PRENOTE: My personal views on this issue are at the end of the post.  See “Personal View”.

Previous posts this week, here and here.  There will be a few on other topics in coming days.  Check back.

Aug. 9, 2022

Tuesday Aug 9, 2022, was Minnesota’s Primary Election.  I voted at about 7:30 a.m. and I was very impressed with the general organization and tenor at the site.

I always vote, in every election.  I’m accustomed to a positive experience, without exception, in past elections.

I wore my “I Voted” sticker all day and it was noticed, positively, several times.

Later that morning, I had coffee with a friend who had not yet voted in her community.  I asked if she would comment back on her reactions .  She didn’t know my impressions.  Later in the afternoon came her e-mail:

lawn sign against the school district referendum request

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77 years ago today, the horror of the Atomic Bomb was unleashed over Hiroshima, Japan.  Three days later, the act was repeated at Nagasaki.

The debate will never end.  The act must never be forgotten, or repeated.

Here are two remembrances about the bomb, and the folly and the myth of war itself.

First, a column I wrote which was published in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, August 6, 2005: Atomic Bomb 1945001.

Second, the below column by my long-time friend Peter Barus in OpEdNews in July 18, 2020. reprinted with permission of the author.

(Today’s rendition of the Peace Boat, the Golden Rule, sets sail down the Mississippi River, beginning at Stillwater MN on September 2, 2022.  Details, including changes, will be reported here as they are known.  Here is a description of  the 2022 Golden Rule Project.  More can also be read here, starting at “Three.”)

Vietnam War Protest ca 1968 Philadelphia PA, the Golden Rule photo from Peter Barus, whose Dad  is pictured in the boat.

Peter Barus: My father, a founding Vet for Peace, had served on the battleship Indiana in War Two, and years later was photographed with two members of the Philadelphia Orchestra in a tiny sailboat, tacking across the bows of another battleship being recommissioned in the Philadelphia Navy Yard, with STOP THE WAR IN VIETNAM emblazoned on the sail in electrical tape. There was precedent for this.
Some informal historical background…
“Golden Rule” was, and is again, a small two-masted sailboat that was sailed by Albert Bigelow and George Willoughby into the Atomic Test Zone to stop the atomic bomb testing in the Pacific that contaminated the Marshall Islands. They were repeatedly towed ashore by the Coast Guard, and were not vaporized. But they did raise public awareness of this awful crime against humanity, the Earth, and life itself.
That was in 1958, and at the age of ten, I went down to Fort Detrick, MD, for my first peace vigil. I believe I met “Golden Rule’s” crew there. We were all excited about Golden Rule. Albert and George had just returned from being jailed again. George was part of our Meeting, I think. Margaret Rawson, another Quaker activist, was there, and her husband was the head of the biological weapons lab inside the fort, which was the object of our protest. That afternoon Margaret’s husband was visited by the military commander of the fort, who said there was a crowd of “Communists” at the gate, and offered an escort home. “No,” he replied, “My wife is out there with them, they’ll be coming to our house for dinner, would you like to join us?”

At the time, the US Government was not only irradiating inhabited Pacific islands, and spreading plutonium across the landscape in the Southwest, but injecting it into indigent patients in a hospital in Cincinnati to see what would happen to them. They died horribly of course. But “indigents” is one of those words that means “not White,” so this was not considered newsworthy. In the late eighties a friend of mine had been a lawyer for the above-mentioned islanders, so shamefully treated by our government after being intentionally deluged with fallout in the tests the Golden Rule had been trying to stop. To this day they are still suffering the effects of that terrible crime, and have only recently been allowed or forced to accept a few hundred dollars and return to their original home island, with its glowing beaches. The islanders and the “indigent” patients had all been the unwitting subjects of a horrific experiment, the effects of which were already well understood in Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be a hideous variety of unbearable ways to die. I was told that in the Cincinnati case, by a court order, a commemorative plaque was installed in a boiler room of the hospital.
The following, sent this week by the Vets for Peace Golden Rule Project, is all the more poignant to me in light of these memories…

“Seventy-five years ago today – July 16, 1945, the United States detonated the first atomic bomb, which was named “Trinity,” in New Mexico. In less than one month’s time, the first three nuclear weapons had blasted the planet, unleashing a destructive force with consequences that will linger for thousands of years.
This issue of the Golden Rule eNews is devoted to remembering those horrible events and to educating ourselves about the continuing impact U.S. militarism in the Pacific, with particular focus on Hawaii.
The Golden Rule peace boat is currently in Honolulu, sheltering-in-place until Covid-19 restrictions can be safely lifted in the Marshall Islands and throughout the Pacific. In the meantime, we remain committed to our mission to rid the world of nuclear weapons and to sail for a peaceful, sustainable future.
Seventy Five Years Ago – July 16, 1945 The Atomic Era Began with the Trinity Test in Alamagordo, New Mexico. It Changed the World Forever.
Both the yield (21 kilotons) and the fallout exceeded expectations of the scientists by far. Wind carried the fallout over a hundred miles and rolls of film as far away as Indiana was ruined. “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.”, said Robert Oppenheimer afterwards. Survivors and their descendants are still trying to get health care and compensation. Downwinders of that blast are still trying to get health care and compensation for the injuries to themselves and their descendants.
Because ten of the thirteen pounds of plutonium did not fission but were drawn seven miles into the stratosphere and rained back down on the planet, a huge area of the Southwest will be contaminated for 240,000 years with the most toxic poison known to man.
Just 3 weeks later, On August 6, Hiroshima, Japan was destroyed and 180,000 civilians died by the end of the year.
In five square miles of the city, 92% of the buildings were destroyed or damaged by the blast and fires.
On August 9, Nagasaki was bombed, with over 80,000 killed.
Tens of thousands died instantaneously and others died slowly and agonizingly as a result of burns and radiation. Survivors are still susceptible to leukemia, tumors, and post-traumatic stress. But the damage didn’t stop there – children and grandchildren of survivors had increased chances of small brain sizes, delayed development, blindness and increased susceptibility to leukemia and other cancers.
Atomic bomb survivors have worked hard all of their lives to assure that NEVER AGAIN will nuclear weapons be used!
Truman’s diary confirms that he knew Japan was trying desperately to get out of the war by opening a negotiating channel through Moscow.”

The salvaged and refurbished ship is in Hawaii, pinned there by The Virus on the road to Hiroshima. But the plucky little craft continues her voyage.
The list of outrages we now know about has grown in seventy-five years, and there are a lot of dots to connect. The persistent and rising resistance movement now includes and involves millions of people that Capitalism left in its toxic dust. It isn’t so much a movement as a kind of social sea-level rise, from the relentless heat of state repression. A system that can never provide either equity or environmental balance has defended the indefensible for too long.
But there’s a difference now. The surveillance is even more widespread, because it is in private hands, and therefore not constrained to secrecy so much as entitled to it. A Snowden inside The Book of Fe, um, Faces, for instance, might get sued, but wouldn’t have to leave the country for fear of being executed under some ancient sedition law or other. And the government can still get hold of your dossier the old fashioned way: buy it on the open market, like anybody else.
Except they no longer care about you. They’ve figured out that you are subject to currents and trends that are much more easily managed by software. You are just a data-point. It isn’t your opinion that matters, it’s where your gaze is pointed, that makes the big money now. And the big money decides.
There’s a new solidarity among people who are not in denial about what’s at stake for humanity. Old demographics have lost their meaning (which may explain why “targeted” advertising is losing so much money). It’s not the big names, Antifa or BLM or LGBTQ+ or “woke.” It’s much bigger than those great efforts combined. It’s simply people who don’t have a stake in “normal”. But it’s not that first wave of stake-non-holders, so clueless and terrified they flocked to a bloodthirsty psychopath. These folks watch and learn. They know the difference between shite and shinola. They know that money could be found to pay everyone in America to stay home until The Virus settles down, and build more homes for the people who don’t have one, and hand out enough PPE for everybody to change them often. Read up on this in Stephanie Kelton’s new book, “The Deficit Myth.” The banks and hedge funds just got trillions and what are they doing with all that loot? Sitting on it. Read all about that in “Levers of Power.” Kevin Young has just explained to us all how History Shows Disruptive Protest Works, where neither violence nor electoral politics can. And it’s just fighting fire with fire, as long as you identify the fire accurately: money is the fire, not the SWAT teams. They have to get paid to repress people. That means the people they repress have to spend money. And while you’re at it, look up Veterans for Peace, and see what you can do to help.
Just for starters.

Companion post, Voters, here.

I am,  and you and every else are, “politics”.  The “them” we like to despise, really is US, period.

Two years ago, August 1 and  2, 2020, I did two posts on successive days about U.S. politics, and where I stood and why.

The two posts remain unchanged and pertinent, and I re-present them, unedited here: D’s, and T’s.

Like then, I welcome comments here.

It is not new news that I’m a committed Democrat, and basically have always been.  But, the person I call my political mentor was a progressive Republican; and, earlier, “I like[d] Ike”, etc.  This is no contradiction in terms.  These kinds of Republicans have been purged from what goes by “Republican” today.

*

Two years ago, like almost everyone, I was caught unaware about the pending and escalating insanity following Election Day, won by over 7-million votes by Joe Biden – a margin which didn’t surprise me at all.

With all of us, I watched storm clouds gather, which I erroneously thought crested and ended with January 6, 2021, but which continue to this day.  And the crisis was hatched long before Election Day 2020.

In my lifetime, I have never seen anything like the time between Nov. 2020 and today.  In our country’s lifetime, except for the Civil War, there has been nothing like this: craziness unchained: ur democracy on the edge of destruction.

There is no longer a “Republican Party” as commonly understood particularly in recent times; the name has been stolen and it’s reputation sullied perhaps beyond redemption.  It can recover, but this will take many years of very hard work.

Today’s Democrats by and large are like yesterdays progressive Republicans, by and large banished from today’s party.

*

Two years ago I differentiated between today’s two major parties with the distinction “We” vs “Me”.

Democrats – the “We’s – often are portrayed as disorganized, even by Democrats.  I consider that a strength, since the Democrats are a party that embraces and endeavors to respect all voices (which is, after all, the nature of our nation itself).

However imperfectly, Democrats consistently work towards the ideal of Community – a gathering place where all matter, not just some.  Where ‘winning’ is not reserved for the privileged few.  A personal hero, Paul Wellstone, said it best: “we all do better when we all do better.”

The T’s (Me’s) seem most attracted to authority – working to control who makes the rules (Laws) and interprets these laws (Judges).  In their view, there are in’s and out’s “winners” and “losers”.  And they work to control.  In a diverse society this is a dangerous and doomed philosophy.

In these tribal days, the gap is difficult to bridge.  A “me” frames an issue in terms of personal self-interest – what I want.  A “we” starts from a community perspective – how are we, together.

Of course, no definition is absolute, especially when people are involved – look at your own circles – family, friends, associates….  But I think my basic distinction (we v me) is true, and one of the main reasons dialogue is so difficult: “what’s best for all of us” is very different than “what’s best for me”.

As a society, person by person, we need to deal constructively with differences of opinion.  This used to be more common that today.  Now it’s winner or loser.

We are all losing.

*

POSTNOTE:  As this was ‘going to press’, Jeff sent a query relating to the upcoming primary election in Minnesota: “why the primary system exacerbates the pull to the left and the right for candidates” referring to a column by Tom Horner in yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune.

It happens that my primary ballot has numerous contests, for Congress, and other positions, Republican as well as Democrat, as well as a large school district referendum.  If you’re Minnesotan here’s the link to find the info for your area.

My opinion: Probably as long as there have been humans there have been contests for power and control.  Come to think of it, this holds true in the animal kingdom generally.

Elections  are an effort to civilize this conflict.  Even in our system of government, since the foundation, there have been contests, not always polite, at election time.

I was fairly active politically (as a Democrat) for quite a long while.  Generally the candidate endorsement process was through the political party structure beginning at the local level.  Anyone could run, and the conventions would endorse, and ultimately the state party endorsed candidate was on the ballot.

The contest was open and relatively civil.

My first experience with a deviation was in 2010, when Mark Dayton bypassed the regular endorsement process, won the primary, and became two-term Minnesota Governor from 2011-19.

In 2010, I was active in the DFL Senior Caucus, Minnesota Democratic Party.  Internally within our caucus came a controversy: do we go with the endorsed candidate, or support Dayton?  It became a divisive issue.  I favored  staying with the endorsed candidate – respecting the long-standing process.  The non-endorsed candidate, Dayton, won.  (In my opinion he was an outstanding Governor.)

My opinion, the primary process does as Tom Horner suggests.  Fewer folks vote and it’s more susceptible to manipulation by well organized constituent groups.  In my local case, the long-time well-respected Congresswoman, (who I support), is being challenged by a another woman who appears to be from the more progressive wing of the party.  Who’ll win?  Ask me on August 10.  But it’s an important contest.

There is another question on my ballot: an important school bond referendum.  I know the issue, which was advanced by the local school board, and is important.  The details of the issue are here:   833 Referendum 2022.  Public Schools, of course, are public entities for the powerless, and depend on the public for taxation. Over the years I have noticed political manipulation of such issues, particularly how, if at all, they can be publicized and by whom, and when the elections are held.  If you wish to defeat the issue, you don’t allow it at the time when it will most likely be passed.  Mostly the signs I’ve seen (and there aren’t many of them) are “vote no” with absolutely no detail.  I suspect that the “vote yes” group is mobilizing in other ways.  Again ask me on August 10 how it turned out.  Defeat will not get rid of the issues; only the cost will rise as time goes on.

from Norm:  Norm is a long-time active Democrat and we’re good friends.  I had raised this issue with him, and here’s his most recent response.

Julianne J___ [a Democrat friend] and I made a presentation to my local Kiwanis club a few years ago on the political process.

We wanted to make the presentation non-partisan in recognition of the far ranging and various political views of my Kiwanis club colleagues, all mainly retired and many of them nationally and internationally known in their fields of academia, science and medicine.

That is, quite an accomplished and sophisticated group of men and women!

Julianne found and discussed the results of the research that had been done on the development of personal political views. Not surprisingly, the research found that most political views and opinions are formulated by most people before reaching the age of five based upon the views of those around them, that is, primarily their families.*

Further, that those views are unlikely to ever change during their lifetime save for some traumatic life changing event.

Given that, it is interesting to speculate what traumatic event happened to the many people who have chosen to believe little Donnie’s Big Lie and to lose faith in so many pillars of democracy including the Constitution, elections system and its process, truth speaking and truth seeking legislators like Rep. Cheney who will be demolished in her primary for the great work that she has done with the January 6 inquiry, and so on.

What happened to cause such a change?

Was it little Donnie and nothing more?

Was it little Donnie convincing too many people that all of their ills, lack of successes, public policies that they did  not like including LBGTAI rights and so on were all the fault of “those  people?”

Further, was it little Donnie convincing too many folks to forget all about those laws, policies and so on that were victimizing them and to just trust him and that he would take car of them aka Rev. Jones?  That is, drink the Kool-Aide and all will be well.

Coal will once again be in high demand and all miners will have jobs.  Steel will be made again in the US and all of the rusted plants will be brought back to life and jobs will be plentiful.  Climate change is just a hoax by folks trying to make me aka little Donnie, look bad!

Heck, COVID is just another hoax perpetuated by folks wanting to make me aka little Donnie, look bad.  Just gargle some Chlorox and you will be fine!

*Note: one of my Kiwanis colleagues told me after our joint presentation that he was quite sure that Julianne was a Republican so we knew right there and then that we had accomplished our intent to be non-partisan with our presentation!

Linda adds to the conversation:

Nice to read of Norm and Julianne’s presentation to the Kiwanis club.   What a great project.  These projects take a great deal of effort.

At the time DJT was elected in 2106, I spent 3 months preparing a public presentation on “Understanding the Constitution”.  This morphed into the “Trump Administration and the U. S. Constitution”.  It was sponsored by the American Constitution Society.

Meetings were held around the TC and law students, lawyers, some Republicans, and members of the public came.  My focus was what the Trump Admnistration was advocating through the courts and changes to the law, stating the outcome of these changes or rulings, and contrasting them with the preceeding interpretations of the Constitution.

It was interesting to listen to the questions that attendees had.  A few people just sat there and glowered at me.  Many people took notes.  Many people just asked for further information.  A few people wanted to develop these sessions into classroom projects.

I was gratified that the talks were received with interest and not controversy.  I concluded that many people who believed in Trump just do not realize what profound impacts the rule of law and Trump’s prejudices have had on the country.  Many people spend most of their days being entertained, working at a job, and looking for simple answers.

Why do people not believe what experts say?  I think the following events account for it.

1. The Catholic Church scandal.
2. Nixon and Watergate (Republicans lied about it)
3. The War Against Iraq  (Republicans lied about it)
4. Lack of understanding how health and science professionals make us safe  (Trump lied about them)
5. Lack of Civics teaching
6. A history of racism and sexism, that meant white men lost when others had rights.
7. Vietnam (Democrats and Republicans lied about it)
8. Politics and churches
9. Indifference to community values (Republicans)

PRE-NOTE to everyone:  August 6 and 9 are the 77th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  There is a significant on-line event relating to this with segments Aug 3, 6, 10, 17, 24, 31.  Details are here.  Pre-registration is required for each segment, and early registration is recommended.  This is worth your time.

To Minnesotans, Primary Election Day is August 9.  Know the candidates and the issues and VOTE well-informed.  More information here.  Click on the box “What’s on my ballot?” if not certain of issues in your area.

(Monday and Tuesday, August 1&2 I plan to have two politics-specific posts.  Do check back.)

Following are several items.  One or more may be of interest to you.

1. A Memory: Uncle Vincent’s Knife.

We were enroute home July 20, and an apple beckoned, but I had nothing to cut it with.

At the time I was the passenger, and I remembered that in the glove box was Uncle Vincent’s key ring, which included the pocket knife which had given him long and faithful service.   That key ring went everywhere with him, farm and town; fishing, church….  The knife was a multi-purpose tool, not a weapon.  It would do things like cut rhubarb in the garden, and such.

I took the knife and ‘cleaned’ it like back on the farm.  A nearby ragged handkerchief did the duty.

The apple was delicious.

Why, you ask, was that key ring in the car?  Uncle Vince died over 7 years ago, the last of a large farm family which included my mother, his sister, (who was 16 when he was born).

Vince lost custody of his car keys a year earlier when his residence changed to the memory care unit of the LaMoure Nursing home.  Not an easy transition at age 89, but necessary.

I became the custodian of the keys, seldom had use for any of them. But they’ll be with me until I depart this earth, a reminder, I guess, of many rich conversations with my Uncle, and of family.  Thanks, Vince.

Vincent’s knife, July 20, 2022

2.  A Model: Virgil’s Oxbow Project

Two days earlier, I’d been up to rural Huot, near Red Lake Falls, MN, for a visit with my long time friend, retired Professor of French, and passionate French-Canadian, Virgil Benoit.

Virgil has been an advocate for over 40 years, and Oxbow at Old Crossing (new Facebook presence) is his most recent project.  Oxbow probably best conveys his true legacy, which is building community; truly crossing boundaries.

Virgil showed me the various projects in process on the oxbow.  They include tree planting and traditional gardening.  They involve more people than himself,  and the ideas are multifaceted.  Oxbow is a community working together.

Recently he sent a newsletter, with a description of the initiative.  Here is a copy for your perusal. Benoit Virgil Oxbow Fdn.

Virgil Benoit with young beet, Oxbow garden, Huot MN, July 18, 2022

3.  Another Model:  Annelee 

The trip north centered around our friend, Annelee, soon to be 96, in a time of transition in her own very long, productive and interesting life.

Much of her adult life, Annelee was a teacher in a northern Minnesota town.  I got a first look at her school on this trip, and found an unanticipated plaque on the wall of the school, with 13 other members of the “Hall of Fame”.  The light situation didn’t mitigate for a good photo, but here’s what I saw on the wall of the school about my friend.

Annelee was (and still is) an outstanding teacher, another unsung hero, as is Virgil, was Vincent, and so many others, everywhere who we come across in our daily lives..

4.  A Learning Opportunity for You: A Private Universe

Back in the late 1980s, my friend, Kathy, then a 5th grade teacher, sent me a handout from some inservice she had attended.  It had spoke to her.  I read it, and I kept it.

A couple of weeks ago for whatever reason she sent me the exact same handout she’d sent years ago.  It caused me to look at it much more carefully, and it spoke to me, and I think it can speak to all of us in these days when getting stuck in our own certainty is a major problem for our very society.

I think it came to me because she and I had recently chatted about the difficulty of conversing about politics in general, even with people we know well.

This time, I looked up A Private Universe on the internet, and I invite you to do the same.  In 1987 it was a learning research project with junior high school students, which apparently endures.

I invite you to in particular watch the videos #1 (the original, featuring junior high kids) and 8 (Q&A some years later with the ‘star’ of the original), which won’t take much of your time, and then translate their topic to your own contemporary idea about communicating with people with differing opinions from your own about most anything.

I think you’ll find the time well spent, and learn something about yourself as well.

Here’s the sheet Kathy sent me, not complete, but you’ll get the idea: Private Universe 1980s.  The videos will add much more.

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We learn in small and sometimes seemingly insignificant increments.  For me, simply in this post, the “teachers” have been Mom, Virgil, Kathy, Annelee and many, many more.

Yours?

*

Two additional items well worth your time:

from Fred, re life in Russia:  Bill sent this very interesting take on the long suffering Russian people and the great writers who documented their eternal misery under despotism.

PRE-NOTE: What is North Dakota about?  This year you have the advantage of a new book which I’ve publicized at this space two or three times, and continue to highly recommend:  ” Clay Jenkinson’s “The Language of Cottonwoods.  Essays on the Future of North Dakota”.   There are many reviews.  Here’s the Table of Contents: Jenkinson Lang Ctnwoods Contents.   Whatever your connection with the state, if you’re at all interested, read this book.

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Most of last week I spent in North Dakota.  It was not a secret trip.  Friend Jane, in California wrote: “North Dakota?  Sooo jealous.  The only state I haven’t visited yet.  Plan to go next summer, hopefully even get to Standing Rock.”

Having grown up in ND, in many towns, and an almost annual visitor there, I can speak with some authority about the prairie state.   The book I recommend at the beginning of this post will do a much better job than my scribbles in defining present day North Dakota.

North Dakota is a pretty normal place with its pluses and minuses, as is true everywhere.  I could make lists.  No need.  Suffice, we’re a nation that defines others by labels and extremes.  We’re mostly just folks: think of yourself and the people you know, personally.  Then think of what leads the news, regardless of the medium; the latest of anything that brings the outside world to your attention….

A few personal notes here: DB ND July 2022

Below is my  2022 ND road map.  It seems a better visual than assorted random photos between Fargo and Bismarck.   Generally, had you been along, you’d have seen lots of green and open farm area, interspersed with tiny towns, mostly, along the mainline of the old Northern Pacific railroad and U.S. Highway 10.  Of course, the interstates intentionally by-passed the small towns everywhere, which didn’t help the local economy, but so goes progress

The weather was magnificent summer weather.  I travelled in the southeast quadrant: I-94 and a little south, as far west as the Missouri River.

There was a relatively small amount of summer road construction on I-94.  75 is the legal speed limit in ND. Bismarck to St. Paul is about the same distance as from St. Paul to Chicago…400+ miles.   It was a hike for someone my age, alone.

Fargo-Moorhead on the east border is the Prairie metropolis, truly.  Still, the centerpiece artifact at the Fargo visitor center is the woodchipper made famous in the Coen Brothers movie, “Fargo”, which really had nothing much to do with Fargo or North Dakota, but both added to the marketing appeal of the film.  Stereotyping?  Sure, but you take what publicity you can get.  As the quotation attributed to someone(s) goes:  “I don’t care what they say about me, just spell my name right.”

North Dakota road map 2022

My first stop in N. Dakota, and my first visit, was with my friend, Larry, in Fargo on July 5.  I told him about Jane’s comment (above), and said I’d like to take a photo of a real North Dakota ‘hayseed’, and he was more than happy to oblige (more at the end of the post about him).  He’s lifelong NoDakker, escapes the bounds of the state now and then, but always returns.  He’s the real deal!

Larry at West Acres, Fargo ND July 5, 2022

Jane isn’t the first to have told me that ND has never been their destination.  We have some kind of reputation, I guess.

I thought about Eric Sevareid’s famous commentary in Colliers Magazine in 1956.  He was born and raised in Velva, not far from Minot and Karlsruhe (where I lived 1951-53).  “You can go home again” was the headline.  Between his growing up in Velva (1912-25), and the 1956 commentary, Eric had become a celebrity to those in my generation.  He only lived a while in Velva as a youngster, but in a sense he never left.

There was a time when I would hesitate to say I was from North Dakota.  That reticence is long past.  I’m proud I grew up there, and in a larger sense, I’ll never really leave, though I’m more than 57 years out of state, most of that a ‘city slicker’ in metro Twin Cities Minnesota.

North Dakota is a pleasant place to visit, Larry and others make it so.  For me, “others” this year meant 10 folks I know.  My particular business this year focused on the State archives in Bismarck where my family has a presence (collection 11082).  I’ve gone back to the archives about once a year or so, usually for a couple of days.  Enroute out and home, I enjoy my state and I visit. This year was no different.

*

What about Larry (picture above)?

I’ve known Larry G for over 60 years.  When I was in college, he was a high school classmate of my future wife.  I didn’t know him then, except that he was the announcer with a superb radio voice on local radio, KOVC in Valley City.

I didn’t know he was a high school kid.

He went on to success in other areas, and in retirement he blogs as I do.  His turf is HERE.    I think you will like his content.  His information is shared with his permission.   Take a look.  Pieces about Garrison Keillor, Louis L’Amour, “Fargo”, Bobby Vee….

One of my destinations last week came via a tip from him as we conversed.

Oldtimers will remember renowned singer Peggy Lee, who started life as Norma Egstrom of Jamestown ND [July 13: as my college roommate Richard reminds me, below, she actually grew up in tiny Wimbledon ND].   Turns out that she did her first live radio gig probably in the same KOVC studio where Larry Gauper did his announcing.

He told me about a mural on the side of the building that was the radio station and I stopped to see it.  Sure enough, there it is:

The stories go on and on.  If you have the chance to go to North Dakota, go.  You won’t regret it.

And pick up Clay Jenkinson’s book on the Future of North Dakota, “The Language of Cottonwoods”.

Cleveland ND on I-94 from the south July 5, 2022

Missouri River at Bismarck ND July 7, 2022

COMMENTS (more at end of post):

from Mark: Not So Wild a Dream  is one of Eric [Sevareid]’s best pieces of writing about our region.

from Debbie: Thanks for this, Dick.  I taught music in South Dakota on a Sioux reservation and would often go home with one of the teachers from North Dakota – Buffalo.  People there LOVED N. Dakota and called it God’s Country.