#1032 – Dick Bernard: Catching a Moment in Time. Saturday, March 18, 1905

Visiting the graves of Ferd and Rosa Busch, and three of their children, Verena, Edithe and Vincent, Berlin ND St. John's Cemetery, May 24, 2015

Visiting the graves of Ferd and Rosa Busch, and three of their children, Verena, Edithe and Vincent, Berlin ND St. John’s Cemetery, May 24, 2015


Seventeen of us gathered at the old Ferd and Rosa Busch farm in Henrietta Township on May 24. It was the end of an era: for 110 years the farmstead has been owned, and for the vast majority of that time occupied, by Ferd and Rosa’s family. Now the old place is up for sale, and at some early point new occupants will take over the newly re-surveyed 10 acre farmstead, 10 miles northwest of LaMoure, 5 miles northeast from Berlin, about the same southwest from Grand Rapids ND.
Saturday a few of us were doing the last run through of the artifacts now stored in the metal machine shed.
One item remaining was the formidable wooden packing crate which brought the Busch possessions from southwest Wisconsin via Dubuque in March of 1905. For years the crate resided quietly in the attic in the old house; thence in Vincent’s bedroom in the new. It had been opened previously, but not examined in detail.
This day, we took out everything, including Grandma’s wedding dress, in near perfect condition after 110 years.
But there was something else I noticed in a box within the crate. There were a couple of old newspapers, used for packing back then. I took them out: one of them was a pretty well crumpled newspaper in German from November of 1904; the second was the Dubuque Morning Telegraph for Saturday, March 18, 1905. Grandma and Grandpa married on February 28, 1905, and I knew they hadn’t left immediately for North Dakota. I can now deduce from the newspaper date that they probably left for the prairie shortly after March 18.
That was only the first piece of “news” from that paper….
(click to enlarge)
Dubuque Morning  Telegraph, page one, Saturday, March 18, 1905

Dubuque Morning Telegraph, page one, Saturday, March 18, 1905


There were four pages from the newspaper, pages 1, 2, 7 & 8.
The main headline on p. 1 immediately caught my attention: “GENERAL KUROPATKIN IS DISMISSED IN DISGRACE”, followed by the sub-headlines so common in papers of that day: “Gen. Linevitch in Suspreme [sic] Command” “…withdrawing what is left of the great Army of 250,000, men hemmed in on all sides, confronts him.” “Czar shows no signs of yielding” “Preparation for carrying on the war on a greater scale are made by Russians-Oyama in Mukden”.
The front page news in Dubuque was about a war being waged between Russia and Japan in the far eastern reaches of Siberia.
Places like Harbin and Vladivostok were mentioned. Dispatches were included from London and Berlin sources. You could see the same kinds of headlines in today’s newspapers….
In this issue, the Russians were – the Czar was – being defeated.
This defeat was a harbinger of the Czars becoming a thing of the past; Communists were a part of the future. The German-Russians, Lawrence Welk’s kin, probably didn’t know it yet in 1905, but they were all being squeezed out of Russia to new homes, a great many of them migrating to North and South Dakota.
The other stories on the front page had a deja vu aspect to them. A law passed in Delaware to “Abolish Pillory” “inhuman” punishment; in Peoria IL an oil “pipe line across certain highways” hit a snag (“Strikes Snag in Illinois” read the headline); there was a “scheme” by powerful interests “to grab Niagara” Falls, threatening the tourist attraction with extinction.
It was announced by Secretary Taft of the Theodore Roosevelt administration that the U.S. “will retain the Philippine Islands” for perhaps at least a generation. And a fascinating headline prominent at the top of page one said “Castro is preparing to send an Army of 30,000 to take New Orleans to demand Indemnity.” This was not Fidel Castro, rather the then President of Venezuela.
There were no pictures on this front page: it was all news. Other headlines at the bottom of the page: “Sold Wife for $10” (the deal was legal, and okay with the wife, apparently); “Missouri legislature Passes Law Against Bookmaking”. A Baltimore Whiskey maker won a trademark lawsuit against a clever impostor in Brooklyn who had borrowed part of its name.
And so it was, on and on, in Dubuque, Iowa, and the world right after Grandma and Grandpa Busch were married, February 28, 1905.
It was like opening a time capsule….
Some of those at the small reunion at the Busch farm on May 24.  From left Pinkney's, Dick Bernard, Bill Jewett, Carter Hedeen.

Some of those at the small reunion at the Busch farm on May 24. From left Pinkney’s, Dick Bernard, Bill Jewett, Carter Hedeen.

#1031 – Dick Bernard: Taps. A Memorial Day to Remember in LaMoure

POSTNOTE, May 29, from Kathy G: A one-minute ad without a single word, for Memorial Day. “This is a one-minute commercial. Not a word spoken and none is needed. Food City is a Southern grocery store chain with headquarters in Bristol, Tennessee.”

May 25, 2015, American Legion, LaMoure ND

May 25, 2015, American Legion, LaMoure ND


Reunion over, and about to leave LaMoure ND, we and my brother John decided to attend the annual Memorial Day observance at the LaMoure American Legion post. It is always moving and inspiring – an honor to attend, as is the usual observance by the Veterans for Peace in St. Paul MN which I had to miss this year.
I had been to several observances with my Uncle and Aunt in LaMoure over the years, so I knew what to expect, but brother John, long retired from a 20-year career as an Air Force officer, and long-time Californian, was deeply impressed with the local observance, as was my wife, Cathy. Neither had been there before.
Monday was an iffy day, weather-wise, but the place was packed as usual, with music provided by local high-schoolers, with the reading of names of departed veterans, and a couple of very good speeches. (I can’t name names: my program departed the car enroute home during a windy and rainy stop to change drivers at Fergus Falls.)
At the end of the formal presentation indoors, we adjourned to the vacant lot beside the Legion where crosses were planted, poppies affixed, an honor guard with flags and rifles for the traditional salute, and then taps, expertly played by a young woman, probably high school age.
We had a mix of near sunshine, and light rain, almost perfect.
It was all deeply moving.
(click to enlarge all photos)
May 25, 2015, LaMoure ND

May 25, 2015, LaMoure ND


Inside, the narrator had earlier read the names of all local military veterans who have died.
Even in this small community, it was a very long list of names, particularly for World War II, and World War I as well. As I remember: departed veterans were named from the Civil War, and the “Indian War” during the same time period; the Spanish-American; Korean, Vietnam, Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan Wars.
This observance emphasized the physically dead. Back home in the evening I noticed that the national observance on the Capitol mall now recognizes also those veterans permanently physically disabled by war. The Vets for Peace recognizes all of these, but also those mortally wounded psychologically: PTSD, mental illness, drugs and alcohol, homeless….
Saturday, I’d seen the reader of names at the fish dinner at the same Legion, and he said that every year somebody mentions somebody not named who should have been on the list.
Little did I know that I’d be writing him my own letter today. He read the names of my uncles, Shipfitter Frank Bernard (USS Arizona), and Lt. George W. Busch (USS Woodworth); but not those of Uncle Arthur Busch (U.S. Army 1945-46), nor Art and George’s cousin next farm over, Capt. August Berning, Marine in the Pacific Theatre WWII, both deceased.
So next year, the narrators list will be even longer, thanks to me, and to others who also add names, and, of course, more veterans who have died in the days to come.
*
The recitation of names by War caused me to think about categories of Wars in which the U.S. been engaged, and how people have engaged in those wars. (In a previous post I included an American Legion summary of these wars: America at War001)
Of course, the early wars, including the Revolutionary, came as our country grew to today’s boundaries of the lower 48 states. Wars brought us into being, over 150 years ago, against England, etc.
But by far our most deadly war was our own Civil War: the same war which birthed the very concept of Memorial Day. We were at War against ourselves, then. It is not an abstraction to think that perhaps the current “war” between Sunni and Shiite centered in Iraq and Syria might not be such a novel occurrence. There are far more similarities than differences to our own Civil War. In our own country, the Civil War was brother-against-brother; slavery or not was the main issue; plenty of Old Testament scriptural basis supported slavery.
Then there were the Teddy Roosevelt adventures: Spanish-American War, Cuba, the Philippines, etc. That was my Grandpa Bernard’s War: North Dakota’s were among the first volunteers to go to the Philippines in 1898, and Grandpa was on the boat with the others.
The deadliest wars so far, WWI and WWII, the U.S. entered long after they began, reluctantly. There was debate whether we should have entered earlier, or not at all. Wars are complicated things, after all. In WWI my Grandpa Busch’s hired man, whose name I do not know, was killed. Grandpa wanted to volunteer, but there was the matter of his being ethnic German, which complicated things a whole lot for Germans in this country.
Then there were the anti-Communist Wars, like Korea and Vietnam, and the near miss with Cuba and Russian Missiles in 1962 (I was in the Army, then). It’s been years since the Soviet Union became Russia and other countries, but the “Communist” card is still played by some, perhaps yearning for the good old days of the Cold War. Wars have an unfortunate way of living on, far past their reason.
And there have been wars just for the hell of it (it seems to me): Grenada comes to mind. Remember the Grenada War?
*
Through Korea, Wars were very personal things: if you were at war, you were at war against someone who could shoot you dead. The days of massive standing Armies and compulsory draft are long past, the times when (as in my own family) we three boys all served; or four of my five uncles (the fifth was needed on the farm). The notion of a citizen Army (males of a certain age) ended with the end of the Draft in 1975 and (in my opinion) will never be successfully marshaled again, even in times of major crisis.
Memorial Day remembers old wars….
Now war has become a video game, threatening every single one of us, if we can’t figure out how to deal with each other, including the top guys who have led and will lead people into these ever deadlier things called war.
“Evil” will never end (not always restricted just to the “bad guys”). Yes, we can be the bad guys, and have been.
And, there is much to be said for “duty, honor, country”.
But the reality of evil, and those honorable concepts can be and are misused by all “sides”, including our own.
There are lots of alternatives to war, and while peace can be very messy in itself, it far exceeds the never-ending problems with attempting to win the peace by war. That has never, and will never, work.
Thanks, LaMoure American Legion, for a most respectful and sombre Memorial Day 2015.
I will not forget.
LaMoure ND May 25, 2015

LaMoure ND May 25, 2015


SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES


The Reader of the Names

The Reader of the Names


The Student Speaker

The Student Speaker


The main speaker

The main speaker


The traditional Salute

The traditional Salute

#1030 – Dick Bernard: Memorial Day 2015 Thoughts about the War About War

We’re out of state on Memorial Day so this year, for the first time in many years, I won’t be at the annual Vets for Peace gathering on the Minnesota State Capitol Grounds. Of course, the event doesn’t need me to go on. Here’s the info about Monday in St. Paul. This is always a meaningful event, of, by and for veterans.
Memorial Day with the Veterans for Peace
Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Minnesota State Capitol grounds)
Monday, 9:30 AM
Music, poetry, speeches,
solemn ringing of bells,
and the reading of the names
of the Minnesota casualties
of Iraq and Afghanistan Wars

(click to enlarge photo)

Entasham (at left) interviewing Native American author and Vietnam War vet Jim Northrup at the MN Vietnam Memorial Vets for Peace event, Memorial Day, 2014.  Cameraman fellow Pakistani, Suhail.  See Postnote

Entasham (at left) interviewing Native American author and Vietnam War vet Jim Northrup at the MN Vietnam Memorial Vets for Peace event, Memorial Day, 2014. Cameraman fellow Pakistani, Suhail. See Postnote


There are many thoughts this Memorial Day, particularly when politicians are attempting to justify war and blame someone else for it.
I’m going to propose taking some time to watch and read the items which follow. They will take some of your time, but you might find them both interesting and instructive.
Personally, I am a military veteran, from a family of veterans. I’m a long time member of the American Legion and Veterans for Peace. I have a grandson who’s in Air Force ROTC in high school, and I consider it a positive experience for him in many ways. This does not make me, or him, pro-war. It is helping him grow up. And he, too, is proud of his service.
My focus this weekend will be on a person I never met, the brother of my good friend, Jim, who died this year from the lingering and severe effects of exposure to Agent Orange during Vietnam. His suffering is over. Our national confusion continues.
All this makes me a complicated individual when it comes to a conversation about this annual Memorial Day which is interpreted in so many ways (the Legion post in the town we’re visiting this weekend will be having a fish fry on Saturday night). Not all is somber on this day remembering death (though many victims of war are very much alive, though suffering PTSD or other long-term effects of war).
Here’s my recommendations:
1. March 20 I and many others listened to seven persons tell seven stories of the Vietnam War from their perspective. The film is excellent and runs for about 90 minutes. You can watch it here. I was there. It is a somber and thought-provoking presentation.
2. In recent months, out at the family farm in North Dakota, I have come across some very interesting and historical documents about World War II BEFORE Pearl Harbor. The American Legion has helpfully provided its summary history of American Wars. You can read these in the first section “POSTNOTE” here.
3. This year is the 70th anniversary of the founding of the United Nations. On June 1 will be what appears to be a very interesting webcast of talks by many experts which at minimum I’d like you to be aware of. You can access the information here. Another perspective, by my friend and UN expert Dr. Joe Schwartzberg can be read at the end of this post from Jan. 1, 2015.
My friend, Lynn Elling, is fond of the mantra that we are in “an open moment in history” to change course.
I agree with his assessment, but even more so.
We will, collectively, decide on global progress towards peace; or continuing on a death-spiral for our entire planet through war, lack of attention to crises like man-induced climate change, etc.
We cannot pretend that the past is present; that simple belief about this or that suffices; or that there is a rosy future without deep and painful changes in our behaviors.
The mantra of the energy industry, for instance, pronounced over and over on TV ads, that we are energy independent and will be (it is suggested) okay for the next 100 years is very dangerous.
My grandparents were married 110 years ago, long ago, but a blip in human history. Who will be around 110 years from today who will remember us fondly?
It is long past time to wake up.
POSTNOTE: A year ago, this time of year, it was my privilege to meet Ehtasham Anwar, a Pakistani civil official in one of Pakistan’s largest city – as big as the Twin Cities. Ehtasham was completing a year as a Humphrey/Fulbright Fellow at the Human Rights Center of the University of Minnesota Law School.
We talked about many things in the month we worked together on his year-end project, on the issue of peace. And one memory is vivid in my mind, since he mentioned it to me more than once.
Paraphrasing what I remember, he said this: “Throughout this year in Minnesota I have been so impressed with how friendly and peace-loving American people are. Why is it that American foreign policy towards others in other parts of the world is so negative and dominating?”
Difficult question.
I gave him my answer, what I thought was our national problem. Hint: it is every one of us, our disinterest and lack of engagement in the greater questions of who we are with the rest of the world, even with our fellow Americans. We are individualists. Too many of us have had it far too well, for far too long. We feel we are entitled to what some call our “exceptionalism”.
What is yours?, I ask you.
Ironically, overnight came a personal commentary remembered from a fifteen years ago conversation in Paris by my favorite blogger, Just Above Sunset. You can read it here. Remember, this is from near 15 YEARS ago. While at this blog space, the previous several posts have summarized the last couple of weeks of posturing by presumptive U.S. presidential candidates for 2016 on the issue of war. The other columns are very well worth your time.

#1029 -Dick Bernard: The Sounds of Music

Friday night was a conflicted one for me.
In Havana, the Minnesota Orchestra was playing its first concert; out in Eden Prairie, a relative, Mickey, was graduating from Dakota County Technical College; over in South St. Paul, 8th grade granddaughter Kelly was part of the year-end Choirs concert for the St. Paul Public Schools.
I chose the graduation: an especially big deal for a wonderful Mom of two teenagers. She was graduating with honors, and along with the graduation, receiving a significant promotion at her work.
After the graduation, perhaps ten of us gathered at a restaurant in Edina to celebrate. It was about 8:45 when I got in my car and tuned the radio to FM 99.5 to hear the rest of the Orchestra Concert in Havana. The concert was not yet over when I reached the parking lot. The others went in. I sat there, in the car, till the concert concluded.
Some times you do what you need to do. This was a memorable moment.

A Parking Lot theatre seat in Edina, May 15, 2015

A Parking Lot theatre seat in Edina, May 15, 2015


A memorable moment indeed. As I sat listening to the strains of Beethoven’s 3rd Symphony, the Eroica, streaming from Havana, I thought about the great significance of this cultural exchange.
This wasn’t about a continuation of, now, 56 years of sullen war of one aggrieved country against its small neighbor. Rather, it was an overture of peace; a reprise of the same worked played at the last concert by the Orchestra in Havana in 1930 but having, at least for me, great symbolic importance. Beethoven originally called this symphony the “Bonaparte”, in admiration of Napoleon, but changed his mind…. The last straw was Napoleon’s declaring himself as emperor. There’s lots to discuss there, parallels and not….
The language of music, even what it is called, is important.
So, I had a great evening, Friday.
Saturday night, the second concert conflicted with my one “addictive” TV program: Antiques Road Show on PBS. I watched one, and listened to the other.
The listening won out.
Then came last night, in the auditorium of the South St. Paul High School, the Spring Concert of the South St. Paul bands, directed by Andrew Peterson. There is genuine synergy between Mr. Peterson, his youthful charges and the audience…a “three-legged stool”, as I’ve noticed is crucial to the success of the Minnesota Orchestra.
This was a long program with the usual great energy, both on stage and in the audience. These are fun evenings, always.
The very first piece, Crunchy Frog, by the Jazz Ensemble, was opened by 9th grade grandson Ted on the Vibes, and he did a great job.
(click to enlarge photos)
Ted Flatley, May 18, 2015

Ted Flatley, May 18, 2015


Of course, Band and Orchestra are your basic “team sports”, as demonstrated by the Jazz Ensemble in its five pieces, and with all the other groups as well.
The Jazz Ensemble May 18, 2015

The Jazz Ensemble May 18, 2015


At intermission, Ted’s Mom asked: “any chance you could get Ted to McPhail for his lesson this afternoon?”
Of course. When you’re watching talent accompanied by passion, as Ted possesses, you want to help out, and Ted seems to have found his own muse.
Saturday, we’ll be up in North Dakota, and can’t use the regular Orchestra seats, so Ted and someone else will be going in our stead, to experience the Minnesota Orchestra and pianist Garrick Ohllson.
I suspect Ted’ll have a great evening.
I’m glad I can be a tiny part of the supporting cast.

#1028 – Dick Bernard: A special experience: Ken Burns and Don Shelby

POSTNOTE May 30 10:42 am.: Just now I am listening to Jay Ungar’s Ashokan Farewell, made famous in Ken Burns Civil War. Give it a listen.
I was working on a project at home, yesterday, when an e-mail came in from our friend Catherine. I saw it at 12:30. “I have two tickets to see Ken Burns at 4 today at the History Center. Would you and Cathy like them?”
This was a no-brainer, albeit with almost no notice. Cathy was out of town; and I’d heard part of the freeway was closed for maintenance, and when I finally got the printed ticket via e-mail it was 3 p.m. and the program started at 4.
I arrived at the Minnesota History Center in plenty of time for the program. Unfortunately I forgot my camera. By 4, the auditorium was packed. I was lucky and got a seat in the third row.
Then commenced a riveting 1 1/2 hour conversation between film-maker Ken Burns and former well known Twin Cities TV Anchor and reporter Don Shelby. The conversation would make for a fascinating TV program on its own…I hope it was filmed for just that purpose.
The program was hosted by TPT, Twin Cities Channel Two and the Minnesota History Center.
The program began with an eight or so minute video recapping Ken Burns 40 years in the business of film documentaries, all for public broadcasting. I tried to write the titles down. My list is 23 productions though I likely missed some (you can find the list here). I’m a fan of Burns, but I can’t say I’ve seen all of the programs. My list includes the Civil War, Baseball, Jazz, The War, Dust Bowl, Prohibition and the Roosevelts – those are the ones I remember for sure.
I pieced together Burns biography from his own comments. He was born about 1953; when he was two his mother, Lyla, fell ill with cancer and died with the disease 50 years ago, in 1965. He was 12 when she died.
He had ancestors who were American slaveholders, and another who was a Tory in the American Revolution.
He went to tiny Hampshire college in MA beginning 1971 – apparently beginning just a year or so after the college was founded, and followed his muse of film and history with the outstanding results we’ve seen for many years. He lives in New Hampshire, and has many projects in the works.
He has informed opinions about America and Americans, flowing from many years of reconstructing our history, largely from the perspective of ordinary people living at the time. In America, race is “the burning heart of the story”, he said. It is a disabling part of our national DNA; to move on takes a great deal of acknowledgment and effort.
While Burns suggests we Americans are addicted to money, guns and certainty, he thought there was still hope. “Bill O’Reilly [Fox News] and Rachel Maddow [MSNBC] genuinely love Abraham Lincoln”. There are things we can and must find common ground on to survive.
He sees Americans as restless and hard-working, demanding individual and collective freedom.
He apparently has some disagreements with my favorite quote: Santayana’s “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” “Cuckoo”, he suggested. I’ll give the quote another think, from his point of view. Maybe we’ll reach some agreement, maybe not. That’s the purpose of conversation.
He knows Americans well, a Studs Terkel (“Working”) knowledge of how we are rooted, our strengths, our very deep weaknesses. Our “exceptionalism” has dimmed as we have collectively “gone to sleep”, I heard him say. What the founders words in the Constitution about the “pursuit of happiness” basically meant, he felt, was their belief in the value of lifelong learning.
He gave considerable time and emphasis to his work on the “Central Park Five”, the five black youth who were tried, convicted and sentenced to long terms for a 1969 rape they never committed. (It was a program I haven’t seen.) The rush to judgement was shameful. Even after being exonerated, he would hear people assert “they must have done something”, a refusal to acknowledge a hideous mistake. As previously mentioned, “race is the burning heart of the story”, and we will always have lots of work to do.
(My favorite “visual”, as presented orally by Ken, was this: his little daughter was terrified of the family vacuum cleaner. When it was on she ran and hid. No amount of reassurance would change her mind.
One day, for some reason known only to her, the vacuum cleaner was turned on, and his daughter went to the door of the room in which was running, and after a moment of hesitation ran in and sat on the vacuum cleaner.
She had decided to deal with her own fear in her own way.
In their house, use of the phrase “sitting on the vacuum cleaner” has a particularly powerful meaning; we need to confront our fears….)
I’ve been slow about renewing my TPT membership.
The check will be in the mail tomorrow.
Thanks, Catherine.
POSTNOTE: Jim Pagliarini, President of TPT, began the program by asking us how many of us remembered when television meant three commercial channels and a public station. It seems like 100 years ago, but many of us do remember. Then, he said, came the era of a dozen cable channels, to today’s hundreds of options, and a rapidly changing future….
Survival for entities like Public Television means adapting to changing circumstances, staying ahead of the curve, finding different ways of delivering a media product. We’re long past four channels on the TV, but even the TV is becoming passe.
But like the media itself, we need to relearn how to communicate with others.
My opinion: our very survival as a country and a planet is at stake. Individualism is a curse we cannot afford. We are a part of, not apart from, a much greater whole.
This mornings paper addressed this very issue in the business section. You can read it here.

#1027 – Dick Bernard: Remembering 50 years; a Teacher Union Gathering.

Today was the annual Recognition Dinner of Anoka-Hennepin Education Minnesota, and as I’ve done since the first one, in 2001, I always attend. And when I get home, I’m always glad I made the trip to the north suburbs of Minneapolis, to some venue in the Anoka-Hennepin School District.
It was a rainy late afternoon, early evening, this year, and a rush hour drive, but as always the general theme of food, fun, family prevailed, the family being 85 or so present and past leaders of the now over 2700 member teacher union.
This year I was especially glad to be there, though externally I probably looked and sounded a bit withdrawn.
It was an evening of reminiscence…a time of thinking back.
It was 50 years ago this coming summer, July 21, 1965, when I came to Anoka for the first time, and signed a contract to teach in the brand new Roosevelt Junior High School in the neighboring town of Blaine. I signed the contract in Superintendent Erling Johnson’s office in the old Anoka Senior High School, the school from which Garrison Keillor had graduated a few years earlier, in 1960.
I didn’t know it then, but three days later my critically ill wife, Barbara, would die at the University of Minnesota Hospital, leaving me in a strange city, a new arrival, with a year and a half son. Survival depended on community, in the broadest definition….
(click to enlarge all photos)

Dick and Tom Bernard about Halloween 1965 at Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis MN

Dick and Tom Bernard about Halloween 1965 at Minnehaha Park, Minneapolis MN


The early weeks remain a blur, and the first year was especially difficult, but somehow or other unplanned things tend to work out, and in this case they did.
Another unplanned event got me involved in the teacher’s union beginning towards the end of the 1960s.
I was teaching at Roosevelt, and a teacher colleague, Ron Swanson, became President of what was then called AHEA, the Anoka-Hennepin Education Association. Anoka-Hennepin was already a large district, and while there was not yet collective bargaining, representing about 1000 teachers was very hard work.
Ron was a local boy, and I was an outsider, but one day I remember Ron walking by with a large box of Association files, heading to a meeting, and complaining of a bad headache.
It was then and there that I decided that I needed to get involved and do something, though I had no idea what teachers unions did. That singular decision led to a 27 year career representing public school teachers – something I’d never even considered doing. So is how life goes.
AHEA Executive Board Meeting in October 1971

AHEA Executive Board Meeting in October 1971


You learn quickly, of course, when you jump in, and others who are active see that you have an interest.
For me, it began with becoming part of a Public Relations Committee which founded something we decided to call “Coins for the Community”. Tonight, at the dinner, it was mentioned that Coins for Community remains as a project of the Association 45 years later!
Old AHEA Newsletters I have reveal the origin and first results of “Coins for Community”: AHEA Coins for Community001. I can still see in minds eye the small committee meeting in an Anoka-Hennepin classroom deciding on the project. A teacher at Sorteberg Elementary School asked her son to design the Coins logo which was used for years.
Then came a year of editing the Teacher Association newsletter, thence dabbling in negotiations, thence diving into the totally uncharted waters of Executive Director of the local Union beginning in March, 1972.
American Education Week 1970.  These youngsters would now be in their late 50s!

American Education Week 1970. These youngsters would now be in their late 50s!


"Revolution" in the Fall of 1970

“Revolution” in the Fall of 1970


Growing Pains January 1971, at what was soon to become Anoka Senior High School

Growing Pains January 1971, at what was soon to become Anoka Senior High School


There were increasing numbers of we teachers who became active back then and, truth be told, we all basically slogged along, putting one foot in front of the other, learning as we went along. So did management adapt and adjust. They had no concept of sharing power with employees – it just was something that had never been done.
We all learned, making abundant mistakes in the process.
What heartened me tonight is that this Association survived and thrived long after we departed from the scene.
Sitting in that room tonight, among a number of we “old-timers” were a large crop of present day active members of the Association, the people who make any organization work: in a real sense, a family of people who work together towards a common cause, not always agreeing on what or how to do this or that, but nonetheless getting the job done…and being respected by the other side.
Sometime in the next months there will be a 50-year anniversary of the opening of Roosevelt Junior High School. When it happens, I’ll be there with the rest of us, all well on in years, now, but nonetheless all people who contributed in our own ways to the future.
Thanks AHEM Local 7007. It was great to be there.
LeMoyne Corgard, President of AHEM, presides over the recognition of teacher leaders May 14, 2015

LeMoyne Corgard, President of AHEM, presides over the recognition of teacher leaders May 14, 2015

#1026 – Dick Bernard: The Minnesota Orchestra goes to Cuba, and some related observations from the early 1960s

UPDATE May 14, 2015: from the Minnesota Orchestra on landing in Cuba.
Save Our Symphony has an excellent ongoing compilation of news from/about the Orchestra in Cuba.
Monday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune had as its lead story the Minnesota Orchestra’s pending visit to Cuba.
Wherever you are, you can listen to the live performances in Cuba this Friday and Saturday at 7:30 pm on Minnesota Public Radio 99.5 FM or on-line.

Henri Verbrugghen, conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony  Orchestra at the time of their last visits to Cuba in 1929 and 1930.  From a Symphony Ball poster ca late 1980s, courtesy of Alan Stone.

Henri Verbrugghen, conductor of the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra at the time of their last visits to Cuba in 1929 and 1930. From a Symphony Ball poster ca late 1980s, courtesy of Alan Stone.


We’re regulars at the Orchestra and I’ve posted frequently on Orchestra topics, particularly during the long and very painful lockout 2012-14. The Orchestra is amazing; and the mutual intention to recover from the disastrous lockout seems amazing, for both sides.
But today seems a good time for some brief comments about another relationship, Cuba-U.S., as remembered by one who’s never been there.
As a geography major in college, I certainly knew the essentials of Cuba. The first evidence that Cuba reached out into North Dakota comes from a release which was in the July 5, 1961 Viking News (click to enlarge):
Viking News, Valley City ND State Teachers College, July 5, 1961 page one
I am quite certain I went to this performance, since such events were few and far between in the town and on campus. One quickly notices that the “Afro-Cuban Review” apparently is missing the Cuban element. This is likely due to the fact that on January 1, 1959, the Cuban system of government changed, and for 56 years, now, the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba has been, officially, non-existent (with a lot of “winks and nods”, especially by business interests: where people exist, there also is a market….)
Back to early 1960s: a year or so later, out of college and in the Army, I witnessed the Cuban Missile Crisis of October, 1962, as an Army infantryman, mobilized for possible action. We were a long ways from Cuba, but nonetheless in the bullseye of the Russian missiles, and it was a scary time.
In October, 1962, we soldiers watched President Kennedy address the nation on a tiny television screen in our barracks near Colorado Springs.
Very soon, life went on. American and Russian leaders saw the implications of escalation; there was no war. But Castro’s Communist Cuba became and remained a ripe political opportunity in the U.S.; one might say, a North Korea near our shores. Fear is a useful emotion to manipulate and use….
Of course, if you happen to be the resident of the weaker enemy state, as Cubans are, you are unlikely to attempt to overthrow your government; while the stronger enemy, the U.S., in effect punishes you for the supposed sins of the leader, Castro.
Some years ago, likely at my Uncle’s farm in North Dakota, I came across a well-used college text: History of Latin America from the Beginning to the Present by Hubert Herring. This “Second Edition Revised”, 1963, includes a 21-page chapter on Cuba which drew my interest, particularly the Cuban history from 1895-1963. In this chapter on Cuba, Theodore Roosevelt was not even mentioned; nor was the then-more recent nuclear brinksmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis era.
At the end of the chapter, the author states: “Reflecting on the sorry state of Cuba in 1960, the onlooker could say that two things are reasonably clear: Cuba was indeed overdue for a revolution, and revolutions are never mild and gentlemanly.” (p. 422)*
Thankfully, the walls constructed so well over 50 years ago between Cuba and the United States are now, finally, breaking down.
I will listen with great interest to the Minnesota Orchestra in Cuba this weekend.

A previous post with reports by two visitors to more recent Cuba can be read here.
* POSTNOTE: Here’s the entire Cuba chapter, made easy by pdf, hopefully so ancient and unavailable as to not get me in trouble with the author or publisher from over 50 years ago: Cuba to 1963001

#1025 – Dick Bernard: Camp Buell, Dakota Territory, July, 1863

On my frequent trips to LaMoure ND, I’ve always passed by a road-side historical marker on the edge of Milnor (about 40 miles west of Wahpeton on Highway 13).
Markers like these are “magnets” for me, but this one I would always pass by – enroute, and too tired – though I think I read it back in the late 1980s, before it had any context for me.
Here’s a photo of the marker, weather beaten but readable. Click to enlarge it.

Milnor ND May 6, 2015

Milnor ND May 6, 2015


This marker had, it turns out, personal meaning to me: back in 1863 my ancestor, Samuel Collette, was a private in the very unit that camped here, part of Co G of the First Minnesota Mounted Rangers, on their mission to remove the Indians from territory about to be settled, part of the Indian War (now called Dakota Conflict) of 1862-63.
There is no need, here, to either justify or condemn that long ago action. It could be argued either way, and has been, and likely will be. It was a part of history.
The marker itself is now over 50 years old, and it would be interesting to discuss how its contents might be changed, if at all, at this time in history.
Five years ago as part of my French-Canadian family history I included a few pages about this campaign. A portion of those pages can be read here: Sibley Expedition 1863*001
The North Dakota Historical Society has an interesting weblink which describes, briefly, the circumstances and experiences at each of the camps on the Sibley Expedition. You can read it here. Simply use the drop-down menu on the page to find any of the camps, including Camp Buell.
No photos exist of Samuel Collette. Apparently they were all lost in a house fire somewhere years ago. He was an interesting character, coming from Quebec to what is now Centerville in suburban St. Paul in 1857.
In 1862, for reasons unknown, he became part of the First Minnesota Mounted Rangers, thus becoming part of the historical narrative of this part of the midwest.
* – Pages three and four of this link are from a newsletter, Chez Nous, which endeavored to keep alive aspects of French-Canadian history in the midwest. The entirety of Chez Nous can now be read on-line, and is indexed. Go here, click on Library, click on Chez Nous to access both index and newsletter entries.

#1024 – Dick Bernard: "A Boy Named Sue", a song for Mother's Day?

Today we did what has come to be an annual trip, possibly four miles to the Ramsey County Correctional Facility (RCCF) to purchase Mother’s Day Flowers. (More here.)
The seasonal business is staffed by inmates at this place once called the Workhouse; 25% of the proceeds count as a donation. It is a pleasant task, buying flowers at a jail while helping some folks recover from the mistake(s) that got them confined there.
(click to enlarge)
RCCF Flowers001.
I’ve written about this program before. Every inmate there has a mother, and father, and ancestors…and some problem that got them time….
This year I was reminded of a session on “heritage” that I conducted on Monday evening, coincidentally my 75th birthday, in Minneapolis.
Heritage, I said on Monday, is everything about us, brought to us from our past. In Old French the word heritage essentially means “inheritance” from our ancestors.
We usually think of our ancestry, as people we know: our Mom, our Dad, maybe our Grandparents, but we are a sum of thousands of predecessors, parents, uncles and aunts, siblings, on and on and on. Each brings to us something empowering or disabling. Much is DNA; or observed and learned behaviors, and on and on.
Our “inheritance” is far more than money – or lack of same….
Thinking about how to approach Mondays topic, I decided to frame heritage as our collective “baggage” and “balloons”.
If we’re lucky, and determined, the balloons we’ve inherited have greater lift than the weight of the baggage. We can rise above much; sometimes like these inmates who were helping us today, we’re dragged down, but we can recover.
I kept thinking of Johnny Cash’s old tune, “A Boy Named Sue”, and found an unexpurgated and particularly entertaining version on YouTube. (Yes, this version has the cuss words, little kids doing fake violence and the like, but c’mon, every now and then you’ve thunk the same ’bout your own situation and who bears the blame for your state of being at some particular time!).
Somewhere out there on the internet, I’m sure, there’s analysis about what drew Johnny Cash to sing the verses of that song, and made that song so popular. Here’s one. We identify with imperfection, because we’re imperfect. Doubtless in the video that accompanies the song, those little kids who were the “actors” had fun with the rubber knife and the play gun.
I guess it’s part of the life we all experience from time to time, our private face..
But for all of us it started with a Mom and a Dad, and for them, the same, and back all through human history.
Happy Mother’s Day!
And if you’re in the area, and haven’t got your flowers as yet, try the RCCF sale this weekend, or through May 24.
A related post here.
And an interesting commentary, “Teach Your Children Well“.

#1023 – Dick Bernard: On Turning 75….

Today I’m 75. “Just a kid” to great numbers of my contemporaries; nonetheless, a very noticeable birthday, to me at least.
Each person has their own story, along life’s road. And life’s journey is, indeed, a new “road” we all travel, with the attendant surprises any trip down a previously untraveled road or path has for everyone.
(click on all photos to enlarge)

Richard Bernard, new kid on the block, with parents Henry and Esther, May, 1940, McGillivray Apts,  Valley City ND

Richard Bernard, new kid on the block, with parents Henry and Esther, May, 1940, McGillivray Apts, Valley City ND


(This photo was taken a block away from Valley City State Teachers College, which my Dad was then attending, and which I attended myself beginning 18 years later.)
Perhaps this birthday is more prominent to me than the others because the last member of my parents generation, Uncle Vince, died just three months ago, on February 2.
I’ve written often about he, the family and the North Dakota farm on this page. My sister, Flo, and I were with him during his final few hours.
It surprised him when I mentioned a few months ago that I was soon to be 75.
He’s told me that he was the first family member, other than my parents, to hold me after I was born.
Vincent was 15, then.
Tomorrow, I’ll be out at the family farm again, continuing the process of transitioning an entire generation into history. To me that place, those things, represents far more than just stuff to dispose and/or distribute. It’s occupants were, Grandma and Grandpa, and all of these Uncles and Aunts, and my parents, the ones who launched me and all my siblings and cousins in many and sundry ways.
Some pictures of them, at various times back then, are at the end of this post.
Today, also, grandson Parker celebrates his 13th birthday.
He’s already an accomplished baseball guy, his passion, and yesterday, at a small family dinner, I gave him a home-made card with a photo of my brother Frank, and I, taken 1955, at Antelope Consolidated School, near Mooreton ND. I used to stand out in our yard, there in the country, and try to hit baseballs over the trees, imagining I was Mickey Mantle.
We have our dreams.
Dick, at right, and Frank, summer, 1955.

Dick, at right, and Frank, summer, 1955.


I think he liked the photo.
He’s on his own road, now, with its own promise, ruts, crossroads, forks…. Like every one of us, he’s on his own journey, in which all of us participate, in one way or another.
Life is, I’ve learned, a community event. And the community, now, is the planet earth – every last one of us, everywhere.
Here are a couple more photos with my own past memories, one’s which today hold more significance than usual.
Maybe they’ll jog some of your own, about you.
Have a great day.
Grandpa and Grandma Bernard and we Bernards, Spring 1946, Grafton ND.  Grandpa, then, would have been 76.  I'm the five year old in front, with parents and then-three siblings, Mary Ann, Florence and Frank.

Grandpa and Grandma Bernard and we Bernards, Spring 1946, Grafton ND. Grandpa, then, would have been 76. I’m the five year old in front, with parents and then-three siblings, Mary Ann, Florence and Frank.


Grandma and Grandpa Bernard had three children. My Dad, Henry, was the middle child. His older sister, Josie, was deaf, and from the 1930s on lived in the Los Angeles area. She rarely came home to Grafton. Grandma and Grandpa, beginning in the later 1930s, spent winters in Long Beach, so they saw her often. Their youngest son, Frank, served on the USS Arizona beginning 1936, and died on the ship December 7, 1941.
Grandma and Grandpa Busch at the farm on their 50th wedding anniversary Feb. 28, 1955.  Grandpa would have been about 75.  All but two of their children, my aunts and uncles, are in the photo.  Art was unable to be there, I guess; and their daughter, Verena, had died at age 15 in 1927.  Uncle Vincent is third from left, his sister, Aunt Edithe, is at far left.

Grandma and Grandpa Busch at the farm on their 50th wedding anniversary Feb. 28, 1955. Grandpa would have been about 75. All but two of their children, my aunts and uncles, are in the photo. Art was unable to be there, I guess; and their daughter, Verena, had died at age 15 in 1927. Uncle Vincent is third from left, his sister, Aunt Edithe, is at far left.


Art, the only child absent, was an electrical engineer in Chicago, in the early years of marriage and career, and was probably unable to come home for this event. On the wall behind the family, one can see the General Electric annual wall calendar, which was certainly from Art to his parents.
Henry Bernard, 74, "mannequin" in a Quebec City suburban department store window, June, 1982

Henry Bernard, 74, “mannequin” in a Quebec City suburban department store window, June, 1982


Birthday  Twins: Parker (May 4, 2002) and Dick (May 4, 1940)

Birthday Twins: Parker (May 4, 2002) and Dick (May 4, 1940)