#39 – Dick Bernard: A new Farmer's Market in New Hope MN

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Yesterday’s e-mails included a post from a good friend, Leslie Hendricks, calling attention to a local newspaper article about the opening of a new Farmers Market in her suburban community.
Leslie had good reason to be excited about the article (http://tinyurl.com/mjhlh2) since the New Hope Community Farmers Market is her idea, tirelessly promoted beginning in the Fall of 2008.
(The market opens tomorrow, Saturday, June 13, and will be open every Saturday through October 17.  Hours are 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.  It is located at 4300 Xylon Avenue N in the parking lot by Kmart.  It has a very eye-catching website at www.newhopemarket.org .)
The news article in the local paper (link above) gives all the details of the birth of this venture.
As is always true with any enterprise, it begins with someones idea, but it takes more than an idea to bring success:  a great deal of work is involved, including negotiations, consensus building, selling…. 
Leslie has all those skills, and more.
We’ll take the trip across town Saturday morning to visit this new addition to the twin cities landscape.   Spread the word.
Oh, yes…we should mention that in the midst of all of this hard work to build the Farmer’s Market, Leslie was laid off from her job, and had to find another one (she succeeded), and she’s raising two teens as well.
As I said to her in response to her e-mail yesterday: “WAY TAH GO!!!!!!!!”
Leslie can be reached at leslie102896AThotmailDOTcom.  Ask her about her “Turn Up the Peace” (c) tee-shirt, which is how I met her in the first place.  She walks the talk.

#33 – Dick Bernard: Susan Boyle goes back to her village

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A reader comment follows this post.
Saturday night, May 30, 2009, Susan Boyle’s dream ended…or did it just begin?
In blogpost #8, published April 16,2009, I wrote about the astonishing clip I saw of this lady singing on Britain’s Got Talent competition in mid-April.  “The rest of the story” of that happening is accessible there.  Here’s the performance that led to the post:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY
The particular clip I reference has now been viewed over 65,000,000 times, the fifth most popular YouTube video ever.  There are people, like myself, who have watched it on numerous occasions.  I continue to watch it.
Now the dream has ended for Susan Boyle, or so goes the story.  Saturday night she came in second in the finals of the competition in England.  There will be a narrative that the clock has struck midnight on Cinderella, and she will fade into obscurity.  In our western society, which is trained from birth to revere winners and competition, Susan, while certainly not a loser, will now become an also ran, replaced by the inevitable next surprise sensation who will, for a time, capture the publics imagination.
Personally, I think that Susan really won by losing on Saturday night.  She really had nothing more to prove, and like most of us she was not accustomed to the life of celebrity into which she was thrust.
She had always wanted to perform on a big stage in front of a large audience, and she did, and she performed superbly.
For me, she will always be a winner, and I will go back to that clip of her on that English stage often, any time I need to be encouraged to keep on.
Back home she can (and I hope she will) attempt to resume a semblance of her former life, which was perhaps (as for most of us) not “exciting”, but manageable.  I hope she finds the job that she was looking for, something she likes, where she can come home to her cottage each evening.  I don’t wish for her a life on the road, as a performer.
It is said that we all deserve our fifteen minutes of fame.
Susan got far more than that, and likely far more than she expected.
Last evening, in a post-mortem of her loss in the finals, CBS evening news played a clip of the end of Susan’s dream.  They showed a young man holding a note written to him by Susan Boyle sometime in these last few weeks.  He had apparently written her, saying he liked her, and her short note said, apparently, that no one had told her they liked her before….
When it comes down to the end, this is where it’s at: we all need someone to like us, hopefully for who we are.  May we all be so blessed.
And may her Scottish village, and all villages, learn from her experience in the spotlight.  We are all parts of our own villages, but all of our villages are tied together in today’s world.  We are no longer and will never again be islands in isolation or independent from other communities.
Congratulations, Susan.
And a final note before I sign off on this “thread”: I found myself respecting Simon Cowall, and his fellow judges Piers and Amanda, as time went on.   No doubt Simon and the others are very astute business people and celebrities, but their warmth and humanity showed through in substantial bits and pieces I came across in following days and weeks.  Had I stuck with my initial sense of them, closing my book on their character after watching them judge Susan harshly when she came on stage that first evening, I would have missed another much more positive side of each of them.

#18 – Dick Bernard: A re-view of Mother's Day

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Sometimes seemingly dis-connected happenings converge, causing one to re-think what previously was thought to be obvious.
This has happened to me in recent weeks, regarding Mother’s.
“Mother”, it seems to me, is a whole lot more than solely a biological function; and it is much more than a designated day in May. It is joyful, tragic, complicated. It is all those things, and much, much more. It is 24/7/365 for all of us.
In particular, this Mother’s Day, I think of my cousin’s niece, a young mother of two, who is struggling with cancer in a hospital room at the University of Minnesota Hospital.
I think of my cousin, who’s not been a biological Mom, but who’s been a primary visitor to that hospital room, and in a substantial sense has become a Mom, too, for her niece in a time of need.
Nearby in my own neighborhood is a retired couple whose son and two children live with them. It wasn’t what retirement was planned to be. For whatever reason, the biological Mom was unable to cope with the business of parenting. One is tempted to judge, but such happenings are seldom if ever routine.
Then there are the Dad’s, too, who for various and sundry reasons have become “Mom”, too. Perhaps their spouse died, or couldn’t cope.
Indeed, the Mom business is very complicated; the Dad business, too.
And our role as part of the greater Community in all of this is complicated as well.
Give some thought, this day, to “Mom” in all of the renditions of the term.
And have a happy Mother’s Day, everyone.

#17 – Dick Bernard: Don Bartlette, Macaroni at Midnight.

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Today was Diversity Day for Bloomington MN high schools and I went out to Jefferson High School in Bloomington to staff a table for a group in which I am active called World Citizen www.peacesites.org.
I had the written program for the day, but wasn’t certain when I was supposed to be there, so I went out early. The first two periods of the day featured an assembly talk by a “Dr. Bartlette, Speaker”. I had no idea who this person was, and the program didn’t say any more about him or his topic. It was a very nice day outside, and the choice between listening to somebody give a speech to a bunch of kids captive in a school auditorium, and enjoying some fine spring weather seemed a no-brainer.
But something drew me into the auditorium for the second talk. Still, rather than sit down, I stood in the back, much like a teacher on duty. At least I had an escape route.
Dr. Bartlette was given a very low key introduction, and walked up to the podium, a short man, wearing a short sleeved dark shirt, very plain appearing. He began to speak, quietly, and with something of a speech impediment.
He quietly told his life story, born in a small log cabin up the hill and in the woods outside of a town, born with severe facial deformities, unable to speak, growing up shunned as a native American in North Dakota, but also shunned by his own father who had expected him to be normal at birth, and he wasn’t. He was shunned by virtually everyone except, it seemed, his mother, and ultimately a wealthy woman in the town of 1700 people became something of a guardian angel. She saw something in him, or perhaps it was her sense of his worth as a human being that led her to help him thrive. His life began to turn around. In his high school years someone, perhaps the wealthy woman (I don’t recall off-hand), prevailed on the most popular high school kid to befriend him, and the youngster did, and Don blossomed, becoming class and student council president and valedictorian of his class.
He had his audience completely engaged. I was standing back there, choking back tears, choking back tears, choking back tears. And he continued to tell his story.
He continued to learn, and ultimately achieved his doctorate and now, as his business card says, he is a “Public Speaker”, worldwide. He now lives in Ohio.
Doctors went to work on his face, replacing the deformed half-nose with which he was born with a plastic nose that serves him well. Other major facial and other defects needed correction as well. He got his degrees, and one of his first jobs was as Human Rights Director for the city of Bloomington MN in the late 1970s. It was not a time, he said, where diversity was celebrated.
He finished his talk to great applause from the young people in attendance. He came back to thank them for their attentiveness to his story. He left the stage, and I thought I’d not see him again. But my 45 or so minutes in his presence profoundly impacted me.
After the talk I saw him walking a short distance away. I went up and shook his hand and thanked him for a powerful witness to possibility. We compared notes: he had graduated from his North Dakota high school the same year I did: 1958. He knew my small towns; I knew his. We will likely stay in touch. There is much for us to connect about.
I looked him up on the internet. Material about him can be found by searching Don Bartlett Macaroni at Midnight (yes, there is a story to that). A movie about him is apparently now in production.
If you ever hear that he is in your area, make it a point to stop in.
You won’t regret it.

#15 – Dick Bernard, Grandpa's Slingshot; and Jane Stillwater, a Letter to the Editor

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A reader comment follows this post.
Today is my 69th birthday. I share the birthday with grandson Parker, 7, and a great number of others. Parker and I shared birthday cake yesterday.
To a great number of people in my assorted constellations my age means I’m “just a kid”; to many others, including Parker, I grew up long ago in a simple time they cannot even imagine.
Today I take the time to share a couple of stories, one from me, a family story about my Grandpa and Grandma in Grafton ND; the other from a friend “out west”, relating a recent contemporary event that shows that, at heart, true community still lives in this country of ours. To me, the stories are related, and tell of being part of, rather than apart from, the community that makes up planet earth.
Grandpa Bernard: a story from the 1940s or 1950s:
My Grandpa Bernard was a crusty old French-Canadian. He’d served in the Spanish-American War; was chief engineer at the local flour mill; President of the Grafton Fire Department; lost one leg to diabetes in 1946, and the loss of the second leg in 1957 was his sayonara to life, 85 years well lived. I was told that he wasn’t one to run from a fight. I was 17 when he died so I got to know him pretty well.
We used to visit Grandma and Grandpa at their tiny, tiny, tiny little house down the street from the Court House in Grafton ND. Why they lived in that tiny, tiny house is another story for another time.
Grandpa enjoyed sitting outside, and they had built a bench of sorts outside the front door, and in good weather Grandpa was out there most all the time. He’d regale passers by and visitors with stories and wild tales, facing down moose in the woods when he was a lumberjack in Quebec, that sort of thing. We kids mostly reveled in his other antics: like he told us that, as a lumberjack, he wore the same long underwear all winter, and it was so dirty by springtime that it would stand by itself. I remember particularly one version where he recalled a caterpillar or some such crawling out of the button hole of one set of those “long johns”. Dirty underwear meant no baths: ah, that was the life!
And then there was the time when, at the end of Thanksgiving dinner, with all five of we impressionable kids at the table, he decided to teach us how to clean our plates…by picking up his plate and licking it clean. Made a great impression on us; somewhat less impressed were our parents and Grandma.
But I digress.
Grandpa was armed and dangerous to neighborhood critters.
They had a little garden out back, and hanging by the back door was a beebe gun which occasionally came in handy if something was out there munchin without asking permission. The back door faced an alley and a vacant lot, so there was not much danger or hitting somebody’s window, or rear end.
The front porch was a little different.
Out there Grandpa had a hand-made slingshot and a coffee can full of perfect pebbles. He was pretty accurate and it had good range.
One day we were visiting with him and he had an opportunity to show off his neighborhood influence.
He spotted a big dog trotting down the sidewalk towards his house.
When it got a couple of houses away, he told us kids “watch that dog”. So, of course, we did.
The dog trotted to slingshot range of Grandpa, made a hard right, trotted across the street to the other sidewalk, made a hard left, trotted on, then out of range, made another hard left, and then right, back on our sidewalk.
There was no hollering, no barking, no shots fired!
I’ve never forgotten it!
Thanks, Grandpa.
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From Jane Stillwater
Berkeley, CA 2009:
A published letter to the editor, Berkeley Daily Planet:
I went to the April 22 Berkeley City Council meeting to see if I could snag some of that Obama stimulus package money for Savo Island Cooperative Homes, the South Berkeley housing project where I live. And as I sat there for over two hours while waiting my turn to ask for money to repair my home, I was forced to listen to speaker after speaker, all of them asking the council for money. And after listening to all these speakers describe all kinds of projects geared to make people’s lives better and realizing how many of these helpful and wonderful projects are funded by our city, it suddenly hit me. Berkeley is truly an amazing place.
Some of the worthwhile groups helped out by our city are a foster agency called A Better Way, Lifelong Medical Care (they fixed my teeth!), the Berkeley High School Bio-tech program, Berkeley Boosters police athletic league for kids, Strawberry Creek Lodge senior housing, BOSS assistance programs for the homeless, an Alzheimer’s center, a program to help deaf children, I forget what all else. If you had sat there for over two hours, you would have been amazed too.
Earlier this week, I had gone to a People’s Park anniversary event, and had thought to myself, “Those days are long gone. Berkeley just isn’t like that any more.” But after listening to all the wonderful people speaking up for their wonderful groups that help all sorts of people here in Berkeley, I suddenly realized that Berkeley hasn’t changed all that much after all.
Berkeley is still a wonderful, caring place—a place that takes great pains to make sure that those in need are taken care of and that we Do The Right Thing. I was very proud of my city tonight.

#14 – Anne Dunn: Sweet Smoky Blues

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Note: Here’s another chapter on Sugaring near Deer River MN. Anne previously wrote on this topic at #6, published April 12, 2009, under the category, Quietings.
I’d been charged with watching the maple syrup cooker so it wouldn’t boil over. There were also three barrels of sap bubbling the steam away. Annie and Laura had just returned from emptying sap so the holding barrel was full.
After returning to camp, Annie began splitting wood while Laura renewed the fire. I was quick to see and eliminate a brief but intense flare. Using a long pole I scattered the flaming wood to cool the fire.
Earlier that day I’d noticed that the sparks clung to the shelter roof and didn’t die out as quickly as I thought they should. I also noted that the fire was swirling rather violently. But with several sugar bush veterans in camp I decided it was not going to be a problem. In fact, I told Laura that the fire had learned a new dance. She smiled and glanced into the flames but said nothing. When she went out to stack the woodpile I was alone with the fire.
Soon I smelled plastic burning. I checked my boots then stepped out to tell Annie and Laura to check their boots, too. When I re-entered the shelter I was hit by a terrible odor. Then the roof burst into flames. Burning tarpaper and melted plastic began falling into our boiling barrels. I shouted “Fire!” and we flew into action. We formed an instant bucket brigade with Annie climbing to the roof while Laura and I passed buckets of sap from the holding barrel. I went back inside and began throwing cans of sap against the inside of the roof. After many desperate minutes we got the blaze under control but there was a great loss of syrup and sap, not to mention the gaping hole in the roof.
On the following day the roof was repaired and we were back in business. The sap was still running and we were still boiling it into syrup. We finished 15 quarts that day.
On Easter Sunday we had a big dinner and egg hunt at the camp and the fire seemed quite forgotten. However, Annie was later presented with a book of spent matches. The award was given in recognition of her being the camp supervisor at the time of the fire.
It was soon decided that we would close down the camp because we had all the syrup we need for the coming year. Usually we close camp when the maple tree buds are as big as squirrel ears but this year we closed early.
We began pulling taps and bagging up catch cans. The cookers and holding barrel were still full. Some of the men said they would finish cooking the remaining sap and the resulting syrup would be given to some of our hard working helpers.
We had opened the camp with a naming ceremony, give away and feast. Now we were closing with a family dinner.
I watched the smoke drift away through the trees and listened to the voices around me but I heard no words at all. I was only aware of a certain contentment that hummed about me. Closing my eyes I felt like a fetus that had been carried into the sugar bush camp within her mother’s womb.
When I opened my eyes I looked up through the bare branches above and thanked Creator for another good gathering. I asked that I be allowed to return to the sugar bush next year and enjoy the sweet smoky blues without burning a hole in the roof.
Anne M. Dunn is an Anishinabe-Ojibwe grandmother storyteller and published author. She makes her home in rural Deer River, MN, on the Leech Lake Reservation. She can be reached at twigfigsATyahooDOTcom

#9 – Tom Bernard: Columbine 10 years ago, and 10 years after

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Note from Dick Bernard:
On April 20, 1999 – it was a Tuesday – I was at a meeting in suburban Minneapolis. Driving back to my office after the meeting, on the car radio, I heard about some shootings at Columbine High School in Littleton CO. I didn’t know anything about Columbine, but I knew my son, his spouse, Jennifer, and my 12 year old granddaughter Lindsay, lived in Littleton. I tried to get a map location of Columbine on the then-primitive on-line maps, and the location which came up on computer turned out to be a few miles away from what turned out to be the actual location. I was soon to learn that Columbine High School was one mile due east of their home, separated only by a park and a few streets of homes in their subdivision. That afternoon, Jennifer called to say that Lindsay was okay. Later that week, I went ahead with previous plans to take a hiking vacation in Utah the next week, with a scheduled return stopover in Littleton on May 1 and 2. During the time in Littleton the four of us spend several somber hours in a rain-soaked line going up what had been dubbed as “Cross Hill” to view the crosses erected at the top of a dirt hill dedicated to each of the victims of the shootings. It was a powerful time. We reached the crosses at the same time as the celebrated TV preacher, Dr. Robert Schuller. I had huge respect for Dr. Schuller. Sixteen years earlier his sermon, Tough Times Don’t Last, Tough People Do, had saved my emotional life, literally.
The day after the shootings, my son Tom Bernard, wrote his immediate impressions of April 20, 1999. They appear below, with his permission, preceded by a short commentary written by him on April 19, 2009.
Here are his comments, the most recent, first:
Tom Bernard
Littleton, April 19, 2009
GAZING INTO THE MIRROR
Ten years ago, our family walked with hundreds of neighbors to the hills surrounding Columbine High School. It was surreal and intense. Everyone that was touched by the event, so close to home, carries the hurt from it to this day. The shared tragedy brought everyone together for a short time, as we all wrestled with the magnitude of the days events. We needed each other, not to discuss, not to blame, just to see in a strangers eyes the same confusion and fear that we were feeling. We needed to know that we were not alone. Columbine was a shared tragedy like many before it, unique to the human experience. We can look back to grainy black and white photos of Lincoln’s funeral procession and see in the eyes of the mourners a very real and profound connection with ourselves. The deaths of Kennedy, King, Kennedy again, Lennon, The crew of Challenger, all the way to September 11, 2001, were common in their effect on society. For a moment, we all stopped yelling and rushing, ignoring and patronizing, judging and blaming. For a time far too short, we stood together quietly and accepted our shared loss. The lessons ignored in these tragedies is not contained in the event itself. The lessons reside in everyone around them. The quiet of the shared pain is quickly and inevitably replaced with yelling and rushing, ignoring and patronizing, judging and blaming. The community splinters into its preferred cliques, all smug and self assured that they are not the problem, its obviously the other guys. As time speeds by, the time of quiet community grows shorter with every passing shock. Columbine was story of youthful alienation, rejection, and social separation. It was the end for the casualties that day. And for the rest of us, it could be a new beginning, or it could be the beginning of the end.
Tom Bernard
Littleton, April 21, 1999
Today was anything but usual. The sun rose and was bright as ever, the sky was a brilliant blue, and the foothills to the west were coming to life in subtle greens. Puddles, our new puppy, woke me as usual, warm snout on my cheek. I rose slowly and went downstairs. The television was still on the same story, 8 hours later. Katie Couric was welcoming the new day from Clement Park, a short 5 minute walk from my front door. The long night had given the television crews plenty of time to sift thru interviews, footage and facts. The whole country (and most of the world) needed to know. I hoped to myself they were ready to listen.
Yesterday was April 20, Tuesday, senior skip day. I was locked into a 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. shift at Piccolos [the restaurant Tom managed]. Lunch was uneventful, very slow…Around 1:30 I noticed a group of employees standing under the television near the bar. I looked up. The trailer at the bottom of the screen stopped me in my tracks…”GUNFIRE AT LITTLETON HIGH SCHOOL…POSSIBLE HOSTAGES.”
My jaw dropped. I was not worried so much about Lindsay, she is still in Middle School. It was the area. I didn’t know which school it was at first…but my fears were realized. This was less than 1 mile from my front door. For the next two hours I paced, sat, tried to keep occupied as the story grew worse and worse. I tried to equate the situation with some past experience to make it easier to take. I found nothing to hide behind. This was new. This was bizarre. This was….
The next few hours were a blur. We had a busy dinner, the casual attitude of the diners upset me. Few people showed any interest in the news reports. I heard some reports and said almost nothing to anyone. A young hostess was laughing and joking around. She told me to smile and it will all be fine. I snapped a bit and said “I have too much on my mind…I will smile later, I promise!” She huffed a bit and walked away. The night finished and I went to pick up Lindsay at [sister-in-law] Julie’s house. I drove in dead silence. I could not bear the sound of another voice, and music was out of the question [Tom loves music and is a musician]. Lindsay was fine. She didn’t have much to say about the shooting. I doubt at 12 she really understands the magnitude of the event. We talked a bit and Lindsay went to bed. I sat up awhile and went to an AOL chatroom to talk, and listen, and maybe make some sense of it all. I met a couple of nice people in the room, and stayed up till 2.
As I said, today [Wednesday] was anything but usual. The stories, one after another, left me in tears. I knew these people. I did not know their names, but they live in my subdivision, shop in my stores, eat at my McDonalds. On a side note, last week I went for lunch at McDonalds and sat in a booth next to who I believe were the two killers and a friend.
The television was on nonstop coverage all day. President Clinton considered a trip here, but declined because it would be disruptive. Gov. Owens announced that all weapons bills before the legislature had been shelved indefinitely. The blood bank turned away 200+_ people and asked that they return another day. Makeshift memorials appeared everywhere anyone had been seen in pain. Tom Brokaw, Peter Jennings and at least 2- remote news feeds from various cities were broadcasting from Clement Park. I was still not convinced that anything would change.
About 6 o’clock, we decided to go lay some flowers at the memorial at Clement Park. The storm was moving in fast, wind and rain kicking up, and I had never felt so cold. The traffic was backed up, so we parked at a nearby restaurant and walked the ½ mile to the memorial. The lake was cold and angry, the sky dark and colourless. The people walked together, old, hippies, yuppies, trench coats, and jocks to the site of the memorials. Closer to the memorial there were news trucks from at least 15 cities, wires taped everywhere. I counted at least a dozen cameramen going about their business, and an equal number of well coifed anchors preparing to do their gig. I was not prepared to be there.
I read some of the messages on the paper chain surrounding the memorial. There was no anger, no hate, no blame, only hope and love. I saw a young girl, no more than 16, emotionally broken and crying on the shoulder of her friend. I saw a teachers car, covered with flowers, surround by students huddled and praying together. I saw students from 20 different schools, together in the knowledge that it could have been any of them. I saw, for the first time, hope.
[A writing apparently read by Denver Mayor Wellington Webb]
“No one can make sense of a thing like this.
No one can make the pain go away
All we can do is this:
Pray for those who have lost their loved ones
Hug your own child a little tighter
Hug another child who may not get enough love
Hug someone who is different from you
Teach your children to do the same.”
The storm is rolling in, pray for those who will never share the warmth of home with family again.”
Postscript from Dick Bernard, April 20, 2009:
The same day Tom wrote his account, April 21, 1999, I was at an all-day training session in a Minneapolis suburb with perhaps fifteen school public relations professionals. As I recall, the topic of Littleton did not come up until the end of the day when someone remarked that they were relieved that their assignment did not include the public relations nightmare that was Littleton (Jefferson County School District). There was agreement round about, until I mentioned that my son and family lived only a mile from the high school. It was at that moment that one of many learnings took root with each of us: there are no boundaries in this world of ours. The crisis at Littleton did not stop at school district, town, state or country lines. We were all in this together.
Shortly after the tragedy, someone from another state constructed simple large wooden crosses to remember the dead from April 20. The crosses were planted atop a pile of dirt just to the west of the school building, between Clement Park and the schools athletic fields, and became “Cross Hill”. The crosses themselves became controversial in that the builder planted crosses not only for the victims of the shootings, but for the two killers as well. By the time I walked up Cross Hill more than a week later, the two crosses for the killers had been cut down and removed. A message remains from that happening as well….

#8 – Dick Bernard: Susan Boyle, and "Cynical", "Tiger" and "I dreamed a dream"….

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Susan Boyle, Britains Got Talent, April 11, 09. A great gift… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9lp0IWv8QZY.
To be as clear as I can be: Susan Boyle’s performance on Britains Got Talent on April 11 was stunning and real. She was so good, but the lead-up made her sound so unlikely to be as outstanding as she was, that I struggled a bit. But it didn’t take long to accept that what I was hearing was true: Susan Boyle was very, very real real.
Here is how the feelings evolved for me, and how I see them as applying to all of us in our very cynical and untrusting society.
ABC Evening News with Charlie Gibson on Tuesday afternoon, April 14, was my first contact with Susan Boyle. The last item was the piece on her appearance on the popular British show. From the first note, hers was a stunning and moving performance by a common country girl, her skeptical audience “turned on a dime” and was cheering unceasingly. I’m “country” to the core, and I felt huge pride in her performance.
I sought out the clip and found it on YouTube. At the time I seem to recall there had been something over 2 million views (as I write this, it’s over 12 million). I had noticed, even on the ABC clip, a slight difference between Susan’s mouth movement and the music, but I noticed the same difference in the other speakers, so I simply interpreted it as a synchronization problem, which I know is common in early edits of video. Still, the performance was so wonderful as to be hard to believe.
Overnight Monday night came an e-mail from a friend urging me to look at the video, from a different source than the one I had found.
Within a few hours everything mitigated toward the reality of Susan, her background, her outstanding voice, her dream. I sent the link on in the morning. At that time there had been 5 million views. Later, on Wednesday, I found Susan to be on the cover of my MSN page on the internet.
I received a few e-mail comments, which follow this piece. I had no doubts.
I’m still awestruck. Some observations:
1) Susan Boyle is, in my view, a shero of the first order. She did what very few of us would ever consider doing. She knew that she was good, but she also knew that she would be subject to the withering and “cynical” view of the panel and audience on the program. She went out there anyway, and represented all of us “commoners” in a most remarkable and real way. I share the feelings of one of those who commented (below): I hope that in the process of marketing her talent, her handlers will not try to remake her from what she is, a Scottish village lady who loves to sing.
2) Susan also represents to me our society’s tendency to dismiss reality in favor of fantasy. The expression “don’t judge a book by its cover” comes to mind. But we are always looking for the cover, first: the resume, the reputation…. Ironically, had Susan come out on stage with a fancy “cover”, sophisticated-looking, made-up and all, in the latest fashions, then we would have seen an image, and, even if she sang exactly the same, the judges and the audience would have probably looked for flaws in her vocal performance.
3) My guess is that most of us are prone to fantasy. It’s how we’ve been “made-up” by our life experience, especially in the age of television and beyond. We’re taught “slick”. Or, even more, we’re taught to stay in our place, our “class”.
4) Susan Boyle and Britains Got Talent, and ABC and MSN and all the rest, demonstrate another truth: both the sophisticated media and we unwashed masses need each other, and provide benefits to each other. There needs to be some kind of a “truce”. Without the opportunity presented by Britains Got Talent, Susan would never have had the opportunity to be seen by what is already tens of millions of people. Without big media – ABC and MSN and many others – I never would have seen her performance. She would have been hidden in her Scottish village.
5) It is the Susan’s of the world who make life worth living. Her success is something we can and should celebrate. In our own ways, we can all be Susan in our own places!
Congratulations to a true diva cut from common cloth!
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Some early comments received:
Apr 15 09 12:11 a.m. “Check out the above site to hear the American idol lady from England…a real treat and inspiration to late bloomers everywhere.”
*
Apr 15 8:14 a.m. “Wow. When did this happen? I just hope they don’t remake her. I like her as she is. Half the happiness is the surprise.
*
Apr 15 6:04 a.m. “ I’m not the ultimate cynic, I loved this video, but I frankly wonder if it isn’t lip-synched. In the first two lines, I saw disparity between the timing of sound and lips. And a couple other times going through.
*
Apr 16 7:37 a.m. “The Susan Boyle thing is quite a phenomenon. (I will admit that when I
first viewed it and I didn’t watch the whole thing, when I saw the guy off stage say something like “you didn’t expect that did you?”…. my internet skepticism was raised and I started surmising it was some type of scam with lip synching involved…. goes to show you how easily one can become skeptical in the modern world)….
This came just at the right moment…I watched “Tootsie” last night (25th anniversary edition) and there was a special feature afterwards on the making of the film in which Dustin Hoffman talks about how he felt to learn what it was like to be an unattractive woman in a society that doesn’t tolerate it. He cried while talking about it (maybe he was acting) but it was very moving to see; he said he had never realized how callous men are to homely women and how many doors shut in their faces without giving them a chance. He said for some reason the world forgives ugly men, but not women.
This singer must have never tried wholeheartedly, knowing that. Good for her, giving it one last go.”
We’ll see if anything comes out on this. I hope not, but if it does…
I’ve thought of another possibility, i.e. it may well be Boyle’s voice. But she would have sung this song many times to the same taped accompaniment, and they could have used a singing of it which was not the one in front of the crowd. I don’t know.”
My first take on this is that it is symptomatic of the recession, instead of high flying rich and famous types being idolized, people are seeing the quintessential “everywoman” who is something special. Is this hyper populism? On a psycho-social note the other thing is the interesting expose of human disposition toward expectations based on visual inspection. Can a middle aged, overweight, non hip person possibly be talented? Very interesting comment on human nature in my opinion.”
Update – May 24, 2009
The performance which led to this post on April 16, 2009, has now been viewed by 60,000,000.  Last night Susan Boyle won the highest number of votes in the next round.
Update June 1, 2009
Susan came in second in the final round, May 30, 2009.  As of this date, her video has been seen 65,000,000 times, the fifth largest viewership ever on YouTube. 
 
 

#6 – Anne M. Dunn: SUGAR BUSH VOICES 2009

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UPDATE SEP 5, 2013: Other posts by Anne Dunn: May 3, 2009; Dec 13, 2012, July 18, 2013. Anne is also featured in this post about a concert at La Farm Aug. 31, 2013
Those who gather maple sap can name the signs that tell them when it’s time to tap the trees. Many will say the sap begins to rise when warm days are followed by freezing nights. This is true and this we know.
But I prefer the sign my mother waited for. She used to tell me, “When the box elders begin to weep, it’s time to tap the maples.”
So I spent some time looking up into the branches of the tall box elders that surrounded our old house (on tract 33, Cass Lake, MN). Sometimes I would listen for their weeping in the night but Mom said they wept in the warmth of the afternoon. Then one day it happened that a box elder tear fell upon my upturned face and I knew that what she said was true. The box elders were weeping.
So this year when we drove out to the sugar bush camp and parked the car at the end of the tar I was keenly aware of the privilege I had of entering this small but rich domain. Once again I was greeted by sugar bush voices.
The great white pines reach high into the April sky, poised and waiting for the wind. One after another they join their voices as the song moves from tree to tree. I raise my hands and touch the sighing breath around me before stepping off toward the camp. As my boots crush the snow beneath each step, new and unique voices rise around my feet. It’s many steps to the camp and the icy songs enrich my journey.
Everyone is out emptying catch cans so I am alone at the fire. I put a sprig of cedar on the coals for symbolic cleansing and wash my hands in the smoke. The excited voices of the flaming tongues offer their fiery poems.
Later I take a bucket and go out among the trees. I put down a bit of tobacco and than Creator for the generous gift of nourishing sap. Then I empty a can into the bucket, re-hang the can and listen as the sap drops sing against the metal. After emptying and re-hanging several cans I listen to this sweet song of life. When all the cans are emptied we return to camp and our varied voices join the chorus.
The crackling fire must be fed. So someone begins splitting wood. The boiling sap sizzles, bubbles and hisses. Of course, these lyrical voices are also blended into the sugar bush symphony.
The shouts and laughter of playful children punctuate the great song. Then a weary child is lifted into the blanket swing and the rope squeaks against the bark of the supporting trees. A grandmother sings a soft lullaby and leans into the swing to kiss the little one. The child smiles once, the eyelids flutter and close.
When the sap is boiled down to syrup it’s poured into a clean bucket, covered with a dishtowel and carried back to the road. It’s been a warm day and the snow has melted. Now the boots make sucking sounds as we follow one another through the mud. A nation of small birds flyover us and their thin raspy songs trail behind them.
I listen carefully for the voices of the ancestors whispering around us as we leave with our precious gift. They are saying that even in the midst of great and widespread change the sugar bush voices remain the same.
Postscript April 12, 2009: We pulled the taps today and called an end to the gathering of sap. We usually do that when the buds are as big as squirrel ears. But it has been an abundant flow and we have all we need. Tomorrow we return for a final boil and I will use the last bucket to make sugar.
Anne
Anne M. Dunn is an Anishinabe-Ojibwe grandmother storyteller and published author. She makes her home in rural Deer River, MN, on the Leech Lake Reservation. She can be reached at twigfigsATyahooDOTcom