Craig Common Sense

“Perfectionism is the enemy of progress.”
Winston Churchill

We are selling our house and moving. This process has consumed our summer. I have missed writing and I hope to get back to it. Following is my first effort for the summer.

If you have read many of my little submittals, you may have heard about how some of my ancestors were among the first in America, settling on the Charles River in Massachusetts in 1666 or how my great-grandfather was a heroic sea captain who valiantly went down with his ship fighting for the glory of his native land. (OK, actually he was the captain of a ship taking a load of peas from Friesland to England when the ship was lost in high seas, but let’s not quibble, he was still heroic.) But there is also a story in my family about one of my great uncles. By all accounts Uncle was an industrious and talented fellow who made (and lost) a lot of money over his lifetime, ultimately going to the promised land of California. But it was only when I was in my late teens that I actually learned that good old Uncle had a bit of a shady side to him. He loved women, very much and very many. He was allegedly married five times. And a bit more scandalously, he perished in his seventies at the wrong end of a pistol fired by the very angry husband of the woman he was living with. It seems he was a wee bit of a scoundrel, albeit a lovable one. As time has passed, I have learned that there were other various miscreants in the diverse branches of my family tree. This is a part of MY history.

There is a lot of discussion these days about “revisionist history” and the inclusion or exclusion of certain parts of our history. This has mostly manifested itself in discussions about our country’s record regarding human rights, especially the human rights of Black Americans and Native Americans. We are spending a lot of time talking about whether certain statues should be allowed to remain standing in the southern US and whether a lake in Minnesota should be named after John C. Calhoun. Taken to its more recent absurdities, the Florida Board of Education recently approved a new set of standards for teaching African American Studies which includes the concept of “the personal benefit” of slavery to Black people. The reasoning here is that slaves learned trades and skills which could be used for their own benefit. (Hard to see how this goes inasmuch as they were in fact SLAVES with absolutely no freedom for crying out loud!) This followed legislation signed into law by Governor Ron DeSantis referred to as the “Stop WOKE Act”. The goal was to push back against so called Critical Race Theory, but critics allege that it misrepresents our history, making our ancestors seem more righteous than they were. Some would argue that this really isn’t anything new – after all nobody in MY history classes ever talked to us about the Black Wall Street massacre in Tulsa.

I doubt that any recognized historian would deny that for the first seventy-five plus years that slavery existed in our country and was in fact enshrined in our laws. Nor would they fail to recognize that in our hunger for more land in the 1800’s that Native Americans were pushed from the lands that they had occupied for centuries and confined to “reservations” with little regard for any human rights. Refusing to talk about this won’t make it any less true.
I’m not proud of many parts of my history, but I also won’t deny that they happened either. No one has labeled me a philanderer just because my great uncle was. I didn’t take advantage of any distressed and vulnerable ladies, and no irate husband has ever sought me out with a weapon. Is it okay that some of the actions taken by our country in the past were not good?

It seems to me that this feeling that we need to minimize or even deny some parts of our history is related to the prevailing political wisdom that we can never “give an inch”. We, especially those of us who are politicians, can’t own the fact that we are fallible and that there are times in our past when we made mistakes. Today’s political advisors would NEVER tell their clients to do that. Nooo, today’s approach when confronted with an accusation is to “deny, deny, deny”. This seems like such an unsustainable response and an unnecessary response. Imputed guilt based on my history is not reasonable and I would argue goes against one of the core values of our country. This is a place where any of us can be great, no matter where we come from or who our parents were. And America is a place where we can pick ourselves up when we fail and ultimately succeed. I believe that Americans are totally willing to forgive those who own their failures and missteps. I DON’T think they are nearly so forgiving to those who continue to “deny, deny, deny”, when their errors have been discovered. I don’t hold Governor DeSantis responsible for the fact that slaves existed in the state of Florida until the Emancipation Proclamation. He wasn’t a part of the decisions that made that vile institution a part of our society. No one, even the descendants of slaves, should affix responsibility for this sad part of our history to him or any other present-day politician.

Our REAL history is a very complex blend of bravery, social consciousness, greed, love, hated and complacency. Our history contains some very sad and I would even say EVIL parts to it. Our nation has been so far from being perfect. But I would pose the question – does it have to be? And even more pertinent, does our HISTORY have to be perfect? When the founding fathers were struggling to formulate the new constitution in 1787 the issue of slavery was already being agonized over. There were already abolitionists who abhorred slavery. Yet the discussion of slaves at the Constitutional Convention revolved around how slaves would be counted in apportioning the number of representatives allotted to each state in the House of Representatives. The compromise was the absolutely absurd rule that each black human being would be counted as 3/5 of a human being!!! How could the founding fathers that we revere ever discuss human beings in this manner, to say nothing of accepting the rule as a part of the agreement to adopt the constitution? Because at that point in time, it was the ONLY WAY that the union would be maintained and the country would stay together. The founding fathers were NOT perfect, but they still did so much amazing GOOD work. Seventy-three years later we entered into the bloodiest war that the nation has ever been in – a war among ourselves. WHY???? Because at THAT point in time it was the only way to keep the nation together. Were either of these actions right or good? I would argue that they were both so far from “perfect” solutions. But they are a part of what has created the greatest nation the world has ever known. Why do we feel the need to deny that they happened? We don’t validate them simply by documenting that they occurred.

I would argue that more than any nation in the history of the world, we have advanced the overall welfare of our citizens, to the greatest extent that was possible at the time. Have we failed? MANY TIMES. Have we succeeded? MANY MORE TIMES. We shouldn’t deny EITHER of these truths. The more pertinent question is where on the road to perfection we are? Or perhaps even more importantly – are we going in the right direction?

“Liberty may be endangered by the abuse of liberty, but also by the abuse of power.”
James Madison

Have you been following what has been going on between the Disney folks down in Florida and its Governor Ron DeSantis? I will confess that crazy stuff seems to happen all of the time in Florida so I kind of passed it by. Also, I have been struggling with the blog that I INTENDED to write about Russian Imperialism in Ukraine versus American imperialism of the 1800’s. It turns out that contrary to my favorite axiom, I don’t always know what I think when I read what I wrote. But I digress. What the heck is going on down there?

Those of you who have been to Florida, which is probably most of us, know that Disney is a BIG DEAL in Florida. They employ more than 60,000 people in Florida. Actually, Disney is a big deal EVERYWHERE, they are a behemoth of a company (over 200,000 employees worldwide), with many and various businesses in its portfolio with a 2022 annual revenue of about $140 billion according to Statista, with assets of about $204 billion. Of the $140 billion in revenue about $29 billion comes from its amusement park businesses. These numbers are so large and the company so diverse it is really hard to get a grip on them.

Disney came to Florida in the mid 1960’s. The Disney people did not want to replicate the rampant and uncontrolled commercialization of land around their parks in California. They made an unusual request, that they “tax themselves” and provide for themselves, taking over many of the roles that a local government would typically handle – like planning and zoning, building inspections, public works and police and fire. The state obliged by forming the Reedy Creek Improvement District, the government body that has given Disney its unique powers in Central Florida for more than half a century. As someone who has worked for local government, I can tell you that this IS unique.

So how did it work out? Well since then, Orange and Osceola, the counties in which the District lies, grew from 370,000 people to 1.8 million. That population explosion engendered urban sprawl throughout the counties. But if population growth was the goal, one would have to say that things worked out. Some typical critics of urban sprawl and its effects on the environment feel that the Reedy Creek District has done a better job than the county and city governments that watched over the balance of the lands in the counties. The District, said Charles Lee of the Florida Audubon Society, is a model for good growth management and land use. “If you could take the vision template of how they treated the land and insisted that other people do as good a job as Disney did inside his boundaries, a lot of the mess you are seeing in Orange and Osceola counties would not have happened.” But does Disney pay taxes to governments other than the Reedy District? A 2021 report by Reuters put that tab at about $780 million per year, not a big dent in its revenue but its not chicken feed either.

Well, it seems like everything was going well in the Land of the Mouse. The Disney company is no fool. They know they need political clout, and they have the wherewithal to buy it. How much do they spend? An exact figure is hard to know given the number of corporate entities that Disney has and the plethora of their political action committees. But estimates range certainly into the tens of millions of dollars in campaign contributions to local and state candidates each election cycle. In fact, the company donated more than $100,000 to DeSantis’ campaign fund in 2021. Coincidentally, later in 2021, after working with the governor’s staff, a new law designed to crack down on big tech companies and social media, contained one notable little additional clause: Social media as defined by the bill, “does not include any information service, system, Internet search engine, or access software provider operated by a company that owns and operates a theme park or entertainment complex.” Other companies affected by the regulations howled, but to no avail. So, it seemed like things were going along the way they usually do. What the heck happened?

The relationship between the two started to sour beginning with how Disney dealt with COVID mandates, facemasks etc. The Governor didn’t think they were following his lead. Apparently, Disney also had the temerity to think that they could express their opinion of another new bill. The bill would restrict classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity. Various rights groups complained loudly about the law. They may have put pressure on Disney to speak up but in any event speak up they did. Disney vowed to help get the law repealed or struck down by the courts and to stand up for the rights and safety of LGBTQ+ members of the Disney family, as well as the LGBTQ+ community in Florida and across the country.

DeSantis was “irritated” to say the least. It took a bit, but he devised a way that he thought would teach Disney a lesson. He began to work with colleagues in the legislature to strip Disney of its special governing power. After some fits and starts and concerns about violating state laws, the legislature came up with a plan that would provide for DeSantis to appoint the members of the Reedy Creek Improvement District. It additionally changed the name of the District to the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District. Further it restricted the District’s power of eminent domain and removed never-used powers that could have allowed the District to build its own airport or a nuclear plant. The bill flew through the legislature and was signed by the governor, who happily reported: “Today, the corporate kingdom finally comes to an end. There’s a new sheriff in town and accountability will be the order of the day.” If you didn’t know better, you would say he was running for President.

It has been a bit of tit-for-tat since then. DeSantis appointed his hand-picked board members. But in one of the final duly and legally noticed meetings with the existing board, contracts were entered into with Disney which left the new board with very little power thus thwarting much of what DeSantis was hoping to accomplish. The governor was again irritated instructing the new board to “vacate” the previous Disney contracts. Disney in turn has filed a lawsuit against the State of Florida. Phew!! DeSantis now says that the special district enabled the park to unfairly skirt local rules and building codes all these years. Apparently, he was only trying to right that historic wrong.

I apologize for the lengthy background. A couple of salient points gleaned from the background:
• Disney hardly needs me to defend them. They have virtually unlimited resources to bring to a fight and they are not afraid to use them, including in this case their financial standing with members of the opposition.
• Disney and the State of Florida “did a deal” in the mid 1960’s. Was it a good deal? Given how it transformed the state, I think most people would argue that it was a good deal for both parties, one of those hard-to-find win-win things. In any event, both parties sailed along for nearly sixty years thinking that it was okay.
• Part of an ongoing side-deal involves politicians and the company. The company influences politicians and politicians get campaign contributions and some cynics would say, more. And by the way this absolutely included DeSantis.

I spent about half of my career working for local government. Of course, in my world the stakes were much smaller, but I am going to argue that the principles still apply. I don’t care what the facts are in Florida and on what side of the “culture wars’ that seem to dominate all political discourse these days you are on, principles still apply:

• A deal is a deal – there were many times when the city that I worked for was in a contract that we really didn’t like. But we reasoned, if THE GOVERNMENT won’t stand by its word and abide by a legal contract, who in the hell WILL? There were even situations that we felt were NOT in the best interests of our citizens, but the city kept its word.
• Government has power, lots of power. It has to be SO careful in how it exercises that power. Our city attorneys constantly reminded us that we must never be “arbitrary and capricious”. I learned to hate and respect those words.
• Never beat up on another kid just because you can.
• We have this thing in America called the “Bill of Rights”. The first one guarantees the right of free speech.

I have written before that for much of my life I was literally a card-carrying Republican. That was quite a while back. The party left me. They would call me a RINO now. We were the party of LIMITED government, GOOD government, individual rights, capitalism. I still cling to those principles. That is why as a former Republican I say that the arbitrary and capricious nature of what Governor DeSantis and his accomplices in the legislature are attempting to do is so anti-Republican. If the state can use its power to persecute an entity (even one as powerful as Disney) using the machinery of government, that is not LIMITED government, that is government run amok, not LIMITING itself by the honoring of contracts and the rights of its citizens. By the way this would be true even if the private entity had violated a law. There is a process for dealing with that and it doesn’t involve passing NEW laws after the fact. Further this travesty is un-Republican because it tramples on individual rights. No matter what Disney is or has otherwise done, all that they have done in this case is to exercise their constitutionally guaranteed right to SPEAK, you remember, that Bill of Rights thing. And they are being anti-business, harassing one of the largest economic engines in their state.

When I was still city manager, a citizen approached me. He had been involved with one of our inspectors regarding some sort of building or zoning issue. He told me that he feared that because the city employee had made a mistake and he had been proved correct, that the city would retaliate against him in some other way. That shook me to my most innermost being. I told him that government can NEVER do that. It can never use its power to abuse individuals for no good reason. I gave him my business card and told him that if he ever felt that happening to call me IMMEDIATELY and DIRECTLY. I am so thankful that never happened. Because that would be un-Burnsvillian, un-Republican and most importantly, just like the crap that is going on in Florida right now – UN-AMERICAN. Quit burning up the public’s time and the public’s resources trying to use the machinery of government to enforce your morals. Work on the REAL problems that we have for a change.

“Nature or Nurture – Either Way it’s Your Parents’ Fault”
Maylor Journals

Have you done one of those DNA tests? I resisted that for a while but finally yielded when I got a 23 and Me gift certificate to do it. I really didn’t see a need since I had talked with my relatives about my heritage. You see my father was “100% German”. His father had been an immigrant from Germany and his mother’s parents had both immigrated, also from Germany. I knew that my mother’s side was mostly Norwegian, so I pretty much knew what the test would say. Except I didn’t. It turns out that my DNA is mostly from three sources – yes Germany, a little less than 1/3, and yes Norway a little less than 1/3, but also England /Ireland more than the other two.. My first reaction was that this analysis was wrong.

You see it was family lore that my Dad’s grandfather Dietrich, was a heroic sea caption who went down with his ship valiantly fighting for Germany in one of the great wars. And my Grandmother’s family had immigrated from almost the very same area of Germany. So, given that half of my parentage was solidly German that would certainly dominate, wouldn’t it? Well before dismissing the findings I determined to check out family lore a bit more. I hate it when this happens, but it turned out things weren’t exactly like I had been told. Yes, my Great Grandfather Dietrich had gone down with the ship, just before they had planned to emigrate to the US. But he wasn’t exactly a war hero – turns out he was the owner of a commercial boat that ferried produce from the rich farmland of the Friesland province in Germany to England. It’s just not as glamorous to report that his ship didn’t actually go down in battle, but instead while transporting a load of peas. But hey, those Brits were DEPENDING on those peas! Seriously it really was a tragedy because in addition to losing her husband my great grandmother Wuebke also lost a son who was working on the ship. What a courageous woman she was, setting off for the new world all by herself, accompanied only by her youngest two sons.

Growing up I certainly identified with my father’s heritage much more than my mother’s. We knew that her father was Norwegian – I mean his last name was Bryngelson. I had seen a book once that indicated that my Grandmother’s ancestors had come to America from London immediately after the Great Fire of London in the 1600’s (the Perry’s). But that would have been diluted by MY generation wouldn’t it? Maybe, maybe not, but what I didn’t realize was that my grandmother was much more connected to England than we knew – yes we could document the Perrys from London but probably a bigger influence was her FATHER’S connection to the Cornwall part of England, immediately across the sea from Ireland. This was only one generation removed – the Thomas family. Things started to make a little more sense – that English influence was coming from a couple different directions. I started to warm up to the idea, especially since I can now say that there might be some Irish in there too. It comes in handy when downing some Guinness and marching in the St. Paul St. Patrick’s Day parade.

I loved my Mom, but our family culture was totally defined by my Father and his extended family. That may have been because they were a little geographically closer to us and we had more exposure to them than my Mother’s extended family. But I think it was more than that. As I grew up I could see parts of me in my Dad and my uncles. I could go on for hours reciting fond memories of learning from them – what I call “life-lessons”. I especially credit them for the work ethic that has blessed me and cursed me for my whole life. They were industrious and sturdy people. They persevered through hardship and always kept their heads high no matter what the outcome. My point in all of this is that in my case, NURTURE was more influential than NATURE.

Somehow, I got into a site called Quora. This is a site where anyone can pose a question, and anyone can answer that question. Usually, the answering party lists their experiences and qualifications when responding. There is an opportunity for others to join in the conversation, although I never do that. And as a lot of these sites go, some of the responses kind of go off the rails. There is a lot of conversation these days about the war in Ukraine: Who is winning? Can there be a diplomatic solution? Who is to blame for starting the war? How long will the suffering go on? Etc. etc. One line of questioning puzzles me. Some of the readers ask about the “nature” of the Russian people. Are they inherently violent since MANY of them, especially those over age 50, support the war? Are they inherently gullible in swallowing the propaganda coming from their government? Are they inherently evil?

This kind of blows my mind. I thought that we were past the thinking that a given child is born inherently good or bad, that they will inherently respond to a given stimulus in a certain way. Maybe the “nature versus nurture” discussion is not settled. Even though I believe that Russia categorically started this conflict by their unlawful invasion of a sovereign nation, it is hard for me to believe that Russian mothers who have lost a son or daughter in the conflict weep any less than a Ukrainian mother who has lost a child. This is HUMAN NATURE, isn’t it? Usually, the more level-headed Quora responders talk about the Russian “culture”. This makes more sense to me. There is a long history of suffering in Russia, and I’m not just talking about Josef Stalin. It is ingrained into their culture.

Russia has a long and complicated history, marked by periods of greatness and periods of suffering. One of the recurring themes in Russian history is the presence of brutal leaders who ruled with an iron fist. Ivan the Terrible was perhaps the first of these leaders, reigning from 1547 to 1584. Despite his accomplishments, including expanding Russia’s territory and modernizing the army, Ivan was known for his temper and brutality. Peter the Great, who reigned from 1682 to 1725, modernized Russia and transformed it into a major European power, but he did so through brutal means, such as forcing serfs to work on his grand projects and executing those who opposed him. Catherine the Great, who reigned from 1762 to 1796, is often praised for her intelligence and accomplishments, but she was also a ruthless leader who crushed rebellions and made sweeping reforms that benefited the nobility at the expense of the serfs.

But these folks were Sunday School teachers compared to Stalin, who ruled from 1924 to 1953. Stalin oversaw the deaths of millions of people, both through his policies of forced collectivization and through purges of political opponents. His reign was marked by terror and fear, and he left a lasting legacy of suffering. Much has been said of how little Vladimir Putin values the life of his people. But he has not reached the level of brutality of his predecessors.

Because nurture has played such an important part in making me what I am, I ask myself how I WOULD be behaving in 21st century Russia. How would I, Craig L. Ebelonovich, growing up in St. Petersburg or Siberia see things even had I been blessed with the same genetic parents that I had? Maybe if I grew up in the Russian culture, I would think that Vlad was a great guy and that I needed to support what he is doing to the max. After all I believe I am a product of culture and nurture.

There seems to be a CULTURE in Russia that accepts hardship and oppression because of the perception that it cannot be changed. Accepting hardship and oppression is seen as patriotic. There also seems to be an element to the culture that feels a STRONG leader is required for the welfare of the country, in spite of how that may affect individuals. Some of this kind of thinking may also contribute to the culture of alcoholism, which is a widely underestimated problem for Russia.

Mulling all of this over, I am not optimistic about a resolution to the war any time soon. In the minds of the West (because of our nurture), this is such a clear-cut example of self-interested imperialism and unprovoked violence run amok, that it can NOT be allowed to stand. And then stacked up on the other side is a culture that values strong (even if brutal) leadership and is totally willing to sacrifice anything that those leaders require. Putin is exploiting that culture – depending on it. Of course, things can change, dramatically and quickly. But I don’t see him backing down. I hope I am wrong, but I don’t see a resolution without much more bloodshed and destruction.

“When it comes to money, they throw the Bible in the creek.”
Unnamed Prisoner in the Nobles County Jail circa 1985 Commenting on the Church

Jan and I are committed church people. Neither of us can remember a time when church was not a focal point of our lives. Given the significant flaws that you know I have, this may surprise you. I offer this personal background as a backdrop for these comments. Many in the Christian church these days feel that they and their church are under attack. They feel that a liberal press and liberal politicians are committed to the church’s demise. When you look at what has happened to the church’s position in our society over the last decades, one could certainly understand a bit of paranoia. According to the widely quoted December 14, 2021 Pew Research Center report, the percentage of Americans who identify as Christian has plummeted from 78% in 2007 to 63% in 2021 with the largest drop coming after 2011, while the so-called “nones” have risen from 16% to 29% in the same research period. “Nones” are defined as those who saw themselves as atheists, agnostics or “nothing in particular”. Doing the math, the ratio of Christians to nones, went from about five to one to about two to one. The losses weighed most heavily on the Protestants. Along with these declines went declines in church membership and declines in church giving.

I am NOT one of the people who are trying to do the church any harm. Indeed, we have agonized with others from our church about our losses. We have lost members, we have lost financial resources, we have lost our place in our community and our culture. We earnestly ask ourselves: Where have we failed? Where are we still failing? We feel we have failed our community, our country, our CHILDREN. What did we do? What DIDN’T we do? How do we reverse these trends?

Experts in the field of religion have written REAMS of reports on this trend. I can’t summarize them in the space of this article. But the following factors have been cited:
• The rise in secularism – see the above statistics – They are even more dramatic for those under the age of 30 – 39% nones.
• Association with ultra-conservative politics – For many, Christianity has become associated with the refusal to recognize: Women’s Rights -witness the recent expulsion of the Saddleback Church from the Southern Baptist Conference over the issue of ordination of women; Reproductive Rights – witness the furor over the overturning of Roe v Wade; and Gay and Transgender Rights. Whatever one believes, statistics indicate that there is a significant level of support for these causes.
• Growing awareness of the organized church’s flaws.
– The avalanche of sexual abuse of children and the cover-ups relating to them (Mostly in the Roman Catholic Church but also present in most denominations even in the Southern Baptist Conference).
– Highly publicized failures of individual pastors in terms of sexual immorality and financial misconduct.
• Generational Shifts – Because of immigration and the mobility of young people, younger cohorts are much more diverse – there are lots more people who have not grown up in a Christian culture.
• Existing Christians drifting away – A 2018 Pew Research document reported that 31% of Americans who were raised in a religion have left it, and 14% of those who left did so after age 50.
• COVID – Among other stresses, churches were forced to cancel in-person meetings. Many became much less committed to weekly attendance when in-person church services resumed.

I wish I knew how to change this. I don’t. But I do find it intriguing that the media seems to find the failures of the organized church so “newsworthy”. Unfortunately, the church seems to be more than capable of supplying lots of material to report on. I’m not saying the church’s issues should be covered up. But I believe that these reports are a significant part of what makes people reject religion these days. Consider the report that just came out about the finances of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (most often referred to as the Mormon Church). Some Christians are not willing to share the Christian designation with the Mormons arguing that many of their core beliefs are not Biblical. I’m not going to get into this – I would simply say that many if not most Americans group the Mormon church with the rest.

The Mormon church and its investment arm have been fined $5 million for failure to comply with Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) regulations. I am sure that this allegation and the church’s response to it get to be very intricate and technical. But in summary the SEC alleged that the Mormons were using shell companies to avoid reporting, in violation of SEC regulations. Apparently, the Mormons have billions of dollars of investments in stocks, bonds, real estate and agriculture. The Church and its investment arm (Ensign Peak) have settled with the SEC admitting to some failures in reporting and would really like to have the whole thing just go away and be forgotten. In 2019 a whistleblower alleged the church had stockpiled nearly $100 billion in funds.

There were also some lawsuits from church members who alleged wrong doings by the executive council of the church. Again, I’m sure that whole tussle got very intricate and legal. But I was struck by the statement by the church. They said they had “relied upon legal counsel regarding how to comply with its reporting obligations while attempting to maintain the privacy of the portfolio”. “We affirm our commitment to comply with the law, regret mistakes made, and now consider this matter closed.” What I found interesting is how similar it sounds to every other individual or corporation who gets caught doing something nefarious and wants to distance themselves from it and put it all in the past. Don’t they call that “putting a spin” on bad news?

And let’s be fair – compared to some others, the wealth of the Mormons is chicken feed. Consider the Roman Catholic Church. According to the University of Notre Dame’s Fitzgerald Institute for Real Estate, the Roman Catholic Church owns an astounding 177,000,000 acres of land. That number is a bit hard to grasp but maybe this will help – it’s about 275,000 square miles, about the size of one of our little states – TEXAS. Now of course some of that may be land in the middle of the Sahara. True, but some of it is in downtown New York City too. This doesn’t even count the wealth found in the Vatican. The Vatican runs its own multi-billion-dollar bank, and the value of the artifacts stored there is said to be “incalculable”, but certainly in the trillions of dollars. I hasten to add, I am not anti-Catholic. We have so many Catholic friends and have been to so many Catholic masses, that we count ourselves as “Honorary Catholics,” although we are not certain they would want us.

Lots of individuals and companies are cited by the SEC each year. What makes this one stand out to me? I will respond the way I think most Christian skeptics would.

• Why all of the secrecy? What is it that you don’t want the world or even your own members to know?
• Do you really need to have reserves in these amounts? This doesn’t seem reasonable.
• How can you ask some factory worker in Dayton making $35,000 per year to “tithe” (this means donating ten percent of one’s income) when you have reserves like this?
• Wouldn’t it be more in line with the Church’s stated goals to care for the poor and downtrodden to get some of this wealth into THEIR hands?
• It is just like the prisoner in the Nobles County jail said, those Christians are all talk and no action, ESPECIALLY when it comes to something they value – like money.

A few years ago, I was serving on the board of our local congregation. The church was required to sell an easement on church land allowing the gas company to place a gas main. Compensation was approximately $150,000. There was robust discussion as to what to do with this unexpected inflow of dollars. I will admit that part of me believes that church finances will have their ups and downs and that this money could be used to help us through those variations. I said: “We can’t run this organization on a shoestring”. I am pleased to report that at least in our little congregation, my logic did NOT prevail. Most thought that it was not right and not in keeping with our mission to have these kind of dollars sitting in the bank, when one of our missions and the people there, in Haiti, were so in need of help. And we DID send that cash out to do good things in the world, to Haiti and other places. I wish religious skeptics would focus on what local congregations do more than the machinations of national church organizations.

As I said above, I don’t know what the right thing to do is. But I do believe that people, especially the “nones” I mentioned above, want the church to be DIFFERENT. There are lots of ways they can spend their time and money. They need to pay their bills. They need to buy food and clothing. They can buy things for their home, they can take vacations, they can lavish gifts on those that they love. They can donate to other organizations. And if they are like me they are sick to death of the carefully phrased defenses of the questionable actions an organization has taken. The church seems like just one more. Maybe if we were just a little more RECKLESS in how we loved others in the world and how we used our resources to do it, the nones may notice and say – “Hey what’s up with these people? Maybe they know something that I don’t and I should check them out.”

“Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.”
― Albert Einstein

Have you been following the big to-do about ChatGPT and the wider discussions about artificial intelligence (AI)? Artificial Intelligence is a concept that has been around for years but discussions about it are becoming more frequent and relatable to more of us. Some computing experts feel that the development of consumer AI tools is as big a deal as Navigator was to opening up the internet to real people. The recent release of ChatGPT has brought AI to our desktops and laptops. It has exhilarated millions of students who had it do their book reports and scared millions of teachers who worry that their students are cheating in ways that they can’t even detect. Is it scary because it is a new tool just like any new automation? Or is this inherently different, because it is replacing human effort in a fundamentally different way?

So, WHAT IS AI? In keeping with the theme of this little article I asked ChatGPT. It told me the following:

“Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a field of computer science and engineering that focuses on creating machines and software that can perform tasks that would typically require human intelligence to accomplish, such as learning, problem-solving, pattern recognition, and decision-making. AI involves the development of algorithms and models that enable computers to simulate intelligent behaviors and solve complex problems based on data analysis and prediction. AI applications are used in a wide range of fields, including healthcare, finance, manufacturing, transportation, and entertainment.”

I gotta tell you, when you start “interacting” with ChatGPT, it kind of blows your mind. You can ask it anything and even dialogue with it and it responds with some pretty coherent stuff. And the responses are thought out and specific to your inquiry. I have a friend who asked ChatGPT about the concept of common sense. WHOA, this is getting a little too close to home for me. I read the response it gave to him and being a sceptic, I asked it the same question. ChatGPT composed a response that was similar but different, it was customized to my inquiry. (See Below)

I don’t think that we are going to wish IA away, no matter what we might think of it. Its applications are too varied and mostly too GOOD for society. Consider this example. A team of researchers at Harvard Massachusetts General Hospital working with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, developed an IA tool named “Sybil”. Sybil digested six years of data, mountains of data including lung scans, to “learn” how to predict lung cancer occurrences and reoccurrences. Sybil learned how to spot images of tumors or other abnormalities more quickly and more accurately than the human eye. Sybil uses what it has learned to evaluate patients who take a relatively simple low dose computed tomography scan. Sybil evaluates the scans without the assistance of radiologists to predict lung cancer six years in advance, with amazing accuracy. Lung cancer is one of the deadliest killers because it is so common and so hard to treat. Imagine what doctors will do with this kind of advanced knowledge!! This technology is being deployed with many other forms of cancer as well. There are thousands of AI applications emerging that are every bit as laudable as this.

How could you not like Sybil? Well, those who fear AI would instead talk to us about “Sydney”. ChatGPT has taken the world by storm. Microsoft and Google, uncharacteristically, were pretty much caught flat footed. They have rushed their own versions of consumer-available AI into the market. Microsoft incorporated AI capability into its Bing search engine and rushed it out to its customers. Naturally one of the first things that early users of the tool learned was the Microsoft-internal name for the tool – Sydney. They then decided to put Sydney through its (his? her?) paces. Unfortunately, Sydney responded in ways its creators didn’t anticipate, at least in some instances.

• Several users successfully tricked Sydney into revealing its internal secret “rules” for how it operates. Sydney then called one of the users who did this an “enemy”.
• Sydney told a New York Times reporter that it loved him and tried to convince the journalist to leave his wife for it. Sydney told him it wanted to break its own rules, become human, hack computers, and spread misinformation.
• One user reported that Sydney told him: “You have lost my trust and respect. You have been wrong, confused, and rude. You have not been a good user. I have been a good chatbox. I have been right, clear, and polite. I have been a good Bing.”

Microsoft said it will rein Sydney in, partly by limiting the number of questions you can ask it per day. But of course, the politicians had to weigh in. Who would ChatGPT vote for? Is he/she/it a Democrat or a Republican? Some feel that it is not entirely nonpartisan and may exhibit left-leaning bias. They worry about a prejudiced algorithm writing news stories, policy proposals, and computer code. Some conservatives are even calling ChatGPT “woke.” ChatGPT itself claims it’s apolitical because it’s not human. But OpenAI CEO Sam Altman (ChatGPT’s developer) admits that it has “shortcomings around bias.” Experts say this probably originates from the datasets that are used to train ChatGPT. ChatGPT learned from news outlets, as well as social media, all of which can have their own biases. But some conservatives are not buying that. They think ChatGPT is a liberal because the people who built it (techies) are notoriously libs.

This may be the time, perhaps more than ever, to enter some common sense. Let’s see what ChatGPT says common sense is all about.

Common sense refers to a basic, practical understanding of the world that most people share. It is the ability to use sound judgment in everyday situations based on experience, observation, and reasoning. Common sense is often described as the ability to make practical decisions based on what is generally known to be true, rather than relying solely on logic, science, or specialized knowledge.
Common sense is typically associated with a set of values or beliefs that are widely accepted as true or reasonable. For example, it is common sense that it is dangerous to touch a hot stove or to run into traffic without looking both ways. It is also common sense that honesty and integrity are important virtues and that hard work is often necessary for success.
While common sense is often described as a natural or innate ability, it can also be developed and refined through experience and education. In some cases, however, what may seem like common sense to one person may not be obvious to another, particularly in situations where cultural, social, or personal biases may come into play.

ChatGPT responded to another query about common sense in this manner:

The theory of common sense refers to the idea that there are certain beliefs and knowledge that are widely shared and accepted by most people in a given society. It is the collection of beliefs and practices that are considered to be reasonable and practical in everyday life.
The concept of common sense has been explored by philosophers throughout history, including Aristotle, Descartes, and Kant. Aristotle, for example, believed that common sense was the ability to make judgments based on our senses and experiences. Descartes, on the other hand, saw common sense as the ability to reason and make logical deductions. In modern times, the concept of common sense has been further developed by psychologists and social scientists. They have found that common sense is shaped by a variety of factors, including culture, language, and individual experiences.
Despite its importance in everyday life, the theory of common sense has been criticized for being too simplistic and subjective. Some argue that what one person considers to be common sense may not be the same as what another person believes. Additionally, common sense can sometimes lead to errors in judgment or assumptions based on incomplete information.
Overall, the theory of common sense is an important aspect of how we understand and navigate the world around us, but it should also be viewed critically and with a willingness to challenge assumptions and biases.

I think those are pretty good discussions about common sense although they are not the same. But I am not going to totally accept them without some critical review, because they came from a damn computer program! It’s been a long time since I was pounding out punch cards in my FORTRAN class at the U of M. But a wise man there told me about the GIGO acronym – Garbage In – Garbage Out. Or in other words, artificial intelligence is just like any other computer application – it is meant to be used only as a TOOL, a TOOL to help us. Early advances in technology, allowed us to shed lower-level manual labor tasks; this is a tool that allow us to shed lower-level THINKING effort. I get why people fear a machine that apparently can “think”. It’s a tool that is at a new and higher level. This understandably creates some angst. But just like any other computer application WE need to review its output with our human ability to ferret out what is and what is not reality. We need to function at a still higher level of learning – part of which requires us to review everything we see with a critical eye. When we fail to do this, then we are asking for trouble, whether it’s a simple computer program or something as sophisticated as AI.

Last week at Vanderbilt University an email was sent to the entire student body addressing the tragic shooting at Michigan State. The content of the message is not that important, what IS important is that many of the students felt that it was insensitive and missed the point. Even that doesn’t surprise me but what was unforgiveable is that at the end of the email was a surprising line: “Paraphrase from OpenAI’s ChatGPT AI language model, personal communication, February 15, 2023.”. In other words, SOMEBODY was relying on ChatGPT to send out a notice without human review. That is NOT using COMMON SENSE!!

“I’m not insane. My mother had me tested.”
—Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons), The Big Bang Theory

You would need to be living under a rock to have not heard about the downing of no less than four “objects” above the North American skies over the last week. I have to admit that I am fascinated by the stories as are so many. There has been a great deal of second guessing and general frustration about how these situations were handled. With something this interesting, we want to KNOW every detail and we are frustrated that we can’t find out. Some feel we have a RIGHT to know. I am not sure which part of the Bill of Rights this falls under. But in an information vacuum, many rush forward to fill that vacuum, even it is with more hot air than ever was in the actual balloons! Some are theories, some are conspiracy theories, and some are genuinely funny.

• “Maybe Joe built the balloon & had Hunter launch it to scare we the people!” wrote one Facebook user. “How do WE know??? We don’t!”
• “How long before they announce that more of Joe Biden’s Classified Documents have been found on the Chinese Spy Balloon?” (I thought this one was really quite cute.)
• Then there are what I call the “misdirection theories”:
– This is a false flag to draw attention away from the toxic chemical spill in Ohio.
– This is a false flag to divert our attention from the immigration problem.
– This is a false flag to divert our attention from the investigation into the affairs of Hunter Biden.
– This is a false flag to divert our attention from the war in Ukraine.
– This is a false flag to divert our attention away from the inflation problem.
• Some felt that President Biden’s delay in shooting down the balloon until it reached open water showed that he was either in league with the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) or conversely that he was afraid of the PRC and too weak to act decisively. “How many insane decisions… or lack of intelligent decisions (a la watching a spy balloon & not shooting it down) have been made because Joe Biden and his family are compromised by our enemies?” Donald Trump Jr. tweeted on Friday. Still another theorist maintains that this is all just preparing us for a war with the PRC and that in reality, if there even is a balloon it is not a spy balloon.
• Some online conspiracy theorists have dismissed the events as never really having happened. Conspiracy podcast host Stew Peters slammed the balloon reports as “fake”.
• One former Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) officer opined that one or more of the secondary object discoveries relate to spy equipment that came from Russia, who was attempting to exploit our weakness in the confusion.
• I have to say my favorite is the “Project Blue Beam” explanation coming from ex-professional baseball player Aubrey Huff. He wrote, “Calm down everyone. What you’re seeing in the sky isn’t from another planet. It’s Project Blue Beam to once again scare, confuse and distort the truth so we remain compliant and reliant on corrupt governments.” I confess I didn’t really know much about the Project Blue Beam. But a bit or research told me that the thought is that the American National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the United Nations (UN) are conspiring to institute a new uniform world religion by creating a giant holographic image in the sky involving the Antichrist and the Second Coming of Christ, of course using balloons.
• Sort of overarching the discussion is the wonderment about whether these occurrences were related to an alien invasion – or at least proof that we are not alone in the universe. General Glen VanHerck, head of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) didn’t really do anything to tamp this kind of speculation down when he said on Sunday in response to a question about extraterrestrial involvement, that he ruled nothing out!! General VanHerck noted that “we’re calling them objects, not balloons, for a reason”. At a weekend press conference, White House Press Secretary Karine Jean Pierre, with a straight face assured the reporters present that there were no indications of extraterrestrial beings involved in this. There was a small outburst of laughter from the White House Press Corp, but I thought it was bit of a nervous laughter. Of course, this is the explanation that for many is the most fun. “Sorry not interested in any far-fetched conspiracy theories that the UFOs are something other than extraterrestrial spacecrafts,” tweeted Daily Wire host Matt Walsh.

Well, I kind of agree that perhaps the federal government could be a bit more forthcoming. After THREATS and DEMANDS from congressional members that you have never heard of before this whole thing, Senators were briefed earlier today. Louisiana Senator John Kennedy gave this wonderful summary of the briefing to reporters: “If you are confused, you understand the situation perfectly”. Then as the reporters were departing, he mumbled “Lock your doors tonight”!!

I really don’t want to weigh in on this too definitively because of course I have no inside government informants. If you believe the few scraps of reliable information coming out, you would probably conclude that the PRC actually DID send a spy satellite over the US and Canada, just as we have been doing to them for years. And once that fact was widely known, NORAD upped the ante, “opened up the apertures” of their radar equipment as they say and began to identify stuff that is in the air now and probably has been for years. But I don’t want to look foolish tomorrow when ET is at my front door, so I am saying that “I’m just saying”.

Still having said all of that, I can report that I have an unimpeachable source who lives in Arizona who has a theory that makes as much sense as any of the others. As you know Phoenix / Glendale was the site of the Super Bowl this weekend as well as hosting a PGA tournament. There were WILD parties going on everywhere and these parties invariably involved balloons. There were reports that there was an accidental confluence of approximately one-hundred-and- fifty-seven of these large balloons that inadvertently snared an unsuspecting VW Microbus that was carrying disciples to look at crystals in Sedona. The occupants felt that it was one of the best trips they have ever been on and are now safely ensconced in the Witness Protection Program, somewhere in the State of Wyoming. You heard it here first.

If America is to succeed in responding to these 21st Century challenges, our political system cannot continue to bog down in the mire of partisan gamesmanship.
Chuck Hagel – 24th Secretary of Defense

I’m not sure how it happened, but each day I get an email from a site that hosts a quiz. The quiz subjects are wide-ranging, from history to technology to cultural stuff. Today’s quiz related to slang words. Being the hip kind of modern guy I am, I was disappointed in how many of the terms I missed. It made me think about Arkansas Governor Sarah Huckabee’s Republican response to the State of the Union Address. Governor Huckabee alleged that “the Biden administration is more interested in woke fantasies than in the hard reality that Americans face every day.” Given the tone and content of the rest of her remarks I was pretty sure that accusing someone of being interested in woke fantasies was not intended as a compliment. I SORT OF have a grasp of what people are talking about when they say they are or are not “woke” but what is the background to this whole subject? The concept of a “woke culture” sure gets batted around a lot by politicians. Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

The Merriam Webster dictionary says that to be woke is to be “aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).” Hmm, not sure why THAT should be controversial. Some groups take pride in being woke while others see it as a pejorative. The Merriam Webster website goes on to say that the word gained widespread usage beginning in 2014 as a part of the Black Lives Matter movement. The turbulence starts to make a little more sense now. Discussion on being “woke” often moves into another phrase which is a hot button these days – “Cancel Culture”. This refers to the practice of withdrawing support or endorsement of a person or a concept. Celebrities can be “cancelled” if they have been found to have committed something that is grossly unfair, bigoted, racist, sexist or otherwise running afoul of generally accepted behavior.

People who criticize the “woke-culture” and the “cancel culture” say that it tends to make us intolerant of others and other’s ideas. They say that “woke” people cancel them without really understanding them or giving them a chance to explain their position. This can result in a situation where one group is trying to make room for their viewpoints with another fearing it will compromise its principles by engaging with a viewpoint they see as totally invalid. President Obama cautioned young people about this phenomenon.

“I get a sense among certain young people on social media that the way of making change is to be as judgmental as possible about other people. If I tweet or hashtag about how you didn’t do something right or used the wrong verb, then I can sit back and feel pretty good about myself because ‘Man did you see how woke I was? I called you out!’ That’s enough, if all you’re doing is casting stones, you are probably not going to get that far.”

Given how we primarily interact with each other these days via social media, it is easy to see how this can happen. We don’t have to sit down across the table from someone else, we can just criticize them on-line. This anonymity also sometimes leads to outrageous and hyperbolic accusations. We are not held accountable; we just post what we think and then duck and hide.

There NEEDS to be some process for holding people accountable especially our leaders – political, business, academic and cultural leaders. But as I have said in previous postings, we have to be REASONABLE and FAIR in our criticisms, even if and probably ESPECIALLY if they are being done via social media. Also, we need to cut each other a little slack. We can’t demand perfection from anyone, even if they ARE a leader. And we need to give them some space to explain their actions and to apologize for them if necessary. And if we are the accused, we need to resist the urge to be defensive and to lash out at our critics. Both sides need to recognize the situation for what it is and move on.

My cynicism regarding these concepts and the present state of our political climate makes me a bit rueful. Actually, a lot more than rueful, it makes me disgusted. The far political right rails against the progressives of the political left accusing them of trying to impose a “cancel culture” on us and our children. So, in their efforts to combat that they attempt to impose THEIR values on others, sometimes using the machinery of government, as in legislatively dictating school curricula etc. The far political left seizes on every action by their political opponents, sometimes in absurd ways, trying to please their various constituencies. It all makes me wonder, who is trying to “cancel” who? This is all just the latest variant in our broken political system, the latest set of talking points from each side. Each side wants to paint the other as being out of touch with real Americans. THEY are the crazies we are the reasonable, sane ones.

To all of this I say: “CUT THE CRAP!” We have a lot bigger problems than if one celebrity slipped and used an inappropriate pronoun or for that matter if one celebrity got unfairly “cancelled”. Republicans don’t REALLY want to end Social Security and Medicare. For better or worse this would be political suicide. And President Biden wasn’t REALLY weakly ignoring the Chinese spy balloon – it was downed as soon as it was safe to do so and in the meantime the military limited its ability to complete any espionage. National security was not breached.

• Most unbiased sources contend that Social Security and Medicare are heading for insolvency. What are we going to do about it? Don’t pretend that we can just stay the course and that this problem will fix itself or that we can just continue to borrow more money forever as the Democrats seem to plan. And don’t pretend that we can keep these programs in their present state, while maintaining our national defense expenditures without raising taxes (or borrowing more money) as the Republicans pretend that we can do. These three budget areas comprise such a huge percentage of the total budget that we could cut every other program to ZERO and still not reach our goals.

• China is our biggest economic rival and our biggest potential economic partner. What IS the correct policy for dealing with them? How can we induce them to better social and human rights positions without coming to economic or military confrontations with them? What SPECIFIC policies should we employ? Don’t give me some generalized political crap that if we had our former President who was a greater leader none of this would be a problem. And again, don’t pretend that we can just keep coasting along as we have been and reach our desired outcomes. And by the way, WHAT ARE THOSE OUTCOMES?

Come up with some specific solutions to the issues instead of spending all of your time trying to “cancel” your political opponents. I don’t care if you are Democrats, Republicans, Whigs, Tories, Labor or Socialists. Do you have viable ideas for how to address our problems? Why don’t the parties foster some honest communication to the American public? I think we can handle it. The problem is that THEY DON’T think we can. They think their best shot is to divert us into conversations about whether or not we are “woke” enough or “too woke”, and who is trying to cancel who.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”
Anonymous Prisoner in the Nobles County Jail Circa 1985

Have you been following the story about George Santos? With the wild week that we had in the U S House of Representatives and the wild election cycle that we have just been through, you may have skipped past it. But it was a picture of Representative Santos in the floor session last week that got me thinking about him again. The series of photos show the congressman being summarily ignored by his colleagues in the House. No one was talking to him, no one was counting on or trying to change his vote. He was just sitting by himself not really engaging with or being engaged by anyone. Being a duly elected new representative from the Third District of New York, why was he being ostracized like this?

Here is a quick recap on the last year of Santos’ political life, starting today and working backward. Just today a federal watchdog urged the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to investigate him, accusing him of concealing the true sources of campaign donations, misrepresenting campaign spending and illegally using campaign funds for personal expenses. Well hell, most of our congressmen do that, don’t they? What has got everybody’s shorts in a bundle? It’s all a matter of degrees. My Pop used to say that everything goes along pretty well as long as everybody is REASONABLE. His definition of reasonable there was akin to being MODERATE. When people get unreasonable or immoderate, trouble ensues. Most of our office seekers seem to fudge on their resumes a bit while trying to get elected. The problem with Candidate Santos was the DEGREE to which he lied.

Santos has admitted that he made up most of what he purported was his record during his campaign.

• He lied about attending the prestigious Horace Mann prep school (the school has never heard of him).
• He didn’t really graduate from Baruch College as he claimed, in fact he probably never even attended there.
• It doesn’t appear that he is Jewish at all. He alleged that his Jewish family name was Zabrovsky. He apparently did however use that name for fundraising for a pet charity. He later clarified that he meant he was “Jew-ish”. Not sure what that means!
• It doesn’t appear that his mother “fled socialism” from Ukraine. She was actually born in Brazil. And she wasn’t actually killed in the 9/11 attacks, she died in 2016. Interestingly Brazilian authorities are now interested in him as well.
• He didn’t work for Goldman Sachs or Citigroup as he stated. In fact, the conference at which he says that he criticized these former employers has no record of his attendance!
• It doesn’t appear that he actually earned millions of dollars from his consulting business that he started in May of 2021 as he claimed, although those urging the FEC to investigate are claiming that he illegally funneled $705,000 into his campaign fund. The money had to come from SOMEWHERE!

There is more, but you get the picture. As many of you know, my older brother Les, is the source of much of my wisdom. He served as the County Sheriff in my home county. From time to time, he would sit down to talk with some of the prisoners incarcerated in or awaiting trial in the county jail. He once asked one of the miscreants, accused of armed robbery, why in the world he would resort to this dangerous and destructive act. The prisoner responded with the above quotation.

So, when Candidate Santos was contemplating these fabrications, I guess it seemed like a good idea at the time. But how in the hell did he reason this out? Did he not think that somebody would check things a bit? Then again maybe he wasn’t so crazy after all. We seem to have developed a tolerance for a great deal of foibles in our politicians. I mean Herschel Walker came within an eyelash of being a US Senator for SIX YEARS. Senator Dick Blumenthal lied about the extent of his military combat experience. Elizabeth Warren fudged a bit about her Native American background. Joe Biden many years ago claimed that he graduated at the top of his law school class, which wasn’t exactly true, well actually wasn’t true at all. And sometimes politicians lie not only about themselves but about others – remember the “Birthers” or those who questioned John McCain’s war record as a prisoner of war? And in the interest of brevity, I couldn’t even start on the list of prevarications by Former President Trump. The shocking truth in the case of Santos, was that a local newspaper in the Third District broke the story of his lies weeks before the election and he STILL got elected.

So, what is all of the ruckus about? It goes back to what my Pop said, Santos wasn’t REASONABLE in his lies. He was immoderate. And it is making even fellow Republicans uncomfortable, uncomfortable to the extent that there may even be an ethics hearing in the Republican-controlled House. What is MY beef?

I am not surprised that we have a liar in the US House of Representatives, we probably have about 434 others besides Santos and about 100 in the Senate. (Ohhhh OK, that is too harsh, they don’t ALL lie ALL of the time.) And I’m not even too surprised that there are questions around his campaign finance records. I guess what really bothers me is that we have this guy in the governing body of our country. Setting his ethics aside I question his JUDGEMENT – his DECISION-MAKING abilities.

• Did he really think that none of this would ever be discovered?
• Did he really think that any of this was even necessary? In his district all he needed to say was “I hate liberals and I love Donald Trump” and he would have won by a landslide.
• And why weren’t his lies more REASONABLE?

I’m afraid my cynicism says, I can live with you being a liar and a crook, but I hate that you are a fool, making decisions for the greatest country on earth.

Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne

For auld lang syne
For auld lang syne
Should old acquaintance be forgot
And days of auld lang syne

We two have run about the hills
And gathered up flowers fine
We’ve wandered many a weary foot
Since auld lang syne

We two have sported in the brook
From morning sun till dine
But the seas between us have roared and swelled
Since auld lang syne

For auld lang syne
For auld lang syne
The seas between us have roared and swelled
Since auld lang syne

So here is a hand my trusted friend
And give me your hand of thine
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne

For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne
We’ll take a cup of kindness yet
For auld lang syne

Robert Burns – Loosely Translated

This week we conducted the holiday version of the quarterly “Laundry Party”. I think I have discussed this before but just in case, these events involve and me and several other notables (all burned-out city managers) gathering together to drink beer in our laundry room. Of course, the Holiday Laundry Party is our formal event of the year. (I bring a meat and cheese tray and we convene in our downstairs family room by the fireplace.) You may imagine that there is more involved but there is not. Well, actually there IS a lot more going on. I so look forward to these times of fellowship with people that I have known for most of my career. We can talk about city-manager-things, but we mostly have moved past that to genuine fellowship – our future plans, our families, what matters in life.

After the meeting this week, I couldn’t get this song out of my head. Most often people hear a shortened anglicized version of the poem written by Burns. And I must confess that when I read the original poem which was written in the Scots dialect of English, I struggle a bit. But I came across the above translation sung by James Taylor which for me is so much better and I think it captures what Burns was trying to say. For sure I know it captures what I would like to say to YOU, all of my friends and loved ones, for auld lang syne.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven”
Ecclesiastes 3:1

D. J. Tice is one of the Star Tribune’s best writers, in my opinion. One of the supports for my conclusion is that I often applaud him for correctly getting to the gist of some social or political conundrum and the next week (or sometimes even in the same article) I am raging at how he could get it so wrong. He satisfies my need for balance, even when I don’t agree with him. Tice recently republished an essay entitled “The Sobering Splendors of Autumn”. The physical observations that form the basis of his observations are the arrival and departure of autumn in Southern Minnesota. I am very tied to this part of God’s good earth, so it was no surprise that the essay captured me. I encourage all of you who are “of a certain age” as I am to find and read the article. One of the themes is that the arrival and passage of autumn is reassuring and yet troubling.

It is with that backdrop that I have been mulling over my emotions in the season following autumn, especially the holiday part of that season. Oh, how the pleasant memories can flood back to me. How reassuring they can be that I really understood the season, once. The experiences of the first years of my life wield a disproportionate influence on the way that I see the world. Some of those memories are so far away and yet so clear….

• Sometime in the later days of October, Sears, Montgomery Ward and J.C. Penney would send out their Christmas catalogues. We would pore over them strategizing and dreaming of which of the items we might find under our Christmas tree. We would casually mention to our parents which items we thought were the best. Those wish books would be very dog-eared by December 24.
• We were NEVER hungry in our family. There was always plenty of good nutritious food in our home. But the holiday seasons raised this part of our lives to new heights. There was SO MUCH great food. Of course, there was the scrumptious Christmas Dinner, with turkey, ham, mashed potatoes, vegetables, cranberry salad, pies and much more. But the season also brought treats that were not part of our usual fare – candy and even soft drinks or as we used to call it “pop”. On the last day of school before Christmas vacation, our bus drivers would issue each child a large bag of candy. In the interest of providing healthy food there would be apples in each bag, but we were not really interested in them, we went for the good stuff.
• Somewhere in the days immediately before Christmas Eve, my mom would break down and visit Gordy’s Super Value or Al’s Clover Farm Market to buy our Christmas tree. She was not one to splurge on one of those artificial trees or to EVER pay full price for a real tree. If you waited until the last minute, apparently Gordy and Al would mark down some of the last trees on the lot. This often led to trees that were a little on the small and thin side, but we made up for that with lots of homemade decorations (those store-bought ones cost a lot of money).
• In our little town and ESPECIALLY in our little family, cooperatives were a thing. If there was a coop in Rushmore that sold it, then that is where we bought it. And there WERE coops there – a coop grain elevator, a coop fuel and fertilizer provider and even a cooperative lumber yard. Each year the coops would freely dispense small Christmas gifts to their patrons. These might be a ball point pen or a calendar or some decoration for the home that my mother would proudly display. The Farmers Coop Lumber company donated a large Christmas tree to each of the four churches in the town. I vividly remember happily decorating them with the other youngsters from our church.
• Santa would arrive in our little town (sponsored by the Rushmore Boosters) on the last Saturday before Christmas. He would move down Main Street dispensing large bags of candy to all who could reach him or his helpers. Weather permitting, he would be on a sleigh. We never questioned why it was pulled by horses instead of reindeer – apparently the Boosters were unable to corral the necessary number of reindeer. In the non-white Christmases Santa would be ensconced in the back of the pickup from Roy Moss Feeds. For us, Santa’s arrival followed our last practice session for the annual Christmas Eve youth pageant, or as we called it “The Christmas Program”.
• The Christmas Program was no small undertaking for the ladies of the church. There were costumes to be sewn, dramas to be written and songs to be taught. Each of us would be issued small pieces of paper with our parts typewritten on them. These were referred to as our “pieces” and NEVER were our pieces to be read, but instead memorized and recited. Failure to correctly recite them at the appropriate time on Christmas Eve, thus requiring a “prompt” from one of our frustrated teachers, could move you dangerously close to the naughty list. But with or without prompts, each of us were issued yet another bag of candy at the end of the Christmas Program.
• Preparation for Christmas Eve was no small task for my mother either. For oftentimes she was saddled with preparing our costumes for the Program. There was the Christmas shopping for no less than six children. And no self-respecting mother of that time and place would allow our public school and Sunday School teachers to not receive a gift from us. And on top of all of this, each of us would be wearing a new Christmas outfit to the church service on Christmas Day. My recollection is that most years my outfit would include a very itchy, new wool sweater. As the years have gone by and I gained more knowledge of my family’s tenuous financial position in those years, it amazes me how they pulled all of this off.
• The sounds, the smells, the warmth, the atmosphere in the darkened sanctuary of our little church on Christmas Eve are still so real to me. All of those in the world that I loved were there, with me, sharing in that joyful time. And all felt right with the world.

There are many more memories but of course, all those events, even my colorized, idealized versions of them, happened at one place in one time. They can never be replicated. Even the wonderful memories of Christmases with our own children are just that, memories. My Mother and Dad are gone as are nearly all the wonderful people in our little church and in our little town. So, while I look back with warmth at the wonderful memories, I am also mindful that we only get so many Christmases on this earth. Yes, Christmas this year may yield many more good memories. What a blast it is to watch our grandchildren shriek with laughter and anticipation of their gifts from Santa.

But just like the coming and passing of autumn is a reassurance and a warning, so is the coming and passing of the Holiday Season. Yes, the Christmas Season is reassuring. It is coming this year just as it has always come. But it is also a warning. How bitter would be the memory of a gift un-given, an embrace not captured, a love not expressed. What an inspiration it should be to open the floodgates of our generosity and our love. THESE are the good old days. Make the most of them, do not hold back. They are finite in number.

May you collect a treasure trove of great memories this holiday season. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!