“Rapidan Dam” Wikipedia (“This article documents a current event. Information may change rapidly as the event progresses….”)
From that NBC piece:
“…An Xcel Energy substation at the dam, which supplies power to about 600 customers, was washed away early Monday. The utility company said its crews were working to replace the destroyed substation and restore power….” (“Rapidan Dam in Minnesota is in ‘imminent failure condition,’ officials warn” Doha Madani, NBC News (June 24, 2024))
That dam is very roughly five miles southwest of Mankato, Minnesota – about two and a half hours south and a little east of the town I live in.
That’s not the only place in Minnesota with flooding problems this week. This spring was the first time in two years that no place in Minnesota was experiencing a drought. That’s good news, but the flooding isn’t.
It’s been a warm, very warm, summer day here; with a slight chance of severe weather tonight. (That’s Monday night, June 24, 2024.)
Here in central Minnesota, that’s rather routine. I’m keeping an eye on the weather anyway. The house is on high ground, here in Sauk Centre. But — there was a storm a few years back, when part of a car dealership landed across the street, so situational awareness is a good idea.
That’s all I’ve got for now: just a quick look at regional news that’s also international news.
More than six decades later: new buildings, new snowfall, old memories. (February 2022)
Most of the neighborhood I grew up in is now a parking lot.
But Prairie Home Cemetery, a block west of the house I grew up in, is still there. I mostly remember it as being next to the sledding hill.
My father and I went by, or maybe through, the cemetery on our way to the ‘hill’.
The sledding hill wasn’t, technically, a hill.
It was part of a coulee going through the southwest corner of Prairie Home Cemetery. Or, rather, it was part of what had been a coulee.
There must have been a culvert under 8th Street South, since the coulee continued through Concordia College. All that’s left of that part is “Prexy’s Pond”, and a bridge over a lower-than-average stretch of lawn.
There’s another trace of that coulee; although I haven’t seen it mentioned. It was in a small home’s back yard, near the corner of 9th Street South and 10th Avenue South.
It’s still there. Or was, at any rate, in February of 2022, when Google Street View recorded that particular part of south Moorhead.
I probably wouldn’t have noticed it, back when I lived nearby: but Moorhead is in the Red River Valley. That’s one of the flattest expanses of land on Earth.1Any dip will stand out.
Flexible Flyer and Winter Clothing
Anyway, my Dad and I, along with a number of other kids and adults, would slide down the east side of the coulee.
Actually, the kids did nearly all the sliding.
This would have been around 1960, so the sleds would have been like the Flexible Flyer in that illustration. It’s from a book published in 1922, but the design hadn’t changed much. Still hasn’t.
These days, most sleds I see in Walmart are those plastic things with ridges running along the bottom.
I can see advantages to the new design. For one thing, they’ll probably slide along surfaces that’d have stopped my old sled. As I recall, snow had to be fairly firm.
On the other hand, they don’t look particularly steerable. Which the Flexible Flyer was, at least in principle. I don’t remember my sled being very maneuverable, but maybe my expectations were too high.
In any case, a quick online check tells me that Paricon Sleds still makes “Classic Sleds”. So someone, somewhere, has probably written about the pros and cons of old-school Flexible Flyers and today’s plastic sliders.
Now that I think of it, I’m not sure how accurate that 1922 picture is. The book starts on a “cold morning in March”, but I don’t know where. If it’s where the author grew up, east of Niagara Falls, that cold morning’s day might have stayed below freezing.
But I grew up in Moorhead, Minnesota, where it was not quite ten degrees (Fahrenheit) colder that time of year. On average.2 Going sledding with a light cap on my head, short pants, and no mittens, was not a reasonable alternative.
Memories and a Legacy
Moorhead State’s gate: The trees are bigger, the paving fancier, than when I lived near there. (October 2011)
I don’t know how often my Dad and I went to the sledding hill.
I do remember what it was like: cold, bright, a swift ride down to the coulee’s bottom, a slow trudge back up, pulling the sled behind me. Then back on the sled and down again.
I learned that leaving my mittened hands on the runners wasn’t a good idea.
It was my left hand that slipped down from the runner’s leading curve, caught on the snow and shot back; throwing me off-balance. I wasn’t hurt, but feeling my weight pressing the runner onto my hand wasn’t pleasant.
I don’t remember how we decided it was time to go back home. Or even what time of day it typically was. Probably afternoon. And probably determined by my father’s noticing how cold he was getting.
But home we went, at least once stopping to look at some of the stone markers in Prairie Home Cemetery. I’m not sure why my Dad did that. My guess is that it’s because he had my ‘interested in everything and anything’ attitude.
No. It’s the other way around.
I have his ‘interested in anything and everything’ attitude.
As legacies go, that’s a pretty good one. I hope I’ve passed at least some of it on to my kids.
Children, Dreams, and Choices
Encouraging my kids to pay attention to the wonders around us, and think, is one thing.
Insisting that they be just like me, or achieve something I wanted to do, that’s another: and not a good idea.
Imprudent parental pressure was highlighted with a light touch in a Phineas and Ferb episode:
“…You, Monty Monogram, don’t have to give up my dream of becoming an acrobat….” (“Minor Monogram” / Transcript (2012) via Phineas and Ferb, fandom.com)
One of the many things I like about being Catholic is that what the Church says makes sense. Like how to be part of a family. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1601-1617, 1633-1637, 1914, 2197-2206, 2214-2233, 2366ff, and more)
The ‘you can fulfill my dream’ option for raising kids is not part of the package.
Part of my job as their parent is teaching them about our faith. (Catechism, 2226)
Books have been written about that. Today I’ll just say that telling my kids what I believe and why I believe mattered, and matters. So did, and does, acting like I think it matters.
Another angle is — was in my case, the kids are long since grown — seeing to it that our children learn what’s needed in today’s world. And then, once they’re adults, letting them decide what they do with what they’ve learned. (Catechism, 2229-2231)
In the case of our kids, “letting” them was a given. Each, in his or her own way, is as stubborn as their mother and I are. “Strong-willed” might be a nicer way of saying it.
Happily, neither my wife nor I had a family tradition of following some specific career.
As adults, each of the kids have “the right and duty to choose their profession and state of life.” (Catechism, 2230)
One of them opted for being married, the other three surviving kids haven’t. Either way, this is okay. (Catechism, 2231)
Giving them “judicious advice” has been part of my job. (Catechism, 2230)
Success and Vocations
Insisting that our children have a “successful career”, or conform to some other societal standard: that was not a priority.
I spent my teens in the Sixties; and retain a lack of enthusiasm for spending money I don’t have, to buy stuff I don’t need, to impress people I don’t like.
Misgivings about being “successful” didn’t start in the Sixties:
“I’ve got my standards. ‘I’ll lie, cheat, steal for this company…’ but I will not give up my integrity. I feel that a man is of value to the organization as long as he…” “Brigadoon” (1954) (via springfieldspringfield.co.uk))
And that’s another topic.
A few more points, and I’m (almost) done for this week.
Having kids can be a good idea. But not having kids — sometimes that happens. Which is why we’re told that adoption can be a good idea. (Catechism, 2366-2379)
It should be obvious, but we’re also told that children are people, not property. (Catechism, 2378)
Each of us — single, married, in religious life — has a vocation. Mine is being part of the laity, and being married. Which reminds me. It’s been a while since I defined “vocation” in this context:
“Vocation: The calling or destiny we have in this life and hereafter. God has created the human person to love and serve him; the fulfillment of this vocation is eternal happiness (1, 358,1700). Christ calls the faithful to the perfection of holiness (825). The vocation of the laity consists in seeking the Kingdom of God by engaging in temporal affairs and directing them according to God’s will (898). Priestly and religious vocations are dedicated to the service of the Church as the universal sacrament of salvation (cf. CCC 873; 931).” (Glossary, Catechism of the Catholic Church)
Good Memories
Our kids won’t have Dad taking them sledding as childhood memories.
But they’ve got story time in the attic to remember, and — I hope — other good memories.
Sledding (“This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.” — My guess, this is one of those activities ‘everybody knows about’, so few write about it: and, ages later, scholars will go nuts, trying to work out how folks lived in this era. 😉 )
Eager readers and “Appeals to Passion”, “Venom”, “Sensationalism”, ” Strife”…. (1910)
“It’s fair to say that if news sites were people, most would be diagnosed as clinically depressed right now.” (“I stopped reading the news. Is the problem me — or the product?”, Amanda Ripley, Washington Post (July 8, 2022) via Wikiquote)
A comic strip started me thinking about the news, fearmongering, viewpoints, and weird groupings from Google News. I’ll be talking about that: along with rich folks, free speech, and whatever else comes to mind.
Free Speech, a Slogan, Journalism, and a (Very) Little History
I’ll give editors of Pulitzer’s The World credit for some restraint.
They put a question mark at the end of their February 17, 1898 headline: “Maine Explosion Caused by Bomb or Torpedo?”
That left readers left to ponder whether the question was whether (A) the explosion was caused by either a bomb or a torpedo — or (B) the Maine’s captain and “other experts” might be wrong.
Time passed. Experts who weren’t anonymous analyzed evidence from the Maine’s wreckage. Journalists working for Pulitzer and Hearst moved on to other juicy stories.
And some of the American public began thinking about “appeals to passion” and “sensationalism” illustrated in that “Yellow Journalism” cartoon by Louis M. Glackens.
Somewhere along the line, journalists and editors started being ‘objective’ and ‘unbiased’. Which is why today’s purported articles covering alleged atrocities carefully avoid emulating yesteryear’s gimmicks.
Leading the way, The New York Times adopted “All the News That’s Fit to Print” as their slogan in 1897.1 And, since The New York Times is one of America’s newspapers of record, that slogan must be true. According to The New York Times.
I’ll admit to a bias.
I strongly suspect that many, maybe most, folks see the world through their own eyes: myself included. But I also think that reality is real, no matter how I feel about it.
“The Yellow Press”, Mayor Gaynor’s Letter, and Viewpoints: Including Mine
I think that it’s much easier to see deviations from unbiasedness when it’s ‘one of those people over there’: and not ‘that good person who is one of us’.
I’ve been blessed with a life in which I often lived and worked among folks who didn’t see the world the way I did. That’s partly because of the way my brain is wired — and that’s another topic.
The point is that thanks partly to my eclectic interests and a checkered — kaleidoscopic — assortment of jobs, I’ve learned that folks whose views don’t square with mine aren’t “scoundrels”, or “without souls”. The latter is impossible — and yet another topic.
That said, I do sympathize with Mayor William Jay Gaynor. Partly because he’s Irish-American, mostly because I strongly suspect that he earned his reputation as a reformer.2
“The time is at hand when these journalistic scoundrels have got to stop or get out, and I am ready now to do my share to that end. They are absolutely without souls. If decent people would refuse to look at such newspapers the whole thing would right itself at once. The journalism of New York City has been dragged to the lowest depths of degradation. The grossest railleries and libels, instead of honest statements and fair discussion, have gone unchecked.” — From Mayor Gaynor’s letter published in the New York Evening Post.” (Quoted in Louis M. Glackens’ “The Yellow Press” cartoon. Puck. (October 12, 1910))
Freedom of Speech, Lèse-Majesté, and “The Apotheosis of Washington”
Detail, Constantino Brumidi’s “The Apotheosis of Washington”, U.S. Capitol rotunda. (1865)
There is a balance, somewhere, between Brumidi’s “The Apotheosis of Washington” and Richard Newton’s “Treason!!!” cartoon.
About “Apotheosis”, I’m pretty sure that 19th century Americans didn’t really believe that their beloved former president had taken his rightful place among the gods.
But the implicit beliefs of rabidly-religious and patriotic radio preachers of my youth weren’t far from it.
The central figure in that cartoon, the one exercising free — speech? — is “Mr Bull”, AKA John Bull, personification of the United Kingdom, the common man, liberty, or something else: depending on which era you’re looking at. The target of John Bull’s disrespect was George III.
King George had been, no question, nutty as walnut pie. What his problem was: that’s been, and still is, debated and debatable.
Now, about Mr. Bull’s apparent rejection of the king’s authority.
Since I’m a Catholic, categorically dissing someone in authority the way Mr Bull did isn’t an option. But mooning a king isn’t the problem. Not specifically at any rate.
Societies need folks with authority, legitimate authority. I’m obliged to show respect for the folks in charge. Those authorities should, in turn, show respect for the basic rights of the human person. (Catechism of the Catholic Church, 1897-1904, 1907, 1929-1933, and more)
So much for how things should work.
Lèse-majesté, criminalizing lack of respect for a country’s leadership, goes back millennia. The phrase, and our version of the idea, started in the Roman Republic.
Like pretty much everything else involving people, it’s complicated.
America’s had versions of lèse-majesté, starting with the 1789 Sedition Act. So far, they haven’t lasted more than a decade or so each. They all looked good on paper, but grated on my country’s notion that freedom of speech matters.3
By the Pricking of my Thumbs, Something Freaky This Way Comes
From “My Topics”, Google News Feed: “Space”, “Physics”, “Robotics”. (May 27, 2024)
I check my Google News feed a few times each day.
Toward the end of May, parts of the “My Topics” section got — intermittently weird.
I’m pretty sure I was seeing Google’s nifty new AI at work, but I can’t be sure.
Most of the articles I found focused more on Google’s embarrassingly wacky search AI.
I’ve been noticing the new-and-improved Google AI-generated answers in my Google search results — which occasionally give me useful words and phrases.
On the other hand, I now have to do a little more scrolling before getting to less ‘curated’ results. So it isn’t either gain or loss for me: just another change in routines.
Folks my age are, I gather, supposed to be averse to change. There’s something to that stereotype. I do like my routines.
But — I was born during the Truman administration, and have been paying attention.
Technologies, social standards, and political slogans have shifted. This is not the world I grew up in.
So for me, change has lost much of its shock value.
Google News and ‘Physics’
Whatever was — and is — behind the weirdness in Google News and Google Search, it’s not blocking me from information I want.
And I like to think that most folks are savvy enough to realize that the following aren’t physics topics —
Biden’s Memorial Day remarks
Yet another professional athlete getting sued for sexual assault
The current Trump trial
Two showbiz stories about The Boys
Something creepy about Nicolas Cage
But — there’s that lawyer who didn’t notice, when ChatGPT gave him alternatively-accurate information.
As I keep saying, we humans have big brains. But we also have free will, so using our brains is not automatic.
As for AI : I think the new technology will affect all of us, one way or another.
But I don’t think we’re doomed.
Some of us will either learn new skills or find new jobs. Or do both.
I sure don’t think we’ll be facing a Forbin Project scenario.
Even assuming that an AI ‘woke up’ and decided to take over the world —
I can see it now: Our Hero, defiant to the last, comes face to keyboard with the maniacally malevolent mechanical mastermind. And the Dread Digital Despot says:
“Puny human! Bow and cringe before the awesome might of my FILE NOT FOUND!”
“…You don’t have to talk. This large person is making socialists faster than you can make them!” (1911)
In my youth, very few folks were at or near the top of the socioeconomic ladder.
That’s still true. Obviously.
Complaints that the top one percent have too much wealth may be justified. Or not.
Someone on a late-night talk show, decades back, said that “enough” wealth was 20 percent more than what you have at the moment. Whether or not that’s backed up by verifiable research: it sounds about right.
With election-year hoopla in progress, fear of “centralized wealth” is an almost-inevitable talking point.
There’s some reason for that fear. Wealth, or poverty, doesn’t guarantee virtue. And rich folks have options that others don’t: including deciding what their newspaper, magazine, or studio churns out.
But I don’t think wealth, or poverty, guarantees vice, either. It just affects our options.
I was going someplace with this. Let me think.
Free speech. Viewpoints. Headlines and using our brains. Right.
Wealth, Averages, and Attitudes
Granted that having too much of a society’s wealth controlled by too few folks could be a problem: I haven’t been bothered by knowledge that my boss was wealthier than I was.
Now that I’m retired, it’s a moot point, and that’s yet again another topic.
Back in the day, I wanted the boss to be stinking rich: so that there’d be enough left over to cover my paycheck.
That principle would have applied, even if I had worked for some corporation. Again, having too much wealth controlled by too few people can be a problem.
And sometimes just having wealth is a problem. Or seems to be.
“…We hear all the time about the ‘lifestyles of the rich and famous’. Today, on April 1st, let’s look at some lifestyles of the rich and foolish….
“…Over a period of fifteen years, Cage earned more than $150 million. He blew through that money buying things like:
Fifteen homes, including an $8 million English castle that he never stayed in once.
A private island.
Four luxury yachts.
A fleet of exotic cars, including a Lamborghini that used to belong to the Shah of Iran.
A dinosaur skull he won after a bidding contest with Leonardo DiCaprio.
A private jet.
“It’s not fair to characterize Cage as ‘broke’ — he’s still a bankable movie star — but his net worth is reportedly only about $25 million. (That’s like someone with an average income having a net worth of roughly $25,000.) He could be worth ten times as much but his foolish financial habits have caused him woe….”
I don’t know what that article’s “average income” is. Statistically speaking, “average”, “mean”, and “median” — have several meanings.
A quick glance at American personal and household incomes — that’s still more topics — told me that the ‘average’ American who’s working full-time earns around $60,000 a year. And the ‘average’ household pulls in around $70,000 a year.5
That’s something like double what I ever took home. But I’m part of a wonderful family, we have a roof over our heads, and food in the pantry: so I’m a happy camper.
Besides, I’ve had more than my fill of moral panic and election-year antics.
“Moral Panic” and Making Sense
Speaking of which, seems that the phrase “moral panic” popped up in 1830.
Marshall McLuhan discussed today’s idea of “moral panic” in 1964. The phrase got linked with today’s academic definition of the term — a widespread fear of someone or something — a few years later.
As defined, I think moral panic is a legitimate academic topic.
As perceived, I can sympathize with folks who see McCarthyism, old-school witch-hunts, and being religious, as typical symptoms of moral panic. My teens and the Sixties overlap, and the era’s rabid radio preachers impressed me: a lot.
They also helped start me on a path that eventually led to me becoming a Catholic: which was emphatically not what they were preaching.
Wrenching myself back on-topic — spotting (irrational) moral panic in ‘those people over there’, folks who don’t agree with me on matters of musical taste and pantsuits, is easy.
Noticing when someone who’s on the same page as I am — or in the same chapter, at any rate — stops making sense: that can get tricky.
But it’s important. Partly because I’ve got enough problems without adding screwball beliefs to the mix. And partly because I’m a Catholic. So at the very least, I should avoid making my religious beliefs look like a threat to society.
“…The lay calling has different duties, the supreme knight noted, but the duty to evangelize is particularly crucial today. ‘All of us are called to be missionaries in a society that often views religion, at best, as a matter of private opinion — or at worst, as an enemy of the public good,’ he said. ‘This requires that we live out our mission constantly … at all times, in all places, and to all the people we meet.” (“Supreme Knight Addresses John Carroll Society”, Columbia Magazine (May 1, 2024)) [emphasis mine]
Happily, my (reluctant) decision to become a Catholic was based on what I thought about facts I’d learned. Not how I felt.
If I’m going to believe something, it has to make sense. No matter how I’m feeling at the moment.6
It’s like an atheist-turned-Catholic said:
“… If Vulcans had a church, they’d be Catholics.” (John C. Wright, johncwright.livejournal.com (March 21 2008))
Finally, the comic strip that got me started with this week’s post, and a few points I wanted to make.
“Today in the News….”
“…I’m starting to get how this works.” Wizard of Id. (June 8, 2024)
I don’t know if fearmongering is becoming more common in America’s news.
I do know that I didn’t watch the evening news for a few months, back in the 1970s. Couldn’t, actually. When I had access to a television again, I noticed how the pacing, images, vocal delivery, and other factors were affecting my emotions.
That’s when I stopped watching the evening news. I’m a very emotional man, and getting those feelings revved up seemed like a bad idea. Particularly since they were interfering with my thinking about whatever truth might be in the dramatic accounts.
And that gets me to truth and beauty.
Truth is important. So is beauty. We’re surrounded by beauty and wonders. Paying attention can lead us to God, if we’re doing it right. (Catechism, 32-33, 283, 341, 2500)
News and communications media in general should serve the common good with “information based on truth, freedom, justice, and solidarity”. (Catechism 2492-2499, particularly 2494)
I emphatically do not want America’s news networks to start implying that Catholics are always right, and that the Catholic Church can do no wrong.
That would not be truthful. We’ve been around for two millennia. During that time, some of us have set a bad example. Including folks who should have known better.
And I sure don’t want a return to the “good old days” when “presidents” were getting their weapons from us, while “dictators” were getting theirs from the Soviet Union.
I would prefer seeing more straightforward reporting, less fearmongering, and even less partisan labeling.
I can’t do anything about news media’s editorial preferences.
But I can keep an eye on my own habits, do what I can to support “truth, freedom, justice, and solidarity”: and remember that my neighbors aren’t just the folks who agree with me.
Good Advice, Actually
“…Trust me. They needed it.” Wizard of Id. (May 20, 2024)
I don’t seek wisdom in the comics. But now and then I see something that makes sense. Like that Wizard of Id strip from the second to the last Monday in May.
I won’t try pretending that all’s right with the world. It’s not.
But I won’t do myself, or others, any good by fretting or fuming.
So breathing in, breathing out, and just sitting still for a second, might be a good idea: now and then, at least.
In any case, I don’t particularly enjoy feeling afraid, or angry, or distressed.
And I’ve found that thinking about those problems I can actually do something about is easier when I’m not overwrought.
In case you still haven’t had your fill of my writing, here’s more:
The End of Civilization as We Know It (“…If I thought post-1967 America was a golden age, I’d probably be angsty about current events. I’d be more apprehensive if I thought it really was the best humanity can do….” )
“Fifty years after a tornado warning led to the abrupt cancellation of a high school graduation for students in Moore, Oklahoma, the class of 1974 has finally walked across stage to receive diplomas….
“…The event 50 years ago was never rescheduled, and for years the class of 500 pupils had discussed the idea of holding a formal graduation ceremony for themselves….”
At the time, there were reasons for not rescheduling the event. And the lack of a ceremony didn’t affect their graduation: I gather that the students picked up their diplomas later, in the school gymnasium.
Even so, ceremonies matter. Which I figure is why the class of 1974 finally got their graduation day: and another class, whose graduation ceremony would have happened early in the COVID-19 pandemic, had their own belated commencement exercise.
Something new each Saturday.
Life, the universe and my circumstances permitting. I'm focusing on 'family stories' at the moment. ("A Change of Pace: Family Stories" (11/23/2024))
Blog - David Torkington
Spiritual theologian, author and speaker, specializing in prayer, Christian spirituality and mystical theology [the kind that makes sense-BHG]
I was born in 1951. I'm a husband, father and grandfather. One of the kids graduated from college in December, 2008, and is helping her husband run businesses and raise my granddaughter; another is a cartoonist and artist; #3 daughter is a writer; my son is developing a digital game with #3 and #1 daughters. I'm also a writer and artist.
I check my Google News feed a few times each day.
Whatever was — and is — behind the weirdness in Google News and Google Search, it’s not blocking me from information I want.
