Sohlzenitsyn

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September 5 I footnoted the following suggestion in another post:

Yesterday, came a link to a 1978 commencement speech at Harvard by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn .  I printed out the 16 pages, read them, went to the  “Reflections on Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address” from October 26, 2020, and also looked up Solzhenitsyn’s wiki-bio.  This is not light reading.  Respectively, these are 16, 17 and 31 pages.  At the end the 1978 speech is a link to Solzhenitsyn’s own personal reflection on his 1978 speech, written in Fall 1978. Here is the official brief biography of Solzhenitsyn.

Solzhenitsyn, born in 1918, was 59 when he gave the speech at Harvard; and it was in the second year of President Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

I took a special interest in this commentary because in the same 24 hour period the link was forwarded to me from an unlikely source, the Department of Justice made a major announcement relating to Russian disinformation intended to interfere with the United States election and functioning.  The news release is here, and highly publicized in U.S. media including my own local paper, the Minnesota Star Tribune September 4&5: MN StarTribune Sep 4&5 2024.  There was no direct connection indicated within the DOJ communication; but the topics were so directly related that it wasn’t a wild leap to connect the two. (Heather Cox Richardson on the Department of Justice announcement Sep. 6 2024.)

I asked the person who forwarded the Solzhenitsyn link to me, who forwarded it to him?  No answer.

I printed out and read all of the articles, totaling 51 pages, and observed that there was a great deal of content to discuss from all sorts of points of view.

Without arguing the substance of the speech, which was powerful, I just want to give it some context, since it was given at a particular point in history, by a Russian, to an American audience at Harvard, and ultimately worldwide.

As noted above, the speech was given in the spring of 1978, which was the beginning of the second year of President Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

Three years earlier the Vietnam war ended.  A year before, President Nixon had resigned, replaced by Gerald Ford, who in turn had replaced Nixon’s vice-president who himself had resigned in disgrace.  Ford pardoned Nixon.  The 1960s and 1970s were turbulent political times in the U.S.

In Jimmy Carter’s recap of his life, written when he turned 90, he remarks that the beginning of the movement which ultimately became today’s White Christian Nationalist group began to sprout about 1979.  Carter was one of the most active Christians ever to be President, but he kept the wall between church and state.

The other actor at the time was Solzhenitsyn’s Soviet Union, which directly affected him, of course, since that is where he grew up.

I simply looked up the assorted leaders of Russia.  The names will probably ring a bell.  Lenin (1922-24); Stalin (1924-53); Malenkov (six months, 1953); Kruschev (1953-64); Brezhnev (1964-82 – the President of USSR in 1978); Andropov (1982-84); Chernenko (1984-85); Gorbachev (1985-91, in whose time the USSR collapsed); Yeltsin (1991-99); Putin (2002-2008); Medvedev (2008-12); Putin 2012-present,

Solzhenitsyn’s reference points pre-dated 1978.  His unknown “wall”, like our own, was the future beyond 1978.  He died in 2008.  I wonder what his thoughts were in the days after 1978.

In the 2020 commentary on the 1978 speech by Romanian Sergiu Klainerman, Princeton, I took particular interest in his reference to “Woke”, a word I’d not heard until very recent years, and now has a derisive connotation.  You can look up its definition.  What I notice is there is a fence of sorts to keep Woke within specific limits.  For instance excessive wealth and concentration of power within certain elites, and the preeminence of Capitalism, however defined, are not Woke, but it seems to me are no different than diversity, equity and inclusion….

History is complicated.  The speech and additions is well worth reading, reflecting and discussing.

 

The City Manager

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Friday I was at a meeting of the Roseville MN Optimists (Roseville Optimists ).  I’m not a member, but came as a guest, interested because the program was a group of Ukraine students, here for a short visit under the auspices of YouLEAD (Youth Leadership Engagement and Development Program: YouLEAD.

This was a large meeting – over 100 of us in attendance.  We were assigned to tables, and my ‘next door neighbor’ for lunch was somebody I didn’t know.  Mark and I were of the same generation, shall I say.  Two retired guys….

We’ve all been to many meetings like this.  In our brief time together, Mark and I found out the tiniest snippets about each other.  In his case, his career was in city management, part of the time in the small city where my own office was for 10 of my staff years; also my Minnesota “home town”.  We didn’t know each other then – no reason to – but I remarked that a colleague friend had, I thought, a brother who’d been a Minnesota City Manager as well, and I verified that later.  Mark knew of him, but he’d come to Minnesota a bit later.  Small world….

In the same 24 hours, I watched the League of Women Voters televised Q&A of six candidates for two city council positions up for election on Nov. 5.  There are eight candidates on the ballot; the other two didn’t show for whatever reason. All of the six I viewed presented themselves very well, and all seemed to be accomplished people, with track records of community engagement.  I’m pleased with how my city runs, and I didn’t say any of them who I’d consider a liability, so I have a quandary, still,  which two will get my vote.   I’m sure I’m not alone.

Then, of course, came Springfield, Ohio.  I need not say more: front page news, a mayor in the spotlight, doubtless a City Manager working in the background to deal with a community crisis, which has become a national item of news and a political crisis as well.

In the course of about 24 hours – a day – I’d come across the simplicities and the complexities of living in our society.

It’s a bit like driving a late-model car these days.  The driver assumes everything: that the car will run efficiently, and start, of course, and that there will not be a flat tire, or an accident, or anything else interfering with a climate controlled journey from here to there.

In the background, always, of course, is a backup team to try to manage imperfections and disagreements.

In our town, it is a Mayor and City Council who receives flak, probably, about most every grievance.  And because there are over 80,000 of us – larger than Springfield – these problems need to be shunted over to somebody, probably the City Manager, whose job it is to figure who, and how, to resolve whatever the issue might be.

We are a nation full of unsung heroes, and we too often forget this.

Back at the meeting, four of this years visiting students from Ukraine reflected on their five weeks here.  They are the third group I’ve seen in person, starting with the first in 2022 – the year Ukraine was invaded.  They all have represented their country extraordinarily well.  One of them, from Lviv, was at our table.  He said he knew four languages, and his English was very good.

Another at our table was a young woman, an American, involved with YouLEAD.  Awesome young person.

At the beginning of the session, another Ukrainian student, who’d been here for the first gathering in 2022, and who’d sung a song for us at that gathering, sang the Ukrainian National Anthem for our group.

Is there hope for the future?  Absolutely yes.  We were all young once, and among us, then, were leaders like these kids are today.

Thank you.

The Great Peace Race

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See important postnote #2 at the end of this post.

The ‘meat’ of this post is the link in the next line.  But see the postnotes as well.

This link, Peace Race (1) (3), opens to a very interesting 8-page commentary on a very noteworthy citizen initiative through the 1960s calling attention to, and mobilizing citizen action, about the Arms Race.  Author Jim Nelson, an active member of United Nations Association MN for over 50 years (1972 photo below), was and continues to be an outspoken advocate, and bears witness to the virtue of persistence. and the quest for peace in our world.  This article, published in 2024, speaks for itself, and I’m proud to present it here for your reflection, sharing and discussion.  Great work, Jim.

A key character in Peace Race is Hubert Humphrey, former Minneapolis mayor, U.S. Senator and Vice-President of the United States. through the late 1940s through the 1970s.  On Friday evening, Twin Cities Public Television airs a program on Humphrey, live streamed to where you live.  Details are below the photo.  This is a unique opportunity, and Jim’s article is a major contribution to understanding how Humphrey fit in to the politics of peace.

Also below, are links to other activities which highlight that we have a long way still to go towards a peaceful world, but actions like Jim and many others give reason for hope.  As Churchill so famously said:”never give in, never, never, never“.

Jim Nelson, United Nations Association State Fair Booth, 1972

Friday evening Sept 13 at 8 p.m. CDT, TPT Channel 2 in the Twin Cities will air a special on Mayor Humphrey of Minneapolis. This program will be live-streamed https://www.tpt.org/watch-live.  It will air again, though not live-stream, on TPT Life Channel  channel on Sep 19 at 8 p.m.  Here’s the TPT descriptor from their program magazine: Hubert Humphrey on TPT Sep 13 and 19 2024

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POSTNOTES: other programs for anyone interested:

  1. Middle East Peace Now is sponsoring a zoom program about Hamas, Saturday morning Sep 14

Date/Time
Date(s) – Saturday, September 14, 2024
10:00 am – 11:30 am

 

“What Hamas represents politically,
why most Arabs support it,
and how Israel-US should deal with it”
with Rami G. Khouri  

Saturday, September 14, 2024    MEPN Zoom Webinar
10:00am – 11:30am CT

About the Speaker: Rami G. Khouri is a Palestinian-American academic and journalist whose family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. During his 50 years as a journalist in the Middle East, he was editor of the Jordan Times and the Daily Star (Beirut) newspapers, and contributed reporting and opinion pieces from the region to the Financial Times, NPR, BBC radio, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and other outlets.

Rami founded and managed the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs (IFI), at the American University of Beirut, where he also taught journalism for a decade. He has been a Harvard Nieman Journalism Fellow and a senior fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, and a Fellow of the Palestinian Academic Society for the Study of International Affairs in Arab East Jerusalem. He was a visiting scholar at Villanova, Oklahoma, Mt Holyoke, Syracuse, Northeastern, and Tufts universities. Rami is currently a distinguished fellow at IFI, a senior fellow at the Arab Center Washington, DC, and a regular contributor to Aljazeera online. His texts and interviews are available on X @ramikhouri.

Rami Khouri’s latest book, co-edited with Helena Cobban, is entitled Understanding Hamas and Why That Matters and is scheduled for release in early October.

Please direct questions about this event to mepn@mepn.org

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2.  Another upcoming zoom cast relating to Israel/Palestine is sponsored by J-Street on the “Spiraling Situation in the West Bank”.  It’s Thursday 11 a.m. CDT, September 12.  Preregistration is required.  Here is the form.


The program descriptor

Media attention was jerked back to the West Bank Friday following the horrifying news that a 26-year-old American peace advocate had been shot dead by Israeli forces.

The news comes amid ongoing reports of an unprecedented rise in settler violence against Palestinians in the West Bank, increased IDF military operations and a near-total lack of accountability for soldiers and settlers alike – with over 500 Palestinians killed since October 7, including more than 140 children. Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations warn that the situation is going from bad to worse, with security experts alarmed that simmering violence risks boiling over into full-scale conflict

Here’s what you can expect:

  • Lior Amihai will take us right into the situation on the ground in the West Bank and unpack the indispensable work Peace Now is doing, the high level of danger posed to Palestinians and peace advocates, and rising Israeli and Palestinian extremism.
  • Michael Sfard will share his analysis of the damning international legal implications of decades of occupation, including this summer’s significant ruling by the International Court of Justice that found Israeli occupation of the West Bank to be illegal.
  • Celine Touboul will offer expert policy analysis and recommendations for defusing the growing crisis in the West Bank, protecting human rights and safety there, and charting a better course.

We will also discuss the role that sanctions on those most responsible for violence and instability in the West Bank can play in holding perpetrators accountable and impacting the reality on the ground.


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3. Twin Cities Nonviolent for several years has sponsored programs related to nonviolence for twelve days, this year beginning on Sept 21 through October 5.  Here is this years Program.

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4.  9-11-01.  Sunday evening CBS’ 60 Minutes gave a full hour reprise of it’s 2022 special honoring the fire fighters of New York for their heroism at the time of 9-11-01.  NYPD lost hundreds of its own in the aftermath of the attack.  The report brought tears to my eyes, as it always does and will.  I had basically finished the draft of this post before watching.

Those who knew me then, and now, know that there are two “me’s” when it comes to 9-11-01.  The first is the early weeks after the disaster itself,.  I was working on a Habitat for Humanity build in Minneapolis the week of, including  9-11, and only heard about it on a radio at the site during the day.  This was before cell phones, and obviously there was no TV either.  We didn’t know the towers collapsed until arriving home late in the afternoon.  The e-mail network which years later became the Outside the Walls blog, thence Thoughts Towards a Better World originated in late September, 2001 – it was sort of a group catharsis venture, which some readers would remember.

In early October my mood changed as the decision was made to bomb Afghanistan in response.  To get al Qaeda.  That and other actions were applauded by the general public.  Often at this space I’ve shown the news article that I kept at that point in time.  It is below.  In my opinion, retribution was not a worthwhile response.  It was a lonely time: I was in the 6%…..  But it was also became the entry point for me into the peace movement, of which I’m still a more informal part.

The debate will go on forever, I suppose, about 9-11-01 and what it means.  I’m not alone.  To remember is important.  To disagree is okay.  Our war on Afghanistan, then on Iraq, then back to Afghanistan, really has not ended, 23 years later.  When will we learn?

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4.   Public television: I am a long-time contributor to TPT, for the last six years $1,000 per year as AMillionCopies.  If you would like to be a co-participant,  send me a check for any amount, made to TPT, post-dated to October 31, 2024, and I will add it to the 2024 contribution.  Every little bit helps.  Interested by don’t have my address?  Just ask.

POSTNOTE #2 3 p.m.: Shortly after I published this post, the breaking news was about the just released Congressional Report on the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.  That debate can go on with out me.  In the Sep 2 post, I included a recent column from John Rash in the Minnesota Star Tribune interviewing the American ambassador to Kabul, Minnesotan Ross Wilson, at the end of the Trump years, and beginning of Biden years, 2020-21.  He was a direct witness to particularly policy considerations in those difficult months.  You can read it here: John Rash 8 31 24 STrib Afghan.  It is an important addition to this conversation.

Re the “Debate”: I will likely watch it, but that is about all I’ll have to say about it here.

POSTNOTE #3 Sep. 11:  I did watch the entire debate and quite a bit of the post-debate discussion, and I’m glad I did.  Kamala Harris was pitch perfect.  Still won’t make the rest of the campaign any easier.

Winder, Georgia

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25 years ago – it was April 20, 1999, I was returning from a meeting and a bulletin came on the car radio about a school shooting in Littleton, Colorado.  I paid attention: my son and family lived in Littleton.

The day and week unfolded.  The incident was at Columbine High School. I had no idea where Columbine was, but ultimately found that it was little more than a mile from my sons home.  At the time, my granddaughter was Middle School, so there was no direct connection, but the incident was by no means abstract to this commuter 1,000 miles away.

Some time earlier I’d made plane reservations for about a week of hiking with siblings in Utah, and fortuitously had scheduled a stopover to visit my son and family enroute home the next weekend.

So, about May 1, I was with the family as we slowly trudged up “Cross Hill” in the rain, to see the memorial crosses raised to remember the dead.  (‘Cross Hill’ was basically construction residue, and from its summit, Columbine. below. was easily viewed.)  Two of the crosses had been sawed off – the person who put them there, had also put up crosses for the two killers, both students at the school.  Giving them a cross was an outrage, to some family of victims.

It was a dismal, rainy day.  Nearby, Robert Schuller of the then-famed Crystal Cathedral in California, came up the soggy slope, separate from the rest of us, with a crew of assistants.  I gathered he was doing some video for use in his television ministry.

Back home, May 4 – National Teacher Day – I talked to teacher union and administrators in Anoka-Hennepin School District.  An unexpected part of the talk was about my recent experience.   I wore the same clothes I’d worn on Cross Hill.  I still have them hanging in a hall closet….

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Fast forward to yesterday at Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia.  Four dead this time, two students, two teachers, nine injured.

Once again, thoughts and prayers.

School shootings have become so routine that I doubt Winder will get much more air time, as Columbine did so many years ago.  There have been hundreds of school shootings in the last 25 years.

Ironically, in my most recent post, September 2, I was remembering when I was 18, in 1958, including this: “There was not even a thought about school shootings.”   This tragedy has a particularly personal dimension: two of my daughters are educators working with 14 year olds and others in schools, today.  Doubtless there are many conversations going on.

Have we learned anything since Columbine?

I think it was in the year after Columbine that Charlton Heston made his famous “cold, dead hands” comment at the Convention of National Rifle Association.  The decision was, in effect, “damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead”.

This is not a time to be silent.

EXTRA CREDIT:

Coincidentally, a couple of items ‘crossed my desk’ which indirectly relate to this conversation.

Yesterday, came a link to a 1978 commencement speech at Harvard by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn .  I printed out the 16 pages, read them, went to the  “Reflections on Solzhenitsyn’s Harvard Address” from October 26, 2020, and also looked up Solzhenitsyn’s wiki-bio.  This is not light reading.  Respectively, these are 16, 17 and 31 pages.  At the end the 1978 speech is a link to Solzhenitsyn’s own personal reflection on his1978 speech, June 7, 2018,

Solzhenitsyn was 59 when he gave the speech; and it was in the second year of President Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

Secondly, also yesterday, came a provocative commentary on Artificial Intelligence and its role in the present and future.  “What Happens when the bots compete for your love?”  by Yuval Noah Harari

The reality is that each and every one of us ultimately make decisions on these things, in large part by who we select to be our leaders.

If there is interest, I’m willing to do a specific post on these writings with contributions from others who actually read each of the articles.  

COMMENTS:

from Laura: Thanks so much, Dick. Please pick up the book The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt. Anyone who cares about the young people of our world must read it! Just tremendous.

 

 

65 Days to Nov. 5, 2024

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POSTNOTE Sep 23: Final post related to November 5 here (Sep 20, 2024)

Related: An excellent commentary from John Rash in Saturday Minnesota Star Tribune on “The facts on Afghanistan from a Minnesotan who was at the center of it all.”  Here is the article in pdf: John Rash 8 31 24 STrib Afghan.  Rash interviewed Minnesotan Ross Wilson, ambassador to Afghanistan in 2020-21 in the administrations of both Donald Trump and Joseph Biden.

Thoughts about Labor Day: Heather Cox Richardson

Minnesotans: You can see the names which will be on your 2024 ballot here.

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Some personal thoughts before the election.

“Regardless of where you live, please visit and share this website: VOTE.GOV”.  Minnesotans, early voting begins September 20.  The MN website is here.  65 days to Election Day, November 5.   My own view on the upcoming election, here. 

Below there are two maps.  WHY THE MAPS?  People everywhere are a very diverse lot.  The United States is a particularly diverse country among the nations of the world.  Today and in the future we are part of world society.  Each of us has our own network – people we know who in turn have connections with many others.   Society is all of us.  The maps are simply reminders of these physical connections.

(Here’s a pdf of the above: US Map.)  Map is courtesy of John M Wolfson, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons

I am particularly interested in the viewpoints of young people, who are a major voting constituency, but who traditionally haven’t gotten as politically engaged, or vote as much as others.  Still, they are ultimately the ones who will inherit whatever government, however constituted, carries forward for, and will affect them far longer, than it will me.

In our country, children are given a pass until age 18; at 18 they are adults, with all the rights and responsibilities of adults of any age.

There is an obvious major generation gap, between myself and the youngsters. (My youngest grandchild turns 18 on November 10 – the only one not yet voting age.).

For most of us, being 18 is almost out of sight in our rear view mirror.  I’ve spent some time thinking about how life was when I turned 18, May 4, 1958.  (Kids born in 2006 will begin to turn 18 on Nov. 5.  9-11-01 babies will be 23….)

On this Labor Day, I invite you to consider, for yourself, three questions.

  1.  What were the political realities and ground rules when you became 18?
  2. What are the political realities and ground rules for today’s 18 year olds.
  3. What is your assessment of what that reality will be 18 years from now, or even more daunting, how about 66 years from now (the number of years I’ve been out of high school).

Obviously, you will have different answers than I.  I’m just encouraging some independent thought as you go into conversations about the consequences of this, or any, election in our democracy.  I will give a very brief overview on my own view of question one below the map.

 

Map: Geordie Bosanko, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>

66 years ago, May 4, 1958,  I lived in a tiny town in the center of North Dakota (see the blue dot on the map).  Today, and for many years, I’ve lived in the twin cities metropolitan area of Minnesota 14 miles from Wisconsin.  (the second blue dot on the map).

In 1958, I had to register for the military draft.  I think this applied only to males, and it was no nonsense.  Voting age was 21.  I was not old enough to vote in the 1960 presidential election; and the first election where I was eligible to vote for President was 1964, when I was 24.

Things like communications methods and mobility generally were very primitive compared with today.  The Interstate Highway system had just been authorized, and the first stretch of 1-94 in North Dakota was the stretch between Valley City and Jamestown completed in the summer of 1958.

Sputnik, in the Fall of 1957, heightened the sense of national insecurity.  About a month before Sputnik, September, 1957, I saw Louis Armstrong and his band in person in performance in nearby Carrington ND.  Needless to say it was a unique experience. Nuclear was an element of schools in 1957-58, even the tiny ones.   Even conceptually, things like “national”, “international”, even “state”, were more vague than today.  We weren’t nearly as aware as we’re forced to be, now.

There was not even a thought about school shootings.  Drugs really hadn’t graduated from alcohol and cigarettes.  On and on.

Go back another 66 years to 1894, what would we see?  1828?  1766?  Ahead to 2090..?.

Your turn.  Our future is on the ballot two months from now.  2090 is not abstract.

POSTNOTE:  There have been three other posts this past week: State Fair, The Forgotten Tribe, and School.  Do check them out.

VOTE, and know well who you’re voting for, and why.  Whatever you do, you’re stuck with the results.

I plan to spend less time on “politics” at this space over the next two months.  Every conceivable issue has been hashed and rehashed for all of the candidates for national office.  Most of the national candidates have been well known public figures for years.  Most everything else is local.  I plan to continue to write about whatever comes to mind, as usual.  Check back once in awhile.

COMMENTS (more below):

from Lois: Hi Dick – Amen to your decision about discussion/facts/opinions of political items in the next two months in your blog.  I think we all have political fatigue.  Your reminder of on our first opportunity to vote brings to mind what Kennedy said in his Inaugural Address – “Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”.   More than any other words, this has been the most meaningful for me over 60 years of anything relating to elections.  From city government to federal, we all need to participate in some way.    Thank you for all your interesting chats.   Lois

from Brian:

Very interesting!   Re:  “In our country, children are given a pass until age 18; at 18 they are adults, with all the rights and responsibilities of adults of any age.”  I had a similar experience you had.    I grew up in Texas.  When I was 18 my pastor, my parents, and my government said it was my duty to go to Vietnam (to kill or be killed), to a country that was not threatening us.  And l like you, I couldn’t vote or legally order beer.
I work with credit unions.  I’ve actually been to Vietnam a few times working with German friends there.   My wife and I loved Hanoi.  We rented a motorbike and drove all around northern ‘Nam, to the port, to the border with China.  Fun!
So getting back to your comment,  I refused the draft, I went off to work in Denmark–loved that, wild girls and all, ha ha.  And I had a great job in accounting there.
My momma, a negotiator, made a deal with the draft board.  If I came back, I could have a student exemption.   I accepted.  And then I got a high-enough draft number to avoid the draft.  I just went to church yesterday.  Jesus is about love, not war!
Best,
Brian
P.S.  I still have my fake ID where I showed I was 3 years older than I really am.  At the U of H even under 21, I did manage to have a brew or two, ha ha!    Even Jesus at the Last Supper had some alcohol, ha ha.    And when I was an altar boy in San Antonio I had to arrange the priest’s wine and ring a bell when he blessed it!   (I did not drink any of it, though).   Dad and Momma sent me to Mexico where they asked Uncle Stanley, who lived there, to show me how to drink alcohol.  My first drink was a gin and tonic he fixed.   Then six months later on the Texas Clipper  [see note below] we made a port of call at Bordeaux, France and we visited a winery and I had my first wines there–too much, but I didn’t know, ha ha.)
ADDED NOTE from Brian: I didn’t see your reference to the Texas Clipper but I can tell you what it was.  It was a converted liberty ship run by Texas A&M Aggies.  It sailed out of Galveston, Texas in 1966 with me on it working in the engine room.   We went to Dublin, Bordeaux,  Spain and the Canaries.   Loved it.

Response to Brian: Brian and I met on a powerful trip to observe Microfinance in Haiti in 2006.
Brian, yesterday the Priest/homilist was a retired farm kid in his 80s who is a powerful preacher.  When he talks, you listen.  Fr. Harry preached on the text of the day Mk 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23 which is all about rules, which the Pharisees seemed to adore.  The essence of his message, as I understood it, was about the contradictions within religion and within all of us.  He commented about the Inquisition, and assorted goings on since, and the good and the not so good about this or that ideology and the impact of religion on the conflicts of the day.  in his 15 or so minutes, no one was spared criticism or compliment.  At the very end of his commentary he had a “by the way”, which I don’t think was at all coincidental.  He noted that Pope Francis was on the way to Indonesia, the country with the largest Muslim population on the planet….
Our large church was pretty well filled.  You could hear a pin drop.
Thanks much.


from Mary in New York: Last evening at a Labor Day picnic a friend asked if I knew of the reasons for Tim Walz ‘frequent’ trips to China….her implication being sinister.  I knew nothing but now am curious whether the local Minnesota editorial comment is as ‘suspicious’ as my friend Maggie.

I tried to lighten her conspiracy theory drift by comment that Walz was probably secretly married to Ivanka and was helping her with chinese business.
Granted, I know little but tend to judge the story of being on China’s side on its surface merits…..pretty much above board.

Response from Dick:  Maybe this piece from NPR will help.  The opposition research crew is becoming frantic to find some real scandal about the Governor.  Mostly what I witness about such revelation in Minnesota is a big yawn.  Walz has near 20 years as an elected congressperson or governor in Minnesota.  The book on him has been open for many years.  Basically he seems just a normal guy, with loads of relevant experience to lead.  .

 

 

School: Memories, Another Year Begins

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“Never underestimate a public school teacher.”  Tim Walz, acceptance speech at the DNC Convention 2024.

Tuesday after Labor Day is the traditional start to the school year in Minnesota.  While there are some deviations from that norm, most pre-K-12 kids will be back in school on Tuesday.  This  means approximately 50,000,000 youngsters.  Another 5 million or so are in private schools; an unknown but significant number of students are home-schooled.

Monday, August 26, I had my picture taken at the booth of Education Minnesota, the school employees union which was my employer for 27 years.  Here is the pdf. Education Minnesota 2024

However one slices it, there are a great number of kids in school, everywhere in this nation, and if one factors in all school employees, from bus drivers to superintendents there are millions more involved in public education.  Of course, this breadth creates infinite opportunities for good and bad publicity.

Public Education is an essential institution of human beings.  Public schools are where the vast majority of us grew up as part of a greater community than traditional family to become the adults in society that we are today.

Public education is not perfect.  No institution of humanity is.  Nonetheless, we can all be thankful public education not only exists, but thrives.  Back in 2006, I endeavored to define public education as community.  The short essay is here: Community by Dick Bernard 2006.

I probably relate to public education much more than most.

My parents were career public school teachers; I graduated from a Teachers College; I taught junior high school for 9 years, then spent 27 years representing public school teachers.  My children and grandchildren went to public school. One daughter is  long-time Principal of a large suburban Middle School; another daughter teaches grade 7-8 in a parochial school.  I’m not a school inspector, looking over people’s shoulders, but I can fairly say that one time or another I have witnessed a great variety of situations.

Mom and Dad began their teaching careers in the 1920s in one-room country schools in North Dakota (which is where Mom and her siblings attended their first 8 grades). Their first home as a married couple was a vacant classroom in their school at Medora ND.

We lived in a variety of tiny places in North Dakota.  The population of my largest town was about 230 when I lived there, making VP candidate Tim Walz’s Butte NE almost a big city in comparison.  My senior class was 8 students.

There were lots of deficiencies in these tiny places.  A typical high school had perhaps two or three teachers, one of whom was the Superintendent, who was always my Dad.  Being a teachers kid had its disadvantages, of course.  On the other hand, you had the teacher 24-7, like it or not!  I have no complaints.

A short while ago I came across a picture of Dad visiting a rural school he’d superintended nearly 50 years earlier, when he was in his 30s and I was 3-5 years old.

Henry Bernard visiting Eldridge Public School 1991.  Photo by Dick Bernard (he was about my present age in this photo).

This particular school (Eldridge, ND a few miles west of Jamestown on I-94) was occupied by a family when we visited it in 1991 and it was in good shape, though it had not been a school for years.  Dad is holding onto the rope for the school bell.

As noted, Mom and Dad were both career school teachers.  Two of Mom’s sisters were teachers, and one brother and one sister-in-law and one brother-in-law as well, so there was no lack of teacher presence when there were family get-togethers.

Teaching and School and all the attendant support staff and programs is an essential human institution.  Every year is a new start for students and everyone else.  New classes, classmates, parents, etc., etc., etc.

I have always been intrigued by the philosophy of education for Roosevelt Junior High School (grade 7-9) in 1966.  Roosevelt was where I taught 1965-72.  The philosophy, printed in the yearbook between the photos of Principal and Assistant Principal, was very succinct: “A junior high school is a bridge between elementary and senior high school.  It is a point where young people can have a chance to mature before they start to accept their responsibilities as adults”.

To all those in school, I wish you a good year!

Mom, Esther, (left) and Lucina Busch, her sister, at the farm probably 1926 after Esther’s graduation from high school.  Both attended and graduated from St. John’s Academy in Jamestown ND, classes of 1925 and 1926.  Photo was taken with the family box camera.

COMMENTS:

from Molly: Hi Dick, I enjoyed your post greatly, and noted that the photo of the 2 young women could have been of my grandma and her sister–in an era where teaching jobs were among the few actual professions available to women…
Being an almost-baby-boomer (1943), I was in packed classrooms (maybe 40+kids!!), with new schools popping up like mushrooms to accomodate all those growing post-war babies…
Blessings of this gorgeous cool day,
Molly


from Fred:  You certainly have a lot of educators in your family. As a writer and historian, I revere the humble classroom teacher, those “little people” who helped me along the road to success and renown.

As I always say, “Those who can do; those who can’t teach.”
Horace Mann

response from Dick:  A sincere chuckle!  We – you and I – know each other very well.  And you’re a retired public school teacher and a well known writer and historian, too!  I have often thought about the quotation you share (apparently attributed to George Bernard Shaw).  And I quite often say that among all the teachers I had, growing up, one of the most impactful was the same one who some of the kids used to mercilessly ridicule…he looked and talked and seemed more than a little odd, but did he ever have a good influence, even today.

The Forgotten Tribe

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A longtime friend of mine alerted me to the following very long article about the Mendota Tribe in the August 18, 2024 St. Paul Pioneer Press.  I prefer to simply let the article speak for itself.  The locus of this tribe, Mendota Mdewakonton Dakota Tribal Community, is not far from where I live, in the vicinity of Fort Snelling and Mendota MN.  My familiarity with them basically centers on occasional events in Mendota MN.  Here is the map reference, which is near the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport and historic Ft. Snelling.

Here are two links to the same article.

The Forgotten Tribe, as published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press August 18, 2024.

If the above link is no longer available, here is my cut and paste pdf of the actual article: Mendota Tribe Pion Press 8 18 24 (3)

Lawrence Taliaferro’s hand’drawn map of Fort Snelling and vicinity, 1835. Public domain. Minnesota Historical Society

The State Fair

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Monday I went to the Minnesota State Fair.  This has been an annual event for me for many years.  Nothing fancy.  In most years I’ve gone by pubic transportation, had a defined ‘circuit’, stayed maybe three hours, then back home.

This day it was probably 80 by the time I arrived at the Fairgrounds about 9, very humid, near 90 when I left about 1.  Back home, in the evening, at a meeting, the metro was hit by big rain, wind, thunder storm.  The Fairgrounds was not immune; it was closed Tuesday morning.  There was no fun last night, that’s for certain, for the people who came.

I asked my search engine how Minnesota ranks among U.S. state fairs.   Apparently second, bested only by Texas.  It’s been around almost since statehood in 1858.  Here’s a thumbnail history.

Here is a snapshot of humanity I saw Monday:

Minnesota State Fair, August 26, 2024

You can’t tell who’s who at these events.  I actually came across four people I knew.  Minnesota is a state of about 5.7 million, about 60% of us in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area.  Enroute to the Fair I chatted with a couple from Wisconsin who were attending for the first time.  In the above crowd were doubtless other ‘aliens’ from foreign places, like Iowa…!

This year I saw less evidence of politics (shirts, caps and the like) than I can recall in recent years.  Of course the parties have their buildings.  The Democrats place was very busy; the Republican not so much.  The outliers, like Libertarians, were in evidence, but it seemed less than previous years.  Two years ago when I was at the Fair, Gov. Tim Walz showed up while I was there.  I don’t think that will happen this year.  His status has changed.  We’ll see.

The Fair is the state’s humanity personified: a community of strangers gathered together, indistinguishable.  “Community” begins before you enter the gate.  I caught my bus in at a public metro bus hub at Maplewood Mall; the driver brought us in on a public highway, to a public Fair.  All along the way, including at the fair were loads of ordinary folks doing the work of the fair in the booths, etc.  When I arrived at the Education Building, usually my primary stop at the Fair, what seemed to be a platoon of service workers – probably kids hired to do routine cleanup duties – seemed to be marching much like a bunch of raw Army privates to somewhere down the street.  It was rather striking!  I wish I had sought out the back story.

One of my annual stops is the band shell, which features music groups each day.  When I happened by, the band for the Minnesota National Guard Red Bull Division was the featured act.  Red Bull (34th Infantry Division), including its band, has a storied history, going way back.  VP candidate Tim Walz spent part of his National Guard career with this division.  Politics did not come up at all, from the stage or the audience.

I got to the band shell about the time the color guard raised the flag.

Flag raising Aug 26, 2024

I’ve seen the band in prior years.  Each year it has an excellent program.  At the end of this years program the band played the medley of armed forces anthems, and the veterans were asked to rise when their branch was announced.  I rose when the Army was called.  I am an American, a military veteran (U.S. Army 1962-63), a Minnesotan and was very proud to be with this band and this group at the Minnesota State Fair.  On this sultry morning – even worse on stage, I’d guess – the bandshell was an uplifting place to be: proud to be an American.

POSTNOTE

I said earlier that I met four people I knew at the Fair.  Three of the five of us are military veterans, Army, Navy, Air Force.  A fourth was unable to serve due to a physical disability, the fifth was not in the military.

Of those in the audience at the band shell, only a small percentage of us rose as service veterans, the largest contingent seemed to be Army.  My friends were all men, most of us old, and there was a message in that as well.

Of course, these days military service is made to be a political issue, often dishonestly.  Gov and VP candidate Tim Walz’s service has been questioned over and over since he first ran for office in 2006 (He retired after 24 years in National Guard in the early 2000s).  It seems appropriate to identify the issue as it relates to the person:  here’s what Snopes found about the real story of Tim Walz and his military service.

My annual portrait at the Education Minnesota booth. This photo booth has been a fixture at the booth for many years. This year this is my political message

Kamala Harris/Tim Walz

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“Do Something.”  This phrase says it all about the next 70 or so days.

Mn Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. V. P. Kamala Harris in support of candidate MN Lt Gov incumbent Peggy Flanagan, Minneapolis October 22, 2022.  Both Peggy and Tim won reelection in Nov. 2022. (Snapshot by Dick Bernard)

NOTE to non-voters, independents et al at end of this post.

First: 1) Voting information for any state: VOTE.GOV  2) A brief and very interesting history of political conventions comes from Heather Cox Richardson for August 22, 2024; and her August 24 post discusses the just completed Democratic Convention.  3) here’s a self-assessment sheet to help remind you of what offices you can vote for this year: Office Holders: Candidates.  (Except President/Vice-President, your list, will be unique based on where you live).  4) My post on Tim Walz, most recently updated August 23.  This will be my ‘file cabinet’ on Tim.  Read the third (“filing cabinet”) paragraph.  5) My long-time friend in England, made an interesting comment to my August 18, 2024 post, with his views about the American and English political systems,  I set it aside as a post of its own on August 19, and made it into a brief dialogue you may find of interest.  It is presented with his permission.

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Late in her speech to the Democratic Convention on Thursday, August 22, 2024, Kamala Harris accepted the nomination for election as President of the United States.

I am a person who respects process.  Until VP Harris accepted the offer, she wasn’t officially the nominee.  Now it’s official, and Gov. Tim Walz is her running mate.

No surprise to anyone who knows me, my vote is Democrat.  Democrat in my lifetime has always been the party for the people. This year in particular the slate is exceptional.

I don’t consider myself to have ever been a true passionate activist.  In the “scrum” of the population, I think I would be in the moderate left.  The graphic at the end of this post, which I’ve used often since I drew it in the 1980s, catches me well.  This year I attended and participated in all of the local political events, from school board to primary election to being set to serve as an election judge if needed Nov. 5.  I’ve always been ‘on the court’.

I have often said that the sometimes  ragged appearance of the Democratic Party is much more a positive than a negative.  It is not easy to be a ‘big tent’, accepting differing points of view sometimes completely at odds with each other, sometimes with the party itself..  We are an extraordinarily diverse country, and Democrats welcome debate, and work for peaceful resolution.

We resist efforts to restrict access to or interference with the secret ballot to select our representatives.

This election is the first time I’ve ever suggested voting  straight ticket Democrat for all offices.

My opinion: there is no longer a Republican Party worthy of the name, and until the formerly Grand Old Party is taken back by more reasonable folks, it is a mistake to vote for anyone under the label “R”.  I have these specific concerns:

  1. An almost absolute lack of respect for truth and the rule of law.  DJT campaigns for election after being found guilty of numerous felonies, under indictment for numerous other infractions.
  2.  Specifically, anyone who voted in any way to deny or reject the 2020 election results, or supported election denial, does not deserve support.  See page 5 of this NPR article from Jan. 7, 2021: Election Deniers Jan 7 2021 NPR0001.  Also, here.  There were over 120 of these folks.  Two of these were in my own state, one of the two is deceased, the other (Fischbach) remains on the ballot.  Here is some data on state legislatures.  At minimum, get on-record the comment of your candidate on the issue of denial of legitimacy of 2020 election and on laws restricting access to voting.  If any of these candidates are on any ballot, they should be publicly confronted.
  3. The Nuclear Bomb in our midst in this election is Project 2025, which the radical right wing rolled out very publicly some time ago, and which they are seeking to temporarily distance ithemselves from, even though the project remains the blueprint for a hoped-for future of authoritarian control of the United States.  There is a great deal of information available about this immense and dangerous to democracy proposal, deadly to all, including its supporters.  The Kamala Harris website has a summary well worth your time.  An organization of which I’m a long-time member, the Minnesota Alliance of Peacemakers, has developed a well done flier, which I share with their permission: STOP PROJECT 2025

Finally, a few days ago I did a post featuring a comment from a long-time friend in England about the two political systems, English and American.  It is simply a conversation, but I think worth your time.  You can read it here.

The end of this story is in all of our hands; the evidence will be after November 5, 2024.

We, the people, own the result, November 5, whatever that turns out to be, for our nation, our state, our community.  It is the people we elect who will make – or not – a better world for all of us.

I urge a well-informed vote for all of the offices on every ballot.

NOTE TO NON-VOTERS: in 2020 over 81 million citizens voted for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for President/V.P.; over 74 million for the opposing candidate. Some voted for issues and candidates that had no chance at all to prevail.  Over 75 million eligible voters didn’t vote at all, and 2024 was the highest total vote in history.

We’ve all heard the reasons why people don’t vote.  No need to recite them.

A truth: in a democracy like ours, in fact, every one votes, whether or not they show up to mark a ballot.  Effectively non-voters of any type, including those who truly vote ‘independent’ for some candidate who has zero chance of winning, are giving their proxy to the two parties whose candidates names show up on virtually every ballot for every office in this nation.  They forfeit their right to participate, and are rolling the dice that the candidates elected are somewhat more inclined to their position, than the opponent.  Their non-vote is accepted….  But it never makes any sense for the absent voter.

No candidate, no party is perfect, particularly in a society such as ours with so many diverse opinions on multitudes of issues.  At minimum, speak with the voice you have on a ballot in each and every election in your community.  Whether you vote my way or not is not as important to me, as your actual vote.  See you at the polls.

POSTNOTE:  I am a citizen who’s paid attention to politics from the grass roots perspective.  I’ve written often about political topics here.  If you are interested, and wonder what I’ve been thinking over the years at time of recent Presidential elections, here are some posts archived at this site which I think are most pertinent.  (use Archive tool at right): Hillary Clinton July 31, 2016, including link to my thoughts about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in 2008; about Donald Trump July 19, 2016;   about Joe Biden and Kamala Harris August 20, 2020; about Why I’m a Democrat August 1, 2020; about the “T’s” (what was left of the former Republicans August 2, 2020.

Political Scrum 2024

POSTNOTE: Many years ago, my friend Joyce passed along a link received from her daughter in California.  It was Just Above Sunset, and it’s proprietor was a retired middle management person who grew up in suburban Pittsburgh, and retired in Los Angeles.   Several years ago, Alan retired from his volunteer passion of distilling the national news for people like me.  Often I referred to his work here. Recently Just Above Sunset appeared in my inbox again.  This time another highly skilled retiree out east, Doug, started sharing his work under Just Above Sunset heading.  His blog, Weekly Sift, I’ve come to find as useful as the old Just Above Sunset.

The most recent three posts from the Weekly Sift are offered and worth your time, if you wish.  It is easy to subscribe to this post, and of course easy to manage.  Following are the links to the three,  Take a look at least at one of them; note the authors bio.  August 26; August 26 (2); August 26 (3),   These are three separate posts on the same day.  You can subscribe.  It is worth it.

I will continue to write as things occur to me, but will likely back off from distinctly political stuff.  Doesn’t mean I’m not interested.  Right now the objective is best to clarify your own beliefs and work to get out the vote Nov. 5.  No election is routine.  This one especially.  Early voting in many places, including Minnesota, starts about Sep. 20.

I was at State Fair today and will likely post about that tomorrow.  I have another post in the works about “The Forgotten Tribe”, probably this week, and perhaps for Labor Day a piece on teaching, especially given Tim Walz status.

Have a good week.

 

Independent and Oligarch; Avatar or Idiot

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Later today the Democratic Convention convenes in Chicago.  At the end of this post are two links which seem appropriate to the Convention and coming days.

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Early Sunday morning came a response to my “Political We” post from my long-time friend in England, SAK.  The response, also at the aforementioned post, is at the end of this post as well.  It deserves a space of its own.  Read it, below,  before reading further,

There is hardly a word I would change in SAK’s response.  That is the easy part.

First, a preliminary comment:

Of course, the founders of the U.S. were declaring their independence from England,  It was England that they were most familiar with and other than getting rid of the King, their working model was probably England.  Doubtless there have been tons of books written about that.

In the U.S.  system, as it has evolved over our long history,  the common folk have found their voice, and a consistent feature is the secret ballot to elect our representatives: that a persons actual vote is secret, unless the person elects to reveal his/her choice.

We can guess, of course, and we do, how someone voted; we can say how we voted, and not be honest about it; we can respond to a poll, honestly or not, or not at all; or simply declare we’re “independent”, whatever that means to us.  We decide.

There are logical exceptions to this rule.  In the recent Minnesota Primary, each voter received a ballot with a Republican or Democrat ‘side’, and were told we could only vote one side or the other; a vote on both sides invalidated the ballot.  To my knowledge no other party had sufficient public support in the previous election to get a candidate on this ballot.  This primary had very limited choices.  Mine, for instance, had only candidates for U.S. Senate (several competing) and my Democrat Congressperson (none), though the Republican side had several challengers.  There are rules for qualifying to get on the ballot for the general election.  That is reasonable, in my opinion.  It is not reasonable, for instance, that every citizen must be listed on a ballot….

Of course, every state has its own rules, and there are attempts to play games with democracy, but mostly the republic has survived the challenges.

Thoughts

In the end analysis, for our entire history, and this would be the same I would guess for the UK, there are only a few major political parties.  On rare occasions there is somebody who runs a strong race as a so-called independent: John Anderson (1980) and Ross Perot (1992) come immediately to mind, but success is like pushing a rock uphill.

Then of course there is Ralph Nader (2000) whose voters almost certainly gave the election to the candidate least consonant with their political objectives.  I’ll leave the “yah-buts” and the “how-abouts?” to others.  So long as there is a whiff of democracy remaining in our society, the likelihood of changing our political system is extremely remote.

(I’ve often said that my preference for the Democratic Party is basically in support of its ragged edges – it is much more inclusive of the diversity of our nation – there is room for argument, LOTS of argument, very public,  This carries disadvantages, of course.  People have different notions of what is right.  The beauty and the beast of democracy is the imperative of negotiating differences and reaching an imperfect compromise.  The Democratic Convention which starts today is a good example of this.  Just recall the last two months.)

The “Ultrarich”

I agree  with SAK that the American Oligarchs, like Musk et al, use their money to leverage division amongst the peasantry, which is most of us, to consolidate their own power.  It will be a great day if/when enough of we peasants figure this scam out.

There is an immense gap between the ultra-rich and the populace in our country: the “billionaires” vs the “middle class”.

Over the years I have increasingly come to believe that this is much more of a dilemma for the billionaires than for the rest of us.

The rich depend on somebody to spend money on goods provided in the market place.  It makes hardly any sense at all to keep the least wealthy away from living wages and thus from spendable income.

Paul Wellstone, liberal U.S. Senator from Minnesota, said it best: “We all do better when we all do better.”

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“Independent and Oligarch, Avatar or Idiot”?

In today’s America, plenty (by no means all) super-rich Oligarch’s appear to have selected their Avatar, and their Avatar is saddled by hundreds of millions of dollars in penalties as a lawbreaker, multiple convictions of felonies, and an assortment of unresolved and delayed indictments for other felonies; an has absolutely no traditional moral or ethical guard rails: there is no ‘truth’ beyond what is stated.  It is a dangerous situation.  On we go.

Between now and November 5, I would presume that #45’s extensive record will be publicized.  They are not ‘fake news”,

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Finally, SAK’s final paragraph on the Atomic Bombs.

Father Bury, a nonagenarian who’s a lifelong peace activist commented on the same blog as follows: “As a Catholic Priest, I wonder why Christians do not take the Triune God and the human and divine Jesus literally when the Triune God clearly revealed in the Ten Commandments,not to kill.  No exceptions. Also, Jesus was clear in His statement  “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you.” He mentioned no exceptions such as “IN SELF DEFENSE. Hence , If we really have faith in God,why do we Christians not follow God’s commandments/invitation? It seems to me that it is beyond time when we refuse to kill and build instruments designed to kill. What say yee?”

In response to Father Bury, who is a good friend, I said this: “What say yee?”, I would agree with my friend, SAK, in England (see last paragraph in his comment to this blog, below). At the same time, there has always been and likely will always be the irresolvable tension between ideal and real, as it plays out today in Israel/Palestine/Gaza and Ukraine/Russia and on and on. Peace and Passivity are not synonyms, unfortunately. As I have noted, innovations like the United Nations have mitigated albeit imperfectly towards a “Better World”, which is my personal mantra. At the same time, there will always be evil, which has to be confronted in other than peaceful ways. Persons like yourself do yeoman service. Thank you for your service for peace.”

 

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The initiating comment from SAK, Aug 18: I really like your Political Scrum 2024 – I also think it’s pretty accurate. Increasingly there are independents – I remember Ralph Nader running & how Berkeley students campaigned for him. I think the system is beyond its sell-by date & needs a lot of fine tuning if not an overhaul. It suits the powers that be & therefore is unlikely to change any time soon I suppose. Similarly for the UK which I know much more about.

As for the ultrarich, while it is true that they have one vote, one can look at the issue from a different angle & note that they have a lot of “influence”. Elon Musk for example. These days he has opted to intervene here & there – including in the UK where he announced a civil war & incited many to serious acts of violence. A poor US farmer distracted by making enough to survive on is unlikely to have such influence.

Aneurin Bevan, was a lively British Labour leader – Labour in the UK is a party close to the US’ Democrats while the Conservative party (also known as Tory) is closer to the Republicans. Well he said something that resonates in the US as well:

“The whole art of Conservative politics in the 20th century, is being deployed to enable wealth to persuade poverty to use its political freedom to keep wealth in power.”

This “persuasion” can be based on racism, all kinds of phobias, anti-immigrant sentiments, antiestablishment feelings, religious fervour or fanaticism, whipped up anti socialist beliefs, hyped individualism à la Ayn Rand, impossible nostalgia . . . it is ironic that some of the “Conservatives/Republicans” are prominent in the establishment or are far from religious etc. The irony is lost on the poor voters.

As for the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima & Nagasaki, I know not whether that was correct or not, but from my own Christian perspective it was immoral as is all violence. “Just war” sounds like a contradiction in terms else how can we hope for peace and justice 😊!?