Seeking the answers from proper authority

Controversy? In regard to this place?

What a tangled web someone is weaving. I'm not assuming the librarian. The city manager? The mayor or council? Well I don't know and my instincts are those of a journalist. You might say a Watergate era of journalist. We are suspicious. We are wary about people in power. 

I grew up when the government had the power to force young men to go over to Vietnam in waves and be killed in large numbers. 

You're concerned about the 13 U.S. soldiers killed in the withdrawal from Afghanistan? Did you really think that could be done cleanly? In that part of the world? Compare the number 13 to the toll of Vietnam. 

 

Local turmoil

Getting back to the very micro situation with our library, what the heck is going on as the weeks pass? Here's an email I shot off to a friend this morning (Friday):

 

Del - Just checked my email for first time since last night, and no answer from Kevin Wohlers. My email to him was very fair and well thought out. Nothing. I saw Sharon Martin this morning at Willie's Cafe. She and I agreed that there is some aspect to what is going on with the library that is very sensitive and concerning, and something that the general public should not be apprised of yet. If ever. But the city is a public entity. We are all stakeholders in this, n'est-ce pas? Does the shoeshine guy even know anything? I can just see Leslie Nielsen sitting down to talk to him. "Well Johnny, what do you hear on the street?"

- BW

 

Kevin Wohlers (long-time friend of mine)

I am pleased to report that I have sort of "gone to the top" in exploring the library matter, lest anyone think I'm relying too much on informal, unofficial talk. Who, me? So I share below an email I sent to our esteemed mayor Kevin Wohlers yesterday at 2:20 p.m. 

It is Friday a.m. now and I have gotten no response. There must be some tightly-guarded stuff going on here? Is the public library even worth this unpleasantness? Rhetorical question. Here's the email I sent Kevin:  

 

Hello Kevin - Well we're supposed to be in the most dead time of the calendar for our Morris - midsummer - and you and I have talked about this, how the old Prairie Pioneer Days was a remedy for that. It enlivened things. I covered it for years for the paper and I really truly thought it was special. I was ambitious enough to ride my bike out to the halfway point of the 10K run to photograph the leader! After all that I made an ignominious exit from the paper. Are we seeing sort of the same thing with Anne Barber now? I am writing because I am increasingly puzzled as to how such a huge and uncomfortable matter just keeps rolling on, becoming embarrassing for the city. So I have to ask: Is there something I'm missing? One thing I refuse to do and that is to take sides with Anne just because I've known her and her family a long time, whereas I've never met the city manager. I looked up pictures of her. Do Anne's problems go back to when Blaine was here? Would he have some answering to do? Of course he's retired now.

I am writing to you because some people will say that if I'm going to blog about this, I should at some point try to get official statements or facts from people rather than to just glean what I hear "on the street" or from the (sketchy) media sources. I was surprised to see the newspaper website have a timely and decent article when the story first broke, because normally the SCT has nothing of value on its website, but a ton of UMM sports!!! What about Tiger sports? 

Someone got to the paper and told them they had to do something re. the library, for some reason related to someone's special interests. Hey I didn't come into town on a turnip truck.

My attitude of late has been that I'm surprised that top city officials haven't taken some action on this just to make the conflict go away. Do whatever it takes even if it involves a little sacrifice. Allow normal life to return. You know by now that Anne has lots of personal supporters out and around. Her whole family has been known here a long time. And I guess this should absolutely not matter. I consider myself a personal friend but I wouldn't rule out shenanigans by anyone! But I would be upset if Anne is unfairly charged. And this whole damn thing has become so PUBLIC! Has this aspect just been totally unavoidable? Are there legal reasons why it is having to go on for so long? I mean my God, to hire outside attorneys or investigators? So my sense is the charges must be pretty serious. But I'm confounded at the same time.

And we have the East Side Park subject too!! Heavens. I decided not to sign the petition. I'm a pretty strong supporter of Neil Schmidgall and Superior. I sit right by the Apostolic guys at Caribou Coffee on Sunday morning, 7 a.m. every week. I think we need to appreciate NextGen, is very healthy for an otherwise unambitious Morris MN.

I thought the NextGen proposal was good but the issue is all the residences located so tightly around the park. How many decades have gone by while the Killoran stage has gotten negligible use? And the city spends money to maintain it. At the recent concert event there with Marty Sarlette's group, we had the same old problem: nobody wants to sit on the aluminum bleachers if the sun is out. They all sit a fair distance away which seems totally stupid.

If you wish to elucidate me on anything, that would be nice. Man, people are tossing around the word "fraud" in connection to Anne. Holy balls the long knives are out. Was this unavoidable? "Fraud" is actually a prosecutable crime.

- BW

Happy Dad's birthday on "Juneteenth"

You might think I'd choose a photo of Dad in a music setting. Here's a refreshing departure: a racing speedboat, a pastime Dad loved! My parents had a custom Christmas card made one year that showed Dad in full acceleration, practically a blur! I'd say it was dangerous. He told me the story of how he once "raced" a float plane as it was taking off! Can you picture Dad doing that?

 

My late father's birthday happens to coincide with "Juneteenth." If I'm skeptical of the holiday it's because I think we have too many holidays. We could simply skip several of them. 

There was a time when we saw a push to transform Columbus Day into something else. Many re-imagined it as Indigenous People Appreciation Day. There was a concerted push to elevate "Juneteenth." You might say such efforts were "progressive." They were connected to grievance arguments. The historic injustices done to Native Americans and black people. Well, MLK Day fit in with it. 

My whole point about MLK Day has been that it's "condescending." The subtle message is that we need to appreciate the crusader Martin Luther King for helping ensure that black people got legitimate rights, i.e. rights they should have been entitled to all along. And of course MLK had to persuade the white people to adjust their ways. So in the end, "thank you white people for being amenable to this." 

Barry Goldwater perhaps expressed the best sentiment about MLK Day when it was proposed. "It's just another day when the mail won't get delivered." 

But now there is a fresh new problem or issue staring at us. Hoo boy, it is the president of the U.S. who wants to wipe out "grievance holidays" if he can. He is limited in some ways. But he'll try to do what he can. 

Trump wants to literally wipe out "DEI." And you might say that DEI is the basis or "brand" of our U of M-Morris. The concluding chapter of my father's career was with UMM. It wasn't far from where he grew up. He was an adaptable guy because he grew up in rural Minnesota outside of Glenwood, but then transformed himself into quite the big city person. I'm sure he stayed relatable to people from both backgrounds. 

He got his undergraduate and Master's degrees at the U-Twin Cities. UMM did not exist then. We had the West Central School of Agriculture out here at the Morris campus. 

Dad worked summers at Glacier National Park. He dressed like a cowboy during the day and then donned his tuxedo at night to lead the dance orchestra at the Lodge. Like I said, "adaptable." Although, I'm not sure how well he adapted to yours truly. 

My preschool years were when Dad directed music for the U of M-St. Paul School of Agriculture. Those were precious days in my life. They came before the pressures of public school and being around kids who weren't always the nicest. That happened here in Morris. "Adversity builds character?" Not sure if that's really true. 

Maybe I should have been sent to reform school. Maybe that was suggested and my parents fought it. They were in denial about my shortcomings. 

Here I sit today and I can at least claim that I made it to age 70. 

Dad definitely made his commitment for WWII. He floated out on the Pacific. Was lieutenant in U.S. Navy as we overcame the Axis powers. He visited Tokyo soon after hostilities ended, found the Japanese to be very passive and humbled. The city had been fire-bombed to a cinder. I guess the general behind that was Curtis LeMay who would later be VP candidate with George Wallace. 

Remember Wallace? I was sort of taken by him just because he made politics into a "performance art." His wife would later say "he didn't want a marriage, he wanted an audience." There is evidence to suggest that Wallace began spouting racism only because he was a product of his Deep South culture. And, that he really knew better. He was a judge at one time. And a black lawyer would say of him that "he was the first judge who ever called me mister in a courtroom." But boy the guy could certainly handle a campaign lectern. 

 

What a venture!

It is well-known how my father launched the UMN-Morris music program. Holy cow, all phases of it. That's an absolute fact because he was literally the only UMM music faculty in the institution's first year, its "maiden voyage." That was 1960-61. I was age five in 1960. and it is well-known that Dad scored lots of points for the fledgling (and according to legend frail) UMM. 

The year was 1962. Cuban missile crisis on everyone's mind. Beatles hadn't arrived as mega-celebrities yet. But the Minnesota Twins had arrived. In fact the Twins finished second in the American League behind the still-dynastic New York Yankees. Must have seemed like a miracle. Twins were only five games behind the Yanks in fact. But that was long before the expanded playoffs. Only one team advanced past the regular season in each league. 

 

The image at right is a rare photo of dad as a young boy. He was the youngest of five sons of Martin and Carrie Williams. He graduated from Glenwood High School in 1934. Lean Depression times, John Dillinger days. In baseball, Dizzy Dean was tops.

 

My father's trip to Seattle with the UMM men's chorus was significant for a reason I will remind you of. It was not so much to display UMM for the fairgoers, although that was nice. You see, UMM was part of a big musical contingent from around Minnesota. So all those musicians became vividly aware of UMM. Our chorus was high-profile because it opened the Minnesota Day program at the World's Fair. 

Elvis Presley did a movie that was set at the Seattle World's Fair a.k.a. Century 21 Exposition. 

Directing male singers was something my father became known for. He directed the Apollo Male Chorus of Minneapolis in the 1950s. You should see his scrapbook. He was quite the flamboyant guy. Not sure he was so flamboyant once he came to UMM. I remember him directing the original UMM Fight Song at the P.E. Annex, since razed. I watched UMM basketball there and also watched Cougar football at the old P.E. Miller field. That was out behind the present-day multi-ethnic building. 

 

On a tenterhook

The 64-dollar question these days for UMM is whether we can keep getting away with having DEI, a multi-ethnic building and other stuff like that. I wonder what the current status of such stuff is. Can I assume there are intense, maybe fearful discussions behind closed doors? 

Even as a little kid I could sense that having a male-only chorus at UMM could be a problem. Should I have counseled my father on that? Let's be clear: if I had tried counseling Dad on anything, I would have just screwed things up. Let the past stand as it is. When you see the little display honoring the old UMM men's chorus at the recital hall entrance, just reason: "Those were different times." 

Hey, no women's intercollegiate athletics yet! That's a tough one to swallow. And today we have Caitlin Clark! 

 

Long and full lives

My father passed away on February 2 of 2013 at age 96. Mom came within a month of her 94th birthday, so that's doing pretty good I'd say. Incredibly good. But death does come for us all. We lost Bunny Yerigan and Todd Hickman recently. The pages get turned, always. Life goes on for Morris and UMM. 

"Juneteenth" is a Federal holiday ensconced on the calendar, but celebrations have become muted. You know why. We hear about mounting resistance to "diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives." Such political backlash looms. Our nation has elected DJT twice. An asterisk: The first time in 2016 he got three million fewer votes than his Democratic opponent. Just thought I'd mention it. 

I was not emotionally close to my father. But I'm proud to remind of his exciting and productive life, reflected primarily by the existence of our campus out here. 

Maybe we are such a remote place that Trump, Stephen Miller and the others will not even notice us. Maybe that's our best hope. It appears that Torrey Westrom and Paul Anderson are not actively joining their party's leader in fighting DEI and grievance causes. 

Pssst, happy Juneteenth. And happy birthday to Dad up in heaven.

And hey Mom, I remembered to make a new dentist appointment today!

My father Ralph E. Williams is at right, visiting with an old U of M student friend of his. That person happens to be Malcolm Moos who at the time of photo was University of Minnesota President! The photo was taken at installation of Jack Imholte as UMM Provost. "Provost" was then the term for UMM's top person. Now it's "Chancellor." And the person now is Janet Schrunk Ericksen. The Morris paper had Janet's name spelled wrong in a headline at the time of inauguration. Of course I'd have been tarred and feathered for that misstep. I must say, a person can get somewhat confused dealing with the middle of her three names. Is it "Schrunk" or "Shrunck?" I don't think it's "Honey I Shrunk the Kids." As journalists we have no excuses (especially if your name is Brian Williams). I'd be called a dumb whatever. An event at UMM led to my downfall in the Morris print media. That event was the goalpost incident. You know, I don't think the UMM higher-ups appreciate any reference at all to that event, no matter what the reason. So it was not a "teachable moment."
  

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com 

"The Longest Day" (1962) skirted reality

Mitchum, Fonda, Wayne

There is so much I can reflect upon having grown up as a "boomer" and with my father having WWII experience. You would think our dads would resist any attempt by popular entertainment to present the war. Think of the war's obvious horror and suffering. But they were strangely indifferent. Maybe they just chose not to pay a lot of attention to it. So it sort of floated over their heads while they attended to the real priorities in their lives. There, is that sound analysis? 

Our fathers were into "DIY" so they had a habit of collecting "tools." This trait has gotten attention in the TV series "The Wonder Years" and the movie "Gran Torino," the latter with Clint Eastwood of course. I believe the Eastwood character's background was in the Korean War. The "mysterious" Korean War, I might add. Success or not? Heck I can't answer that. We got the country divided in two, was the best we could do. 

We tried the same in Vietnam and failed. I should say "failed miserably." The media today will not hesitate to call Vietnam a totally failed venture. How can I as a boomer ever forget what that did to my generation? Boys had to stare "the draft" in the face and could be so distracted by this, they could not get into their desired career path or footing. Such a distraction it was, it had to affect the economy. 

World War II was so much more easy for us to understand. Such clear moral lines drawn. Good vs. evil, freedom vs. tyranny. 

It's easy to generalize too much about anything. Hollywood after WWII showed the "Allies" as such clear moral heroes. Well of course we had to win. But were the German people - I mean the broad populace - imbued with such intrinsic evil? Well of course not. We are surrounded with people of German stock today and we think nothing of how these folks once fought for Hitler. We view the Germans today as being the equals of all. No suspicions held, right? 

So it must have been some mass delusion that built up in the '30s and reached its horrific peak in the early '40s. The submarine movie "Das Boot" was excellent because it showed young German military members in WWII as sympathetic and human. Of course they had to be. Young men bear the brunt of war because they are expendable, or so their governments dictate. 

Wars are actually fought between governments. The governments develop propaganda to make the common people passive and accepting of what's going on. 

The fathers of my generation did not object to a whole lot of war movies from Hollywood that showed the carnage. But with an asterisk: carnage that was heavily sanitized. I have to believe that everyone knew that war was more violent and tragic than what we might gather from the movie screen. 

Maybe I'm wrong on that? 

 

Don't forget the Russians 

So my fellow boomers who were teeming in numbers of course flocked to the theaters in the early '60s to see "The Longest Day." The turning point of WWII? The decisive difference in the war? That's a popular conception. Would be nice if true, but D-Day for all its success was really more like a complimentary move. 

The Russians were so heroic and determined as they resisted and then pushed back the Germans. But it was very rough-going and slow for them. Something had to be done. So the D-Day invasion served to divert the Germans from their efforts to resist the Russians. The Nazi resources got spread out more. 

And surely the U.S. with the likes of Patton did its job. Patton was the general who "Ike" could call on when a pugnacious effort was called for, an effort entailing significant "good guy" casualties. Andy Rooney of CBS had a problem with Patton because of that. 

Patton had no qualms about rolling his sleeves up. Don't think there was no skepticism among the U.S. people about our pugnacious actions. A large number of Americans were losing their sons. In the Pacific, the Tarawa conquest served to get many Americans agitated and most dour. 

Post-war we increasingly wanted to just bathe in our success and by extension, glory. Glory? No way. 

 

Knock off this term

WWII has come to be described in a perverse way as "the good war." We can debate whether all the casualties were required. Hitler in order to hold his efforts together, was having to execute his own generals. So when Donald Trump compliments Hitler's generals on their "loyalty," I have to wonder how much war history he knows. 

Rommel was executed. And then he got a big state funeral. We see Rommel portrayed in "The Longest Day" (1962) setting up Germany's defenses at Normandy. He eventually wanted to see Hitler taken out. 

Hollywood's "The Longest Day" with its "star-studded cast" greatly entertained the boomer generation boys. The girls? I would guess not. Women are nurturers while men are destroyers. Can you name a single national leader or general in WWII who was a women? Well I guess not. 

The toy industry came out with military facsimile stuff that boys could use to "play army" in their neighborhoods. I have personal memories of that, like of a plastic grenade that would "explode" using caps as with "cap guns." Cap guns? A real-looking pistol that makes a sound like it's being fired? Oh how absolutely unacceptable for today - the cops could come along and shoot your child dead. Boys got Christmas gifts of this type. While their fathers just sat there and I guess "capitulated." 

John Wayne in "The Longest Day"

"The Longest Day," while entertaining, avoided depiction of graphic violence. I have read "minimal blood and gore." But was there any blood and gore? There was a limited focus on individual suffering. The emphasis instead was on overall operation and strategies. So it was sort of like watching sports. Well yes. 

We can observe "camaraderie" among the U.S. service members. Even among the German commanders too I suppose. Hitler himself is not presented. The Germans actually speak German. The "camaraderie" had the effect of making boys excited, perhaps, about the prospects of someday being in military service. I remember expressing this thought once as a kid and then a neighbor boy two years older and wiser got me over it. 

"The Longest Day" showed us clean deaths and lack of lasting injuries. Characters often die instantly. No agonizing groans or debilitating wounds.

Well, along came "Saving Private Ryan" years later as if this movie's purpose was to correct all that. Did we really need to be hit over the head? And my God was this really entertaining? Aren't we more entertained just watching John Wayne and Robert Mitchum? 

 

WWII legacy 

D-Day may have planted the seeds for future U.S. delusions about war. It caused us to overestimate our capacity to win foreign wars. 

So D-Day was the turning point for overcoming tyranny? Well it surely was not so simple. The Russians were ferocious coming from the east and they made the Germans more amenable to surrendering to the Allies. 

But my goodness, post-war we were obscured from appreciating the Russians because the Soviet Union had become our enemy. Our children were led to think that the U.S. all by itself had saved the world. And so we felt that henceforth everyone was going to have to get out of the way of our military. Iraq? Afghanistan? Those were misadventures. It really is not so easy. We might have avoided all of that. 

Remember, no WMD. 

"The Longest Day" is considered a cinematic achievement. Well my God it's three hours long. Parts surely could have been trimmed out. But the movie was so "important," so epic. "America saves the world." Look at all those young American men making "buddies" in the Army and then taking on a foe en route to "victory." So inspiring. 

But wouldn't it have been wonderful to just avoid all of it? All those men killed in the war: How would their lives have turned out? Think of their gifts, how they could have built families, had descendants among us today.

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com

Instability with interest rates an omen?

So many cheerleaders for "rate cuts"

We're into June and the rhythm of the seasons continues. Is it reassuring for you? Or do you begin making your rounds each day scared of discovering the higher prices for everything? Inflation does not come out of the ether. Economics is a science and there are causes. 

I grew up during the very pernicious 1970s inflation. Eventually we discovered there was a solution, as Paul Volcker took over at "the Fed." He made us take our medicine. He pushed up interest rates one whole point sometimes. Oh, a lot of people bemoaned that of course. Inflation got snuffed out so completely, it became rather out-of-mind. But I never forgot what we had been through. 

And I had to be thankful for one thing: my certificates of deposit at the banks performed quite well during the period of "taking our medicine." I'll sometimes bring this up when I'm around people like at church coffee, and people can be resentful. Even in the present time they might make a face. 

I guess the farm crisis of the 1980s was a pretty serious thing. I had no influence to affect anything but I did have some CDs in the banks. 

 

Uncertainty

Wouldn't it be ideal if we didn't have to gravitate to extremes? I stopped acquiring Meals on Wheels because I was asked to fill out a form. The government always seeks data, even government under conservative leadership. Maybe especially government under conservative leadership. 

The form asked me my income. Well that's a problem. 

For a while I was able to get some pretty good "CD specials" at the banks. Interest rates floating up around five percent in fact. Well I'll take the best I can get. But you know what the norm has been over the last few years. Quite a few years actually, even going back to Obama. We had the "2008 financial crisis." Odd type of crisis because it was not an act of God. It came on because of the fallibility of human beings. 

Mistakes? Or shifty moves prompted by greed? Was there substantial incarceration of the guilty parties?  Well no. We saw this in Iceland which had women in powerful positions in government. We needed that here. Instead the "good old boys" with their status and deep pockets just bamboozled us. 

Hank Paulson, former treasury secretary

So on comes Hank Paulson holding his three sheets of paper with hands trembling. Time for TARP. The well-heeled crowd had gone to the usual well for support. Well, a "bailout." And of course that well was the government. I laugh. Who else was going to support these people? Where else could they go? The Federal government can create new money. Bring on "quantitative easing" or "QE." 

The high rollers of Wall Street act like they are such conservative folks. Heaven forbid anyone comes forward as "liberal." As conservatives they decry "big government" and government spending. But when the excrement hits the fan for them? We know the routine, all carefully cloaked in rhetoric that makes it sound necessary. George W. Bush got bamboozled but that shouldn't surprise us. He told us that "economic advisors" told him that without the bailout and QE, "our economic system would collapse." 

I looked around me at the routine of our local businesses and professional people and it seemed life was going on as usual. So everything was going to "collapse?" That's what Bush told us. Was that really the fear, or were the well-heeled elite folks wetting their pants over getting crushed in "the stock market." 

Ah, the stock market. When I was a kid you didn't hear the common folks talk about the stock market. They knew about it but did not think it was their thing. They figured it was a "playground" for the rich people. This implies that rich people didn't care about being careless with their money. The opposite is true: rich people pull every string to guard their wealth. Such folks knew where to go when the storm clouds of this apparent "financial crisis" formed in 2008. Do we really know how bad things were? The media just began hitting us over the head with this notion. Today we'd call it a "meme." 

So there stood Hank Paulson with hands trembling as he held the three pieces of paper for the bailout. Mostly we saw America shrug about this. "Well, just one of those things." "You know how it goes." 

 

Terrible for savers

So we got this extended period of QE where people with money "in the bank" simply got screwed. Then upon the re-opening after the worst of covid, we got the stimmy checks which experts said would cause inflation. This led to a major upswing in what banks could offer savings customers. But to take advantage, you had to sign up for this thing called a "CD special." And yours truly had to twist arms to get paid monthly interest instead of "annual" or "at maturity." 

I have had some good results from this. But it could all come to an end quickly. Our president is really strong-arming "the Fed" to try to get interest rate cuts. This totally violates the unwritten rule about how the president isn't even supposed to talk about the Fed. Well, so what? The U.S. was stupid enough to elect Trump twice! So why care about any unwritten rules in Washington D.C.? 

Hey, let's throw the baby out with the bathwater. And heavens, what is this all going to lead to? 

I thought "conservatives" were free-traders. But we have a president with an absolute tariff fetish, so unstable with the application that it is pure comedy. 

"TACO?" 

The president's trick is to divert and distract enough to keep a certain type of (mainly male) American supporting him. He advises Republicans "don't talk about 'trans' until a week before the election." 

He's right for getting Republicans elected. But will the U.S. under his leadership turn into a house of cards? Really, are you prepared for that? Prepared for the ramifications of tariffs and possibly plunging interest rates? More inflation without a doubt. 

And this while scores of the working poor will lose Medicaid? People will probably declare personal bankruptcy which means the health care providers/professionals won't get their money. Obviously DJT does not care. 

Has our own congressperson Michelle Fischbach ever second-guessed anything that DJT has done or said? Even once? So you're all good with this? You must be. You probably get reinforced when you attend church on Sunday. Republicans win on the cultural issues. This is their trump cared so to speak. 

We completely put aside the science of economics. We completely disregard how the cutting of Medicaid and even Medicare is going to have calamitous outcomes. But as Joni Ernst reminded us, showing Republican wisdom, "we all die." So let's get on with it.

- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com