State Representative David Bly, MN District 25B

Although I had to work and missed the Northfield News 60th anniversary celebration for Maggie Lee, I did attend her earlier presentation at the Northfield Historical Society. After her talk that evening, we briefly shared memories of the years my father worked at the News as a reporter and photographer. Maggie’s dedication to the News and to the community are very rare examples of what one person can do to nurture and help build a community.

I also attended a fascinating presentation at the Northfield Historical Society by Bob Flaten retired U. S. diplomat to Afganistan and Rawanda. He was in Afganistan in the ’70s when Bruce Laingen was in Iran and warned of an imminent crisis in Kabul and then was in Rawanda preceding the genocide. The stories he told about his experiences in these troubled countries were both inspiring and chilling. He commented on how sad it was to know many of their friends in Rawanda had been killed in the genocide. He also told an interesting story about his involvement in the Reagan administration’s decision to invade Libya, where he was the lone voice protesting the legality and wisdom of such a venture and advising, in the strongest possible way, against it. Fortunately for us, his arguments were picked up by others in the government and they managed to prevent a war that would have been very similar to the one we find ourselves embroiled in today in Iraq. Too bad no one like Bob Flaten was courageous enough to speak out at the outset the way he did then.

Poet Carolyn Forche read at Carleton College from her work and from her anthology Against Forgetting, Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness. It brought home to me the reality that the struggles we face fighting terror and oppression are not new.
It was a very timely reading, as it followed close on the heels of the breaking of the stories about the abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. She has been writing since the ’70s about the horrors of oppression and its victims. Her anthology begins with the following quote:

In the dark times, will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.” - Bertolt Brecht

Her collection covers many of the horrific events of the 20th century from the Armenian Genocide through the holocaust, apartheid, and the struggle for democracy in China.
She includes the following from Bei Dao:

…I write poems of life
This universal longing
Has now become the whole cost of being a man…

Here I stand
Replacing another, who has been murdered
I have no other choice
And where I fall
Another will stand
A wind rests on my shoulders
Stars glimmer in the wind

Perhaps one day
The sun will become a withered wreath
To hang before
The growing forest of gravestones
Of each unsubmitting fighter
Black crows the night’s tatters
Flock thick around (tr. Bonnie McDougall)

In her last book THE BLUE HOUR she writes,

What ghost comes to the bedside whispering You?
- with its no one without its I -
A dwarf ghost? A closet of empty clothes?
Ours was a ghost who stole household goods. Nothing anyone would miss.
Supper plates. Apples. Barbed wire behind the house.

At the end of the hall, it sleepwalks in to a mirror wearing mother’s robe.
A bedsheet lifts from the bed and hovers. Face with no face. Come here.
The bookcase knows, and also the darkness of the books. Long passages into,
Endless histories toward, sleeping pages about. Why else toss gloves into a grave?

A language that once sent ravens through firs. The open world from which it
came.

Also this month I attended my daughter Julia’s fashion show at St. Catherine’s in St. Paul. She is a sophomore there and enjoying the fabric design program they have. She always amazes me by creating her own designs with such ease.

Of course on Sunday before Syttende Mai I joined other Northfielders St. John’s Church for a wonderful concert of Grieg’s music and also out to Lonsdale’s Trondjeim Lutheran Church, and on the 17th joined other Norwegian descendants at St. Olaf for a Norwegian breakfast of waffles and a smorgasbord of fruit, bread, and fish.

Memorial day weekend is very full with two graduations, Northfield High School and St. Olaf, not to forget the many Memorial Day celebrations remembering all those who gave their lives in defense of family home and country. This was also my 30th class Reunion. I enjoyed meeting with many on campus including Ember Reichgott Junge who again gave me words of encouragement for my campaign.

Oh and by the way the Huestvedt Auction went very well, Auctioneer Ed Kuhlman held the crowd in the palm of his hand: Rice County Chair Steve McKelvey couldn’t pull himself away from those skiis: