Editorial: 'A thing of the heart and not of the lips'

Nov 25, 2009 at 10:04 PM

Photo by Hulton Archive via Getty Images

A family sit down to Thanksgiving dinner, circa 1935.

As another year draws to a close, the people of the United States are once more united in the observance of a day of thanksgiving. According to the adjurations of the official proclamation of the day, it is one on which a nation and its people "give thanks to an almighty God for the blessings of life." Being thankful is a thing of the heart and not of the lips, and how fully we enter in the deeper spiritual significance of the day cannot be measured in our faithfulness to the outward habiliments of a holiday that by custom and tradition we delight to honor. ...

[T]he spirit of thanksgiving and the gift of a thankful nature is not a matter of official holiday or presidential proclamations. These are individual gifts the lack of which cannot be supplied by exhortation. The gifts of thankfulness, of sincerity and of humility are unevenly distributed and find devious ways of expressing themselves. None of us is completely lacking in this respect, but the lives of some are richer in these qualities than others. Frequently it is those whose material comforts are the most meager who are really the most appreciative of the few good things that have come to them.

The day, having become a fixed part of American tradition, has lost none of its freshness or any of those qualities which are part of our aspiration as a nation. It calls to the mind of the nation the sturdy faith of the Pilgrim fathers. It reminds the American people of the deeper spiritual blessings of life which the events of the moment make it so easy to forget. In prosperity as well as in adversity it calls upon the nation to give thanks for those things which can forever be ours and to cherish those loftier aspirations which the finest idealism in our life, as a nation, has sought to express.

However imperfectly we, as a people, may fulfill the challenge which a national day of thanksgiving throws down to us, these annual summonings are one of the golden threads that run through our national life. It is well to be reminded, as we are by President Roosevelt's Thanksgiving proclamation, that "during the past year we have been given courage and fortitude to meet the problems which have confronted us in our national life. Our sense of social justice has deepened. We have been given vision to make new provisions for human welfare and happiness, and in a spirit of mutual happiness we have co-operated to translated vision into reality. More greatly have we turned our hearts and minds to things spiritual. We can truly say, 'what profiteth it a nation if it gain the whole world and lose its own soul.' With gratitude in our hearts for what has already been achieved, may we, with the help of God, dedicate ourselves anew to work for the betterment of mankind."

Whether there has been a material deepening in our sense of social justice and whether we as a nation are any more spiritual today than we were a year ago, is not for us to say. Of necessity the eyes of the nation have been centered upon the horizon seeking signs of a material recovery. In the time just past our sense of social and spiritual values has been put to a severe test and how we stood the test the future will be better able to say than can we. Whatever the immediate gains for America as a people and as a nation may have been, the day of Thanksgiving and the spirit in which it is proclaimed should awaken in all of us a deeper sense of gratitude for that which is ours and a finer sense of responsibility in the fulfillment of the promise of American life to every partner in its commonwealth.

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Pamela Hill Nettleton: This tradition, yes, breaks the mold

PAMELA HILL NETTLETON| Nov 25, 2009 at 06:30 PM

“The Parting of the Red Sea” — a recreation in Jell-O.

I stayed up half the night trying to build a tiered wedding cake out of orange gelatin. Engineering problems -- mainly gravity -- obliterated my efforts, and the whole thing splatted like a jellyfish all over the kitchen table. On the other hand, my pastry chef daughter's entry was brilliant. She made clear gelatin from scratch (who knew you could?) in the mold of a B-52, and stuck an itty-bitty plastic superheroine into the pilot seat. Voila! Wonder Woman's invisible plane.

But the winning entry came from Uncle John, who poured blue Jell-O into a fish bowl, submerged a miniature deep-sea diver under the keratin waves, poked Pepperidge Farm goldfish crackers and gummy worms down in there at varying levels, and carried a lit votive candle around behind it to cast watery-looking shimmers.

He won, but controversy ensued. Two other uncles had labored mightily to create ring molds of cranberry, lemon and strawberry and pretended to be incensed at Uncle John's sidestepping the "edibility rule"--which, of course, had yet to be written.

"Next year," said my sweet little sister, shaking a finger at Uncle John, "you're goin' down." The Playtex gloves were off, and an annual tradition was born.

One year later, she and her husband duct-taped an 8-foot-long hollow Plexiglas tube to the frozen drainpipe outside their front door, erected a ladder, and set the alarm clock. Every few hours, they woke up, mixed up a fresh flavor of Jell-O, walked outside, climbed the ladder to the top of the tube, and poured another color in to settle atop the already-set layers below. The rainbow Jell-O-meter was born. But it faced stiff competition.

Uncle John designed his own molds out of rope, Styrofoam and who-knows-what to cook up a realistically rendered Jell-O hamburger (with lettuce, tomato, and a Kaiser bun), fries, and a malt. It was a thing of beauty.

Yet he was beat out by my daughter-in-law, Megan, who cooked up gigantic twin Cherry Cokes out of Cherry Coke-flavored Jell-O with Jell-O cherries and Jell-O froth.

Before the turkey comes out of the oven, Jell-O competitors must solemnly parade their entries around the dining room for all to see, accompanied by the strains of Elgar's "Pomp and Circumstance." This rule survived only three years. Megan's Jell-O cello licorice strings and frosting f-holes were too fragile for the march. Chris' Emerald City and fields of poppies from "The Wizard of Oz" couldn't be lifted, and Gretchen's life-sized ruby slippers wiggled so much they split in half like the Titanic.

I don't recall the year, but once my husband made champagne-flavored Jell-O out of gelatin sheets and a bottle of something (I hope domestic) he found laying around. From the junk drawer, he unearthed a fiber optic flashlight with long, squid-like plastic fronds. He turned it upside-down, shoved it into the half-set Jell-O, and turned it on. Electric Jell-O. He won. What were the judges thinking?

I've only won once: last year, for my epic "Parting of the Red Sea." An Indiana Jones action figure was Moses and birthday cake pirates wrapped in raffia were the Pharoah's army. OK, so using the Arc of the Covenant was historically inaccurate, but hey, it came in the blister pack with Indiana. The thing took $30 worth of red Jell-O, and like Cecil B. DeMille, I'm not telling how I got the seas to rise up into watery walls to let the children of Israel pass.

The Jell-O competition is now in its something-or-otherth year and has become an essential part of our Thanksgiving tradition. It doesn't hark back to my grandmother in her Iowa kitchen, the way making lefse on Christmas Eve day does for my children. It doesn't conjure up my aunts singing Lutheran hymns in the kitchen the way baking sugar cookies using Aunt Mary's recipe does for me. My ancestors didn't craft mountains out of Jell-O, although cumulatively they probably carried that much of it in aluminum cake pans into church basement suppers. It is a new bud on the ancient tree of generations, our Jell-O competition.

Yet it is in the moving forward that it becomes a tradition for those unborn people who come after us. This Christmas, my first grandchild arrives, and he will never have known a world without the Jell-O competition. To him, "Pomp and Circumstance" won't mean "graduation," but "Uncle John won again!"

Pamela Hill Nettleton is a Minneapolis writer.

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Rex Smith: Sometimes it's silly, the topics that have teeth

REX SMITH| Nov 25, 2009 at 06:28 PM

My day job usually requires me to pick which stories will wind up on our newspaper's front page. Some days the choices are easy, because the topic of a story is vitally important. But sometimes stories get attention because people care deeply about them, even if they don't matter greatly in the scheme of things.

My night and weekend job often involves other stories -- those told by a 14-year-old girl. My daughter has some of the interests you would expect of someone her age, like school sports and friends' adventures. A lot of it doesn't matter much in the long view, either, but dads do their best work when they pay attention.

It was clear months ago that "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" would be a very big deal. A Hollywood-hyped sequel to a blockbuster isn't going to drop lightly into the cultural mix. Nor does an editor have to be the father of a teenager to recognize that a movie generating so much buzz merits coverage in the newspaper.

Is "New Moon" important? I hope not. Climate change, terrorism and disappearing nest eggs have me concerned enough, so I don't have time to worry about the emergence of vampires and werewolves. But topics don't have to be important for people to care about them.

Last week there was another reminder that rational decisionmaking can't fully account for human interest. It came in a story involving an animal, which often will draw attention all out of proportion to the impact that one nonhuman creature could have.

Two men working on the Hudson River dredging project were swept over a dam Tuesday after their small boat capsized. One man drowned. But the focus of what we call the "second-day story" on the front page was on the barking dogs that had alerted a woman who lived on the river that something was amiss. But for those dogs, the second man may have died of hypothermia after crawling out of the water onto an island.

There was another water rescue the same day, when a heroic 52-year-old construction worker from Castleton, N.Y., Steven Jung, pulled a stranger from drowning in the Mohawk River. The Mohawk rescue was published on the cover of our regional section. Alongside that account was another dog story, this one about a Schenectady, N.Y., woman charged with animal cruelty for failing to get medical treatment for a puppy whose leg was broken.

Which story was most important? Which did more people care about? We can't measure readership of newspaper stories, but we do know how many people read articles online. Maybe you can guess the answers.

The story about the barking dogs alerting the woman to the man in peril on the river was the most-read story on our website that day. It drew almost five times the readership as the story about the man being rescued by the construction worker. And the animal-cruelty story got about 50 percent more traffic than the human rescue.

Certainly readers pay attention to stories on topics of substance. But I'm reminded of John Grogan, the newspaperman whose "Marley and Me" became a best-selling book and a movie. His column about the death of his 13-year-old yellow Labrador retriever got more response than anything else he has ever written, Grogan says.

We understand that at our house. Last week was perilous for our hound, who is not yet 3 years old. He hovered near death, victim of a once-rare tickborne illness that has emerged more frequently in this era of warm winters and wet summers. My kid would like you to know that Otter has made a miraculous recovery.

It's a story that I could tell here and make you cry. That's because we read not only with our heads, but also with our hearts.

We can't help what we care about, and there's nothing wrong with a newspaper reflecting that.

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Letter of the day: The trophy is nice, but now Mauer must get the money

Nov 25, 2009 at 06:26 PM

Photo by Star Tribune

Minnesota Twins catcher Joe Mauer posed for a picture with his family after winning the American League’s Most Valuable Player trophy Monday.

JOHN GAMOKE, RICHFIELD

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GEORGE A. FARR, PLYMOUTH

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LOLLIE EIDSNESS, ST. LOUIS PARK

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Readers Write for Thursday, Nov. 26

Nov 25, 2009 at 06:24 PM

MAMMOGRAM GUIDELINES

Goal is just to educate patients more fully

The Nov. 19 Letter of the Day stated that "a 'government panel' has decreed that women in their 40s no longer need to bother with annual mammograms, I didn't believe in death panels. Now I do."

The writer, and others believing that the guidelines from the U.S. Preventative Services Task Force will deny women access to mammograms, need to step back from the media-fueled sound bites and look at the actual recommendations.

The guideline clearly states: "The USPSTF recommends against routine screening mammography in women aged 40 to 49 years. The decision to start regular, biennial screening mammography before the age of 50 years should be an individual one and take into account patient context, including the patient's values regarding specific benefits and harms."

What does that mean? It means that a mammogram should not be ordered as a reflex when a woman turns 40. Rather, the physician should talk to the patient about the benefits and risks of screening, and make sure that an understanding of both has been reached. Then, using that information, the patient and her doctor should decide how she wants to proceed -- screen now or defer to a later date.

In short, we should be practicing medicine based on evidence, but relying on an informed patient when a choice has to be made regarding an intricate balance of risks and benefits.

Allowing the patient to choose based on evidence, rather than dictating "this is what you need to do" hardly seems like a death panel.

DIMITRI MAXIMILIAN DREKONJA, MINNEAPOLIS

CATHOLIC CHURCH AND GAYS

There was a time when they worked together

Retired Roman Catholic Archbishop Harry J. Flynn takes both me and the Star Tribune to task for "statements and actions attributed" to him in the Nov. 17 article "Gays reject church's attempts to 'cure' them." In particular, Flynn labels as "pure fabrication" the claim attributed to me that he personally approached the Catholic Pastoral Committee on Sexual Minorities (CPCSM) in the late-1990s and requested that this organization be a resource for the archdiocese.

I regret such a claim was printed but nevertheless maintain I was misquoted.

What I attempted to convey was that throughout the 1980s and up until the late 1990s, certain parishes and the archdiocesan program Catholic Education and Formation Ministries (CEFM) approached CPCSM, an independent, grass-roots coalition, and requested that it share its experience and expertise in ministry with gay people.

In the case of CEFM, Archbishop Flynn was aware that this particular archdiocesan program had approached and was working with CPCSM on a Safe Schools Initiative for gay students in Catholic high schools. This collaboration took place in the 1990s.

I empathize with Archbishop Flynn's annoyance at having statements wrongly attributed to him, but I'm also disappointed that he chose not to set the record straight and acknowledge the reality that there was a time when the archdiocese, if not the archbishop personally, collaborated with CPCSM.

MICHAEL BAYLY, ST. PAUL

POSTING GRADES

It can give students a goal to work toward

Regarding the Nov. 16 article "Teachers can't post top scores," while I understand the concept of data privacy, I am concerned. I do not post student test/project scores. I do, however, have a "leader board." I simply look for a natural curve of the best of the best and post their names in alphabetical order on the day I hand back a major test or project. The names differ from time to time. There is a pure and simple goal of sparking motivation. I mention that these are students who are finding success; perhaps you might ask them how they do it, study together, etc.

Last year, I had a student with a fourth-grade reading level in ninth grade who made it her goal to be on the leader board for a test. Guess what? It happened. Please be careful with laws and rulings.

LEANNA NELSON, EDEN PRAIRIE

28 Comments

Garrison Keillor: For a few fine hours, behold: The family

GARRISON KEILLOR| Nov 25, 2009 at 06:24 PM

We now interrupt Mrs. Palin's book tour to bring you Thanksgiving, a grand old holiday, and we in the book business are thankful for her, that a busy woman who wanted to tell her story chose the medium of ink and paper between hard covers. Her tour is not about politics. It's about books.

Those big crowds waiting in the cold outside bookstores were looking forward to cozying up to her book and savoring the intense intimate pleasure of a memoir, the feeling that you and the author are close personal friends. You don't get that feeling from watching someone on TV; you get it from a book. Mrs. Palin's job was not to impress book reviewers or stake a claim to the Republican Party but to give pleasure to people who already love her, which evidently she did. Good for her.

And that's the challenge of Thanksgiving -- to gather among our kin who know us a little too well and have an amiable occasion enjoyed equally by all, at which nobody is stabbed through the heart with a carving knife.

We're a mobile and overcaffeinated people, and at every family gathering, amid the ancient aroma of turkey and sage and squash and sweet potatoes and a few pounds of butter, you'll find some edgy individualists, someone who knows the true story of what happened on 9/11, the story that the mainstream media have suppressed. A tea-party devotee or two. Someone who believes that yeast is the secret of happiness. People capable of harangues and diatribes, but nobody wants this.

The family liberals smile at the family wingnuts. The vegetarian daughter-in-law produces her tofu loaf, which looks as if a large animal such as a buffalo came by and dropped it hot and steaming on the plate. We don't comment on this. She believes that the treatment of turkeys is a moral blight on America, but she does not say so. The Unitarian cousin listens to the fervent Lutheran prayer and murmurs Amen. The Vikings fans and the Packers fans sit side by side.

It is the dinner of all dinners, generous and comforting and completely predictable, and a true test of civility, and we do it in gratitude for the simple goodness of life. Our consumer society is all about need and craving, and politics is so much about complaint and resentment, and here is a day devoted to something else.

My family gathers in the house that Dad built in 1947, by the fireplace that Great-Uncle Alfred, a stonemason, built when he was 80. He lived to be 90, and whenever you saw him and Aunt Millie, they were holding hands. Joining us will be cousin Dorothy Bacon, who recently told me that my grandfather James, who died before my time, loved to read and even out in the field raking hay with a team of horses he had a book in his hand; that he was often seen kissing Grandma; and that every night, until he was very old, he carried her in his arms up the stairs to bed. Good to know these things.

In my day, we went outdoors after dessert and ran off our dinner and when it was dark, were allowed back in the house, and we flopped down on the floor and listened to Uncle Lew tell about the night their house burned down in Charles City, Iowa, and afterward watched "The Bell Telephone Hour" on television with Robert Merrill and Patrice Munsel singing "Dear Hearts and Gentle People," and then a horn honked in the driveway and my sister came down from upstairs where she'd been primping in the bathroom and Mother said, "Tell him he has to come inside and pick you up, he can't sit in the car and honk." And so the boy came in. Sheepish, tongue-tied, hair oiled and swirled around on top, he stood as close to the door as possible and we inspected him as a potential relative and thought, "Naw. She could do better."

I remember the urgency of that horn honking. It meant that Thanksgiving was over. The family that had gathered in a tight circle around the feast of tubers and turkey was now breaking up, in search of something finer. The call of the grown-up life. We all hear the honk and run away in hopes of finding a major romance and adventure and grandeur, and good luck with that, and meanwhile, life is good. Be grateful for it.

Garrison Keillor's column is distributed by Tribune Media Services.

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John Rash: The real news war

John Rash| Nov 25, 2009 at 06:06 PM

Fox News vs. MSNBC. The Drudge Report vs. the Huffington Post. Rush Limbaugh vs. Air America. These and other verbal skirmishes between news organizations often become big news in America.

In the process, however, they often drown out the real war against the press taking place in all corners of the globe. The latest occurred in the Philippines, where 18 Filipino journalists were among the 57 people massacred Monday in election violence.

Just hours after confirming that grisly news, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) held its annual International Press Freedom Awards ceremony. The host, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, appealed to the audience to dig deep for the CPJ’s global assistance fund, with some money slated for the families of the slain Filipino reporters.

Then the CPJ honored four journalists who, like their Filipino counterparts, often put their lives on the line in order to report the news.

One of the recipients, Mustafa Haji Abdinur, the Somali correspondent for Agence France-Presse and editor-in-chief of Radio Simba, an independent station, lamented that six journalists have already been killed in his country this year. Worldwide, CPJ had documented that even before the news from the Phillippines, 35 journalists have been killed this year, and 762 since the organization began tracking in 1992. And most murders of reporters are done with impunity; CPJ estimates that 88 percent are unsolved.

Other worthy honorees included Tunisia’s Naziha Rejiba, editor of the independent online news journal Kalima, whose harassment by the government included repeated police interrogations, phone monitoring and constant surveillance.

The other two award winners, Eynulla Fatullayev of Azerbaijan and J.S. Tissainayagam of Sri Lanka, could not accept. They’re in prison, just like 279 reporters worldwide, according to Reporters Without Borders, another international press advocacy organization.

Somalia’s Abdinur, in putting the war against the press in perspective, unwittingly confirmed how trivial America’s “press wars” are when he said “Friends, if a journalist is killed the news is also killed. We need your support now more than ever. Please don’t forget us.”

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Editorial: St. Paul makes wise hometown pick

Nov 25, 2009 at 04:57 PM

Valeria Silva

The community spoke, and the St. Paul school board listened. In veteran staffer Valeria Silva, the school board has selected a leader with city roots who expects to stay put for a while. Those qualifications were important for many citizens in the recent school board election.

Former Superintendent Meria Carstarphen left for a job with the Austin, Texas, schools this summer after only three years in St. Paul. Carstarphen was not known as a collaborative leader, and, earlier this year, a community survey revealed a desire for an open-minded schools chief who listens, understands the city and can improve achievement while building relationships.

In many ways, Silva, who was named to the top job Monday, fits the bill. During a Tuesday interview, she discussed the importance of longevity. National research, she says, shows that urban districts with long-term superintendents make greater student achievement gains. She wants to build that kind of record.

Silva also has shown she has the skills and sensibilities that should serve the district well. Her life story is American Dream material.

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St. Cloud Times: The Legacy Amendment: Any regrets?

FROM AN EDITORIAL IN THE ST. CLOUD TIMES| Nov 25, 2009 at 04:58 PM

Photo by New York Times

A scene from the 2008 election, when Minnesota voters agreed to raise the state sales tax to fund environmental, cultural and arts projects.

A lack of accountability to voters, a lack of details and constitutional paralysis on putting public dollars where they may be needed most -- for these and many reasons, we've long taken issue with Minnesota's Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment.

Most Minnesota voters, though, thought otherwise in 2008 and agreed to raise the state sales tax one-eighth of a percent for 25 years so that $11 billion could be raised and spent on environmental, cultural and arts projects.

Now that the first returns on those investments are starting to come in, we can't help wondering how many Minnesotans might be having second thoughts about this amendment.

Look no further than a recent St. Cloud Times news report about Legacy Amendment funds for KVSC-FM -- the campus radio station at St. Cloud State University -- and grants from the Central Minnesota Arts Board.

KVSC stands to get up to $238,000 by the middle of 2011 from the tax. Among the uses: adding staff, improving and expanding its Web presence, expanding signal strength and providing live coverage of events as far away as Canada.

At a time when college students face rising tuitions, universities have endless lists of building projects, and faculty and staff face pay freezes, is this really the best use of $238,000 of public money?

33 Comments

The value of college, by degrees

BILL MAXWELL| Nov 25, 2009 at 04:57 PM

Americans are attending college in record numbers. According to a Pew Research Center study, 11.3 million Americans ages 18 to 24 attended college in 2008, continuing an upward trend that began 30 years ago.

Now, because of the deep economic downturn, high student debt, the failure of many students to graduate in four years and President Obama's call for every American to get at least one year of higher education or vocational training, many old and new issues are being hotly debated.

A growing number of outspoken education experts are arguing that too many young people are attending college.

The Chronicle Review, a publication of the Chronicle of Higher Education, asked nine higher education experts, liberals and conservatives, to respond to questions. The two I found most challenging were these:

•"Who should and shouldn't go to college?"

•"Do we have a moral obligation as a society to work to send as many students as we can to college?"

Predictably, conservative and liberal experts answered differently. But this is a healthy debate.

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Health care bill is politics (as usual)

DOYLE McMANUS| Nov 25, 2009 at 05:14 PM

As the Senate tackles the health care bill that may be its most important domestic legislation in a generation, you might have expected thousands of citizens to descend on Capitol Hill to demonstrate, for or against. But the important parts of this debate have moved into the Senate's back rooms.

The great health care debate hasn't been a triumph of mass politics on either side. Congress isn't being stampeded by the public -- and it's not being stopped by the public, either.

Instead, the debate has turned out to be a battle of old-fashioned special interests and parochialism. The most important players have been the insurance industry, the American Medical Association, labor unions and AARP, the senior citizens lobby. As for parochialism, last week's most blatant action may have been Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's insertion into the bill of a $100 million Medicaid bonus for Louisiana, whose senior senator, Mary Landrieu, has been one of the holdouts.

One reason for this resurgence of backroom politics is simple: Polls show the public to be fairly evenly divided on health care reform and understandably confused by its details.

In modern American politics, with its professional lobbyists and millions of dollars in campaign advertising, public opinion isn't always the most important thing.

"Winning public opinion is not the secret of legislative success," said Lawrence R. Jacobs of the University of Minnesota's Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs. "You want to hold your own in the court of public opinion, sure. But members of Congress have to worry more about what interest groups are going to do."

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