Category Archives: Minnesota

Anoka County, Art and Culture, Minnesota, Our Land and Home, Politics, Sierra Club

Why I Live Here

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Samhain                                                             Thanksgiving Moon

I have decided, over and over again, to remain here in Minnesota.  Leaving occurs to me from time to time, more often now the direction considered is north, beyond our borders where the politics, health care and weather all seem more sane.  Even with those attractions, and they are considerable, Minnesota and in particular the Twin Cities Metro always trumps any competition.

The arts here are a wonder.  Having the MIA and the Walker in a small market city like Minneapolis doesn’t amaze us, because, after all, they are here.  But it would if you considered them in a national, even international light.  The Guthrie is only the most visible island of a large theatrical archipelago, boasting more seats than any other metro area in the nation outside of New York City.

The St. Paul Chamber Orchestra is a gem.  Again, nationally.  The Minnesota Symphony used to be an internationally renowned organization, as recently as two years ago, before dimbulbs began a series of self-inflicted wounds.  Dance, local rock music, glass and clay arts, printmakers and galleries all thrive here.  Jazz, supported by KBEM of internet renown, flourishes.

There are substantially more dining options now than when I moved here in 1970.  More than Kate and I can visit before they disappear.

Writers in Minnesota consistently publish and make the national book news.  The Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the Loft provide outside academia support for the literary community.

Healthcare is as good as it gets. Anywhere.  Hawaii and Minnesota are tops in the US and good US healthcare is as good as there is anywhere.

When policy makers divided the land in the Upper Midwest and created Minnesota they included the intersection of three US biomes:  prairie, deciduous forest (Big Woods) and the boreal forest.  The Wisconsin glaciation scoured out numerous lakes and the Great Lakes.  Though flat our terrain is remarkable for its diversity and its  pristine nature in the north where the moose and the wolf still live.  At least for now.

Where else do you get all these things?  Nowhere else.  That’s a large part of why I stay. Another, equally large part, is friends.  The Woolly Mammoths, the MIA docent class of 2005, the Sierra Club and various past political activity has peopled my life with friends. They’re here and I am, too.

In the past, too, I valued the Minnesota political culture which showed compassion to the poor, effectiveness in government and sound stewardship of the state’s natural resources. A long desert of mean policy makers, eyes and hearts captured by the great god money, have devastated much of that culture though I continue to believe it exists.

The common good, defined broadly, is just that.  Our future depends on an educated work force, receiving a decent wage, a hand-up when life turns sour and a healthy environment in which to work and live.  These have seemed and still seem to me the necessary elements of a civil society.

Great Work, Minnesota, Our Land and Home

Among the Buckthorn

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Summer                                            Solstice Moon

Cleared buckthorn, again, from the area around the grandkid’s playhouse and the fire pit, leaving in serviceberry and small ash trees. Rejuvenating the understory is difficult to impossible with buckthorn present since it chokes out most things shrub size and below.  In certain areas of our woods it’s a remediable problem, those areas not on the boundaries with the neighbors.

Sitting outside now in the evening, watching the fire, has me more tuned up to work in the woods, since up to this point the woods have been an amenity, but not a place where we spent much time or energy.  This kind of work is hard labor, perfect as an alternative to the computer, the mind, the writing.

A local guy, biologist Mark Davis of Macalester College, has a different take on invasive species like buckthorn:

“Davis…believes it’s time to raise the white flag against non-native species. Most non-native species, he said, are harmless—or even helpful.

In a letter published in the journal Nature this past June, Davis and 18 other ecologists argued that these destructive invasive species—or those non-native species that cause ecological or economic harm—are only a tiny subset of non-native species, and that this tiny fraction has basically given all new arrivals a bad name.”

As may be.  As may be.  But I still don’t like the way buckthorn crowds out the serviceberry, ninebark, dogwood, columbine, trillium and jack-in-the-pulpit.  Somehow it doesn’t seem to deter the poison ivy.  If it did, well…

Art and Culture, Memories, Minnesota, Music

Destination Twin Cities

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Beltane                                                                               Solstice Moon

 

Butch Thompson is an elegant guy who can really get down.  “Two Minnesota artists — celebrated choreographer Sarah LaRose-Holland and jazz pianist Butch Thompson — have collaborated to present “Destination Twin Cities,” an impressionistic, time-traveling exploration of neighborhoods, landmarks, people and places that define urban life in Minnesota. Who were we, and who are we today?”

Butch played piano and one very soulful clarinet piece and Sarah LaRose-Holland’s dance troupe, Kinetic Evolutions, gave movement to a nostalgic look back at many Twin Cities’ notable places from the Lexington Restaurant to the Hennepin Avenue Strip.  The latter roughly located where Block E is now.  It was a place full of dives that provided steady work for many Minnesota jazz musicians.

Slides of Twin Cities past:  the Wabasha Caves, street cars, winter scenes in neighborhoods, the Stone Arch Bridge, the West Bank accompanied the music and dance projected on the brick wall of the former Guthrie Lab space, 700 N. 1st Street.

Butch’s music was sad, cheery, bouncy, wistful and cool.  The choreography had some fine moments, especially two two person sets, one ironic and intentionally so I imagine, paired a fine African-American dancer, Kasono Mawanza, with a superb Chinese dancer, Jenny Sung, moving through an evening at the haunt of the white power elite, the Lexington while the second featured a mother and daughter walking on Selby Avenue.  The daughter was 5 years old, maybe 6 and kept right up with the adult who could have been her real mother.  The Lexington piece was elegant and smooth, all careful sinuousity while the Selby Avenue work had improvisation and the kind of charm only a young performer can bring to the stage.

 

 

Dogs, Minnesota

Another Species

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Beltane                                                                            Solstice Moon

Rigel has a small pink abrasion on her right nostril.  Kate showed it to me this morning.  We both concluded it probably got there via snapping turtle.  Here’s the story.

(chelydra_serpentina)

Rigel’s job is to patrol the fence line and warn off any invaders, be they dog, human, cat or, in yesterday’s case, snapping turtle.  Usually we let her do her job without intervention, but while I took a shower, Rigel set up an alarm bark that agitated all the other dogs.  And, in the occasional assertion of her coyote hound genes, she wouldn’t stop.  Usually, she barks at something, then, after a bit, calms down.  Not this  time.

Kate got up from her nap to go investigate.  Rigel had found a snapping turtle just on the other side of our chain link fence and had already expended considerable energy telling it to stay there.  Do not come in here.  This is my yard.  Stay out.  Go away.

Rigel and Kate returned to the house.  After my shower, and unaware of all this excitement, I let the dogs out again.  And.  They found the turtle, this time inside our property and, Kate, again going to see what was up, discovered Rigel  on her belly, legs out in front, barking at the turtle, but this time from a distance.  Vega patrolled the rear, going back and forth around it.  The turtle had gotten about halfway through our woods from our fence line paralleling 153rd to the rear fence line, traveling on a diagonal to a spot that was well over two football fields away.

Kate, who has taken the turtle as her totem animal, recovered the turtle, holding its shell at the rear.  Even then, she said, the turtle’s long neck kept snaking around toward her hands.  She removed the turtle to a position outside our fence line and we’ve not heard any new alarms.

Based on reading the material* below I imagine this was a female hunting for a place to lay her eggs. (see the video)

*Group:

reptile

Class:

Chelonia

Order:

Cryptodeira

Family:

Chelydridae

Habitats:

Breeding takes place any time that the turtles are active, but occurs most frequently in the spring and fall. During June, females travel to open areas that are suitable for nesting, and may travel 1 km (0.62 mi.) or more from water. Suitable nesting areas must be open and sunny and contain moist but well-drained sand or soil. Nesting areas are commonly sandy banks and fields, but also include gravel roads and lawns. The female uses her hind feet to dig out a cavity, and then lays 10-100 (usually 25-50) eggs, using her hind feet to guide them into the nest. The eggs are 2.2-3.2 cm (.87-1.25 in.) in diameter, white, and have a leathery shell. Once the eggs are laid, the female covers the nest with sand or soil and returns to water. Depending on the weather, the eggs will hatch in 50-125 days. Incubation temperature affects the sex of the hatchling turtles, with more females hatching during warmer temperatures, and more males hatching during cooler temperatures. Hatchling turtles use their egg tooth and claws to break out of their shell, and then must dig their way out of the nest and find water. When they emerge, hatchlings are 2.5-3.2 cm (1-1.25 in.) in length. Young turtles are vulnerable to predation and desiccation. From any given clutch of eggs, 60%-100% of the young may be lost to predators. Primary nest predators include raccoons (Procyon lotor), skunks, foxes, and mink (Mustela vison). In addition to these animals, hatchlings are also preyed on by large fish, large frogs, northern water snakes (Nerodia sipedon), and some bird species. Common snapping turtles are slow to mature, reaching sexual maturity in 5-7 years.

Minnesota, Our Land and Home

Don’t Get Too Comfortable

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Beltane                                                          Early Growth Moon

Mark Seeley University of Minnesota & MPR

My MPR colleague Dr. Mark Seeley gave us some astounding benchmarks on just how rapidly Minnesota’s climate is shifting, and how extreme weather in Minnesota is becoming the new normal.

-Weather Whiplash: The record warmth of March 2012 was the “most anomalous month in Minnesota and USA climate history” Fast forward to spring of 2013, and Minnesota is living through one of the coldest and wettest springs on record. This kind of year to year “weather whiplash” is unprecedented in Minnesota’s climate record.

-On the need to adapt: Minnesota’s infrastructure is built upon older perceptions of climate behavior that no longer hold true. We need to adapt our infrastructure to the new climate reality…which include more heat waves, tropical humidity episodes (70F to 80F+ dew points) in summer and excessive rainfall events.

-On changing rainfall patterns: A greater percentage of Minnesota’s annual precipitation is coming from summer thunderstorms…and the extreme rainfall they produce. The gentle soaking rains of our youth are fewer and farther between. That is promoting a cycle of flood…and drought in Minnesota. Twice in the past 6 years several counties in Minnesota were declared in flood…and drought at the same moment in time.

The “new normal” in Minnesota’s changing climate includes an “amplified thunderstorm signature” meaning more of our rainfall is coming in the form of heavy downpours.

Memories, Minnesota, Politics

Magnetic or Sticky?

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Beltane                                                                     Early Growth Moon

Sister Mary discovered an interesting analysis by the Pew Trust which measured states as magnetic and sticky.  Essentially magnetic meant the capacity, demonstrated by census data, to attract newcomers while sticky measured the capacity or lack of it to retain those born in the state.  States received rankings on both measures and then were grouped into categories such as high magnet/low sticky, low magnet/low sticky and so on.

Minnesota and Indiana are in the same group, along with surprisingly, California.  That is, neither state attracts all that many new folks, but those born there tend to stay.

I’m not sure why folks remain in Indiana, except for inertia, but I’m sure folks stay in Minnesota because it offers a distinctive culture, one rooted in an outdoor life-style coupled with progressive politics and a highly developed arts and performing arts scene in the Twin Cities.  All this set in a spot tucked up next to Canada with the boreal forest extending almost to the northern exurb of the Twin Cities where Kate and I live, a forest filled with lakes and wilderness bounded on its eastern edge by the largest fresh water lake in the world, Lake Superior.  (Lake Baikal has more depth and therefore more water, but its surface area is somewhat smaller than the shallower Superior.)

Having said that I moved here by accident when I came for seminary in 1970 and remained by choice.   Minnesota is a low magnet state for several reasons, the chief one being climate.  We have, or had, severe winters coupled with short but intense summers.  Another factor working against Minnesota is its location.  It’s not on the way to anywhere in the US.  You have to come here on purpose, either for school or outdoor recreation or a work related move.  The Upper Midwest, of which Minnesota is a part with Wisconsin and Michigan all share that sense of isolation from the more southerly tiers of states.  And you’ll notice they are in the same column.

Indiana does not attract folks, especially now, I imagine, due to poor job prospects.  The closing of industrial manufacturing facilities put Indiana solidly in the rust belt.  It does not have the natural amenities of the hills and mountains of Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, nor does it have any other particularly noteworthy natural features.  It does have a strong blue collar culture focused on basketball, cars, racing and the remnants of unionism which might help explain why folks stay.

The whole article on the Pew website is worth reading.  They do very interesting work on several topics.

 

 

Faith and Spirituality, Memories, Minnesota, Politics

Cities

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Beltane                                                                       Early Growth Moon

Writing the post below reminded me of a topic I pursued in some depth for many years, cities.  Cities fascinated me from the moment I visited Chicago, Washington and NYC as a teenager.  Small town central Indiana, even the Indianapolis of the late 50’s and early 60’s, had none of the energy, the danger, the possibility.

(Cedar-Riverside People’s Center, formerly Riverside Presbyterian Church.  I had an office there in the late 70’s and early 80’s.)

When I moved to New Brighton in 1970, on my very first day at Seminary, also my very first day in Minnesota, we visited the Guthrie, the Walker and the MIA.  Not too much later I discovered a program, I don’t recall its name, that allowed students to buy theater tickets and orchestra tickets for ridiculously low prices.  That put me in the seats at the Guthrie, its design in the old spot based on the Stratford, Ontario festival theater, a theater in the round(ish) with a thrust stage, a theater I had visited many times.

At some point not long after that I got a job as a weekend staff person for Community Involvement Programs (CIP), a facility for training recently released and high functioning developmentally disabled adults.  The concept involved apartment based training, teaching folks how to live independently.  The next stop after C.I.P. was your own apartment.

I lived in the facility, located in Mauna Loa apartment building, just to the east of what was then Abbott Hospital in the Stevens Square Neighborhood.  After that move I lived in either Minneapolis or St. Paul until 1994, our relocation year from Highland Park, St. Paul to Andover. (There was a brief and unhappy hiatus at the Peaceable Kingdom, my first wife and mine’s 80 acre farm in Hubbard County, and a bit of time in Centerville, the rest all in the cities.)

Over those years, starting with the organizing of the Stevens Square Community Organization and its subsequent redesign and redevelopment, which featured a very public fight with General Mills over their purchase and rehabbing Stevens Square apartments, my life became inextricable from the life of urban neighborhoods.  That engagement stuck until I left the Presbyterian ministry in 1991.  It even lasted a year beyond that when I took on teaching a small group of students in urban ministry internships.

Someday, I’m going to write about those years.  They were fun and a lot of good got done.  Plus I learned a lot of things about cities.

Minnesota, Politics, US History

Proud. Again.

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Beltane                                                                        Early Growth Moon

Proud to be a Minnesotan.  Again.  Finally.  It has been a long, long time in the conservative weeds with no new taxes chanted ahead of every policy debate, ruining the things that have made Minnesota the strong, progressive state I loved when I first moved here over 40 years ago.  Now, in one legislative session we have more money going into education instead of raiding our school systems piggy banks while raising property taxes.  And, incredibly and beautifully and thankfully, we have marriage as an institution available to all Minnesotans.

It is not, after all, gay marriage, anymore than it is hetero marriage or African marriage or white marriage.  No, it is a legally sanctioned bonding of two people for the purpose of creating a strong family unit, whether that unit is two people or two plus kids.  Hopefully, in not too many years, we will look back on this debate and shake our heads, “Why was that such a big deal?”

An open civic society, a thriving K-12 system with post-secondary education appropriate for all, a world class health system, diverse cultural life and a commitment to a healthy environment, that’s the Minnesota I love and I can begin to see it emerging again from the compassion drought we’ve suffered under the tax-obsessed Republicans.

As Leonard Cohen sings, Hallelujah!

Feelings, Minnesota, Our Land and Home, Politics, Travel, US History

Another Country

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Spring                                                               Bloodroot Moon

A few pictures from my trip to Mt. Vernon.

Before the pictures though.  Here in Washington and at Mt. Vernon the early history of our nation has a presence on the street, among the documents, in the traditions, and by shaping the forms of architecture from government buildings to residential homes: the brick homes, the limestone greco-roman revival government buildings and monuments and the cobblestone street in Alexandria, Virginia.  The constitution and the declaration of independence lie entombed in the Archives not far from where I write this.

Each place you go some element of our history peeks around the corner, waves. Says, “Psst, want to see some history, kid?”  I remember the same sense when I was on the Capitol, the sleeper train that runs between Chicago and Washington.  Once we got into central Pennsylvania the architecture changed.  We passed places I knew mostly from history books.

Here’s the thing.  I’m a Midwestern guy born, raised and never left.  A heartlander.  This does not feel like my country here on the east coast.  When I think of Minnesota from here, it feels far away, up north and filled with pine trees and lakes.  Which, of course, as most of you know who read this, it is.  Pine trees and lakes are in a large part of the state and they do define our identity as Minnesotans.

This feels like the old world, Europe to our heartland new world.  A place so built up and fought over and crusted up with money and power that it has a different tone entirely from the one at home.

Sure, we’re all subject to the same government and fly the same flag, speak the same language and send our kids off to the same military.  True.  But the east coast, like the south, the West and the Left Coast are different enough to be different countries in Europe or Southeast Asia or Africa.  You know this, I’m sure, but I’m experiencing it right now and it unsettles me in some way.

Here are the pictures.

Latin, Minnesota, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

GO D Park

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Imbolc                                                                       Valentine Moon

Saw the full Valentine Moon rising over Gold Medal Park near the Guthrie yesterday late afternoon.  Some clever vandal has knocked out the L on the large metal sign there so it reads GO D MEDAL PARK.  This is the park given by plutocrat and former CEO of UnitedHealth Partners, William McGuire.  Why both rich people and the public seem to think the wealthy have a fine aesthetic that should get public spaces for expression continues to be beyond me.  The saving grace here is that a well-known landscape architect designed the park, Tom Oslund.

Back to the Latin this morning, resuming my work on Ovid and about to start up on the novels again, reading the last of the Eddas today and tomorrow.  Still a good bit of reorganizing work to do, but the vast bulk of it in here (study) has been accomplished.