Prenote: each and every single one of us IS government and politics.  I post frequently on politics at this space.  I will write about the Democratic nominee for President and Vice-President after they are officially nominated at the Democratic Convention in a few days.  Check back.  This is our country, all of us, together.

*

In our garage, above my car, is the ancient mailbox that stood at the end of the driveway to the ancestral farm of my mother.  Here it is, photo’ed July 4, 2020:

I had rescued the mailbox, as one of the last family artifacts to leave the 110-year family farm in 2015.  No heir even asked about it.  It was just junk.  I just couldn’t leave it behind.

In this picture it sits on the ancient chair that Uncle Vince sat on in his last visit to his farm in 2013, right before the Nursing Home ended his semi-independent living in town.   Vince’s mental acuity was declining rapidly.

For Vincent, and for most everyone else, including me, every day, checking the mail is a daily ritual.  It is central to most of our lives, even in this time of fewer ‘real’ letters, and the dominance of The Tube – TV or computer.

Personally I would guess I’m in the post office, physically, two or three times a week.  I like the post office employees.  I enjoy getting mail at the curb.  I still write letters by hand.

Now the postal service is again controversial, through no fault of its own.  Here’s today’s long post from Just Above Sunset, well worth your time: Mailing it in.

Put “mailbox” into the search box for this blog, as I just did, and you’ll find 26 references, the oldest of which is here, June, 2009, two months after I began to blog.

I wonder what Vince would be thinking, were he around today.  He was a quiet man, but my guess is he would have a strong opinion on this.  One of his daily rituals was to go down to get the mail.

That old chair on which the mailbox sits?  Here’s the story I wrote which includes a photo of that chair, from September, 2013.

Vince is now five years deceased (Feb. 2, 2015).  I can’t ask him for an opinion now, but I’m pretty certain he wouldn’t be happy at the current chaotic state of affairs.

You, reader, and I, and hundreds of millions of others, are still here, and the current issue is in our hands.

Do something.  To use the post is your, and all of our, Constitutional right.

COMMENTS: (see also the on-line comments below)

from Steve: Your latest story was a lovely way to begin this weekend morning. There’s some nostalgia, some plea for more human correspondence, and some politics. Receiving one’s mail–or delivering one’s thoughts and information–without an effort beyond opening a computer or phone is convenient, I guess, but for me it offers less adventure than “going down to get the mail”–an act of some commitment, especially if the hike were more than a short driveway in distance. The current pushing match over this postal system seems especially profane when the tradition of stamps and delivery that’s been a confident exchange has become a political match stick. I hope that the mailbox in your garage has the karma or whatever it takes to keep us from the corruption of this connection to our democracy.

from Carol: My grandparents, living out in the wilds of North Dakota (as you know), got mail from TWO post offices.  Now people are in danger of not getting mail even from one.  This is NOT progress 🙁

This charming little story is from Grandma’s tape-recorded memories:

“You know, the Oriska mailman, he drove horses.  ‘Giddup. Giddup. Giddup. Giddup.’  You could hear him comin’ way from that Catholic church east of our place.  That was a mile.  You could hear him comin.’  ‘Giddup. Giddup. Giddup.’  So Pa told him every time he come to the farm he should put the horses in the barn and feed ‘em and then come to the house and I’d give him somethin’ to eat.  So we did that.  He brought the mail from Oriska, you know.  We had that mailbox right on the corner and then we had a Fingal mailbox down to the other corner, so we could get mail from both routes… That dress that Inez has got in that picture, his wife made that.  We fed the horses, you know, and give him somethin’ to eat.  And then this mail carrier got me a set of pans.  Three of ‘em.  And I liked ‘em so well, they was nice pans.”

(She went on to say that she found some of my uncles had “borrowed” her nice pans to make a still in the woods.  But, I digress…)

from Larry: When “Carol” mentioned Oriska and the postman, I am reminded of my maternal grandfather, Louis B. Musselman. He was a rural mail carrier out of Oriska during the mid-30s. There was a day during each year when he had to distribute Sears catalogs. This would be quite foreign to today’s Amazon users. That distribution day was a huge event to the rural mail carrier, as you can see in the attached photo.  My grandfather is the fellow behind the wheel and the other guy is probably the Oriska postmaster.

from Dick: A letter to the Postal Service which I began to deliver Aug. 17, first to my home mailbox:

Dear Postal Worker:  I have a long and very positive experience record with the USPS, including the last 20 years in Woodbury.  There are no horror stories in my files, and I’m in the post office two or three times a week; am shepherd for one PO Box in Woodbury for an organization I’m part of, have excellent residential service, and spend many hundreds of dollars every year for stamps and other services at the post office.

The Post Office to me has always been the people who provide the service…still today, every day, I look forward to the mail.

Thank you.

from Sonya: This was such an interesting blog post. At age 65, I also love getting “snail mail” instead of only text messages and emails, though I myself very seldom write a paper letter anymore.

from Walt: We still use the USPS every day of the week, and we buy stamps by the roll of 100!  We write checks to mail bills, send actual birthday cards to friends and family,  and mail gifts and other packages.  We do not use FedEx or other delivery companies. This is our choice, and we feel that we are doing our best to support the Post Office.

Today is an ignominious anniversary: the dropping of the Atomic Bomb on Nagasaki Japan.  Hiroshima came a few days earlier, on August 6.

I expressed my opinion on the matter in a column in the Minneapolis Star Tribune on the 50th anniversary, August 9, 1995.  You can read the column here: Atomic Bomb 1945.  The newspaper article referred to in the article is here: Atomic Bomb 1945 news20200809 (click both pdf’s to enlarge them.  both are single page.)

The best that can be said for all of us – and it is good – is that 75 years have passed since the offensive use of The Bomb in war.  Yes, there plenty of threats, and some kind of perverse need to out stockpile each other, or keep the bomb out of the hands of others.  We are the only country, thus far, to actually use the bomb in war.  May the first uses, also be the last.

This morning on my walk I wore by “Veterans for Kerry” T-shirt from the 2004 Presidential election.  Kerry’s time as Secretary of State resulted in successful negotiations to tamp down a perceived threat in Iran and in general calmed things down.  Of course, these kinds of agreements were torn up in the succeeding administration, which was an unfortunate development.

As noted in my column, my Naval officer Uncle George landed at Tokyo on September 10, 1945.  The War was over.

I’ve visited the Battleship Missouri twice, at Bremerton WA in 1971, and again at Pearl Harbor in 2015, where it had been moved to a place near the USS Arizona, the point of our entry into WWII, and on which my Dad’s brother, Uncle Frank, perished Dec. 7, 1951.

I have also been twice to the USS Arizona Memorial, in 1985 and 2015.  It is an intensely moving place.

Two photos on the deck of the Missouri Dec. 18, 2015:

Who wins a war?  I contend that nobody ever has, nor ever will, really win a war, though there are all sorts of declarations made to the contrary.  Victories are always temporary.  The loser remembers….

We survive together; we perish separately.

COMMENTS: (see also end of this post.)

from Larry: two letters to the editor in the Star Tribune, scroll down to “Hiroshima”, the second from himself, can be viewed here.

More at July 26, August 1, 2.  Also, other posts in July, and in following days.  Check back.

*

Today is just another day of breaking news, following all the other days.  Today is the day millions of people will not get the $600 weekly supplement, $15 per hour.  My friend, Kathy, mentioned one of the beneficiaries who bought a dishwasher with some of the money: IS THIS A LOAFER SQUANDERING UNEARNED MONEY?  DISGUSTING!  So the debate can go.

It also must be noted that the money for the dishwasher is a boon to capitalism…somebody made the machine, someone sold it, someone installed it.  SOMEBODY PROFITED, WITHOUT LIFTING A FINGER.

We are a capitalist society.  People can’t spend money they don’t have; they can’t seek or take jobs that don’t exist….

As I compose this about 10:30 a.m. CDT, the story is the quandary of school reopening – it is not easy to translate sound bites into universal policies in this time of Covid-19….

*

The first two days of this month, and another on July 26, I talked about politics from my own perspective in 2020.  The link to those is here.

My dominant thought this day is that we are a nation full of rubes,  susceptible to a huckster-in-chief.  We are only at the edge of the abyss.  Falling into the immeasurable chasm won’t happen until after election 2020, when we learn the consequences of believing false pitches for some, against others.    We have always seemed to be attracted to fantasy – only the process has become more and more sophisticated with passing years.

The president we unfortunately elected four years ago is a master of the carny pitch, and too many of us want to believe that pitch. And today the pitch is more easily and instantly spread to masses in means available to almost everyone, no discernment required.

*

Yesterday, I was reading an article in the July/August 2020 Vanity Fair, “Undercover in the Church of Trump” by Jeff Sharlatt.  At page 122, Sharlatt references Aimee Semple McPherson, a noted and entertaining, then notorious, evangelist who founded the Pentecostal “Church of the Foursquare Gospel” in the 1920s.  It brought back some memories, one from my Dad, another from a most unlikely good friend, Alan King-Hamilton, an elderly and prominent British Judge who I met in person in London in 2001.

Of Sister Aimee, Sharlatt said this, comparing hers with Trump’s showmanship.: “[her] belief that church should above all be entertaining.  She once preached a sermon dressed as a motorcycle cop, complete with a motorcycle  onstage….”

Judge King-Hamilton, as a young man, was president of the Cambridge Debating Society, and spent a remarkable fall of 1927 with two colleagues, in debate competitions in the midwest and west of the United States (places visited are here: King-Hamilton et al 1927001).  The Judge loaned me a copy of the diary he wrote during the trip, which included several hundred words about a Nov. 27, 1927, visit to “Sister Aimee McPherson at her Angelus Temple – one of the worlds greatest show-women…”  He was then 20 years old.  His visit obviously intrigued he and his companions – he spent more time on writing about that visit than on any other event in the three months in the United States.  Among King-Hamilton’s comments, “Sister is no mean story-teller.  She is a great show-woman and understands how “to get it across.”  

The show was the thing, not the substance.  Ultimately Semple McPherson flamed out….  She was a theological Carnival barker.

Not long ago, in Centennial, 7/16/2020, I recalled my Dad’s recollections of attending a similar event in Valley City, North Dakota, perhaps about 1930.  The actor on stage that day was evangelist Billy Sunday, and here is part of what Dad – a devout Roman Catholic – had to say: “I do remember Billy Sunday, a fire eating evangelizer, who preached fire and brimstone for about an hour.  I don’t remember much of what he said but his antics were sometimes bizarre.  He would start his sermon very calm but as he warmed up to the occasion he would take off his coat and tie, jump up and down on the stage and sometimes as a climax he would get up on the table and shout.  no microphones so they had to be leather lunged in order for the audience to hear.  I think most people were more impressed with his antics than with what he said”.

Billy Sunday had his run, and Aimee Semple McPherson hers, as have legions of pitch men and women of all stripes before and since.

Most all of us remember Jim Jones, and hundreds of his followers, who “drank the koolaid” and died in a mass murder-suicide in Guyana in 1978.   So will the current successors, and those in the future, remembered as fools.  But it will be too late.  A bit further back in time, Grigori Rasputin, the so-called ‘mad monk’ for the last Tsarina, comes to mind.

Perhaps there is method to the madness of the stunt of our President posing with the Bible at the Presidents Church earlier this summer after he called in the troops to clean protestors out of the park across the street from the White House.

Caveat emptor.

COMMENT

from Annelee, born 1926, grew up in Hitler’s Germany: Dick, your Blog and Jeff Sharlett’s article “THE SECOND COMING” Vanity Fair July/Aug., should be required reading.

At page 88, bottom, Pastor Sean stated that he loves Trump because he believes God has chosen Trump for this hour. That which Trump’s critics see as crude and divisive, Pastor Sean takes as proof of his anointing. He is God’s champion, a fighter, a “counterpuncher.”

I lost count of similar statements throughout the article, I was appalled and said, “Oh, no, not again!”

My thoughts flashed back to my home country, Germany during 1933-1939, Adolf Hitler had been voted in and most German people were sure they made the right decision.  After all, the unemployed who for years couldn’t  take care of their families, worked now on the Autobahn, build schools and homes and  their health care was excellent and affordable. By 1935 life was good and it seemed it would get better. Most families were now members of the Nazi Party, my friends joined the German Girls group, the boys belonged the Hitler Youth.

I was eight; I begged Papa to let me join.

Papa said, “Anneliese, I am NOT joining the Nazi Party, und you will not join either”.

After  1936-1939 Adolf Hitler suggested and then enforced changes.  The changes soon became laws.

The Jews have taken over the German Banks and stores—don’t buy from Jews

Jews need to wear special armbands —-the Star of David

Newspapers and radios, except for local news are now controlled by the government

Only selected radio stations will bring commentaries.

Immigration and emigration is under number control.

Now, even if people stated to question few dared to speak up.

These rules and laws made Germany a tightly controlled country. It was easy to convince the people that Poland attacked. WWII started, and the 1000 Year Reich was destroyed

I remember when people used to ask me “How could the German People believe Adolf Hitler?”

More at July 26, August 2 and 3 and other dates listed below, and others yet to come.  Check back. 

Among 7.8 billion citizens of planet earth, 331 million in the United States, I am one.  I have 80 years of experience in my native land, the United States of America.  Everyone has their own story.

This is the first of several posts I will use to try to define myself, politically.  The next will be tomorrow, a third on Joe Biden, after his expected nomination later this month.  There have been prior, related, posts, July 11, 22, 25, 26 and 29 and 31, if interested.

This is about being a Democrat.

Best I can recall, I’ve been relatively active as a Democrat since about 1976

A while back I posted a sketch of my notion of American politics, and where I stood.

I’m not sure when I did this sketch but it was likely before I actively joined the 15% called “worker bees” which was long before 9-11-01.  I never reached the “hard left”, which is no compliment to me or criticism of them.  Being labelled a Democrat is not adequate.  Democrats reflect the great diversity of America, imperfectly and with lots of room for argument among themselves.  Will Rogers nailed it many years ago: “I am not a member of any organized political party. I am a Democrat.”  We are truly a ‘big tent’.

I choose the pronoun “WE” as the operating philosophy of the Democratic party I know.

In the near 60 years of my adult life, “Democrats” have been the majority the U.S. Congress most years.  Here’s a chart I did recently: U.S. Government (click to enlarge). This has not always been an easy time.  As we are often reminded, in the old days, not so very long ago, to be Democrat, was very often to be a supporter of slavery, and after Lincoln (a Republican) was assassinated the trip ahead was “State’s Rights”, “Jim Crow”, often under the “Democrat” banner.

The past doesn’t define us, however.

Then-Mayor of Minneapolis, and later U.S. Senator and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, gave a stirring speech at the 1948 Democratic National Convention, a key part of which is memorialized on the State Capitol Grounds in St. Paul MN (below photo).  This was not universally well received…by Democrat leaders of the time.

At State Capitol monument to Hubert Humphrey, former Minneapolis Mayor, United States Senator and Vice-President of the United States.

In the 1960s, southerner Lyndon Johnson, JFK’s Vice-President and successor President, did what was right, including support and leadership of the Voting Rights Act.  Johnson himself acknowledged that such actions would bring difficult years for the Democratic Party – a prophecy fulfilled by the wholesale departure of southern Democrats to the Republican Party.

The rest of history is simple enough to follow without listing here.  The Democratic Party that I know encourages enfranchisement and practice of democracy by as many as people as possible, as safely as possible (this year, by mail in response to Covid-19).

Personally: years ago, I was on a bus trip led by my friend Virgil Benoit, a kind and caring professor.  Somewhere in the far north of North Dakota, I asked him what led him to become the person that he was, and he responded, and then he asked me the same question.  It caught me aback – I had, after all, been the one who asked the question.  For me, the epiphany came when I, and my young wife, Barbara, in our early 20s, were forced to come to grips with a new reality a few months into our marriage in 1963.  Barbara, pregnant with our first child, was caught in what turned out to be fatal kidney disease, without insurance.  In those extremely difficult two years, ending with her death July 24, 1965, leaving behind a son, 1 1/2, and mountainous debts.  I learned what a caring society meant..  What it means when someone says “we’re all in this together”.

*

Life goes on.  We will get through this extraordinarily unfortunate and divisive interlude in our history as a country.  Where we are now, is without any precedent in my own life.

June 13, 2020, I wrote a letter to a good friend my age, who I’ve known for many years, about the political times in which we’d lived, and in which we now live in the present day.  Re the President at the helm: “My one statement for this letter is this: in the last 62 years only in the last three have I felt totally excluded – and in 35 of these years a Republican was President.“

This is what we are up against in this election season – as a nation we have to come to grips with our division into little more than warring tribes, a tribal society intentionally birthed.  I wish us well.

A proud Democrat.  Dick Bernard.

Sign seen in E. St.Louis IL April 2, 1997. Walter Mondale, still living, was had been U.S. Senator and Jimmy Carter’s Vice-President.  Geraldine Ferraro was his nominee for Vice-President.  This election was 1984, losing to Ronald Reagan.

Seen at Ford’s Theatre Museum in Washington DC in 2006.  Abraham Lincoln was Republican.

COMMENTS (more also at end of post)

from Julianne:  Why I am a Democrat.

My mom and Dad were first generation US citizens and took their voting privileges very seriously. There were many discussions around the kitchen table on who to vote for and why especially for president. Mom chose to vote for an individual. Dad, a union man, indicated that it was important to look at not just the man but who supported him (they were all men at that time.) He felt that you had to look at his supporters as well. what they stood for, and what kind of administration they would provide.  His thinking made sense to me. The important thing was they went to vote together, Dad saying often, that mom would cancel out his vote.

It was an important lesson for me. Later in life I had people expect I would vote one way or another, and I knew that I had the right to chose for myself.

In my professional life, I was exposed to the hardships that people could face and what resource were or were not available to them depending on the government in charge. Democrats were about people. Republicans seemed to be more about how to be successful by making more and more money. That was not what I learned in church. That was not what I believed.

I remember attending a social event where a woman proudly proclaimed, “I don’t care what other people get as long as I get my share.” Her share was apparently much more than most. It prompted me to get involved in the local DFL party and I have been involved ever since. I believe in “we are all in this together” theme.

Unfortunately, there is a deeper division between the two major parties with no common ground. Games are being played. Our current president is making the division his “wall,” his “my way or the highway battle cry” and his re-election campaign. He has taken over the traditional Republican Party and has worked hard to lock in his supporters by making them feel that they have been left out and only he can save them. Compromise seems more difficult than it has ever been.

Now as the pandemic surges across our country and across our world, we are living in fear for our lives and the lives of our families. We lack leadership in turning this virus assault around. Everything is political even health care and resources to fight the virus. It feels like we have lost our way and our democracy is at risk along with our economy. Why is that? What has happened to us as a nation, as a people with common goals? These are strange times indeed when division is the rule. People are rioting in the streets and individuals are carrying guns and assault weapons.

We need to back off. We need leadership that will bring us back together. I believe that we must support Biden and everyone should support him with this awesome task. Our nation and our democracy depend on it.

from Fred:  some well-informed and interesting notes on political history of the U.S.: Fred on Politics Aug 9, 2020  (click to enlarge).

from a grade school friend who I’ve kept up with for many years, a retired engineer:

As I have indicated in the past, I am a center-right progressive in the ilk of Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight D Eisenhower.  I always have been and always will be.  I was impressed by what I learned about Teddy Roosevelt in school and his time in North Dakota, and impressed by Eisenhower who was president while I was in grade school. Further, their actions were also consistent with my moral upbringing, which should and does play a role in my political views.

My views were also influenced by the actions of FDR, who helped our family remain on the farm during the days of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl.  FDR showed how our government could come to the rescue of the people in a manner that some today refer to as socialism.  Today’s so called socialists are no further to the left than FDR was.  While I am eternally grateful to FDR for what he did for our family, what kept me from originally registering as, and voting as, a Democrat were the so called Southern Democrats; those southern racists that hated Abraham Lincoln for feeing their slaves, and hence parked in the Democratic Party.  The influences of FDR results in my believing in such things as the safety net programs, Social Security and Medicare.  And that led me to be a proponent of “universal health care” and the movements to uplift the working class, which again is paralleled with my moral upbringing.

When the last of those racists, the so called Reagan Democrats, moved over to the GOP, I started tending to vote more in line with the Democrats who were more in line with my center-right progressive views.  I find it useful to remain a registered Republican because of all the info that I receive from the GOP which helps me to see the political “big picture”.    History has also shown that Conservative Economic philosophies were instrumental in leading to the Great Depression, the Reagan Recession as well as Bush’s Great Recession, so I see no merits to conservative economic strategies.  On the other hand, our (Seattle Area) experimentation with a $15 minimum wage showed it to be an very effective economic stimulus in addition to improving the lives of so may workers.  Ultimately it is my philosophical views that guide me in my voting, not the names of parties.  Those philosophical views also guide my lifestyle and my philanthropic activities as well.

As an adult and a [major corporation career] employee, I became involved with the engineering union, the Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace (SPEEA), and served on the organizations board for several years during difficult times… when the management was not doing justice to its employees in those difficult times, which again is in keeping with my center-right progressive views.

Something that I now find alarming as a US citizen is the attitudes of the nations eligible voters.  While there are numerous voter disenfranchising activities in many of the red states, I am surprised by the low voter turnout across the nation.  With our Washington Vote by Mail system, voting is so simple, yet only about 2/3rds of the voters take the time to fill in the parts of the ballots that could impact them. Your state leads all others with about 3/4  of the voters participating.

In closing, I am a center-right progressive; always have been and always will be. A posture that supersedes party affiliation.

more from Norm (see other comment at end of post)

38th and Chicago Ave Minneapolis neighborhood June 30, 2020

Today I made my 6th visit to the area of Minneapolis affected in the wake of George Floyd’s murder on May 25. On this day  All was quiet, save for road construction on Lake Street.  There is still lots of rubble, but it is contained and ready for removal.

Today for the first time I saw the now notorious 3rd precinct of Minneapolis Police Department.  It is one short walking block from “my” place, Gandhi Mahal, which was destroyed by fire on May 29.  Two of today’s photos of 3rd precinct are at the end of this post.

Of course today’s quiet in Minneapolis is shrouded with the attempts to demonstrate “American carnage” taking place in Portland OR in the area near the Federal Courthouse, 620 SW Main St. Portland.  Nothing like troops and tear gas and protestors to make it seem like demonstrations in a couple of block area of downtown Portland are the end of America.

The last 24 hours here have been interesting.  I attempted to watch the House hearings with Attorney General Barr, but it was a bridge too far to last for more than two or three hours.  This is street theatre, Washington style.  ALL of the participants know the ultimate objective: sound bites on their favorite – or least favorite – TV channel, whatever it happens to be.  There is substance there, too, but the ordinary person needs a lot of discipline to discover the context.

Earlier this morning, I picked up the Minneapolis paper, and read on the front page about “Umbrella Man”, the new media star, filmed on May 27 breaking windows in a closed business across from 3rd Precinct at the time of the fires.   That story is still developing.  You can read it here.  Here’s more.  

(On May 30, a friend sent a Facebook Post, where someone outlined the varied categories of people who show up – and can mess up – legitimate demonstrations.  These were the categories, identified in the post.

Activists

Grieving Citizens

Rowdy Idiots

Chaos Agents  – (Dick: You can bet that there are lots of “umbrella man” types out there).

Professional Thieves

The correspondent was just expressing his/her own opinion, but its seems pretty comprehensive to me.

Day after the night of the fires at 27th and Lake St Minneapolis MN June 30, 2020. Throngs of ordinary citizens gathered to help with cleanup June 30, 2020

*

I’m just one lonely voice in this terrible situation.  About all I can contribute is my single voice, and evidence, of what we are witnessing in real time.  I am not a ‘babe in the woods’ on this.  A business very familiar to me, Gandhi Mahal, was destroyed in the Minneapolis unrest on May 29.  The neighborhood was very well known to me.  I visited there often.

The house in the photo that begins this post, was the first home I ever stayed in in Minneapolis, late May, 1965.  The picture is from June 30, 2020, and the house still looks the same as it did then – and is a short walk from 38th and Chicago, where George Floyd was killed on May 25.  I remarked at the beginning, that the ‘carnage’ was almost exclusively to businesses along the main streets – not the homes beside and off the street.  I’m sure the residents were terrified, but they were not the targets.  And the businesses were mostly small, catering to the neighborhood, not logical targets for criminals.

The 3rd Precinct, the last two photos below, is one block from Gandhi Mahal.  Until yesterday, when I saw it in person, it was a place I had never noticed before.  It is now the center of the debate about policing in general.  Of course, sound bites enter into everything these days.  No one I know – mostly liberals – has suggested “defunding police”.  Certainly how funds are used is an essential part of the debate.

I’m a keeper of history.  In a box downstairs are all of the newspapers from the time of Covid-19, and I actually pulled out the issues for May 25-31 yesterday to review the awful week of George Floyd’s death.

The posts I’ve done about the time period were May 27, 29, 30, 31, 2020.  There have been a couple of posts since, including this one.  At least I have some personal history on record.  Let’s keep working for resolution.

3rd Precinct, Lake and Minnehaha, Minneapolis, July 29, 2020 (behind and to the right of the flag).

3rd Precinct entrance July 29, 2020