#34 – Bruce Fisher, Carol Ashley: The Conversation about Climate Change

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A reader comment follows this post.
Note from Moderator: On the local evening news on June 1, the weatherman noted that May, 2009, was one of the driest on record, exceeded only by May, 1934, a year of great drought.  Is May, 2009, just an unusual month of weather, or a looming manifestation of serious climate change problems to come?  Are those concerned about climate change simply worry-warts, or are those unconcerned denying an unpleasant reality?  Do we live in the moment, or act for the long term?
In early April, I publicized a website that features a 20+ section “Crash Course” to help understand the possibilities of the future, and by understanding help deal with those possibilities.  The website is http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse for those interested.  In my opinion it’s well worth the three hours it takes to view the sections. 
Carol Ashley took the time to view the series, and commented on it in #19 on this blog, May 11, 2009.
Bruce Fisher also took the time and on May 25 posted the following, to which Carol filed her own response.
Bruce Fisher: I’ve been thinking about the “Crash Course” and the significance of its concepts for our environment and economy.  A few days ago, [an] article by George Lakoff appeared in the Huffington Post and it struck me that framing is understanding and the environment and economy need to be framed together (the [political] right has done this for years with the emphasis on the environment as material resource for the economy).  As a cognitive scientist, Lakoff knows this best.  For those who have taken the “Crash Course”, [the Lakoff commentary at http://tinyurl.com/08pwon] is an especially relevant article.  [ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/george-lakoff/why-environmental-underst_b_205477.html ]
Carol Ashley:  From Lakoff’s article “…one of the things Westen and Lake get right is in an incomprehensible diagram on the back page: an explanation of why discussions of climate fail.  It is hidden in a discussion of “associations,” an inadequate way of discussing the public’s frame-based logic.  Climate and weather are usually understood as beyond immediate causation, something you are subject to, but can’t just go out and change right away.  Climate is not directly and causally connected to the values that underlie our concerns about our planet’s future: empathy, responsibility, freedom, and our ability to thrive.  They try to say that in the diagram, but the arrows and lines don’t communicate it.”
What I see in my rural area is that people are prone to see the weather as a daily event: at the most, a weekly or seasonally based phenomena.  It’s kind of the same problem in government…no long range vision.  So people are prone not to see the effects of short term actions, not to see the actuality of broader patterns and rather base assumptions on climate on a cooler than usual spring season, for example.
Rural people and those in small towns often value community and their particular environment.  (Their community tends to be very small comprising only their extended family, church and friends.)  They don’t value getting rich.  They also don’t trust government and haven’t for years. They vote and expect who they voted for to do the work of politics.  They tend not to stay informed.  They don’t have the time and the access to information.  And their lives are often a struggle to survive.  They, therefore, don’t make policy so these observations may not apply to others, but I think some applies to just being human and there are plenty of poor people in cities who for racial reasons are also mistrustful of others and rely on their communities.
There is also an issue of “delayed gratification” here, I think.  That ability to do what needs to be done, sacrificing what one wants for what one will have in the future and even forgoing what one wants for the sake of one’s children and grandchildren.  It’s easier to do that for one’s own children than to consider the world’s children.  I think, in order for delayed gratification to be possible for an individual, one has to have some basic needs met, like food, shelter and some measure of health.  Long-term poverty undermines that.
The reason this may be important is that those on the extreme right are often rural and poor.  People in cities who live in poverty are often focused on basic needs, too, and need framing that applies to them more immediately and practically.  The difference between the rural and city poor, I think, is the very fierce independence of the rural and their valuing of that independence and the rural environment over the desire for wealth.  Either way, the best way to reach these people is through major media and through churches.  (Even then they tend to be pretty independent minded and hold to what they have always believed.)  The framing has to reach them that way.  So the first step is back to square one, in my opinion.  Get corporations out of government and create an avenue for non-profit media.  Is that even possible any more?  Like most rural people, I doubt it.  The super rich are in control and will be.  Haven’t they always been?  Even in the beginnings of our country?
I suppose my pessimism comes partly from being rural and poor.  I have little ability to be an activist.  The poor and rural always seem to be at the mercy of others.
Note from Moderator: Essays from others on this topic are solicited.  Watch future entries.

#32 – Dick Bernard: Health Care Reform ("Good Morning Vietnam")

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Yesterday was spent with a group of about twenty persons.  We were having our annual meeting.  It could be fairly said that with very few exceptions, we all knew each other reasonably well.
Someone observing us from the outside would quickly note that we were about the same age.  We would appear to be homogeneous in composition,  of roughly the same economic status, all accustomed to being leaders in one context or another.  And we would even agree  on the major issue facing our constituency, and that issue was Health Care Reform.
Near the end of our meeting the group was presented with a proposed statement of position on Health Care Reform.  The draft was very brief and general: two paragraphs, one-half page.  
Rather than simply approve the draft and go home, there ensued a vigorous debate and a number of amendments to the contents of the fifteen lines of text.  What two pairs of eyes had thought would be a relatively simple action statement became considerably more complicated when 20 pairs of eyes looked at the same sentences.
And we were all basically similar in our points of view on the general issue.
It took about a half hour of vigorous discussion, but finally a generally acceptable draft was approved and we went home.
It occurred to me that if our little group had so much trouble agreeing on a general framework, how much more difficult it is when the constituency is over 300 million, as is our U.S. population.  Change does not come easily.
But change does happen, and that’s why the “Good Morning Vietnam” addition to the subject line of this post.
I was in the Army in 1962-63, the beginning of the Vietnam era.  So I saw the entirety of the Vietnam conflict as an adult American. 
Vietnam was a long, destructive, contentious and divisive war among the American people.  Wounds still fester 35 years after the conflicts official end.  
But there is a lesson from that era that is directly applicable to today’s debate about Healthcare reform.
Years ago, very slowly but very surely the national conversation about Vietnam changed.  People can key in on different events which led to the change – there were many such events – but that part of history is less relevant than the ultimate fact that at some point a tipping point was reached, where the status quo of continuing the War became politically unacceptable, and the politicians sensed the change, and the war ended.
In my view the same general dynamic is in play today regarding health care reform.  The tipping point either has or soon will be reached in the debate.  Unlike the unfortunate end to the Clinton initiative in 1993-94, today’s efforts are not as clouded by public rigidity to change in the inefficient status quo.  People know that something needs to be done.
But as evidenced by the debate over a small statement of position by a small organization yesterday, the process of moving from the status quo to a new standard will be extraordinarily messy, and the initial outcome will be unsatisfactory to most who will legitimately see this defect or that in the resulting creation.
The very least we can do as individuals is to make certain that our personal positions are made known to our elected leaders at state and national level.  And, in addition, to enter into the debates in our organizations – as we did on Saturday afternoon – to take organizational positions on the abundant issues as well.
At the same time, we need to acknowledge the reality that this will be an extraordinarily difficult and imperfect process. 
As we enter this debate, I offer my favorite song from “Good Morning Vietnam”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc.  Louis Armstrong went up against long odds.  He was not a quitter.

#30 – Marion Brady: A very serious and comprehensive look at the need for Public Education Reform

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Note from Moderator:  For 77 years Marion Brady has been immersed in public education in numerous roles, from student to teacher to text book author to informed commentator on public education.  In blog entry #10, (April 24, 2009), Marion laid out a very simple, but very essential prescription for necessary change in Public Education practice to fit the present day and future needs.  He contends that modern public education policy originated in the 1890s, and has inadequately changed in the well over 100 years since.  Below Marion Brady provides more specific context.   

 

Marion Brady: For more than forty years, in books published by respected presses, in a great many articles in education journals, and in newspaper columns distributed nationally by Knight-Ridder/Tribune, I’ve maintained that there will be no significant improvement in learner performance until problems with the deeply flawed “core curriculum” adopted in 1893 and in

near-universal use in America’s schools and colleges are recognized and addressed.

 

My criticisms have been myriad and specific, and have been articulated in simple, straightforward language, but education “reform” efforts from the local to the federal level continue to assume that poor performance is primarily a “people problem” rather than a system problem.

 

Until problems with the 1893 curriculum are addressed, rigor, raising the bar, trying harder, bringing market forces to bear, and so on — the reform strategies being promoted by corporate America and state and national politicians and policy makers — won’t just fail but will be

counterproductive.

 

For a summary of major problems with the familiar, traditional core curriculum, see:

 

www.marionbrady.com/powerpoint/NationalStandardsII.ppt

#27 – Dick Bernard: The Webinar on Fear, and related happenings, May 21, 2009

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 In #26, May 21, 2009, I mentioned an adventure on which I was about to embark: hooking into something called a webinar on “The Fear Factor: A briefing on communication and messaging from U.S. in the World”.   This session was taking place in some conference room in Washington D.C.

Apparently at roughly the same time, in the same city, President Obama was making a major speech on essentially the same topic relating to Guantanamo; and former Vice-President Cheney was trying to blunt the Presidents case in yet another speech at the American Enterprise Institute.  It was an interesting day, yesterday. 

 I am of the doofus generation, at least in a technological sense: a Webinar was something novel and largely incomprehensible to me.

 

 Nonetheless, I managed to follow the appropriate instructions, figured out how to put my cell phone on speaker mode, and got my computer linked so that I could watch the speakers power-point, including her occasional small errors in going to the wrong slide, or such.

 

(The power-point, with captions, can be accessed here http://www.connectusfund.org/resources/managing-fear-factor-briefing-us-world) 

 

That the speaker and in-house audience was invisible to me and sounded somewhat tinny was a relatively small problem.  I got the gist of it.

 

 The time on the webinar was well spent, though there are only so many new ways to make a presentation about Fear.

 

Fear is obviously a saleable commodity, and a dominant emotion in homo sapiens (and other vertebrates) brains.  It is survival mode, the bare basics on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. 

 

The speaker described as the “stone age brain”, and it is tempting to ascribe to the others whose views I oppose the inferior intellectual status of Fred and Wilma Flintstone.

 

But I have seen plenty of fear-based behavior amongst the good (and intellectually superior, of course) people with whom I most often associate.  And I’m in the same kettle as everyone else….  We’re all susceptible to Fear.  We just fear different things in different ways.

 

So, the speaker talked about “fears world view”, a view in which the “stone age brain” assesses situations as it would if its owner was in a schoolyard tussle with a bully; in a rough and tumble “wild west” scenario; or as it sees or imagines things out there in the “urban jungle”.  These are all examples of places “where the normal rules don’t apply” and where everyone has to watch out for him or her self.

 

In these kinds of situations, the sense of community is very restricted: trusting even the good next door neighbor might be a stretch.  “Me against the world” might be a good phrase.

 

The message I picked up from the Webinar is that the best course is simply to acknowledge that fear is a reality for all of us, and it is nothing to lecture or belittle people about.  People who are fearful are not stupid or crazy.  Fear just is.  And other tactics need to be explored to deal with the political tendency to rachet fear up as a useful “us vs them” tactic.

 

There is plenty of good material available about the topic, beginning with those references noted in #26 for May 21.  Do take the time to take a look at these references.   

#26 – Dick Bernard: NIMBY – Are we killing ourselves through "fear itself"?

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Shortly I will join a webinar sponsored by the Connect US Fund (www.connectusfund.org).  The title of the session “The Fear Factor: A briefing on communication and messaging from U.S. In The World”.   The  suggested readings are listed at the end of this posting.  They are very interesting.

 

I write intentionally before that session convenes.  Somehow it seems that the title is missing something when it says “from U.S. In The World”.  Might it better be, rather, “among us”?

 

The internal use of Fear to manipulate us is perhaps our most deadly enemy as a nation.  As I suggest in the title, we buy this Fear and, I contend, we are accepting the role of “killing ourselves”.

 

Examples are abundant.  Two on the national and international level occurred for me in the past 24 hours

 

1.  Yesterday, May 20, the United States Senate voted 90-6 against a small budget allocation directed towards the closing of Guantanamo Prison in Cuba.  The vote is not because there is serious disagreement with the data about the prisoners long held there, their possible guilt or innocence, the implications of their release, whether they can get a fair trial, etc.  Neither is it about the need to close this institution which has come to represent the worst of what we are as a nation.  We know we have to do this.  But none of this is terribly relevant.

 

The sole question seems to be “where should these prisoners go?”  And the stated and unstated answer is, “not in my backyard” (NIMBY).  We are afraid of these people, and legislators are afraid to face down this fear and do what is right.  They are afraid of the political consequences in the next election.

 

Some of these prisoners, (Many?  Most?), were innocent when they were thrown in jail without any rights, and left to rot there, tortured for information they did not have.  In the tragic irony of such situations, their very false incarceration leads to the near certainty of their continued incarceration in Cuba.  Nobody wants them in their state.

 

Fear is at work.  Politicians know the value of fear as a motivator.  Nobody wants them, even in the most secure facilities in the United States.   

 

If only this were the only example of fear run amuck….

 

2.  The same day the Senate voted I received the draft of a long carefully written letter to the Secretary General of the United Nations questioning the conduct of a recent election in the country of Haiti.  It seems that a major political party was denied placement on the ballot there because its designated leader had not properly signed the required form: a fax’ed signature was deemed improper.  Because this party wasn’t on the ballot, apparently great numbers of people boycotted the election in question, rendering the results invalid: there was no free election.

 

Since the designated leader of the party “is half a world away, exiled to another continent under international pressure” he could not sign in person the form required.

 

I have come to know a bit about this country and the sordid long term U.S. relationship with it.  Most Americans likely know little or nothing about Haiti, which makes it irrelevant and invisible to them.  But what we do reflects negatively on us, in relationship much as we impact negatively on it.

 

The leaders name is Jean-Bertrand Aristide, twice democratically elected president of Haiti, forced into exile by a coup engineered by the U.S., France and Canada in 2004.  Aristide, native born and till 2004 a life-long resident of Haiti, cannot even return to the country of his birth.  He is in another Guantanamo of our making, South Africa, even though he has not been found guilty of anything other than being someone the United States didn’t want to hold office in the desperately poor sovereign nation of Haiti.

 

For a particular reason, his popularity with the people of Haiti, the United States apparently fears Aristide’s return to his home country.   We fear any sense of empowerment of his constituency, the poor, for whose interests he advocated. 

 

Unlike the prisoners at Guantanamo, most Americans have probably never heard of Aristide; in fact, during a period of exile after another coup (1991) he lived several years in the United States.  One wonders if he would even be allowed to come to the United States at this point.

 

We seem mired in a swamp of our own making.  If there is anything we need to fear, it is that we are destroying ourselves.

 

Here are the readings suggested for today’s web-based session.  They are worth the time.

Resources
Detecting Intentions, Managing Fear: How Americans Think about National Security
Produced by the Topos Partnership for the National Security Network
http://www.connectusfund.org/resources/detecting-intentions-managing-fear-how-americans-think-about-national-security-0
Death Grip: How Political Psychology Explains Bush’s Ghastly Success
By John J. Judis, in The New Republic, August 27, 2007
http://www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=9e9af105-6745-497a-b5f8-4f304749eed4&p=1
“Cheney’s Fear Mongering”
Political Cartoon by Morin, in The Miami Herald, April 5-11, 2009
http://politicalhumor.about.com/od/politicalcartoons/ig/Political-Cartoons/Cheneyu-Fear-Mongering.htm
“A Nuclear 9/11?”
By Brian Michael Jenkins, Senior Advisor to the President of the RAND Corporation
http://www.rand.org/commentary/2008/09/11/CNN.html
“Clark blasts GOP terror video”
Alex Isenstadt, in Politico, May 8, 2009
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22268.html

 

 

#24 – Bob Barkley: Power vs Force

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As the transition from Bush to Obama continues, the differences between the reliance of power versus force, while subtle, are still quite substantive. I believe it is best explained in a piece I wrote in the midst of the Bush incompetence.
The tension between power and force is great and often misunderstood. Much of the problem here is the western worlds—or at least most Bush sympathizers—misunderstanding of the differences between these two dynamics.
And when it comes to which of these two will win in the long-term, power will eat force for lunch.
Power is about influence, persuasion, example, compassion, civility, modeling, pacifism, peacefulness, humility, and is intrinsic by nature; it is a ‘pull’ action.
Force is about bullying, brashness, greed, militarism, war, arrogance, hubris, brutishness, and is extrinsic by nature; it is a ‘push’ action. We have just escaped a US leadership that revered force, and, while not yet complete, the shift is apparent to at least a balance of the use of power and force.
Gandhi, M. L. King, Mandela, the Dalai Lama, Reinhold Niehbuhr, and Jesus exemplify power. Its essence is in ideas rather than things, and it is transmitted through words, serenity, calmness, and trust. Use of this model generates eager followers rather than reluctant servants.
King George III, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, bin Ladin, Saddam, Caesar, Herod, and, some would argue, to an increasing extent the US and British leadership for the past 8 years in particular, exemplify force. It is transmitted through fear, intimidation, coercion, dishonesty, and violence. It generates obedience and subservience rather than voluntary and enthusiastic acceptance.
The world has had its share of force, but force has never sustained a society in the way that power has. Martin Luther King captured the concept with the following: “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.” It will always take the power of some new and more reasoned influence to rectify the damage done by the wrong-headedness of using force.
A friend has offered that recently, “We have at work a strange version of the force/power distinction that operates as if force is the measure of power. Those holding this belief think that a bigger force will inevitably win, and they dread that others will conquer them if they don’t achieve total domination first. The only thing that can be won in such a paradigm is more control. And to maintain such control requires an ever-increasing ruthlessness and creates a world that responds only to force – a world that is driven by extrinsic reward or consequences rather than by an intrinsic sense of hope and of true community.” A study of history—Rome, Hitler, Napoleon, on and on, take your pick—shows that force is always trumped and is never sustainable long term.
A tweaking of this power vs. force discussion might well lead to what Reinhold Niebuhr would have referenced as “power and humility.” This comment about Reinhold Niebuhr recently came to my attention*, “Niebuhr understood that the exercise of power can be shocking and, at times, corrupting. But he also understood that power is absolutely necessary to fight the battles that must be fought. The trick is to fight these battles with humility and constant introspection, knowing that there is no monopoly on virtue. Moreover, this combination is simply more effective. For power untethered from humility is certain to eventually fail.”
And in the wake of World War II, Niebuhr warned us “we are so deluded by the concept of our innocence that we are ill-prepared to deal with the temptations of power which now assail us.” I can’t think of a better bit of advice to those that today control our government.
Finally, Niebuhr wrote, “If we should perish, the ruthlessness of the foe would be only the secondary cause of the disaster. The primary cause would be that the strength of a giant nation was directed by eyes too blind to see all the hazards of the struggle; and the blindness would be induced not by some accident of nature or history but by hatred and vainglory.” Or quoting an old adage, “Hubris is terminal.” And there couldn’t be a better description of where Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, et al, had been leading this nation.
In my manuscript titled “Progressive Thoughts from a Liberal Mind: Creating a More Perfect World,” this section has received the most attention by occasional readers. It is also the one I seem to refer to most often as I reflect upon today’s international climate.
Undoubtedly we must guide our nation to the use of power as here defined and to avoiding a reliance on force. Ultimately, particularly in the long term, all models based upon force will fail. But quite unfortunately, the failure of these models falls upon the children of the perpetrators rather than upon them. This means that it is most often the shortsighted and selfish – those lacking “humility” – who most rely on force to settle their grievances and frustrations or satisfy their greed.
It will serve us well to reflect upon this dynamic of power v. force as we evaluate efforts by the Obama administration to make the transition as it is apparent they wish to.
* Quotations by Rienhold Niebuhr are from his book Moral Man and Immoral Society: A Study of Ethics and Politics
_________________________
Robert Barkley, Jr., Worthington, Ohio. Email at RBarkle@columbus.rr.com. Retired Executive Director, Ohio Education Association, served as Interim Executive Director, Maine Education Association, thirty-five year veteran of National Education Association and NEA affiliate staff work, long-term Consultant to the KnowledgeWorks Foundation of Cincinnati, Ohio [www.kwfdn.org], author of: Quality in Education: A Primer for Collaborative Visionary Educational Leaders, Leadership In Education: A Handbook for School Superintendents and Teacher Union Presidents, Principles and Actions: A Framework for Systemic Change (unpublished), and Progressive Thoughts from a Liberal Mind: Creating a More Perfect World (unpublished and available online upon request).

#23 – Dick Bernard: President Obama at Notre Dame University May 17, 2009

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A beautiful Sunday afternoon was very tempting for a good long walk, but I knew that the long anticipated appearance of Barack Obama at Notre Dame was soon to begin, so I delayed the walk and watched the proceedings live on Notre Dame’s website, from the procession of graduates into the fieldhouse, to the remarks following President Obama’s speech.

 

It was a truly remarkable afternoon: grist for an entire semester course condensed into less than two hours of time.

 

I would diminish the event by trying to summarize it.  The most gifted commentators and film editors will similarly diminish it.  It has to be watched. 

 

Those who wish can likely view, or view for a second time, the entire proceedings at the Notre Dame website http://www.nd.edu/.  To get the entire perspective, you really need to watch the proceedings, including the opening prayer, and the student valedictory by a remarkable student, E. Brennan Bollman.

 

For those unable to see it all, it included a history lesson or two or three: the President noted (to no applause – doubtless because it caught a young audience unawares) that today was the 55th anniversary of Brown vs Board of Education, the landmark civil rights case.  And at the end of his speech, the President was presented a photo of former Notre Dame President Theodore Hesburgh with Martin Luther King in Chicago in 1965.  Hesburgh was one of the giants of the civil rights era.  He was at the commencement, nearing his 92nd birthday. 

 

As a lifelong Catholic I could feel pride at the long history of my Church as a champion of social justice.  At points in my life I benefitted from that role.  As a person who brushed up close against the possibility of abortion during my first wife’s last months on earth in the spring and summer of 1965, and is unalterably pro-choice because of my personal experience, I listened closely for, and heard, acknowledgement of the difficulties inherent in adopting absolute right and wrong positions.  But I heard respect for differing opinions from both Obama and the University of Our Lady (Notre Dame).

 

Obama used the Abortion word on the Notre Dame stage, and handled the sensitive matter in a sensitive way.  But he was no less classy than the Notre Dame officials. 

 

There was one – or was it several – very loud hecklers early in the speech.  An overwhelming student led chant drowned them out. 

 

I was distracted early on by a grim looking professor like figure behind President Obama on the stage.  This guy had on all the robes, but when others applauded, he stood stone-like.  I finally decided that he was probably Secret Service.  Maybe someone will expand on that presumption of mine.

 

Knowing a little about such things work, my guess is that all of the VIPS, Obama, the President of Notre Dame, Father Hesburgh and others, knew before a single word was uttered what at minimum the gist of each others talk would be.  This was not a time or a place for surprises.

 

Going in everyone doubtless knew that this wasn’t a serious issue within the Catholic Church.  Only about 20% of the Bishops united in opposition to Obama’s appearance; over 60% of Catholics approved.  In my own Catholic Church, this morning, there was not a single word verbally or in print about the conflict, nor did the local diocesan paper in its most recent edition carry a single word about it (though I suspect the local Archbishop was among the 20% who were against Obama’s appearance).* 

 

And to the best of my knowledge Rome was silent.   Its silence spoke volumes.

 

For those who value Hostility around a controversial and difficult issue, today was not a good day.  For those who are interested in Healing, today was a solid start.

 

I went for my walk.  And saw a little kid with his Mom, wearing a Notre Dame tee-shirt.  A good omen.

 

One day later – May 18, 2009

 

* I went back to the Archdiocesan paper and found I was in error on this sentence.  Indeed the Archbishop’s column mentioned the event without mentioning either the speaker or the institution, but one had to be a very diligent reader of the weekly newspaper and interested in the event to figure out what the Archbishop was talking about.  The meat of the column was buried in the inside back page of the newspaper.  Such placement was likely intentional.  The entire column is accessible here http://tinyurl.com/ovhszz. 

 

In his column, the Archbishop appears to acknowledge the need to dialogue “with those who disagree” with the Church’s stand.  The continuing dilemma is how there can be “dialogue” with someone who not only claims the truth but claims that the official position of the Church is the only correct one and says that “[t]here can be no compromise”.  Dialogue does not presume closed minds in a conversation, or “lines drawn in the sand”.  But no openness to other points of view is conveyed whatsoever. The Archbishop who wrote the column for his newspaper has chosen, apparently deliberately, to hide his position from all but those who most likely fervently agree with him.  He can demonstrate that he took a hard position on the issue, without much risk that anyone will notice.

 

Two days later – May 19, 2009

 

Out of curiosity I decided to look at the several issues of the Archdiocesan newspaper which were published the last several weeks before the speech.  I picked up a sense of editorial meetings concerning “what shall we say about this?” with an answer “as little as possible”, from the small amount of newsprint devoted to the Obama appearance.  The most interesting, and perhaps most revealing, article was a short one on April 16, where it was reported that the local South Bend Bishop “advised Catholics to not attend [the] demonstrations”.  Whatever the real intent was, my own perception was that, even by early April, the powers-that-be knew that the general church membership was not with them regarding Obama’s visit to Notre Dame, and the advisory was a clever PR creation to provide a cover story.  But that is just my individual perception.  I have learned over the years that it is useful to have a healthy skepticism about official versions of events and their meaning.

 

Four days later – May 21, 2009

 

The Archdiocesan newspaper carried two front page “below the fold” stories about the events at Notre Dame.  They were equal in length: one focusing on Obama’s remarks; the other on the protests.  On page 6 was a half-page “Guest Editoria” “It’s not only Obama who needs to examine conscience” which, first, acknowledged what every Catholic knows: that the church is not a monolith where everyone thinks alike; but nonetheless contended that genuine Catholics must follow the official Church teaching. 

#22 – Dick Bernard: Johnny, Carl and Elmer L.

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Yesterday’s post on Heather (#21, May 13) got me to thinking back to those “good old days” about which people my age tend to recall so fondly as we face these troubled times. “Wouldn’t it be nice”, we tend to say, “if only we could be transported back into those good old times when life was simpler.” Indeed, on occasion, around will come some e-mail talking about those past-times when government didn’t intrude so much, and self-reliance was more a value. “Wouldn’t it be nice.”
After I posted the column, my memory went back to the time between 1945 and 1951, right after WWII, between age 5 and 11, when we lived in a little town not far from the Hawk’s Nest pictured on the front page of this blog.
In this town was a kid named Johnny, older and bigger than the gang I ran with, but on reflection, obviously retarded, often with us. In my memory, Johnny couldn’t talk, and lived at home down the street. He hardly had ability (as we measured such), but occasionally we could get him enraged, and then he would be fearsome. Nothing ever came of this rage – we could outrun him. The next day he’d be back.
I wonder whatever happened to Johnny.
It was at this point in time when I remember those visits to the town with the School for the Feeble Minded, briefly described in #21. (The 1982 History of that town headlines the section as being about the “State School”, and says it was established by State Government in 1903 as the “Institution for the Feeble-Minded”, and that it was, by 1982, “the largest employer in [the] County”.) In a recent conversation, a friend remembered an Aunt who had been confined there for some reason and “used the rope” (hung herself), likely to escape the misery of her confinement. Such facts don’t often appear in official histories.
In those same good old days, Carl, in another context, was growing up, retarded, on a farm in Minnesota. He was able to work, and he was worked, hard. In today’s context, his treatment would be called “abuse”. What happened on the farm stayed on the farm. I knew Carl for several years when he lived with my sister and her family. He lived to an unusually old age for someone with his disability, and at the end lived semi-independently in a community up north. He could not have survived on his own. He benefitted from a more enlightened day.
Our society was very late in the game of engaging in the reality of special needs and needs for special education and other special services.
I come from a life-long environment of public education, but even so, it was late in the game when I became fully aware of how slow we were in acknowledging the reality of unmet special needs.
In the early 1990s I became good friends with a former Governor of Minnesota, Elmer L. Andersen. He was a conservative Republican, and I met him through reading his columns in a community newspaper which he owned, and to which I subscribed, largely so I could read his columns on sundry topics.
I liked his philosophy, as expressed in his opinions, so much that in the spring of 1995 I decided to nominate him for the Friend of Education Award from my union, the Minnesota Education Association. I didn’t live in the state when he was in government, so my nomination was based solely on his opinion pieces. It became obvious, quickly, that there was much more to Elmer than what I knew of him.
He won the Friend of Education Award in the fall of 1995, and here I let my former colleague and good friend Judy Berglund complete the story as she wrote it for the MEA Advocate in October, 1995: Then-state legislator Elmer L. Andersen was “the architect of Minnesota’ special education program in 1955.
“At that time, one in 12 children was born with disabilities, and unable to benefit from a normal school environment,” he says. “I thought the Legislature ought to do something about that.”
The Legislature set up an interim commission, which he chaired. Every one of its recommendations was adopted by the 1957 Legislature, which established one of the best and most comprehensive special education programs in the nation. Families with retarded children got financial help to enroll their children in school, training programs and scholarships were provided for aspiring special education teachers.
That was 20 years before federal special education laws were passed, laws Andersen thinks hampered the program by encumbering it with extensive regulation. “Nevertheless, Minnesota took the lead in recognizing that all children have potential, all have God-given gifts, all have special needs,” he says….”
Mr. Andersen never wavered from his commitment to quality education for all, regardless of abilities or circumstance. Our friendship continued until his death during Thanksgiving week, 2004. He and many others are heroes for today’s and tomorrows Heather’s.
But todays most vulnerable citizens are most likely to be on the “chopping block” in tight economic times. Their budgets are easy to cut. They have little voice, only us.

#21 – Dick Bernard: Heather and a salute to "Community"

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Last night, shortly before 7 p.m. at Ballfield #5 in Lakeville MN, Heather Bernard came up to the plate, wearing an Ohio State pullover, and holding and jiggling her bat like she’d doubtless seen countless batters on television prepare for the pitch. (She looked pretty good, actually!)
The pitcher lobbed the softball towards the plate, and ultimately Heather swung and connected, a well hit ground ball. She dropped the bat and took off towards first, running harder than I’d ever seen her run, and she made it: an earned single. That hit was something to be really proud of, and I’m talking also about me, her Dad.
At that moment between home plate and first base, something else came together for me: the abundant good side of not only America, but of people generally, regardless of where they live, or how directly or indirectly they might be positively involved in others lives.
Heather is my daughter, 33 now, Down Syndrome. We think she was probably on the right team last night, but as I write I’m still not certain of that. Regardless, the coach fit her into the lineup, and she took seriously her position as short left-fielder, and like her teammates she had her turn at bat in the one-hour game.
Left alone in this game of life, Heather’s odds of even survival were never good. She was born with a serious heart defect which required several surgeries before she was five years old. She lives because a heart pacemaker keeps hers ticking!
And when I saw her running to first base last night, it was a testimony to modern technology: her first pacemaker allowed only a single level of activity; currently, the pacemaker adjusts to the level of exertion, and consequently Heather could actually run to first base, rather than slowly walk as would have been the case over 30 years ago.
Heather was playing ball last night because another community, likely primarily parents of similar special needs “kids” like Heather, who have organized and support a once a week league. Out of such leagues, come participants in the long well-established Special Olympics program. Indeed Special Olympics exists because of special needs kids. http://www.specialolympics.org/
Last night someone, likely a parent of one of the other participants, approached us with a flier from a local Pizza establishment who had agreed to make a large match, up to $5000, for contributions to this local activity. We live a long distance from the town, so I wrote out a check instead.
I gave thanks, last night, for something I’ve been aware of for years, but which only infrequently bubbles to the surface: we are bombarded every day with bad news, and all manner of political positioning on supposedly major issues of the day, but at the end of the day the big news is taking place in millions of settings across our country and across the world: settings like that Ballfield #5 in Lakeville MN last night.
It is useful to keep that in mind. We are the good – and the bad – of the huge community in which we all live. And we have a great capacity to make life better, or worse, depending on how broadly or narrowly we choose to define that word “community”.
A public community, very large, and largely invisible, has nurtured Heathers life over all these years.
There are lots of Heathers, and lots of communities. As we know, it’s not too many decades ago where her fate, realistically, would have been to end up in a School for the Feeble Minded somewhere…. I remember seeing one of these schools, frequently, when we went to visit our grandparents in a particular town in the 1940s and 1950s. The mentally deficient of the state were ware-housed there, and on pleasant days you could see them gathered on the lawn behind the fence, and we could look at them like one would look at animals in a zoo.
Our society looked at Heather’s kind differently then. That’s just as it was.
Hopefully in these troubled economic times we won’t be tempted to backslide….

#20 – Dick Bernard: The Drones as Solution, or Problem?

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A reader comment follows this post.
The May 10 edition of CBS’ “60 Minutes” featured a segment on the military’s new star: an unmanned reconnaissance and war plane called a Drone. The segment, “Drones: America’s New Air Force”, likely remains available for viewing at http://www.60minutes.com. It is worth watching.
The Drone has those same qualities that used to attract me, as a kid, to the Ray Guns of the science fiction world of Flash Gordon, and the two-way wrist radio of super cop Dick Tracy. Lasers and digital phones are now old news in our society. The $11 million Drone with its $1 million camera is simply the latest rendition, allowing an operator sitting in a windowless high tech building in Nevada to take out bad guys in Afghanistan or other places thousands of miles away.
No more is there any risk to our “side”: someone simply presses a button, and out of existence goes some evil doer or group of evil doers over there. We are safe and in control. We don’t need to see the “whites of their eyes”; indeed, part of the star quality of this weapon is that the victim of it is not even aware that he is even being watched. (I think I can say “he” with a certain amount of confidence.)
There are downsides, of course, like possibly killing innocent civilians, or maybe even blasting out of existence an erroneous target, but that’s small price to pay, or so would say the supporters of this new smart warfare.
But is it so “smart”?
The program drove me to my internet search engine for some very elementary statistics: The United States has 3 million square miles of land surface compared with a world total of 57 million square miles. This translates into the U.S. occupying roughly 5% of the world’s land mass. Similarly, we have roughly 5% of the world’s population. And we’re a very large country.
What are the odds that an ever more sophisticated generation of Drones can successfully patrol the world for us, and rid it of all evil doers. For that matter, what are the odds they could control the evil doers in just our country, or my state, or town, or even neighborhood?
The odds of course is essentially zero, unless some target has been tirelessly tracked for months, and is a creature of habit, never moving, always following the same routine. Of course, a smart potential target blends into the neighborhood as well, putting at risk people who don’t even know he is there.
I think, here, of the lowly cows who used to be in the pasture at my grandparents place in North Dakota. They used to occupy the pasture south and west of the barn, wandering at will throughout the day, except for morning and afternoon when they would march along the proverbial cow path to the barn to be milked. Now, these were creatures of habit, easily predictable targets. How well would the Drone do its job if its target was a single one of those cows, a renegade one, who needed to be taken out? Could it single out its target, and not damage the other cows in its company? Would these other “productive citizen” cows just be considered a dispensable collateral damage?
Ah, high tech weaponry seems so innocuous and effective until you look the tiniest distance beyond it. They are, first of all, like all aggressive weaponry, a waste of natural resource. There is little “productive” that can be said of weaponry: it’s function is to destroy including, in the case of bombs and bullets, itself.
Conversely, the very survival of Humanity, from the basics of family onward, in the most primitive society to the most advanced, is rooted in the business of positive relationships.
The more powerful we became (I speak in the past tense), the less we felt we needed to engage continuously and positively with the world citizens who occupy the rest of the 95% of the planet. Unlike cows (so far as I know), humans whatever their language or culture have a tendency to develop relationships, and to not forget how they were treated.
Without positive relationships, no number of Drones will save or even protect us.