#372 – Dick Bernard: Spring inches northward.

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Today, May 10 in suburban St. Paul MN, the leaves on the trees have burst out, and the leafy green of woods in spring has returned once again.
Exactly one month ago, in suburban Albuquerque NM, I was taking a solitary walk along the Rio Grande River, and noticed a simple tree which intrigued me (click to enlarge photos):

It was about the identical stage of leaf development as the trees I saw on my daily walk today.

Carver Park Woodbury MN May 11, 2011


Further north of here, other trees will leaf out in coming days.
Further south of Albuquerque, somewhere, trees were leafing out precisely on the Vernal Equinox of March 20.
So it goes.
Spring brings with it the predictable; the only unpredictable is the precise timing for such events as the first leaves of summer.
Across the driveway, a duck has set up a nest beside a neighbors house.

With some luck (the family has a cat and a dog) the ducklings will hatch and follow Mom to some pond a few blocks away, and survive, and life will go on.
Walking along this morning, I was momentarily surprised by someone coming out of the adjacent woods.
Not to worry. Just a gray-haired lady who bent over to inspect some green foliage. “It’s milkwort” she said, excitedly, and walked on in the opposite direction.
Happy Spring.
I’ll include a photo from Babbitt MN to be taken on Friday, May 13….

Sandia Mountain Range east of Bernalillo NM Apr 10, 2011


Some Minnesota wild flowers May 11, 2011:

The much-maligned Dandelion (my Dad's favorite "wild flower")



Remembering a life as spring begins at Bear Lake near Babbitt MN May 13, 2011.

#369 – Dick Bernard: Mother's Day 2011

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UPDATE June 7, 2011. Here’s the flower we bought at the Work House a month ago, May 7, 2011.

UPDATE August 5, 2011. Here’s the same plant, now dubbed a ‘monster plant’ by our neighbors, on August 5. It’s the best plant we’ve ever had!

August 5, 2011


To all Mom’s out there, a great day.
I know at least one young Mom for whom this day has recent and tragic memories, and to her and all of the many others in this world who have lost a son or daughter long before their normal time, my condolences. Being Mom is not always easy.
Defining “Mom” these days is a bit harder than 100 years ago, as this 1910 postcard found at my grandparents farm shows.

Women’s suffrage was still 10 years in the future.
Friday I was at my bi-monthly ‘blood-letting’, donating blood at the Memorial Blood Center branch here in Woodbury.
The Nurse – herself a Mom – and I were chatting. She mentioned that she planned to go over to the Ramsey County Work House to get her Mother’s Day flowers.

Greenhouses at Ramsey Co. Correctional Facility, Maplewood MN


Flowers for sale at the Work House? I’d never heard of such a thing, but the idea was intriguing so we went over there Saturday morning. It was worth the trip.
Every society has its guys (and gals) who’ve taken the wrong turn on the road of life, and ours is no different. The inmates have Moms, and Dads, too, and while they’re doing their time, particularly if they’re not on work release, there is work. Why not grow flowers?
At this work facility, the decision was made to have a greenhouse in which they raise annual plants, and sell them on weekends beginning on Mother’s Day weekends. The flowers certainly don’t mind who plants and cares for them, and the products we purchased and delivered matched those we normally buy at the commercial greenhouse.
I’m sure there were guards somewhere yesterday, but they were unobtrusive. There were volunteers too (the lady who met us said, with a smile, “be careful, last year I came here as a customer, and here I am volunteering!”), and there were inmates helping carry and deliver the products to our cars. Our helper were a couple of younger adult inmates, very polite. I have no idea what got them their time in the slammer but that didn’t matter. They were polite and helpful.
As I say, these inmates have Moms too.
One way or another every one of us have or had a Mom, and a Dad, who hopefully at least tried to raise us to the best of their ability. Having assumed the role of a “Mr. Mom” for quite a number of years, I sort of know the trade, the perils, the pitfalls. It’s not easy being Mom – or Dad – for that matter.
But this is the day for Mom’s, whether living or dead.
Remember them, perhaps especially the Mom’s of those inmates at the Work House and other such places.
And if you haven’t done so, or done so recently, consider taking up the ‘blood-letting’ routine at your local blood bank. I evaded that duty for years but it’s now a good habit.
Have a great day. Here, thanks to Lucy’s Mom (and my daughter, Lauri), is a little gift for the day to everyone reading (click on the photo to enlarge).

Granddaughter Lucy, May, 2011


(I’m tempted to say, “Lucy in the sky with diamonds“. Great Thanks to the Beatle’s, Yellow Submarine and You Tube. Son Tom and I went to this movie sometime in 1968 at the then-Suburban World Theatre in uptown Minneapolis.)

#356 – Dick Bernard: Bottineau Jig, Untold Tales of Early Minnesota

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Two sold-out performances of Bottineau Jig, Untold Tales of Early Minnesota, attested to the interest in Dance Revels Moving History’s interpretation of the life and times of legendary Pierre Bottineau.
The program was performed at Intermedia Arts in Minneapolis, Friday and Saturday evening, April 1 and 2. The production was a creation of Jane Peck of Dance Revels. Jane is a long-time student of historical dance forms. The program proudly noted that the activity was “funded, in part, by the Minnesota arts and cultural heritage fund as appropriated by the Minnesota State Legislature with money from the vote of the people of Minnesota on November 4, 2008” (This is the Clean Water and Legacy amendment approved by Minnesota voters November 4, 2008.)
Pierre Bottineau (played by Dr. Virgil Benoit) was a legendary early founder of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and he was renowned guide in the white settlement of the upper midwest. Bottineau, Metis (Michif) born in the area of present day Grand Forks ND, was gifted in languages and a larger than life presence. He was one of eight pioneers who built the original log cabin St. Paul Catholic Church (the first Cathedral of St. Paul MN); he owned land and built the second frame house in what was then St. Anthony, later to become Minneapolis; he founded Osseo and later Red Lake Falls MN.
Jane Peck’s program was an extraordinarily rich demonstration of period fiddling, music and dance.
The program interspersed spoken word, ethnic music and dance, covering the period from Bottineau’s birth in 1817 through 1870. At the conclusion of the program the cast of 14 invited the audience to join them in a Red River Jig, and then engaged in discussion with the audience. (Click on the photo to see an enlarged version.)

Audience and Cast participate in Red River Jig April 2, 2011


The program specifically intended to showcase an assortment of characters, not all well known in Minnesota History. So, Sarah Steele Sibley was emphasized over her more well known husband, Henry Hastings Sibley, and Franklin Steele, builder of the first house in to-be Minneapolis. Jacob Fahlstrom, early Swedish settler via England and years with the natives in Canada, and his wife, Marguerite Bonga, whose ancestry was a freed Haitian slave well known in what is now the Duluth area, spoke powerfully to the dilemmas of cross-cultural relationships in the newly emerging Swedish community northeast of St. Paul.
Among other purposes of the Bottineau Jig Project are, according to producer Jane Peck: “1) Offering the contributions and points of view of the mixed bloods and Metis in Minnesota history. They have been ignored as much or more than the French; 2) tracing the modern-day communities of some of the cultures represented in the play, including the Metis as the only modern mixed blood community.”
An expert cast was augmented by three fiddlers, all well known interpreters of Metis and French-Canadian music: Legendary Metis Fiddler from Turtle Mountain ND, Eddie King Johnson, gave his usual great performance, as did Twin Citians Linda Breitag and Gary Schulte. Larry Yazzie and Ricky Thomas provided outstanding dance, native and Metis. Other performers, all very engaging, were M. Cochise Anderson, Josette Antomarchi, Jamie Berg, Paulino Brener, Kenna Cottman, Craig Johnson, Scott Marsalis and Jane Peck.
Jane Peck has begun and will continue a blogging project on the Bottineau Jig at her website. See her site for more stories about Bottineau Jig.
Also visit the website of IFMidwest for upcoming activities in Virgil Benoit’s French-Canadians in the Midwest organization. The annual conference of IF Midwest is planned in Fargo ND October 7-8, 2011. Details will be at the website.

#352 – Dick Bernard: August Wilson: the Triumph of an Ordinary Man….

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On check-in at my hotel in downtown Pittsburgh, I asked if the August Wilson Center (AWC) was somewhere in the neighborhood.
That was an easy question: it was three short blocks away. I walked there, and found the back side of it was visible from my 15th floor room (the orange traffic signs are alongside AWC in the photo – click to enlarge).

August Wilson Center from Omni William Penn, Pittsburgh PA, March 25, 2011


August Wilson?
If you don’t know who he is, note the Center website link above. There is plenty of information. He is one of America’s most noted playwrights, one of the very few winners of two Pulitzer Prizes for his plays; the only African-American playwright ever to have two of his plays performed simultaneously on Broadway.
I met him when he was, literally, a “nobody”, like me….

Portrait of August Wilson at August Wilson Center, Pittsburgh.


Best as I can figure, it was sometime in 1979-82 time period when I met him, briefly, when he was a part-time cook at Little Brothers in Minneapolis MN. I was a sometime volunteer there, and August was the cook. Laura, my friend who introduced me to Little Brothers and got to know August better than I, says he was an outstanding cook, and I’ll take her word for that. My specialty is eating! She spent more time than I at Little Brothers; I was more part of the Catholic Charities circle in those years.
But I did meet August.
Later, I saw eight of the ten plays in his Pittsburgh Cycle – the plays that led to his fame. All of these were produced locally at St. Paul’s Penumbra Theatre. Gradually, I came to know that the playwright August Wilson was the same August Wilson who I’d met as a cook at Little Brothers some years earlier.
In April, 1998, my daughter and I visited Pittsburgh and were privileged to be given a tour of Augusts Hill District by his older sister, Freda, including going into the tiny home in which they grew up. (In the photo it is the last building on the right, and it is now a historic site in Pittsburgh at 1727 Bedford Ave. Its backyard was the setting, August said, for his play “Seven Guitars”. Note the skyline of downtown Pittsburgh in the background. Indeed, the Hill District is on a hill overlooking downtown.

August Wilson Boyhood home, 1727 Bedford, Pittsburgh PA, April, 1998


Freda remembers her younger brother as always being serious. It was not an easy road for he, his siblings or any persons of color in his growing up years. He wrote a paper in school, and it was so good he was accused of plagiarizing it, and dropped out. No one seemed much interested in his re-enrolling. Ultimately, he received an honorary high school diploma from one of Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Libraries, which is where he delved deeply into history, particularly African-American. He wrote, and wrote, and wrote.
My friend, Laura, remembers August as very modest and humble. When he won his first Pulitzer (1987), Laura recalls him as being excited to be able to take pictures of the famous people he would see there, not much aware of his own fame…that, in fact, he was now famous, too.
At the conference I attended in Pittsburgh, I invited August’s sister to speak to the 200 retired National Education Association educators in attendance, and publicize the new Guidebook (it is excellent) which has been published about August Wilson’s Pittsburgh. Here is the flier she distributed: August Wilson book flier. Her picture is below:

Freda Ellis, Pittsburgh, March 27, 2011


As for me, I’m working to learn more about how Little Brothers in Minneapolis assisted in August Wilson’s career development, and to help get Little Brothers recognized as well. As best I know, he completed at least one of his plays while there, and refined one or more of his “Pittsburgh Cycle” in his two or three years there. Yet Little Brothers merits hardly a sentence in any descriptor of August Wilson. Minneapolis’ Little Brothers is a very important part of his ‘roots’.
We all have our heroes and sheroes: August Wilson, and Freda, too, are among mine. I’m so happy we crossed paths….

#348 – Dick Bernard: Part 17. Garrison Keillor "…and all the children are above average"

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Today’s newspaper brought news that Garrison Keillor might, just might, retire in 2013, leaving Prairie Home Companion (PHC) in the hands of someone else.
Precisely when Garrison will no longer be part of the picture is an unknown, probably including to himself. But as someone a couple of years senior to Keillor in age, I can attest that he is not getting any younger; he’s no longer a kid.
I was one of the lucky ones who first saw him in the olden days of PHC (which began in 1974). The first time was in the fall of 1977, probably at Macalester College in St. Paul, where you could walk in off the street to buy a ticket, and find a good seat as well.
I was never a regular at Prairie Home Companion, but I showed up a great plenty, and during my time as Director of the Anoka-Hennepin Education Association we once hired the show band, “The Powdermilk Biscuit” bunch, to do a dance gig for our teacher’s association in Keillor’s home town of Anoka MN. Those were the days….
Once, I saw him crossing the street at the Swayed Pines Festival at St. John’s University in Collegeville MN. It was in late April, 1979. Here’s the snapshot, for the first time in public! (Click on the photo to enlarge.) St. John’s is where Keillor first went on air late in the 1960s, and it is in the heart of his mythical Lake Wobegon.

Garrison Keillor late April, 1979


I signed my first Anoka-Hennepin teaching contract in the office of the Superintendent July 21, 1965. The office was in the same school Garrison Keillor had attended high school and graduated from a few short years earlier. A few years later I would begin to represent in teacher union work some of the same teachers who had Garrison as a student. Of course, at the time I had no idea there was such a person as Garrison Keillor, nor would I till he began to be noticed ten years or so later.
While Keillor’s Lake Wobegon is a collage of bits and pieces from many places, there has always been a very heavy foundation of Anoka in his sketches of Lake Wobegon. I know this, since I moved to Anoka in 1965, and except for three years absence 1966-68, I either lived or worked in or near the suburban community till the early 1980s. Too many of the characters and geographic images are far too “spitting image” to be successfully denied.
Keillor’s forever and ever signature is his description of the good people of Lake Wobegon, where “all the women are strong, all the men are good looking, and all the children are above average.”
I have no idea how he came up with this phrase so many years ago, but it is clear to me, living in our contemporary society, he had us “nailed”. We seem, collectively, to think we are all exceptional. Maybe we all have exceptional qualities, but basically we are just people, as Garrison Keillor is.
As is true with most of us, the now-famed Mr. Keillor probably came across as very much an average and ordinary kid in those school years. One or more of them did their part in helping him develop his own latent but immense talents; as they and legions of other teachers in other places and times have helped others develop their own talents. Having taught myself, I know we basically try to do our best with everyone. We don’t always succeed. But often we do, and more often than not we touch someone in some ways we will never realize.
Teachers and indeed all the supporting staff in public schools do an immense service.
Thank school employees.
(As I’ve been writing this I’ve had as background music the work of another commoner who took her talents to the next level. Take a listen.)

#324 – Dick Bernard: Watching the Voronezh Ballet at Northrop Auditorium

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UPDATE February 5, 2011: Twin City Daily Planet review of the Ballet here; Minneapolis Star Tribune review here.
I was a very reluctant stand-in Thursday night, when we went to see the Ballet at the Northrop Auditorium at the University of Minnesota.
My wife had purchased tickets to the Voronezh State Ballet Theatre performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake at Northrop Auditorium, and I had no interest in attending. Her friend down the street planned to go, but was ill. An octogenarian friend across the street and his friend made up the foursome.
I came home delighted I had gone.

It would be foolish for me to proclaim any knowledge of ballet, what was good, what wasn’t.
Judging by the audience reaction from what seemed to be a full house at the immense Northrop, we were treated to first class ballet by a first class company. I’ll leave the performance details to someone else.
Ballet was not part of my growing up experience, in tiny towns in North Dakota. I am sure that someone out there ‘did’ ballet, but not within my own circles or experience. Me? It was hard enough to learn to Square Dance in 4H. I learned the waltz steps in my bedroom, and really struggled with polka, etc….
In those years, the 1940s and most of the 1950s, cultural communication was primarily through radio, and television was too primitive for large stage performances to broadcast well. So I don’t recall ever seeing the awesome precision and skill of a ballet company.
I do recall that one or the other or both of my parents liked to tune in the live performances of the Metropolitan Opera in New York during those days. Song was a medium one could listen to.
Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, the music for the ballet, was probably available on phonograph records, if one had such an interest.
I watched the performers in the 50 or so member company attentively, and applauded in synch with others who knew better than I when to express appreciation.
Someone said that old music, like Swan Lake, is losing its appeal to youth, and that programs like ballet are less common now than previously. I have no evidence about this. I did see a large number of young people, and it was not necessarily an audience that was only Russian or white European in ethnic makeup. There was a good variety of persons in the audience.
While Swan Lake has an unhappy ending, the ballet was a very happy experience for me.
During the first intermission, my wife and our octogenarian neighbor were discussing ballet, and she mentioned that during her high school years at St. Joseph Academy in St. Paul, that at least once a year the students would be treated to a performance by the local Andahazy Ballet Company – a familiar fixture in this area for many years. Don, our neighbor, said that in his younger years, which would have coincided with my wife’s high school years, he was a member of the Andahazy Ballet. Possibly, he had been a performer in one of those performances my wife had witnessed.
I began the evening with no enthusiasm at all for attending the Ballet; after the nearly three hour performance, I left happy and energized.
Thanks to everyone that got me involved in the evening.

#323 – Dick Bernard: Taking Leave…Brooke, Vince

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Sometimes events intersect and their very intersection adds to their individual meaning.
Such happened in my own life during the last two weeks.
It began with a phone call on Jan. 20. I heard Cathy gasp, and say “oh no.”
The call was about her niece’s 8-month old daughter, Brooke, hospitalized in critical condition with severe bleeding on the brain. She was not expected to survive. It was a genuine shock. A day earlier Brooke had been a normal, happy, eight month old child, born May 5, 2010.
Within 24 hours, an e-mail arrived from my cousin, concerning her brother and my cousin Vince, age 58, in the hospital “and is not expected to survive. Multiple systems are failing….” With Vince, the announcement did not come as a shock. He had not been well.
January 22, Vince died. Brooke followed January 23. One eight months old; the other nearly 59 – too young, yes, but 58 years older than little “Brooke-e” as the minister described her at her funeral, renaming Cinco de Mayo, “Cinco de Brooke-e“. Less than two months earlier he’d had Brooke in front of the congregation, he said. Like everyone else, he was still in shock.
(Click on photos to enlarge them)

Vince, January 17, 2000


Brooke on the family Christmas card, December, 2010


For Vince, there was no funeral. He was not married, and his surviving family members lived long distances away. His dog and two cats were rescued after his hospitalization and death. Memories are being shared in phone calls, letters, photos and e-mails. Best as I know, he would not have liked a funeral: crowds were something he abhorred. He was very intelligent; one sister described him as having the highest IQ in the family – and the family was blessed with very high IQ’s.
Most of us had not seen Vince for years. When he left his town, as for his brother’s funeral in 2000 (photo above), he came across as a very good humored guy. But life in the spotlight was not his kind of life. My guess is that he departed as he wished: no pretense, cared for, but not too many people to deal with. His struggles behind him. “Free at last…” to borrow a phrase.
Brooke, on the other hand, with all of eight months of living behind her, packed the church for her funeral. Her Dad is a policeman, and police care for their own: there had to be 100 or more law enforcement officers at the service, and they were an honor guard for the family.
She was eulogized, and laid to rest in the Church cemetery.
One hundred years ago, a death of someone her age would have been quite common; but today, an infant death is almost unheard of, and brings much grieving.
The whole town, it seemed, was out at the wintry cemetery where little Brooke was buried.
Vince’s ashes are now with the family…a tangible memory of his having been in our company for almost 60 years.
Funerals, memorials, ashes, are for the living, not for the dead.
All of us who were touched in any way by Vince and/or Brooke have our own thoughts on what their deaths mean in our own living with others, and in our own lives.
In their way, they teach us lessons about ourselves.
I feel blessed to having known them, their parents, siblings, grandparents and everyone in their circles.
They are at peace.

The cemetery where Brooke was buried January 29, 2011

#313 – Dick Bernard: Old Music and Family History

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Last night we attended the Minnesota Orchestra, where we’ve had season tickets for many years.
I’m a fan of classical music, but not a particularly well-informed one. Before we left home, Cathy asked “what are we seeing tonight?“, and I said “I don’t know.” The ticket wasn’t helpful: “Symphony and Song” is all it said.
The program turned out to be a delightful potpourri of all-Mozart, including the always outstanding Minnesota Chorale.
I never tire of Mozart-anything. One of the pieces played, Veni Sancte Spiritus, was composed by Mozart when he was twelve years old! (That was about the age when I first became a terminally resistant pianist. It took a while for me to get around to truly appreciating music. I got a D in Music Appreciation in college….)
But, January 16 was a delightful evening, as evenings at “long-hair” music events almost always are for me.
This particular night, for some reason, I fixed on Wolfgang Amade Mozart’s biography: born January 27, 1756 in Salzburg; died December 5, 1791, Vienna. His was a short, intense and extraordinarily productive life. Apparently the music never went out in his head.
1756, his birth year, had a particular attraction this night.
It was about 1757, when Mozart was a year old, that my last French-Canadian ancestor, Francois Collet, came across the big pond from Bretagne (Brittany) to Quebec. (The first known ancestor in North America was Jean Nicolet in 1618.)
Two years after Francois Collet arrived, the English defeated the French at the Plains of Abraham and Quebec became part of the British empire.
Sixteen years later came the American Revolution; and fourteen years after that the French Revolution of 1789 (Les Miserables, and all that).
In 1791, at the ripe old age of 35, Mozart died. In 1805, Francois Collet died in Quebec at the age of about 64, and life went on for families left behind: one with a famous descendant; the second whose story lives on in his surname (now spelled Collette) and many descendants, one of which is me, 7th generation downline.
As one of our families historians, I know that the history of all families, most especially ‘ordinary’ ones, are full of blank spaces, many of those spaces never to be filled. Indeed some of those blank spaces are intentional…”know all, tell some”…we all have our share of secrets….
All we know is that we descended from an almost infinitely long line of predecessors who left us with certain pieces of their abilities or disabilities. We are a sum of many parts.
During intermission I continued to read the program and came across an Essay on Mozart’s Ave verum corpus, by one Dan Chouinard. This piece was part of the program. (You can read the Essay here: Dan Chouinard Essay001)
Chouinard is most definitely a French surname, and in this case Dan Chouinard rang a bell: Dec. 7, 2010, my sister wrote about meeting Dan at an event in the town where she lives, and talk got around to our shared French-Canadian histories. Were we related, she wondered. “Dan Chouinard (Prairie Home Companion, pianist extraordinaire) and Prudence Johnson performed here in Park Rapids on Friday, hosted by the Kitchigami Regional Library with Legacy Amendment funding. Dan introduced himself as French-Canadian ancestry, whose early family immigrated to NE Minneapolis before Minnesota was a state. Of course, I told that I, too, was French Canadian, and told him about your family history project. He wondered if it was archived at the Minnesota Historical Society, and I’m glad to see that I was correct when I told him I was sure it was!
I briefly cruised through the genealogy part of the document we have and couldn’t see any Chouinards. Apparently some people in his family have also done a great deal of work on their genealogy, too.”
I don’t know how or if our families intersect in a genealogy sense, but I do know family pioneers were in the present day Twin Cities area “before Minnesota was a state” [1858]. I haven’t heard much about music as a special talent in my French-Canadian ancestry; my interest seems to come from my mother’s German side. But, who knows?
I’m going to see about meeting this Dan Chouinard….

#308 – Dick Bernard: Susan Boyle, Ted Williams…and Elaine Page

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Give 35 seconds for Haiti, Wednesday, Jan. 12, 4:53 p.m. (Haiti, Eastern time).
One of my earliest blog posts was this one on April 16, 2009, celebrating a stunning performance by unknown Susan Boyle at Britain’s Got Talent. (The original video referenced in the blog is no longer available. The same video appears to be here. The videos have probably been seen over 100,000,000 times.)
At her debut she said, to a doubting panel of judges and audience, that “she wanted to be like Elaine Page”. To be honest, I didn’t know who Elaine Page was at the time.
In December, 2009, about a year ago, Susan Boyle got her chance to sing with Elaine Page. Check their performance out, here.
The video speaks for itself.
Susan, and the doubting that accompanied her performance…to the extent that there were thoughts that she might not actually be singing the song…was soon discovered to be “the real deal”. Susan got on the roller-coaster that comes with new-found fame and had her ups and downs.
A few weeks ago I bought her second annual CD as a Christmas gift to myself. Apparently her autobiography is on sale at the bookstores. Maybe a purchase….
She is testimony to each of we commoners that we do, indeed, have talent.
Then comes the incredible story of one homeless guy in Columbus OH, Ted Williams, who two days after the story broke found himself in the studios of NBC in New York City as a major guest on today. You can view an extended clip here. (I am not sure how this video will be on YouTube. The first segment I watched was taken down for copyright reasons. If you can get lucky, you’ll see this phenomenal story.)
Again, from obscurity to instant fame…and the wondering whether this alcohol and drug addict will make it. Mr. Williams – it seems more appropriate than saying “Ted” – will face the same roller coaster ride as Susan Boyle, and hopefully will get the kind of support he needs to ride the waves of fame back into a normal life.
This time, again, I’m going to bet on the underdog: you go, Ted!

#304 – Dick Bernard: New Year's Eve and the Perpetual Calendar: "What are you doing New Years, New Years Eve?"

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This year the last day of the year coincides with the last day of the traditional American workweek.
Rather than muse about this or that, I simply took a look back in history to see the previous December 31sts which occurred on a Friday.
You can easily do this by looking at the perpetual calendar.
It turns out that the occurrence of Friday, December 31 is not as comfortably predictable as I thought*.
More or less they occur every five years, but not exactly, and there are odd variations as well.
Here are the last few:
2010
2004
1999
1993
1982
1976
1971
1965
1954 is the next earlier one; the next time December 31st falls on a Friday will be 2021 – the same interval as between 1982 and 1993.
We humans tend to act in the short term, often the very, very short term. As the song lyric goes, “What are doing New Years, New Years Eve?”
But we don’t live in a short-term world. What happens long term is what we need to think about.
For me, personally, I’m going to reflect on those specific years I just mentioned, and see how things were, then, what the country collectively thought, and what happened in the interval following.
It will be an interesting exercise.
1948
1943
1937
1926
1920
…
1830
Where will we be as a country and society in 2021?
We the people will have a great deal to say about that, for good or ill.
Among the treasure trove of sayings used by my school-teacher Dad to his scholars was “time passes, will you?”
Will we?
Happy New Year.
* – The ‘cycle’ appears to be 28 years.