Technology – Page 3 – Thoughts Towards a Better World

#1022 – Kathleen Valdez: A Surprise Find from a DNA Analysis.

May 3, 2015/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, History, Immigration, Technology /by dickbernard

PRE-NOTE FROM DICK: For some time I’ve been thinking of having an ancestry DNA analysis done.
A short while ago, the inclination racheted up quite a bit with this e-mail from an out-of-the-blue e-mail from Kathy (Corey) Valdez, an Oregonian whose Mom Ellie Lemire Corey was (she thought) from primarily French-Canadian roots from Quebec to Minnesota to North Dakota.
Here’s Kathy’s e-mail, with followup comment, all from Kathy, passed along with her permission:
March 24, 2015: “In going through mom’s letters, I felt I needed to tell you about the DNA discovery I’ve made and how it’s all come about through the Spirit. You know, the Spanish have a word that is much richer in meaning for our word- coincidence. The word is diosidencia – google it!
In my DNA (autosomal – half from mom and half from dad), I found among the English, Irish and Western European that I was 19% Iberian Peninsula. I first thought, “I don’t have Spanish blood- I’m all French on Mom’s side with some Native American mixed in.”
About 3 weeks ago, I came across a French-Canadian Project for Aunism…Spanish Jews who fled to France as a result of being targeted in the Spanish Inquisition. Yep, that be me! [NOTE from editor: here is a general link to the topic.]
I cross-referenced the 50 or so names of those on the list of Sephardic Jews who fled to France and then 400 years later to settle New France and I found 18 surnames on my Lemire/Parent family tree!
My great uncle Arthur Parent (Mom’s uncle on her mom’s side) passed on to his descendants that they had Jewish blood in their ancestry but I dismissed it because the ‘reporter’ (uncle’s daughter) was way off on some of her other information. She also liked to sensationalize information.
Well, my DNA test showed she was right!”
I asked Kathy for more info, and got her permission to pass on her information:
March 27, 2015: “I first had my test done through Family Tree dna because they test Y and Mitochondria chromosomes as well as the more general testing for autosomal. You are able to find your closest matches in the database and contact these matches, hoping they have some sort of family tree to see where you connect.
Ancestrydna did my second test and it’s more ‘user friendly’ to the public and only tests autosomal. Autosomal is the test for ‘ancestral place’. It goes back 4-5 gen. and matches you with other people who have been tested so you can contact each other.
So both test autosomal and give matches for you to contact but only Family Tree dna finds your Y dna (males) back to the beginning of humankind. Both men and women have the mitro. (X) and everyone has autosomal (half from your mom and half from you father).
Autosomal: It’s a toss up as to which genes you inherit (crap shoot:) Your sibs inherit different combos unless you’re identical twins. I just attended a LDS Conference in Forest Grove last Sat. and a woman from Ancestry was keynote – excellent! She said that AncestryDNA altho has only been around 3 yrs. is growing faster than Family Tree and for all intent and purposes the autosomal is the only test you need….unless you want to find your deep, deep roots!
Ancestry DNA usually has specials from time to time – I think before Mother’s/Father’s Day..$79
The Ancestry.com woman said you’d have to test no less than 5 sibs to get a clear picture of your parent’s dna. Except for Tim, my sibs are reluctant so I guess I need to pay for their tests 🙂 If both parents are alive, that’s all you need to test (not yourself as it’s all there 🙂 Test your oldest relatives.
If you’re a member of Ancestry (AARP membership- I just joined last month because of this) has 10% off membership so I pay $209 annually now as opposed to $299 when you subscribe annually)….on Ancestry they have tutorials about dna that they archive. If you want, I can notify you when specials are happening:)”
COMMENTS:
from Jeanne: There will be a DNA round table at Minneapolis Central Library: Genealogy Research: DNA Testing Discussion Minneapolis Central Library • N-402 • Share Tuesday, June 9, 7–8 p.m.
from Christine: These Jews were called the Maroons in Spain and in France later. This is a well known migration of population in Europe. They have become Catholic and gradually lost their Jewish practice.
This search of your DNA and origins is very enriching.
from Marshall: It is funny you mention DNA. We have been curious for a while on our own DNA, and Carole and Karen (twins) sent in swabs for “zygosity” testing, meaning the absence or presence of twinship. To my surprise, they are certified identical. Their DNA markers were expressed as numeric, and some were 7 or 8 digits long. Being identical twins, their markers were identical with no deviations. Case closed.
My own DNA testing was through Ancestry.com. Here are my results (for me only).
Great Britain 54%
Iberian Peninsula 18%
Europe West 15%
Ireland 5%
Europe East 3%
Scandinavia 2%
Italy/Greece 2%
Finland/Northwest Russia 1%
From what I know about my family, I expected a higher percent for Europe West (the French influence). The Iberian Peninsula includes western France, the Basque area, Portugal, and Spain.

#1012 – Dick Bernard: Wikipedia

April 6, 2015/2 Comments/in Community, Media, Technology /by dickbernard

Last nights 60 Minutes had a fascinating profile of Wikipedia, the ever-more respected (ever-less maligned) people’s encyclopedia.
You may be able to watch the segment here, though it seems like CBS has constructed hoops now, which one now needs to jump through to watch their programs on-line…. At any rate, it is worth the hoop jumping to watch this segment. Right or wrong, once you’ve made 60 Minutes, you’ve made the big time!
Wikipedia has always been free, and apparently intends to remain that way. Hoorah! But it does ask for contributions, and when it does, toss a few bucks in the kettle. It’s a service that deserves to continue to thrive. (Here’s wikipedia’s wiki entry about itself. I notice it doesn’t even mention the 60 Minutes appearance last night.)
Just out of curiosity, I put the word “Wikipedia” in my e-mail archive search file. It told me it came up with 670 matches, the earliest one from February 9, 2005. (There may have been others, but back in the old days, permanent records tended to die prematurely, from things like viruses.)
For this blogsite of mine, which originated in March, 2009, 159 matches come up. So I lean on Wikipedia a lot, and it has been and remains a valuable resource.
Here’s the first use of Wikipedia in my e-mail, 10 years ago, Feb 5, 2005 (ancient history!): P&J Feb 9, 2005001. Note the yellow hi-lite. Back then Wikipedia was just becoming recognized as a force to be reckoned with, but there was considerable game-playing with the citizen edit feature, thus I urged caution. Danny Schechter, media person and media watchdog, who’s referenced there, recently died. You’ll note his wikipedia entry is updated. We met him and saw the film referenced in the post. A very interesting and enlightening evening.
I am more and more confident in what wikipedia has to say on most anything. Having over 100,000 editors on staff worldwide is very, very helpful. “BS detectors” are built in to get rid of obvious public relations moves for or against someone or something. Vigilance is still prudent, and I really try to be careful to send along credible information, from any source. This is never easy, in this headline, soundbite driven society.
Back in those earlier days I found myself referring back to my 1977 Encyclopedia Britannica to at least attempt to verify information pre-dating 1977. This was before the advent of word search, and while the Britannica still occupies space on my bookshelf, it hasn’t been referred to in quite some time.
And as Wikipedia found Gary Wills said, in the 60 Minutes segment last night, Wikipedia is as accurate, if not more so, than any other traditional encyclopedic source.
We citizens are absolutely barraged by information (which is often mis-information, or hopelessly biased and one sided information) so that it is very difficult to be even somewhat informed.
At least, Wikipedia gives us a running start on some semblance of the truth…if we take time to use it.

#971 – Dick Bernard: Experiencing History. Cuba, Iran, North Korea and other places.

December 18, 2014/0 Comments/in International Relations, Politics, Technology, War /by dickbernard

We are, I think, in a very significant time in international history. And it is a good time, but very scary for those who need enemies to be scared of, and dangerous because of a desire to maintain the historical status quo of enemies and war as a solution..
It is a good time to look at the pre-history (that which occurred before the recent history that we are directed towards.) There is a tendency to ignore bad decisions long before that lead to the present. For instance, WWI, the war to end all wars, had a lot to do with creating WWII….
President Obama continues to make very good calls on very complex international situations. Without doubt, he’ll be vilified for all of them, because he’s plowing new ground. As I said in the previous paragraph, it is a good time, for each of us, to start brushing up on history, the history we won’t easily find or hear about, since some things are considered by official dispensers of information to be best left unsaid….

Some snippets, from a bystander (I could easily make this post much, much longer):
1. Added Dec. 19, from reader John Noltner: “I thought I’d share a little of the Cuban beauty I found when I was there a couple years back.” You can view his montage here. John’s work, A Peace of My Mind, can be found here.
CUBA. I was in college when Fidel Castro took over Cuba (1959), and when President Eisenhower made Cuba an enemy state (1960).
Last night I looked at the college newspaper I edited then, and found the article on the front page about the “Afro-Cuban Review” which came to the college in summer 1961. I reread the article, and found the performers were from “Haiti, Jamaica and Trinidad” – apparently no Cubans….
Back in those days, of course, having black people in our town was very unusual, a novelty, one could honestly say. Cuba then and now was a black country. So, also, Haiti, Jamaica and Trinidad, though, unlike Cuba, they weren’t Communist.
Interesting.
(click to enlarge)

In 1962, in an Army barracks below Cheyenne Mountain in suburban Colorado Springs, I watched President Kennedy address the nation during the Cuban Missile Crisis (mid-October, 1962). Colorado, then and now, bristled with military installations and was in the bulls eye, so the Rocky Mountain News reminded us. It was a very nervous time for we young GIs, but it passed quickly.
Ultimately Presidents Kennedy and Khruschev decided there were better ways to deal with their relationship than pointing missiles at each other. We didn’t want Soviet missiles in our backyard much like, I suppose, the Russians are not keen on having NATO missiles in their backyard in Ukraine or such today.
And need I mention how it all started, with Teddy Roosevelt’s “charge up San Juan Hill” and the Spanish-American War which began in 1898, the pretext being the supposed bombing of the USS Maine in Havana harbor.
My Grandpa Bernard didn’t go to Cuba, then, but he did spend a year in the Philippines 1898-99, part of the Spanish-American War which gained for the U.S., Puerto Rico, Cuba and the Philippines, and created the largely ignored part of Cuban-American history we need to read for the first time, between 1898 and 1959….
2. NORTH KOREA. Last night Nora O’Donnell’s (CBS Evening News) voice went dead on-air while talking about the apparently connection between North Korea and the hacking of Sony Pictures and the cancellation of the movie “The Interview” scheduled for Christmas Day. It was a long and distinct enough breach so I wondered: was that brief time of dead-air not a coincidence….
There is lots of pre-history here, too.
A week or two ago I had lunch with an executive of a major corporation here, and was moved to ask a dumb question.
He was South Korean by birth and upbringing, much younger than the Korean War, and I asked him, because I didn’t know, how it was that North and South Korea came to be.
Easy.
Korea at the time of WWII was part of the Empire of Japan; many of the soldiers killed in places like China and the Pacific Theater were Korean conscripts, he said. As I mentioned at table, “cannon fodder?” Of course.
After the War the victors, split Korea into two: North and South. “The victors”, in this case, were what have been since 1945 and presently remain the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council: Russia, China, U.S., France, United Kingdom. Not long thereafter came the Korean War, and the deadly military adventure there, including General McArthur’s being fired by Eisenhower for exceeding his authority, and over 60 years of history where we apparently have preferred having an enemy, than working towards resolution.
Check it out.
3. IRAN. History begins where political leaders want it to begin.
It is that way in all regimes, whether good guys or bad.
Our public history of Iran begins with the U.S. Embassy Hostage Crisis of 1979, which was very useful in bringing down President Carter in the 1980 election.
You have to look a bit further to find the back-story: the overthrow in 1953 of democratically elected Iranian President Mossadegh by covert organizing by the West, especially somebody by the name of Kermit Roosevelt, is mostly overlooked.
The objective: to protect western oil fields in Iran. The Shah of Iran was installed, and was hated by the people he governed. Near his end, he was hospitalized in the Mayo Clinic, in our own state. In effect, we welcomed the leader Iranians hated.
I somewhat haplessly crossed through an interesting demonstration by Iranians when President Carter came to Minneapolis in 1978 for a political event. Their heads were covered with grocery bags, and the demonstration was completely peaceful, but serious. This was before the hostage crisis a year later….
4. ETC.
In this post, I give no links. I didn’t even fact check the specific dates, since I lived some of them and have learned the others over the years.
Take some time to see where history began in these and other circumstances.
I applaud President Obama for his move towards normalizing relationships.
May it continue, regardless of the political hysteria it will excite.
COMMENTS:
from Jeff: Nora O’Donnell… wow, I saw that, Bridget mentioned it and I said “you must have touched the mute on the remote” (she did have it in her hand)… she said she didn’t. I never thought of that connection. And it’s odd as I/we seldom watch the network news at 5:30…
I think the Sony decision was amazing… now it is said to have come from N Korea…a commentator on CNN said expect to see the USA and international financial community cut off all financing for N Korea…apparently they did that several years ago and in 2 to 3 weeks they couldn’t pay the Generals…things changed quickly.
Cuba: good op/ed in the NYT saying basically the GOP is following old thinking per usual. Actually I suspect that except for the Florida crew and Menendez from NJ, and of course, Cruz, there are few against this. The GOP in the new Congress might try to scuttle it but its insipidly stupid. Has been for years… the logic of having on going relations with Russia, Japan, Vietnam, Germany, Venezuela, etc. after and during times of enmity is so overwhelming its beyond speaking. We bankrupted a country and people. The moneyed criollo class who came here post-Castro have called the shots for years and the yokels have eaten it up.
Personally I think the change has a lot to do with the current Russian situation…I think the handwriting is on the wall for Cuba… Russia is heading toward a complete economic meltdown and that is not good for Cuba.
Korea: I don’t know the history of the conscripts of Japan… of course I know the history of the “comfort women” and the general historical enmity between Korea and Japan. My guess is Korean conscripts largely died in China during the war.
Philippines: the war there has been mentioned several times as a complete precursor to our Iraq expedition. Imperialism based on ignorance and blithely turning a population into an enemy.
From SAK: Many thanks for drawing attention to #971 – I agree it is much better to make friends than enemies & especially in this world of ours with vulnerable internet/communications & weapons that are readily available and devastating!
I have been investigating WWI a lot since it is a sad anniversary of sorts – except for the Christmas truce [1914, 100th anniversary this year] which moves me every time I read about it – I also watched a very good French film about it. I suppose instead of the war to end all wars that was the peace to end all peace (1918-19).
As for Mossadegh & other oily business a French/German channel recently broadcast a couple of episodes:
“La face caché du petrole”
1. dividing the world here; and
2. manipulations, here.
from David: Thank you for your peaceable perspective.
President Truman canned Dug Out Doug-ie. That is what my Chief Petty Officer called the fade away soldier. A member of our Chapter 154 (Vets for Peace Fargo-Moorhead) has an anti-war brochure on the Philippines. Horrendous anti-terrorist and insurrectionist atrocities there. I call us the run-to-the-gun Nation.
Blessings on all — animal mineral vegetable.
from Flo: Yesterday, when I heard President Obama on MPR telling us of his executive orders to make the changes he could in our relations with Cuba, I cried for joy! Then I pulled out our photo album with pictures and memorabilia of our 2012 Lexington Institute educational tour to Cuba with about 30 returned Peace Corps Volunteers. Yes, the government of Cuba must make changes, too, but the Cuban people certainly don’t deserve the sanctions and the embargo imposed by our own government. Neither do we, who declare ourselves FREE. The instructions we received on what we could and couldn’t purchase and bring back with us to the USA and what we could and couldn’t do required a full page of small print!
My fervent parting hope for Cuba was that the American embargo be lifted and the curtain separating our countries be shredded. Thank you, President Obama, for giving my hope wings!
***
More from Dick:
An amusing footnote: Back in the 1990s I was having a conversation with a valued relative, my Dad’s cousin, who was a retired bank president in a major Minnesota town, an executive type who had been President of the Minnesota Bankers Association, and before that rose briefly to Colonel in the WWII Army in the Pacific, right at the end of the War.
Somehow or other we got to talking about Castro and Cuba.
“You know”, Marvin said, “back in 1959 I made a $5 bet with a friend that Castro wouldn’t last six months. Guess I got that one wrong.”
A not so amusing footnote: Our complete dependence on the cyber-world (internet) is perhaps our major vulnerability as a country. Imagine your world, today, without computers. In my opinion, it is unimaginable.
The only fail-safe I see is that the world is now so tied together – so interdependent – that an attempt to destroy one countries capabilities would be as destructive to the enemy as to the target. The internet is, in a sense, even more our mad, mad world, than the insane nuclear arsenal we still find a need to have.
An awful footnote: In this same fortnight came the intersection of two events: the terrible tragedy of the bombing of the school in Pakistan, with more than 100 dead; and the grotesque defense of torture back in the good old days by Dick Cheney and company, and the quiet acquiescence of a distressingly high percentage of Americans to that practice of torture.
In this age of misinformation, disinformation, false flags and the like, it is risky to believe any narrative put forth by anyone about anything.
In my opinion, we forfeited our innocence and goodness the first time we tortured someone to attempt to extract information, and even if we now totally outlaw the practice, it will be a very long time for us to restore our standing as even slightly righteous.

#964 – Dick Bernard: Thanksgiving? The implications of Ferguson MO

December 1, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Family History, Guns, Nature, North Dakota, Technology, War /by dickbernard

This will be one of a series which all begin “Thanksgiving?”
Thanksgiving for me was at a nursing home in North Dakota, with my last remaining relative from my Mom or Dad’s generation – her brother. His health is such that he’s confined to a wheelchair and is on oxygen, and while he is very sharp mentally, in relative terms, he’s in the Peace Garden Suite – the place where people with Alzheimers and the like live. He has no short term memory to speak of.
Lately, joining him in his unit have been an attorney with a long history and strong positive reputation in the town; and another man, an excellent musician, who until recent months was living in the Assisted Living portion of the Nursing Home complex.
Such is life for all of us. Here today, then gone. We can pretend that we’ll beat death, but however we beat the odds, some day it certainly will catch up to us, as it has, already, with one-fourth of my cousins.
But that isn’t what has me up at 4 in the morning on this day.
More, I’m thinking about the national insanity facing us: the aftermath of Ferguson MO.
Ferguson MO is todays Selma, Alabama, 1965, and I wonder what we’ll do about it, as a society.
None of us are expert on this case, certainly not I.
But enroute home from North Dakota last Friday I kept thinking of the “Un-indicted Co-conspirators” in the case. There were three of them, to my way of thinking: Michael Brown, teenager, unarmed, who’ll never be able to speak for himself, dead on a Ferguson street in August; and Darren Wilson, police officer, who killed the teenager, also un-indicted, with the opportunity to prepare a perfect case before a Grand Jury. He could tell his story to the world.
Michael Brown can’t.
Just before Thanksgiving, in my Nov. 25 post, I described what possibly was going on with Michael Brown that day in August, 2014: “stupid kid action”.
This wasn’t about what happened in the street – we’ll never know for sure about that; rather about the snip of convenience store video and the cigarillos. There are only conflicting witness accounts of what happened in the street. Wilson had plenty of opportunity to defend himself, but Brown never had that chance, dead with six bullets striking him.
I’ve known plenty of “stupid kid” situations in my life. Any of us who are honest would admit to our own “stupid kid” actions in our own pasts. Somehow we lived past them; stuff we didn’t tell our parents about…that, likely, they don’t want to know.
Overnight I thought of one scenario similar to the street scene in Ferguson MO. It involved one Byron Smith in Little Falls MN, who shot and killed two local teenagers who were up to no-good in his home; in fact, they had a history. All of the actors in the Little Falls scenario were white, and Smith was indicted, tried and convicted, and is now serving a life sentence.
Above, I mention three un-indicted co-conspirators.
The third: the sacred Gun*, most always the accessory to the crime of killing someone in our society.
I struggle with how to personally stay engaged with both of the issues Ferguson again identifies: active racism in our society; and insane reverence for the Gun.
Without the Gun placed in action by Officer Wilson, no one would have been dead, and “Ferguson” would not now be a household name.
This is far beyond a simple Second Amendment issue (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”)
We have embraced violence by weapons in this country. We are the lesser for this.
* POSTNOTE: This is no anti-gun rant. If somebody likes to hunt, the gun has its place. The Uncle referred to above still has six common weapons, safely stored. They were valued by him – very much a part of his life on the farm, always for hunting.
I brought along several albums Vince had kept over the years, and he became particularly animate about three photos like the following:
(click to enlarge)

Vincent and Art with the catch of Jackrabbits sometime in 1941-42. At the time, jackrabbits were numerous and a nuisance. He had similar photos with skunk, and ducks, etc.

Guns had their place in the rural areas. Not like today, when the right to kill another human in supposed self-defense is viewed as almost a sacred right by some.

#928 – Dick Bernard: Greg H on Ferguson MO

August 21, 2014/0 Comments/in Guns, History, Media, Minnesota, Technology /by dickbernard

UPDATE: Overnight, August 22, “Policing the Masses”, some thoughts on the down side of crowd control.
Grace Kelly’s proposal, presented in the August 7 post (written back in May, before Ferguson; it is at the end of the post), is the basis for conversation and action anywhere. If you haven’t read it yet, consider doing so now. It is simply an idea, to be developed in different ways in different places.

Don Thimmesch (undated). See note at end of post.

A good friend of mine, Greg, is an attorney and retired prosecutor in this major metropolitan area. He’s sent three comments during the times of the incident in Ferguson, and I present them below as received. His is a perspective flowing from experience. Below his comments are a couple of my own flowing from the three previous posts on the topic of police and violence, which can be accessed here, here and here.
Greg H, Aug 15, 2014: A year ago or so [ago] I caught the testimony of a local police chief before a Congressional committee. In part, he chronicled the increase in fire power of the weapons issued to his patrol officers, in a small community.
The latest upgrade was to a weapon similar to that used in the Sandy Hook school shootings.
The police chief explained to the Congressional committee members that the reason for his community spending money to equip patrol officers with more lethal weapons was simply to prevent his officers from being out gunned by the bad people.
Just today we learned the suspect in the murder of the local police officer [Mendota Heights MN, August 7 post] during a traffic stop had told a woman friend days earlier that he planned to kill a cop. He also told her he had been smoking meth for several days.
As to Ferguson, I prefer to wait for the facts of the confrontation between Mr. Brown and the officer before reaching any conclusions.
Greg, Aug 18: A letter to the editor published in the August 16th Star Tribune…pointed out that the population of Ferguson is about 67 percent African American, yet four of the six elected city council members and the mayor are Caucasian. I do not mean to imply that electing more African American individuals to city government will solve all problems. However, as we well know elections do have consequences.
Also, whether that police officer did or did not know Mr. Brown was a suspect in a recently-committed robbery, Mr. Brown knew what he had done and of course he did not know whether the police officer was also aware of what he had done.
This does not appear to me to be an easy-to-understand situation. I am still wanting to know more about what happened.
Greg, Aug 20: A Mike Meyers op ed piece was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune today, introducing us to that city as it was in the 1950s- and 1960s as he grew up there. [Meyers is a former reporter for Minneapolis Star Tribune]. Pretty much confirmed my opinion. Reminds me of Studs Terkel. I do not mean Meyers’ column justifies 2014 life in Ferguson, but it does, I think, help us understand how we got to 2014.
Chris Matthews in his sign off opinion comment on Hardball last night [MSNBC] was to the same point. He suggested the root cause of the problems between the races in Ferguson is more about economic disparity than racism. As is playing out across our country, there just are no longer well-paying jobs for people who have only a high school diploma. Actually that is true also for many people with only a bachelor college degree.
Students from Ferguson attend Normandy High School located in a nearby community. Students come from 24 communities to attend that school, whose enrollment is 98 percent Black. Michael Brown was a member of the Class of 2014. Here is a link to a story from NBC News. Grim picture.
How many graduates are ready to face the challenges of the 21st Century? How many Normandy graduates attend college or any other post secondary education schools? In 2012 the school lost its accreditation. The state has taken over operation of the school. All teachers were required to reapply for their jobs, 40 percent of whom were not hired back.
Indicting, convicting the involved police officer will do nothing to address these root causes.
Parting Thoughts as I leave this topic:
My instincts tend strongly to supporting police. While I’ve never owned a weapon, guns for hunting have been a regular part of my surroundings since I was a little kid.
I am long past the illusion that because I grew up in rural North Dakota, before African-Americans were part of my surroundings, that I am race-neutral. We all grew up with messages…. Native-Americans (“Indians”) seem to have been our race of choice.
As demonstrated by events in recent weeks, guns, especially ever more sophisticated weaponry, and the uncertainties of human behavior are not a good combination; and racial tensions are never far below the surface. Guns are not good mediators, and those who “win” at the point of a gun, are the ultimate losers, almost always. The guy who shot the policeman here a few weeks ago may as well be dead; the policeman who shot the man in Ferguson will never recover either, even if totally vindicated.
I agree with Greg that the entire picture is not yet clear in Ferguson. At the same time, what happened there has rippled out, everywhere, not soon to be forgotten. And proximity to a deadly weapon was not good for the officer, whether he ultimately is exonerated or not.
These issues: weapons, race, and police-community relationships generally, are important topics. Ongoing.
NOTE about photo: Don Thimmesch was the husband of my mothers first cousin, and next-ND-farm-over neighbor, Cecilia Berning. He was one of the first 50 uniformed Iowa State Highway Patrol officers in the mid-1930s.

#923 – Dick Bernard: Policing. Alternative ways of keeping the peace.

August 15, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Guns, Peace & Justice, Technology, War /by dickbernard

My too-frequent trips out to North Dakota, with a side trip last Thursday and Friday to Bemidji, yield numerous ideas for blog posts, all kept on a list of possibilities for sometime.
Today, the first post after my return, current events in Ferguson MO interfere.
One week ago at this space I wrote about the outpouring of emotion about a policeman killed while making a routine traffic stop in a neighboring community. You can read it here.
This week the news has been dominated by a deadly incident in St. Louis suburb Ferguson MO, where a policeman shot and killed an unarmed teenager. There have been other recent incidents involving excessive violence by police. A long and excellent summary is here.
In last weeks post, at the end, I included a May 27, 2014, proposal by my friend, Grace Kelly, about recognizing positive policing policies. It seems a good time to remind readers of that proposal, and invite you to read and share the proposal, and help towards positive results in your community.
Best I recall, Ms Kelly’s sensitivity to gross over-policing dates back to the Republican National Convention in St. Paul in early September, 2008, when the police appeared armed and very dangerous to quell protests. Who can forget the gunboats in the Mississippi River at St. Paul, supposedly there to protect against river assaults by protestors? This was a very bad time in our town.

This and following from Greg and Sue Skog, at time of Peace Island Event described below Sep 2008.

There was a single garish reminder of that time in the funeral procession of hundreds of police vehicles last week: One of those monster anti-something vehicles came up the street along with the normal police cars.
It did not fit.
It stood out. Very negatively.
Grace was a leader in the successful campaign to replace the then-Ramsey County Sheriff with a much more positive Sheriff, Matt Bostrom, in 2010. We see the difference every time there is an incident here. Tone is extremely important.
Like last weeks overwhelmingly positive tribute to police, this weeks overwhelmingly negative indictment of police overreach in Ferguson MO is a time to reflect, and Grace Kelly provides the opportunity to those who will look at her proposal. Please do.
Every single one of us can make a positive difference, where we live.
Comment
from Greg H, Aug 15:
A year ago or so I caught the testimony of a local police chief before a Congressional committee. In part, he chronicled the increase in fire power of the weapons issued to his patrol officers, in a small community.
The latest upgrade was to a weapon similar to that used in the Sandy Hook school shootings.
The police chief explained to the Congressional committee members that the reason for his community spending money to equip patrol officers with more lethal weapons was simply to prevent his officers from being out gunned by the bad people.
Just today we learned the suspect in the murder of the local police officer during a traffic stop had told a woman friend days earlier that he planned to kill a cop. He also told her he had been smoking meth for several days.
As to Ferguson, I prefer to wait for the facts of the confrontation between Mr. Brown and the officer before reaching any conclusions.

Early Sep 2008, Mississippi River, St Paul MN photo by Greg and Sue Skog

POSTSCRIPT:
Here are my memories, written September 8, 2008, in the aftermath of the heavily militarized security at the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul MN. Personally, I walked in the major protest march (peacefully), but most of my time was in a major Peace Island Conference a group of us had organized which ran for the two days of the Convention, about three miles from the Republican Convention site. Our conference was so peaceful that even activist media didn’t cover us – the drama was down the street at the Xcel Center where the Republicans were meeting.
A GREAT END TO A LESS THAN STELLAR WEEK IN THE TWIN CITIES
This past Thursday, Sep 4, shortly after noon, I decided to deliver a large box of unused “Vote in Honor of a Veteran” buttons back to the Minnesota Secretary of State’s office, which is near the State Capitol Building (Watch for a future post on those buttons). When I arrived there, the youth protest gathering was commencing at the Capitol steps, and there were plenty of assorted kinds of police in evidence. But all was quiet.
I parked in front of the State Office Building, put on the warning flashers, got the large box out of the back seat, and began to walk up the front steps. A Minnesota State Trooper came out from behind a pillar, with his soft drink in hand, and I said I was going to the Secretary of State’s office. “Got a bomb in there?”, he said in an off-handed almost joking manner, and didn’t even venture a look inside the box (I guess I didn’t look like a terrorist), I went in, dropped off the box, and left. (Somebody could probably cite him for dereliction of duty, but for me he was the good face of the police this past week.) I decided not to stay for the demo, since I wanted to get over to the Peace Island Picnic, and legal places to park was an issue where I was, and it would have been a long walk to and from.
Driving my route to get to Harriet Island, I went down Chestnut Street, below the Xcel Center, and there were swarms of police preparing for the afternoon duty (today’s paper says there were apparently 3700 police in all, marshalled for the Republicans party in the twin cities – obscene overkill in my opinion.) Shepard Road was open, more police, and Jackson Street, and Kellogg to the Wabasha Bridge, and when I got to Harriet (now and forever more Peace) Island at 1 p.m. there was a great plenty of quality parking. There were few people in evidence, plenty of room to park, and a huge plenty of hotdogs, pork, cake, and on and on and on. It looked like it would be heaven for someone looking for a free meal (and it was). There was a box for contributions towards the event cost, and I hope they did well on collecting. (Coleen Rowley’s acknowledgements to all those who contributed their talent to Peace Island Picnic follow this text.)
Down on the river bank at Peace Island it was a chilly afternoon, overcast, breezy, maybe in the 60s. But it was about perfect for a gathering in many ways.
The Rowley’s were there, and, initially, perhaps 100 of us strolling around, and then the music gig began, first with Larry Long, no stranger to folks in these parts, joined by Pete Seeger’s grandson, Tao Rodriguez-Seeger, for a medley of songs beginning with Down by the Riverside, then This Land is Your Land, then Lonesome Valley, and on. The two musicians by themselves were phenomenal, the power for the speakers and instruments was solar (and stellar), and even in the overcast worked impeccably all afternoon.
The afternoon was off to a great start. In my initial planning for participation in the Picnic, I was going to stop by for awhile, go home, and come back later in the afternoon to help be part of the giant peace sign. But it was such a mellow place, this Peace Island, that I decided to stay the day.
I went back to the car to get my outdoor canvas chair, and settled in by the flagpole to the 9-11 victims, just to the musicians left, and with a clear view of the river. I was ready to settle in for one of the most relaxed afternoons I’ve ever had.
There could not have been a more peaceful place than Peace Island this day. The crowd grew, but slowly.
Tuesday’s Robot, a really good local group, followed Larry and Tao, and they were to be followed by a continuous succession of musicians all afternoon; there was some great jam session music going on as the afternoon progressed. I counted up to 15 musicians together at one point in the afternoon.
There were some bizarre twists, to be sure.
Patrolling the river just beyond the musicians was a gun boat – I kid you not – a Coast Guard vessel with mounted machine guns fore and aft. It appeared to be protecting the tour boat Johnathan Padelford as it carried passengers, probably delegates to the RNC, up and down the Mighty Mississippi. It was so bizarre as to be funny. (It’s in the slide show I previously sent.) I guess you never know what “tear-wrists” are going to be gunnin’ up or down the river to take out whomever…maybe that’s why George and Dick didn’t show in the twin cities.
At one early point, four SUVs ominously drove down a sidewalk in our area, all full of police, one with the back door open, as if they were preparing to raid our small assemblage, but they just slowly moved on.
To our west, a bunch of the police gathered, apparently for their souvenir photo, with, it seemed, the downtown St. Paul Skyline probably behind them. The gunboat arrived, apparently to be part of this photo op of “what I did on my vacation”.
Around 6 or so we all assembled into a giant peace sign. I’ve seen the photograph of all of us in this peace sign, and I’m sure that in a short time it will be published on Huffington Post or maybe even here on P&J. It was a very clear shot. I could even make out myself, on the back portion of the circle, a few folks to the right of the upright portion of the peace sign.
Together, Peace Island Conference and Peace Island Picnic turned out to be phenomenal and totally peaceful events. Together, they merited only the tiniest bit of news coverage – Peace Island Conference with 350 registrants none at all; Peace Island Picnic with about 1000 meriting only a few dismissive and inaccurate comments in the Pioneer Press On-line edition, bad enough so that a correction was apparently printed this morning in the print edition of the paper.
The message is “if it bleeds, it leads”. The anarchists, hated as they are by so-called ‘civil society’, were essential to the police state mentality that became St. Paul and Minneapolis this past week. Those anarchists should get thank you notes from the Republican Party, and the powers-that-be in our town. Without them, there wouldn’t have been any news. And while they’re writing thank you notes, maybe the likely abundant agents provacateurs should be on the thank you list as well. One of the persons on the march who was doing lots of photography, was quite certain she saw one person who had been egging on the Iraq Vets Against the War during the Labor Day protest march, breaking a window later in the downtown area – if so, he was probably arrested, and quietly released….
For us, the mantra for each of us has to become “I am the Media”. It is of absolutely no value to kvetch about what they aren’t doing. We have to become, as Gandhi said, ‘the change we wish to see in the world’. There is no alternative.
Let Peace Island become a continuing part of our conversation for sanity in our country and world.
From Coleen Rowley, Sep 6, 2008:
Wow!! Really good, Mr. Bernard! I’d like to forward the photos to my list too. I’m going to copy Mr. McGovern, Ann Wright, Tao, Larry Long, Sara Thomsen and Emma’s Revolution also as they figure in a few of your pictures.
If only there’d been a little more sunlight for the picnic. I think the cold weather was perhaps as much of a deterrent as the RNC bridge closings/traffic problems and the police intimidation.
With just a couple of “no-shows”, most of the info about musicians on our website turned out correct. Neither Clyde Bellecourt nor Dorene Gray made it for the opening water ceremony. And Mitch Walking Elk didn’t make it either. But I think everyone else listed did. The solar panel trailer was from Minnesota Renewables. David Boyce is the contact and as a power source, it worked absolutely great. The sound system was run by Doug Lohman of the Armadillo Sound Co. and it also got big compliments. (David Rovics had sung at the “March on the RNC” which didn’t have a good sound system and he said Doug’s was top notch. Doug used to do the sound for years at St. Joans.) The great grilled pork was made by Brian Huseby and his brother on their unbelievably large but portable grill. They grilled about 275 pounds of pork roast and 1200 hotdogs and almost all was eaten. (We did have a lot of buns left tho’.) We got free barbeque sauce from the Ken Davis company; donated French bread from New French Bakery; baked vegetarian beans at cost from Java Live in Faribault and also donated fruit from Co-op Warehouse and coffee from Equal Exchange.
We just had a great committee who did this all—not a lot of meetings—I think the grand total was only six—but we divvied up tasks well according to each person’s unique expertise.
Guess what? Tao already committed to coming back if, God forbid, St. Paul should ever host another RNC and we need to try and return to good neighborliness and sanity. Coleen R.

#874 – Dick Bernard: Craziness around….

April 25, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Guns, History, Technology /by dickbernard

PRE-NOTE: I had completed the entirety of the below post on April 16, but decided to hold off publishing till after Easter. Recent events, particularly in the Nevada ranch situation, make this a timely post. The overnight Just Above Sunset has a good summary on the current state of affairs.
The recent incidents in Nevada (the rancher refusing to pay rent on public land), and Kansas (the gunman who hates Jews and blacks who killed three white Christians bring back some happenings and thoughts from a while back. (Anyone interested in a longer post about the meaning of the above, here’s a useful link.)
There’s always been the crazies around.
The first one I paid serious attention to was a guy named Gordon Kahl who told the national government to go to hell, and ended up dead in 1983. His particular road to infamy covered only a few months in 1983, when he got in a shootout somewhere between the tiny towns of Heaton and Medina ND, killed a policeman and escaped, to live on for a few months till he met his own end.
I suppose the box score favored Kahl: three lawmen dead, and himself. But in the end it doesn’t make any difference. He was dead, too, only to be followed by new generations of deluded crazies destined for the same fate.
Kahl interested me because he came to national notoriety as a farmer somewhere outside Heaton ND in 1983. “Back in the day” Heaton was a hamlet seven miles or so west of Sykeston, where I graduated from HS in 1958, and the place where my Dad and Mom banked. Even then, Heaton was all but non-existent, and Sykeston was not much bigger, but for me, the word “Heaton” made Kahl noteworthy.
These days, of course, the first and greatest amendment to the U.S. Constitution is considered by some to be the 2nd amendment, to keep and bear arms. We’re at the stage, now, where every citizen is always vulnerable to somebody packing heat, who’ll shoot you on purpose, or kill you accidentally. It makes no difference if you have your own arsenal. Usually, the element of surprise prevails.
There is a big problem, however, for those who, these days, think they are above the Law, and can act with impunity whenever and wherever they wish, especially with their arms.
In 1983, not that long ago, really, communications and intelligence were primitive compared with today. It was still a paper world, and help was still a phone call away, and bad guys (and gals too) could more easily blend in out in some woods somewhere, and possibly not be found. Evidence gathering and analysis were also pretty primitive.
There is also a fatal flaw in the argument of the gun rights promoters: if you actually use that gun to kill someone you run the risk of being tried for homicide. This is another set of laws not likely to ever be repealed.
Recently I’ve been re-listening to a Willie Nelson CD, which includes the ballad of the Red-Headed Stranger, who goes free after he kills a woman who was, it is said, trying to steal his recently deceased wife’s horse. Execution preceded Charges and a Trial….
Of course, Red Headed Stranger is just a ballad, but in the days of the wild west, probably not very far-fetched.
In the end, the rancher will lose his case and, probably his ranch as well. It will just take a while. He’ll have his 15 minutes of fame, and his fan club will be on to other supposed outrages.
As for the guy in Kansas, well, he was after Jews and he killed Christians, but in the end it will make no difference. He won’t be going free.
We are a country which is an imperfect community, but it is a community, and community is where Rule of Law still means something, imperfect as it is and will always likely be.
POSTNOTE:
These days the public “conversation” seems dominated by people on the ideological fringes. Makes no difference who’s position is “winning” at the time, all is lost if there is no conversation towards reaching common ground. And even then, making positive change is never easy….
My great friend, Peter Barus, sent a link and a comment about this a couple of days ago. It seems to relate to the above, if you’re interested.
April 15, 2015
Peter: Uncharacteristically I send this link.
The writer and those he cites are, I think, experienced, active pioneers in new ways of being and living in community. His focus is on culture as the basis of societal conduct. Like Howard Richards, he is saying, can’t change behaviors without changing the cultural rules.
He comes close to, but falls just short of, explicitly distinguishing two aspects I think hold the best hope for human survival in these late times.
One is “in here/out here,” which refers to effective performance. If one wants to play a game or hold a conversation – or change the world – it works to be “out here,” among other players. “In here” is (even neurologically, or especially so) less likely to produce anything but re-runs.
The other is “way-of-being-and-acting” as correlate of “our occurring worlds.” That is, we behave according to our lights. Seeing is believing. To change behaviors, I must see the world differently. We have access to this through the ways in which we speak about life.
We experience life through language, and through language we can make substantive changes to our own perceptions, and hence our own behaviors.
What sort of language? That’s the intriguing part, and the article contains a good many examples, but you have to pick most of them out for yourself.
Love
Peter

#863 – Dick Bernard: An unintended re-learning about something I already knew: the Rapid Change in How We Communicate in Contemporary Society

March 25, 2014/0 Comments/in Community, Media, Quebec/French-Canadians, Technology /by dickbernard

POSTNOTE: The “work in progress” referred to below is complete as of April 13, 2014.
During the past few days I have been involved in a “headache” assignment, self-imposed, but still a headache.
For years I’ve had a very large notebook including 145 newsletters from a small, very low budget, but vibrant organization I was part of for over 20 years. The newsletters began in 1980, and ended at the end of 2001. I was editor of near 100 of the mostly 6 to 8 page documents, from 1985 till we decided to close down.
Last week, I spent a lot of hours converting about 1000 pages of content into pdf files at 96 dpi. Briefly, I re-saw over 20 years of a small organization as reflected in every one of its newsletter pages. It was exhausting, but very interesting. These newsletters are now on-line, but quietly, here, planned as an addendum to a future post “in progress”.
My involvement with newsletters goes back to being student editor of my college newspaper in 1960-61, and subsequent amateur newsletters for assorted groups.
Newsletter production by small groups of amateurs is no mystery to me.
What struck me with this batch of newsletters from 1980-2001 was how change in technology affected us. These were newsletters laid out by volunteers. All the printer did was print the copy (we had to use a real human print shop: this was before sophisticated copy machines).
For most of the history, the format was the old traditional “cut and paste” with typewritten text, typed on someones typewriter, perhaps adorned with some rudimentary art and press on lettering for headlines. (P. 5 CN 1-26001.) It wasn’t fancy, and it was time consuming.
In the end, for all of these years, the product was mailed to each members U.S. mailbox. It was read, and often saved. For a long while we had a sufficiently large circulation to send bulk rate, which saved on postage, but slowed receipt of the newsletters – just like today. But money was money then.
We were very limited in what we could do, then. In March 1982 the editor used a photograph, but it takes a close look to make out that what the photograph showed. (p. 52 CN 52-78003)
In May, 1985, came the first newsletter that utilized one of early versions of word processors, probably an early Apple. (p. 154 CN 140-170006)
It wasn’t until the 1990s that things like columns, and borders, and shading and the different sizes of type were first used, and they rapidly expanded.
It wasn’t until Jan-Feb 1999 that an e-mail address appeared in the newsletter.
We tend to forget how recent that now almost obsolete innovation came to the common folks.
In Jan-Feb 2000 a website was referred to for the first time. (p. 828 CN 792-829028.)
Of course, most of our readers did not do e-mail, even at the end, and relied on pieces of paper transmitted by U.S. mail to individual mailboxes.
Oh, what a change. Back then, I venture, none of us could have visualized todays cacophony of communication media. And this was not that long ago.
We’ve all experienced this.
I wonder what’s ahead in the next generation. We always think that things will be even better. There is a downside as well.
Someday, we might consider the good old cut and paste days to be something we wish we had again.`
* – If you wish to see these newsletters, go back to the March 24 post, the “Work in Progress” [now completed as “1000 pages…”]. All those pdf’s are there. The content that goes with them is still in preparation, for later.
POSTNOTE: Our newsletter died at the end of 2001, when we were doing our best work, utilizing better technology. Members were dying and in other ways just leaving. People we had relied on as readers were not computer literate and had no intention of becoming so. In a way, we represented the dilemma of contemporary society. We have not figured out how to bridge between the old and the new, and it is hurting us.

#793 – Dick Bernard: Revisiting VCSTC (Valley City (ND) State Teachers College, aka Valley City State University)

October 29, 2013/2 Comments/in Community, Education, History, North Dakota, Technology /by dickbernard

About a year ago I decided to translate my college years (1958-61) to a blogpost for posterity. The results can be seen here. Initially, my intent was to send my musings around to a few people I remembered from those long ago days, and certainly there was no intent for the post to be as long as it has become. A newly received college alumni Directory yielded over 300 e-mail addresses for persons who attended the college in my general time frame, and I decided to add them to the list as well. Most of them I didn’t know.
To anyone who has an interest, there is now a great plenty of information about those “olden days” of ca 1956-66 at “STC” within the boundaries of that single post for January 2, 2013.
Last Thursday, October 24, I happened to be in Valley City, and took some early morning photographs around campus. Most of these are in a Facebook album here. College was in session, but Thursday was a
lab day, and labs didn’t begin till 9 a.m., and by 9:30 I had left. So, while I didn’t avoid students, I didn’t see many either.
(click on any photo to enlarge)

“STC”, as we knew it, was still basically a “Normal School”, (“teacher’s college”), one of those underrated places of even less status than land grant “cow colleges”. I’ve always had pride in our small college, and the quality of people who went, and who taught, there, and I’m always looking for examples of success.
For instance, in the excellent history of the air war in Europe in WWII, “Fire and Fury” by Randall Hansen, one of the four most prominent American leaders cited was Ira C. Eaker, whose lack of pedigree was very clearly stated: “Eakers only education was at the undistinguished Southeastern Normal School in Durham, North Carolina” (p. 36)
Famed artist Georgia O’Keefe, began her rise to prominence as an art teacher in a west Texas Normal School in the 1920s. She was a farm girl from Sun Prairie WI. Recently, a guide at Frank Lloyd Wrights Taliesin, said that O’Keefe and Wright were friends, and he was the one who advised her to paint the red barns of Wisconsin, which she did, famously.
Her experience there is recounted in a fascinating book of letters about her relationship with photographer Alfred Stieglitz, “My Faraway One”.
In various ways, there are many people from STC who were (and will be) similar to Eaker and O’Keefe….
Even in a brief visit, such as mine was last Thursday morning, there are vignettes:
The lady in the coffee shop of the Student Center said she’d been there 26 years, and the place had been remodeled three times in her career. It was somewhat sobering to realize that when I left Valley City 52 years ago, that Student Center was still just an artist rendering, about to become reality. Time flies.
Where students used to gather in the previous “student center”, in the basement of old main, one now finds the technology offices for the college. VCSU has completely embraced technology.
Allen Library, which I remember for large study desks at which you looked at real books, is now mostly a lounge-looking kind of place, fully wired for the new generation of communications. The stacks are still there, but books, as books, for the time being at least, are almost novel.
The newest structure, just completed and occupied, is the very impressive L.D. Rhoades Science Building, very 21st century. Walking its halls, I came across a centerpiece display of Prof. Soren Kolstoe’s collection of bird eggs (see photos, caption and link below). Earlier this year one of Dr. Kolstoe’s kids wondered what had happened to his Dad’s egg collection. The answer was in front of me (see below).
There were few people around when I was on campus, but those I met were all welcoming. Yes, there was that student who met me, oblivious to my presence, with ear plugs and eyes focused on his smart phone…will this be a passing fad? One can hope, but not likely.
I was glad I stopped in.
Here are a few photographs from the most recent trip. There are a number more in the Facebook album for those who can access them.

Vangstad Auditorium Oct 24, 2013. The stained glass windows are blocked by sound panels used at a choir concert. The dome is shown in the following photo.

Vangstad Auditorium, known to many generations of students as a place for convocations, programs, etc, is being closed for major renovation in January 2013. The historic integrity of the facility will be retained.

The L.D. (Dusty) Rhoades Science Center

A sneak peak at a Lab Session in progress.

“Dusty” Rhoades, for whom the Science Building is named.

The old Science Building, sans the second floor entrance bridge removed many years ago.

Dusty Rhoades was a legendary science teacher at ‘STC, holding forth in the old Science Building. He would likely have a hard time imagining that a major and very well equipped Science Building would be constructed at his old school in 2013. He’d probably be surprised that an actual building was named for him.

A portion of Psychology Professor Soren O. Kolstoe’s legendary bird egg collections has a prominent place in the Science Building

Some of the many eggs from Dr. Kolstoe’s collection. Most of the collection remains on display at the State Capitol in Bismarck.

While Dr. Kolstoe was a Psychology professor, he had a great interest in the outdoors, and gained much regional prominence in his work with and for the North Dakota Outdoors. A previous post about Dr. Kolstoe, including his book of nature poetry, is here.

Plaque to Navy V-12 program conducted at VCSTC during WWII, on front lawn at the University.

A relatively recent addition to the campus is the above plaque to several hundred students trained in the Navy’s V-12 program during WWII. Following the war, including into the 1960s, many students attended with help from the GI Bill.

#791 – Dick Bernard: Revisiting a Speech of President John F. Kennedy October 22, 1963

October 22, 2013/1 Comment/in Community, Politics, Technology /by dickbernard

Last night I was returning from a meeting and happened across a portion of a speech President John F. Kennedy had given on this date, 50 years ago, one month before his death.
The 24 minute speech, to the National Academy of Science, is archived on YouTube, accessible here.
This is worth a reflective listen. Any pre-listening editorial comments by me are superfluous.
Your comments are solicited.