two year old mother, Esther: she was born in 1909, and by the time this book was at the farm home, she was probably at the age where a pencil and paper had some relationship together. (The final picture, at the end of this post, is of the first page of the book. Likely an Esther Busch original!)
(click to enlarge)

The cover of the “red, white and blue” Blue Book of North Dakota, 1911

North Dakota’s history, like all places, then to now,is a very complicated one. For anyone interested there are a great many sources and observations interpreting North Dakota’s early history and the torturous course of its Constitution pre and post 1911. Between statehood in 1889 and 1911, when this book was published, there had been great changes in ND, with extremely rapid growth. It was doubtless an exciting time on the prairie; a time of transition. The history as recorded in the book is as known and accepted as fact in 1911.
Here is the 1889 Constitution of North Dakota as reprinted in the 1911 Blue Book: ND Constitution 1889001
Dr. Jerome Tweton much later wrote an interesting commentary on a later effort to redo the oft amended original Constitution.
Here is the summary history of the state and Dakota Territory, its predecessor, as written in the same book: ND TerrHist writ 1911 002 [See note at end of this blog].
Dad’s side of my family preceded ND statehood.
My grandmother Bernard, then Josephine Collette, was born eight years before statehood at St. Andrews, where the Park and Red Rivers come together in Walsh County ND. Her parents came to ND in 1878; several uncles and Aunts came west about the same time.
Her uncle, Samuel Collette, who migrated to the St. Paul MN area from Quebec in 1857, was the first family member to see North Dakota. He was part of the Minnesota Mounted Rangers in 1862-63, a soldier in the so-called Indian War, and likely was with that unit in 1863 when it reached what later became Bismarck. This was a bit before Interstate 94.
Every state has its symbols.
Here are the 1911 descriptors of the Wild Prairie Rose, the State Flower, and the North Dakota Flag: ND Flower Flag 1911 002. These are the only state symbols within the book.
There is no descriptor of the North Dakota Seal in the 1911 book. Here is a more current interpretation of that Seal.
I found most interesting, in the reverential description of the ND flag, the many references to the Spanish-American War in the Philippines 1898-99. My Grandpa Busch, Mom’s Dad, would not, in 1911, have had any idea that his future brother-in-law, my Grandpa Bernard, Dad’s Dad, who came to Grafton from Quebec about 1894, was in that war, spending that entire year in the Philippines, part of Co C, Grafton. Where that ND flag was, there was Grandpa Bernard. I have visited Manila, Pagsanjan and Paete, all mentioned in that description.
Without knowing it, the two ND families were already “tied” together. (Another book found at the Busch farm is one about the Spanish-American War written at the time of the war in the grandiose style of the time.)
North Dakota was one of the earliest enrollees in Theodore Roosevelt’s Spanish-American War, spring of 1898. Of course, the “Roughrider”, Teddy Roosevelt, had spent two important years in ND in the mid 1880s, living in the Badlands not far from todays Medora. In a way, by 1898, Theodore Roosevelt had become a North Dakotan.
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ND Flag, as presented in the 1911 North Dakota Blue Book. Scribbles likely compliments of then 2-year old Esther Busch.

ND State Flower, the prairie Wild Rose, as presented in 1911 ND Blue Book

Great Seal of North Dakota in 1911 ND Blue Book. Scribbles likely contributed by then 2-year old Esther Busch of Henrietta Township, rural Berlin ND.

Likely artiste, Esther Busch, in the 1911 North Dakota Blue Book.

Esther Busch went on to Henrietta Township School #1 near Berlin ND, thence to St. John’s Academy in Jamestown, thence Valley City State Normal School. She became a North Dakota Public School elementary school teacher in the late 1920s, met her future husband Henry Bernard at Valley City State Normal School, and together they taught a total of 71 years in North Dakota Public Schools.
Happy Birthday, North Dakota!
re ND TerrHist link above: At page four of the link you’ll find the population of ND by decades until 1910. Succinctly, the population grew by 75% from 1890 to 1900, thence 80% from 1900 to 1910 to a 1910 population of 577,000.
That more or less remained the population of North Dakota until the recent oil boom.
They say ND is now about 700,000; In the 1960 census, when I was a junior in college, ND population was about 630,000. When I did the Busch family history some years ago I looked up the population of Berlin, which was platted in 1903 and incorporated in 1906. Berlins highest population ever was in 1910, 137 people. It was all downhill from there. The current population of Berlin, ND is about 35. Here’s how it looked about 1910: Berlin ND early pre-1910001
The present ND population boomlet is in the Bakken oil west (Williston, Minot, Bismarck, Dickinson areas) and in the cities, particularly Fargo and Grand Forks.

#933 – Dick Bernard: Working for Change

September 8, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Environment, History, Minnesota, North Dakota, Politics /by dickbernard

A couple of weeks ago a waitress at a local restaurant I frequent asked me a question.
She knows I’m interested in politics, and her son-in-law, now in law school, had developed a strong interest in the Constitution. Could I give her some ideas?
There’s loads of materials on the U.S. Constitution, of course. I knew this young man was from my home state of North Dakota and I suggested that I’d try to find out something about the ND Constitution. Maybe he’d be interested. She thought that was a great idea and I embarked on my quest. It was more difficult than I had thought but as of today the young man has (I’m pretty sure) information he hasn’t seen before, and this is the 125th year of North Dakota becoming a state (1889).
As often happens with such quests, one question leads to another, and yesterday found me looking at the 2013-14 Minnesota Legislative Handbook (they used to be called the “Blue Book”) to see what information it might have about the Minnesota Constitution (Statehood, 1858, right before the Civil War.)
I found a fascinating page and a half description of what it was like to enact the Minnesota Constitution back then. You can read it here: MN Constitution Hist001.
It doesn’t take long to discover that it was not an easy process to enact a new Minnesota Constitution. In fact…well, you can read the short article. Of course, back in that day, all the players were men, didn’t make a difference which party they were, and they were accustomed to being in power, and (I suppose) the primacy of their own ideas. Compromise was not their strong suit, shall I say.
By the time of the North Dakota Convention in 1889 the process was considerably more cut and dried, but still it wasn’t without discord. The final document is, I’m told, 220 handwritten sheets, and here are the first two pages of what Prof. Elwyn Robinson in his 1966 History of North Dakota had to say in introduction to the proceedings: ND Constit – Robinson001.
Of course, again, all of the delegates were men of prominence in their communities.
Long after each convention, in 1920, Women’s Suffrage helped to begin level the playing field. The Civil Rights Act of 1965 began to deal with the residue of slavery, which was supposed to have been taken care of as a result of the Civil War 1861-65.
Nothing is easy.
Yesterday evening, winding down, I happened across a PBS program entitled Secrets of Westminster, about power in English history. You can watch it here.
There were many fascinating tidbits, but the one that will stick with me longest will be the segments about the long struggle for women’s suffrage in England, finally won in 1918, two years before the rights were granted in the U.S. There is an interesting timeline of the quest by British women to receive the right to vote here. Note especially the three entries about 1909, and 4 June 1913. Both were featured in the PBS program.
Change is a continuing struggle. Where there are people, there are differences, and there is power. Change cannot be made by pretending someone else will do it; or that it is impossible to do anything about “it” (whatever “it” is). But it is possible.
At a recent meeting, I was noting a sign I had recently seen on a Holiday Inn Express motel in Bemidji Minnesota. It is pictured here:
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At hotel entrance Bemidji MN August 8, 2014

I commented on how inconceivable a sign like this would have been not too many years ago.
Jim remembered how it all began. He was a college student 50 years ago, and it was the time when the first warnings were publicized on cigarettes, which “may” be hazardous to ones health.
Change happened, there, because some people, individually and then united, worked for it, and worked, and worked, and worked….
We must do the same.

#931 – Dick Bernard: A new school year begins

September 1, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Education, Minnesota, North Dakota /by dickbernard

In a few hours, most Minnesota students return to school for the 2014-15 school year. At this moment, more than 800,000 Minnesota public school students, and more than 100,000 more teachers, administrators, cooks, custodians, bus drivers, etc., are, regardless of their grade level, or number of years of experience, somewhat nervous about tomorrow. It is a bit like preparing to go “on stage”. The jitters are very normal.
(About 9 of 10 school age kids attend publicly funded schools. Education is a primary constitutional function of government and reflects the diversity that is America. Most of the remaining students attend non-public schools of one sort or another. A smaller percentage are home-schooled. The general Minnesota data for all is linked above. National enrollment figures are similar. About one of six Americans are enrolled in public schools.)
Among those returning to school in Minnesota will be eight of our grandkids, my daughter who is a school principal, and another daughter who is a school board member.
Even though we’re physically detached from that place called “school”, it is certainly never far away.
We wish them all well.
I’ve spent most of my life immersed in public education. Both parents were career public school teachers. Both of them were my teachers, at school, in 8th grade, then high school. Four aunts and two uncles were school teachers, most of them career teachers. Some cousins are retired teachers…. Yes, school has never been far away, including the 27 years I represented public school teachers through what was then called Minnesota Education Association (now Education Minnesota (EM)).
Today was the last day of the Minnesota State Fair, and we went to the Fair. For me it was the second trip.
This day I made my usual stop, at the long-time booth of Education Minnesota.
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Education Minnesota booth, September 1, 2014

For many years, Education Minnesota’s booth has been one of the more popular stops at the Fair. Folks can stop by and get their photo and a 2014-15 calendar for free. I got in line for mine, which you can see, in part, here: Bernard – EM 9-1-2014001. Julie Blaha, tomorrow a 5th grade teacher in the Anoka-Hennepin School District, Minnesota’s largest, and for several preceding years President of the local teacher’s union there, greeted all of us in the cheery way of a great teacher. Those who entered the EM booth knew they were with friends.
School is a complex place during the best of times. When mixed in with politics, and emotions, and all of the other facets that go with a complex people institution, no doubt even the first day some things will happen, somewhere.
But when one considers the infinite potential for problems, it is amazing how well schools work.
Most kids are looking forward to being back in school, albeit somewhat nervously. The system will work, not always perfectly, and for the most part retired folks like ourselves will not hear much, mostly because there is not much to hear! Things are working okay.
Our nine grandkids (one graduated long ago) are all unique individuals. Somehow or other, schools do a pretty good job blending kids with each other, and helping each kid find his or her way in whatever grade he/she finds him or herself tomorrow.
We wish everyone well.

Part of the gathering crowd at the Minnesota State Fair, last day, September 1, 2014

COMMENT
from Shirley L:
Appreciated your comments about school and opening day. It was always an exciting time for our family with both parents in school positions – and my brother and I matriculating at the college lab school. Such a regular routine that in the fall I feel a bit out of step! I do take advantage of the back-to-school sales of school supplies…really stock up on pens, paper, folders, sketchbooks, etc.
So here’s a toast to you – your grandkids – and all of our wonderful memories of those great school days!!
from Denise S, President of Education Minnesota: The other day a couple was [at the booth] getting their picture taken and they said it was #17. Fun! A great tradition, indeed. Our best guess is we do 1,200-1,500 calendars a day. Good stuff!

#930 – Dick Bernard: Our (Minnesota) State Fair; and remembering North Dakota and Texas as well.

August 29, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Minnesota, North Dakota /by dickbernard

Yesterday I spent three or so hours at the Minnesota State Fair. It’s “my” state fair, and as the song from the musical goes, it’s “the best state fair in our state”. Over the last 50 years or so I’ve often been to the Minnesota State Fair. It’s something like a piece of genetic code. When the last 12 days of the month of August arrive, I know that I will, at least once, go to the State Fair.
Plenty of folks share that gene, I know. The State Fair has been attracting people for over 150 years, just a year less than Minnesota has been a state.
Out at the ND farm of my mother, was this postcard from way back:
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Postcard dated 100 years ago, Sep. 22, 1914, featuring Minnesota State Fair.

I’m no high-roller at the Fair: yesterdays total cost was about $26.00, including $5 for bus to the Fair; $8 to get in (senior citizens day); $5 for deep fried veggies; $8 for a cup of Sweet Martha’s Cookies, most of which came home with me. Even for me, this was a cheapskate day. A period of light rain interfered, and some of my usual stops I just passed by. But I’m glad I went. I happened to be near leaving when the daily parade started. It was fairly short, but nice. Several bands, and almost a herd of those gigantic cows advertising this or that.

Minnesota State Fair Parade August 28, 2014

The real fun of this fair – any fair – is people watching. We’re all odd, in our unique sorts of ways. “Ships passing in the [daylight]” as it were. For the most part, at the Fair, pretense and conventional wisdom is left at the door. Who cares if I’m overweight; who’ll notice that piece of fatty bacon I paid far too much for, and is laden with all sorts of dangerous things, but is oh, sooooo gooooood. For a moment, when I was seeing those gigantic cows being dragged along I thought of as some kind of state fair deity.

August 28, 2014

Almost exclusively I know the Minnesota State Fair. It is my only point of reference.
But a couple of memorable other State Fairs come to mind.
In the summer of 2007 I happened to be in Minot ND at the time of the North Dakota State Fair. Pretty neat fair, if I do say so myself. The Motel proprietor saw fit to give me a ticket to the grandstand show the evening I was there, featuring a country-western guy I’d never heard of. It was a great show. Every now and then I take a listen to one of his songs, “What Was I Thinking”. Had I not been to the ND State Fair, I never woulda known….

Dierks Bentley, July 27, 2007, North Dakota State Fair, Minot ND

Then there was a time way back in the 1970s when I happened to be in Dallas at the time of the Texas State Fair, I believe it was in October, if memory serves. I had an entire evening to kill between the end of my conference, and catching a bus at about 4 a.m. to go visit my brother and family in Altus Oklahoma.
The Fair itself was quite alright. Very large, different from Minnesota, but that was to be expected.
I went back to the Bus Depot to wait for my bus.
Bus depots, late at night, are not for the faint of heart. This particular night, somebody plopped down beside me, mumbled a little, and seemed to pass out. I thought to myself, probably drunk. Then I looked at his arm, and he was all bloody. Some police came in, and something of a surreal scuffle ensued. Nobody said anything. When the dust settled, I learned that my seat mate had been shot by someone at the Texas State Fair.
It was a relief to get on the bus heading towards Ft. Worth. I struck up a conversation with the couple seated in front of me. They were from Ft Worth, they said, and were on their way home. Why by bus? Their car had been stolen at the Fair.
Ah yes, our State Fair is a great State Fair!

#929 – Dick Bernard: Aiming at the Moon (and hitting ourselves); a thought on redefining how we see relationships with our world, and about the matter of changing attitudes..

August 24, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, History, North Dakota, Politics, War /by dickbernard

Early Wednesday morning, August 21, I was heading out for coffee from my motel in LaMoure ND, and a sight begging to be photographed appeared a few steps to my left, and I couldn’t pass on it. Here’s the snapshot. The waning moon appeared to be in the “bullseye”.
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August 21, 2014, 6:15 a.m., LaMoure ND

I’m very familiar with the sight: I stay often at this motel. August 10, on a previous trip, I’d taken a photo of the permanently on display Minuteman Missile you see in the photo. But this one, with the moon as the bullseye, was unique. I just looked up the Phase of the Moon I photographed that day: here.
More about this missile at the end of this post.
My trips to LaMoure, these past months especially, have always been work, both physical and emotional. I go into a “news blackout”, basically, too busy to read a newspaper; too tired to even watch TV news. So it wasn’t until I arrived home late on the 21st that I learned of the decapitation of the American journalist in Syria by an ISIS person with a distinctly British accent; and I saw the image of some ISIS hotshots showing off with some American tank, either purchased or captured in Iraq and now part of the ISIS arsenal.
Suddenly our omnipotence does not seem so potent. The radicals in ISIS seem far more dangerous and ominous than al Qaeda a few years ago, essentially thumbing their collective noses at us, using our own weapons and tactics, and we can’t do a thing about it. So we debate around the edges of the true reality, which is we can no longer control the world, and our past actions have consequences. We now debate on whether or not we should pay ransom to rescue captured journalists or others, and we face the prospect of dealing with shadowy enemies who look and talk just exactly like us. (“American” are very diverse, should anyone not have noticed. The traditional order has irreversibly changed.)
This is a very complex situation in which we find ourselves, even worse than our no-win Iraq adventure which began in 2003 with bragging that we had won that war less than two months into that awful and deadly and endless conflict (which still continues).
We now have to live within the world which we have made.
When I got home this week, I decided to review the history of the Minuteman Missile, which was a creature of my time in North Dakota.

August 10, 2014, LaMoure ND

We Americans love our weaponry: the Biblical “Ploughshares” doesn’t seem to have a chance against “Swords”. We’re so strong, armed so well, peace runs a far distant second to the advantage of overwhelming military superiority – or so goes the conversation. Look for Monuments to Peace in your circuits. And to War. And see who wins. (One organization I support whose sole mission is a Peace Memorial is here. Check it out.)
Googling “Minuteman North Dakota” just now brought forth a North Dakota Historical Society site which for some odd reason is dedicated to President Ronald Reagan.
The Minutemen were children of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson during the Cold War, and were planted between 1961-67 in the heat of the Cold War (Reagan was in office much later, 1981-89).
When you’re talking man-up, whose name is attached to manning-up matters, I guess.
I see lowly ploughshares memorialized from time to time, but they’re seldom named for a person, compared with war memorials, they are minuscule in number.
FDR was President when the Nuclear Age was born; and Truman was President when the Atomic Bombs were first used, and Eisenhower was at the helm when other weapons of mutually assured destruction were developed and tested.
Actually, all the military toys ought to be dedicated to “we, the people” who fund, and indeed have insisted on their development through our Congress, which by action (or inaction) authorizes endless war and military investment.
(Changing this reality is not simple: for instance, my Grandmother on the ND farm* 10 miles from that Missile in the photos, was joyful when the A-Bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945(Atomic Bomb 1945001). Her bias was her son, an officer on a Destroyer in the Pacific. She wanted him home safe. The U.S. War Department, then, rhapsodized in public relations releases that this deadly bomb might be the key to ending war forever.
And Saturday night I was at a Minnesota Twins baseball game with a family group which included my granddaughters father-in-law. He’s a great guy. Much of his career as an Air Force enlisted man was making sure those ND Minuteman sites were secure….)
As a country we have supported these symbols of our supposed omnipotence, without regard to partisan designation. It is dangerous for a politician to speak against War.
Now a few countries, especially the U.S. and Russia, are awash in nuclear weapons which, if ever used, even one, by some lawless renegade leader or thief, will take a long step towards mutually assured destruction of everyone downwind.
The conventional wisdom back then, that our strength was in military superiority, was not only wrong, but stupid.
We’re in a hole of our own making, and best that we figure out it’s worth our while to not only stop digging, but try other means of co-existing.
We’re part of, not apart from, a much bigger world than just within our borders.
Change can happen, but it always happens slowly. Be the one person who is, as Gandhi said, “the change you wish to see.”
* POSTNOTE: On that same farm, in the yard in November, 1957, I and others watched Sputnik as it blinked on and off in the black night ski. In those days, newspapers carried maps of where you could see Sputnik. In my memory (I was 17 then, and a senior in high school), the trajectory was from SSE to NNW, but I could be wrong. Sputnik was a big, big deal. Earlier, in early teen years, Grandpa would rail on about the Communists, who were sort of abstract to me, then, but it fits, now, with my knowledge of the great Red Scare, Sen. Joe McCarthy, HUAC, etc. And earlier still, would be the Flash Gordon novel which somebody had bought sometime, and was pretty ragged, but featured the Ray Gun (early Laser fantasy?), and Flash Gordon’s conflict with the evil ones. I have recently been going through all of the belongings of that old house, and I keep looking for that ragged old Flash Gordon book, but my guess is I won’t find it….
UPDATE AND COMMENT:
long-time good friend Bruce F responded to my post as follows:
I wonder,Dick, how these rag-tag radical groups in SW Asia can out gun and defeat government armies that we train and supply.
My guess is that in one form or another we supply and train them. In order to be the world’s largest arms dealer, the military industrial machine needs to work both sides to continue to expand profits.
Comment:
The key word in Bruce’s comment (to me, at least) is the word “we”. Who is “we”? And when?
Otherwise I’d agree with what seems to be the general thrust of Bruce’s comment: the unwieldy entity called the “United States” (primarily we citizens, collectively), have allowed this to evolve.
I doubt ISIS (or ISIL) or the “Caliphate” will have a long life. It will not become a new North Korea.
The regional situation is extraordinarily messy. It is difficult to identify who is “friend” or “enemy” at any particular time. The latest ISIS casualty publicized in this area was a graduate of a local Minneapolis suburban high school in 1990 who embraced a radical philosophy about 10 years ago.
The President of the United States is stuck in a quandary, which delights his enemies. There is nothing he can do which will not be legitimately criticized by someone. The U.S. Congress, which should be making the key decisions per its Constitutional obligation to make policy on War, generally, will continue to escape and evade its responsibility.
But it remains we Americans who through our own lack of engagement have helped create the monster which we now can scarcely understand, and hardly know how to turn around.