Key Holds Silent Auction
Jan 30, 2004 News
Monday night at Hogan Brothers the ‘Key,’ that is the Northfield Union of Youth, held a silent auction fundraiser. Among the items on display were Pat Lampe woodcuts, Adirondack chairs handmade by Union of Youth members, hand made frames, gloves, Teddy bears, and a variety of gift certificates and miscellaneous items. The event was accompanied by wonderful music. Pictures of the event can be found on Griff Wigley’s Northfield.org 
I have had a long-standing interest in the Union of Youth as one of its early Board members. Ann Mikkelsen and I established a way for youth involved in Main Street Mentors to earn high school credit for their work with adults who volunteer their time helping youth in our community. Over the years, many students have earned credit while developing wonderful relationships with volunteer mentors. Brian Dever is the current contact person (663-0715) at the key for mentors and their proteges. 
THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION
Jan 25, 2004 News
In honor of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday, someone sent me a copy of an essay he wrote in 1948 called THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION, a thoughtful critique . I’ve just finished my Master’s degree, and at St. Mary’s University Commencement Sunday, I was surprised to hear similar sentiments echoed. Here are a few quotes from King, I thought timely for us today:
It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.
Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.
The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.
We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character–that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.
If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded, unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful, “brethren!” Be careful, teachers!
King’s thoughts were echoed by fellow graduate Tyria Cobb, and University President DeThomasis, when they spoke of the responsibility to teach young people not only to perform well but to care for and respect each other. Dr. DeThomasis added that only then will we be assured of ending the threat of terrorism in the world.
“Where do we go from here?” Martin Luther King Jr.
“I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their tired bodies, education and culture for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the alters of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and non-violent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land ‘and the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.’ I still believe that we shall overcome.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.
When I had just turned sixteen my father was sick and dying at 43, that was 1968. When spring came my father would dress warmly, sit on the front porch and sing hymns. He took great solace at that time from Martin Luther King’s sermons. In particular one King gave shortly before his murder about not making it to the mountain top. My father said, seeing Marin Luther King Jr. face death so bravely helped him face death with courage too. My father passed away one week after Martin Luther King that year, in 1968 it was the Friday before Easter.
“Now, in order to answer the question, ‘Where do we go from here?’ which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was sixty percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare he is fifty percent of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites. Of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites. Thus, half of all Negroes live in substandard housing. And Negroes have half the income of whites. When we turn to the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share: There are twice as many unemployed; the rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites; and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population.“In other spheres, the figures are equally alarming. In elementary schools, Negroes lag one to three years behind whites, and their segregated schools receive substantially less money per student than the white schools. One-twentieth as many Negroes as whites attend college. Of employed Negroes, seventy-five percent hold menial jobs. This is where we are.
“Where do we go from here? First, we must massively assert our dignity and worth. We must stand up amid a system that still oppresses us and develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values. We must no longer be ashamed of being black. The job of arousing manhood within a people that have been taught for so many centuries that they are nobody is not easy.
“The fact is that the work which improves the condition of mankind, the work which extends knowledge and increases power and enriches literature and elevates thought, is not done to secure a living. It is not the work of slaves driven to their tasks either by the, that of a taskmaster or by animal necessities. It is the work of men who somehow find a form of work that brings a security for its own sake and a state of society where want is abolished.
“Work of this sort could be enormously increased, and we are likely to find that the problem of housing, education, instead of preceding the elimination of poverty, will themselves be affected if poverty is first abolished. The poor, transformed into purchasers, will do a great deal on their own to alter housing decay. Negroes, who have a double disability, will have a greater effect on discrimination when they have the additional weapon of cash to use in their struggle.
“Beyond these advantages, a host of positive psychological changes inevitably will result from widespread economic security. The dignity of the individual will flourish when the decisions concerning his life are in his own hands, when he has the assurance that his income is stable and certain, and when he knows that he has the means to seek self-improvement. Personal conflicts between husband, wife, and children will diminish when the unjust measurement of human worth on a scale of dollars is eliminated.
“Now, our country can do this. John Kenneth Galbraith said that a guaranteed annual income could be done for about twenty billion dollars a year. And I say to you today, that if our nation can spend thirty-five billion dollars a year to fight an unjust, evil war in Vietnam, and twenty billion dollars to put a man on the moon, it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on earth.
“Now, let me rush on to say we must reaffirm our commitment to nonviolence. And I want to stress this. The futility of violence in the struggle for racial justice has been tragically etched in all the recent Negro riots. Now, yesterday, I tried to analyze the riots and deal with the causes for them. Today I want to give the other side. There is something painfully sad about a riot. One sees screaming youngsters and angry adults fighting hopelessly and aimlessly against impossible odds. And deep down within them, you perceive a desire for self-destruction, a kind of suicidal longing.
“And when one tries to pin down advocates of violence as to what acts would be effective, the answers are blatantly illogical. Sometimes they talk of overthrowing racist state and local governments and they talk about guerrilla warfare. They fail to see that no internal revolution has ever succeeded in overthrowing a government by violence unless the government had already lost the allegiance and effective control of its armed forces. Anyone in his right mind knows that this will not happen in the United States.
“This is no time for romantic illusions and empty philosophical debates about freedom. This is a time for action. What is needed is a strategy for change, a tactical program that will bring the Negro into the mainstream of American life as quickly as possible. So far, this has only been offered by the nonviolent movement. Without recognizing this we will end up with solutions that don’t solve, answers that don’t answer, and explanations that don’t explain.
“And so I say to you today that I still stand by nonviolence. And I am still convinced , and I’m still convinced that it is the most potent weapon available to the Negro in his struggle for justice in this country.
“And the other thing is, I’m concerned about a better world. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that, he can never advocate violence. For through violence you may murder a murderer, but you can’t murder murder. Through violence you may murder a liar, but you can’t establish truth. Through violence you may murder a hater, but you can’t murder hate through violence. Darkness cannot put out darkness; only light can do that.
“And so I say to you today, my friends, that you may be able to speak with the tongues of men and angels; you may have the eloquence of articulate speech; but if you have not love, it means nothing. Yes, you may have the gift of prophecy; you may have the gift of scientific prediction and understand the behavior of molecules; you may break into the storehouse of nature and bring forth many new insights; yes, you may ascend to the heights of academic achievement so that you have all knowledge ; and you may boast of your great institutions of learning and the boundless extent of your degrees; but if you have not love, all of these mean absolutely nothing. You may even give your goods to feed the poor ; you may bestow great gifts to charity; and you may tower high in philanthropy; but if you have not love, your charity means nothing. You may even give your body to be burned and die the death of a martyr, and your spilt blood may be a symbol of honor for generations yet unborn, and thousands may praise you as one of history’s greatest heroes; but if you have not love, your blood was spilt in vain. What I’m trying to get you to see this morning is that a man may be self-centered in his self-denial and self-righteous in his self-sacrifice. His generosity may feed his ego, and his piety may feed his pride. So without love, benevolence becomes egotism, and martyrdom becomes spiritual pride.
“What I’m saying to you this morning is communism forgets that life is individual. Capitalism forgets that life is social. And the kingdom of brotherhood is found neither in the thesis of communism nor the antithesis of capitalism, but in a higher synthesis. It is found in a higher synthesis that combines the truths of both. Now, when I say questioning the whole society, it means ultimately coming to see that the problem of racism, the problem of economic exploitation, and the problem of war are all tied together. These are the triple evils that are interrelated.
“In other words, ‘Your whole structure must be changed.’ A nation that will keep people in slavery for 244 years will ‘thingify’ them and make them things. And therefore, they will exploit them and poor people generally economically. And a nation that will exploit economically will have to have foreign investments and everything else, and it will have to use its military might to protect them. All of these problems are tied together.
“What I’m saying today is that we must go from this convention and say, ‘America, you must be born again!’
And so, I conclude by saying today that we have a task, and let us go out with a divine dissatisfaction.
Let us be dissatisfied until America will no longer have a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds.
Let us be dissatisfied until the tragic walls that separate the outer city of wealth and comfort from the inner city of poverty and despair shall be crushed by the battering rams of the forces of justice.
Let us be dissatisfied until those who live on the outskirts of hope are brought into the metropolis of daily security.
Let us be dissatisfied until slums are cast into the junk heaps of history, and every family will live in a decent, sanitary home.
Let us be dissatisfied until the dark yesterdays of segregated schools will be transformed into bright tomorrows of quality integrated education.
Let us be dissatisfied until integration is not seen as a problem but as an opportunity to participate in the beauty of diversity.
Let us be dissatisfied until men and women, however black they may be, will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not on the basis of the color of their skin. Let us be dissatisfied.
Let us be dissatisfied until every state capitol will be housed by a governor who will do justly, who will love mercy, and who will walk humbly with his God.
Let us be dissatisfied until from every city hall, justice will roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.
Let us be dissatisfied until that day when the lion and the lamb shall lie down together, and every man will sit under his own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid.
Let us be dissatisfied, and men will recognize that out of one blood God made all men to dwell upon the face of the earth.
Let us be dissatisfied until that day when nobody will shout, ‘White Power!’ when nobody will shout, ‘Black Power!’ but everybody will talk about God’s power and human power.“And I must confess, my friends, that the road ahead will not always be smooth. There will still be rocky places of frustration and meandering points of bewilderment. There will be inevitable setbacks here and there. And there will be those moments when the buoyancy of hope will be transformed into the fatigue of despair. Our dreams will sometimes be shattered and our ethereal hopes blasted. We may again, with tear-drenched eyes, have to stand before the bier of some courageous civil rights worker whose life will be snuffed out by the dastardly acts of bloodthirsty mobs. But difficult and painful as it is , we must walk on in the days ahead with an audacious faith in the future. And as we continue our charted course, we may gain consolation from the words so nobly left by that great black bard, who was also a great freedom fighter of yesterday, James Weldon Johnson :
Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chastening rod
Felt in the days
When hope unborn had died.
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place
For which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way
That with tears has been watered.
We have come treading our paths
Through the blood of the slaughtered.
Out from the gloomy past,
Till now we stand at last
Where the bright gleam
Of our bright star is cast.
“Let this affirmation be our ringing cry. It will give us the courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds of despair, and when our nights become darker than a thousand midnights , let us remember that there is a creative force in this universe working to pull down the gigantic mountains of evil, a power that is able to make a way out of no way and transform dark yesterdays into bright tomorrows.
“Let us realize that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. Let us realize that William Cullen Bryant is right: ‘Truth, crushed to earth, will rise again.’ “(Excerpts from the “Where do we go from here?” speech. To read the entire speech click here.)
Other links:
Martin Luther King.
Martin Luther King Day.
Stanford Univ. King site.
The King Center
Environmental Listening Session
Jan 13, 2004 Agriculture, Environment, News, Transportation
Last night was the “Environmental Listening Session” or “Natural Resources Listening Session,” with Rep. Ray Cox, Rep. Dennis Ozment, Chair of the House Environment and Natural Resources Finance, and Rep. Tom Hackbarth, Chair of the House Environment and Natural Resources Policy Committee. Like the Energy Listening Session, it was well attended, standing room only in the Forest Town Hall. But it looks like the Representatives weren’t enjoying the session.
Much of the discussion was on CREP proposals under consideration, the voluntary nature of participation and how types of programs are allocated. A rundown of land in the CREP program is here.
Apparently there was also a lot of talk about water quality and how waters can be cleaned up. The cost of the Total Maximim Daily Load (TMDL) program is expected to be $75-85 million dollars and it has yet to be funded. The results for Rice County are on this map Cox, Ozment and Hackbarth talked as if this program would help our water quality, but the problem with it is that it only deals with problems after they occur, it is focused on identification and clean up of programs. While that’s good, the clean up is done on the backs of the tax payers who are shouldering too much of the burdens today. Clean up, as suggested by one Lonsdale resident, should be at the expense of the polluters, but none of the Representatives advocated for identification of the polluters and assessment of clean up cost. Non-point pollution was hard to categorize, but now at least the type of contamination is identifiable, which limits the universe of polluters significantly. And as with any type of problem, prevention is always less expensive than a clean up effort. One constituent was concerned about manure application over drain tiles, which provides a direct link into our waters, but the Representatives did not offer any preventative suggestions, and Rep. Cox’ suggestion was that the TMDL program should be used because it would identify the polluted water, but again, that’s after the fact! And Rep. Cox stated clearly that he was not in favor of assessing infrastructure improvements on the party causing the need – the result is that it is shouldered by the taxpayer. Is that fair?
Information on TMDL was posted on this blog on August 23, 2003.
Nearly all of Rice County’s lakes are identified as polluted, only 3 are “good” and the rest are “poor.” For some specifics on the Cannon River, scroll down — the Rice County monitoring results are on the second page.
As noted on this blog before, water monitoring is something you can do.
Clean Water Network offers a great handbook to help you work on water issues called “The Ripple Effect: How to make wave in the turbulent world of watershed cleanup plans” For more information about Clean Water Actin Alliance’s Water Program, contact Patience Caso at (612) 623-3666.
Out to Lunch — back soon!
Jan 1, 2004 News
From Carol Overland:
David’s finishing his Masters, and as you can tell, he’s taking a short break from blogging — it’s hard enough to complete a Masters, let alone do it while working full time, so this time out is well needed and deserved. That said, here’s what’s going on while he’s working:
It’s a birthday party for David Bly!And to help celebrate:
Willie Murphy and his band are coming to Northfield.
When? Saturday January 10th at 8:00 p.m.
Where? The Northfield Country Club$25 in advance, $35 at the door
For reservations, make an on-line Donation or send check, noting all names of those the reservation donation covers, to:
Willie Reservations
The David Bly Campaign
402 Washington St. So.
Northfield, MN 55057
Remember, the state refunds campaign contributions of up to $50 for individuals, $100 for those filing joint tax returns. Have you made your 2003 refundable donation? If not, now’s the time. And in 2004 you get to do it again! This campaign contribution refund is available each year!
For more information: (507) 664-0155
Who’s Willie Murphy? 
What do people say about Willie?
Clearly, this former Bee and enduring idealist still has some sting left in him. “I have a strong anger about the way things are in the world,” says Murphy. “I thrive on it, and I have a great emotional release for it in playing music.” . . . He’s particularly inspired by post-Modern theorist Frederic Jameson.
“He really challenges this notion that if you’re gonna be a political artist that you should disguise it. I never bought that either.”
. . . The longing for peace is palpable on the daydreamy “Just Wanna Be,” or the heart-tugging “Open Letter (to a Politician),” a response to Reaganites declaring ideological victory over the ’60s radicals.
– Jim Meyer/ Mpls. Star Tribune
He is an intellectual and he applies intellectual principles to his music, but he doesn’t let the beat and the pulse take a back seat to lyrical content. . . I think the lack of attention paid to his recordings and the paucity of work for his bands is indicative of the poet-in-his-own-land syndrome.
– Dave Ray
Willie ha sempre riscosso un enorme successo, con un pubblico pienamente soddisfatto, non smette maide chiedere il bis.
– Musicastrada — Iniziative
Willie’s touring Italy right now, but he’ll be back!
Join us at the Northfield Country Club on January 10, 2003, 8:00 p.m.
Make Donation/Reservation online or by mail. For more info (507) 664-0155.
