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#717 – Dick Bernard: A look back to the future in North Dakota

Thursday, May 9th, 2013

A few days ago I did a long post about Sykeston High School, a tiny place near the center of North Dakota from which I graduated in 1958.

Curt Ghylin, now a Minnesotan but back in the early 1960s a student at the same college as I, Valley City State Teachers College, visited the blog, and noticed a state-wide test given to high school Juniors and Seniors that I had taken in November, 1957, on North Dakota History, Government and Citizenship.

For those interested, the 100 question test is here: ND Hist Govt Ctzn 1957001.

Curt asked a perfectly reasonable question: “I want to show our kids the test on North Dakota history that your referenced. Do you know if the key is available somewhere? I don’t know all the answers.”

Well, I was a kid taking the test in 1957, and I did well on it, but it was statewide, probably scored by the University of North Dakota (UND), 150 miles or so from where I was marking my sheet….

No, I don’t have an answer key, Curt.

And relooking at the test, yesterday, I wouldn’t give even odds that I’d get 50% right today, without lots of cheating!

But Curt’s was a perfectly reasonable question, and I knew I had placed second (or such) in the state that year, and there must be something…. In my bookshelf was a book I had been given at the state “Know Your State” contest at UND in December, 1957. It was an autographed copy of “North Dakota A Human and Economic Geography” by Melvin E. Kazeck of the Department of Geography of the University of North Dakota, published 1956 by the North Dakota Institute for Regional Studies at North Dakota Agricultural College (now NDSU) in Fargo.

Mostly, all of the answers will be somewhere in that 264 page book. Best I know I’m the only person in the world who has a copy (I google’d it), so if it’s going to get done, I’m going to have to be the one to do it.

And I will, Curt. Yes I will. Take the test yourself, and check back to this space by early June, 2013 for the “key” (which should be pretty close to accurate).

In his e-mail, Curt articulated a problem with such old documents: “I had to point out to my sister-in-law as she read the test that the date of the test was 1957 when she questioned why Interstate 94 wasn’t a possible answer for question 2—’The highway running across ND from Fargo to Beach’ “

Here, from Kazeck’s book, is a map with the answer to THAT question, from page 181! (The first stretch of ND Interstate wasn’t constructed until 1958, between Valley City and Jamestown, and that was among the first stretches of Interstate Highway in the U.S.)

(click to enlarge)

North Dakota Highways 1956 from Melvin E. Kazeck's North Dakota, A Human and Economic Geography

North Dakota Highways 1956 from Melvin E. Kazeck’s North Dakota, A Human and Economic Geography

But what about the title of this post, “A look back to the future in North Dakota”?

As I was leafing through Kazeck’s volume, I came across the last chapter “The Future of the State” of North Dakota.

That chapter was written 57 years ago, by someone very well versed in his topic and published by a respected institution.

This morning I pdf’ed that 35 or so page chapter, and for anyone with an interest, here’s how a North Dakota geographer saw the future of North Dakota in the year 1956: ND Geog 1956 Kazeck001

I find the chapter quite interesting.

I hope you do, as well.

Posted in Economics, History, North Dakota, Technology | 1 Response »
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#715 – Dick Bernard: On growing Elder.

Sunday, May 5th, 2013

This afternoon, at the annual Heart of the Beast May Day Parade, the obvious salute at the end of the regular parade was to “Grandmas and Grandpas”

(Click on photos to enlarge them)

Near end of May Day/Cinco de Mayo Parade, south Minneapolis, May 5, 2013

Near end of May Day/Cinco de Mayo Parade, south Minneapolis, May 5, 2013

A Grandpa (at left) and a Grandma honor the May Day Parade as it nears its end, May 5, 2013

A Grandpa (at left, partially obscured by a lady) and a Grandma are honored by, and honor, the Minneapolis May Day Parade as it nears its end, May 5, 2013

.

It was an especially nice, and particularly pertinent, touch to a topic that has been much on my mind in recent days, but has been on my thought screen for many years: how elders fit in (or not) in our contemporary American society.

In the last week or two I’d been concentrating on a long remembrance of past days at tiny Sykeston ND High School: the place I had graduated from in May, 1958.

Among many other memories, it occurred to me that at the time of my high school graduation 55 years ago, my Dad and Mother – he was the Superintendent and one of my teachers – were 50 and 48 years old respectively.

My oldest son is now 49. And my parents seemed plenty old, back then in May, 1958.

Then in mid-week last week, more or less impromptu, I had something to do with a gathering on Law Day, May 1, which by design celebrated several Elders, most over 90, all of whom had been prominent in their working lives, and now are part of the huge category called “who’s he?”, or “she?”.

In conversing with one of them – a man I scarcely knew before April, 2013 – I had occasion to remember a workshop from 1998, which became my Christmas card in 2000.

The topic was “Canyon of 60 Abandon”. The card is brief and can be read here: Canyon of 60 Abandon002

The premise of the Canyon story is really very simple: ours is a society which tends to discard its Elders at an arbitrary time called “retirement”. Oh, we give them things like Social Security and Medicare, but basically they’re marched off into a remote area to their old person thing, and (I suppose) hopefully leave behind a substantial financial inheritance.

The story goes on about one family who violated the society rules, and hid their Elder under their porch, ultimately to their great benefit.

In my recollection of that now-15 years ago workshop, the story-teller, Michael Meade, didn’t go into specifics about what value their Elder added to the family that benefited from his or her presence.

That is the essence of story-telling. It is left to the listeners to create the real-world basis of the story.

I’ve now been in that “Canyon of 60 Abandon” for over 13 years, and it has been a most interesting and extraordinarily enriching life experience.

There is something that the Elders possess that those younger cannot, and it is important that the Elders be valued and included and not discarded.

How our society relates to those “out to pasture” tells a great deal about us.

And it is important for us to really pay attention to these relationship questions, as we struggle, ever more, with an uncertain future, and with difficulties in inter-generational communication (think Facebook versus the face-to-face word-of-mouth) that our ancestors would have relied on not too many years ago.

Who do you know in that Canyon? How can they be more truly valued while they are living. And if you’re in that Canyon, what is important about not isolating yourself?

Can we talk?

Posted in Community, Education, Family History, History, Media, Minnesota, Quietings, Technology | No Responses »

#709 – Dick Bernard: The Boston Marathon

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013

Yesterday morning, before 9 a.m., I was at the gym exercising at my usual place. Behind me, visible in the mirror, were two women, exercising beside each other and quite loudly chatting.

One of them mentioned to the other that her husband was in Boston, running the Marathon, checking in from time to time.

A few hours later I heard the news of the bombs at the finish line at the Marathon. This probably changed the woman’s conversation. Perhaps I’ll read in the Woodbury MN news something about this today or maybe next week…. Such is how communication goes these days. Instant and worldwide.

I got to thinking about two happenings in my own life.

Back on April 20, 1999, I was in the car on the freeway in north Minneapolis when I heard that there had been shooting at a school in Littleton, Colorado.

Littleton. That was where my son and family lived.

Soon enough, I learned my granddaughter, then 13 and in Middle School, was safe. No cell phones then. It was via e-mail.

I tried to find where Columbine high school was on the then-version of Mapquest. The school location on the map was misplaced, I soon learned. My son and family, it turned out, lived only a mile from the high school, and later he said he probably had seen the two killers the previous day in a local McDonalds restaurant – just three of the customers at that time, that day.

But in those days, communications was not quite so convenient or instant (though it was pretty good.) There were cell phones of a sort, but not ubiquitous like now. There was cable, but not hundreds of stations vying on the competitive edge for news. I don’t think I was thinking, then, about what has since become something of a mantra for me: “too many news people, too little news.”

Then I thought back further, to December 7, 1941, when my Uncle – Dad’s brother – went down with the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor.

I was alive then, just 1 1/2, so I didn’t pay much attention.

Dad told me about his memories of that awful time years later. They didn’t know for certain that his brother, Frank Bernard, had died until some weeks later. The time was so chaotic that I don’t think there was even an organized Memorial Service for Frank. His parent were in Long Beach for the winter and had no car (they traveled by train, then), his sister in Los Angeles, and his brother in rural North Dakota. Making even a phone call was not a routine matter. No television. Less radio. The news coming via newspaper – I have the clippings.

We tend to forget that.

And now we are besieged for hours upon hours by repetitive images of the same exact thing; by speculation by experts about who done it, and why it was done. Everybody with their own agenda for communicating whatever it is they choose to communicate.

We’re a big country, and such incidents will happen from time to time.

We used to worry about the Russians bombing our school in central North Dakota in the 1950s; now, well you know….

We need to get a grip and keep things in a bit better perspective.

It was bad, what happened in Boston, yesterday.

As a city and as a nation and as a world we’ll survive it.

We really have it pretty good, here.

Posted in Colorado, Community, Family History, History, Media, Minnesota, North Dakota, Technology, War | 1 Response »

#706 – Dick Bernard: Meeting the Space Age, up close

Monday, April 1st, 2013

I suppose the space age began for me sometime in late October or November, 1957.

We were visiting my grandparents at their farm in south central North Dakota, and the Fargo Forum had published the expected track of the Russian satellite Sputnik, which had been launched October 4, 1957, igniting the space race and intensifying the Cold War of those good old days.

Right on schedule, and on the exact predicted course, Sputnik appeared to all of us gathered on the lawn of the farm house under the dark star-laden country sky – at least you could tell it from the stars as it “blinked” on and off as it tumbled across the heavens, reflecting the sun earthward.

The rest is, as they say, history.

And what started as Cape Canaveral and became Cape Kennedy, and then again became Cape Canaveral on which stood Kennedy Space Center, became famous for generations of ever bigger and more impressive rockets, triumphs and disasters.

I’d visited there with my then-13 year old son, Tom, in June, 1977.

And on March 13, 2013, I went back with 13 year old Grandson Ryan, and his friend Caleb, to once again do the tour of Kennedy Space Center. Here is a Facebook Snapshot Gallery taken on the day of our visit.

While there, I learned that there was to be a launch on April 19. I had never seen a launch, and as it evolved, I was visiting a relative perhaps 30 miles down the coast, and excused myself to go north for the launch of an Air Force Atlas, watching it from the Indian River-side property of my friends the Brady’s. They’ve watched launches from their property since the early 1980s.

March 20, 2013, was my first.

I would like to say the launch was an amazingly impressive sight – the launch I saw – but it was not very dramatic. We saw liftoff at 5:20 p.m., and my snapshot is essentially the view that those without binoculars had from the Brady’s.

You had to be attentive for the telltale speck of light off on the horizon. My host knew about where it would launch, which helped.

(click to enlarge – look for the orange dot near the horizon!)

Launch March 19, 2013

Launch March 19, 2013

We watched liftoff till the evidence of the vehicle disappeared, which seemed to be more or less the time that the first sound waves reached us, a minute later. This meant we were about 12 miles from the launch pad.

The last photo before the launch vehicle disappeared from sight.

The last photo before the launch vehicle disappeared from sight.

The more astute observers got a closer view, as reflected in the below photo on the front page of Florida Today Newspaper on March 20. You can see the video behind the photo on the Florida Today website, here.

There can be endless debate about the space program, and the purpose of this particular launch; whether it was a waste a money, or a vehicle for good…or for evil….

For me, it was rather exciting to actually see this one launch, probably the only launch I will ever actually see in person in my lifetime.

Photo from FloridaToday.com March 20, 2013

Photo from FloridaToday.com March 20, 2013

For more on the U.S. space program, a good “launching” place is the NASA website, here.

Equally interesting, in the same area and enviroment, is the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge, one of America’s finest. In a sense, at least, wildlife and high technology seem to co-exist just fine.

Posted in Family History, History, International Relations, Technology, War | No Responses »

#686 – Dick Bernard: Going to listen to Al Gore on “The Future. Six Drivers of Global Change”

Friday, February 8th, 2013

Al Gore was in Minneapolis on Thursday, and while I’ve been to lots of speeches, including by Mr. Gore, and didn’t really need to go, there is something that draws me to such events. I got to Westminster Presbyterian Church an hour early, but turned out to be a half-hour late: I got a seat, but in one of two overflow spaces. The house was packed for the longstanding Westminster Town Hall Forum.

Al Gore speaks Feb 7, 2013, Westminster Town Hall Forum Minneapolis MN

Al Gore speaks Feb 7, 2013, Westminster Town Hall Forum Minneapolis MN

I won’t write a review of the speech: you can listen to it here. (This is the instant video of the speech. Mr. Gore’s portion begins at approximately the 40 minute mark). At about the ten minute mark is a 30 minute musical concert by a twin cities musician, who was also very good.

Neither do I plan to review Mr. Gore’s book, “The Future. Six Drivers of Global Change“, which is readily available everywhere, and is meant for reflection, discussion and personal action.

“The Future” is a book for thinking, not entertainment.

I’ve long liked Al Gore. He is a visionary, not afraid to articulate a realistic vision if we wish to survive as a human species.

Visionaries, especially prominent ones, are often viewed as threats, and are vilified in sundry ways by their enemies.

So it was with Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth which was released in 2006, ridiculed by his enemies. But as current events in our country are showing, the film has been in all relevant particulars true, if anything, even conservative. Yes, there are “yah, buts” in the film, but as an acknowledged climate expert said at a meeting I attended a year or two ago, he said the film was 90% accurate, and this was from wisdom of hindsight.

We saw Mr. Gore speak on An Inconvenient Truth a year before the film was released, in 2005, and it was a memorable, never to be forgotten event. Here’s what I wrote about it then: Al Gore July 2005001. It is remarkable that this was eight years ago, already. Of course, largely, denial continues to be a prevalent reaction to things like Climate Change.

In so many ways we humans live with short-term thinking (“me-now”) and we imperil not only our present, but certainly our future. “An Inconvenient Truths” dust jacket made some suggestions back then that are still relevant today. They are here: Al Gore Inconven Truth001

“The Future” covers numerous topics other than just climate change, and covers them well.

In his talk, Mr.Gore said he got the idea for “The Future” several years ago – 2005 I seem to recall – from a question someone asked at a presentation he was making somewhere in Europe.

From that seed grew extensive research and reflection.

Mr. Gore suggests – that’s all he can is suggest – a wake-up call.

To those who think the cause is hopeless, he asked simply that we remember changes like Civil Rights in this country, which in his growing up days in Tennessee would not have been seen as a possibility either. It is the people that will change the status quo, he said, recalling a particular learning moment in his youth when a friend of his made a racist comment, and another friend told him to cut it out. It is small moments of public witness like these that make the difference, he suggested. He gave other examples as well.

Of course, Gore is a prominent world figure, a former Vice-President, and now a very wealthy man.

But in his appearance, yesterday, he was part of us – he even stopped by the overflow rooms before his speech to give a personal welcome. It was a nice touch, we felt.

By our demeanor – I like to watch how audiences react at events like this – we were very actively listening to him.

It’s past-time to get personally involved, but never too late.

(click on photos to enlarge)

Mr. Gore stops by one of the two overflow rooms prior to his speech.

Mr. Gore stops by one of the two overflow rooms prior to his speech.

Posted in Climate Change, Community, Economics, Education, Environment, International Relations, Nature, Peace & Justice, Politics, Technology | No Responses »
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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 »

#582 – Dick Bernard: The Street

Tuesday, June 19th, 2012

“Back in the day”, my Grandpa Henry Bernard (born on a farm in Quebec in 1872) spent most of his adult life in Grafton ND.

He came to Grafton area with a first grade education and carpentry as a trade but had a particular gift for figuring out how mechanical things work. For years he was chief engineer of the local flour mill, and long-time volunteer and President of the local fire department and the guy, the Grafton history notes, who drove the first motorized fire truck to Grafton from somewhere.

Both my Grandpa’s had inquiring minds – Grandpa Busch was a farmer with a couple of patents – but he didn’t have easy access to the streets of any big town.

Grandpa Bernard did, and in retirement he loved to “kibitz” or be a “sidewalk superintendent” in his town of several thousand. Most times it was on his bench on the front stoop of their tiny home at 738 Cooper Avenue. Sometimes it was watching the action elsewhere in town.

There exists a wonderful film clip from a day in 1949 which includes him watching a crew lay a concrete section of street in Grafton (here, beginning at about 4:15. He even merits a subtitle!). In the fashion of the day, he was dressed up. He was a common man, but when you went out, you dressed up!

Paving that street in Grafton was the ‘street theater’ of the day!

I think of that vignette because for the last week or so the crews have been in our neighborhood rebuilding our street – the first time in about 20 years.

(click on photos to enlarge)

Romeo Road, Woodbury, mid-June, 2012

Such projects are essential nuisances to folks on the street, but a change in routine.

Kibitzing a few days ago, a neighbor and I were wondering why they replaced some sections of curb and not others, so we went to look (cracks were the villains, mostly).

Some unlucky folks had the entryway to their driveway blocked for a few days because their section of curb had to be replaced.

As I write, the street is prepared, and repaving is about to be begin, but early Tuesday morning came another inconvenience. The neighbors across the street – the ones who couldn’t get into their driveway for a few days – had another unfortunate happening.

Early on June 19 came those violent winds, and one of their trees blew over, blocking that driveway again….

Early morning June 19, 2012

Its all better now. The tree was rapidly removed, and life goes on.

We have assorted complaints, of course, but work crews are doing their work very efficiently, and somebody somewhere in our communities did the planning, letting of contracts, etc., etc., etc. None of us had to worry about this planning and implementation.

Yes, we’ll have to pay an assessment, but it’s a small price to pay as part of our community.

And a bonus is the chance to re-view Grandpa Bernard in action at 77 years of age, now 63 years ago.

I wonder what he could have been able to do had he been able to pursue an education.

He died in 1957 when I was 17.

I’ll visit his and Grandma’s and others graves in Grafton and Oakwood ND next Monday.

Thanks for the memories.

Posted in Education, Family History, North Dakota, Quebec/French-Canadians, Quietings, Technology | No Responses »
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#561 – Dick Bernard: Heather, an exceptional citizen and contributor to society

Thursday, April 26th, 2012

Back on April 1, my daughter Joni sent me an iPhone photo of her sister (and my daughter) Heather.

(click on photos to enlarge)

Heather at the Park, April 1, 2012

Yesterday Heather and I went bowling. We did two lines. She got a strike on her first frame. She won the first line, I won the second. No need to do the third (or for you to know the score, either!) Suffice to say that I didn’t take a dive to lose, and she didn’t cheat to win. It was all fair and square on Lane 11 at Mattie’s Lanes in South St. Paul MN. We were the only folks in the place. It was fun.

Today* Heather is having a new Pacemaker installed at Children’s Hospital in Minneapolis. She has lived with a Pacemaker for over 30 of her 36 years. This makes her a pretty exceptional individual in the realm of pacemaker survival rates, I’m told.

Heather, Down Syndrome, has seen a lot of life in her 36 years.

And she’s brought a lot of joy to a lot of lives in those years. Kids like her with exceptional abilities can and do have that affect on people who know them. Those with special abilities look at life a bit differently than we so-called ‘normals’.

When I was young, kids like Heather were people nobody knew much what to do with.

I remember Johnny in a tiny town in which I lived for several years. He was, they would likely say, retarded, or some less polite word: moron, idiot, imbecile…. He was older than we younger kids, and he lived at home. We’d taunt him in the assorted ways kids can, and sooner or later he’d get very angry, and because he was so big he could be dangerous.

We’d run, and he’d go home, and the next day he’d be back.

No special education in those days.

My grandparents lived in the town that had what they used to call the “State School for the Feeble Minded”, and in those years, while awareness was beginning to raise (this was in the 1940s), these folks were warehoused and when we came to visit, and went to the local park, we went by the school and on a summer day they were warehoused behind a fence, sort of like animals in a zoo, no deal differentiation that I knew of.

Things have changed now, of course, and kids like Heather in all their exceptionalness add richness to many lives, not to mention aiding the economy of which they are a part in many different ways.

Heather spends her weekdays at Proact Inc, an extraordinary partnership in Eagan MN. Earlier this week I took her there, and she was proudly wearing her Twins shirt.

Heather at Proact April 24, 2012

The technology she’ll have implanted today is a far cry from the technology of over 30 years ago. In those years, the Pacemaker had one heart rate; the current technology allows Heather to do things unimaginable in those early years, such as playing softball in a Special Olympics league called RAVE in which parents and others give and receive the joy of participation.

I can put Heather in the middle of many “circles”.

To each, she brings more gifts than she takes.

Dad and Heather October 1, 2010

Sisters, Heather, Lauri & Joni, April 26, 2012

For other postings about Heather, simply enter the word in the search box.

* PS: The procedure went well. She’ll be home tomorrow.

Posted in Family History, Health, Quietings, Technology | No Responses »

#541 – Dick Bernard: Election 2012 #3. A blizzard of insanity: the internet Lie machine.

Saturday, March 24th, 2012

The ‘ink’ had not even dried on Election 2012 #1 when in came a “forward”, containing a piece of video purportedly proving that President Obama was born in Kenya. There he was, on videotape, President Obama himself, saying he was Kenyan at a public meeting with real people who looked like normal white people. They were his words. His voice.

The forward-er was someone I only very recently had heard from via e-mail. Except for Christmas cards, we really weren’t in touch. The correspondent said in that earlier e-mail that the President lies, without evidence. Well, apparently here in this forwarded video, was the evidence….

It was easy to dispatch this one, as it is most all of the internet lies circulating constantly. As we all know from watching those cute TV ads of babies talking like businessmen, the insurance companies talking duck and gecko, etc, experts can cut and paste both video and sound, and mix them masterfully, and this they had done with the so-called President Obama video. But many people don’t seem to grasp the obvious with the political stuff: that their hates and fears are being manipulated and massaged by liars who are, in turn, accusing the hated other of lying. So it goes. Lies work. All one can do is respond.

Computers and the internet are marvelous – and dangerous – things. They’re dangerous in the hands of the small Army, largely older people like me, who share the garbage I’ve come to call “forwards”.

This seems a good time to dust off and send the following, which was gathering dust in the ‘draft’ bin of my computer, and which I’d dealt with on-line a few weeks ago. The inquiring e-mail came from a good friend in London, England, who’d gotten a “forward” from his wife’s grandfather in the U.S. Here is what I said about this topic, then:

“My usual source for checking stuff like this is www.snopes.com.

[Yours] is the first international version of passing on the big lie(s) that I’ve seen.

Snopes had nothing I could find on either of these – perhaps I keyed in the wrong search words, or perhaps this is so completely outrageous as to not be worth the time.

My guess: the data is made up, a very, very common strategy. It is extremely time-consuming to validate/refute “data” like what [was forwarded]. The beginning premise is that the reader hates Obama (or liberals, or socialists) and will buy anything that verifies his/her point of view.

I actually don’t mind getting this kind of stuff (I call it “forwards”), and when I do I make it a point of responding.

Things I look for:

1. Is there some kind of reasonably plausible source of origin (who originated the e-mail in the very beginning of its travels)? The answer is always “no”.

2. These things live on by being passed from (usually) one senior citizen (like me) to another…. They’re usually from men, but they sometimes come from women too.

3. Is there some kind of reasonably safe link to check the data? For instance the websites for [the purported source of information, in this case], IBD [International Business Daily] or WHO [World Health Organization]. The answer is always “no”.

4. Does snopes have anything to say about it? Often they do. I would guess that well over 90% of the stuff that is out there is either false or so massacre’d (misleading) that it may as well be false.

5. The right wing has taken to trying to discredit snopes as being a left-wing tool, and if you want an interesting take, go to a competing fact checker, www.truthorfiction.com, and type snopes in the search box. I happen to know that the person who founded truthorfiction is a minister in southern California. I know that because a number of years ago I heard him interviewed on a Christian radio station I happened across when on the road. He and I actually shared a couple of e-mails back then. His debunking does not change the senders mind. They’ll believe whatever they want to believe. Sometimes the “data” will include a supposed link to Snopes, proving it is correct. They really don’t expect people to go to Snopes, after all, they’ve already made up their mind, and the link itself may not be valid (or if you go there, Snopes says it is false.) But you have to go there, and few do.

6. I do think that it is worthwhile (even if it seems a waste of time) to challenge the one who forwards the item, and if I’m lucky enough to have an open cc list, I’ll respond to them, too. Every now and then somebody will write that they were glad I spoke up. Other silent ones get this garbage as well. But the human tendency is to start believing the unbelievable if it is repeated often enough, and that is a conscious and deliberate strategy.

I’m actually glad you sent this on, and I’ll pass it on the group for their information. And if anyone in the group wants to add to my list above, please do. Feel free to send my item to your relative if you wish.”

“Election 2012″ posts will appear periodically between now and November. Simply enter Election 2012 in the search box, and you’ll see where the others are located.

The Video and response links referred to in first two paragraphs: video; here’s the truth: here and here. (Truth or Fiction’s opinion of the video is here.)

Posted in Media, Politics, President Obama, Technology | No Responses »

#505 – Dick Bernard: The “State of the Union”?

Tuesday, January 24th, 2012

This is posted BEFORE the actual State of the Union is presented by President Obama.

This [Tuesday] afternoon I sent my own mailing list a reminder of President Obama’s State of the Union (SOTU) address this evening. The subject line read: “What would you ask President Obama?”

A friend, who I think would answer to “Leftie”, shot back: “How do you [Obama] expect to regain all of the voters you have lost since 08, either by breaking promises (closing Guantanamo) or failing to stop the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? (Yes, Iraq.)”

In response, I said “I’ll respond when you can give me the specifics of what Obama promised, and when. These have to be first person (his own specific quote) in context…you know what I mean.”

Volley: “No one I know saves his [Obama's] quotes. That is a cop-out.”

Counter-volley: ” “Cop out”? You can do better than that. You’re the one who provided the allegation. Where’s the beef?”

Of course, this business of standing firmly on belief or assertion is not one-sided, not at all.

Yesterday, or was it the day before, a coffee friend related about the endless “forwards” his right-wing uncle dutifully sends him. A recent one was so obviously false that even the uncle said he’d checked Snopes, and yes, it was false. But it must have been one uncle really liked, so he sent it on anyway.

Uncle apparently liked the made up version of “truth”.

Earlier this afternoon I happened to be in my coffee shop sitting next to the editor of the local on-line Patch publication. Patch is a burgeoning national alternative media, a creation purchased by AOL in 2010 and developed by them.

About a year later, AOL and on-line publication Huffington Post merged.

The local Patch editor observed that he gets complaints (with no basis in fact) that Patch must be left-wing – that Arianna Huffington herself is setting editorial policy for the local on-line publication.

On the other ideological pole, when the Huffington-AOL merger happened, I can remember a flurry of communications from the left, complaining that Huffington had literally sold out to the right….

(NOTE: I didn’t know this history till I started to do this column.)

There is a caution in noting these alternative realities: we seem to be a nation full of manufactured realities – our own fantasies of what is ‘truth’. It makes no difference what side of ideological spectrum one occupies, or even in the middle, we seem satisfied to delude ourselves. For what I hope are obvious reasons, this delusion is very dangerous behavior.

I’ll watch SOTU with great interest tonight, and tomorrow there will be endless translations of it, according to individual points of view.

And I’m still interested in that exact quote of the President which begins this post….

Now to the State of the Union address.

Posted in Community, Media, Politics, President Obama, Technology | No Responses »

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