#596 – Dick Bernard: Dottie Garwick, and other deaths

I’m of the age where attendance at memorials and funerals are a frequent activity, while marriages and christenings are uncommon.
We have quite a passel of grandchildren, so maybe this will change in a few years, but for now, that’s the routine.
Yesterday, it was the memorial for Dottie Garwick at Hennepin Avenue United Methodist Church. It was a large service. There were hundreds in the Church; they ran out of programs.
I knew Dottie, but not well. I knew her husband, Hank, better. They are (I still prefer the present tense) a remarkable couple who exemplify the phrase, mentioned by someone in the service yesterday: “much is expected from those to whom much is given.” They were almost as likely to be found in India, or Haiti, as in Minneapolis.
Dottie’s obituary says it better than I: Dottie Garwick001
Of course, Dottie’s is not the only recent death.
A few hours before driving to Minneapolis I was reading about the unspeakable tragedy in River Falls, where an estranged Dad, for reasons known only to himself at this point, killed his three young daughters.
One can understand a passage like Dottie’s.
There is no understanding events like the one in River Falls, though it is tragedies like the one in River Falls that get the news…and that has probably always been the case.
We attempt to understand the impossible to understand.
I do family history, and River Falls brought to mind an old very long and virtually impossible to read newspaper clipping I found in a box of old postcards at my grandparents farm in North Dakota. (It’s here, if you want to try to decipher it: Kieler deaths001
It recounted at great length an event in rural Kieler WI, near Dubuque, well over 100 years ago, where, as the news reported it, a farm housewife whose husband was a carpenter killed her four young children with a butcher knife, and then killed herself.)
One of Grandma’s sisters likely sent her the clip from an incident that happened in a neighboring town, and it was one that Grandma allowed to survive, for reasons known only to Grandma.)
For all of us, there is the same destination. All we don’t know with certainty (thankfully) is the when and the how.
(Someone said Dottie and family were told she had two months to live; it turned out to be short weeks.)
July 29 I hope to go to a memorial for an elderly lady, Lois Swenson, who was murdered in her home a few weeks ago. I gather she was much like Dottie Garwick, a pillar of kindness who someone took advantage of.
Where do I – where do we – fit in all of this?
How we live today is an important question.
As Dottie’s service closed on Friday, we sang the hymn “Abide with me”, which was said to be Gandhi’s favorite hymn, and a national favorite of England. A youtube rendition here.
UPDATES:
Lydia, July 14: You pose some important questions, Dick. Lois Swenson’s murder & the deaths of 2 young children by stray bullets in the last 6 months have really thrown me. As peace activists, we focus on the terrible violence perpetrated by our government in other countries…but, what about the “war” in the streets of our cities? What can we do about that? I don’t have an immediate answer…but, the question weighs on me heavily.

#587 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #27. "Obamacare" or "Obama cares"

UPDATE: 23 comments below. A second post on this topic, with additional comments, is accessible here.

Dick and Barbara Bernard as Godparents, March, 1965, four months before Barbara's death.


I’m publishing this a few hours before the Big Release of the Supreme Court decision on what has come to be known as “Obamacare”.
I have no prediction.
All I know is the reality, learned at too young an age, about what it means to be desperately ill and uninsured.
Perhaps someone will read this, and get the message and maybe even change their mind about “Obamacare” (which I deliberately choose to label “Obama cares” in the headline.)
Forty-nine years ago, in mid-October of 1963, fresh out of the U.S. Army, I began teaching school in a small school district in northern Minnesota. Medical Insurance, then, was strictly an elective affair. You wanted it, you got it on your own, and you paid for it.
I was 23 years old. I signed up for doctor but not hospital insurance.
My new wife was even younger than I, also a first year teacher in another school district.
Two weeks after I started teaching, Barbara, already feeling ill, went to see the doctor (a few miles north, in Canada), found out that her kidneys were not working right. She had to resign from teaching two months into her contract. She was pregnant. We began a new unplanned-for life.
Three weeks later, President Kennedy was assassinated.
Those years you couldn’t say “Time out. I think I’ll take some of that hospital insurance now.” Besides, her kidney condition was “pre-existing”.
We struggled on through almost two years of hell.
There is no heroic way to describe it. We just plodded on through it. At the end of May, 1965, she collapsed in a coma at home. She left our town in an ambulance to Bismarck ND; then, in a few days, on to Minneapolis.
At University Hospital they admitted a non-resident patient with no insurance and no ability to pay.
And on July 24, 1965, in Minneapolis, far away from our North Dakota home, Barbara died at University Hospital, not living long enough to receive a kidney transplant, a procedure then in its infancy.
July 29, 1965, on a blustery hilltop in Valley City ND, Barbara was laid to rest. Son Tom, one, was there, as were friends and family.
I came back to the Twin Cities to start the new job I’d received three days before she died. In the fall, as I was preparing to file for bankruptcy, North Dakota Public Welfare came through and paid most of the major medical expense we had incurred. Our bills, while equivalent to over two years of my then-salary, were minuscule compared to today.
My son and I lived with a kind family who provided babysitting for my son, and a room for me, and I worked much of that first year at two jobs. And ultimately survived.
It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that the day after my wife was buried, July 30, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Medicare Act into Law. Now, 47 years later, I have a certain amount of seniority in the wonderful Medicare program.
And we wait for a ruling, momentarily, where some people are hoping that “Obamacare” will be tossed on the trash heap, and the health safety net, complicated enough as it is, will be made even more fragile.
For years I’ve heard all the arguments about why there shouldn’t be some significant version of National Health. Lately I’ve had to endure a TV ad of some supposed family physician lamenting the evil of Obamacare: that some of her patients might not be able to have their appointments with her anymore; and further asserting, without any supportive data, that Obamacare will drive up health care costs even more.
And I think back to those years of 1963-65, when I was in my twenties, and my wife was dying without insurance, and we were broke.
Whatever happens with the Supreme Court today, the reality will remain, for me, that everybody in this wealthy nation of ours deserves the best in education and health care, regardless of their means.
I’ll be interested in the ruling today….

Dick Bernard and Barbara Sunde, wedding day, June, 1963


Relevant and related to this post: here.
UPDATES:
1. Sue: Thanks so much for sharing this story…
2. Molly: powerful post, Dick, thanks. And I’m reading this just below a headline which says that SCOTUS did NOT destroy the ACA… praise the Lord! (…as flawed as it is…) whew.
3. Deborah: dick -Your story is so touching and so very sad!. You are no doubt thrilled at the announcement today from the Supreme court.Thousands of people who would have died or lived a deeply compromised quality of life can today breathe a sigh of relief!
4. Jeanne: Sorry Dick but I beg to differ. I don’t think anyone wants people not to be able to receive affordable medical care.
I have a genetic condition myself.
However, the federal government has not been known to produce positive results.
Our countries understood that the more control that is given to a government the more they can dictate and put power in the hands of one or a few persons.
Our freedom is being taken away.
I will be forced to support things that are against my conscience. If Obama can do that to one group, he can do it to you too.
Yes our health care system needs reform. But not this way.
5. Carole: thank you for this. i am celebrating.
6. Melvin: You have a wonderful gift of writing. I can’t wait to read your book. Thank you for always sharing more of yourself. I know you are touching people’s hearts and minds, which results in human transformation. Keep sharing your wisdom and understanding. It is making a difference!
7. Joe: That was a very powerful message. Thanks.
8. Kathy: Well we can celebrate this small piece of evidence that not EVERYTHING is predetermined along partisan lines.
Thank you for sharing the touching tribute to Barbara and congratulations on your own healthy survival.
9. Carol: I was in the dentist’s chair this morning and Dr. _____ said “I loved your letter in the Bulletin yesterday.” (Gotta love your dentist when he reads your letters :\ Then he went on to complain about that exact commercial you referenced (I haven’t seen it), and he said that he was going to have a very bad day today if they overturned Obamacare. Almost immediately his assistant read scrolling across the computer screen that the Supreme Court had upheld it. We high-5’d (about all you can do with your mouth full of stuff 🙂
10. Susan: What a great ruling! Who’d’ve thunk that Roberts would ended up being on “our side” of the decision?!?
11. Alan: There must still be some people in certain news organizations that declared “Dewey Beats Truman” in 1948 (remember the headlines in the Chicago Tribune?) The first news flash about Obamacare was that the Supreme Court struck it down!! So who won? WE THE PEOPLE WON!!!
Thank you, Mr. President for caring enough to finally see that ALL Americans will have health care. As far as I am concerned, you should be President for Life!!!
12. Christine: Extremely relevant and interesting and moving. Thank you Dick for sharing this with as many people as you can. It shows one of so many examples of why everybody should have the right to be treated with no restrictions of revenue or pre condition or anything at all.
13. Mary: Thanks for sharing these hard memories.
14. Leila: Thank you for sharing this story, and especially the photographs. Barb and I were friends, so they are even more meaningful to me.
15. Debi: What a sad story. Made me cry. Glad that no one will have to face the same difficulties now.
16. Bruce: The best thing about ACA is that it codifies universal coverage into law. Now let the states take us all the way there by implementing a true not for profit Health Care System. Relevant links here and here. Canadians got universal, nonprofit health insurance one province at a time. Let follow the Canadian model and let the states lead the way to real Universal Coverage.
17. Harriette: I just don’t know what to say. I’m glad you’re in my camp. I prize our email acquaintance. You must send this to the Obama people.
18. Madeline: I was certainly happy and relieved that the Affordable Health Care law was upheld by the Supreme Court today, but I have two comments, below. As Ted Kennedy said, “take what you can get.” I think it is a step in the direction toward universal single payer health care.
1. Justice Roberts had already done his dirty work with “Citizens United,” which could make it very difficult for Democrats to win at every level in the Nov. election, and which could put this new law in serious jeopardy. He could side with the liberals on this issue, hoping to make the Court look less partisan, and because of Citizens United, he probably thought he risked nothing. Besides, some of the justices are aging, there may be appointments necessary in the next administration, and if a Republican is elected president, those would likely be conservative.
2. I watched Ch. 5 news around 5-6 pm and again caught coverage at 10. There was a significant difference between the reporting from the dinner hour and the 10 pm report. They obviously had been fed some Republican lies in the meantime which they were expected to present as the “Cons” against the “Pros.”
Peace,
Madeline
[T]he right “recognizes something that few on the left recognize: that campaign finance law underlies all other substantive law.” Mother Jones:ort How to Sweep Dark Money Out of Politics, Undoing Citizens United, the DIY guide
19. Kathy: At 9:15 [a.m.] Fox was yelling “Health Care Ruled Unconstitutioal//we knew it, we knew it..CNN was saying the same thing …It was a 50 page decision..and Fox misread it and had to correct their err…I was listening to NPR and they were copying CNN and then they realized it was incorrect.
20. Norm: Stuff happens!
May remind some of the more senior seniors of a similar mistake headline in 1948 stating that Dewey Defeats Truman with a similar reaction from HST to that of President Obama!
Kind of surprising that CNN didn’t check things out better but less surprising that Fox News did it as well. On the other hand, one of my brothers insists that Fox News is the only accurate news source around so…
21. Jim: I have a sister that claims CNN is a left-leaning lying news source. Only Fox News can be trusted. I’d imagine that she believes that the ACA was struck down but due to a White House deal with the devil was made whole again.
22. Kathy: Rachel Maddow [MSNBC] said President Obama was watching CNN when they said Health Care had been defeated…until a female lawyer came in later and gave him 2 thumbs up..
23. Jeff: Count me in the group of shocked. Although I think Roberts was looking for a little “liberal love”. And he is getting it, along with scorn from the Right wing…. This too shall pass. He personally has presided over the most corporation friendly court in many years, liberals who are praising his decision here ought not get so overdone with praise. Just sayin.

#579 – Dick Bernard: Donna Elling

This afternoon Donna Elling, 88, will be remembered at First Universalist Church in south Minneapolis. We’ll be there, and I expect there’ll be a large crowd. She richly deserves a tribute.
I can’t say I knew Donna well, except through others voices and memories. When I met her and her husband, Lynn, five years ago, her memory was already in decline, but there was no question that she was a classy lady, a partner with her husband since their marriage in 1943, and a loving parent, grand, and great-grandparent.
I got to know Lynn much better than Donna in these past five years. But as I retrace that time, I had many occasions to see Donna. Where Lynn was, so was Donna, always gracious and friendly. Donna was always there, also, in Lynn’s conversation stream. They had a rich 68 years together.
Others can and will relive and recall her long and productive life much better than I.
Some years ago Lynn shared with me his photo album and I made photo copies of some of the pages.
Yesterday, at a meeting, I shared two photo pages of Donna taken from that album. One is below, and both are attached as a pdf Donna Elling 1953001. Appropriately, the magazine is for June 21, the time of the soon-to-occur Summer Solstice.
(click to enlarge photos)
Donna Elling, June 21, 1953 St. Paul Pioneer Press
In my own photo files, there are surprisingly numerous photos of Donna, since where Lynn was, so was Donna to be found.
For her farewell I choose this photo, from September, 2011, at their home in south Minneapolis.

Lynn and Donna Elling, September, 2011


In Peace.
The family has chosen World Citizen, the organization Lynn founded in 1982, as a preferred memorial, and I would ask consideration of Lynn’s ‘driving dream’ which included places (as their home was) as Peace Sites. All information can be found at World Citizen’s website, here.
Do take a look.
Another of Lynn Elling’s passions was the Nobel Peace Prize Festival, now integrated into the Nobel Peace Prize Forum at Augsburg College, Minneapolis MN. One of the last photos I have of Donna and Lynn together was taken at a reception for 1993 co-Nobel Laureate F. W. deKlerk of S. Africa.

from right: Lynn and Donna Elling, F. W. deKlerk, Cathy and Dick Bernard, March 2, 2012


UPDATE June 16, 2012:
Donna had a marvelous celebration of her life on June 13. I’d estimate approximately 300 friends and family attended.
Here’s a great slideshow remembering her life.

Lynn remembers Donna, his spouse of 68 years, at the Memorial Service June 13, 2012

#564 – Dick Bernard: Another Birthday.

Today, all day, I was 72 years old.
I got a head start on a great day on May 3 with a short trip across the Mississippi to Lincoln Center School in South St. Paul MN. There granddaughter Addie (she’s the one in the black and white polka dot dress you can see if you look at center in the photo) and her colleague first graders entertained other students, teachers and assorted parents and grandparents with a program with a Caribbean theme. Louis Armstrong had nothing on these kids when they sang a snippet of “It’s a Wonderful World”. “Entusiasmo” as the Spanish word for enthusiasm spoke for them from the wall beside them.
(click on photos to enlarge them)

Lincoln Center First Graders May 3, 2012


I thought of first grade for me. It was 1946-47, at St. Elizabeth’s in Sykeston ND. I still have the report card. It’s been awhile since I was in First Grade.
As birthdays go, 72 is nothing much to talk about. For me, it has more meaning, this year.
My Mom turned 72 on July 27, 1981. Three weeks later she passed away. She’d been very ill the preceding year (cancer) and there were no miracle cures. For more reasons than Mom’s death, 1981 was an important year for me. Among other things, Mom and Dad helped jump-start me into a family history ‘career’ which has gone on, now, for 32 years. (You can never really retire from family history.)
Being 72 – born in 1940 – means I missed the Great Depression, and was out and about when World War II began for the United States. Recently the 1940 census was released, and I looked. I missed the cut. The census taker in Valley City ND came around in April, 1940, and I was just thinking about arriving on the world scene. It was the census taker who came early, not me!
Of course, when the odometer of life turns over one more digit, it is always a reminder that you are actually a year older than your birthday cake shows. So today I completed 72 years, and begin my 73rd. Such is life.
It’s been a good day today which, for someone my age and temperament, means a reasonably laid back retired person day.
About noon-time today I was at Jefferson High School in Bloomington watching goings-on at the schools annual Diversity Day.
Like the First graders on Thursday, the high schoolers on Friday gave me some sense of optimism about the future IF we adults don’t mess things up too badly. It’s up to us to leave them a future to build upon.
My friend Lynn Elling gave his annual talk, an “old bird” of 91 (as he describes himself) with his spouse of 68 years, Donna, with him.
His talk always focuses on the WWII that he experienced at places like Tarawa Beach, and a 1954 visit to Hiroshima which has had a lifelong impact on him.
In the kids he sees our future, and I like that.
Forward into my 73rd year!

Lynn Elling at Jefferson High School, Bloomington MN May 4, 2012


Kids listen to Lynn Elling May 4, 2012


Martha Roberts, Donna and Lynn Elling at the World Citizen Table May 4. Martha is President of World Citizen, Lynn founded the organization in 1982.


UPDATE May 8, 2012

Happy Birthday to ME, at a gathering on May 6, and ...


... and Grandson Parker, who shares May 4th as birthday, albeit 62 years later.

#553 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #10 – Enlisting the Middle Class (Proles) to kill itself.

I’m very near 72 years of age. The people of my and my parents generation created the Middle Class, and have been huge beneficiaries of it, in endless ways, from Medicare to the GI Bill to Unions, and on an on and on. For the younger generation, as Joni Mitchell’s popular song goes, they may not “know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone….”
Still, the “Army” to destroy the Middle Class we enjoyed seems to have been recruited from the same older generation. I see this in endless hateful, destructive and dishonest “forwards” from people I know from my generation and older.
I review and respond to the “forwards” I get. The vast majority are lies, pure and simple, from manipulation of photographs to manipulation of data. So little “truth” comes around, including TV ads, talk radio and the like, that only the foolish will believe any of it.
These days I think a great deal of a book published in England in 1949 entitled “1984” by George Orwell. It is a famous book, and everyone should read it again, especially those who send those forwards. Orwell’s model apparently was the post-WWII Soviet Union of Stalin, with elements of Hitler’s Germany.
It is pretty clear to me, these days, that unfettered American Capitalism would like to achieve the same objective – easily manipulated, passive and compliant Proles – that 1984s “Big Brother” did by using the same methods.
We are todays Proles.

The book, 1984, first came into my life when the actual year 1984 was far in the future and television was in its infancy and still a novelty.
Computers and ease of editing of images and text was unknown at the time I first read 1984.
But 1984 was about all of these things. “Telescreens” were everywhere, broadcasting what Orwell called the “two minute hate” frequently and at any time. These also doubled as surveillance cameras, recording every persons every move.
Nobody, nothing, was safe from Big Brother.
There was even a new language: “Newspeak”:
“WAR IS PEACE”
“FREEDOM IS SLAVERY”
“IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”
.
Big Brother thrived because of cultivated fear of an unseen enemy he could describe, far away. This enemy was one to be feared and hated, and Big Brother was the only savior.
In my opinion, 1984 has become the playbook for contemporary Right Wing politics in this country of ours. The book simply reflects the exploitable weaknesses of humanity, and those don’t change.
I think of this 1984 every time I see the latest insulting and lie-filled “forward”; or see some example where information is manipulated so that some imagined “failure” of the President (or Democrats, or Unions…) is manufactured.
Indeed, since President Obama has been inaugurated, the mission of his enemies has been to make him fail by any means necessary, and then shamelessly lie about why the failure occurred. Similarly, my “class” – liberal, Union, is similarly characterized. Newspeak 2012: “Failure is Success”.
In 1984s world, the citizenry (Proles) was dominated and completely controlled and settled into a life of happy mediocrity: the housewife happily hung out the wash to dry; entertainment was getting drunk on cheap gin in the neighborhood saloon.
Nobody trusted anybody. The Two Minute Hate and “Big Brother is watching you” were very effective.
The main character, Winston, took a stab at breaking out of the mold, and for awhile seemed to be succeeding.
It is useful to remember the ending scene of 1984. Winston is personally confronted by his greatest fear. He surrenders to the fear. He “sees the light”.
The book ends with these words: “He loved Big Brother”.
POSTNOTE: Orwell died in 1950 only 46 years of age and only a year after publication of 1984. He ends his book with Big Brother still in complete control.
Is it so simple in the real world…? Well, we can read history. A long succession of “Big Brothers” learned their omnipotence was not permanent. Many of them ended up dead, and not of natural causes.
What is our fate as a nation? We American Proles will decide, beginning in November, 2012 by how we vote, or whether we vote at all.
We choose if we succeed or fail as a society.
Directly related: here and here.

#549 – Dick Bernard: Part Two. The slow but certain suicide of Capitalism

I’m not an enemy of Capitalism. From my earliest years some deference was paid to the person who lived in the biggest house in town; who occupied a position of status or rank; the most “successful” relative…. Right or wrong, they were thought to be deserving of being a bit better off.
Today, Capitalism funds my retirement pension (unless its most ruthless advocates achieve a goal of destroying my Union which provides the funding to assure my private pension solvency.)
I also have no apprehensions about Socialism. Indeed, without very strong elements of Socialism in the American economy, Capitalism would die, and Capitalism knows it, but doesn’t have the common sense to know when to quit bludgeoning the middle class and government, which are largely creatures of Socialist largesse – public schools, health and the like.
Examples to debate are endless. The Bible quote in last Sunday’s Passion (see it here) was a most interesting one, cutting the apparent Capitalist of the day considerable slack in how she spent her money.
Oh, if it were so simple.
If I were to pick an exemplar of unfettered Capitalism it would be desperately impoverished Haiti, once the jewel of the French Empire. You can find many examples of extreme wealth there; elite families benefit by friendly laws and have destroyed competition. As one gets richer and richer and richer, defeating a potential competitor is easy.
Poor as it is, I’ve heard post-earthquake Haiti described as a “goldmine”. So, somebody has a monopoly on cement; someone else on school uniforms, etc., etc., etc. And the wealthy in Haiti can enjoy their lifestyle wherever in the world they wish, while the overwhelming vast majority of the people subsist. It is a society of, by and for Capitalism; and in the last 100-200 years it is largely of the American variety. Its cruel circumstances were imported from France and the U.S., largely.

In our own U.S., the Capitalist impulse towards self-destruction is harder to see than in Haiti, but nonetheless it is apparent. We are killing ourselves.
The accelerating imbalance in wealth in America (and elsewhere) is apparent to anyone who cares to look. Last Sunday, 60 Minutes had a segment on burgeoning art markets for the super wealthy.
The wealthy have far more than enough. But, it seems, the more they have the more they want.
A friend of mine, a retired corporate manager and no friend of government or taxes, described this dynamic a few days ago, without intending to do so.
He and his wife spend February and March at one of those Florida Gulf Coast condominium complexes, and they had just returned home.
We were chatting, and the topic got around to where they stay each year.
They rent: $5,000 a month. Two bedroom, 9th floor, Gulf side.
We chatted: The owners of their condo have three or four homes. The 19 floors of their condo has over 100 units; only 6 are year round residents. The condo they rent cost $1.3 million when purchased a few years ago, and probably on a good day would now sell for $600,000. Monthly Association fees are $891, and my friend guessed that the place is rented perhaps four months a year. Most of the year it is empty. There are additional costs for upkeep. There are numerous other similar buildings in this community….
One can gather how a conversation about government, taxes, liberals, unions, etc., would go at dinner in one of the restaurants in this wealthy ghetto. Likely the owners pick as their legal residence the state which has the lowest taxes, and extract every entitlement that they can.
Yes, we have always had the better off, and mostly they were accepted and respected.
But like the semblance of balance necessary to keep a tub of clothes on spin cycle from ruining the wash machine, the obsession with more and more wealth – escalating inequity – is ruining everyone, including the very wealthy.
The wealthy are already a victim of their own greed – imprisoned by their own wealth – but its all they know. The rest of us will just tag along as their (and by extension, our) self-destruct mission continues…unless we decide to do something about it in our still free elections.
Happy Easter.

(Part one is here.)
UPDATE April 4:
John Borgen:
Yes, we are a country of the corporations by the corporations for the corporations. Making profit is our holy grail. So many believe they will strike it rich, win the lottery, inherit the big bucks. Consumerism is our religion. Our citizens are drunk on TV, sports, video games, alcohol, drugs, sugar, gossip, blame, selfishness, American elitism.
Ah, the rugged individual! The entrepreneur who cashes in. Only in America!
I heard on the radio,according to the Gallop organization, the top three happiest countries are Denmark, Norway and Finland. The USA
is # 11.

#547 – Dick Bernard: Part One. Palm Sunday, the Passion, Haiti and the Mega-Millions Lottery

UPDATE April 4: An excellent commentary on the economics of the lottery can be found here. And on another angle, here.
A followup post on this topic is here.
This morning started, as usual, with the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The entirety of page A4 – no ads – was devoted to two topics: the top two-thirds was headlined “U.N muddies Haiti’s cholera war”; the bottom third was headlined “3 Mega Millions winners, more than 100 million losers.”
The two articles speak clearly for themselves.
Then we went to Basilica of St. Mary, picked up up our palms, and settled in for the long Gospel, the Passion, this years version according to St. Mark, Chapter 14:1 – 15:47. (There are three versions of the Passion, and they rotate each year.)
This year, probably because of the juxtaposition of Haiti’s most recent uninvited and undeserved catastrophe with the frenzy to hopefully win the treasures of the Lottery, one section of the Passion particularly caught my attention.
Here it is as recorded in my Grandma Bernard’s 1912 edition of the Douay-Rheims (Catholic) Bible:
“And when he was in Bethania, in the house of Simon the leper, and was at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of precious spikenard: and breaking the alabaster box she poured it out upon his head.
Now there were some that had indignation with themselves, and said: Why was this waste of the ointment made?
For this ointment might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and given to the poor. And they murmured against her.
But Jesus said: Let her alone, why do you molest her? She hath wrought a good work upon me.
For the poor you have always with you: and whensoever you will, you may do them good: but me you have not always.
She hath done what she could : she is come beforehand to anoint my body for the burial.”
(Mark 14:3-8)
Every Catholic who darkened a church door today heard this Gospel, and likely some in other denominations as well.
Last week, some of us were having a little debate about the relative merits/demerits of the Lottery, and the ‘feeding frenzy’ for tickets as the Jackpot went up into the stratosphere.
The conversation got around to the evil of taxes (the winnings are taxed), and giving contributions after winning, etc. There were many points of view, even among the few of us in the little conversation.
Then comes this piece of text which can, doubtless, be ‘spun’ in many different ways, depending on what one wishes to believe.
Personally, I think the Christian Scripture (aka New Testament), including this particular text, is not a comfortable collection of thoughts for the wealthy Christian…and by any measure of this or any other time, Americans are a very wealthy society. That’s probably why the Hebrew Scriptures (aka Old Testament) are much more comfortable to the set that gives deference to wars and kings and such….
But, what does the text from this morning mean?
Or, rather, what did Jesus mean?
Happy Easter.
UPDATE April 4:
John Borgen:
I am rereading one of my favorite books, The Hebrew Bible, A Socio-Literary Introduction by Norman Gottwald. In it he continues to observe that the admonitions of the prophets to the Jews and Israelites, for over a thousand years, PRIOR to the time of Jesus, was to remind the well-off that they are not to exploit the poor, the peasants and those less fortunate than they are and to provide economic and social justice for all. The author suggests the book of Psalms upbraids wealthy Judeans and Isrealites for “pauperization of the populace through the manipulation of debt and confiscation procedures…”
The suggestion is that “Yahweh” punished the leaders in ancient times for the lack of economic and social justice which didn’t exist. Gottwald says these kinds of things throughout this interesting and challenging book.

#536 – Dick Bernard: Melvin Giles, the Peace Pole and Peace Bubbles Guy. "May Peace Prevail on Earth"

After the recent Nobel Peace Prize Forum at Augsburg College in Minneapolis I posted a small album of 46 photographs of the Forum on Facebook.
I chose as the “cover photo” the grainiest of the lot, taken by someone with a cell phone of my friend, Melvin Giles, giving a small Peace Pole to former S. Africa President and 1993 Nobel Laureate F. W. deKlerk.

Melvin Giles gifts F. W. deKlerk with a small Peace Pole, Augsburg College, Minneapolis, March 2, 2012

Melvin is one of those legions of unsung heroes of contemporary life: people who make a difference almost anonymously.
For St. Paul’s Frogtown native Melvin Giles, the passion is a more peaceful community and world. And he walks the talk.
I don’t recall exactly when I first met him, but I’m guessing it was about six years ago, when this enthusiastic guy showed up at a meeting I was attending and started blowing bubbles, those you often see after weddings. I was the President of the organization then, and Melvin came as one of the reps, and he lit up the room.
I got to know him as the Peace Pole Guy, and if you’re interested in Peace Poles and related links he’d recommend this internet link. He’s an authorized representative in the midwest for this organization, the original Peace Pole Makers in the United States. He is also Regional Peace Representative of World Peace Prayer Society (WPPS). He says, “I consider them the god-parents of the Peace Pole and Peace Message: May Peace Prevail On Earth. WPPS works on a global level and on programs and projects that are youth focus, as well as inter-generational.”
As time has gone on Melvin and I have gotten to know each other a bit better, and my first impression has been reconfirmed over and over. In an unreal world, Melvin’s the real deal. What you see is what you get: a kind, gentle man.
He’s given small peace poles to previous Nobel Laureates at the Forum, and this year was no exception.
See the photo gallery about Melvin below. If you’re ever in the market for a Peace Pole, I’m sure Melvin would be glad to help out. You can reach him at PeaceBubblesATqDOTcom.
“May Peace Prevail on Earth.”
UPDATE March 17, 2012: from Deborah Moldow of World Peace Prayer Society: What a lovely and fitting tribute to a peacemaker of the first order!
Melvin does more than walk his talk: he lives it. From the first, he understood the meaning of the Peace Pole project in a very deep way – and proved it over and over among the diverse population of the Frogtown community.
My very favorite Melvin achievement is the Peace Pole outside the police station that welcomes the immigrant communities with a message of peace in their own languages. Brilliant.
I am proud to know Melvin and absolutely delighted to see him recognized by your loving words. Thanks so much for sharing them with me.
May Peace Prevail on Earth!
Infinite gratitude,
(click on photos to enlarge them)

at neighborhood Peace Garden, St. Paul, August 7, 2007

Peace site rededication Centennial Elementary Richfield MN May 13, 2008

Peace Bubbles dispensed by Melvin at Centennial Elementary May, 2008

With Nobel Institute Director Geir Lundestad at Peace Prize Festival, Augsburg College, March 2009

Melvin (hat at left) at Peace Pole Dedication at St. Paul’s Monastery, Maplewood MN, June, 2009

At Peace Prize Festival March 5, 2010

Presenting mini-Peace Pole to Muhammad Yunus at University of Minnesota March 5, 2010

With Anna Tu at 2011 Nobel Peace Prize Festival

#532 – Dick Bernard: The Coleen Rowley and Dick Bernard "Debate" Finally Takes Place – About the Nobel Peace Prize.

Coleen Rowley’s post on HuffPost, yesterday, (link below) is the reason for this blogpost.
Almost exactly a year ago, someone suggested Coleen Rowley and I have a debate on issues relating to peace and President Obama. I agreed.
I actually saved the last of a chain of e-memos about this, dated March 30, 2011. Actually, I think the course towards having a debate started some time earlier in that same month, probably by someone else, in one of those endless online threads that go nowhere, but, no matter…. (The saved memo ended with some talk about “cognitive dissonance”.) A short while later one of the proponents for (and possible organizers of) the debate got angry at me and asked to be taken off my e-mail list (though I still get frequent e-mails from him – so is how it goes on the inter-net.)
Nothing ever happened because the supposed organizers of such a debate never got around to following through on the idea.
It was not the responsibility of either Coleen or myself to set this thing up – place, publicity, etc., etc., etc.
At any rate, I’m no longer interested in a “debate”.
At the same time, it appears Ms Rowley and I have engaged in our grand debate in a most unusual way, and it was at the same time direct and not direct at all.
Here’s how.
It happened at the just completed Nobel Peace Prize Forum and all of the “documentation” is already public record.
Last Saturday, March 3, we apparently were in the same hall at the same time when former S. African President F. W. deKlerk gave his Laureate address to a packed house. That address is archived on-line at the Forum website, and anyone can watch it at anytime, in its entirety. Here is the entree point. The talk was the one given on Saturday morning March 3, 2012. It was viewable live around the world.
Later the same day, at 12:30-1:15 in the Augsburg College Chapel, Coleen and I happened to sit within a few feet of each other, on either side of the main aisle, as Dr. Geir Lundestad, Director of the Norwegian Nobel Institute – the agency that chooses the Nobel Laureate each year – described the sometimes controversial history of the Nobel Peace Prize. This was one of many workshops, and was not filmed, to my knowledge, though I noticed Coleen was capturing some or all of it on her phone camera.
(Full disclosure: I’ve met Dr. Lundestad in previous years, and heard him speak; and I’ve known Coleen Rowley for five years or more. I know them both more through their work, than as personal friends.)
At the end of the same day, Saturday, March 3, at the closing of the Forum, I and hundreds of others heard Naomi Tutu, daughter of Desmond Tutu, give the Call to Action. It was a powerful address, and it is the last presentation on-line. I don’t know if Coleen was there or not. In her remarks, I recall Ms Tutu mentioning two panels that she had been part of earlier in the day, each on the same topic with the same participants. She observed that she and the other panel members spoke different thoughts from one panel to the next, and while not going into any specifics, Ms Tutu found that quite interesting. Coleen went to the first workshop; I had considered going to the second, but chose another option instead. Had I participated in the second workshop, I might have heard something different from the panelists than what Coleen heard an hour or two earlier.
On the other hand, I had seen and heard deKlerk twice on the previous day, once in the presence of hundreds of school children at the Festival portion, and at a reception in the evening. I gather that Coleen was at neither.
So, our “debate”?
Coleen has a much larger “platform” than I, and appeared on it yesterday, in a 1725 word Huffington Post commentary, accessible here.
I, on the other hand, reported on deKlerk and Lundestad, with mention of Naomi Tutu, in all or part of blog postings on March 2, 3, 4 and 5, accessible here, here, here and here.
This is the closest Coleen and I will come to debating this or any issue. But it does represent a start.

Maybe one or two or three of you will take the bait and start your own conversations with people you don’t normally talk with….
They’re surely necessary.
POSTNOTE: As I was writing the above, I began to think back over my entire work career when Committees were a not-always-desirable feature of daily life. You name it, there was a Committee about it. And the Nobel Peace Prize is selected by a Committee.
We all know the jokes about the results of committee work, but as I know from experience, committees are necessary, most always do their best, and in the end present their best possible results to the rest. Sometimes there is near-unanimity in accepting the results; most always somebody, sometime most everybody NOT on the committee, will be critical of something or other, maybe everything, that the committee has tried to do.
Committee results are overturned, but for good reason there is great hesitation in doing so. It is difficult enough to form a good committee.
Here we have a Nobel Peace Prize Committee which for over 100 years and through literally generations of different members has tried to do its best to select someone who in its judgement best represents the Will (will) of the founder of the Prize, Alfred Nobel.
And we have people who for their own reasons are rushing to judgement to criticize the results of the Nobel Peace Prize Committee as if it is some sinister person with dark motives.
I don’t wonder why the Peace Prize Committee keeps its deliberations secret for many years.

#531 – Dick Bernard: "Takeaways" from the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize Forum at Augsburg College, Minneapolis MN

At the preview of the Nobel Peace Prize Forum on February 14, we were told that, for the first time, the major sessions of the Forum would be live-streamed and accessible around the world. I did not publicize that to my own mailing list, since I was most interested in attendance at the event. There is a particular synergy when people come together at an event and, besides, the vast majority of the sessions were not televised.
In the end, it appeared that the attendance was very strong through the closing session on Saturday, and all of the plenary sessions are archived on-line at the Forum website. Watch them. There’s lots of insights. (In going there this morning, I found that my own reports through this blog led to my own ‘byline’ – a pleasant surprise to me. I was just interested in sharing bits and pieces of this phenomenal event.)
I’m left with a most daunting task: how to summarize those 27 hours at Augsburg and the University of Minnesota, and attendance at 15 plenaries, workshops and events, into a few hundred words of “takeaways” – things I hope one or two readers will find useful.
I think my most important observation is one which I actually made several months ago while observing a gathering in the Minnesota State Capitol the day after the government shutdown ended. The full report is here; the summary of that post is very simple: Margaret Mead was right. Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”
But there is an essential corollary to that quote, which I stated in the blogpost: those people in the Capitol circle, and those people in every circle aspiring to change anything, have to turn around and engage the people outside of their circle, otherwise their energy is wasted. Over and over again in the conference, in sundry ways, I heard variations on the same theme: we are a very complicated world, and we have to negotiate and to compromise.
Good friend Bob Barkley, in Ohio, asked: “As I have commented before on several issues, I wonder what you think the root causes are which lead to situations other than peace. Many people point to religious fundamentalism and intolerance, wealth inequality, and the general passion for power, for example. But what one thing stands out from your sessions?
It feels to me like the entire peace effort is often little more than a rambling struggle in the wilderness. And we don’t seem to be able to make much progress. If you were to sit down now, after all you’ve heard, and concentrate on one thing, what would it be?”

My answer: conflict is a complex business. My friend Michael Andregg took an impressive stab at defining the business of War a few years ago, and his 289 page book is accessible free on line here. Just a look at the Table of Contents gives a clue about the causes of war. I’d simply add to the answer as I just stated immediately before Bob’s quote: get out into the world, you little groups, and make the changes you wish to see in it. Get to know each other, and work together not separately.
Someone, I’m thinking it was in one of the workshops I attended, talked about our tendency in this society to put ourselves in ‘boxes’ of like-minded individuals. As technology expands its reach, paradoxically we can become more and more isolated: our boxes get smaller and smaller, our ideological purity greater and greater, and consequently our problems become worse and worse. We have to look “outside the walls” of our own certainties and explore the concerns and aspirations of the other (less perfect?) persons, and negotiate, and compromise. We need to do this to survive.
The conference put me in constant proximity to many young people, children and college age and young post-college. These are the people who will make the future out of whatever mess we elders leave them. The image seared in my memory will be F. W. deKlerk connecting with those First Graders from Burroughs Elementary in Minneapolis on Education Day. They are our future. He knows. We know. My friend, Lynn Elling, near 91 years old, lives his passion that the future is the children. Not him. The children.
(click to enlarge photo)

F. W. deKlerk and Burroughs Elementary singers March 2, 2012 Augsburg College


I could go on and on.
Connect, connect, connect. Get out of your own self-imposed ‘box’, and get to work!
Previous posts on Augsburg Nobel Peace Price Festival: March 1, March 2, March 3, March 4