Monday of this week I was about to leave for a conversation group I’m part of.  I caught the first part of the 6:00 local news on WCCO-TV, and one of the first stories was about the arrest of my State Senator in a town 220 miles from here.  By Tuesday, the opposition party was “shocked”. By Wednesday, it was front-page news.  Thursday, one of my fellow citizens, in a letter to the editor, demanded that the Senator resign, probably based on no more information than I had.  This morning, another long article in the STrib again was based only on currently available information.

At this writing, Friday morning, I know nothing more than anybody else about my Senator and the incident.  So goes life in the local world.

I am keeping whatever I see in writing (from the Minneapolis Star Tribune paper edition), and at some point in the future, whenever there is some finality, I will write more.  I will also pdf the articles for  use at this space.

But you will see no pre-judgement from me.  Except to say that in my opinion, she has been an excellent Senator.  I didn’t know her when she announced her candidacy two years ago.  She met with me on my request back then, and to my knowledge I’ve been to all of her several back-home citizen update meetings, simply as a constituent.  Those are my only contacts with her, and they have all been positive.

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Meanwhile: As it happens, much of this week has been engaged in following assorted court hearings in New York City, Washington DC and Phoenix, regarding someone else we all know, about events which happened between 2015 and 2021.  Yesterday was oral argument at the Supreme Court about Presidential immunity; today, as I write, David Pecker, formerly head honcho of the National Enquirer, is testifying.  I tend to follow these kinds of things.

I have no more to say about this either.

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I’ll return to all of this sometime later.

PRE-NOTE: This post is a new book, presented with permission of the author.  More below.  There are four preceding posts you might wish to view as well: The Solar Eclipse (April 9); Propaganda (April 11); Senate District Convention (April 12); and Covid-19 first year (April 6).   The Covid post includes several recent comments.

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The subject of todays post is a new and fascinating book,  the Roy-Collette Family History, here, by cousin, Dr. Remi Roy of Montreal.  The book  is accessible in its entirety at the link, with permission of the author.  I encourage reading and sharing this.  Anyone with, or who knows anyone with, any French-Canadian ancestry will find this book a useful template when considering how to reconstruct their own family history, most especially with French-Canadian background.

Take some time to browse the books contents pages.  You’ll not know what’s inside till you look.

My Dad was 100% French-Canadian.  We never lived in a French-Canadian enclave, so it wasn’t until half a lifetime ago, 1980, that I even began what became a deep dive into this rich heritage.  About 15 years ago, Remi and I first met – through the internet – and in the last few years he continued and completed his exploration of his families of origin (His great-grandfather and mine were brothers, Octave and Philippe Collette.  His maternal line were Germans from Russia; mine was German-American).  So both of us are 50% French-Canadian.  (My 23&Me Ancestry declares I’m 100% French and German, northwest Europe. I don’t know Remi’s.)

Remi’s Quebec ancestors routes to their future home are in the two maps below (pp 65 and 82 in the book).  There were tens of thousands of French-Canadian immigrants to the United States, primarily mid-1800s.  Their ancestors came to what is now Quebec in the 1600s and 1700s.

Back in 1980 the U.S. Census included a question about the ancestry of those counted.  Fourteen million (of then-226.5 million population in the U.S.) indicated some French ancestry, from France or Canada, including 8% of Minnesotans.  Most of these, I think I can confidently say, were of  French-Canadian descent.

Here in both pdf (French in U.S. 1980001 ) and jpeg is the page from the calendar produced annually for 18 years by Dr. Virgil Benoit and Reine-Marie Mikesell.  Note especially West Coast data.  I think I could state without too much risk, that most of the west coast French had their antecedents in French-Canada.  This certainly was true in my family, going way back.  “Go west, young man….”

from Quebec to Saskatchewan

Quebec to Minnesota to Dakota to Manitoba. This would have been the probable route of most of my branch of the family, most of whom came as a group in 1864.

Have at it!

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My own Bernard-Collette History is here.  Remi and my Collette great-grandparents were brothers, Octave and Philippe, who came west with their entire family in the 1860s, and were in what is now the Twin Cities area from about 1850s-78; thence to the Dakota Territory area that became Oakwood-Grafton-Walsh County, North Dakota.

Special thanks to French-American Heritage Foundation which added this writing to their Library section.

Take your time.  Enjoy.  If you wish to make contact with Remi, email dickDOTbernarddt1878ATicloudDOTcom and I’ll pass along.

POSTNOTE:  Here’s the European linguistic map I refer to in response to Mary Ellen Weller’s comment (below).  The Map is from Rand McNally Goodes World Atlas 1996.  European Languges

COMMENTS (more below):

from Richard: As for me I have perused the book of your recommendation two times. Since my area of study is generally West Central Minnesota before 1862, the second perusal was date specific.  It is an excellent piece of work, if not a labor of love. I plan to revisit it at a later date for a more detailed read.

from Kathy: I am just now opening the French Canadian history piece that you sent.  This is coming at a good time for me because I’m assessing ways of approaching my diverse family history…..past to present? present to past? or a little of both?… making an attempt to make family history understandable to my own family! Thank you for directing my attention to this labor of love!

from Brad: These histories are always great reading – especially the mysterious, unknown, and sometimes family secrets.  The hard work and journeys too of our ancestors.  Jeff and I are traveling to France and Spain next week for a month.  We will be in Paris, and SW France (Bordeaux, Bergerac, Biarritz).  Bilbao Spain (Guggenheim musée) afterwards.  We’ve been to Normandy before but never Brittany.  Some day we’ll visit Finistère and I’ll be on the lookout for “Colet!”

from Brian: Thanks for sharing!   We have a cabin in way upstate NY near the Quebec border and my Peace Corps hostess mother lives just north of Montreal so we find ourselves going up to French-Canada often.  Fun place!

from Carole: Thank you.  I have a Canadian daughter-in-law, a cottage in Nova Scotia, elementary schooling at the College Des Ursulines in Quebec, and two son’s educated in Canada (University of Kings College and Acadia). And, have read much history.   Always interested.

Lest it be lost, below, I urge you to set aside the time to read this long commentary from a blogger I’ve never heard of: Terri Kanefield (note the April 6 post) This is long.  Take the time, agree, disagree, but do take the time….  Thanks to Molly for letting me know about it.

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Yesterday I caught an on-air conversation between Nicole Wallace and John Bolton. Their names may well be familiar: Nicole is a fixture on MSNBC, Bolton is a prominent Republican.  In an earlier life, Nicole worked for Jeb Bush in Florida, then his brother, George W. Bush at the White House, then for John McCain, as Republican candidate for President in 2008.  She was a California Republican.  Bolton is best known as UN Ambassador for George Bush in 2005-06; later National Security Advisor for the President of the United States 2018-19.  He has a recent book “The Room Where It Happened” about life in the White House.

What I found interesting was not unexpected.  Would Bolton vote for Biden in November?  There was the usual waffling, with the also usual ‘nutgraf’ that Biden’s foreign policy was worse than bad.

So goes the drill with political conversation in the United States in 2024.  Who, What is to be believed?  You won’t get it from highly placed sources who know that their every word of theirs will be interpreted, their every sentence and paragraph sliced and diced.

In the end, each of us as citizens has to decide, not only who to select for President, but every other elective office, and it best be an informed decision, including whether to vote at all.  Every voter action or inaction is consequential.

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Terri Kane’s commentary highlights a dilemma most any of us have these days.  We have so many sources of information, so many choices, that it becomes difficult to even have a civil conversation – what I read you’ve never heard of; what you saw on television I didn’t watch – on and on.

My friend who sent me the link to the commentary admits she rarely watches the tube.

As for me, I do, but I try to at least get a sense of other perspectives.

Kanefield’s post reminded me of something I wrote in 1996, after the Presidential election that year.  My commentary is here: Politics 1996.  This is five pages, and a good piece of it takes a look back at a vignette in 1960 Presidential election time.  At least take a look.

The purpose of this post is not to advocate for anyone or anything; rather to encourage your own personal reflection in the interim between now and November 5.

Four years ago, as Covid-19 strangled all of our ‘business as usual’ notions, there still seems a national PTSD.   We all have our stories.

I decided to use my time ‘in quarantine’ 2020-21 to sort through and label over 20,000 photos then-and-still stored on my computer.  Most photos were unlabeled.   (Most were digital, and I hadn’t noted in some cases, who or what they showed.  The digital ones were date-stamped, of course, so I could identify most.)

It was a lot of work, but I got the file essentially up to date…through 2019.  But I continued to take pictures, and fell into the same old habits of not finishing the task of labeling.

This past Wednesday I started again.  This time it was easier, and the first day I did 2020, the first year of the Pandemic, and at this writing I’m through mid-2021.  In this post I want to briefly translate my first 12 months in the Pandemic, through the photos I reviewed, and perhaps jog you to do something similar from your own perspective.

We’ve all lived through an immensely significant time in our history,  with lessons hopefully learned from this awful experience.  We’re not out of the now-four-year-war….

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I archive all of my posts, which are all word-searchable.  The first post I did on Covid-19 was dated March 6, 2020, and can be read here.

What follows is completely jogged by my own personal photos. and speaks for itself.  Everyone has differing memories of course.  Maybe something I write will jog something in you.

Here goes:

By March, 2020, it had become undeniable that something very unpleasant was evolving in our world.  My first personal memory – my personal first notice – was the news of the Nursing Home deaths in Washington state.  My total ‘normal’ daily world was upended almost overnight.  At first,  there was no public alarm.  The first reports were perhaps two cases in Minnesota.  It turned out one of these was from a nearby suburb, but of course this wasn’t mentioned at the time.  But concern began to increase.

March 15 I went to church as usual, and ushered  It was a rather sparsely attended service.  At the end of Mass, the Priest announced that there would be no more Masses open to the public.  At the back of the church I took a photo of assorted disinfecting items.  At the time, no one knew exactly what we were dealing with.  But we were rapidly coming to know it was deadly.  Places like Italy and suburban New York City were harbingers.

I had planned a breakfast meeting with a friend on St. Patrick’s Day, March 17.  We were to meet at  a pancake house, which was supposed to be open.  My friend drove by and found that they wouldn’t be open for breakfast.  So the ‘official’ start of the Pandemic for me was St. Patrick’s Day.

March 20 was when ‘normal’ ended for everyone in Minnesota, and we weren’t alone.

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I am a creature of habit, which created the necessity of adjusting to a new reality.  I began a daily practice of taking a photo or two of some evidence of life as it was evolving.

April 7 I photographed a chalked message on the sidewalk of my walking route: “Smile.  We Will Get Through this Together.”  It was a nice touch.  But even walkers were sparse, and most were masked, and gave lots of space.

April 22, I saw the first leaves of spring – a bush – and I took a photo of it.  It’s in the photo file.

April 23, a young woman friend of the family turned 21, and the family celebration was outside with lots of social distancing.  It was a unique gathering, which became common.  In this time frame I recall seeing a Memorial Service on a lawn for someone who had died.  I had begun a practice of one or two brief solitary drives each day to dull cabin fever.

By May 2, I knew my 80th birthday on May 4 would be a private affair, and I took a picture of the street sign at 80th Street South in the adjacent suburb of Cottage Grove.   A resident nearby was clearly suspicious of why I was taking the picture.  “I’m turning 80” was satisfactory for him, I guess.

Schools were closed, and on May 9 a local Middle School where my daughter is Principal had a Drive-by, where school staff waved to the students and parents driving by – sort of a parade.  Now, there is a Covid generation of kids, and the process of recovery is slow.  But it would have been insane to keep the schools open back then.

I did one screen shot of the first zoom meeting I was part of.  Another big adjustment.

By Mid-May, 2020, I had completely abandoned my outdoor walks.  Even walkers, even social distance, seemed not enough for some walkers I met.  It was a paranoid time.  I began doing ‘sanity drives’ a couple of times a day: just nearby places I’d not seen, no more than a few miles.  I got to know places like Newport, Grey Cloud Island, old Cottage Grove, and the like.  All solitary visits in a car.  Often I’d stop to get takeout coffee at my Caribou Coffee – there was no indoor seating, takeout only.

The evening of May 29, my friends restaurant, Gandhi Mahal, was burned to the ground in south Minneapolis, one of the last acts of violence in the wake of the May 25 murder of George Floyd.  To this day, the block on which the restaurant had stood has not been rebuilt, except the U.S. Post Office.  The Surveillance Camera was burned along with the building, and no one has been arrested.  Four years later, there remain significant residual effects of that awful week.  This was face-mask time, so perpetrators of this wanton violence were most likely masked, and only have their conscience as punishment.

June 3, 2020: the school year had been totally upset all Spring.  My daughter is Principal of a large Middle School, and I saw this in her office when I stopped in for a brief visit.  I gathered most school management was by laptop….

June 3, 2020 Oltman Middle School

June 7, grandson Parker graduated from high school.  It was a most unusual graduation – students made appointments to come, one at a time, to receive their diploma.  On the 12th, grandson Ben turned 15.  There were occasional other similar events, all outdoors.

August 12 I took a screen shot on the television of the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris candidacy for President.

September 19 I saw a sign at Basilica announcing that people could come to Mass, but needed to pre-register.  I gather one per pew was normal density, possible exception: couples.  Few attended, I think.  The church ventilation system had been upgraded, and a new on-line televised Mass initiated, which continues to this day.

October 2, I took a screen shot of the President being taken by helicopter to Walter Reed Hospital for treatment of Covid; October 6, another screen shot of the defiant President back at the White House.  All stops had been pulled to save his life, I gathered.  (For the rest of us, see February 4, below).

November 7, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris were elected.  Another screen shot.

January 6, 2021, I took 32 screen shots of the riot at the U.S. Capitol – the first at 2 pm. the last at 3:07 p.m. Central Time.  I watched the entire spectacle in stunned silence.

January 17, I took a screen shot of heavy security gathering at the Minnesota State Capitol in the event of some demonstration there.  I don’t think a lot transpired, but there was fear of violence.

January 19, a screen shot that Covid-19 had tallied 400K deaths, and 24.2 M cases (400,000 and 24.2 million).

January 20 screen shots of the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris as President and Vuce-President of the United States.

I got my first vaccine, February 4, 2021.  The clinic was very well organized.   Since, have had 6 rounds, and am pending a 7th soon.  I was pretty diligent with masking through the first year; and some habits, like social-distancing in lines, are positive residual habits.

February 9, the 2nd impeachment of the past president began.

February 27, 2021: back in restaurant.  Life returning to normal, but lots of after-effects.

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April 6, 2024: To date, we’ve avoided the virus, without becoming hermits, but we’ve been careful. The disease to now has taken over 1,000,000 American lives….

I tend to be an optimist.  I think enough of us have possibly learned a thing or two from the catastrophe which we experienced four years ago.  A primary re-learning for myself is that every single one of us on the globe is an interdependent part of a massive community.  We can’t survive by our own individual wits.  It is too easy to get careless, to not learn from mistakes, to pretend we can do this on our own.  I wish us well.

POSTNOTE: Reflections after Easter post, here.  Today is the local Senate District Democratic Convention.  I’m a delegate, and will write about that later.

COMMENTS below

Overnight Tuesday came an e-mail from a friend, commenting on a Frank Lloyd Wright home she know, somewhere.

The reference jogged me to think back to mid-October, 2013, visiting Wright’s Taliesin, Spring Green WI, and seeing a unique windmill there (see photos at end of this post).  In turn, that caused me to think of another windmill found at the North Dakota farm around the time of my Uncle’s death in 2015, which I came across in a box a short while ago.  It is below, simply a piece of farm art on a scrap piece of wood, doubtless a cooperative creation of persons very familiar with windmills, prairie farms and water.

I don’t know who did the above creation, measuring about 7″x12″.  It is likely a photo from a farm magazine glued on a piece of scrap lumber and then varnished to become a piece of home grown decoupage.  It was a hobby which I remember seemed to have caught on like a prairie wildfire among my elders for a time.  If there was a ‘culprit’, I would put my Aunt Florence near ground zero for planting the seed to decoupage.  But it could have been my mom, or any to the other sisters or female aunts.  You know how such things go.

Show this photo to anyone who’s ever had a close call with an old farm, and it will bring forth lots of memories.  Windmills were the farm “water works” – a source of hopefully fresh water from a fairly shallow well.

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The windmill at Taliesin has its own story, which the internet helpfully searched for me.  Here, you can read the short story.

Oct 16, 2013 at Frank Lloyd Wrights Taliesin, Spring Green WI.  Photos by Dick Bernard

October 16, 2013. Taliesin

In a way, those windmills are like all of us.  In their lives they’ve seen a lot, and done a lot.

Unlike us, they spent their time stuck in place.  Most of us are capable of more flexibility, and making more of an impact than we feel we’re stuck with.

We take many things for granted, these days, which folks couldn’t imagine not all that many years ago.  Rural electricity replaced wind power on my grandparents farm in 1949.  An interesting diary of another North Dakotan adds to that story.  You can read the article here.

Now another spring begins.  A good time to take another look at how we, as individuals, can positively impact the status quo.  And then ‘spring’ into action!

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Bonus PREVIEW, especially for those whose ancestry includes French-Canadian and/or Midwest.  Visit the French American Heritage Foundation website (here) , click Library tab, click books, and scroll down to Roy-Collette Family History.  This is brand new, a French-Canadian family story from France, to Quebec, to the United States, to the Twin Cities area, North Dakota, Ste Elizabeth, Manitoba and Lampman, Saskatchewan.  This is author  Remi Roy’s paternal grandparents story.  At least scroll through the document.  There will be a specific post on the book later in April, but the entire 315 page book is available.  Disclosure: Remi Roy and I are cousins through the Collette line.  At the same site is my 400+ page French-Canadian family history, Bernard-Collette Family History, which is also available in its entirety, from 2010.

COMMENTS (more at end of post):

from Fred:  Liked the Taliesen windmill. We visited Frank Lloyd Wright’s Spring Green hangout probably around the same time you did. I don’t remember the windmill, though. We greatly enjoyed the visit. Wright actually influenced how we sited the house we are now in. Instead of going up a few stories for a better river view, we opted for a land-conforming walkout rambler style. It still feels like the right decision.