Craig Common Sense

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!

“There are two ways to be fooled. One is to believe what isn’t true; the other is to refuse to believe what is true.”
― Soren Kierkegaard

“The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie–deliberate, contrived and dishonest–but the myth–persistent, persuasive and unrealistic. “
― John F. Kennedy

The Los Angeles Times is one of the newspapers in my news feed bundle. I read an article from it today regarding the recent attack on John Pelosi. The way the article was written struck me as somewhat odd. It didn’t so much present the facts but instead recited facts to refute “alternative facts” that are now circulating the media sphere. I need to begin all of this by telling you that Congressman Pelosi is not one of my favorites in the House. She is too far left for me. (Although again in the interest of full disclosure, I have a hard time thinking of a member of Congress who is not too far left for me or too far right.) One of the other things I don’t like about Speaker Pelosi is that she is OLD. That might sound a little funny coming from ME, when of course I’m old too. What I don’t like about the Speaker’s “old” is not that she is 82, but that she has been in House since Shepp was a pup. I don’t like politicians who just go on and on and on. I saw a statistic the other day that half of the Senate is aged 65 or older. Doesn’t age bring wisdom? Ummmm yes, oftentimes, but not always. I just think that when we get into our later years so often we see the world in different ways that do NOT make us ideal for charting the course of the future. And if my memory serves me correctly, in 2018 Pelosi said that if elected Speaker for one more term, she would step aside in 2020. But 2020 came and went and she is still the Speaker. By the way my angst over over-extended tenure is bipartisan. I mean really, its time for Dianne Feinstein AND Charles Grassley to be gone. They are both 87.

Just because I have some issues with Mrs. Pelosi, I should still feel bad for John Pelosi shouldn’t I? Well, there was that thing about insider trading that he has been accused of, but who among us is perfect? Surely not me. But I was nonplussed by how the Times article was “playing defense” on its reporting of the facts. Why did they feel the need to do this? It is sad, but probably the reason they felt this need is that there are numerous “alternate facts” circulating. You have probably heard them. Mr. DePape was the homosexual lover of Mr. Pelosi and the attack on him was nothing more than a lovers’ spat. The police found both of them in their underwear. Mr. DePape lives with a known leftist and this is all nothing more than a publicity stunt to influence voters in the upcoming election. Based on reports from the San Francisco Police Department, there is not a shred of truth to any of this nonsense. Mr. DePape has admitted to detaining Mr. Pelosi and told investigators he was going to hold him until Mrs. Pelosi returned home. At that point he would be asking her questions and if she answered “wrong”, he would break her kneecaps. If this weren’t all so sad it would be funny. Investigators have gone to great lengths to show that Mr. DePape has been posting wing-nut information on his social media for months (there is an “alternate fact” that indicates that his posts were only made the day before the attach). If Mr. DePape were REALLY Mr. Pelosi’s lover, wouldn’t he be claiming that in his defense? I would guess that the Times debated about whether or not confronting the misinformation would just give it more credence.

I believe that our country has always had fringe actors. These would be the kind of folks that would dream up “alternative facts” like these. What we HAVEN’T HAD until the last few years, are supposedly main-stream politicians and other well-known people who will reinforce this kind of nonsense. No less than Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr. have re-tweeted the bogus claims. I read later that Musk “removed” his retweet. What the hell does that mean? Millions of people read it before he removed it. And other high-ranking Republicans are strangely quiet about this situation. There was a time when Ronald Reagan would have stood up and said “I don’t care if you are a Republican or a Democrat, intimidating and physically attacking a family member of a congressman is UNACCEPTABLE.” But the truly discouraging thing to me is that a sizable segment of our population, a sizable segment of our voters, buy it all as well.

You have read my words in prior editions of this blog. I love America and I think it’s the greatest country in the world. I think we are the shining beacon on the hill just like they say. But I am becoming increasingly more worried that our light is dimming. I’m not at all hopeful for the upcoming election. I think we are going to be shocked at some of the people who will be occupying positions of authority. We might begin all of that with our former Viking running back being elected to a SIX YEAR TERM as a US Senator from Georgia. I sometimes listen to KFAN, a local sports radio station here in the Twin Cities and to one of their afternoon hosts, Dan Barreiro. He occasionally reads an audacious news article in a segment he calls “The End of Society as we Know It”. If we can’t even agree that breaking into a private home and attacking an 82 year-old with a hammer is a bad thing, Barreiro might have lots more news reports to use for his segment.

“How very wet this water is.”
– L. Frank Baum, The Marvelous Land of Oz

“If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a duck!”
– Robin Cook

Over the last weeks there has been a series of hearings in Washington, unlike anything we have seen except perhaps the Watergate hearings (for those of you who are old enough to remember those). We listened to the testimony of a lady whose name is Wandrea Moss. She is commonly known as Shaye. Who in the world would have ever thought that the whole nation would be listening to Shaye Moss? I’m sure she didn’t. After all, Shaye is just a humble government worker in Fulton County, Georgia. She is like all of us, trying to make a living, trying to make a better life for those she loves. But for nothing more than just doing her job, an honorable profession I would argue, her life has been upended. She now fears for her life.

What in the world happened? Shaye was an election worker. Somehow for some reason, she was accused of pulling fake mail-in ballots from a suitcase while working on Election Day. (Election officials quickly confirmed that the “suitcases” were actually standard ballot containers and that there was absolutely no fraud.) It is not clear why Shaye and her mother, Ruby Freeman, who was also a temporary election worker were selected for the attack and identified to the public. In the now infamous call in which our own former President Trump called Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, he singled our Shaye and Ruby, calling them “professional vote scammers”, “hustlers”, “known political operatives” who “stuff ballot boxes”. The President’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, falsely claimed that he had video footage showing the women engage in “surreptitious illegal activity” acting like drug dealers “passing out dope.” The reaction by the Trump Faithful was swift and severe. Within a very short time Shaye and Ruby began fielding hate messages and threats on their Facebook pages. The oftentimes racist messages threatened physical violence. Suddenly people were knocking on their doors at all hours of the day including the overnight hours. Ruby immediately quit her job. Shaye took a leave of absence and tried to change her appearance. She quit shopping at her regular grocery store, afraid that an acquaintance might call her by her first name and that she would be identified. She began to move from house to house, never staying in the same structure two nights in a row.

Did Ruby and Shaye “go off the deep end”? Are their fears overblown? Maybe but I don’t think so. Have you ever been threatened by the most powerful man on the earth? You know, the guy who is Commander-in-Chief of the most powerful military in the world, and who oversees the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Central Intelligence Agency, and other agencies I don’t even know who could end your life in minutes if the order came down. This does not even take into account the legions who hang on former President Trump’s every word. But they wouldn’t resort to violence, would they? Oops, I guess having observed the events of January 6, maybe they would. If they would attempt to break into the nation’s Capital and hang the Vice President, I guess they might harm two innocent little ladies in Georgia.

I don’t think I can really understand the terror that these two ladies feel, but former President Trump’s words in his call to Secretary of State Raffensperger dredged up memories of a very unpleasant experience I once had that might be similar on a much smaller scale.

“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have because we won the state.”
“And there’s nothing wrong with saying, you know, um, that you’ve recalculated.”

In other words, I don’t care how you do it, just make it happen. In 1975 while I was working for the government of my hometown, as the assistant city engineer, the City Engineer resigned to take another job. Our city administrator (a man who could very incisively evaluate exceptional talent in my opinion) told me that he would suggest to our City Council that I be made the new City Engineer. This would be my dream job, serving as the chief engineer for the community in which I grew up, close to my family and friends. There was however a problem – state law required that a city engineer must be a state-licensed engineer. Obtaining a state license involves several steps all of which I had completed – except taking the Part 2 oral exam and finally the Part 2 national written exam. I would not be eligible to take the Part 2 exams for six months. Our city administrator figured out a way to get through that, he would contract with a licensed engineer to serve as my supervisor for the six months and once I passed the Part 2 exams, he would advocate for my appointment. My interim supervisor reviewed and approved all of my technical work during this period, but I was also in charge of non-technical work not needing technical review. One of those tasks was to formulate “special assessments” for public works projects. Special assessments in Minnesota are charges made to residents in addition to their normal taxes relating to public works projects felt to provide special benefit to their individual property. My duty was to identify the properties affected and to propose the amount of the special assessment for each property.

As luck would have it, a month or so before taking my exams, one of the special assessment projects included a property owned by a member of our city council. I dutifully prepared the assessment roll and readied it for presentation to the city council at their regular noon meeting. At 10:30 AM the affected property owner/council member, stopped into my office. He questioned my work and told me that I had misinterpreted the city policy and that there was no way his property should be subject to the charge. I carefully reviewed with him how we had applied the policy and how we had calculated the charges. The conversation grew more animated, and he ended it with this directive – “I don’t care how you do it, get my name off that assessment roll – make it happen” and he stormed out.

I sat in my little office, a bit stunned and uncertain what I should do. The city administrator was out of town and there was no one to consult. The meeting was in an hour. My thoughts ran wild.
• Is he right? Did I make an error? I reread the policy, looked at the supporting documents, and recalculated the numbers. Everything checked.
• This is not going to end well for me. I either need to knowingly do something wrong (probably even illegal) or this fellow is going to lead the charge to make sure that I am NOT the next city engineer.
• Maybe he just doesn’t understand. I didn’t explain things to him clearly enough.
• Maybe he is just testing me, verifying that I am honest and will always do my job without fear or favor.
• Maybe I should just go home and send someone else to go the meeting to tell the council that their action on the proposed assessments should be delayed (until I could get a chance to discuss this with the city administrator and have him take care of the problem).
With a lot of trepidation, I went to our noon meeting. With all of the resolve I could muster I looked the councilman in the eye and said – “These are the assessments I recommend”. The council studied the document and after a period of time there was a motion to adopt the list and a second. ALL of the Council voted in favor including my now least favorite who was berating me ninety minutes earlier. As I left the meeting still wondering what he would do to me in the future, it became clear to me. This wasn’t a misunderstanding – this wasn’t a disagreement about the city policy – this wasn’t a test of my honesty. This was about the damn $222 in cost that he was going to incur. Sometimes things are exactly what you think they are.

Brad Raffensperger and Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman and thousands of other dedicated public servants across the country have been going through hell, and still are, simply for doing their jobs. I have been around elections for much of my professional career. I have watched the training and the processes that are mandated by our state law. And without exception I will tell you that these people are as a pure as the driven snow. They are doing their jobs to the best of their ability and their job is incredibly important – I would argue that free and fair elections are the bedrock of our system of government. It’s time as former Attorney General Barr said, we call BS when it is BS.

NONE OF THE SO-CALLED ACCUSATIONS OF ELECTION FRAUD ARE REALLY ABOUT FRAUD – THEY ARE JUST WHAT THEY SEEM TO BE – A BALD FACED ATTEMPT BY THE FORMER PRESIDENT AND HIS INNER CIRCLE TO STAY IN POWER NO MATTER WHAT IT TAKES. JUST MAKE IT HAPPEN.

“Call it a clan, call it a network, call it a tribe, call it a family: Whatever you call it, whoever you are, you need one.” — Jane Howard

We made our annual trek to visit cemeteries this weekend. When you are young it is inconceivable why old people do this. While I’m not sure that I would say that I “enjoy” it, as I grow old it is something that I find, I’m struggling to find the word, fulfilling is the best that I can come up with. The tradition of Memorial Day was born out of a desire to honor the dead of the Civil War. It was first observed in 1868 and was widely observed by others for decades until Congress passed the National Holiday Act of 1971 to make it officially a holiday to be observed on the last Monday in May, to honor our military men and women who have given so much to keep our country free. I would never want to detract from that primary purpose. But the day has grown to also be a time for remembering ALL of our loved ones who have gone before, usually our family members. When I walk through the cemetery and see the graves of my grandparents and my uncles and aunts, memories (nearly all GOOD memories) flood into my mind. I haven’t lived in my little farm community for more than fifty years and yet when I go to the cemetery, there is a strong feeling that this is where I belong, this is where I came from, and this is where I should end. Given that apart from one of my brothers, I have no immediate family that lives in the area, this is a bit irrational. But despite the many friends that I have made throughout my life and my departure from this geographical area, as Johnny Cash said, these are my people.

When I retired a few years ago, I felt compelled to take stock of where I had been in my life and to offer some wisdom to those who thought I should have learned something after all of those years. I struggled to sift through all of those experiences to identify what is really important and came up with three things:

1. God – the need to BELIEVE
2. Family – the need to LOVE
3. Hard Work – the need to SERVE

At my retirement gathering I said the following about family. “We are not alone in the world. If we try to be we will be so much less than what we could have been. We can say in our anger and foolishness sometimes that we don’t want or need anyone to love. We all know that is silly. Humans were meant to be with other humans. And families are our first ring of those we must love.”

Remembering this I had such an empty feeling when I came across Gert’s tombstone in our little country cemetery. You see, Gert is not laid to rest among a huge number of Van Steinfahrens as is commonly found with families in our cemetery. Indeed, his is a little stone and it was found far off in the corner of the cemetery all by itself.

Our part of Gert’s story goes like this. Sometime in the early 1900’s Gert came to the doorway of my Grandpa Wilber’s farmhouse. He was tired and hungry and was looking for work, looking for shelter, looking for food. Wilber was a young farmer with a wife and children struggling to make it, out on the Southwestern Minnesota prairies. Why did Gert pick Wilber and Frauke’s door? Maybe he had tried lots of other doors and theirs was the first one that was opened. Maybe he saw “Ebeling” on the mailbox and thought that perhaps these people might speak “Low German” or Dutch which was probably his nationality. There is a lot we don’t know about that first meeting. But this much we do know. Wilber explained to Gert that he had no extra food and although he desperately needed help on the farm, he had no money to pay him. And then he made this offer to Gert instead: “If you will work with me on the farm, you can live with us, you can stay in our home, eat what we eat and live as we do. Additionally, I will buy you one new set of clothing each year.” This apparently was acceptable to Gert, for he moved in with the family and stayed with Wilber and his wife and his children until he died in 1927.

It’s hard for us in the affluence of the 21st century to grasp that an adult male could be that down on his luck to need to randomly knock on a door to look for food and employment. And how many of us in these days would take someone who is obviously down on his luck, whom we know NOTHING about, and take them into our home, and let them stay for twenty years?!?!? What a kind and generous man Wilber was. What a sad state of affairs Gert found himself in. He was apparently far from home with no ties to anyone, bereft of family and loved ones. And now he lies in his grave, with a small stone in the corner of a windswept little country cemetery. It seemed so “SAD” was the best word I could come up with.

But then I remembered something else that I said about families at my farewell event reflecting on how my first wife Pam was taken from us at age thirty-eight and how Janice took us on as a part of a new family, blending her children with mine. “Ours is not exactly a “normal” family. And yours might not be either. But DON’T be without a family. Your family may not even be biologically linked to you or related to you in the traditional way at all. But as we have demonstrated in our little assembly, that really isn’t what it’s about. You may have known each other for decades or months. Do NOT deprive yourself of others to love.” And then I went over to Wilber’s gravesite and realized that his cemetery plot had not been purchased until 1954. When Wilber paid for Gert’s funeral and burial in 1927, he wasn’t thinking about his need for his own burial site, or having Gert next to him, he was just trying to do what he needed to do, what he could afford to do, with a wife and eleven children. It hit me: Gert DID have a family. He was part of Wilber’s family. He is part of MY family.

On this day when we reflect on our loved ones who have gone before, I recite again the words from my farewell event. May you never be deprived of a family to love and to be loved by, however you define that family. Happy Memorial Day!!

“There is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people, if well administered………..(it) can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” – Benjamin Franklin – From His Final Speech at the Constitutional Convention – September 17, 1787

With the momentous events of the last week, it FEELS like I should say SOMETHING. It feels like we should all say something and DO something. Well, we sent some money to a relief agency but that feels a bit feeble when you look at old guys my age in Ukraine who are packing up their shotguns and heading for the front lines. The Ukrainians are so inspiring right now. The worst is truly bringing out their best. I wonder if OUR politicians would refuse safe passage to escape war and instead ask for more ammunition?!?! What makes Americans so admire the Ukrainians is that they remind us of us!! Or at least they remind us of what we THINK we were and what we are. And it is true that there have been remarkable American patriots at the birth of our country and in the centuries since then who were no less heroic than our modern-day Ukrainians. But history is always a little more complicated than we like to remember it. Things are not always so black and white as we would like to think they were.

As I have reported before American history fascinates me. I have been working my way through a course on the constitutional convention over the last months. I love digging in to the nitty gritty of history because it always reminds me that our heroes (and villains) were nearly always ordinary people, with their own prejudices and passions, their own strengths, and weaknesses, doing extraordinary things.

The constitutional convention was in session from May 14, 1787, to September 17, 1787. The delegates included an impressive list of our heroes of the revolutionary era. James Madison was the unofficial notes taker (although he was not the designated secretary), George Washington presided, and Benjamin Franklin was a delegate from Pennsylvania. The list included Edmund Randolph from Virginia, Roger Sherman from Connecticut, and other founding fathers. The process wasn’t quite as neat as we might remember. Some states did not participate for the entire process, delegates came and went, and Rhode Island never came at all!! The delegates jealously guarded the interests of their own states and schemed and argued for provisions that would serve THEIR state the best. Slavery was a thorny issue for them. There was great discomfort with how to address it and there were certainly conflicts of interest – many if not most of the delegates were slave owners. There were many times when the delegates thought that it all would blow up and that everyone would just go home in frustration. But they all agreed that the country could not continue under the Articles of Confederation. What has the American constitutional convention got to do with the awful invasion of Ukraine? Its Benjamin Franklin and Vladimir Putin.

Franklin was in his advanced years during the convention. There were days when he was literally carried to the meetings and days when he was unable to attend at all. But when the document was ready for signing, he asked for one last chance to address the convention. His concern was for the future of the proposed document. Would it be approved by the congress that existed (under the Articles of Confederation) and would it be approved by the ratifying conventions that would be held in each state? The delegates had pounded away at each other for a whole summer and now at the end of it all they were worried that their work would go for naught. Indeed, three of the delegates refused to sign the document and actively worked against its approval. If you have not read Franklin’s speech which he wrote but was too weak to deliver (it was read by James Wilson, a fellow Pennsylvania delegate), I think you will find it to be one of greatest speeches of the era. There is a lot in it about compromise, respecting the opinions of others and seeing ourselves the way we really are. But the above quote is my favorite part of the speech.

So, what is my point? Well, there are a couple:

– Governments are really only made up of people. And people can be good or bad, or good sometimes and bad other times, wise sometimes and foolish other times. Are the Russian people inherently evil? I can not believe this. They are like us. They want to live in peace and prosperity. They want their kids to grow up in a world that will be better than the one we live in now. And I believe their form of government COULD be a blessing to them and to the world IF a despot did not lead it. Yes, Putin is a liar, a cheat, a thief, a megalomaniac, and a lot of other things which add up to him being a despot. When you look through the sad history of Russia, unfortunately he is not the only one – Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Rasputin, and others to say nothing of the czars that preceded them. What makes this happen? The leaders who are evil of course, but more. It is also the people who immediately surround the despots – their co-conspirators, their fellow thieves. The creation of the oligarchy in Russia needed two parts – the despot (Putin definitely fits the bill) and his enablers. These include the oligarchs, his fellow thieves in their corrupt version of business, and his fellow thieves in the higher levels of government who all take their cuts, stealing from the Russian people in their own ways. This might mean pocketing money meant to be spent on social programs or even pocketing money meant to modernize their military. People are amazed at how the Russian military equipment seems to be old and breaking down despite billions of dollars dedicated to updating it. Transparency International has ranked Russia as one of the world’s most corrupt countries, identifying a particular problem in its defense sector. Thieves!! These people do not challenge the despot because they are afraid of him, but also because they are in league with him.

– Despite some missteps on our part (think about our recently concluded adventure in Afghanistan or the “shock and awe” of Iraq) America has been and still is the shining beacon of liberty for the world. While we have NOT been perfect, we have done so much good over our history. How have we avoided the maladies that have inflicted Russia for decades and even centuries? WE have been blessed with leaders and people who surrounded them that while flawed, still had the best interest of the country and the world in mind. These people are there because we have been blessed with a culture of independence and a free press. We EXPECT and DEMAND accountability from our leaders and the ones that surround them. The spark for doing this in Russia has been so starved for oxygen for so long it is hard for it to burn.

– Well, if as Franklin says any form of government CAN work, does it follow that any form of government can be corrupted? The constitution that those people labored over in the summer of 1787 makes that a little more difficult here, but it still comes down to people. We have been blessed throughout our history with patriots who could fend off corruption. But events of the last few years have shown that despite our form of government, we are NOT immune to despotism. We must always remain vigilant.

“Nothing succeeds like success”
Alexandre Dumas

There are lots of things going on in the world today and many of them are ominous or at least not good. I choose to ignore those and to instead comment on the world of NCAA College Football. Let me preface these remarks by saying I have been a Gopher fan since the days of Sandy Stephens and Judge Dickson. I knew about the Golden Gopher football team before I even realized there was a learning institution that was attached to it. Ahh, those were the Glory Days – SOOOOO long ago. Oh, not that there haven’t been a few fleeting minutes of joy since then. I confess I am not a season ticket holder. But there have been very few seasons where we haven’t attended two to three games in person and watched/listened to the balance of the games. It has been an exercise marked by heartache and frustration. For after those glory years of the early 60’s and one shared title (with two others) in 1967, my Beloved Little Rodents have been shut out of the Big Ten title. And after attending last week’s debacle with Illinois and watching the disappointing loss to Iowa Saturday it is now clear that 2021 won’t be the year to break that string either.

But really what did we expect? There are “haves” and “have-nots” in college football, and we certainly are not one of the “haves.” Ohh when you listen to the Big Ten Network commentators one would think that this is a wide-open competition year-in and year-out. And I am certainly not a statistician but even a sewer engineer can look at who has won or tied for the Big Ten title over the last fifty years. I did that little exercise and found that Ohio State has won or shared the title twenty-five times and Michigan twenty times. Their nearest competitors are Wisconsin (six), Iowa (five) and Michigan State (five). All others combined have ten. So, I think the math is that OSU has as many titles as all other Big Ten teams not named Michigan combined. Michigan and OSU together have almost twice as many titles as all others combined. Its not the Big Ten, it’s the Big Two and the Little Twelve. How can this be? Wouldn’t you think in fifty years our Gophers could muster a team to compete with the Big Two?

To explain this phenomenon, as with all dilemmas, I harkened back to the source of all my wisdom, my days growing up on the farm. One of my fondest memories is when we gathered with my dad and my Uncle Louis to bale hay. Rather than pay the exorbitant fee charged by other farmers who already had a hay baler, my Pop and my uncle pooled their resources and purchased an International Harvester model 50T baler. The 50T had a nasty habit of not correctly tying about every third bale, which in turn lead to unbaled chunks of hay littering the field and streams of profanity from its owners. In fact, if my uncle and my dad are not in heaven (which I know they are) it would be because of that damn 50T baler. But one thing that DID work on the 50T was the flywheel. This was a massive piece of metal that kept rotating and kept the baler running smoothly even if the inadvertent large windrow of hay brought too much material into the baling chamber. The tremendous weight of that huge metal wheel just kept that machine going, on and on regardless of what it ran into. It sustained the ongoing power of the machine.

The Alabama’s, the Ohio State’s, the Georgia’s of the college football world have huge flywheels. They are sustained every year through massive athletic departments funded by massive donations from supporters and massive ticket and merchandising income. But the biggest flywheel they have is that they win consistently. NCAA football is fundamentally different than the National Football League (NFL). When you finish first in the NFL you get the lowest draft picks. Your incoming players are by design less capable than those available to the team that finished LAST in the league. That last place team gets the FIRST pick of the available players. This is all designed to create parity in the league and for the most part it has worked (well maybe except for the Bears). College football is the opposite. If you finish last in the league none of the elite incoming freshmen want to join your program. The college football have-nots have no flywheel, and it is REALLY hard to get one if you don’t already have one. It is much easier to keep one going once you have it spinning.

This was my hypothesis. Just to check myself out a little bit I visited two websites – one listing information on the 2021 recruiting class for OSU and one listing information on the 2021 recruiting class for our beloved Gophers. Based on what I read in our local and national sports publications the Minnesota class was one of its best in years. How did it stack up against OSU? College sports and all the businesses that revolve around it are an industry. High school football player rating agencies are part of that industry. The three largest of the rating agencies are 247 Sports, Rivals and ESPN. They sometimes differ slightly in how they rate incoming freshmen but not all that much. They use a “star system,” assigning each player a star rating ranging from one to five – five being the best. The 247 Sports rating agency said there were thirty-one five-star recruits in the nation for the 2021 class. OSU was able to secure five of those players. Of the twenty-one players in their incoming class, five were five-star, thirteen were four-star and three were three-star players. Of the eighteen players in the Minnesota class, NONE were five-star, four were four-star and fourteen were three-star players. Do you kinda see how this works? OSU has a LOT bigger flywheel than Minnesota, yet they play in the same league.

Fortunately, football games are not computer model exercises and sometimes those two and three and four-star football players rise and give those five-star laden teams a tussle, but truthfully not very often (see the data on the Big Ten championships). Well, if things are so discouraging why do I shell out big bucks each year to go down to the games? And why do I agonize and curse and rage during each game you watch on TV? Ummm because its’ fun? Actually, it IS fun. We get to go down and see the band and the spirit squad and good old Goldy. We sing the Rouser and Hail Minnesota with gusto usually until the third quarter when we are far behind. And there is the sting of the losses, but that goes away – after a while. And then we wistfully dream of next year – those incoming freshmen really DO look good. Just wait until next year – we are going to win back Floyd of Rosedale, and the Axe, and the Little Brown Jug and we are going to go the Rose Bowl!!!! But it looks like the Pin Stripe Bowl for us again this year.

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
Mark Twain

I have been missing in action for a few weeks. Our lives have been devoted to helping Grandma move to a new assisted living location. A part of that involved canceling existing phone, cable television and other accounts and advising social security of her new address. Despite approximately five hours of effort, the social security records change is not done. I have about twenty hours of effort involved in utilizing the time-saving automated services of these companies, nine hours of which was involved in the effort to acquire a telephone service from Frontier. But all of this is another blog.

Today I want to talk about running. Now at my age the term “running” may seem a bit generous when one sees or hears about my efforts. But I do attempt to keep up with my own version of the activity. With all the difficulties we have had this summer and the recent move I am sorry to report that my normal running routines have been interrupted. But I was able to run yesterday, and the run reminded me of all the joy and pain associated with this hobby. It occurred to me that my routine involves the same thought patterns. This writing attempts to capture some of those thoughts.

Running Day Minus Three
• I just ran yesterday. I must be in decent shape.
• I will go ahead and eat the candy bar that Janice bought for herself.

Running Day Minus Two
• I should not have eaten so much yesterday. The extra weight will make it hard for me to run when I resume.

Running Day Minus One
• I really should run today.
• If I don’t keep at this, I will turn into a gelatinous blob of blubber and be an embarrassment to my wife and children when I collapse of terminal obesity.
• I will really give her heck tomorrow.

Running Day Minus Thirty Minutes
• I really could wait until tomorrow. It looks pretty cold (or hot) outside. Did I just see lightening? I’m sure the weather will be better tomorrow.
• And what would I wear? Do I really have the right shirt/pants/socks/hat for today? Maybe I should wait for better equipment.
• There are higher priority items on my do list. Janice must have something that she wants me to do that is more important.
• Well, I told Janice yesterday I was going to run today and if I don’t, I will seem weak and unmotivated. I know, I will at least start. I don’t have to run the whole three miles. I will just start and see how it goes. I can always walk for a ways and turn around if I need to.
• I will walk to begin with, I don’t need to start running until I reach Mead Court.

Running Day
• My two-block walking start is done. Why did I eat so much yesterday?
• This feels like I have never run before in my life.
• Do I always gasp like this when I start?
• My knee is kind of barking.
• Wait a minute, this isn’t so bad. Once my breathing starts to even out, this is better. I think I can go a mile.
• My knee actually is not hurting so bad.
• The trees and pond are gorgeous today. Wow it is a great morning for a run.
• I love this part of my route. I am feeling better all the time. I think I can easily run the mile, what the heck let’s do two.
• I am going a bit faster now and you know, I remember why I love this running thing.
• I am feeling even BETTER now. In fact, I feel like I could run FOREVER!! Well at least for sure I need to do the regular three-mile route.
• I have run this route thousands of times, but I don’t remember this hill being quite this steep. I don’t think I can run forever; I will just finish the three miles.
• Where the heck did this other hill come from? I need to slow down a bit to make sure I finish strong.
• Maybe I need to walk a while. No, only wimps do that. Push through it and get ‘er done.
• I could cut off here and save a half mile. NOOOO, only wimps do that. You can make it.
• Was this REALLY a good idea?
• This was a bad idea.
• Home is in sight. I think I am going to make it.
• I made it. I AM a stud. I’m feeling groovy (although a bit tired). I need to check my time.
• What the hell? I’m calling Apple, this run COULDN’T have taken FORTY MINUTES!! The clock on this new iPhone must be inaccurate.
• I must run more or less.

Running Day Plus One – Rinse and Repeat