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Our View
Pope is best kind of leader, using humility, kindness, wisdom Just before the election of President John F. Kennedy in 1960, there were jokes and even some ridiculous worries that since Kennedy was a Catholic, the pope in Rome was packing his bags to move to the United States and take over the country. Last week, one could almost think it had actually happened – that the pope had “taken over.” He actually did for a time. He captivated everyone he met; he inspired and moved millions of Americans of every walk of life; he gave a spiritual “pep talk” to the U.S. Congress; he showed that humility, kindness and wisdom should be the qualities of a great leader – not weapons, threats and cruelty. What is most remarkable about the pope’s visit is how he kept underlining, through his actions, the essence of the gospel messages about helping the poor, the dispossessed, the outcasts, the marginalized. Pope Francis met with homeless people, with immigrants, with school children in East Harlem, with victims of sexual abuse by Catholic clergy, with prisoners. All through his American trip, again and again, he emphasized the gospel message, which is basically the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” His many talks were powerful and convincing in their quiet and simple ways. He did not harangue people; he did not politicize issues; he did not use ornate word constructions; he spoke very simply, using down-to-earth language, right from his heart. There are an estimated 70 million Catholics in the United States, but Pope Francis reached and moved many more people than Catholics. His messages are truly universal ones that have the power to touch a chord in everyone, no matter what their religion or lack of religion. He even moved many people in the U.S. Congress to tears. What a spiritual feat that was. Wouldn’t it be grand if Pope Francis could make a similar trip to Russia, to Iraq, to Iran, to North Korea, to Syria. There are many tyrants, monsters and terrorists living in those places who need to hear the pope’s message of kindness and love for others. As is the case with ISIS, however, such people bent on cruelty and destruction are almost certainly tone-deaf to any messages promoting decency and kindness. It would take more than the pope – and more than a few miracles – to get through to such rocky hearts and stony minds. It’s a shame. But, in the meantime, we can certainly hope the pope keeps traveling, inspiring with his messages, being an example of simplicity, humility and good works. Maybe – just maybe – some kind of miracle will take place, and the pope’s deeply human messages will catch on and touch hearts and minds in the most unlikely places.
The ideas expressed in the letters to the editor and of the guest columnists do not necessarily reflect the views of the Newsleaders.
Friday, Oct. 2, 2015
Opinion Long live the Paramount Theater! I was born a diehard movie buff. When we were kids in the 1950s, going to the Paramount Theater was like dying and going to heaven, over and over again. My two sisters, three brothers and I were St. Cloud southsiders who grew up just west of the college. We would walk the mile to that theater at least once a week in all weathers, our quarters, dimes and nickels jingling in our pockets, our eager minds anticipating the excitement of a big-screen spectacle while munching popcorn and slurping on boxes of Jujy Fruits, Junior Mints and Black Crows. Before the films began, we pint-sized movie addicts would sit there in our seats squirming with anticipation. Then, at last, the lights would begin to dim in two oval chandeliers, the curtain would begin to open and we’d hear the roar of the MGM lion or the trumpet-blaring flourish of 20th Century Fox just before the movie started. We would be thrilled beyond words. Many a Sunday, after sitting through catechism classes at St. Mary’s (or, just as often, while playing hooky from catechism), we’d rush over to the Paramount and watch the same matinee over and over all day, sometimes three times in a row. When we were very young brats, our favorites were westerns, war movies and sword-fighting spectacles – the bloodier the better. Later, I began to enjoy more sophisticated pictures, especially those spellbinding Alfred Hitchcock movies, which always came to the Paramount, not the other two theaters in St. Cloud – the Hays and the Eastman. To this day, a half century later, Hitchcock is my favorite movie director. I still associate his movies with the Paramount Theater because that’s where I first saw some of his very best – To Catch a Thief (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), Vertigo (1958), North by
Dennis Dalman Editor Northwest (1959) and Psycho (1960). After seeing Vertigo, the eerie images and soundtrack from that movie haunted my mind like ghosts for weeks, and I begged everybody I knew to go see it. At the time, it was considered a critical flop, but I knew, young as I was, that it was a genuine masterpiece. It remains to this day, after so many viewings, at the top of my Top-10 movie list. Every time I’ve seen Vertigo on video or CD, my experience of viewing it in the Paramount is still palpable. That theater with its drafty popcorn aroma is indelibly entwined in memory with that movie – and so many others. It’s the same with Psycho, that other macabre work of art from the Master. I saw it in the Paramount with my cousin from Benson, Mary Lou O’Malley. What a stunner it was. And what spooky ambience, what with a couple actual bats flying through the flickering darkened air above us. Yes, indeed. In those days, sometimes bats did fly and flutter in that theater. Nearly 40 years after Psycho first shocked and thrilled me, I saw it again – lo and behold – right in the Paramount again during a special showing. After seeing it on video many times on TV, what a treat it was to view that moody classic again digitally projected on the great big screen in the very place I’d first seen it. From the early 1950s through the 1980s,
I must have seen at least 500 movies at the Paramount, which is the greatest movie palace of all time, as far as I’m concerned. Its plush ornamental elegance, its glimmering chandeliers, its lacey filigreed ceiling, its scalloped balconies hanging there as if by some magic levitation made the moviegoing experience extra-special. In the 1950s, so long ago, the Paramount’s magnificent grandeur and its big colorful movies were special treats because back home, all we had for viewing pleasure were clunky TVs whose picture screens looked like ship’s portholes through which we could see rather fuzzy images floating around in a hissing snowstorm caused by bad-signal reception. The Paramount, in contrast, was the Real Thing: Technicolor! CinemaScope! Bigger than Life! Thrilling! Some of the classic movies I first saw in the Paramount and still associate with my experience of them in that wonderful theater are Old Yeller, Swiss Family Robinson, The Searchers, The Bridge on the River Kwai, Some Like It Hot, Summer and Smoke, The Godfather, Chinatown and so many more, too many to mention. When I returned to St. Cloud in the late 1990s, I was astonished one day when I walked into the Paramount for an art exhibit and beheld that theater’s magnificent restoration, of which I’d been unaware, having lived elsewhere for years. I’d assumed it was still a decrepit shadow of its former glory. Words cannot express my amazement upon seeing that restoration, and it still astonishes me every time I enter that theater, which in my memory and even now is one of the happiest places of my long life. Its restoration is like a vivid dream revived. Long live the Paramount!
Letter to editor
Reader responds to ‘Cookie-aisle screechers need spanking’ Nicole Gertken, Rice As a mother, I was disgusted by Dennis Dalman’s Sept. 18 column “Cookie-aisle screechers need spanking.” I was really angry when I finished reading this column, really angry, and not for the reason you are probably thinking. I don’t think it’s criminal to spank your child, but what I think is distasteful are the inappropriate comments and harsh judgments made on a woman for not smacking her kid in a public place. I feel sorry for her, for two reasons.
First, because like many others my child is not perfect. I understand. I have been there. Even my mild-tempered daughter can throw a fit in a public place, causing me great embarrassment. The second reason I feel sorry for the verbally brutalized woman in the column is, she was stuck in a no-win situation. She was criticized by Dalman for not disciplining her future “delinquent,” but if she had spanked him in the store she would have received the same criticism or worse. Maybe next time instead of asking if she
needed an exorcist, a simple “hang in there, mom, we’ve all been there” could have been offered. It probably would have made her more comfortable in an embarrassing situation than the cold stares and nasty words from the stranger that was unfairly judging her. I may not be speaking for all moms but in my opinion we put enough pressure on ourselves to be good parents and raise our kids right. We do not need the “advice” of a stranger who witnessed a single situation when we were not at our best.
Amidst turmoil, I have good news If you turn on your TV set you are going to hear bad news. If you read your newspaper, you are going to read of bad news. If you listen to the radio, there is nothing but bad news. The Stock Market is in the toilet. ISIS is taking over the world and it’s just a matter of time until they are here and killing innocent Americans in the streets. The Iranians are soon going to have nuclear weapons and they are going to use them on us. Young people have lost all respect for authority, especially police authority, and they are running wild. Soon, very soon, our country will be eliminated from the earth by, your choice, global warming, bird flu, AIDS, the Russians, the Chinese, highfructose corn syrup or anything else you can imagine. Just fill in the blank. Most of this frightening stuff is designed to sell TV time, newspapers and radio commercials. But I have good news. We, all of us, are part of a great experiment that got its start more than 200 years ago. A relatively small group of fed-up individuals decided they would throw off the oppression of a foreign government and rebel. They decided they would take up arms and defend their new homeland. They wrote a constitution that was their law and they created a new country. That country was and is
Ron Scarbro Guest Writer America. They knew what they were doing was dangerous. They knew if they were caught by the oppressive government, they would be executed. But they also knew what they were working for was worth the sacrifice. These were strong people. These were courageous people. These were daring people. Sure there were some doubts. I am positive many never really thought they could pull it off. Some even probably stayed out of the fight and left it for others. Let me tell you also there was bloodshed. Many were killed in the effort to establish this new country. Most, fortunately, survived. They went on to establish America and make this country the most powerful force for good in the world. I said I had good news. Well I have even better news. The blood that flowed through the
veins of those early patriots still flows today in the generations which have followed. The daring and the courage that caused this great nation’s beginning is just waiting to be called on again. There is no people, no government and no army which would have a chance of defeating this country. And the world knows it. The blood of the early ones has been diluted to be sure. Some think it has disappeared. Don’t you believe it. It has been strengthened by the challenges of two world wars. It has been made stronger by immigrants who fled their own oppression to live free. Diverse races and ethnicities have come together to make a stronger America. We know some have come here with the goal in mind of destroying us. We know some have come here in an effort to create the same cesspool from which they escaped. But what we also know, and they have yet to learn, is they will fail. They will fail as others have in the past. The fire of revolution that burned in the bellies of our forefathers burns yet today in the hearts of their offspring. “Don’t Tread On Me” continues to be our motto, and that should be a word to any who think they have a chance against us. Don’t even try it. You have no idea what awaits you.