norman borlaug – Thoughts Towards a Better World

About a week ago, I packed my bag and got on the road, destination an annual meeting of Citizens for Global Solutions near Lambert St. Louis Airport, St. Louis MO.

Over 500 miles later, I arrived at my destination, both exhausted and energized. It was good to see the open country between St. Paul and St. Louis, traveling I-494, U.S. 52, 63, I-380, IA 27, U.S. 61, and I-70 (to minimize confusion, the route is more or less a straight line from St. Paul to St. Louis). We are a very large and very diverse country, if one takes a moment to look.

Somewhere around Iowa City, on 27, I began to see a repetitive road sign:

(click to enlarge)

Somewhere in southern Iowa October 20, 2017

I could see the word “Saints” on the distinct road signs, but finally had to stop and read the rest of the story, and take the photo of Avenue of the Saints, unfortunately with the fleur de lis “impaled”. There oughta be a law!

There had to be a story. Back home I looked it up. You can read the fascinating story here. The “Saints” are St. Paul and St. Louis….

Such journeys have always fascinated me…49 states so far in life. Not much interested in the 50th – Alaska. Maybe I’ll still make it, but it’s not on my “bucket list”.

Even at highway speed, there is much to notice along the way. Friend Steve, hailing from Cedar Rapids, advised bypassing Waterloo due to road construction. His diversion allowed me to see the towns of Raymond and Dewar, and at least wonder about the town a few miles to the right on C66, Dunkerton.

The route took me to the outskirts of Hannibal, Tom Sawyer’s town. “Been there, done that” back in 1976 – stopped for coffee there, both enroute to and from.

After the conference in St. Louis, rendezoused with my brother in Belleville, at beautiful Our Lady of the Snows, where our Dad lived the last ten years of his life, dying there in 1997.

We took a trip to the nearby and very interesting Cahokia Mounds park, and I managed to get a good photo of downtown St. Louis a few miles away.

St. Louis from Cahokia Mounds IL Oct 23, 2017

On the 24th I headed home the same way I’d come, this time deciding to stop at a single point of interest I’d noted on the trip down, found east of Lourdes, Iowa.

Hwy 63, Iowa, south of Lourdes, Oct 24, 2017

The diversion six miles east was well worth the trip, even though there was no one there, and it was a chilly and very windy day.

At the farm site was the country school Dr. Borlaug attended (he was born in 1914). Also, some displays, one shown below.

Dr. Borlaug’s country school, opened in 1865.

Norman Borlaug Oct 24, 2017

Back home I wrote a note a good friend, born and raised on a farm, who I first met as an 8th grader in 1953-54, as follows:

“I made one stop enroute home which may interest you, as a farmer. One of the premier world agricultural experts – a Nobel Peace Prize winner – was Norman Borlaug of rural Cresco Iowa (perhaps six miles south of Cresco, about the same east of Lourdes, Iowa). I saw a sign pointing to the place where he grew up, and I drove the six miles off route 63 to see the place. It was chilly and windy and I was the only person there, but a fascinating stop. Here’s the web description of Dr. Borlaug.

His cousin was the country school teacher, and she recommended to his parents that he go to high school. She said he wasn’t the best student, but he had the attitude he needed to succeed. She called that one right!!!!

I once did a blog which referred to a chance meeting of my uncle and aunt with Borlaug, probably down in the Hankinson area of ND: You can read it here. The meeting with Dr. Borlaug was a vivid memory for Vince. It probably was sometime not long after he had won the Peace Prize. We all have our stories.”

In short order, my friend, a retired scientist, responded with his own message, which added to the learning experience of my week.

“Interesting article on Dr. Borlaug. There are a lot of people that have made great contributions to their respective fields, but as you know from my preoccupation with the forthcoming Ice Age and issues like that, what we need more of are folks that are big-picture thinkers. I was seeing on TV that the efforts of the Gates Foundation may completely eliminate polio. We spend much money on saving children from starvation and other preventable diseases, and yet, as per the population growth curve that I have shown you that I refer to as the “human stupidity index”, there will come a time when billions of people will be dying as nature reduces the earth’s human population back down to somewhere around 3 billion over the next millennium or two. As I have told you, my greatest charitable contributions are now focused on population reduction. I can’t do it by myself, and there are those that detest the idea of population control, but I will keep doing my bit to hopefully reduce the number of people that will lose their lives to natures forces as time goes on.”

In my life, I have found that there is lots to learn, and lots of richness in differences of opinion. Point of fact: I basically agree with my friends concern. What are we leaving those who come after us?

Returning home I did the periodic newsletter for my Minnesota Chapter of Citizens for Global Solutions. You are welcome to read it here: CGS News Nov 2017 Final-2. Of course, you can join an e-list for this five times a year newsletter if you wish. Just let me know: dick_bernardATmsnDOTcom.

Coming soon: Some thoughts a year after November 8, 2016.

A week ago, out at LaMoure ND, I asked Uncle Vince if he’d like to go for a ride.
I knew what his answer would be: “yes”. As long as I’ve known him, a ride in the country is like ice cream to a kid. Farmers like to take a gander at the countryside, regardless of the season, and comment on what they see, which is lots more than city slickers like myself can hope to observe. The actions of land, water and sky are very important in their daily lives.
That’s the essence of being a farmer: having a feel for ones environment.
Along with me, I had a three-CD set of Benny Goodman’s 1935-39 small group recordings, a recent gift from an 84 year old elder neighbor. Vince was 10 years old in 1935, and sometime in his youth he had learned a bit about the clarinet.
He loves music, so Benny Goodman and clarinet was an additional treat on a pleasant early spring afternoon.
I mentioned that I had seen Goodman and his band in person, in Carrington ND, sometime in 1957-58. In that era, somebody in tiny Carrington managed to book famed national acts like Goodman, and Louis Armstrong and ensemble, who I also saw there in September 1957.
We chatted a bit about that, and then Vince said he’d once met Norman Borlaug. “The Nobel Peace Prize winner?” “How did this happen?”
Vince recalled a time he and Edith were driving on Highway 11 west of Hankinson ND and they saw somebody at roads edge. They stopped, and the guy said he was out of gas. So they gave him a ride back into Hankinson, helped him with the gas, and were on their way again.
In the conversation, it came up that their passenger that day was Norman Borlaug, and that he was out in ND checking on some field work on barley, if I recall correctly.
Borlaug won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970, and Vince knew about him. It seems Borlaug has become controversial. There are assorted opinions about him. You can take your choice.
If you didn’t know the name, “Norman Borlaug”, you would be forgiven. Few outside of the agricultural community probably do.
But the conversation with my Uncle, long retired farmer, now in the twilight of his life, was fascinating to me, in part because through him I have gotten to know common farmers on their farms: how they live, how they think.
Vince was a small farmer by ND standards, but he had a lot of pride in what he did.
And while only high school educated, to this day he reads voraciously, and, if he could, he’d attend this or that farm meeting in his area of the state. He may have been “ordinary”, but ordinary meant extraordinary in so many ways.
He was well read, well educated. He remembered Norman Borlaug from that one brief encounter years ago. I had no doubt that the event happened as described, where described.
There’s the old saw about “don’t judge a book by its cover”, and it applies to my Uncle and to a great many others in all sorts of ways.
The 84-year old man, Don, who gave me that Benny Goodman CD spent much of his work career keeping track of the location of box cars for the Great Northern Railway – this was before computers. This same man, in his small home across the street from us, has an autographed photo of Elizabeth Taylor, dating from the time he was a dinner guest at her home during his days of involvement in the movie industry.
We all have our stories, to be remembered, and celebrated.
Thanks, Uncle Vince, for yours. And Don, as well.

Grain Elevators, Berlin ND, March 27. 2014

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