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#684 – Dick Bernard: Towards a rational conversation about guns and need for their regulation….

Sunday, February 3rd, 2013

UPDATE February 11, 2013: February 8 I posted a very brief survey to 46 persons on my long standing peace and justice mailing list. The survey was about Guns. Ultimately, 23 responded to the questions, and the entire compilation can be read here: Gun Survey Feb 82013R1. I was surprised both by the number of responses, and the kinds of responses received. This may help the reader clarify his or her own mind about the issue of Guns in our Society, and the survey certainly hi-lites the complexity of the issue needing affirmative resolution. This is an issue that needs both speaking and very active listening with an eye to resolving the issue.

Here is how I summarized my feelings on the issue to my Government representatives: Gun Issue Position Feb 2013

THE ORIGINATING POST.
Today is the holiest of holy days in the United States: Super Bowl XLVII Sunday, where gladiators from Baltimore and San Francisco meet on the field of battle in New Orleans to determine the Champion of the World, at least for today. Then there is the Super Bowl of Super Bowl Ads. Now there’s clamoring for a National Day Off for the day following the Super Bowl….

But then we’re also in the real world: Yesterday’s paper front page lede was about a gang member being convicted for a random act of violence: shooting up the house of a rival, killing a 5 year old in the process. It was the second family member killed in that house. Later in the day, on-line, the same paper had a picture story about President Obama shooting skeet at Camp David…which the NRA mostly ridiculed.

I wish the President hadn’t felt the need to prove he’d actually shot a gun, even in skeet, but, hey, this is America in the year of irrational talk about the need for rational gun regulation.

Additional Post on this specific Topic: here and here.

It happened that the same day a cousin (her Mom and my Mom were first cousins, their parents brothers and sisters) sent a photograph of her Dad, Don Thimmesch, who was among the first 53 highway patrolmen in Iowa (1935). (More here.) And it reminded me of another photo she had sent me some years earlier, of her Mom, Cecilia Thimmesch, who was a national champion marksman with the Rifle.

Best I know, Cecilia is the only National Champion on either side of my family. Hers was a well-earned accomplishment.

Their photos are below:

Don Thimmesch, ca 1935, first class of highway patrol in Iowa

(click on photo to enlarge)

Cecilia Thimmesch, Champion with the Rifle, 1939

Daughter, Carol, is rightly proud of her parents, as she has a right to be.

They were responsible gun users.

If we could go back to those olden days.

But not likely.

As I write, a radical government hater in Alabama is holed up in his survival cellar with a young school child as hostage after shooting the school bus driver last week. In his mind he had some point to make. [Note February 5, 2013: the kidnapper is dead, the child was rescued, yesterday.]

There is no good end to this gun story, as there are seldom good ends to gun stories, unless the gunman comes out of his cave with hands-up before the youngster and the gunman both die.

I suppose the guy thought he could beat the government by being armed and dangerous, having a hostage, and going into his underground shelter.

The moment he took action, he’d lost. And so had his innocent victim.

Yes, we do need to talk about rationale and new gun policies everywhere in this land. A suburban police chief from this area described the problem well, very recently: According to my friend, Greg, who knows the chief personally, here’s what he said: “He told of the progression of weapons his police officers carry. First it was a shotgun in the squad car. Then it became an MP-5. Now his officers carry an AR-15. The reason for the progression to greater and greater firepower? As Scott testified, the changes were necessary to keep pace with what the bad guys are carrying.”

In my opinion the NRA spokespeople can go to hell, at least in their current role as shill for the gun industry.

Where does one start on a “rational conversation”? Maybe how guns were viewed when Donald and Cecilia became noteworthy in Iowa, in the 1930s.

Here’s a commentary I received from a great friend who’s a school bus driver and lives on rural property in Vermont:
From Peter, February 1, 2013

The Samurai Always Left Their Long Knives at the Door

For some reason it has been slow going, looking at this crazy, bloody couple of months. My school has been locked down for a week now. Some jerk said something scary.

As a school bus driver it kind of struck a nerve when somebody shot a driver in Alabama and (at this writing) is holed up in a bunker with a kidnapped five-year-old. I guess the NRA would say all school bus drivers should be packing now. Among the drivers I know, every one of them would get between a shooter and a student without thinking about it first, and still would not carry a gun on the bus.

Among all the people I know, I can’t think of more than one or two I’d want to be around if they were “carrying.” For myself, if I ever find out somebody’s packing heat, I will explain that this is a problem that precludes whatever purpose brought us into the building, and leave.

Around here people check with the parents of their children’s playmates to see if they have guns in the house, and whether they are safely locked away. Half the kids around here, at a guess, are crack shots with a deer rifle.

As for hunters, almost every hunter I’ve met on my property has been drunk, and has pointed the gun carelessly at me or at their friends or their own feet, heads, whatever. I have zero faith in hunters to be “responsible gun owners.” We lose two or three a year, here, including kids, to accidental shootings. A farmer was shot while driving his tractor, mistaken for a deer. A blueberry-picker was shot, mistaken for a bear. Two died last year when one mistook the other for the deer, and then, seeing his mistake, shot himself. Best friends and long-standing hunting club members. This is in a county it takes about half an hour to cross on dirt roads.

I thought the police were supposed to be the ones with the guns and the training about when to shoot people. Imagine whipping out a Glock 9 in a shopping mall, for any reason. Whom would the cops point their guns at?

I like one idea I’ve heard: gun-owners’ insurance, similar to car insurance. Mandatory and expensive and track-record based. This sort of solution functions like a check-dam, changing the course of change rather than trying to plug the system. We used to call this “trim tabbing.”

The NRA is simply out of control, and should be investigated and drowned in lawsuits and put out of its misery, like the KKK.

Posted in Guns, Peter Barus, Politics, Technology | No Responses »

Franco-Fete Nouvelles Villes Jumelles Minneapolis September 29, 2012. Hon. Jacqueline Regis

Friday, October 5th, 2012

On September 29, those attending Franco-Fete heard very meaningful remarks from Hennepin County Judge Jacqueline Regis.

Her 12-page remarks, printed here with her permission, “Serving our Community through the unique perspective we acquired through our French language”, can be seen here: Jacqueline Regis at Franco-Fete Sep 29, 2012

Her talk concluded with sustained applause.

Judge Regis, who grew up in rural Haiti, has her own inspirational story, “The Daughter of L’Arsenal”. It is accessible at a number of sources which can be seen here.

Judge Regis is profiled in the Journal, Francophone Roots in the Midwest, Vol 4, Issue 1, Fall 2012: Hon. Jacquie Regis001

At page 7ff Judge Regis comments on a personal hero of hers, Toussaint L’Ouverture, a leader in the slave revolution which led to Haiti’s declaration of independence from France in the early 1800s. There are numerous references to L’Ouverture on the internet. Take some time to take a look.

Posted in Community, Family History, Haiti, History, International Relations, Minnesota, Peter Barus | No Responses »
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#605 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #34 Hubert H. Humphrey: Working for compassion is not a task for the meek….

Sunday, August 5th, 2012

This morning a friend sent me a quote of John F. Kennedy, which seems apropos today: “If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people — their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties — someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal,” then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”

The friend didn’t know that a few hours later I was planning to take a look at the newly dedicated statue honoring former U.S, Vice-President and United States Senator Hubert H. Humphrey.

There were a few of us at the statue about 4:30 p.m. including George and Edna from Brooklyn Center (below photo, click all photos to enlarge).

George and Edna with Hubert Humphrey, August 5, 2012

Both reminisced fondly about Hubert as an important figure in their lives. George recalled the large numbers of African-Americans who paid respects to Mr. Humphrey when he died. Hubert was a lion for civil rights, before it was popular.

Humphrey and Kennedy, liberals, were colleagues in the U.S. Senate 1953-1960. Kennedy had served in the Senate 1953-60, till he took office as President of the United States 1961-63. Humphrey was a U.S. Senator from 1949-64, and again from 1970-78, and Vice-President of the U.S. 1965-69. Before his national recognition, he had been Mayor of the City of Minneapolis 1945-48.

Humphrey was only 68 when he died; 34 when he became mayor of Minneapolis. I remarked that politics is for younger people. It requires much energy.

The basic biography of Hubert Humphrey is here, at the website of the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of the University of Minnesota. Many of his memorable quotations can be found at this site as well.

In 2004 I happened across a book which mentioned a meeting with then-Senator Humphrey. It became the basis of my 2004 Christmas letter which remains on the internet here.

Here is a portion of the letter:
Early in October [2004], while reading the excellent book, Compassion: A Reflection on the Christian Life (Henri J.M.Nouwen, Donald P. McNeill, Douglas A. Morrison. Image Books/Doubleday c 1966, 1983 pages 5&6), I came across a passage which grabbed my attention: “…compassion can at most be a small and subservient part of our competitive existence. This sobering idea was forcefully brought home to us during the early stages of this book. One day, the three of us visited the late Senator Hubert Humphrey to ask him about compassion in politics. We had come because we felt he was one of the most caring human beings in the political arena. The Senator, who had just finished talking with the ambassador of Bangladesh, and obviously expected a complaint, a demand, or a compliment, was visibly caught off guard when asked how he felt about compassion in politics. Instinctively, he left his large mahogany desk, over which hung the emblem reminding visitors that they were speaking with the former Vice-President of the United States, and joined us around a small coffee table. But then, after having adapted himself to the somewhat unusual situation, Senator Humphrey walked back to his desk, picked up a long pencil with a small eraser at its end, and said in his famous high-pitched voice, “Gentlemen, look at this pencil. Just as the eraser is only a very small part of this pencil and is used only when you make a mistake, so compassion is only called upon when things get out of hand. The main part of life is competition, only the eraser is compassion. It is sad to say, gentlemen, but in politics compassion is just part of the competition….”

I had two thoughts after reading this passage:
1) Here was a public person, well known for his compassion in public policy, relegating compassion in politics to the subordinate status of eraser.
2) I also was aware that an eraser, unused, soon hardens and becomes useless. Is this the same with unused human compassion?

Ours has become a brutally competitive society: winner take all, Losers are…losers. Compassion is, more than ever, only the eraser; its use determined by the Winner.

We have experienced, once again, the brutal polarity of U.S. elections. Once again the electoral “Super Bowl” has identified winners and losers. Once again, the U.S. population is described as split. I wonder: who qualifies for compassion? What does a ‘winner’ – and society at large – lose, in a winner-take-all society as ours has become?

What is the cost of this polarity to the United States? To the world at large?

Does a person deserve compassion as a right? Or does he or she have to qualify for it, or earn it? Do we each set up a ‘compassion boundary’, which we restrict to only certain people: family, certain friends, neighborhood, town, state, nation? Or does everyone in the world – an Iraqi? an Afghani? Someone in Darfur or Haiti? – equally merit compassion whether we know them or not? These are questions, I think, worthy of serious reflection and action.

Posted in Community, History, Minnesota, Peter Barus, Politics | No Responses »
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#92 – Peter Barus: “Out of the loop”

Thursday, September 24th, 2009

From Moderator: Peter Barus is a great friend, going back a half dozen years or so.  When first I knew him, he was an out-east big city guy, a computer specialist, an excellent trainer and all around good guy.  Two or three years ago or so he and his spouse moved into the very rural northeast U.S., to a farm, and here begins his story….

I have been out of the loop for a couple of weeks or more.

And it strikes me now that this is more than burnout or just an upsurge in activity around here  I’ve really had a change in lifestyle.

I used to be plugged in all the time, writing back to everybody, reading everything that came in within minutes or hours of arrival.

What’s happened?  For one thing, I moved to a farm without electricity, with wood heat, and spent two years living as if I hadn’t.  This year, instead of paying over a thousand dollars for enough wood to stay alive til spring, I decided to go get it myself.  after all, this is a 186-acre forest.

There was a big ice storm last winter that knocked the tops out of about a quarter of the big trees at the edges of the fields and along the roadsides.  The plan was to clean up the mess where its close to home, like the cluster of maples that fell on the old tent platform just up the hill beyond the garden; then go out along the roadsides where the Town crew left major trees for us, before the less scrupulous among our neighbros scarfed it up.  And we had some big chunks out of the logging operation from last winter that a neighbor kindly hauled out of the swamp and left me several truckloads in the front yard.

Lots of people around here rent a splitter and spend about two weeks making their winter pile.  I like splitting by hand.  But first I had to go cut up the trunks and load them in the truck and bring them home.  Then I set up a big stump about waist-high and got out the old maul.  This is like the child of an ax and a sledge hammer.

I got to where I’ve been able to stack about five cords so far; seven is comfortable; a dozen would be nice, cause we can just carry it over into next year.

But it hurts!  My hands are all gnarly and knotted and other words that sound like “nnggg!”  All my joints ache.  I’m not complaining!  I’m strong as an ox now, at age 61.  But how many more seasons can I keep this up?

I think the secret is pacing.  A few strokes a day, rather than a crash-and-burn, all-out, heroic effort.

In between all this, clean the chimneys with the long handled brushes, finish re-shingling the roof, host a family reunion, etc.

We live in the previous centruy, or the one before that, now.  sleep when it gets dark, and up with the first hint of a sunrise.  Life here is a direct struggle with nature, and nature is changing fast too.  Weather like nobody’s seen before, changes in soil, habitats, flora and fauna.

Well, as I say, a change in lifestyle.  By the time I get to the Town Library and hook up to the local wi-fi, I ain’t got much to say, somehow.

But keep ‘em coming.  I’ll get to it.

Love,

Peter

Posted in Community, Economics, Environment, Nature, Peter Barus, Quietings | Comments Off