#1140 – Dick Bernard: Dealing with Un-reason.

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The early morning Just Above Sunset, “Dreams of Vengeance“, was another excellent analysis. The column is worth a weekend read.
Among the insights: In the recent “Brexit” election a crucial segment of the electorate who voted heavily to exit the European Union, was also a demographic which had the most to lose from Britain’s actually leaving the EU. Effectively, they seemed to have voted against their own self-interest.
The column also talks about the dismay of the American “middle class” – angry and frustrated, while at the same time seeming to dismiss the amazing recovery of this country from the very near economic collapse of 2001-2009, of which a disastrous Iraq war was one of the causative factors.
Mid-morning, I left for my daily duties, one of which, this day, was a little political “leaf-letting” for an area candidate for state representative. It was a very nice day; I did my duty; hardly anyone was at home (not unexpected, on 4th of July weekend.) Those I met were most pleasant.
Back at the local office, another person on the same assignment was reporting on a conversation with a couple of older people somewhere in our town, apparently Democrats, who were thinking seriously of voting Republican in November.
The reasoning went like this: The Republicans are more likely to keep them “safe”; and they didn’t trust Hillary Clinton….
There is no time to be wasted arguing with such people.
Consistently, Hillary gets high marks for being as honest and as open as it is possible for a politician with many years of public service to be, while her presumed opponent; Donald Trump, is such a pathological liar that even the media has gotten tired of even “fact-checking” him. Nothing he says can be trusted.
Still he seems to get, among a certain segment, higher marks than she in the “straight talk” area.
The apparent illogic, both in last weeks British vote, and right now in America, seems essentially to be the reverse of the quantifiable reality.
Emotions “trump” facts.
*
Today caused me to think of the periodic stampede of people to buy lottery tickets. The stampede to buy tickets increases as the odds against winning also increase.
It seems as if it is hardly worth losing one’s dollars if the prize is only $5,000,000; but once the prize is $500,000,000, and the odds against winning astronomically greater, people are falling all over themselves to buy losing tickets.
Rather than buy low and sell high, many seem to be addicted to buying high, and losing it all….
And the Donald Trumps of the world reap the financial rewards by doing the opposite: buy low and sell high.
As for feeling more “safe” with Republicans in charge, there seems a very serious short term memory problem.
Given that we are in what may seem, at least via the “news”, an “unsafe” world (what else would the news have to talk about without daily catastrophes?), we in this country, and even in the world, are living in a very safe time* in our history, and it is largely due to sound government policy and a notion, at least, that we are part of a global community.
There are great problems, to be sure, but against our own, and the world’s, deadly history, this is a pretty peaceful time, at least so far as “war” is concerned.
There is an amazing amnesia about the disastrous eight years following 9-11-01. Then, our nation was led on a misadventure that costs tens of thousands of lives – ours and Iraqis in particular – in the wake of 9-11-01. The refugee crisis, ISIS and all the rest flowed out of our Iraq War.
Financially, I was most apprehensive about the future of our economy in September, 2008, in the last months of the Bush presidency.
I made an effort to quantify the human cost of war to the U.S. some months ago, specifically as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan 2001 through the present. The results are here and speak for themselves:War Deaths U.S.002.
I also made an effort to get some reasonably accurate data about death-by-Drones, then, but was unsuccessful. Todays paper had an article about Drone casualties, which includes other sources of data. (The comments are interesting.)
Even using the highest estimates of civilian Drone deaths, the toll by Drones is a tiny fraction of those who died in the Iraq War.
There have been few “terrorist” (defined as such) incidents on our shores, but even these are dwarfed by other incidents of wanton killing, especially with guns.
Statistically, we are overwhelmingly more likely to die at the hands of some ordinary looking citizen, than by some certifiable “terrorist”*.
But, it seems, data (facts) don’t really make much difference when dealing with emotions.
The only antidote is work for a strong voter turnout in November, for candidates who care about the future of this country and the world of which we are a part.
* – The notable exception, and it is an important one, is that we in the U.S. are killing ourselves and our fellow citizens with guns at an alarming rate, well over 10,000 U.S. citizens every single year. Here’s one data source that seems credible.

COMMENTS: from Larry: Excellent piece. The real “fear” that Americans should have is masked by the outrageous rants of Donald Trump, the Republican nominee. What all of us should actually fear is his getting elected president of the most powerful country on the planet.
Fear mongering is Trump’s key campaign tactic. And he continues to express fear in a variety of ways, over and over again while providing no workable solutions to the problems he tells us to fear. As one of the most effective propagandists of all time said: “It would not be impossible to prove with sufficient repetition and a psychological understanding of the people concerned that a square is in fact a circle. They are mere words, and words can be molded until they clothe ideas and disguise.” That from Joseph Goebbels, a man who, in no small measure, helped the world’s worst narcissist (at least to that date) become the cruelest, most self-gratifying dictator in the world. The real fear Americans should have is not of Mrs. Clinton but of the kind of country we will become under another unmitigated ego-maniacal fool.

Peter Barus: A Talk By Amy Goodman

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NOTE: Peter is a longtime great friend from rural Vermont. He is an occasional and always welcome visitor at this space. On May 22, he had an opportunity to hear journalist Amy Goodman in Troy, New York. His comments follow, with his permission.
(click to enlarge)

Peter Barus, front row, left, Oct 23, 2002, Mastery Conference, Annandale MN.

Peter Barus, front row, left, Oct 23, 2002, Mastery Conference, Annandale MN.


Peter Barus:
May/22/2016
Amy Goodman spoke last night at the Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy, NY, a lovely little old converted church. Arriving early, I strolled around the block in this economically by-passed neighborhood of old houses, grand old churches, and grinding poverty. A local church still retains its original Tiffany stained glass windows, and the Troy Music Hall is world-famous for extraordinary acoustics. I found that the Sanctuary for Independent Media is very active in the immediate community. At one end of the block is a little park, with an outdoor stage, built by (and commemorating) local artists, craftspeople and community groups. The back of the stage is a wall of intricate mosaic made by many hands. There was chicken being cooked for the $100 a plate dinner, and while I was standing around, a little car parked, and out stepped Amy, with two or three friends. We all walked around the little park while one of the Sanctuary’s leaders explained the history of this little patch of green in the city. There is a community garden at the other end of the block, and inside the Sanctuary is a 100-watt FM radio station that broadcasts Democracy Now! along with music and community affairs programming.
After supper Amy spoke to a packed house in the high-ceilinged former church. Soon everyone was listening as if sitting across the kitchen table with Amy, as she reported on the 100-city tour she is completing with her book.”Democracy Now!: Twenty Years Covering the Movements Changing America” by Amy Goodman, David Goodman, and Denis Moynihan. Her speech covered almost the last four decades of peace, justice, civil rights action, from an eye-witness perspective only she can provide. The connections, the people and events, touched my own life at more points than I’d ever realized. Her stories are moving and the raw truth of them is immediate and inspiring. They seem to have a common thread, of ordinary people acting in admirable and selfless ways, without a moment’s hesitation, in the face of systematic oppression, violence and injustice. And it seems that this is how human beings normally act in such circumstances – media depictions to the contrary notwithstanding.
One important message is that the media have almost no connection to direct human experience, and politics is covered in proportion to political ad revenues. Punditry demands no actual knowledge of the facts. This is why, for instance, we rarely hear what Sanders actually says, much less in his own voice. Instead we are treated to speculation about violent “followers”. This major Presidential candidate has been “vanished” from the airwaves. The night the Republicans ended up with a “presumptive nominee”, that individual got coverage of an empty podium at one of his mansions, captioned “to speak soon!” while his rivals’ concession speeches, some Hillary sound bites, and zero mention of Sanders droned on. Sanders was at that time addressing an audience of tens of thousands in Arizona, by far the largest actual news event, and the cameras were pointing at an empty platform.
Amy brought stories of a real and very large movement, the same one we are constantly told ended successfully when Obama was elected, It is the current generation’s Civil Rights movement. Occupy Wall Street is part of that, Black Lives Matter is part of that. The many anti-war demonstrations that go almost totally unreported are part of that. The Sanders campaign is part of that. And the real, and unreported, question today is whether the corporate media will manage to keep enough of us distracted, resigned, apathetic and cynical while the forces of blind capitalism complete the looting, militarization and ultimately the destruction of our only planet.
The corporate media are simply ignoring that ubiquitous and vital public conversation. The stakes seem high. As I listened to Amy speak, it became clear that it’s not about choosing “sides” in some mythical epic struggle between good and evil, war and peace, much less “Republicans” and “Democrats”; it’s about discovering one’s own commitment, and whether it is to mere personal avoidance of pain, or to aliveness and possibility for all people, everywhere. To climbing the mythical Ladder of Success, or being of some actual service in making a workable world while we’re in it together.
Amy Goodman is a walking demand that we struggle with this question, for ourselves. Get with “people like us, and not like us,” she says, and express your own experience honestly, and listen honestly to theirs. Instead of accepting the false dichotomies and slogans and polls, endless polls, that pour out of the media echo chamber, take your part in the conversation that matters.
Peter
COMMENT:
from Dick: Great post from Peter. I most resonate with the last paragraph.
Each time I hear the conversation about who has the power I think back to a thirty years ago talk, about 1987, about “Referent Power” – how much we have, and how ineffectively the left uses it. Referent Power? Here. Scroll down a little ways. Developing positive relationships with someone who sees some things differently is crucial to making positive change. Relationships are not easy. They are crucial.

#1132- Dick Bernard: The Spymasters, and related.

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Last night we watched what I’d consider a must-watch two hour special on CBS’ 48 Hours: “The Spymasters: CIA in the Crosshairs“. If you missed it, I think you can watch it on-line here. Ordinarily these are shown free for a very limited amount of time.
Succinctly, we live in a complicated world. The constant effort, on all sides, is to try to reduce everything to the simplest of terms. If you watch this program reflectively, rather than strictly judgmentally, it will cause you to think.
Towards the end of the program we were reminded that in the 15 years since 9-11-01 there have been 45 deaths due to terrorism in the United States (an average of three per year in our population of over 300,000,000); on the other hand, radical Islamic terrorism and its dangers have spread dramatically. We see this, of course, mostly in TV images of ISIS these days. But even here, there are only a limited number of merchants of terror.
Fear of Terror is exploitable, as we see most everyday in our political conversation. It is used to keep people psychologically on edge, by so doing keeping them more susceptible to manipulation.
Back in the winter of 2016, I set about trying to define a bit how the face of war has changed. It exists in this single page graphic: War Deaths U.S.002.
Here is the same data pictorially (click to enlarge).
Human Cost of War001
We are in a time of change, and in my opinion it is change for the better, though we will never rid the planet of evil. And the nature of news – we see it every single day – is to focus on the tragedies, the evil, the polarization of one person, one group, against another.
But a shift is happening.
By no means is it obvious, but it is happening. People of good will, which is the vast majority of us, simply have to take the bait and be, as Gandhi said so clearly, “the change we wish to see in the world”. But to do this we need to change our own behaviors, so easily leveraged by those who seek to elevate war above peace for their own reasons.
For one instance, yesterdays e-mail brought a rather remarkable commentary from a long-time peace activist in Israel, Uri Avnery. Avnery is a 92-year Israeli Jew with credentials. His comments are, I feel, pretty remarkable. You can read that here.
I thought the e-mail fascinating, and sent it to our near 90-year old friend, who grew up in a largely Catholic town in Nazi Germany and still has many relatives and contacts in her home country.
Her response: “The email on Uri Avery’s Observations gives insights to what is going on in Israel.
I believe it was Bastian, my German relative, who sometime ago remarked about the great number of Jews from Israel that come to Germany, want to live there, and seek German citizenship. Bastian stated also that these new immigrants could not live any longer with what was going on in Israel.
I was doubtful, I thought they may have been drawn by the free education and the lack of inflation that is taking place in Israel.
I went on the internet tonight and checked Jews moving back to Germany and I got quite a choice. To me surprising and interesting.
My niece Manuela … is most outspoken and angry about the fact that Germany is still paying Israel 3 billion a year for the Holocaust. She says, “My generation wasn’t even born when that took place. The young Jews that come here like us, so let it rest. There are enough monuments here — we will never forget.”
Israel should think about what it is doing to the Palestinians. As long as they take the land and freedom from the Palestinians there will never be peace.”

#1122 – Dick Bernard: "Eye in the Sky" – a discussion about Drones

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Thursday night, April 21, three knowledgeable people will discuss policy related to the use of Drones in Warfare. The flier is here, in pdf: Drones001, and below.
(click to enlarge)
Drones003.
Prof. Nelson-Pallmeyer is well known in the local community. Ms Thabet is a Child Protection Officer in Aden, Yemen; and Mr Ahmad is Chief of the Peshawar City Police in Pakistan. Both are participants in the Humphrey/Fulbright program of the Human Rights Center of the University of Minnesota Law School. They bring an extraordinarily important perspective to this conversation.
I have long had an interest in Drones as instruments of war in this new era of technologically driven warfare through terrorism (in which we Americans are at minimum equally complicit with the enemy; in fact, we have been the innovators and facilitators of ever more sophisticated tools of war).
There is room for differences in points of view.
Drones are with us, like them or not, and indeed they have long been with us. I recall the times, now many years ago, watching hobbyists flying radio controlled model airplanes. It was only a matter of time before advanced technology met up with a relatively old innovation. It is not likely this genie will be put back in the bottle. But that’s only my opinion.
Last week, I went to “Eye in the Sky“, the recent feature-length film on the use of drones in the war on terror.
If you haven’t seen it, I’d highly recommend it.
Eye in the Sky powerfully explores the issue of drones through a situation in east Africa involving an innocent young girl selling bread and a terrorist armed and ready to commit mayhem with the girl having no knowledge of the threat just out of her eyesight, and those in England and the U.S. who will supervise the use or non-use of a drone in this case, the ones having to make the life and death decision.
Among the key actors in this movie drama is a miniature drone, the size, shape and appearance of a large insect, remotely controlled, which can fly into spaces unnoticed and film what is going on.
The film goes on for 142 minutes, and unless one is absolutely married to one polar position or the other on drones, this viewer found myself wondering what would I do if faced with a similar situation.
My colleagues in the theater were, like myself, quiet and subdued. This was not a comedy.
I have written several times on the topic of Drones. Rather than give a direct link, for anyone interested, simply write “drones” in the search box of this blog.
What I will say, is that my passionate plea has been that we have to be willing to talk openly and honestly about this technology, and that we need to demand of our policy makers (Congress in particular) to engage in open dialogue and take responsibility for the policy of the United States of America.

#1120 – Dick Bernard: God for President (or, in the alternative….)

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Today is primary election day in Wisconsin. As per custom, I write before the first vote has been officially counted; at about the time the polls open.
Some weeks ago I was on a busy street here in Woodbury, waiting to make a left turn enroute home.
Crossing at the light was a guy carrying a large hand-written cardboard sign reading, as I recall,
“Vote for
God
in the
U.S. Presidential Election“
Interesting thought.
Certainly, the man knew what God’s platform was, otherwise, why would he be holding up his sign? When in doubt, perfection is the gold-standard, which God must certainly represent….
The problem, of course, in this society of individuals, which the U.S. is, there are many differing definitions of God, including positions on the issues of the day. There are numerous “Christian” denominations; and Jews and Moslems recognize presumably the exact same God as well. We are all of the same family of belief. But we fight wars in God’s name.
But mostly God is as we define the deity; God is our own individual construct.
Thus the man and his cardboard sign. (He had no illustration of what he thought God looked like…that, too, would have been interesting.)
I happen to spend a lot of time in my Church, which is recognized by most as a Christian denomination.
To my knowledge, God hasn’t laid out his platform at my Church, though I admit we were out of town on Easter, when the new Archbishop was celebrant/homilist. At any rate, my guess is that the new guy would be the last one to declare himself as God among us. He simply has a bit more public persona than the rest of us in the pews; the new chief spokesperson for the organization which is the Catholic Church in Minnesota.
So it goes as we enter the heavy-duty political season.
My preferred candidate for President is Hillary Clinton, (which draws literal or figurative gasps from Bernie and Donald and Ted (and John and Paul) fans alike). My position really hasn’t changed since I supported her in the 2008 Primary Season.
For the most difficult job in the world, she is by far the most eminently qualified, in my opinion.
Opinions differ. So be it.
Of course, we are all bombarded with claims, charges, counter-claims, and the heavy duty campaign season has not yet even begun.
But for starters I offer two items, one from an e-mail from a friend back in December; another from the Minneapolis Star Tribune in March, both from the respected Politifact.com, a group which tries to keep ahead of the assortment of pitches we political consumers are bombarded with.
I’ll let the illustrations speak for themselves.
(The first ranks the then-candidates in descending order, most False claims first; the second does the same, by True claims first. Note Hillary Clinton in both illustrations.
Certainly, you can say, “yah, but….” But remember we’re not in a carnival, we’re selecting our leaders at all levels for the exceedingly difficult job of finding some persons who must stand in for god, and make some pretty tough decisions.
(click to enlarge the illustrations)

Politifact, in the Dec. 11, 2015 New York Times

Politifact, in the Dec. 11, 2015 New York Times


Politifact March 19, 2016 Minneapolis Star Tribune

Politifact March 19, 2016 Minneapolis Star Tribune


POSTNOTE: There is, of course, a contemporary reality problem in our society, and I think it is far worse in our society than in most societies, including the so-called “developed” world: “Truth” has come to be whatever our “Belief” says it is. “Fact” is less relevant, if relevant at all. This problem cuts across all ideological lines. We choose who or what to believe.
Political strategists know this.
Sooner or later the truth outs, and it seems most always to come down to facts, which people knew at the start, but denied.
Caveat Emptor.
COMMENTS:
from Larry: Well stated observations, Dick. I’m with you re Hillary being the only one with the necessary experience…and all of those “investigations” are garbage..for decades there has been no proof, only smear. The only candidate worth even considering on the Republican side is John Kasich. However, the T party gang and the hard core GOP right claims he’s “too centrist…he gets along with both sides…etc.” That’s more of what we need in a President, of course, and Hillary has what Kasich has but in spades. Some Republicans say they “can’t trust” Hillary. Well, I certainly trust her with her emails far more than Donald Trump with the nuclear codes or Ted Cruz with my Medicare.
from Fred: Enjoyed your post but think you should rely upon comedian/commentator Stephen Colbert’s more accurate veracity scale. For assessing the political speech, he created the “truthiness factor” (essentially if it sounds right to me it’s the truth) a few campaigns ago. On Colbert’s generous scale, I believe both Trump and Cruz would jump several percentage points.
from another Larry: [I] worked in Ohio for three years while Kasich was Governor. In my role as Executive Director of a state teachers union, Ohio Education Association, I even met with him (along with the organization President) for over an hour. He has a knack for sounding reasonable but then acting out in a very, very extreme conservative way. Not as extreme as Cruz but that is NOT a good standard to use to make judgments.
Here is a report that details what Kasich has done as Governor in Ohio. As I am sure you know he is NOT a moderate by any standard EXCEPT when compared to the extremism of Cruz and the ignorance of Trump. Maybe your friends would find the report of interest.
[He] essentially came into office and cut income taxes dramatically and then balanced the state budget by cutting education funding at all levels and cutting aid to other local units of government forcing them to cut services and to raise local taxes. He is not a budget whiz-he is a classic ultra conservative who showers the rich (and corporations) with tax cuts and then sticks it to everybody else.
Hope this is useful.
from Norm: For what it is worth, and in spite of so many folks saying that they “would be okay with Kasich”, I have heard many with the same concerns about him as those expressed by the second Larry.
Just another good example of perception being reality to many folks not unlike those who used to think that old [U.S. Sen.] Dave Durenberger was a good old liberal Republican as compared to Plywood Minnesota Rudy who was seen as so much more conservative.
As I recall, their voting records were darn near identical and both very conservative!
Image marketing and all of that!
Rep. Paulsen is very good at that as well image marketing himself as a savior of Minnesota jobs by hammering away on trying to eliminate the tax on durable medical supplies (DME as they are referred to). Unfortunately, Paulsen has been successful in getting Sen. Klobuchar and Sen. Franken to buy into his silliness about “protecting” Minnesota jobs thereby assuring the DME providers of very large profits…and thereby throwing out some of the funding mechanism for Obamacare.
Again, just good image marketing and all of that!
It has been extremely disappointing to me that Klobuchar and Franken have so readily and so easily bought into Paulsen’s crap regarding the tax on DME’s[?]!
Response from Norm re query about DME: DME stands for durable medical equipment which was taxed under the ACA as one of the sources for funding that law.
It is an area that is generally quite lucrative for its providers and, in my view at least, should be taxed to support the ACA that they will benefit from as well.
My on-going irritation is with folks like Paulsen or Kline is that they are able to successfully grab on to good non-partisan sounding positions of issues that seemingly affect lots of their constituents even when upon closer review, many of those positions are not at all favorable to most of the folks in their districts.
from Gaucho: This fall I am running for another term as Supervisor on the board of [a water] Conservation District. In that role I have spent a little time lobbying at the Capitol and now need to do some at the county level. I believe water will be perhaps one of the largest issues the country will face in the next 50 years. I have enjoyed my first term.
Thoughts on the “God for President” sign from an atheist. I think overall religion in kindly moderation can be a good thing for a country and world. The problem always arises by its evangelist members or other members use its name as a motivation or justification to cause others to suffer.
IMHO I sit back, laugh, and shake my head watching what is occurring in the US society. Actual Christianity is being destroyed from within. Preachers flying around in their own private jets, Christian professing elected officials not wanting to assist the poor, helpless, suffering, sick, hungry and the children. The so called professed “Christian” masses cheering them on. These people are coming from the mega churches, the small congregations that have split off, as well as the established churches.
This segment of the population will send their children on a “feel good” mission as a merit badge of accomplishment. They just don’t get it! They are concerned and frightened of Sharia law yet want to establish its Christian counterpart here in the US. They want to send “boots on the ground” many places yet are not willing to provide for the soldiers when they return.
From an outsider looking at this mess it is both humorous and frightening. The US Christian churches and congregations have always been quite distinct from those of Europe. The Europeans are laughing at the US, the country where about half the population does not believe in evolution!
I wonder if US Christianity is going to be destroyed and really split into two separate belief systems. The fearful, uneducated, noncritical thinkers along with some leaders who will continue to engage the “new Christian” belief system will be one system. The other system will be that of the older more stable churches and congregations who will actually believe in following the beliefs of their believed founder Jesus. Overall, I think US Christianity will lose quite a few of its followers,
This whole situation can be traced back to the loss of the middle and lower middle classes in the US. Between big business has become more and more powerful, unions becoming more and more powerful into the 1960’s winning contracts that on the short term worked but on the long term made manufacturing too costly in the US to compete in the world market,various restrictions being lifted, and trade pacts millions of middle class paying jobs were lost. Unskilled production workers were well established in the middle class. As these jobs vanished, as well as even the modest paying production jobs in other parts of the country there were no jobs to replace them even at a lower rate. The cotton industry completely left the US. A few years ago there was no cotton manufactured here.
Compound that with the mortgage fiasco which broke the spirit of many and further destroyed lives, the masses were ripe for the political clowns of Trump, Cruz, et al. The masses are united by fear. They are following leaders who espouse historical misinformation concerning the Constitution and an unChristianity interpretation of the religion. Some of the masses should know better and do know better but with this underlying fear they are suffering from severe cognitive dissonance.
People including veterans who are dependent on Social Security, Medicare, Food stamps and other government assistance are supporting politicians who are telling people they are going to demolish these same programs.
As a social, political, economic as well as military leader of the world perhaps the US has reached its salient point. The masses also do not know how to handle this situation. Even though survey upon survey have shown that about the only things we lead the world in are military spending and percentage of our citizens incarcerated. With all these fears the masses just can’t handle it all. They are grasping at straws.
It will be interesting to see how this all works out. I won’t be alive long enough to see how the historians, political scientists, and economists will view the current situation. All I can do is vote and hold on for the ride. With the cognitive dissonance of the masses rationale discussion goes nowhere.

#1104 – Dick Bernard: Revisiting "The Bones of Plenty"; and Lois Phillips Hudson's Reflective Testimony to Ourselves and Coming Generations: "Unrestorable Habitat: Microsoft Is My Neighbor Now".

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UPDATE May 1, 2016: The official Lois Phillips Hudson website is here.
UPDATE Feb. 27, 2016: Six pages from North Dakota State University (Fargo) Archives, Feb. 23, 2016. Hudson NDSU Arch001Mrs. Hudson taught at NDSU 1967-69.
*
In 1962, Lois Phillips Hudson published “The Bones of Plenty”.
A New York Times Book Review commentary said this about the book: “It is possible…that literary historians of the future will decide that The Bones of Plenty was the farm novel of the Great Drought of the 1920s and 1930s and the Great Depression. Better than any other novel of the period with which I am familiar, Lois Phillips Hudson’s story presents, with intelligence and rare understanding, the frightful disaster that closed thousands of rural banks and drove farmers off their farms, the hopes and savings of a lifetime in ruins about them.”
While I grew up a North Dakotan, I missed the book at the time of publication.
In early Jan. 1962, freshly graduated from college (Valley City (ND) State Teachers College), I entered the United States Army, spending two years playing war in the rattle-snake infested foothills of the Rocky Mountains at Ft. Carson, Colorado and other places, like Hanford Firing Range, Washington.
After the Army, life interfered with things like recreational reading; I don’t recall ever hearing about “The Bones of Plenty”.
In fact, it wasn’t until my friend, Nancy Erickson, told me about the The Bones of Plenty a few years ago, that I took the time to read it, and it spoke to me, very personally. It was my people she was talking about: rural North Dakotans who had lived through and survived the awful years of the 1930s, “The Great Depression”.
The “Bones of Plenty” is set in rural Stutsman County North Dakota in 1934, set primarily in Jamestown and rural Cleveland ND (photos which follow are of Cleveland ND* taken January 27, 2016).
(click to enlarge)

Jan. 27, 2016, Cleveland ND, west side of the main street.

Jan. 27, 2016, Cleveland ND, west side of the main street.


At the time I was introduced to “The Bones of Plenty” by Nancy, I was spending more and more time with my Uncle Vincent and Aunt Edithe in LaMoure, a town little more than an hours drive from Cleveland.
When I’d ask Vincent, a lifelong rural Berlin ND farmer, about the Depression, he would always reply that 1934, the year he was nine, was the worst. (He was 2 1/2 years older than Lois Phillips, then living on the rural Cleveland ND tenant farm, not far away).
I can attest, having shouldered the task of closing down the 110 year old farm, that the family never recovered from the trauma of the 30s.
And they weren’t unusual: being trapped in years of uncertainty has its impact. “The folks”, their siblings and many others lived in the shadow of the 30s their whole lives. “The Bones of Plenty” put “meat” on those bones for me. It helped me understand why they lived as carefully as they did.
Jan. 27, 2016. Likely the Town Hall, probable scene of meetings in The Bones of Plenty.

Jan. 27, 2016. Likely the Town Hall, probable scene of meetings in The Bones of Plenty.


Jan. 27, 2016. Most likely the Bank in Cleveland which failed in the 1930s.

Jan. 27, 2016. Most likely the Bank in Cleveland which failed in the 1930s.


*
Fast forward.
January 6, 2016, one of those occasional unusual e-mails came to my e-screen.
A person named Cynthia Anthony introduced herself: “I’m seeking permission to post links to your posts, numbers 490**, 499**, and 565**, which reference Lois Phillips Hudson. I am the director of the Lois Phillips Hudson Project, and run a website dedicated to preserving her legacy – you can view [the site] here.”
As we began our chat, I found that Cynthia lives in western New York state, I am in Minnesota (but North Dakotan to the core). She had come to be custodian of Ms Hudson’s boxes of archival material after Ms Hudson’s death in 2010, in part, I gathered, because of her involvement in something called the Rural Lit Rally. She said the boxes had yielded little about Lois’ 8 years in ND, nor about her parents and their kin. She knew a lot about most of the rest of Lois’ life, beginning about 1937, mostly in Washington State, most around Redmond.
Redmond, among other things, is the headquarters of Microsoft.
I agreed to help Cynthia sort out the North Dakota connection of Ms Phillips Hudson (and invite the reader of this blog to do the same. Here is the portal for submitting comments, etc., to her.)
Included in the many boxes was a manuscript of a nearly completed book, Unrestorable Habitat: Microsoft Is My Neighbor Now (click on the title for ordering information). Ms Hudson had apparently been working on the book from about 2000 till near her death; roughly the decade of her 70s.
On careful review, a decision was finally made to publish the 390 page book as it had been left by Ms Hudson, including occasional typos and notations about incomplete verification of sources.
*
I have read Unrestorable Habitat, and I recommend it without any qualification whatsoever. It is powerful, and it is uncomfortable.
In many ways “Unrestorable Habitat…” is autobiographical and about the world of Lois Phillips Hudson, from youth forward. It weaves personal recollections and direct observations of contemporary life, as seen by a young girl, then by a woman who ultimately retired as a college professor in 1992, about the desperately poor rural North Dakota of the 1930s, and country village, thence city of Redmond, Washington, from the 1930s to the end of her life.
The book offers the reader a great deal of food for thought about our present technological age.
No reader who cares about the future of our planet will be comfortable reading Ms Hudsons observations. We are all complicit in the deteriorating state of our planet. Start with myself, writing this post on a computer in a comfortable room, soon to be transmitted to who-knows-where by internet….
As I read Unrestorable Habitat, I have to ask myself, how do I fit into this narrative of squandering our future for the comfort of today? What can I, as an individual, do to make the future hospitable or at least survivable for the generations which follow, as well as for other living species?
The problem to solve is not someone elses: it is mine, and all of ours.
This book would be a great one for book clubs. I recommend it highly.
* – In 1920, the first census of Cleveland showed a population of 341; in 1930, 273; 1940, 246; 1950, 181…the current population is estimated as 82.
** – The references to The Bones of Plenty in previous blogs are found in #490; 499 and #565
Jan. 27, 2016. The two story public school in Cleveland, now closed, and apparent storage yard for heavy equipment. Ms Phillips Hudson went to her first school years here, and her mother graduated from this high school.

Jan. 27, 2016. The two story public school in Cleveland, now closed, and apparent storage yard for heavy equipment. Ms Phillips Hudson went to her first school years here, and her mother graduated from this high school.


COMMENTS
from Jermitt: Thanks for sharing information on Lois Phillips Hudson book “The Bones of Plenty”. There are two books about the dust storms of the Great Plains and depression of the late twenties and early 1930 that I really like. They are The Worst Hard Time, by Timothy Egan, The Great Plains by Ian Frazier and Pioneer Woman of the West, by Susan Armitage and Elizabeth Jameson. I just finished my book “Memories of a Grateful Past” Stories of Family and Friends from the Heart 1830-1985. The book has 470 pages of stories about family, friends, and my work as a teacher and eighteen years of working with the Wisconsin Education Association (1968-1985). The book also includes family stories from South Dakota during the depression and drought. It has gotten wonderful reviews, so I’m pretty excited about it. The books will be printed and sent to me by April 1.
from Curtis: As a history guy is it just on ND? Just finished Eva’s Story by Eva Schloss. Story of a survivor of the death camps of WWII. After the war her mother married Otto Frank. Tough read about what humans did to other humans.
Response to Curtis: Bones of Plenty is 100% about Stutsman County ND, basically rural Cleveland and Jamestown in 1934. Unrestorable Habitat is mostly about Redmond (suburban Seattle) in the 2000s, but includes lots of autobiographical flashbacks to Hudson’s growing up on the ND farm.
from Lynn: Thanks Dick, This reminds me that when I worked for the North Dakota Farmers Union we were privileged to have Lois speak to a youth group, I think in 1968. Very memorable experience!
from JoAnn: Thanks for all your interesting discussions. I can remember receiving a copy of “Bones of Plenty”, I believe from my mother. My brother and I enjoyed the incongruity of the lovely title. I totally enjoyed the book. I was not old enough to participate in the actual worst periods of those times, but i certainly lived through the after effects of those years. My grand father lost his bank in Wheatland in spite of my mother donating her $5000 inheritance from an uncle in the vain attempt at saving the bank. (Quite a chunk in those days.) I can remember many conversations (this would have to be early 40s as I was born in late 39) in which my father would end with the phrase, “Well, we can always move to the Ozarks.” I guess that was his escape plan if we couldn’t stick. My husband and I have recently moved and while unloading and sorting and selecting books to keep, I actually handled BONES OF PLENTY today. I acquired along the way somewhere, a book entitled, REAPERS OF THE DUST, a prairie chronicle also by Hudson. More recently I found THE WORST HARD TIME by Timothy Egan, which, as my brother would say,”Another miserable book”. This I took to mean another book about a miserable time. Egan’s book is not about our local area but covers the horror of the dust that covered the earth of the high plains during those “dirty thirties.” The descriptions were unbelievable. Perhaps you’ve read this book already. Anyway, thanks for directing my thoughts back to those memories. You do great work with your blog. Cheers!
from Emily: Great article! Thank you for sharing! I hope you are well.
from Debbie: Thanks for this info, Dick. I love reading books about Dakota. I do believe I read Bone of Plenty way back when. Will look for the other.
from Christina: I googled for some information on those two books. I think they both might be very interesting especially “Unrestorable Habitat.” I like John Grisham’s books. I am now reading Gray Mountain. I know it’s fiction but based on true situations. This one is about the coal companies strip mining the mountains, miners with black lung diseases,the water being polluted from the coal slush & waste being dumped into the valleys etc. The coal companies have the lawyers pretty well sewed up . I am thankful how Gov. Link got that reclamation project passed. Many object to the EPA but thankfully some one is watching out for our environment. Thanks for the book recommendations.
from Kathleen: Thanks very much. Our library system has it. I look forward to reading it when I return from CA.

#1061 – Dick Bernard: September 11

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NOTE: I’ve added a postnote to this post.

Nuclear weapons, from display at Hiroshima Nagasaki Exhibit at Landmark Center, St. Paul Aug 23, 2015

Nuclear weapons, from display at Hiroshima Nagasaki Exhibit at Landmark Center, St. Paul Aug 23, 2015


Seventy years ago today, September 11, 1945, my mother’s brother – my Uncle and Navy Lieutenant George Busch – was on board the Destroyer, the USS Woodworth, which had anchored the day before in Tokyo Bay. (WWII was over, the surrender signed nearby on September 2, 1945.)
I know this from the ship daily log books which I had requested back in the 1990s. Uncle George was on the Woodworth, from January, 1943, through the end of the war, till docking in Portland Oregon October 20, 1945, thence reentering into American civilian peace-time society.
Presumably on September 11, 1945, those on the Woodworth had an opportunity to take a look at what was left of Tokyo.
from Bombers over Japan WWII, Time-Life Books 1982, page 198

from Bombers over Japan WWII, Time-Life Books 1982, page 198


Perhaps some of them – perhaps my Uncle George? – did as my Dad’s cousin and best man, Marvin, an Army veteran, who was field promoted to Colonel by the end of the war, and was for a short time head of a Prefecture on Japan. He told me once that his first act on reaching Japanese soil was to “piss on it”. So it is with showing dominance over enemies after conquest, and disrespecting the vanquished, even though his Prefecture was far from the seat of things militarily – it was just a rural area in northern Japan.
The war in the Pacific had been a vicious one for all, and in addition, Marvin’s cousin, my Dad’s brother Frank, had gone down with the Arizona at Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
Marvin and Frank, circa 1935, probably Oakwood ND

Marvin and Frank, circa 1935, probably Oakwood ND


There have been lots of September 11ths before and since 1945.
September 11, 2015, in addition to the obligatory nod to THE 9-11, will probably feature, on TV tonight, the endless commercials attacking one of our MN Congressmen who apparently is not condemning the Nuclear Agreement with Iran and is viewed as politically vulnerable. One ad ends with a horrific fireball, a “mushroom cloud”, as if it is some unique invention to be pioneered by the Iranians if we don’t see to it that they’re kept under our heel. Such propaganda is expensive and persuasive. We have become slaves to sophisticated media messages which are difficult to escape.
But there are alternative realities as well. Tomorrow somewhere in the Twin Cities a large number of new citizens will proudly take the oath, and graduate to full citizenship in the United States. It is doubtless a ritual shared in all countries, all that differs is the precise way it is done.
And these new citizens will be proud of their new citizenship, as they’re proud of their own homeland, and are likely more aware than the vast majority of us about what it means to be an “American”. They’ve had to study our system, and they are knowledgeable. Sorry, more of us aren’t as aware….
We all will do as we will do today, and tomorrow and next week and on and on and on.
Three simple suggestions:
1. To become acquainted with the organization Green Card Voices, which is doing very significant work to bring to life those who have spent years as Green Card holders in the U.S. enroute to citizenship.
2. If you’re in the Twin Cities, take time to go to the Landmark Center in St. Paul, and see the exhibit provided by the City of Nagasaki about the bomb and its affect August 9, 1945. It is a relatively small exhibit, but if you pay attention to it, you’ll easily be there more than an hour. It’s on till November 28. The schedule is here:
(click to enlarge)
Hiroshima Nagasaki001
3. To pick up and reread, or read for the first time, George Orwell’s “1984”, published in 1949, which I probably didn’t see till college days. It is rather disquieting to translate his novel to present day American terms: actors like “telescreen”, “Proles”, and all of that. (I looked up September 11, 1984, and there really wasn’t all that much happening that particular day. But Orwell was in many ways a visionary, and most of us are todays Proles, who allow life happen to us without much regard to the consequences.)
Each one of us has a certain command of our own “ship”, and we can impact positively or negatively on how it sails, and how it impacts ourselves, and others.
Have a great day.
Same source as above, Aug. 23, 2015

Same source as above, Aug. 23, 2015


POSTNOTE: After publishing the above I watched the 9-11-2015 evening news which, as expected, emphasized again, on this 14th anniversary of 9-11, the continuing national mourning of what seems to be our now perpetual “Pearl Harbor”.
No “mushroom cloud” ads appeared, as erroneously predicted by myself, perhaps because a concerted effort to stop the deal failed in the U.S. Congress on Sep. 11 – a date probably specifically strategically selected for the vote.
No doubt, we experienced a tragedy 9-11-01, but the biggest tragedy of all is our continual obsession of the need to be in control; and the seeming narrative that the only way to prevent war is to be stronger and more threatening than the other party in preparing for the next war…more or less the narrative of George Orwell’s 1984. We seem to need to have an enemy to validate our existence. We are made to live in constant fear of some other.
9-11-01 took the lives of 3 Minnesotans, it was reported tonight. In the 2000 census there were 4.9 million Minnesotans. (There were 281 million Americans in 2000.) After 9-11 has come continuous war, Iraq, Afghanistan, ISIS/Syria, with all the attendant loss of life and disruption of normal lives, including the present day refugee crisis. ISIS/ISIL is a direct outgrowth of our actions in Iraq, including regime change.
We don’t seem to learn, we need to change the conversation, beginning within ourselves.
I wonder if we have the capacity to do this….

#1053 – Dick Bernard: Aunt Edithe's Recipes

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The harvest season has had a strong beginning out in North Dakota, and will continue on into the fall. Depending on the crop, now is a time of vibrant yellows (wheat and similar grains), or rich greens (corn, soybeans, et al). (Indications are that this will be a pretty good crop year – though such is never certain for farmers until the crops are actually in…and then comes bad or good news about prices, etc….)
As for me, I continue the never-ending discovery process of going through the history left behind at the ND farm when Uncle Vince died on February 2 (his sister, Edithe, who was a lifelong resident of the same farm, died a year earlier).
Once in awhile there are remarkable discoveries, among which was this photo from harvest time 1907, which I didn’t know existed.
(click to enlarge all photos)

Ferd and Rosa Busch farm (upper left) in summer 1907, viewed from the north. From left, Wilhelm Busch; his sons Ferdinand and Frank. At the time, Ferdinand was 26 years of age.

Ferd and Rosa Busch farm (upper left) in summer 1907, viewed from the north. From left, Wilhelm Busch; his sons Ferdinand and Frank. At the time, Ferdinand was 26 years of age.


You can see the 1907 harvest proceeding. The shocks of grains dominate, and to the left in the background are a couple of horse drawn wagons to move those shocks to some kind of early threshing machine, not visible in the picture*.
But this is not about those men pictured out in the field. It is about the lady in the house, Rosa, and later her daughter Edithe, and other daughters, and other women, who had the immense task of feeding the workers in the fields, milking the cows, collecting eggs, and on and on and on. The phrase, “a woman’s work is never done” could have originated in these farmyards. As could the phrase, “hungry as a horse” have originated out in those fields.
Last week I was going through yet another stack of old papers, deciding which needed to be kept, and which could be thrown. In the box of the day was a bag full of Aunt Edithe’s old recipes which we’d rescued from the long vacant farm house last summer. As with the other stuff, I went through the recipe cards, one by one, and at the end, took a picture of part of the collection (below).
Some of Edithe's recipes, August, 2015

Some of Edithe’s recipes, August, 2015


My particular specialty has always been eating the results of the recipe cards, but these cards held a fascination of their own. Just looking through these old cards, which women, primarily, have exchanged forever, brought forth memories. Someone saying, “that was delicious. Can I have the recipe?” Someone else flattered and happy to oblige.
Perhaps the best tribute to Edithe came to me from cousin Glenn Busch of Freeport IL on Dec. 24, 2014: “Sandy and I will always remember the wonderful meal [Edithe] prepared for us and our family when we visited ]the] farm back in the early 1980’s. She went far beyond anything we expected. After about 30 years , I still remember that it was some of the best beef roast I’ve ever had. The hospitality that she and Vince showed us was really outstanding….”
Among the recipes were the staples: for pickles of all sorts, doughnuts, assorted desserts, etc. Lefse made a couple of appearances in the German household recipe box. Anyone who has a single recipe card likely knows the variety found in the stack. Among them were some that I found fascinating, which are included below with little comment – none is needed.
They were all reminders to me that in this world where men still, by and large, are “on the marquee” as the important people, it is the women who bear the children and a great deal of the burden of making any family or community work. Ferd was part of a team with Rosa; brother and sister, Vince and Edithe, were a team, too.
So those recipe cards of Edithe’s which we found above the stove in the farm house are far more than simply patterns for delicious foods; rather of a necessary partnership.
A simple “thank you” is not enough, but a little thanks is much better than none at all.
Thanks for the memories.
Aunt Edith August 4, 1989, in the old farm house. She died February 12, 2014.

Aunt Edith August 4, 1989, in the old farm house. She died February 12, 2014.


Here are a smattering of the recipes….
Uncertain what "Victory", but an educated guess would be the ending of WWII.

Uncertain what “Victory”, but an educated guess would be the ending of WWII.


Recipe for Snowshoe Rabbits which were, perhaps back in the 1940s, very common in the ND country.

Recipe for Snowshoe Rabbits which were, perhaps back in the 1940s, very common in the ND country.


One of two or three recipes for homemade soap, a common product for rural folks in the early days.

One of two or three recipes for homemade soap, a common product for rural folks in the early days.


An apparent political statement recipe likely found in a farm magazine dating from the fall of 1974.

An apparent political statement recipe likely found in a farm magazine dating from the fall of 1974.


Apparently a tasty recipe for Ginger Snaps.

Apparently a tasty recipe for Ginger Snaps.


And, finally, a recipe for Lady Bird Johnson White House Pecan Pie, dating from March 2, 1964: Recipe #6006 (The date was found on the reverse side of the clipping, and the reason why the cooks face doesn’t appear is that another article on the reverse had also been clipped!)
Bon Appetit!!!
A gathering of women, labelled Berlin (ND) picnic September 7, 1952. Grandma Busch is at left behind the youngster in front row; Aun Edithe is in the back row, at right.

A gathering of women, labelled Berlin (ND) picnic September 7, 1952. Grandma Busch is at left behind the youngster in front row; Aun Edithe is in the back row, at right.


* – larger scale agriculture involving harvesting of small grains (wheat, oats, flax, etc.) required some kinds of mechanized farm implement to do the job. Such increasingly sophisticated equipment led to the rapid growth of such companies as J. I. Case, John Deere, McCormick-Deering and many others. From cultivating to harvest, it was very hard, dusty, sweaty, often dangerous work, very labor intensive.
This time of year, today, is when the threshing festivals crop up, to demonstrate in a very small way how it was.
The Busch farm in its early years was two quarter sections, 320 acres. In North Dakota, this would be a very small farm today; in 1907 it would have been about average for the typical farm of the day.

#1028 – Dick Bernard: A special experience: Ken Burns and Don Shelby

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POSTNOTE May 30 10:42 am.: Just now I am listening to Jay Ungar’s Ashokan Farewell, made famous in Ken Burns Civil War. Give it a listen.
I was working on a project at home, yesterday, when an e-mail came in from our friend Catherine. I saw it at 12:30. “I have two tickets to see Ken Burns at 4 today at the History Center. Would you and Cathy like them?”
This was a no-brainer, albeit with almost no notice. Cathy was out of town; and I’d heard part of the freeway was closed for maintenance, and when I finally got the printed ticket via e-mail it was 3 p.m. and the program started at 4.
I arrived at the Minnesota History Center in plenty of time for the program. Unfortunately I forgot my camera. By 4, the auditorium was packed. I was lucky and got a seat in the third row.
Then commenced a riveting 1 1/2 hour conversation between film-maker Ken Burns and former well known Twin Cities TV Anchor and reporter Don Shelby. The conversation would make for a fascinating TV program on its own…I hope it was filmed for just that purpose.
The program was hosted by TPT, Twin Cities Channel Two and the Minnesota History Center.
The program began with an eight or so minute video recapping Ken Burns 40 years in the business of film documentaries, all for public broadcasting. I tried to write the titles down. My list is 23 productions though I likely missed some (you can find the list here). I’m a fan of Burns, but I can’t say I’ve seen all of the programs. My list includes the Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, The War, Dust Bowl, Prohibition and the Roosevelts – those are the ones I remember for sure.
I pieced together Burns biography from his own comments. He was born about 1953; when he was two his mother, Lyla, fell ill with cancer and died with the disease 50 years ago, in 1965. He was 12 when she died.
He had ancestors who were American slaveholders, and another who was a Tory in the American Revolution.
He went to tiny Hampshire college in MA beginning 1971 – apparently beginning just a year or so after the college was founded, and followed his muse of film and history with the outstanding results we’ve seen for many years. He lives in New Hampshire, and has many projects in the works.
He has informed opinions about America and Americans, flowing from many years of reconstructing our history, largely from the perspective of ordinary people living at the time. In America, race is “the burning heart of the story”, he said. It is a disabling part of our national DNA; to move on takes a great deal of acknowledgment and effort.
While Burns suggests we Americans are addicted to money, guns and certainty, he thought there was still hope. “Bill O’Reilly [Fox News] and Rachel Maddow [MSNBC] genuinely love Abraham Lincoln”. There are things we can and must find common ground on to survive.
He sees Americans as restless and hard-working, demanding individual and collective freedom.
He apparently has some disagreements with my favorite quote: Santayana’s “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” “Cuckoo”, he suggested. I’ll give the quote another think, from his point of view. Maybe we’ll reach some agreement, maybe not. That’s the purpose of conversation.
He knows Americans well, a Studs Terkel (“Working”) knowledge of how we are rooted, our strengths, our very deep weaknesses. Our “exceptionalism” has dimmed as we have collectively “gone to sleep”, I heard him say. What the founders words in the Constitution about the “pursuit of happiness” basically meant, he felt, was their belief in the value of lifelong learning.
He gave considerable time and emphasis to his work on the “Central Park Five”, the five black youth who were tried, convicted and sentenced to long terms for a 1969 rape they never committed. (It was a program I haven’t seen.) The rush to judgement was shameful. Even after being exonerated, he would hear people assert “they must have done something”, a refusal to acknowledge a hideous mistake. As previously mentioned, “race is the burning heart of the story”, and we will always have lots of work to do.
(My favorite “visual”, as presented orally by Ken, was this: his little daughter was terrified of the family vacuum cleaner. When it was on she ran and hid. No amount of reassurance would change her mind.
One day, for some reason known only to her, the vacuum cleaner was turned on, and his daughter went to the door of the room in which was running, and after a moment of hesitation ran in and sat on the vacuum cleaner.
She had decided to deal with her own fear in her own way.
In their house, use of the phrase “sitting on the vacuum cleaner” has a particularly powerful meaning; we need to confront our fears….)
I’ve been slow about renewing my TPT membership.
The check will be in the mail tomorrow.
Thanks, Catherine.
POSTNOTE: Jim Pagliarini, President of TPT, began the program by asking us how many of us remembered when television meant three commercial channels and a public station. It seems like 100 years ago, but many of us do remember. Then, he said, came the era of a dozen cable channels, to today’s hundreds of options, and a rapidly changing future….
Survival for entities like Public Television means adapting to changing circumstances, staying ahead of the curve, finding different ways of delivering a media product. We’re long past four channels on the TV, but even the TV is becoming passe.
But like the media itself, we need to relearn how to communicate with others.
My opinion: our very survival as a country and a planet is at stake. Individualism is a curse we cannot afford. We are a part of, not apart from, a much greater whole.
This mornings paper addressed this very issue in the business section. You can read it here.

#1026 – Dick Bernard: The Minnesota Orchestra goes to Cuba, and some related observations from the early 1960s

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UPDATE May 14, 2015: from the Minnesota Orchestra on landing in Cuba.
Save Our Symphony has an excellent ongoing compilation of news from/about the Orchestra in Cuba.
Monday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune had as its lead story the Minnesota Orchestra’s pending visit to Cuba.
Wherever you are, you can listen to the live performances in Cuba this Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm on Minnesota Public Radio 99.5 FM or on-line.

Henri Verbrugghen, conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra at the time of their last visits to Cuba in 1929 and 1930. From a Symphony Ball poster ca late 1980s, courtesy of Alan Stone.

Henri Verbrugghen, conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra at the time of their last visits to Cuba in 1929 and 1930. From a Symphony Ball poster ca late 1980s, courtesy of Alan Stone.


We’re regulars at the Orchestra and I’ve posted frequently on Orchestra topics, particularly during the long and very painful lockout 2012-14. The Orchestra is amazing; and the mutual intention to recover from the disastrous lockout seems amazing, for both sides.
But today seems a good time for some brief comments about another relationship, Cuba-U.S., as remembered by one who’s never been there.
As a geography major in college, I certainly knew the essentials of Cuba. The first evidence that Cuba reached out into North Dakota comes from a release which was in the July 5, 1961 Viking News (click to enlarge):
Viking News, Valley City ND State Teachers College, July 5, 1961 page one
I am quite certain I went to this performance, since such events were few and far between in the town and on campus. One quickly notices that the “Afro-Cuban Review” apparently is missing the Cuban element. This is likely due to the fact that on January 1, 1959, the Cuban system of government changed, and for 56 years, now, the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba has been, officially, non-existent (with a lot of “winks and nods”, especially by business interests: where people exist, there also is a market….)
Back to early 1960s: a year or so later, out of college and in the Army, I witnessed the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, as an Army infantryman, mobilized for possible action. We were a long ways from Cuba, but nonetheless in the bullseye of the Russian missiles, and it was a scary time.
In October, 1962, we soldiers watched President Kennedy address the nation on a tiny television screen in our barracks near Colorado Springs.
Very soon, life went on. American and Russian leaders saw the implications of escalation; there was no war. But Castro’s Communist Cuba became and remained a ripe political opportunity in the U.S.; one might say, a North Korea near our shores. Fear is a useful emotion to manipulate and use….
Of course, if you happen to be the resident of the weaker enemy state, as Cubans are, you are unlikely to attempt to overthrow your government; while the stronger enemy, the U.S., in effect punishes you for the supposed sins of the leader, Castro.
Some years ago, likely at my Uncle’s farm in North Dakota, I came across a well-used college text: History of Latin America from the Beginning to the Present by Hubert Herring. This “Second Edition Revised”, 1963, includes a 21-page chapter on Cuba which drew my interest, particularly the Cuban history from 1895-1963. In this chapter on Cuba, Theodore Roosevelt was not even mentioned; nor was the then-more recent nuclear brinksmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis era.
At the end of the chapter, the author states: “Reflecting on the sorry state of Cuba in 1960, the onlooker could say that two things are reasonably clear: Cuba was indeed overdue for a revolution, and revolutions are never mild and gentlemanly.” (p. 422)*
Thankfully, the walls constructed so well over 50 years ago between Cuba and the United States are now, finally, breaking down.
I will listen with great interest to the Minnesota Orchestra in Cuba this weekend.
A previous post with reports by two visitors to more recent Cuba can be read here.
* POSTNOTE: Here’s the entire Cuba chapter, made easy by pdf, hopefully so ancient and unavailable as to not get me in trouble with the author or publisher from over 50 years ago: Cuba to 1963001