This morning I surprised a Ma and Pa Duck out scouting for a nesting place.  Memo to Ma and Pa: there are better places than a bush besides a busy sidewalk…good hunting.  A few minutes earlier I remarked to a fellow walker in the Health Center my prediction that there’s at least one decent snowstorm in Minnesota’s future before we actually have Spring.  Stay tuned.

Today ws the Easter egg roll on the White House Lawn.  There is ginned up  controversy about it, revolving around Christian themed Easter eggs, and the LGBTQ+ proclamation for March 31 which this year happened to coincide with Easter.    Here’s an article I received yesterday about the controversies.

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March 17 I mentioned an 0n-line presentation Monday, March 25, featuring an Israeli professor discussing how Palestinians are presented to Israeli students.  I participated.  The presentation was one hour and excellent.  Here is the YouTube rebroadcast.  It is very worthy of your time.

Mary, who watched the replay said this about it: “Thanks for an exceptional talk.    Great to see you in action and good humor.   May share talk with neighbors on both sides…”

At the beginning of the March 17 post, I made this comment about the Professors topic, about how Palestinians are portrayed in Israeli school texts: “The emphasis…by Prof. Nurit Peled-Elhanan … is common in how national histories are conveyed.  All who feel they’re part of a dominant culture or ideology have their blind spots.  For instance, Native Americans did not factor favorably into the official narrative of American History, and still don’t…. ”  Of course, we all have our blind spots, as individuals, as subordinate groups….  The majority blindspots are the most dangerous in the short (current) term.

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Given the continuing intense conflict in Gaza, I wondered and worried about how the issue would be addressed in my church during this years Holy Week commemoration of Jesus’ death and resurrection..

I’m a lifelong Catholic, so I’ve seen a lot of Easter seasons. I’m at church most every Sunday.   Over my 83 years I’ve had considerable interest in church/church & church/state relationships.

I’ve calculated that there have been over 1400 Sunday Masses since I joined Basilica of St. Mary in 1997, and while I don’t keep a tally, I rarely miss Sunday Mass at 9:30.  In my lifetime, over 4,300….

As such, I think would pass as a qualified observer of the Catholic liturgy as it has been practiced over the years.

This year I heard and saw the Passion read on Palm Sunday, and the Archbishop speak on Easter Sunday.  Friday night, Good Friday, I participated on-line in the annual observance of Tenebrae, which Molly tuned in and said as follows: “I really appreciated your advance notice regarding [Tenebrae]. It was powerful, and incredibly well-planned, and carried out. The participants’ work with light and darkness, and the interspersing of word and song, were beautifully sequenced. The addition of Rabbi Zimmerman at the end was a real surprise to me, and added depth, indeed.”

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Of course, overlaying everything for me was the continuing situation in Gaza.  I understood that Rabbi Zimmerman (Temple Israel) would speak. She is not a stranger at Basilica’s Tenebrae, which has been an annual liturgy at Basilica for over 20 years.  She and colleague Rabbi’s have always impressed.

Overall, I felt the observances I witnessed at this years Holy Week were all appropriate and positive.  I wondered how the politics of the time in history would intersect, and how the Passion story would be treated.  There was no edginess at all, which was very welcome.

Rabbi Zimmerman, long-time Rabbi at Temple Israeli, gave a particularly outstanding message, not side-stepping Gaza.  Her focus was on Mother’s loss – the women who attended to Jesus’ body in the Passion story.  She called our attention to an international group, Parents Circles Family Forum, Palestinian and Israeli families who have lost family members in conflicts.  Take a look.

At the end of her remarks, Rabbi Zimmerman received a sustained standing ovation from the filled church.  This recognition is very unusual, and was richly deserved.

There is a long, long road ahead, but one step at a time and peace and justice can succeed, thanks to all of us.

We all, individually and as parts of groups, can impact positively on the future.  But we need to be on the court.

POSTNOTE April 2: 

Gaza is a terribly troubling topic to take a stand on, or to write about.  Just today Israeli precision bombs killed several food aid representatives in clearly marked vehicles.

People are forced into taking sides.  Like everyone, I’m a single individual, feeling impotent.

In the narratives in these kinds of situations, there is always an effort to target a person or an entity as being responsible.  So, it is said that it is Hamas; or it is Netanyahu; on and on.

For me, during Holy Week, I most engaged in trying to see how organized religion dealt with this most historically difficult issue – the crucifixion of a Jewish man by the Romans with the tacit approval of the Jews: the Passion story.

As I pointed out above, I felt the organized religion in my background – Catholic – in my area, handled the issue and all that surrounds it in a constructive way.  So it was with the Jewish leadership, and most likely the Muslim leadership as well.  Of course, my perception is mine alone.

It’s more complicated than that, of course.

My Church is an immense entity: it is said that about one in four Americans in one sense or another is “Catholic”.

But this designation is essentially meaningless.  All Catholics do not similarly participate; nor do they believe identically; or position on political or other issues.  Those who make policy may think or try to represent that they speak for everyone, but they don’t.  Like any association in this country, people can participate if/as they wish, and choose in the many ways available to them to take positions or not.  Catholics are no more an Army, than are Jews, or Muslims or anyone.  The problem come from who is selected to lead by whatever means.  That is an extremely complex topic.

For me, personally, I have come to the conclusion that I can have an impact, but that my impact will be very small.  But there are others who might agree with me – I may never meet them. – who advocate the same way for the same thing somewhere else.

Only by participating in the conversation can anyone make any difference at all.  It is not enough to blame someone or something else.  As Gandhi is supposed to have said, we all must be the change we wish to see in the world.  Even Gandhi didn’t’ see victory in his lifetime, or even still.  But there is no question that he made a big difference.  We can be so as well.

PRE-NOTE: I recommend the on-line program Monday March 25.  Details, scroll down here.

This morning (Saturday March 23) at 6 a.m. I was arriving at my coffee shop, and directly ahead of me was the most striking view of a full moon I have ever seen.  It was about tree top level, soon to set.  The atmospheric conditions were apparently perfect.  (Technically, the full moon is actually Monday morning, March 25, but no difference.  This mornings was spectacular, even given the hand-held snapshot. )

Woodbury MN 6 a.m. CDT March 23, 2024 Dick Bernard

Easter is next Sunday, March 31.  Each year, Easter  moves around on the calendar.  By definition, it is set as the Sunday after the first full moon of the Vernal Equinox (Spring).  I asked my computer about the dates of Easter: “The earliest possible date for Easter is March 22 and the latest possible date is April 25. Easter can never come as early as March 21, though. That’s because, by ecclesiastical rules, the vernal equinox is fixed on March 21“.  (The earliest vernal equinox is March 19).

Out at the farm in North Dakota, in the early 1900s, my grandparents received and kept pictorial cards received from the home folks in Wisconsin.  The family was Catholic.  About half of the well-over 200 cards received and kept were Christmas themed; about one-fourth Easter themed.  40% of the Easter cards had a religious orientation.  (Only about 10% of the Christmas cards had religious orientation.)

Easter was a time of rebirth everywhere: Spring, Baby Chicks, snow melt, Easter bunnies, re-greening of the earth.

Of course, everyone reading this can fill in the abundant blanks about how Easter has played out in their own lives over the years.  (Often Passover comes at about the same time as Easter.  This year Passover is April 22-30.   Ramadan this year is March 11 – April 9.  The three intersect about once every 33 years, the last was in 2023.

In my particular faith, Easter weeks starts with Palm Sunday, tomorrow; thence Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday.  Here is the schedule at my church.  Always and still central is the Passion, which this year can be read here (scroll down to the gospel).  This will be read on Palm Sunday.   Herein comes the reference to the Jews, which has created so much tragedy for the Jews over history.  As a lifelong Catholic, I’ve witnessed the assorted ways this narrative has been handled by my church – the words are the same, but how they are presented have differed.  (Normally, we’d be at Church tomorrow.  A winter storm is predicted here overnight.  We’ll see.)

At my church, Basilica of St. Mary’s in Minneapolis, for over 20 years, there has annually been an evening service (7 p.m.) on the Friday before Easter called Tenebrae (see schedule in preceding paragraph).  I have not attended this every year, but traditionally, and I believe this year as well, it is customary for a Rabbi from nearby Temple Israel to speak.  This year, Tenebrae, March 29, 7 p.m., will be live-streamed, as will most of the other rituals during the week.  To access, go to the Basilica website at the time/day of the event.  The reading of the Passion will be live-streamed as part of the 9:30 Mass on March 24.

early 1900s postal greeting to the ND farm

COMMENTS (more at the end):

from Joyce: From a Jewish perspective, Easter is quite fraught; it was, historically, an extremely dangerous time because of the blood libel, which resulted in mass murders. I love Fiddler on the Roof, but it depicted a pogrom as nothing more sinister than property destruction. Pogroms were deadly; even infants were killed. It was because of pogroms that my grandparents came to the US at the end of the 19th century.

Another Jewish holiday starts after sunset tonight, Purim. Most of our holidays can be explained as: they tried to kill us, we survived, so let’s eat. Purim is a bit different; they tried to kill us, we survived, so let’s party. If the weather allows I’m going to the children’s Purim service at _____ with my grandchildren tomorrow; there should be a lot of laughter. The children will all be in costume; traditionally, children wear costumes and go from door to door giving out sweets.

Response to Joyce from Dick: I think your growing up background was in a major U.S. city.  Mine was tiny (literally) midwest towns – I once went to a high school with two seniors.  These towns were basically homogeneous – usually basically Catholic or Lutheran dominated, and rarely very mixed.  Jews only appeared in the Passion story, and if there were speaking parts for the reading, Jesus was always the Priest, the “Father”.  Palestinians were not even an abstract idea….  I have thought quite a bit about this over the years.  The only message we got about Jews was that they killed Jesus, and this was basically at this important season, and it wasn’t elaborated on to my recollection, anyway.  I don’t remember any reference of any kind to Father Coughlin, the anti-semite radio Priest who was very powerful in the 1930s and into the 1940s.  I guess the bothersome part of this particularly in this tribal age is the intensification of labeling of the ‘other’, whoever that might happen to be.  We do it all the time – Super Bowl, Final Four, Muslims, and on and on and on.  That’s one reason why I want to listen in on the talk on Monday (above) and why I want to see how or even if the issue is addressed by the Rabbi at the Basilica on Friday.

Thank you for your willingness to be in dialogue.

from Flo: Easter certainly has mixed meanings for many people. I’m now attending Sunday worship alone at RUMC, but also with friends who pick me up at home or bring me home after the service. Carter is also my driver, occasionally. During this Easter I decided to read the Bible beginning from the first page. It’s definitely not my favorite reading, but it certainly makes it clear that Adam and Eve started something that has kept “The Faithful” floundering! I forgot to bring my Bible with me to our Thursday-Saturday stay at the cabin, so now I have a lot of make-up reading ahead of me. Wonder how long I’ll stick with the effort…

from Florence: thanks, wonderful picture.

The major headline in today’s Minneapolis StarTribune: “U.S. ups embassy security in Haiti.  Military flies to capital with gangs largely in control“.

This is not the kind of publicity one likes to see.  The details are readily available on-line, so I won’t go into the current event.  Rather, I want to afford an opportunity to look back at the Haiti I saw in two visits in 2003 and 2006.

Tens of thousands of Americans have been to Haiti, very few of them as ‘tourists’.  Haiti is a small impoverished nation just to the east of Cuba.  After my first visit I did a sketch map comparing Haiti with Minnesota (special thanks to Paul Miller for refinement):

There were two memorable trips, both about a week: both intensive study trips.

The first trip centered on Port au Prince and environ in early December, 2003.  There were six of us in a journey expertly organized by Paul Miller.  The second trip came in March, 2006, organized by the Microfinance group, Fonkoze, and focused on the interior of Haiti out of Hinche (Ench in kreyol), another extraordinary trip. (Ench is a community of about 50,000 approximately where the H in Haiti appears on the above map.)

I wrote about both trips on my return from each trip, and these and other observations are easily available to anyone interested here (click at Haiti in Focus).

Succinctly, I have very positive memories of the Haitian people I met on both trips.

Less than three months after we returned home in 2003, President Aristide, who brought democracy to the island nation, was deposed and exiled.  We had primarily met with persons who shared his values and aspirations for the Haitian people.

The second trip our focus was on the poor in Haiti, aspiring to a better life.

I do not recall a single instance of fear or even tension on either trip, though particularly on the first trip there was clear political tension.

In my opinion, Haiti since it’s beginning as a French colony was noteworthy by its Declaration of Independence, by slaves, in 1804.  It was far too close to the brand new slave holding nation of the United States, and I believe that one of the early actions of the new U.S. Congress was to refuse to recognize the country as a free nation.  Books have been written about this difficult history.

We arrived in Port au Prince on December 6, 2003, and on December 7 – a Sunday – we went to a Catholic Church where Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste was pastor.  Fr. Gerard Jean-Juste knew we Americans were in the pews and his remarks were directed our way, effectively.  I took this photo of him with a parishioner at the time of the Mass.

Fr. Jean-Juste Dec. 7 2003

Later the same day we met with him at the guest house where we were staying.  He was very impressive.

Being “impressive” to the common Haitian was not an asset in December, 2003.  Fr. Jean Juste ended up in prison not long after we left Haiti.  He was an apparent threat to the desired status quo.  Three years later I met him  again in Miami’s Little Haiti where he had effectively been exiled.  He was apparently too dangerous for Haiti, but safe on the streets of the U.S….

Take time to learn more about Haiti.  With all of our good qualities as a nation, we have lots to learn about relationships with others.

Haiti timeline I prepared after the 2003 trip.  Errors in content are mine.

POSTNOTE March 16:

Here is a photo of the 2003 Study Group, in Haiti:

Dec. 8 was a wonderful day.  The week to come was full and peaceful but at times intense.  We were in the country when the storm clouds of a coup were far advanced.  But the stereotype of recent news was not our experience in 2003, nor was it our experience in the interior in 2006.  Personally I never felt at risk.

I was and I am not naive.  But subsequent to the first visit I made a personal list of incidents proximate to us, or which played out after we returned to the states.  For example, someone we met at a school. a few hours later was apparently assassinated near the Haiti Capitol building>. Someone else I met – a Priest – apparently was murdered by poisoning a year or so later…Fr. Jean-Juste thrown into Prison in Haiti, and then exiled to what essentially was freedom in Little Haiti in Miami, where I met him again in 2006, seemingly free, but far away from home – an interesting variation on being sent to Siberia.  He seemed on community arrest.  If he stayed in Little Haiti, no problem….  Or so it appeared.

In 2006 we were in the interior, very poor environment, but our group of perhaps 15 being shown around by Fonkoze was very well treated.  In this second trip I can recall no nervous moments (other than traveling on roads which were definitely not thoroughfares – sometimes very dicey),

In neither year did we tempt fate by foolish decisions: it was less risky to go to church than to some neighborhood bar; less risky to visit with people trying to eke out a living, than getting into a political argument on the street.  Come to think of it, even here at home, there is prudent or careless behavior.  If one seeks trouble, one can find it.

Unfortunately, it seems that Jan 6, 2021, at our nations capitol, is now happening most every day in much of Haiti.  Well armed gangs have taken over.  Who knows what the solution might be…there is a solution, just what that is, is probably impossible to imagine at this tense time.

There are, of course, narratives about Haiti and about its governance, etc., etc.  There was, there is, and there will remain mis- and dis-information.  I don’t pretend to be an expert; Haiti is not a perfect society, neither is our own.  All I can report on is what I experienced, and what I learned afterwards, including the aftermath of the 2010 massively destructive earthquake which killed hundreds of thousands.  The website links give my personal impressions from the past trips.

Today, I gather, we could not fly into the PaP airport if we wanted to, and if we could and did we would be fools.  And activities such as we participated in would now likely be very dangerous.

Today, with Gaza. and Ukraine, and all other places facing tension, we live in an unfortunately tribal society, I can only hope for positive outcomes.

What happens in Haiti, and Ukraine, and Gaza, and in our own country will affect all of us.  It is far too easy to blame somebody for the problems.  All of us need to be part of the solution.  Keep on keeping on.

POSTNOTE 2 March 17:  I was a geography major in college, and taught Junior High School geography for nine years, and probably could have headed for a career as a geographer had I not diverted into union work over 50 years ago.

Still, when I agreed to travel to Haiti in 2003, I really had very little knowledge about the island nation.  I have had almost a college education since.

The group I traveled with was led by a supporter of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, the Catholic Priest elected as the first democratically elected President of Haiti, whose orientation was to the poor, which were the vast majority of Haitians, almost all illiterate, and who spoke a dialect which sounded like basic French, but was not the official French of the country.  They were numerically superior, but almost totally disenfranchised.

Aristide came to power by an election opened to people who had never voted before, who could not read the ballot unassisted.  Nonetheless, when the opportunity was given the people of Haiti underwent the hardships and the risks of casting their ballot, to freely elect their President.

Aristide was largely viewed as an outlier, an enemy really, of the developed world (i.e. the United States, et al).  There are many roadblocks that can be, and were, thrown up to quash success of Aristide and those who supported him.  If you look at the above timeline you will get a sense of this.  At my previously mentioned website, I recounted my efforts to determine the legitimacy of the last Aristide election.  At https://www.chez-nous.net/haiti3.html, scroll down to the link to Anatomy of an Official Lie, and read the link.  It is, of course impossible for someone like myself to do a truly deep dive into “fact”, but in this case I think I got close to the truth.

In my opinion, Aristide was on the right track in Haiti, but this was frightening to the protectors of the status quo.

POSTNOTE3 March 18:  I was listening to Jose Diaz Balart on MSNBC a few minutes ago, and he was talking about 63 years of chaos in Haiti – I specifically heard “63”.   My experience with Haiti began 20 years ago, and my two contacts with the country are described above.  63 years ago would be about 1960, during the early times of Papa Doc Duvalier, whose repressive regime with his son Baby Doc spanned nearly 30 years, from 1957-86.  The Duvaliers were not supporters of Democracy, nor champions of the poor.  On the other hand, it seems they were reliable ‘friends’ of wealthier nations at the expense of their impoverished citizens.

I looked up Diaz Balart, who has a really interesting background and family.  He is Cuban, raised in Spain, after Castro took control in Cuba in 1959.  It is unclear where he was born, but mostly his early life seems to have been in Spain.

Credibly commenting on the Diaz-Balart comments would be foolhardy for me.  But I have a guess that I know more about Haiti than Jose does, and more reliably as well.  At the same time, when I visited and with whom I visited was a time when Democracy had had a brief chance in Haiti, but was also quite clearly quashed by forces outside the country, not the least of which were the United States, Canada and France.

I happen to like Balart’s work, but the comment about Haiti troubled me.  Haiti is, after all, Cuba’s next door neighbor.

POSTNOTE March 6 6 a.m.: Minnesota returns here.  For context, there were 3,542,947 persons who. could have voted; typically, Minnesota has very high voter turnout.  About 11% of eligible voters split their vote between the two most popular candidates.  (Voters had to choose one ballot: Republican, Democrat, or Legal Marijuana Now.)  My “favorite” candidate: Vermin Supreme, who got 404 votes, presumably one of which was his/hers for Legal Marijuana Now….  Of course, there will be endless analysis, and polls and more polls….  Have a great day, and get involved.   It’s our country and it’s fate is in our hands, literally.

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Today is “Super Tuesday”, and Minnesota is one of the 15 states and one territory holding primaries. Rules for each state vary.  Minnesota’s March 5 is Presidential preference.

Last Wednesday I voted early in Minnesota’s Presidential Primary.  It was a single issue ballot.  Note that this vote is only Presidential preference.  I expect a low turnout.  I hope my expectation is incorrect….

The regular Minnesota Primary is August 13.

It can be confusing.

More detail for the 2024 primary’s by state and territory can be read here.  You will note differences between the individual states.

Here’s a history of Primary elections in the United States from the Library of Congress.

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Last week I attended the Precinct Caucus, which was, for me, the kickoff of campaign 2024 in Minnesota.

Those of us who attended the caucus, and expressed an interest could become delegates to upcoming conventions at the Senate District, then vie for delegate status at Congressional District, then State Convention, then National Convention.

The process is an orderly and well organized one, with the ultimate objective of endorsing candidates and approving resolutions reflecting the  political party at large.

In last weeks post I included a note about upcoming events, as well as as a note from the chair of my Senate District about upcoming events for any resident of this district.   It is reprinted below.

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In my case, my Senate District official Convention is Saturday, April 6, and is open only to elected delegates selected at the Caucus (people who could not attend the caucus, could pre-register for delegate status).

Following is the Congressional District Convention on Saturday, May 4, then the State Convention (Duluth) May 31 – June 2.

I have attended all of these Conventions at one time or another; always the Senate and often Congressional.  They are always very interesting, and those attending take their work very seriously.

The Democrats National Convention is in Chicago Aug 19-24; the Republicans in Milwaukee Jul 15-18.  The actual election is Nov. 5, 2024.

I am nearing age 84, and there is a time and a place for everything.

I am a strong supporter of Joe Biden/Kamala Harris.  At the same time, my mantra has long been that the youth, women, and persons of color need to play the major roles in the future, both because they will live in what results far beyond my own mortality; and their issues are very crucial to their own future.

Another personal mantra: we citizens ARE “politics”.  What we get (and often deride) is exactly what we choose in this democracy, fragile as it has become.  Traditionally, more than a third of eligible voters don’t even vote once every four years.  And often those who vote only vote for a single candidate, with little knowledge of the implications of their vote.  This is a disgrace.

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“Below the Fold” – for readers in my own Minnesota Senate District #47

State and National Politics always get the most attention from the media, but the really important work is what is done at the local level.  And often times, local issues take on great importance in special elections including school issues, and the like.  It is not enough to vote for one person one time every four years.

There is a special event on Thursday, March 14 from 5:30-8:30  pm at Woodbury Middle: HotDish Challenge!  Cake & Pie Auction.   School cafeteria (use the entry facing Valley Creek>. Suggested $20 family donation + bid on auction

I asked the local chair to input on this issue, and below is what she offered.  She has been a very committed chair.

A week from today is the Minnesota Precinct Caucus; a week beyond is “Super Tuesday” in many U.S. States.

While details from state to state vary, each state has a process by which citizens input on candidates and issues that their elected representatives will encounter during their term of office.  For Minnesota and my community, the essential information is here.  Scroll down to the indicated links.

In my view, in our democracy, which thus far has endured the entire history of the United States, there are two essential bookends:

1. Eligible voters can cast a secret ballot for the candidates for office in their area.
2. At the end of the process, a judiciary interprets the laws which have been enacted:  “The Rule of Law”.

In between and indeed within the bookends themselves there are endless possibilities for decisions that distress the very essence of a democratic republic, which is what we are.  The citizens and the courts are the essential gatekeepers.

The individual voter is the one ultimately accountable for the outcomes.  None of us need to do it all; but all of us need to do our part.

Get involved.

POSTNOTE: I saved a useful editorial from the Minneapolis Star Tribune on Dec. 31 on the topic of Citizen engagement.  I think it is worth a read.: Citizen Engagement StarTrib Dec 31 2023

Personal Opinion: * – “Voting” is much, much more than casting a single ballot one time every four years….

COMMENTS:

from Brian:  Great Stuff, Dick!