#302 – Dick Bernard: Christmas Eve, a story of winter in rural Minnesota

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Yesterday, on my daily walk, I came across a guy who, I thought, was acting strangely.
He had a shovel, and was on the right side of the street, taking a clod of snow out of the abundant snowbank there. Then, oddly, he carried the clod across to the left side of the street, and returned to repeat the process.
Being curious, I asked “why?”
Quite matter-of-factly the young man said “I’m building a snow fort for my daughter”.
Oh….

Show Fort on a suburban street


Such it is at the season where we seem to have a great abundance of White Christmas – 6″ more by our house again this morning.
I just walked by the man’s house again, and there it was, a snow fort. As kids interest span goes, there probably was a flurry of activity at the fort yesterday; today it’s on to other things. But it was a nice piece of “Christmas”.
Maybe because it’s cold up here, and indoors is more a normal state of affairs this time of year, thoughts turn quite easily to reminiscing, especially as one moves on in years.
I could build on the snow fort story with my own recollections in long ago North Dakota; or I could reprint a Grandpa story sent to me by a friend, himself a Grandpa, with this years Christmas card.
Rather, I’d like to offer a more lengthy story, shared by a Minnesota French-Canadian in the winter of 1996, in a newsletter I was then editing called Chez Nous. The story link is Lowell Mercil – Winter 001 . Most recently I included it as part of a family history book I’ve written about my father’s family and their 400 year history in North America.
It’s about 7 pages, so take your time. But you’ll enjoy the trip back in time to, perhaps, the 1930s in northwestern Minnesota near Crookston and Gentilly.
All best wishes.

#298 – Dick Bernard: No One is an Island: Remembering at Christmas, 2010, an untimely death, and expressing a thousand "thank you's"

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UPDATE: This link was put together by Larry Gauper, a classmate and friend of Barbara during Valley City High School 1957-61: Barbara Sunde Bernard_12_13_2010-3.
Peace and all best wishes for a wonderful Christmas Season and a Happy New Year in 2011. If you wish to participate in a meaningful remembrance this season, note my post at this blog for December 16.

1913 Christmas Card


Every year since 1977 I have crafted my own Christmas Card. Each year, something ‘catches’ me and becomes the focus for that year.
This years message is about “community” and how it entered three lives, years ago. My message has a history, literally, which began for me about 49 years ago, and which began again in November, 2007, when I dropped off some materials at the Fargo (ND) Forum about my brother-in-law Mike, who died Nov. 7, 2007, in a Fargo hospital. Larry Gauper of Fargo ND picked up the story in November, 2010, culminating in a blog post about his friend and Valley City ND High School classmate, Mike’s sister Barbara, who was my first wife. His post is entitled “Remembering a classmate and friend.” I became a close collaborator in Larry’s project.
Barbara and I were married slightly over two years, till she died of kidney disease at University of Minnesota Hospital July 24, 1965.
Barbara was desperately and, it turned out, likely terminally ill during our entire marriage. We married when I was 23 and she 20; at age 22 she was dead, leaving behind a son age 1 1/2, and a stunned family. Neither of us had any idea, when we were dating, then married, that our “Ken and Barby” (as Larry described us) view of the future would have no chance of being fulfilled.
Innumerable people have experienced what Barbara and I did so many years ago. We were not unique.
I can imagine our experience as analogous to being caught in a whirlpool and desperately trying to escape. Everything was supposed to be normal, but nothing was…. It takes a while, but sooner or later you know that you’re just not going to escape.
Barbara died in an intensive care bed at the University of Minnesota Hospital, on the 8th floor if I remember correctly.
Here’s where the “thousand ‘thank you’s” enter the picture.
The unplanned re-visiting of events of over 45 years ago had an unexpected impact on me.
I began to think of all of the people who in one way or another participated in helping us get through those very confusing and difficult days of 1963-65.
At one point, I thought of trying to list everyone, here. But I dropped the idea: there are far too many, and besides, I would forget some who richly deserved thanks. A great many of them have long ago passed on themselves; many have disappeared from my radar – moved, etc. There are large numbers of them whose name I never knew, or who I never even met. All of these are the “thousand” I refer to in the subject line.
We never did have an opportunity to thank them at the time. I doubt we thought about it – we were trying to survive, after all, and expressing gratitude is a luxury not readily available to those in constant stress.
So, here’s an attempt to at least thank those who were there when we needed them. While we tried to survive, they offered us endless varieties of helping hands.
In no particular order:
Our families and friends, yes, especially those who kept Barbara ‘under their wing’ in the hardest times. Thank you.
Babysitters who took care of our son, Tom, when Barbara couldn’t, and I was working. Thank you.
Work colleagues, school administrators, landlords, legions of medical staff in many clinics and hospitals. Thank you.
Marion and Louis Smart, then of 1615 S. Ferry, Anoka MN, who took Tom and I in the tough first year after Barbara died, and who I’ll likely again hear from this Christmas. Tom’s crib in their home was his ‘manger’ in 1965-66! Thank you.
To Mitsy Polman, then of Spring Lake Park MN, who, the following year, babysat Tom along with raising her own kids. Many years ago Polman’s moved. I don’t know where. Thank you.
To Irbers, who were very often a life raft for me in the toughest of tough times. Thank you.
The greater community, represented by the Hospitals and Clinics who took Barbara on as a patient, even though they knew we had no insurance and would likely never be able to pay the bill. Thank you.
To North Dakota Public Welfare, who paid most of the discounted cost for Barbara’s 58 final days as a patient at University Hospital in Minneapolis. Thank you.
Extraordinary special thanks to those who lent a helping hand, small or large, even if there was no reason to extend that hand.
I would wish on no one what we went through, especially what Barbara went through. On the other hand, one gets a new appreciation of what that little word “community” really means. It is ALL of us, whoever we are or wherever we live.
Thank you all. What little I can give back, I will.
Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year in 2011.

Tom and Dick Bernard, November, 1965, Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis MN


Footnote: The first paragraph of this writing refers to my post for December 16, which in turn refers to a memorial on the first anniversary of the devastating earthquake in Haiti. At our first committee meeting, one of the members suggested as a central piece of text John Donne’s Meditation XVII, commonly known as “No man is an island”. It seems to fit particularly well with this reflection.

#295 – Hunkering down for a Blizzard!

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UPDATE 8:15 P.M. DECEMBER 11: Most likely we have over 20″ of snow at our home, thus far no wind. Didn’t leave the house all day. More snow than expected.
UPDATE II 8:10 A.M. DECEMBER 12: We can now classify the storm as a modern day catastrophe. Not only was the Vikings-Giants game postponed till Monday, but at least part of the Metrodome roof apparently has collapsed under the snow.
The storm lasted only 24 hours, and it didn’t even approach blizzard standards, at least where we live, but it was an unusual time for us.
At the end of yesterday’s post are some memories of past times storms.

Our grill in disguise, late afternoon December 11, 2010


There’s something energizing about a blizzard, even if you’re totally disabled and immobile (translated: not going out for coffee) as I am at this moment.
We’re in the fairly early stages of what they’re calling a blizzard – plenty of fluffy snow thus far, but relatively little wind. Once the wind comes along, those harmless little pieces of fluff will be even more disabling.
So there’s little to do but revel in the warmth of a home (we’re fortunate) and reminisce…about blizzards I have known.
Recently I completed a history of my French-Canadian roots, and a bit player in that history was Father Joseph Goiffon, called the “peg leg Priest”.

Fr. Goiffon lost his leg in a mis-adventure when caught in an All-Saints Day (Halloween) blizzard in 1860 near where the Park and Red Rivers come together in northeast North Dakota. Fr. Goiffon only lost his leg; his horse froze to death. His nephew, Duane Thein, edited a most interesting 91-page book, still in print, about the near-tragedy in 2005 (see cover, above). Father Goiffon lived on to re-tell the story many times. He died in 1910.
I survived, somewhat more comfortably than Fr. Goiffon, the Halloween blizzard of 1991. I was living in Hibbing MN at the time, and it was said we got over 30 inches of snow which, after the wind, became the hard-pack flakes famous for igloos and fun for kids to build snow caves and forts.
For adults, such blizzards are usually the pits, even if in comfort (last night in a grocery store line I was chatting with the guy behind me who said the liquor store line had been even longer….) Yah, I’ll hear the high-pitched whine of the snowmobiles shortly, but mostly we’re house-bound.
In Hibbing, we were immobile for what I remember to be several days. There was nowhere to go, and no way to get there. Immobility for we in the mobile generation is difficult.

After the Halloween blizzard in Hibbing MN 1991


Growing up in North Dakota, I became accustomed to blizzards – two or three of them a winter, it seems.
Unlike today’s blizzard, which was pretty accurately forecast, in those days in the 1940s and on, wise sages had to read the skies and we had to act prudently to avoid being caught in a killer out in the country. You knew those mean storms were out there, but you didn’t know exactly when they’d hit or how bad they’d be.
But if you were indoors and had enough food and fuel, you were okay.
Afterwards, you could walk on the rock hard snow banks, and the kids would work harder than they’d ever work doing chores, digging snow caves and building snow forts and doing all the things kids can do when presented with a new opportunity.
I think of the Elgin ND Blizzard of February, 1965 – a bad one. But it is just another example. They happened every year.
I write in the early stages of this one, so I can’t project what it will be like a few hours from now.
It appears to be of relatively short duration, but if it gets windy, watch out.
So far, nobody’s out for fun. Those who are out are busy.
Today we’ll put up the Christmas tree….

Christmas Tree 7 p.m. December 11, 2010, first view


Happy Holidays.
UPDATE: Some responses to the above post:

From Mel Berning, Eureka CA, who recalls a storm he lived through in rural Berlin, North Dakota, right after WWII.
“There were lots of memorable blizzards in N. Dak. but only one remains in my
mind. Dad and Mom came to the Dakotas in 1906 and i remember dad telling about
blizzards so severe you couldn’t see anything but dark lightness in the height of
the storm even during the daylight hours. As a wise kid I discounted these wild
stories as a flight of fancy until one day in deep winter I experienced just
that.
My brother Gus and I decided to get the chores over quickly and do them at 4:30
in the afternoon. It was in the winter of [19]46?? and Gus was home from the
service at the time and staying on the farm with us. To get on with it we went
into the summer porch and lit our kerosene lantern in preparation for the trip
to the barn, a distance of about100 feet. We stepped out of the porch door and
the wind blew the lantern out, I turned to my older brother and hollered lets
hold hands till we get to the barn, surprisingly he gladly complied and we
stumbled blindly on through the howling snow hand in hand. Fortunately I had been
to the barn so often that we collided with the side of the barn and felt our way
around to the door. I kept hoping one of us had matches to relight the lantern
because it was dark as ink. We slid open the barn door, stepped inside, and lo
the lantern was still lit. neither of us could see it in the blinding snow and
it surely was a relief to have light.
Another winter story if you would, We had a 2 week snow with constant blizzard
conditions. As can be expected, dad was out of tobacco and we were running low
on groceries when the storm suddenly stopped and a Chinook [wind] came up from the
south. The temperature rapidly climbed to 50+ and my neighbor and I started to
plow our way to the store in Berlin [about five miles away]. By 3:00 o’clock we were able to reach the
plowed highway and returned home. We both picked up our grocery list and headed
back to Berlin to buy the family groceries. After doing the shopping we decided
to go to the Oasis, the pool hall, have a beer and shoot a game of pool, We
barely got to break the racked balls when some one came in and said it was
snowing out side. We hung up our cues and headed for home. The blizzard was
back and the temperature was dropping rapidly, we got to with in 2-1/2 miles of
home when we hit a new drift on the road and it was home from there on foot.
When I got home dad and mom were very relieved and by that time the thermometer
was on the minus side of 10 below. Several people and some stock died in Dakota
that night.
From Myron DeMers, Fargo ND, who grew up in rural Grafton, ND:
When you mention blizzards and I see so many people outside using snow blowers right now in Fargo, I remembered asking dad years ago if they did a lot of shoveling “in the old days”. His answer surprised me. He said “yes and no” because with all the farmyard traffic, horses, sleighs etc the snow would pack down and most of the winter was spent riding on top of the snow rather then shoveling it. He said the only problem was Spring when it became a muddy mess but by then you were so happy to see Spring, the mud was “clean mud”. Merry Christmas, Myron
From Ellen Brehmer, Grand Forks ND, who grew up in rural Langdon, ND
I hear your supposed to get ‘a bit’ of snow & wind. We are breathing a great sigh of relief because this one will miss us. We’re just sinking into the depths of 20 to 30 below, and that’s not wind chill. We do have the wind so I’m sure the old snow will drift some. It’s always fortunate to be home when the storms hit.
One winter possibly late ’50’s we had to walk a mile across the field in the evening because the car got completely stuck and flooded trying to break through a snow drift on Schnieder’s corner. That’s 1 1/2 miles from home. We walked over the hard pack at an angle so it was probably only a mile – I’m here to tell you that my thighs were very very cold. I’m pretty sure that it was [siblings] Pat, Jerry, Marilyn and myself who walked behind Dad. We had been to some church thing or something. Nothing else got that cold, we all had scarves and mittens and boots, plus we were moving – the front thighs took the beating. So guess what gets cold first for me when I’m shoveling, yup the thighs.
From Mary Busch, Minneapolis, who grew up in ND and northern MN:
Your dad loaned my parents the car to drive to the Carrington Hospital [14 miles away] where I was born during a bad snow storm. (being a geographer-could we find info about that storm?) Late in her life mom revealed I was nearly born in the car. I always wondered about the very flat section of my head—-…
Growing up in Rugby North Dakota, we walked everywhere.
I valued my turquoise fluffy wool coat purchased in Herbergers in Grand Forks ND. The Little Flower School costume was skirts with white cotton socks with metal clasps tied to elastic garters holding them up… rubber boots over shoes and maybe pants… I remember the metal clasps near your skin burning and leaving red marks on cold days. It was a six block walk.
I craved excitement and would walk to the high school to watch Basketball games- Paul Prestis [Presthus?] became a star….It was so cold and about a mile there.
My parents STORED meat in a locked wooden box by the back door….a homemade freezer.
My dad had a complicated ritual involving army blankets to start the Plymouth in cold weather…We often visited relatives for vacations.
A geologist guest in the 1990s was raised in Siberia and commented that Rugby was exactly like Siberia in climate and geology so we had shared similar childhoods.
My dad would take us out ice fishing in very cold weather. We walked back into northern MN lakes, built a fire and drilled our holes. I kept my Rolliflex camera under my jacket so it did not freeze. I often brought guests home to Babbitt and recall an amazed despairing New York City gal, when I explained and demonstrated the toilet opportunities in subzero wilderness.

#294 – Dick Bernard: Naming a mystery man in a photograph, 72 years later.

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Pearl Harbor Day I posted a piece about my Uncle Frank and his service and death on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
The day went on and late in the afternoon came an e-mail from a name I’d never heard before. The e-mail included two photos of my Uncle Frank in Long Beach CA on November 10, 1938. The writer of the e-mail identified himself as the son of the man, Max Calvert, who was posing with Uncle Frank in the photo. His Dad, Dave said, was then the secretary for Admiral Kimmel on-board the USS San Francisco. Kimmel was at that time commander of the Pacific fleet and professionally suffered in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.
I have my pictures fairly well organized, so I took out the package labeled “Frank Bernard” to see if there were any matches. You can see the results for yourself, below.
The first photo of each pair is from Dave Calvert; the second is from my family file.

Max Calvert and Frank Bernard Nov. 10, 1938 Long Beach CA


Same setting, date, place from the Bernard files

Max and Frank from the Calvert album Long Beach Nov. 10, 1938


Same setting, Frank with his Dad Henry Bernard, from the Bernard album


Again, the first photo is from the Calvert album, the second from the Bernard album, third, Calvert, fourth, Bernard.
Before December 7, 2010, Dave Calvert, a Californian, and I had never heard of each other.
How did Dave find me? He had the pictures, and he knew that Frank was a casualty on the Arizona, and on this particular Pearl Harbor Day he decided to see if he could find any evidence of family of this long ago sailor who was friends with his sailor Dad in 1938. He did a simple google search and several pages in found reference to my family history website. From there he managed to get ahold of my e-mail address and the rest is history.
The miracle of the internet.
Some days later, he says, he still has ‘goosebumps’ over this essentially chance meeting and our sharing of essentially identical photographs from 72 years ago. I share his sentiments exactly.
I couldn’t label that photograph with the unknown man though I knew that the picture had been taken in 1938 from a developers mark.
Now, thanks to someone who took the extra step another piece of the family tapestry has been identified.

#286 – Dick Bernard: Visiting the Fielding Garr Ranch and some thoughts about the past.

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On our recent trip to Salt Lake City, we had an opportunity to visit the Fielding Garr Ranch on Antelope Island in the Great Salt Lake.
While the ranch, on the south end of the island, is only several miles west of Salt Lake City, the necessary driving trip is perhaps 50 miles or more, as the sole road entry to the island is over a long causeway on the north end.
It was a chilly late afternoon when we visited the ranch, and all of us probably wondered in various ways “why am I doing this?”, but I found the half-hour or so visit to be thought-provoking.
The story of the island and the ranch are told in the links (above).

Touring the ranch


I kept thinking, as I shivered, and our guide gave us a most personable ‘tour’ of the environs, about that time back in the 1840s and 1850s, especially, when the west was being settled by white settlers seeking land.
We learned (and kids probably still learn) the romanticized ‘Cowboys and Indians’ version of the story, but this was a rough-and-tumble time in our history. The Cowboys won, the Indians lost, and that was that.
What the cowboys won, were they Mormon, or any other settler, was an unforgiving land where laziness or mistakes were not rewarded. Simply put, it was a struggle to get there, and to survive once there. At Salt Lake City’s Temple Square is a sculpture that tends to capture the difficulty of the move west.

Pioneer Statue Temple Square Salt Lake City


We’re a nation of immigrants. In my case, my French-Canadian ancestors got a bit of a head start on this continent, attempting to eke out a living in the 16 and 1700s in what is now Quebec, and like the Mormons, came west beginning in the 1850s; my German ancestors arrived in Wisconsin in the 1850s and 1860s.
All of the things we now take for granted, they couldn’t even imagine. Food had to be processed to last through winter, and, often, parceled out carefully. One didn’t jump in a car to get anywhere, or start a gasoline engine to do the chores. It was all by hand, often backbreaking.
As we viewed that chilly but bucolic area I would call the ‘farmstead’, I could imagine how life might have been back then. We wouldn’t have been sitting in a golf cart, listening to an enthusiastic and pleasant guide telling us about this place at which he was a volunteer.

The Ranch house


(“Back then” in reality is not all that far back in time. I can remember my grandparents farm before rural electrification brought electric current to the farm in the late 1940s. The end of the “olden days” is really pretty recent.)
It was a different time, then; a time almost unimaginable to today’s kids.
Out on Antelope Island these days, successful attempts are being made to reintroduce buffalo who are as nearly as possible the direct genetic descendants of the buffalo we very nearly exterminated back then. In other ways, the ranch and the island have become places to help visitors become better aware of the need for careful stewardship of ever more scarce resources.
Near the end of the trip the guide pointed out a building in front of the main house which had been the pump house. For many, many years it had been the source of spring water for the farm. In recent years, the spring stopped running – the water table beneath had receded due to increasing use in Salt Lake City to the east. No one in Salt Lake City would notice this change….
Be aware. What is may not necessarily be forever.

Deer near the Fielding Garr ranch house


#284 – Dick Bernard: advent of Advent

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In my own faith tradition, American Roman Catholic, today is the first Sunday of Advent, the beginning of the liturgical year. It is a part of the liturgical calendar in many churches, observed in various ways in the present day.
As the visiting Priest pointed out today, the religious Advent has lots of competitors, primary among them the long-time dominance of consumerism called “Christmas Shopping”. In our society “Christmas” has become centered on business and profits (Black Friday, etc.)
So, the advent of Advent can be and is all things to all people, from just another weekday, to an especially significant religious marker, to a very deeply depressing time.
I’m not exactly sure how I will try to make Advent meaningful in my own life, but I am trending towards looking for and emphasizing the good surrounding me at this season.
Even if my resolution lasts only today, I’ll start with the father and son, both named Philip, who I see almost every week at Church, normally in the side aisle, with Dad pushing his son in a wheelchair.
The Dad tells part of their story in the most recent of Basilica magazine. You can see it here AdventGonzales2010001 . You can read more at Philip Gonzales website here.

#283 – Dick Bernard: A simple and positive idea, Holiday Greetings to those who may not otherwise receive them.

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A great friend clued me in on a project a friend of hers was doing: to deliver 1000 greeting cards to military service persons, their families or veterans. It has a deadline of December 10, 2010, and the details are here.

Early 1900s Christmas Card


I bought in on the project and it was simple process to complete 50 cards for the project. We had unused cards from previous Holiday seasons, and it was simple enough to find cards that were not overly focused on one religious tradition or another. I chose to identify myself as a US Army veteran because that is what I am. I was in the service in 1962-63, nearly 50 years ago, in an infantry company.
Back then, as Company Clerk, I was well aware of the fact that when mail call came, there were always colleague GIs who didn’t get any mail at all. Some never got any mail. There is something unfortunate about feeling left out when (it seems) everybody in the unit is getting mail but you. This feeling intensifies when you’re a long way from home and you’re missing a major holiday.
The folks with this project have very simple rules: no inserts, personal messages, mailing addresses – that sort of thing.
The rules make sense…and they make the project even simpler. I simply offered “all best wishes, in peace” and that was that.
Dig out those leftover cards, complete as many as you care to, and send them in within the next week. They cannot be sealed, and the fold has to be inside so that the cards can be easily inspected for content.
If this particular idea doesn’t intrigue you, replicate the idea in some other way this intense season of the year.
Whatever your tradition, or your personal feelings about this season, I’d recommend this as a worthwhile project.

Christmas postcard from December, 1913


My story about those long ago postcards, two of which appear above is here.

#281 – Dick Bernard: "A Red Sky at Morning…." Thoughts at Thanksgiving 2010

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Last Friday morning in Salt Lake City we were treated to a vivid sunrise over downtown. It was a magnificent vista, even if spoiled by some cars in the parking lot and a nearby sandwich shop.
I stepped out on our hotel balcony, and took two photos:

Salt Lake City UT early morning November 19, 2010


Utah State Capitol, early morning, November 19, 2010


Of course there is often a downside to a red sky at morning. As the ancient rhyme goes: “Red Sky at Night, Sailor’s Delight; Red Sky at Morning, Sailor’s Warning.”
As predicted by both sky and weatherman, seasonable weather began to turn, with heavy snow on Saturday night. Today, Tuesday, came an e-mail from a Salt Lake City friend reporting that a blizzard had descended on the Salt Lake City area and the University of Utah had closed.
So, enjoy those morning red sky’s while you can…something bad might be on the other side!
Meanwhile, back indoors in the “Crossroads of the West”, in the papers and on television in Salt Lake City, the yapping of the day revolved around the evil TSA and its supposedly horrendous and invasive procedures at airport check-in. We had checked in at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport last Wednesday afternoon; and checked in again at Salt Lake City airport last Sunday. There was a severe disconnect between the reality we experienced in the airports and the on-line, print and video outrage portrayed by the formal and informal media. We all went through the lines quietly and without incident. Of course in every crowd there’s the near-“road rage” type, but they are the rare exception. But they also make – dominate – the “news” today, on most any subject.
The vast majority of us knew the check-in drill, practiced for years now. The TSAers we encountered were polite and businesslike. We saw or heard no meltdowns. We weren’t newsworthy.
If the crowd we were with in those check-in lines represents America, the country is okay. And that we can be thankful for.
This being Salt Lake City, we took in programs at Temple Square and toured the immense and magnificent Latter Day Saints Conference Center across the street from Temple Square. As expected, people were unfailingly polite and gracious. Our Guide at the Conference Center was a few years older than I, and walked with a limp – five hip replacements can do that to a person. But the fact that she would take on such a volunteer assignment was most impressive. The Mormons know a thing or two about hospitality.

Temple Square from the roof of the LDS Conference Center. The Tabernacle is the building with the unusual roof at right.


The evening of the “red sky at morning” we attended a magnificent Bell Concert at the Tabernacle. Because I arrived late, I joined a line of latecomers and ended up with what I considered to be the best seat in the house: behind the orchestra, seated where the Tabernacle Choir sits. Missing the first half-hour was almost worth it.

At the conclusion of the Holiday Bells Concert at the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City November 19, 2010


Sunday morning we joined the group attending the weekly radio broadcast of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir from “the crossroads of the west”. One needs not be Mormon – I’m not – to be inspired by this magnificent choir.
The radio broadcast began in 1929; I first saw the Choir in person in 1971; first heard it a few years earlier. It is constant quality, it’s members volunteers. This being Thanksgiving week, the program was Thanksgiving based. The rendition of Irving Berlin’s “Counting your blessings” brought tears (listen to a version here).
Outside the Tabernacle’s walls, of course, the winds of controversy about this or that continued to swirl. But for a moment there was a respite.
Tomorrow, Thanksgiving eve, grocery stores will be packed; then there is Thanksgiving; then there’s that monstrosity called “Black Friday” – the official frenzy beginning the “Christmas Shopping Season”, unfortunately our real “Christmas season”. The traditional reason for Christmas is left to compete for leftovers of attention. “Christmas” is “shopping”. At my coffee place, Christmas music started Nov. 1.
“Christmas shopping” will happen.
Today, I prefer to remember the image outside the Salt Lake City home where my brother’s 65th birthday was being celebrated last Saturday night. The “Red Sky” had brought winds earlier, then rain, then snow to the windward side of the Wasatch, and large wet snowflakes began to fall. I took a few photos of the outside scape. Here’s one of my favorites:

Salt Lake City Saturday evening November 20, 2010


Have a very Happy Thanksgiving, and work for a brighter, better country and world.

#279 – Dick Bernard: On Turning 65

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Today, my brother is 65. He’s the cherub in the blankets in the photo taken probably in very early 1946. If you could see this photo close up, even then you can imagine him squirming, hoping to break the shackles of those blankets and play in that snow! He would have been ready, that’s for sure.

Bernards, Sykeston ND 1946


65.
I’m old enough so I can legitimately say “he’s just a kid”. And I know many people who can say, to me, that I’m “just a kid”. Strange how Time just keeps on walking.
For years, literally, I’ve done the mental exercise of remembering this or that at a certain age. It helps to give perspective.
For instance, my four grandparents were 68, 60, 59 and 58 when I was born. When I became old enough to have a notion who they were, they were really, really, really old.
65.
In our society it has been, for many years, a ‘marker’ with unusual significance. It is an appropriate marker of a transition point from the work world to the retired world. It is not a place set in stone. I know people who continue to be employed beyond 65, some because they want to be, others because they need to be. On the other hand, I recently talked to a friend who told me he became the adult in charge of most of the work on their farm when he turned 13 due to his Dad’s disability. He “grew up” rather soon.
In the end analysis the number is less significant than what one does with the time between the beginning, the present and the end.
Best, I think, that one can show that he or she contributed to making the greater world a better place because of his or her being here.
Later today we’ll be flying to visit my brother and friends in his long-time home of Salt Lake City.
Yesterday I was remembering a long-ago trip which took my then-family through Salt Lake City in June, 1971. I dug out the slides from that trip and found the one below which shows my children, then, at the Bingham Copper Mine outside of Salt Lake City.

Tom and Joni June, 1971, at Kennicott Copper Mine


This day, November 17, 2010, Tom is driving his trucking route somewhere in the Great Plains outside of Denver; Joni is doing her work as a school Principal in a suburban Middle School. Tom and Jennifer have a married daughter and son-in-law “as we speak”; Joni and John have a couple of kids well up in elementary school. Time flies.
Happy Birthday, Frank.
To the rest of us, I recall one of Dad’s many admonishments as a school teacher to we reluctant scholars looking at the clock, waiting for school to end: “Time passes. Will you?”

#266 – Dick Bernard: Moving towards Rationality, Civility and Dialogue…or mired in Contempt?

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I walked away from a TV commentary show a few hours ago. The host is someone I like and respect; his guests were four leaders from a few of the infinite number of different organizations that claim to be of like minds, but really have very narrow, poorly thought out, and often opposing agendas.
The talk was about whether or not Social Security and Medicare were “socialist”. Three of the four guests had anti-socialism as a key tenet of their anti-government rant. Of course, none would touch Social Security or Medicare, always going back to their tried and true ‘talking points’. It ended with the usual result, which I first saw in the old “Crossfire” days of the 1990s, where NO ONE was LISTENING to ANYONE ELSE, DEFENSIVE and TRYING TO SHOUT EACH OTHER DOWN. The good idea of debate ended up very badly. Personally, I learned nothing.
Life is far too short….
Right before that, Cathy and I had been to an Interfaith Forum on the topic of denominational beliefs on Life after Death. Five panelists, friends and clergy all, took on the topic. They were Jewish, Muslim, Catholic, Lutheran and Congregational. It was a great pre-Halloween topic and it seemed there were about 200 of us in attendance. The Pastors talked, then there was opportunity for table talk, then then there was Q&A from audience to panelists. If I was to boil it down to its essence, it was respect personified. We all have our beliefs; we are sitting together seeking to understand; we were not throwing rocks at each other, as would have been the case in those vaunted “good old days” before tolerance was cool.
Two days earlier, nine of us had gathered at an office conference room in suburban Maplewood MN to watch a recent film about Haiti, and then to discuss what we’d seen.
The film, Poto Mitan, has five narrators. With a single, brief, exception, they are the only ones who speak, and they speak one at a time, telling their powerful stories. They are “Poto Mitans”, all poor women in Port-au-Prince who talk of survival against all odds. They speak in Kreyol, subtitled into English. The segments are separated by brief but beautiful and powerful prose read in English by Haitian author Edwidge Danticat, backgrounded by film of a woman braiding another woman’s hair.
Poto Mitan is a powerful film which our discussion leader, Jacqueline Regis, said brought her to tears when she first saw it. It was so mindful of her own mother and her own growing up years in Duvalier’s Haiti.
After the film we viewers dialogued with each other about what this film meant to us. There was nothing profound said, but the evening was profound. There was lots of respect among we diverse folks whose only commonality was an interest in Haiti. Our conversation reached no conclusion: it didn’t need to. When we walked out the door, the conversation was our conclusion: food for thought. Out of the gathering did come a proposal to a larger institution to use the film as centerpiece for a program on the first anniversary of the January 12, 2010, earthquake in Haiti, but that was just a proposal for someone else to implement, or not.
Oh if only we could re-learn the almost disappeared skill of dialogue.
So…What is “dialogue”?
I often go back to a great quote I found in Joseph Jaworsky’s 1996 book, “Synchronicity, the Inner Path of Leadership“. Preceding the chapter on “Dialogue: The Power of Collective Thinking“, Jaworsky includes the following from David Bohms “On Dialogue”:
“From time to time, (the) tribe (gathered) in a circle.
They just talked and talked and talked apparently to no purpose. They made no decisions. There was no leader. And everybody could participate.
There may have been wise men or wise women who were listened to a bit more – the older ones – but everybody could talk.
The meeting went on, until it finally seemed to stop for no reason at all and the group dispersed. Yet after that, everybody seemed to know what to do, because they understood each other so well. Then they could get together in smaller groups and do something or decide things.“