JACK BERNARD'S TRAVELS

Posted by jdbernard743

· May 11, 2019

The One-Way Street

If you listen carefully you’ll understand why it’s a one-way street…I’m sure it’s buried somewhere in the Mueller Report too… but if you follow these instructions you’ll find out exactly where we are today. See you when you arrive.

Follow the traffic on Old Campaign Trail. It will lead directly to the high-speed Russian On-Ramp. From there, a hard-right at Coordination Avenue takes you to Collusion Boulevard. Continue with Collusion until it merges with Conspiracy Avenue. Eventually, you will have to slow for a blind corner at Obstruction Alley. There you’ll meet Attorney General Bill Barr who will point you in the direction of the temporary parking lot at the House on Impeachment Way.

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Categories : Books, Politics, Uncategorized, Work and Adventure

Posted by jdbernard743

· April 30, 2019

· 1 Comment

Disappointment, Disrespect, and Frustration…

Like many my age, I grew up riding the American rocket ship to a better life. We were better educated than our parents, part of an ever-expanding, increasingly prosperous, white Protestant middle class, on our way to a life of easy comfort and opportunity. Land of the free. Home of the brave.

But it wasn’t true for everyone… I’m so aware that it was my truth but not always a shared truth for my black, Asian, Jewish, and female classmates. I was self-involved and unaware of obstacles in their way. I didn’t understand that so many of my generation were not finding a seat on the rocket ship.

Nevertheless, for those of us growing up in the middle of the last century, the American myth was alive and well. We believed that “all men (and women) were created equal” even though our eyes told us it wasn’t true. We believed that if we worked hard our effort would be recognized and rewarded. We believed America was a meritocracy, that those who worked hardest were the fittest and would survive and prosper. We paid lip-service to the myth that skin color, religion, and ethnicity didn’t matter if we worked hard and followed the rules. Of course, we were white and middle class, and we thought the American myth was the American truth.

So, when did it change? It wasn’t sudden. It was over time. I remember where I was when John F. Kennedy was murdered. I remember watching it happen. JFK… then, in over a decade it was Martin Luther King, Jr., RFK, and 58,000 Americans in Vietnam. The myth was losing its grip. Next came Spiro Agnew, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush – a succession of dishonest, weak, corrupt, and gullible leaders with a Congress more interested in its own re-election than the welfare of the people it was elected to serve.

75 years ago, American’s watched their own Greatest Generation defeat German and Japanese fascism. 45 years later, a new generation helped bring down the Berlin Wall and defeat Soviet Communism. But by then there were fractures in the American façade, and in 2016 there was enough disappointment, disillusionment, and frustration in the heartland of America that Donald Trump was able to eke out an Electoral College victory to become president of the United States. In November of 2016 America fell to its nadir, and a greedy, corrupt, unfit, draft-evading narcissist took over as Commander in Chief.

I was dejected and disappointed too, but my disappointment focused on the electorate and the degradation of the American system, and the failure of its promise and institutions. Voter participation in the 2016 election was 58%. We don’t deserve better if we don’t honor our responsibility as voters.

Over the last 50 years, America has stood by as its educational system was gutted and its children cheated. Voters chose to cut school funding and failed to give teachers the respect and standard of living they deserve. Corporate executives were rewarded with obscene compensation packages and the government ignored the greedy criminal practices of pharmaceutical companies. Consumer finance protections were withdrawn, and banking regulations put in place following the 2008 financial collapse repealed or watered down.

Mr. Trump and his “advisors” have undermined the international trade and military alliances that supported the post WWII world order. As Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, says in his 2018 book, it is A World in Disarray. America has lost its way and needs new leadership.

We are at a crossroads. Will new leadership emerge? There are currently 20 Democrats vying to replace Donald Trump in 2020. Cable news is breathless in its coverage and eager to find a viable challenger. The candidates are trying desperately to distinguish themselves. Health care, climate change, gun control, education, consumer finance. Which of these issues will carry weight with the voters? In the end, it will boil down to the nominee they think will be able to beat Trump. Nothing else matters.

Will it happen? Conventional wisdom tells us when the economy is good, unemployment is low, and there are no major military involvements the incumbent has a huge advantage. So, despite the corruption, fecklessness, and incompetence for the Trump administration it will be an uphill battle to Dump Trump.

After all, as he told us yesterday, “I just feel like a young man. I’m so young. I can’t believe it. I’m the youngest man. I am a young, vibrant man.” What about the bone spurs, Donald? You can’t ride the rocket ship if you can’t get your shoes on, and it looks like Chairman Kim agrees that your “very big” rocket is fizzling.

Categories : Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· April 17, 2019

· No Comments

Important Perspective…

Monday’s catastrophic fire inside the cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris, terrible as it was, might just allow us to step back from the 24-hour news cycle and reflect on the longer horizon of human history. The fire damage to this iconic structure provides us an opportunity to look at a longer horizon and set other events in perspective. There is little doubt that the church will be rebuilt and restored. Even as the embers were still glowing, President Emmanuel Macron was promising to rebuild. This is not the first time its existence has been in peril. With luck, however, it may be the last.

This astonishing monument is much more than a religious edifice. Its construction began in 1160 and was, for the most part, completed in 1260. One hundred years to build, now almost 800 years old, and while it’s a Gothic masterpiece it is also a symbol of the French nation.

For centuries, Notre-Dame was the sight of royal coronations, weddings, and funerals, of Napoleon’s investiture, and anti-Catholic looting during the 18th century’s Reign of Terror. Books and plays were set there.

Having fallen into disrepair, it was impressively restored in the mid-19^thcentury, and in spite of revolutions, changes in government, two world wars, occupation by the Nazi Reich, and other upheavals it has remained a formidable symbol of the French people and their Republic. It was 600 years old when Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin became America’s first ambassadors to France.

I took this picture from a boat on the Seine when we were living in Paris four years ago. There is nothing in America that corresponds to it–no religious or government building that symbolizes the endurance and spirit of its people the way the great cathedral does as it rises above the Seine to dominate Paris.

Yesterday, the great spire and most of the roof collapsed inward.

In contrast, this morning I woke up to another chorus of “No collusion. No obstruction” from the White House lawn. It was jarring in its banality, embarrassing to be reminded that Donald Trump is still the American president. Nevertheless, the juxtaposition of the two events does offer us an opportunity for perspective.

Donald John Trump is an uninformed, un-curious, overweight, almost 73-year-old, narcissist who lives on a diet of KFC, Big Macs, and Fox News. In 10 years, it’s likely he and I will both be dead. He will be far from center stage – an asterisk, anomaly, and footnote on the greater American timeline – a tiny seeping pustule on its body politic. He’ll be gone, buried with his faux-gold trappings in some garish crypt where visitors can assess the mystery of his place in American history. Notre Dame will endure…damaged, but still standing guard over the French Republic.

Will America endure? On the timeline of history there is good news and bad news for America. The good news is that we have been protected by two great oceans, one on each side. The bad news is that we have been protected by two great oceans, one on each side.

For most of our 243 years, the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, were natural barriers that kept us safe from foreign invasion. Until recently, they gave us time and space to react to foreign threats and keep us isolated from immediate physical harm. We were perfectly situated to protect ourselves while staying connected to the broader world. Jefferson and Franklin traveled to Europe in order to maintain the connection to our European roots and establish alliances for our mutual benefit. Donald Trump is trying for some undetermined reason to undermine those established alliances. In today’s world, it is not enough to have natural barriers. Missiles and cyber-invasion are threats that are not impeded by topography. Diplomacy and personal relationships are more important than ever.

I ask myself repeatedly how Trump, an American child of wealth and privilege, could have passed up the opportunity to travel and learn about the world? How could he have chosen life inside the insular New York bubble when there was so much more outside? How could a man so lacking in curiosity, so embarrassingly ignorant of world politics and geography, become president of the United States? Why did American voters choose a president more interested in personal wealth than their own welfare.

I am reminded of a vignette in Graham Greene’s The Third Man where one of the characters riffs on history by saying that in 3000 years the Italians have seen the rise and fall of the Etruscan and Roman civilizations, Christianity, the Black Plague, the Renaissance and Reformation, endless regional battles, and two world wars while in the same 3000 years, without confronting a major problem, Switzerland’s singular achievement is the cuckoo clock. Donald Trump is our cuckoo clock—limited in almost every way – intelligence, emotional IQ, world experience, taste, empathy, and generosity despite his immense privilege.

The fire at Notre-Dame is a catastrophe of almost unimaginable proportions but thankfully only temporary. It will be rebuilt, restored and reclaim its stature as a secular pilgrimage site and religious monument. Donald Trump’s expiration date is fast approaching. It is probable that he will be a one-term president, cast aside in 2020 and in time, through the lens of history, be regarded as the most dangerous and incompetent person ever to hold that high office.

The Paris fire allows us to gain historical perspective on the importance of people and events. Notre-Dame is immensely important. Donald Trump is a momentary aberration and singularly unimportant in the big picture.

As Parisians gathered to watch the conflagration yesterday, to sing hymns and kneel in prayer, I listened to an international correspondent describe the scene from the courtyard of Shakespeare and Company, one of the world’s great English-language bookstores. Four years ago, during an extended stay in Paris, Marilynn and I spent time rooting around in Sylvia Beach’s small rooms talking about books. Think what a different world we might have if Donald Trump, with all his wealth and privilege, had at an early age decided to learn about the world and root around in Shakespeare and Company.

Categories : Art, Books, Fashion/Lifestyle, Friendship, Personal/Family, Politics, Travel, Uncategorized

Posted by jdbernard743

· April 12, 2019

· 2 Comments

Cultural Placeholders…

I’ve been thinking about generational differences lately and how each generation anchors itself with a set of creative icons, go-to figures, that serve as reference points on a timeline of cultural awareness.

What do you say or who do you think of when people ask you for your favorite movie, book, painting, or rock group? Who’s on that playlist? What music pops to mind? What paintings do you think of? What writers do you refer to and re-read? How you answer those questions most likely depends on the artistic/creative imprinting of your generation.

The writers that became my anchors are the icons of the Lost Generation – Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and John Steinbeck. They were the writers who were esteemed when I was an impressionable college student. Later, came the Redford and De Niro films, the Warhol paintings, Dylan, the Beatles, and the Grateful Dead, the personalities of my cultural soundtrack and the touchstones that still have a grip on me today.

So, what do these cultural anchors say about us? Do we consciously choose them as role models? Do our choices mean we were formed and remain locked in a fixed time frame? No, we didn’t consciously decide to stop growing when we found our benchmarks but they were a way we grounded ourselves as we grew into our own personal histories.

Over time, there is a natural “sort and select” process that allows some figures to rise and endure while others, prominent in their time, sink out of sight. Eventually, those that endure become classics – Mark Twain and J.D. Salinger, Winslow Homer and Andy Warhol, Louis Armstrong and Elvis, Josephine Baker and Meryl Streep, but every day that passes others emerge. Who’s next? Ed Sheeran, Madhuri Vijay, Saoirse Ronan?

The point is not that we’ve stopped reading new writers, viewing new art, or listening to new music. Our benchmarks aren’t signs of arrested development, but snapshots on our cultural timelines. I know, for instance, that I haven’t paid the same kind of attention to hip-hop as I have to rock or country. I was weaned on Bob Dylan and astonished to discover recently that Run-DMC hit the pop scene and captured a Grammy almost 40 years ago while I was parsing Dire Straits’ lyrics. It was a fork in the road, and I missed the hip-hop turn off.

I don’t mean that the generations are siloed, but tastes change and I want my kids, grandkids, and greats to know the classics from the Iliad and Odyssey to Bohemian Rhapsody just as I want to sample and understand graphic novels and conceptual art. I know the kids are more likely to remember Lady Gaga or Beyoncé than Paul Simon or Billy Joel but that’s all in the process of generational change.

Styles change in the arts just as in fashion. I benchmarked an Isaac Stern concert when I was in college. Sitting in the second row for the Tchaikovsky Violin Concerto, I watched the strands of his horsehair bow fly apart and wondered if the final filament would separate before the end of the third and final movement. It was an epic moment in my musical education, but last summer, 60 years later, at Tanglewood, I watched and listened just as attentively as Yuja Wang, one of today’s superstars rehearsed the Brahms’ Piano Concerto. The music of Brahms and Tchaikovsky is timeless, but performance styles have changed in my lifetime.

Professionally, it has been the same. I was 10 years old when Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in the Bell X-1. 13 years later I was flying 1000 mph in an F8 Crusader off the California coast. Two years after that, I called Air Traffic Control to report a streaking contrail in the early evening sky high above me. I was at 44,000’ and there wasn’t a airplane, military or commercial that could fly higher. That contrail turned out to be Neil Armstrong in the X-15 on a secret test. Then there was the moon shot, the moon walk, the space shuttle and space station. Time flies.

I’m not in the aviation business any more, but the benchmarks left by Yeager and Armstrong remain, though we continue to add new ones. I added one in 2009 when Sully Sullenberger landed his Airbus 320 on the Hudson River and saved the lives of all 155 souls on board. Sometimes, a combination of skill, training, and a smattering of good luck is all it takes to create a “Miracle on the Hudson” and give us another solid benchmark.

I’ve shared some of my benchmarks; what are yours? What was your favorite movie, book, or piece of art? How did they help shape your taste in later life? It’s worth the trip to revisit your benchmarks and test them against your taste today. They are part of who you were and who you have become.

Categories : Art, Aviation, Books, Fashion/Lifestyle, Film/Television, Personal/Family, Travel

Posted by jdbernard743

· April 4, 2019

· No Comments

Kindergarten Rules Updated…

In 1988, a local Unitarian Universalist minister published a book called All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. It was a back to basics primer for Baby Boomers. It snuck onto the New York Times bestseller list and stayed there for 2 years. Twenty-five years and 7,000,000 copies later the author, Robert Fulghum, revised his little primer and added a few new essays for the anniversary re-release. Today, his advice is just as cogent as it was when first published – maybe more so in the Age of Trump.

Here’s Fulghum’s Kindergarten code, in red, updated for the Age of Trump, in black:

“All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate-school mountain (We don’t know about Donald, since he ordered his schools to hide his grades),but there in the sand pile at Sunday School. These are the things I learned: (Pay attention Donald. Turn off Fox and Friends. This is not Executive Time).

Share everything.Your tax returns and all the tainted money your father gave you. Be grateful.
Play fair. Stop lying, cheating at golf, and stealing from the American people.
Don’t hit people.Or put them in cages.
Put things back where you found them. Russian money. Golf divots. Your dick.
Clean up your own mess. OMG, this is the big one. If you’ll get out of the way, the Democrats will do it for us.
Don’t take things that aren’t yours. The Affordable Care Act.
Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Mexicans, disabled reporters, Christine Blasey Ford, and the other 372,200,000 of us.
Wash your hands before you eat. Especially after you put everything back where you found it.
Flush. Fox News.
Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you. KFC, Big Mac’s, and porn stars are not.
Live a balanced life—learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some. Hard to balance when you’re dancing with Lucifer.
Take a nap every afternoon. Alone. No tweeting.
When you go out into the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands, and stick together. If Melania lets you.
Wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: The roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that. The great wonder is how Trump ever got to the White House and how he manages to stay there.
Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup—they all die. So do we. And, so will Trump, in spite of Dr. Ronnie Jackson’s bogus misrepresentations.
And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned—the biggest word of all—LOOK. Not TAKE.
Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living. Fulghum’s Golden Rule is not a reference to the tacky decoration in Trump’s New York apartment, but I couldn’t resist this picture.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or your government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all—the whole world—had cookies and milk about three o’clock every afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are—when you go out into the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.” **

Robert Fulghum is not as snarky as I am, but his good advice and literary success has given him the freedom to write and live as he wants. He currently splits his time between Moab, Utah and the island of Crete. In 2014 he returned to Seattle and performed a marriage ceremony for our friends, Steve and Karin Columba Price, in the Washington Park Arboretum. He was also a longtime friend of our friends Tom and Priscilla Wilson. Tom died in 2015 but whenever I hear Fulghum’s name I think of his friendship with Tom. Both were men of great good sense who practiced what they learned in Kindergarten. Thanks to both of them.