How to spend Minnesota's public arts money

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The directors and staffs of the Minnesota State Arts Board and the eleven Regional Arts Councils have an opportunity without precedent to invest in the future of our state and build an arts legacy second-to-none, provided they think and act globally as well as locally, daringly as well as prudently.


Last Nov. 4, more than 56% of Minnesota's voters said YES to the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution. Starting July 1, Legacy increased the state sales tax by 3/8 of 1% for 25 years to dedicate funds for lakes, rivers, streams, groundwater, wetlands, prairies, forests, fish, game, wildlife habitat, parks, and trails. The amendment also provides 19.75% of the collected funds for arts, arts education and access, and preservation of history and cultural heritage.


With statewide lobbying by Minnesota Citizens for the Arts, the 2009 Minnesota Legislature appropriated the first Legacy funds for fiscal years 2010 and 2011 (as reported by MCA):

Funding to the arts via the Minnesota State Arts Board and Regional Arts Councils will increase by $21,650,000 per year for the next two years, for a total of $43.3 million. Added to the $8.6 million passed in the state’s economic development bill, there will now be just over $30 million in state funding for the arts annually, compared to just over $10 million annually this year.

Here is how it breaks down in each year, 2010 and 2011:

• $16,775,000 for Arts and Arts Access Initiatives, “to support Minnesota’s artists and arts organizations in creating, producing and presenting high-quality arts activities; to overcome barriers to accessing high-quality arts activities, and to instill the arts into the community and public life in this state.”
• $3,245,000 for Arts Education Collaborations, for “high-quality, age-appropriate arts education for Minnesotans of all ages to develop knowledge, skills, and understanding of the arts”
• $1,080,000 for Arts in Cultural Heritage, “for events and activities that represent the diverse ethnic and cultural arts traditions, including folk and traditional artists and art organizations represented in this state, ” and
• $550,000 for Fiscal Oversight and Accountability (to the MSAB). The first three items above will be available 70% from the MSAB and 30% from the Regional Arts Councils.
• In addition to the dedicated funding above, libraries received $4.25 million per year which “may be used to sponsor programs provided by regional libraries, or to provide grants to local arts and heritage programs for programs in partnership with regional libraries,” (i.e., opportunities for artists and arts organizations to work with libraries).
• Also, the Humanities Center received $300,000 per year for “museums and organizations celebrating the ethnic identities of Minnesotans” to re-grant, so there may be further opportunities for artists and arts organizations.

In addition, over the next two years, the Minnesota Historical Society will receive $14.4 million, public television $6.3 million, Minnesota Public Radio $2.65 million, AMPERS (local public radio) $2.65 million, children’s museums $1 million, the Science Museum of Minnesota $900,000, Minnesota Zoos $900,000, libraries $8.5 million, Indian Affairs Council (for projects related to the preservation of native languages) $1.9 million, Perpich Center for Arts Education $1 million, and the Minnesota Humanities Center, $2.1 million.

Pretty amazing? Look up from your screen and say "YES!"


Following the legislature's adjournment, staff of the Minnesota State Arts Board conducted a series of forums throughout the state to solicit feedback about funding principles and suggestions for specific funding areas. Currently, the MSAB's thinking embraces the following principles:

• Statewide approach
• Demographic and geographic fairness
• Inclusiveness
• Sustainability
• Anticipatory and flexible
• Transparency and public involvement
• Accountability and stewardship

I attended the public forum in Minneapolis on June 6 and, with 40 others, ran my mouth for two hours about how the MSAB and the RACs should spend Minnesota's public arts money for the next two years. It was a fascinating and stimulating discussion. In the run-up to last November's balloting, I wrote here on Oct. 12 about the reasons why Minnesotans might want to vote YES, along with suggestions for how funds might be spent, with related posts on Oct. 29, Oct. 30, Nov. 5, and Jan. 22.


Today's Minnesota Mist posting updates and reflects my current thinking on the subject in response to the MSAB's request for input. You also should share your thinking, by the means described below.


I know what I am writing about. Besides knocking around Minnesota's arts milieu as a relatively successful arts administrator working with more than 50 communities during nearly 30 years, over the past 10 years, I served on 18 grant review panels for the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, the Arrowhead Regional Arts Council, and the Jerome Foundation. In that service I analyzed and commented about the programs, administrations, and finances of hundreds of small and mid-sized organizations. During the 1990s, I worked with the Bush Foundation and its consortium of funding agencies to raise $100,000 to assist arts organizations, post-flood, in Grand Forks, North Dakota. For many years, I led an organization with access to a $100,000 commercial line of credit based upon my signature. In my consulting activities, I have reviewed and analyzed the tax returns and financial statements of more than 24 organizations. Along the way, I have coached many individual artists and ensembles on a variety of organization, program, administrative, and life issues.


These activities have made me familiar with hundreds of individuals and organizations in all disciplines and corners of the state – from Lanesboro and Rochester in the southeast, to Duluth and Grand Rapids in the north, to Fargo and Fergus Falls in the northwest, and the nine-to-13 counties of the Twin Cities region. At whatever stage of their artistic development, all of these people embody the core values of artistic excellence, accountability and transparency as stewards of public resources, innovation, and respectful partnering in the intellectual and creative development of our people.


Although the legislature previously has been episodically very generous in its appropriations for the arts, its overall investment has not kept pace with inflation and growth of field since 1977. Individual elected representatives and senators who support the arts must acknowledge that fact of life, even as they seek to downplay their complicity in its reality. In this, the legislature differs not at all from the intents, practices, and capacities of our major corporate and foundation grant-making agencies.


With passage of the initiative by Minnesota's former governor, Arne Carlson, the legislature appropriated $13 million for the arts in 1998. This was reduced somewhat to $12.6 million for 2002, and to $8.59 million for each year 2003 to 2007. The appropriation for 2008 was $10.33 million. The average annual inflation rate of 2.71% during the 10 years from 1998 to 2008 made the $13 million appropriation for 1998 equal to $17 million in 2008 and, if extended, $17.9 million in 2010.


My current assumptions, for the points that follow below: $21,650,000 of new annual funding + $8,600,000 of "existing funding" = $30,250,000 of annual funding in 2010 and 2011.


My wish list for 2010 and 2011 begins with the principle of restoring, through the rule-making process, all MSAB and RAC programs to the levels they enjoyed in 1998 when funding was $13 million. This restoration would require an allocation of $17.9 million to fund the same programs for the same number of communities, organizations, and individual artists, adjusted for inflation, but also adjusted for current, statutory mandates and circumstances that recognize how communities, organizations, artists, and programs have changed or gone away over the past seven years. By what rationale would the MSAB and RACs do otherwise?


Then, the following minimum funding increases should be made to existing programs to allow for inflation and growth of field: (a) Individual artist initiatives, $1.25 million; (b) Institutional organization (general operating) support, $1.75 million; (c) Presenting organization support, $750,000; (d) Arts Across Minnesota touring, $750,000; (e) Arts education initiatives, $1 million.


All grants to individual artists by the MSAB or the RACs should equal or exceed $10,000. While current grants of lesser amounts for projects encourage the pursuit of artistic excellence, they rarely allow it to be realized. By what rationale should the grant amounts be less than $10,000?


If we believe that innovation and collaboration are keys to advancement, then funds should be available to any individual artist or arts organization, of any size, to commission new work from Minnesota artists in all disciplines. A $500,000 pool of commissioning funds, administered by the Minnesota State Arts Board on a once-per-year basis, should be available to applicants in amounts up to $50,000, with 20% of the available pool reserved for grants of $15,000 or less.


In the interest of sustainability, and to build infrastructure, the RACs should annually administer and grant from an $850,000 pool of technical assistance and equipment funds for all grantees of the MSAB and the RACs, regardless of budget size. The size of a specific grant should be without limit within the constraints of the total pool of available funds. Prior to 2003, the McKnight Foundation’s capital program made equipment and technical assistance grants to its grantees over and above its general operating grants. Grantees were eligible for one capital grant every five years. Applications were easy and straight-forward, and their approval helped build an organization’s physical infrastructure, including such things as telephones that work, computer networks that can talk to each other, lighting equipment, portable floors, choral risers at park pavilions, etc. For whatever good reasons, McKnight needed to discontinue this program; need for the program continues.


The MSAB should surmount bureaucratic obstacles and make an annual grant of up to $350,000 to the Performing Arts Archives at the University of Minnesota. This grant should be earmarked specifically to accelerate the acquisition, processing, and retention of records – broadly defined – for archival purposes from performing arts organizations throughout Minnesota.


Once annually, members of the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Forum of Regional Arts Councils should convene as the [new] Minnesota Cultural Facilities Commission. The commission should have a $2.5 million pool of funds from which to make annual planning grants of up to $500,000, and capital construction grants of up to $2 million, for projects whose total cost will be $10 million or less. This body also should recommend statewide priorities to the legislature for capital bonding projects costing more than $10 million.


In the interests of inclusiveness and demographic and geographic fairness, new program initiatives should make $1.5 million available statewide on an annual basis for music organizations (rock and roll bands, rhythm and blues bands, GLBT bands, Christian or other sectarian instrumental/vocal groups, VFW and American Legion bands, community theaters, and bands and choirs of specific affinity groups). These initiatives should provide streamlined processes for idiosyncratic grants of as little as $500 to $1,000.


A $1 million pool of funds, administered by the MSAB, should be dedicated to experiments in the provision of administrative infrastructure for organizations with budgets less than $200,000. Current RAC programs provide funds to hire consultants who can tell artists what they need to do. This new funding pool would aim to provide the savvy skill-sets to actually do the work.


All grants should be available to organizations that are not necessarily 501(c)(3) under the Internal Revenue Service code. Provision should be made for those, for instance, that are organized as limited liability corporations (LLC). If one considers that grants made to individual artists are made to "for profit" individuals, then it is not a major stretch to conclude that grants will be appropriate to some organizations that are "for profit."


Finally, although members of the legislature made it clear that a minimum of new arts funding should support increased staffing of the MSAB, the state's collective arts community should push back and insist that a minimum of $150,000 in new funds be devoted to the support of staffing positions at the agency. In other words, get the politicians out of the micromanaging of the personnel resources needed to conduct the agency's operations which have been understaffed for several years.


Now, it is your turn to weigh-in. Sue Gens, executive director, Minnesota State Arts Board, issued the following message on July 10:

Recently, the Minnesota State Arts Board and Minnesota's 11 regional arts councils completed a statewide series of public forums. The purpose was to collect input on how best to invest the new arts and cultural heritage funds that will become available this year. We are grateful to everyone who participated in these sessions.

If you were not able to participate, there is another way for you to provide input. Please take a few minutes to visit the Arts Board's Web site and share your thoughts by completing an online survey at http://www.arts.state.mn.us.

[Update: Jul. 12: The MSAB links to the online survey are ineffective. As an alternative, send emails to MSAB@arts.state.mn.us or Sue.Gens@arts.state.mn.us.]

By what rationale would you not want to tell MSAB how to spend Minnesota's public arts money?

"Stimulus" funds on way to arts groups

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The National Endowment for the Arts announced today its FY 2009 Grant Awards for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. A total of 631 arts organizations nationwide will share $29,775,000 in grant amounts of either $50,000 or $25,000.


Minnesota arts organizations (26, or 4% of the grantees) will receive $1,025,000 (3.4% of the total dollars) to support the preservation of jobs that are threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn.


The grantees include American Composers Forum, St. Paul, $25,000; Art Start, St. Paul, $25,000; Children's Theatre Company, Minneapolis, $50,000; Coffee House Press, Minneapolis, $25,000; East Side Arts Council, St. Paul, $25,000; Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, $50,000; Graywolf Press, St. Paul, $25,000; Guthrie Theatre Foundation, $50,000; Heart of the Beast Theater, Minneapolis, $25,000; Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis, $50,000; IFP-Minneapolis, $25,000; Illusion Theater & School, Minneapolis, $50,000; Loft, Inc., Minneapolis, $50,000; MacPhail Center for Music, Minneapolis, $50,000; Milkweed Editions, Minneapolis, $25,000; Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, Minneapolis, $50,000; Minnesota Opera Company, Minneapolis, $50,000; Minnesota Orchestral Association, Minneapolis, $50,000; Minnesota Public Radio, Inc., St. Paul, $50,000; Mixed Blood Theatre Company, Minneapolis, $25,000; Penumbra Theatre Company, Inc., St. Paul, $25,000; Public Radio International, Inc., Minneapolis, $50,000; Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra Society, St. Paul, $50,000; Springboard for the Arts, St. Paul, $25,000; University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Minneapolis (museums), $50,000; and VocalEssence, Minneapolis, $50,000.


With the exception of the Franconia Sculpture Park, no Minnesota arts organizations located outside of the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul – in those places where philanthropic and other support is harder to come by – made the cut.


Also noteworthy: in spite of having the second or third most thriving dance scene in the U.S., not a single Minnesota dance organization was granted stimulus funds to save jobs. Nationally, 60 dance organizations (9.5% of the total grantees) were awarded $2,650,000 (8.9% of total dollars).


The economic stimulus package passed by Congress earlier this year included $50 million for the arts, of which today's grants are a part. In April, the NEA awarded 63 grants, totalling $19.8 million, to 63 state and regional agencies; in that round, the Minnesota State Arts Board received $316,000, and the Minneapolis-based Arts Midwest received $514,400.

Narcissism: How dumb is my audience?

Minneapolis, Minnesota


For some of them, getting hit in the head with a 2" x 4" would neither wake them up nor make an impression. They are God's gift to the world and prima donnas – very important people who have paid their money and can do what they wish. They may be bored or disengaged (not their fault!), but they are not selfish, arrogant, or rude. Rules and other people just don't apply or matter to them.


"They" are the miscreants who leave their cell phones on during performances; answer those cell phones during performances; check email during performances; text with friends during performances; take still and moving photos during performances, with and without clicks and flashes; talk to members of their party during performances; sing along with the lyrics from the stage; leave and re-enter the auditoria during performances; and trip over everyone in a row on their race for the exits before the curtain rings down. In Minnesota, particularly in Minneapolis and at Orchestra Hall, "they" also are the unfortunate souls who cannot restrain themselves from hacking and coughing throughout performances regardless of the season or weather.


"They" are our cultural narcissists and, judging by reader postings on today's New York Times blog by Dave Itzkoff (Arts Beat: Cultural News and Views), a vast majority of us want "them" to go away.


Itzkoff recounts his Monday report about a Sunday incident at the Orleans hotel in Las Vegas when two-time Tony Award winner Patti LuPone stopped mid-performance to confront a patron who was using an electronic device. Itzkoff apparently thought LuPone was playing the diva and implied she was wrong. That prompted a letter from LuPone to Itzkoff, published today, in which she asked: "What do you expect me, or any performer for that matter, to do?"


Itzkoff's blog, inviting readers' comments, was posted at 10:37am this morning. The first reply came at 10:58am. Response #500 went up at 4:10pm. While somewhat repetitious, it is entertaining and often compelling reading.


Respondent #258–Karen suggests issuing hot pink rule sheets as people enter the theater, informing them they are subject to ejection. Respondent #275–Andrew suggests that performers deal with it as athletes must when ignoring unruly fans in the stands. Respondent #411–Christopher favors allowing performers to use pistols from the stage in order to clean up the gene pool.


A small number of miscreants seek to justify – or bully – themselves; most notoriously, Respondent #18–Charles C.:

I paid my money, and I’ll do damn well what I please as an audience member. If I want to talk or tape or film, ehtier out in the open or sereptitiously I will do it. Look back at the days of Shakespeare when the audience participated in conversation, and now we have prima donnas who strut like a Perez Hilton on a stage acting as they want and feeling immune from appropriate reaction. Here’s what I will do in the future, I will have eggs and rotten vegatables with me and I will offer you a serving it you confront me, ot if you demonstrate haughty aires on a stage that I am financially supporting. [sic]

Respondents #244–Garrett, #332–Anna, and #488–alice563 have several thoughtful and specific words for Charles C. – including the information that in Shakespeare's day the players also could throw stuff at the audience.


Overwhelmingly – overwhelmingly – readers support LuPone, even though a sizeable part of their number question whether it is a performer's place and duty to tell off the crowd. A strong consensus favors greater enforcement by ushers and theater managements. Although one might agree that theater managers, rather than performers, should enforce standards of etiquette and decorum, what are the performers and the rest of the audience to do in the face of management's indifference?


We do have leverage. The collective we have made an art form of our willingness to restrain the behavior of those wanting to smoke $5 packages of cigarettes in our midst. Can we be no less effective on behalf of many who pay much more than that to patronize theaters? Maybe we should risk ejection ourselves by standing up, mid-performance, to call-out the narcissists who believe it is all about them. That might be a 2" x 4" that could get management's attention and lead to change.

Investing for success

Minneapolis, Minnesota


"Where do you want your business to be after this harsh recession and how bold do you plan to be in achieving that goal?"


That's the question posed by Nelson Davis on huffingtonpost.com as he recounts the pitched competition between cereal company rivals W. K. Kellogg and C. W. Post in Battle Creek, Michigan, during the 1930s. Their story is a classic illustration of the adage that one cannot cost-cut one's way to survival and success during tough times. Traction and dominance in the marketplace follow from investments in products and their marketing.


Michael Kaiser, the so-called arts-turn-around guru who now leads the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, has long voiced the mantra "Good art, well marketed."


Many artists and their organizations will not survive the current recession and, indeed, many of them should proactively cash in what few chips they have. I have been working with several excellent artists in recent months, however, who are just warming to the challenges before them.


I have been telling them to do what they must in order to "survive," and to use this time to plan and position themselves for the recovery: order their financial processes, build their networks, hone their artistic craft to an engaging excellence, and own their niche with the most effective visibility.


With 10% of America's workforce now under- or unemployed, individuals can adapt the same advice to their own particular circumstances. It is not always a pretty effort, as the Kellogg-Post story showed, but it is a necessary one, and a part of life's grand adventures.

A marriage in Iowa

Mason City, Iowa

Civil Marriage Ceremony for Gary Swenson and Dean Genth
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Music Man Square, Mason City, Iowa


Officiant: The Reverend Dr. Mel White
Members of the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus
Directed by Dr. Stan Hill
Accompanied by Timothy De Prey

Sacred places, divine faces: A Memorial Day meditation

Minneapolis, Minnesota


I believe in ghosts, and sought their company for two weeks in the waning days of August 2000. In particular, I was seeking my paternal grandfather, Harry Hayden Peterson, whose Kansas origins had been lost in the mists of time and space following his death in Minneapolis in 1937.


While my ultimate destination that summer was Meade County, bordering the Oklahoma panhandle in the southwest corner of Kansas, I first spent three days at the Kansas History Center in Topeka, with a side trip to the Lied Center for the performing arts in Lawrence. Penciled notes made from microfilmed copies of pioneer newspapers and the 1895 agricultural census started my forensic investigation of times and people I had never known.


Heading west from Topeka on Interstate 70, I visited the campus of Kansas State University in Manhattan before resting overnight a few miles on, in Junction City. There, I encountered the first ghosts, maintaining their vigil and bearing witness at the entrance of Fort Riley, Home of America's Army.


Fort Riley was established on the Kansas River in 1853, and since has played a role in all of the nation's military undertakings. As I drove onto the grounds, I was attended by the spirits of thousands who reached this crossroads from all walks of life and participated in the great leavening experiences of American democracy. The 1st Infantry Division left Fort Riley in the vanguard of the American Expeditionary Force to France in 1917, led by Gen. John "Blackjack" Pershing. During World War II, the 1st was sent to England, and participated in the D-Day storming of France's Normandy beaches in 1944. In 1965, its people answered the call to duty in Vietnam.


Continuing westward for 25 miles, I arrived in Abilene, site of the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum. On the grounds of that complex, a visitor can wander through the house where Dwight David Eisenhower – Ike – grew up, and meditate in the chapel where he and his wife, Mamie, are buried. In between, one can study his career as a cadet at the United States Military Academy at West Point and subsequent rise to the rank of five-star general, Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, director of the invasion of Europe, first Supreme Commander of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), and service as the 34th president of the United States.


My own, sole encounter with West Point occurred in 1978, and consisted of lodging for a single night at The Thayer Hotel, a historic, Gothic structure overlooking New York's Hudson River at the south entrance to the Academy.


From Abilene, I continued along I-70 for 93 miles to Russell, Kansas. I wanted to see the community that had shaped the early life of former U.S. senator Bob Dole, a man whose character, and not his politics, had gained him my vote when he stood for the presidency in 1996. Dole was one of many injured during the Allied campaigns in Italy during World War II; his injuries left his right arm paralyzed for life.


Traveling south, by way of Dodge City, I made my first stop in Meade County at the Meade County Historical Museum. Thousands had flocked to that county in 1884-85 from points East, lured by the promise of free land through homesteading. Arriving in Dodge City on trains, they transferred their persons and worldly goods to horse-drawn freight wagons for the 43-mile cross-country trip to Meade.


Centennial books, published in 1985, recorded the stories of many who had made that journey west and created the principal towns of Plains and Meade. Their indices contained the entries that connected with my grandfather and the extended family that had arrived in Kansas before him, by way of Delaware, New Jersey, Ohio, and Illinois. One of the entries noted a contemporary resident, a second cousin once removed, who had been drafted in 1965 to serve in the Vietnam War. My brother, who had joined me for a few days, and I presented ourselves at the cousin's doorstep with the announcement that we were relatives from Minnesota.


From this encounter, we came to know of our grandfather's eight siblings, their parents, our Peterson forebears reaching back to the 1600s, and of the succeeding generations that were scattered further to the four winds. We have become acquainted with many of their ghosts as we have walked the flat, sun-drenched quarter sections that had been the original homesteads in Meade County, and the quiet, hillside cemeteries on the outskirts of Meade, Kansas, and Pineville, Missouri.


During that first Kansas visit, we met a second cousin who had enlisted in the Army Air Corp, was shot down over Germany in November 1944, and was held as a POW. He returned home to pursue his American Dream as a farmer and raise a family with his wife of more than 60 years. I have since met many other Peterson descendants, some of them veterans of military service. In particular, one of my grandfather's sisters, who settled in Washington state, produced several generations of service people. I have met two of them; one lives now in Florida, the other in Colorado.


Closer to my Minnesota roots, my maternal grandfather, Hjalmer Anders Linman, served in the navy as a young man at the Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida, during World War I. He re-enlisted in his 50s and served in New Jersey during World War II. My father, Paul Emmett Peterson, served in the U.S. Army at Fort Benning, Georgia, in the early 1950s. My step-father, Kenneth Jacob Vetsch, served in the U.S. Navy's Signal Service Group, with assignments during and after World War II in the Pacific Theater and at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. These three men, and Harry Peterson, are buried within 500 yards of each other at Crystal Lake Cemetery in Minneapolis.


I set eyes on the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, a few times in 1971 and 1972. After more than 30 years, memory yet lends it a romantic, wind-swept image set on Chesapeake Bay. It was a point of vicarious pride for our family when my second cousin, Jeffrey Tuset, was accepted there as a midshipman. One of my most idyllic memories of summers in Minnesota is of the reunion, picnic, and afternoon of water skiing in Big Lake, Minnesota, before he left to take up his studies.


The ghosts from that afternoon continue to visit me. It may not have been the first time all of us were together, but it was the last. After his graduation, Capt. Tuset died when his helicopter stopped working and crashed in the Sea of Japan, May 6, 1985, an event reported on the front page of the Minneapolis newspaper. Whether he knew it or not, Jeff's service followed, at least indirectly, in the footsteps of his grandfather, John Gunderson Tuset, who served in the U.S. Army during World War I and is also buried at Crystal Lake.


Whatever their particular antecedents, wars confront the generations called to their conduct with the need to make keenly-felt moral judgments. For much of our history, men and women have served in the armed forces of the United States by choice, while for significant periods, conscription has been used to fill the ranks in the numbers needed. Not all agree, however, that every war – or any war – should be fought.


The Vietnam War of ~1964-1975 – a war whose premises the then-Secretary of Defense has since said were wrong – caused much turmoil in hearts and homes throughout the land. Upon receiving his draft notice early in 1971, my partner, James Davies, was resolved to insist on his status as a conscientious objector, even if it meant imprisonment for refusing induction. This caused great distress for his parents who had come of age during World War II. James' father had enlisted in the U.S. Navy at age 17, served in North Africa, staffed the first mine-sweeper in the Bay of Naples on the coast of Italy, and had shipped to the Pacific Theater for the invasion of Japan that did not happen.


A dynamic scene of great emotion played out in the courthouse of Rice County, Minnesota. Before a draft board comprised of war veterans, James' father voiced his profound disagreement with James' beliefs, while vouching for James' sincerity in holding them. Consequently, James performed two years of alternative service as a conscientious objector, working in the mental health unit of a hospital in Tucson, Arizona.


For many of us, resolution of the moral issues happened more by chance than choice, which begs the question of whether we ever resolved them.


When I visited in Meade County two years ago with the cousin who had served in Vietnam, he described his efforts to survive in that conflict and the community of people that embraced him warmly upon his return. He then asked whether I had worn the uniform.


No. After relinquishing my student deferment in 1971, I was classified 1-A for induction for more than half a year. On Aug. 5, 1971, the draft lottery drew number 228 for my birth date. That meant the chances of my involuntary service would be very low.


I have looked back on occasion. On Oct. 11, 1987, I studied the names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington. Earlier that day, I had attended the unveiling of The AIDS Memorial Quilt on the National Mall, memorializing those who had fallen in a different war.


More recently, after 9/11, I was ready to enlist. If they needed me and wanted 50-year-olds, the cause was just and worth the fight. Talk, however, is cheap. That is why I have little patience or use for the rantings of those on both the right and the left of the political spectrum who have not worn the uniform or walked the talk. The daily diatribes of some of them about how their freedoms and liberties are being abridged or denied ring hollow in my ears.


In February 2006, I attended a national arts conference in Washington, D. C. Our activities included a reception at the residence of the ambassador from France to the United States, Jean-David Lévitte. At the time, France had been pummeled for three years by leaders of the U.S. government and others throughout the land for its refusal to share in the erroneous belief that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11 and was amassing weapons of mass destruction.


In his greetings to us, the ambassador recounted poignantly the 200+ year relationship between the two countries, saving his greatest eloquence to acknowledge the ultimate sacrifice made by ordinary people from all corners of America to liberate his country in 1944: "For this we shall be forever grateful," he intoned. "This we shall never forget!"


Lévitte's sincerity was diminished only a little when I learned later that he used that speech regularly while doing his job of representing his country and making what friends he could. In fact, France and its people are grateful and, because they have seen the U.S. at its best, have been critical when we have failed our better selves.


The British people also are grateful. Near Downing Street and Whitehall in London, the underground Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum testify to the close working relationship between the World War II prime minister, Winston Churchill, and President Franklin Roosevelt. A memorial plaque to Roosevelt resides prominently in London's Westminster Abbey.


Since 602 AD, a church of Christian worship has stood on London's Ludgate Hill. The medieval old St. Paul's Church was one of the largest structures in Europe. After The Great Fire in 1666, Christopher Wren designed the current structure and dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. During the German bombing Blitz of 1940-41, much of London and the English countryside was laid waste. Although the survival of St. Paul's dome stood as a symbol of British resolve before the U.S. entered the war, a bomb in October 1940 destroyed the cathedral's eastern apse and, with it, the High Altar.


In post-war rebuilding, the High Altar was repositioned. In its former setting was created The American Memorial Chapel. Dedicated Nov. 26, 1958, the chapel is one of the most emotionally arresting sites for an American visitor. Opposite the altar, the American Roll of Honour, presented by Eisenhower, holds the names of the 28,000 Americans who went to Britain and died in World War II; the roll is kept under glass, and a page of names is turned each day.


The chapel's three, stained-glass windows represent Service, Sacrifice, and Resurrection. Wood carvings represent flowers and fruits from the American heartland. The altar's ironwork shows the Burning Bush of Moses and the Tablets of the Law on which the Ten Commandments were inscribed as a memorial to America's Jewish soldiers who died.


Speaking in the House of Commons, June 18, 1940, Churchill asked his country to let the coming struggle be its finest hour. While the U.S. has known many fine hours in the creation and maintenance of its experiment in democracy, its response to fascism in World War II still stands as its finest hour in the defense of its principles, values, and beliefs.


I do not seek the living among the dead, but I feel deep love and gratitude to the ghosts of those who have gone before. We are the heirs of their faith, the instruments of their hope, and the products of their love.

Clear answers about Coleman/Franken recount

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Eric Black, a political blogger for MinnPost, has followed the recount and legal contest between Minnesota's senate candidates Al Franken and Norm Coleman since November. Black recently took questions from a nationwide audience about the contest; the questions and his excellent responses were published by the Washington Post, May 6.

Journalistic lenses

Minneapolis, Minnesota


A strength of bona fide journalists, an ability to note the details of what is in front of them and relate those to what they have seen before, also can be a weakness: an inability to see anything except what is in front of them, colored by what they have seen before. Case in point: In her May 6 Washington Post column, The Classical Beat, Anne Midgette questions the efficacy and viability of Social Network, the newly-launched, social media site of the San Francisco Symphony, because other, similar sites are not up to snuff.


The presumed existence of an informed readership and citizenry suggests that if newspapers would provide us with just the news, we can provide our own degrees of cynicism.

Citizen of the social media universe

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Some people feel as lost or bewildered as Alice when she went through the looking glass.


When I invited a Facebook friend to connect with me via LinkedIn two months ago, she asked: "Why? I can hardly keep up with Facebook. I can't make sense of it all. Please talk to me about the value you find with LinkedIn." After I did so, she connected with me.


Increasingly, however, the logic I related to this friend just two months ago, suggesting LinkedIn as an option rather than as a necessity, no longer suffices for me. So much has changed, especially between my ears. I have seen the future, and I am it: a citizen of the social media universe – a huge place, an expanding place, and an evolving place. All of us will live forever within its confines without ever touching its parameters.


As I make sense of its reality, I am appreciating more fully what (I think) the "new math" was all about back in 1964: a given switch may be "on" or "off" at a given time, but somewhere there are switches that are always "on." However accurately I understand math, the fact remains that, while its individual users may be on or off at a given time, social media itself is one of those always-on switches.


Social media is a collective term for all of the interactive platforms, websites, and very-cool-must-be-part-of places on the web. The term includes blogs, YouTube, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Flickr, and endless wanna-bees. These have been called a waste of time beyond belief, while many have made them a central part of their daily lives.


Love it or hate it, social media will be with us always in some iteration. Its ubiquitousness may be found in its networking statistics and trends, reported in February by David Erickson on his eStrategy Internet Marketing Blog.


Although its visitor statistics in the U.S. have leveled off, MySpace users represent 25% of Americans. More than 8 million artists and bands have a presence on the site which includes more than 10 billion friend relationships. It handles more than 50 million pieces of mail daily, more than Yahoo, Hotmail, and Google, and users upload more than 8 million images daily.


Facebook claims more than 200 million users worldwide – 70% of them outside the U.S. – with more than half logging on at least once a day. Its fastest growing demographic is over age 35, and the average user has 120 friends. More than 4 million users become fans of "Pages" – organizational friends – each day. With 14 million photos uploaded daily, Facebook is the number one photo-sharing application on the web.


Every minute, 10 hours of video are uploaded on YouTube, making it the number one online video website in the U.S. Half of those aged 18-34 share videos often with their friends and colleagues.


A new person joins the 39 million members of LinkedIn every second. Half the members reside in more than 200 countries outside the U.S., and members include executives from all of the Fortune 500 companies. Current statistics reflect that half of LinkedIn's members are business decision makers in their companies. Their average age is 41, their household income is $109,000, and 80% have college or post-grad degrees.


The growth of Twitter, the current hot dog of social media, is fueled by those aged 45-54, followed closely by 25-34s. Twitter provides a system of sending messages, "tweets," of 140 characters or less. With Twitter, one follows the tweets of selected others who may or may not care if one tweets back. The celebrity/actor Ashton Kutcher bested the cable network CNN in a recent competition to be first to achieve one million followers, although what this means for the merits of what each is selling remains in dispute. All twits, and more substantive followers, can form affinity groups known as Twibes. This is serious business. Even Oprah got in the game last week.


Two months ago, I told my above-referenced friend that I could imagine no circumstances when I would use Twitter. Well, guess who joined a Twibe, has 31 followers (at this hour), is following 48, and has sent 70 tweet updates? I use Twitter mainly to update this blog and MySpace. It is easy to control the people and organizations whose tweets I follow and, to an extent, I don't care that there may never be a million people following me.


Most of my online presence is expressed through this blog, Minnesota Mist, which is now simulcast on both Blogger and WordPress. Both say the same thing, are equally good for you, and their price is the same, but each serves different geographic real estate. Those who prefer blue and gray packaging can access the WordPress version, and those with an eye for yellow and brown can use the Blogger version.


Presently, I also have 89 Facebook friends, 102 MySpace friends, and 216 LinkedIn connections. For all of them, unlike our keeping-score economy, the person with the most friends at the end of the game doesn't necessarily win. Or need to.


Is all of this necessary? For most individuals, probably not. All of these platforms exist, ultimately, to make money for other people – those who created them and any investors they acquired along the way. Nothing at all wrong with that. However, if they rely on the collective we to make them money, then we have rights in the transactions as well. Among these is the ability to shape how each will best serve our individual interests.


Nonetheless, all of us will be required by the necessity of relevance to play on at least two of these playgrounds over time, and the specific playgrounds and the nature of our play will change many times. The notion that, going forward, most of one's life from birth will be documented in cyberspace does not seem far-fetched.


Organizations, for-profit and not, have no choice but to cultivate and develop the ability to communicate effectively using all of these vehicles. A friend who is a media executive recently told university students majoring in communication in the Twin Cities that if they are not on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, he would never hire them.


While most organizations have only started to think about social media let alone talk about it, a few have made the leap. Of these, some are doing it ham-handedly and in ways that will work to their detriment. In a universe where each individual can pick and choose relationships with transparency, it is not acceptable to simply transfer a one-way advertising message from television, daily newspapers, and emails to a Facebook page or a tweet. Anyone who sells anything – from tickets to real estate to clothing – knows that word of mouth is the single most powerful advertising medium. Word of mouth relies on interactive relationships built on credibility, reciprocity, and respect. All of those have to be earned by servant leaders.


We are only beginning to wrestle with the legal, ethical, and privacy issues. In discussing the line between one's personal social networks and business social networks, the blogger Edward Boches posits MySpace as the bar, Facebook as a backyard barbecue, LinkedIn as the office, and Twitter as the café. While a test for social media will be whether it makes us personally more or less tolerant of each other, we will have to be prepared to lose friends, followers, and connections.


Whatever the outcome of our relationships, their record will outlive us forever in the far-reaches of cyberspace. Should these words turn out to be the last I write, they will remain eternally new to someone, someday.


That is as bewildering to me as anything Alice found through the looking glass.

Jonathan Haidt, again

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Last September, I posted links to Jonathan Haidt's extensive discourse, What Makes People Vote Republican?, and various extensive responses. Haidt is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia where he conducts research on morality and emotion and how they vary across cultures. Now, writer Tom Jacobs reports in Miller-McCune magazine about Haidt's view of morality as a team sport: "Morality is not just about how we treat each other, as most liberals think....It is also about binding groups together and supporting essential institutions." Read the article here.

Spring vignettes

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Absent spring and summer foliage, the water level on the shores of Pelican Lake in central Minnesota's Monticello Township appears high and gray against the contrasting brown shadings of the surrounding landscape. Adjacent farmland that has been plowed and disked needs rain while awaiting spring planting. A drive through the area in today's balmy 65º under mostly sunny skies provided metaphorical optimism about the prospects of all who use this time to prepare and position themselves to harvest the fruits of the economic recovery!

• • •

Zenon Dance Company's 26th spring season, inaugurated at the Ritz Theater in Minneapolis tonight, features a varied program that highlights the formidable strengths of the company's four male dancers. Gregory Waletski's accomplished solo in Seán Curran's 2008 quartet, "Hard Bargain," set to Handel opera arias, is worth the price of admission by itself. Mary Ann Bradley excels as the dancing master of ceremonies in "Elegant Echoes," Danny Buraczeski's distinctive jazz work from 2007 to music by Jelly Roll Morton. The premiere of "Not From Texas" by Megan McClellan and Brian Sostek offers a gloriously upbeat but annoyingly one-note paean to the whimsical virtues of cowboys – and so many virtues! Andrea Miller's "Picnic, Lightning" may become an acquired taste with repeated servings; the Chopin-flavored portions tickled my palate the most. The season continues through Apr. 26. Tickets at 612.436.1129.

• • •

"If you remember the 60s, you weren't there. …When I moved to New York City in my 20s and lived in the Village, I went to therapy because it was in the lease." So said folk music legend Judy Collins while holding court for four, standing room performances at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis, Apr. 6-7, accompanied by Russell Walden on piano and herself on 12-string guitar. The gig was a ramp-up to her engagement at Café Carlyle in Manhattan's Carlyle Hotel, Apr. 21-May 30. The year 2009 is one of milestones for the Seattle-born Collins: she turns 70 on May 1; celebrates 50 years of paid singing since her start at Michael's Pub in Boulder, Colorado; and marks 40 years since her appearance on the cover of Life magazine, May 2, 1969. The chanteuse also is an author ("Sanity and Grace, A Journey of Suicide, Survival and Strength"). Her Apr. 7 interview on the Midmorning program of Minnesota Public Radio can be heard here.

• • •

The opening of the 2009 Minnesota Twins Season, Apr. 6, a joint production with the visiting Seattle Mariners ensemble, lacked inspiration and dramatic arc. Most of the performers from both groups were not of the first rank. Joe Mauer, a star on the Twins' roster, was sidelined for the evening by injuries. Promising but disjointed high points during the performance neither satisfied nor went anywhere, and Minnesota's personnel missed several opportunities for showmanship. Minnesota's ensemble sported new ensembles that included white costumes trimmed in red, accented with fire-red caps. Judges statistics: No errors; Minnesota performers 6 hits, 1 run, 7 left on; Seattle performers 6 hits, 6 runs, 1 left on. Audience: Sold out for ninth consecutive year at 48,514. Those seated in the cheaper sections behaved with manners and sat still to watch the program, while better-heeled patrons moved about with restless moodiness. The season continues with 181 performances through Oct. 4.

"We're gonna win, Twins!"

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The boys of summer return to Minnesota with today's season opener at the Metrodome in Minneapolis. The Minnesota Twins vs. Seattle Mariners at 7:10pm CDT. This is the last indoor Twins season at the Dome; they will play on real grass in the open air next year at the new Target Field.

Integration

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Integration is a process and goal applicable not just to one's personal life journey. In a recent post to his Influential Marketing Blog, Rohit Bhargava posits that "The real power of marketing comes through integration, and the tragedy is how easy that is to forget." Read the full post and its related comments.

Review: Buckets and Tap Shoes

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Please come tonight for our...show. We have worked very hard to make this the tightest and most entertaining "Buckets and Tap Shoes" performance EVER! –Facebook post by Rick Ausland, Mar. 29, 2009, for the last of 5 performances at the Music Box Theatre, Minneapolis.

In the year 2039, what passes for that era's version of "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" might well feature the Ausland brothers, Rick and Andy, in the latest of their recurring appearances on the program. As always, their presence would include an energetic and accomplished funky tap dance segment that brings the studio audience to its feet while clapping and cheering to the rhythm.


The duo's conversation with Leno's successor might include reminiscences about their early steps toward stardom during the first, recession-wracked decade of the century when they tapped-out their reputation one gig at a time: Dover, Charleston, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Rapid City, New York, Madison, St. Louis, Washington, D.C., Denver, Kansas City, Hawaii, Austria, Finland, Russia, Ecuador. To name just a very few.

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Mention might be made of their beginnings, applying drum sticks to five-gallon paint buckets and tap dancing on the streets of Minneapolis outside the Metrodome and various nightclubs in the Warehouse District – improvised outings that garnered much applause and occasional abuse.


Some members of that futuristic Leno audience might recall their own presence on the electric evening of November 29, 2003, when Rick, Andy, and their accomplices exploded through the back doors of the Walker Art Center's old auditorium to thump and bump their way to the stage and into recorded history, while the audience for a Choreographer's Evening went totally nuts for the first time in years.


While the Ausland's memories of the blood, sweat, and tears of the early years probably will have dimmed by 2039, they may retain a deep reservoir of satisfaction and gratitude for the meaningful experiences they shared with countless people around the globe. One hopes so. We knew these guys were good long before someone writing in the New York Times said they were "utterly brilliant."


Rick and Andy have tap danced since they were kids. In 1997, they formed Ten Foot Five Productions with three friends as a vehicle for a dance competition (10 feet/5 guys). Known more popularly as Buckets and Tap Shoes, their company of musicians, percussionists, and hoofers presented a major series of five concert performances at The Music Box Theatre in Minneapolis, Mar. 26-29, 2009.


The well-paced program included elements of funk, jazz, classical, hip-hop, blues, and rock in two dozen segments. The proceedings opened with a parade by five performers entering from the back of the house, pounding on a variety of drums as they danced their way to the stage to the accompaniment of rhythmic clapping by the audience. Attired neck-to-ankle in navy blue industrial coveralls, the five lined-up across the stage for an extended section of original, percussive music, switching positions with each other repeatedly without missing a beat.


Costumes changed frequently throughout the show and reflected multiple, individual combinations of blue jeans, slacks, t-shirts, button-down shirts – with and without ties, occasional sport coats, and vests.


Episodes of call-and-response kept audience members participating and engaged – not that they required assistance in that regard. Boundaries between program segments were sometimes marked by moments of abrupt, motionless silence with each performer bathed in a straight-down square of light.


A tap dance in three parts ended the 40-minute first half. On a blacked-out stage, Andy tapped a virtuosic solo while shining a flashlight at his feet. This was followed by Rick's solo-with-flashlight, executed from the center of the orchestra audience while navigating stairs in the dark. A duet by both ensued onstage, accompanied by atmospheric smoke. The section worked well, but one wished for a brighter illumination, aimed more directly on the dancers's feet, rather than in front of, in order to highlight the complex footwork.


Rick and Andy returned precisely 15 minutes later to accompany a recording of Mozart's Turkish Rondo, hoofing in perfect sync with the music and each other. This morphed into a charming and jazzy, downstage interlude by bassist Dan Ristrom and trumpeter Aaron Wiener which, in turn, morphed into a set with the up-ended paint buckets, complete with juggled drumsticks and empty Culligan water bottles. More morphing followed as Ristrom and Wiener provided a funky interlude leading to a Funkeapolis tap dance that sequed into a Funkeapolis tune sung by all five, including drummer Chris Vanderpoll.


At that point, I stopped taking notes because the pace accelerated while the performers danced solo and as a group, vocalized, and stirred a cauldron of audience frenzy that bubbled over to a wild, standing ovation, an encore, and a second ovation. Six minutes before 10pm, everyone in the audience was energized and everyone on stage was exhausted. All were joyous.


The concentration of so much multi-faceted talent in these five individuals makes their enterprise shine like a jewel, one that should be treasured more widely and deeply than it is. Each has clearly devoted the requisite 10,000 hours of training to become a master of his profession, and each is well on the way to acquiring 10,000 hours of experience on stage. As it can for many artists, the heart aches in its witness of their commitment and earnest desire to succeed.


Theirs are generous souls, devoting a page of the printed program to recognize and thank more than 75 individuals and organizations that have lent them assistance. They also are shy fellows, omitting any information about themselves, their backgrounds, and their experiences. In this particular they err; new people, like the women seated behind me, want to know more, while those who are more familiar need help remembering the details from one encounter to the next. Nonetheless, they have become savvy about promoting their performances, and arranged demonstration appearances on the Fox, ABC, and NBC television stations in the Twin Cities.


They are true pros. However, they are in need of a stronger infrastructure that can calm the frenzy and lift the load of their offstage activities. For the long term, they should examine whether a non-profit or for-profit business model can more efficiently serve, sustain, and advance their interests. In either case, the infusion of a modest but significant amount of capital would propel them to the heights that rightfully should be theirs. Someone(s) needs to take on their cause.

• • •

The Music Box Theatre, located near downtown Minneapolis and the city's convention center, is an architectural gem – from an audience perspective – built as a vaudeville house in 1920. Currently operating on a for-profit basis, the theater is a 440-seat house, renting for a modest base charge of $3,500 a week. While its stage is not suitable for most concert dance, its raked seating offers good sightlines to audiences.


It needs improvement in at least one area. For the Saturday evening performance by Buckets and Tap Shoes, advertised to begin at 8pm, only one ticket seller occupied the box office. At 8pm, 43 people still stood in line to purchase tickets or pick up will call orders. Two individuals, who clearly worked for the theater, stood by watching the line's slow progression, while occasionally helping a third employee at the concessions counter. This is a low level of service that, tempered by degree, is as outrageous as the poor performance of many of our wizards of Wall Street finance.


The customer always comes first. It does not matter whether one's job description includes the selling of tickets; employees with pride in their work ethic will add value to their skill sets by taking the initiative to pitch in, to learn, and to help out. When 43 people are waiting to give you $20 each – plus sales tax plus service charge – you need to make it easy for them to do it, even if it comes at the expense of missing out on a sale for a $2 cookie or cup of java. In at least this instance, the Music Box personnel needed to embody a fraction of the can-do spirit that animates some of their renters.


To balance and round out the observation: What was one to make of the customers who were still entering the lobby to join the ticket line at 8:06pm? Did they not know the start time? Did they not leave home in sufficient time to locate a new venue? Did they assume that no one else would be waiting to make a last-minute purchase? Did they think it would be acceptable to take their seats after the performance started? Did they think at all? Hopefully, they thought to tell their friends to turn out for the next performance.

Seasonal affect disorder

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Throughout March, the Minnesota Playlist site has featured reports and commentaries about how, and how well, Twin Cities theaters go about the business of assembling a season of plays. The site's editor, Alan Berks, has just posted No one asked me but... in which he tries to evoke and provoke. Example:

Don't do plays to 'raise awareness' or 'inform' or 'put a human face on a problem.' ... Why is theater the only business on the planet that expects to get a new audience with the same product? ... They know what your theater does – it's not a marketing problem – they don't want to see it.

Worth a read.

Seriously

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Minnesota may not need a second United States senator when we already have a self-described "foreign correspondent behind enemy lines" in Washington to keep us informed and to look after our interests. Her name is Michele Bachmann, and she represents the people of our state's sixth congressional district, having been elected to her second term last November. This past weekend she used the airwaves of WWTC 1280 AM to make one of her periodic reports to us on a number of issues. About the administration's cap-and-trade proposal to reduce carbon emissions, she had this to say:

I want people in Minnesota armed and dangerous on this issue of the energy tax because we need to fight back. Thomas Jefferson told us ‘having a revolution every now and then is a good thing,’ and the people – we the people – are going to have to fight back hard if we’re not going to lose our country. And I think this has the potential of changing the dynamic of freedom forever in the United States.

Some of the folks reading this will find these and others of Bachmann's comments perfectly lucid and reasonable, while some will think she is totally nuts.


A similar divergence of perspective has been occurring lately at the University of Minnesota's dance program where an anonymous protest has attacked "institutional racism and white privilege." The protest was chronicled in a posting on the tcdailyplanet website, which includes links to a blog started by the anonymous protesters and a Facebook page set up by some not-anonymous students.


After reading the manifestos, comments, and meeting minutes, it is clear that the protesters have cut the ground from beneath their efforts by insisting on anonymity and failing to cite specifics to which anyone can respond coherently. (Feel free to dispute this conclusion in the comment section below.) Everyone, including students, who seeks desired or justified change can benefit from learning certain basics about effective dialogue and strategy. Hopefully, for students, that learning can occur while attending a major university.


The protesters – and all of us – might take a cue from Jay Smooth and his upbeat, three-minute video of advice about "How To Tell People They Sound Racist." His pointers might even be applicable to some of our political and public policy dialogue.

Review: "Renovate" choreographer's evening, Ritz Theater

Minneapolis, Minnesota


A showcase for 40 dance artists – choreographers and dancers – provided a welcome complement to the first weekend of spring-like weather in the Twin Cities, Mar. 13-15. Styled as "Renovate: Enhancing the Edifice of Twin Cities Dance," the three performances represented a second year of choreographer's evenings presented by Ballet of the Dolls and The Ritz Theater in Minneapolis.


As she did last year, Lisa Conlin, a member of the Dolls, curated the lineup of 11 dance works with advisory assistance this year from Uri Sands, artistic director of TU Dance, and Penelope Freeh, artistic associate of James Sewell Ballet. The major aim of Renovate is to introduce and highlight new talents by giving them a stage, publicity, and an audience. With one exception, all of the choreographers were new to me, as were most of the dancers.


Hip-hop and breakdance veterans Lisa Berman and Carlos Garcia opened the program with "Breakin' Through Cancer," using a music mix including Everyday People, Everday Struggle, Underdog, HAIR, Do Your Thing, and Age of Aquarius. The two choreographers were joined in a variety of solo, group, all guys, and all gals configurations by Amy Sackett, Nicki Cullinan, Madeline Howie, Aneka McMullen, Joe Tran, Tybierius Nguyen, and Mikhail Sakhvadze. The ensemble moved with a nice cohesion and energy. As breaking evolves, however, its movers with staying power for the concert stage will be those who can differentiate themselves from their peers and colleagues. A sharper attack and finer synchronization would be welcome seasonings for this group's nascent virtuosity.


Megan Parlanti performed very fluidly in Stephen Schroeder's "Trial By Grace," created for her senior concert at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota. Her costume, a tunic and skirt in contrasting shades of darker blue, was striking and well-suited to the flavor of the dance. Schroeder's background as a modern dancer with Zenon Dance Company and Arena Dances is reflected here in the soloist's athletic use of space and, in the third section, time spent on the floor becoming acquainted with the floor. The abrupt editing shifts between musical selections – from Kate Havneik, Univers Zero, Jerry Rau, and Edit: sdeezers – injected a dissonance that served no apparent purpose.


Remember the color of Dreamsicles, those orange-white ice cream treats on a stick? That was the flavorful color of the costumes worn by Estevan Esparza and Pam Plagge in "Lucumi," the duet of Cuban dance they created for themselves to music by Pancho Quinto and Grupo Danzon. They performed nicely together, with Plagge displaying an articulated spine and body not matched by Esparza. Their choreography has a decent base on which to add more complexity and depth in future endeavors.


Although probably not intended or controlled by Esparza and Plagge, the abrupt departure of their many fans – seated near the stage – at the conclusion of "Lucumi" on Sunday was a rude disruption for the audience and the next performers in the first half of the program. The insult was exacerbated as the fans broke into conversation while exiting the theater and one of their number noisily dropped a beverage bottle into the trash.


While the printed playbill for the evening included a number of brief and helpful program notes, the absence of any information about the featured choreographers was notable. For sure, large photos and small-print bios were posted in the theater lobby. The omission was striking on a number of counts. Artists at every stage of development desire to be taken seriously. When the audience does not know who these artists are, and from what background and influences spring their creative impulses, it is near impossible to develop an investment in their work. This was true with Esparza and Plagge; I found nothing of use about him on the internet, while for her I searched enough to learn that she has studied somewhat in Havana and been presented in a choreographer's evening at the Walker Art Center. One should not have to look for basic information. A purpose of showcasing newer artists is to remove them from the insider's game and bring them forward for increased scrutiny and visibility.


Bryan Gerber is a modern dancer with a background in ballet, jazz, and yoga whose heroes include the modern dance pioneers Martha Graham and Ted Shawn. He accompanied the opening of his solo, "Finding Balance," with humming and other vocalizations that gave way to a recording of Rachmaninov's Vocalise, Op. 34/14. Attired in bare torso and shin-length black skirt, Gerber's well-structured movements, largely within a central pool of light, had the look and feel of a captive bird exploring its boundaries.


"Sisterlove," Lisa Conlin's lovely trio for herself and Dolls colleagues Heather Cadigan and Stephanie Fellner, opened with the three women seated, facing upstage, and backed by a meditative segment of Mike Hallenbeck's sound mix. The mix drew from Tim Story, Assumpta Est Maria in Coelum, Ray Lynch, and Minoru Miki. As the abstract narrative unfolded, the dancers interacted with large and small pieces of translucent white and black fabrics.


The last time I saw Jim Lieberthal's work several years ago, he had choreographed a dance for people in wheelchairs. The curiosity of his artistic voice leads him on some worthwhile journeys. He was joined here in performance by Brian Evans, a member of the Stuart Pimsler Dance Theater, and Debra McGee, a member of Arena Dances. I liked the overall crafting of "The Bottom Fell Out...and then." The dancers came across as three independent, interdependent creatures or machines, moving in an angular and staccato – pizzicato? – response to the metallic vibes, clanks, and hammering of music by Ben Siems.


Jaime Carrera is a visual and performance artist who hails from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, by way of Kansas and Chicago. "Frontera," his Renovate offering, is part of a trilogy about Mexican immigrants. In this conceptual solo work, set to music by Cuatro Milpas and El Llorar, Carrera moves with idiosyncratic movement phrases. In an interview with 3MinuteEgg about "Tableaux," his recent production at the Bryant-Lake Bowl Theater, Carrera remarked that he has "done a lot of stuff." It would be interesting to see him attempt fewer things and pull from within more of the complexity and nuance that clearly motivates his expression.


The choreography, vocals, text, and costumes composed by Cathy Wright resulted in the most cohesive work on the program. "Wombman," set to music by Matthew S. Smith, featured performers Nina Ebbighausen, Kristen Ostebee, Christine Maginnis, Sharon Picasso, and Jennifer Mack. The particular combination of costumes and music suggested a mating of Weimar-era decadence with "A Clockwork Orange." In a cast of strong performers, Maginnis shows she still has it going on after a career spanning parts of three decades. Wright's work has been presented by dance companies in Utah, where she earned a BFA degree in modern dance from the University of Utah, and by the Momentum Series of the Walker Art Center and Southern Theater.


Marciano Silva dos Santos, a native of Brazil, provided some of the evening's most complex and interesting movement in "3'0'1," a work for three men and two women, with music by Moana Maru. A solo by dos Santos, a member of both TU Dance and Stuart Pimsler Dance Theater, opened the piece, followed by a quartet of Brian Evans, Cade Holmseth, and Kari Mosel – of the Pimsler company – and Jenny Pennaz. The quartet started from positions on the floor with organic and cliched movement, and progressed to a satisfying finish.


The "most complete" performer on the Ritz stage was Christian Adeti, a native of Accra, Ghana. As a drum and dance instructor and performer, Adeti serves as artistic director of the Titambe West African Dance Ensemble of Minnesota, and has taught at Carleton College in Minnesota, North High School in Minneapolis, and Zenon Dance School. "Ganbolt Dance" drew its inspiration from the mining communities of South Africa where "the men sing and play as they look for gold." Adeti's body served literally as his instrument for drumming, vocalization, and percussion. He was accompanied by performers Autumn Compton and Whitney McClusky.


Julie Warder provided "Jammin," the last-but-not-least program closer. Again, it would have been nice to know something more about this artist than just her name. Working with music by Christian McBride, Warder led her dancers through an abstract drama with the right touch of athletic precision: neither too much nor too little. The performers included Brian Evans, Debra McGee, Cade Holmseth, Kency Roberson, and Aneka McMullen.


Housekeeping details: Throughout the evening, the lighting design did not distract, but would have benefited from a brighter illumination of the performers. The house manager needed to start the show at the advertised 7pm, rather than at 7:10pm. Those quibbles aside, the folks at Ballet of the Dolls and the Ritz Theater should be encouraged to renew Renovate for a third year in 2010.


Italicized text revised/extended 3/19/09, 5:34 AM.

Fury!

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Outrageous and unbelievable!


In the last week: I visited with an agent of a for-profit enterprise that just laid off more than five dozen people and is evaluating whether to renew its sponsoring relationship with one of our major sports facilities. I spoke with an arts community leader who is concerned about losing the community's production infrastructure that provides employment to thousands of on-stage and off-stage people. I took coffee with a writer who is trying to piece together rent and grocery money in a fragmenting publishing milieu. I caught up with a publicist who is working seven days a week to fill 75% of available seats in an ongoing business that requires more than that to break even. On Friday, I dropped in on six organizations to cheer their morale as they deal with budgetary turmoil.


Yesterday: The American International Group (aka A.I.G., the insurance giant termed "too big to fail") announced that it is awarding $165 million in performance-related bonuses for 2008 to some of its employees. This is after the collective we, the citizens of the United States (not all of us are taxpayers) bailed out this firm with infusions of public cash, borrowed from China, to the tune of $170 billion. In a letter to A.I.G.'s chairman, the secretary of the treasury, Timothy Geithner, urged that the bonuses be scrapped.


Today: Larry Summers, chair of the White House National Economic Council, said he is outraged by the news, but because of contracts that pre-date the public bailout there is nothing that can be done to stop the bonuses (although, apparently, effective curbs are in process of implementation going forward). Further, the chairman of A.I.G. says that subjecting the compensation policies of his organization to the dictates of the government (aka the public – you and me – the owners – the people who have guaranteed that they still have jobs) will risk a talent drain to the competition.


Wall Street is separated from Main Street not just by a yawning gap. Wall Street is its own surreal, parallel universe.


Note to Summers and others who say "No we can't" stop these bonuses: You owe your own jobs to our belief and desire that "Yes we can!"


We don't care how you do it. Shut down this outrage!

A good start

Minneapolis, Minnesota


With half of Minnesotans on suicide watch owing to the duration and intensity of winter, and with half poised to slit their wrists if the Coleman/Franken recount does not end during recorded history, sunshine coupled with sustained high temperatures cannot arrive too soon.


Even if this morning began with windchills of –15º to –20º, today's deep and piercing sunshine is a good start, a welcome uptick from yesterday's gray overhang and dump of slop. Once we emerge from tonight's thermometer low of –6º, we will have a shot at remaining above freezing during coming days.


There even are glimmers of hope on the recount front. Assuming that the final witnesses can make it to St. Paul from our blizzard-strewn counties to the west, Team Franken might rest its case this afternoon – two or three weeks ahead of predictions. After Team Coleman's rebuttal and any Franken re-rebuttal, plus closing arguments by both sides, Coleman's legal challenge to the State Canvassing Board's final report could go to the special panel of three, state court judges next week.


After that? Stay tuned. While Franken told some Democratic senators yesterday that he saw light at the end of the recount tunnel, Coleman's campaign manager asserted to some reporters that it really was the light of an oncoming train.


For drama queens and others of every stripe, we have enjoyed or endured (take your pick) months of civic distemper on every topic. From those on the left – complaining about the left-right-and-center – to those on the right – carrying on about the right-left-and-center – it seems none of us are happy about anything.


(Notwithstanding a new Gallup poll that says Minnesotans rank themselves fifth highest for health and happiness.)


Well. At least someone is trying to cope.


The front page of this morning's Star Tribune newspaper featured an interesting juxtaposition. At the top center, the president was quoted as saying "The future belongs to the nation that best educates its citizens." The adjacent story reported about a substitute teacher in St. Paul who was sent home from school yesterday after blowing a 0.18% on a Breathalyzer test.


Probably not the kind of education, or coping, the prez had in mind.


Coping is a state of mind that requires a positive outlook. For example, anyone who still qualifies to pay capital gains taxes in any amount can be added to the endangered species list. (I know that hurts and isn't funny.) Further, at least for now, it appears that close to 90% of the country is still employed at least part-time. (Also not funny).


Our entertainment industries stand ready to help. The owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves basketball team has taken to the airwaves to pitch season tickets for five bucks a game – with the promise that anyone laid off during 2009 will receive a refund.


Only medical tests, however, can remove the darkest cloud on the horizon. Joe Mauer, our hometown star catcher for the Minnesota Twins, had kidney surgery in December. Joe has been able to catch, throw, and swing a bat in spring training, but he still cannot run without back pain and has yet to play a pre-season game. This is not good as we await results of today's magnetic resonance arthrogram in Fort Myers.


Joe's good health would help get the baseball season off to a good start. Could the rest of the world be far behind?

Preview: Coming to the Guthrie

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Follow this link to a YouTube conversation between Galen Treuer and Ellen Swanson about "My Father's Bookshelf," the new Live Action Set production premiering June 18 at The Guthrie's Dowling Studio in Minneapolis.


[Live Action Set website] [Live Action Set Facebook] [Related Minnesota Mist post.]

Stories with brains

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Faced with an apparent underwhelming choice of candidates for the U.S. senate in 2008 (incumbent Norm Coleman-R, and challengers Al Franken-DFL and Dean Barkley-I), Minnesota voters contrived to choose none of them for as long as possible.


The proceedings surrounding the re-count of an election too-close-to-call, certification by the State Canvassing Board, and the (so far) month-long trial initiated by Coleman have resulted in not seating one of two senators to which Minnesota is entitled. Today's tally has Franken ahead by fewer than 300 votes, but stay tuned. Eventually, either Coleman or Franken will assume the office, with neither possessing a mandate from a majority of the voters.


I appreciate the collective wisdom of this expression by the electorate, although I know that many do not. Possibly, if we could have forced a do-over with a new slate of candidates, we would have done so. That is not in the legal deck of cards.


Would that it were so, however, for such sterling public servants as Jack Kingston, the representative for Georgia's 1st Congressional District. Before voting against the recent stimulus package, Kingston raised a fuss about including $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts because the money would not be spent on real jobs for real people. That kind of talk riled some of us arts and culture types. Especially since Kingston's own website touts his district as something of "a literary haven" and the background setting for filming of Academy Award-winning movies.


Kingston's wisdom aside, artists and members of their support system believe themselves to be very real people. In fact, I believe one segment of artists – dancers – are among the most intelligent people on the planet.


Coinciding with the conversation in Washington about the reality of the arts was the appearance in Minneapolis of an essay by Melodie Bahan, director of communications at the Guthrie Theater. Bahan, who says she likes well-written reviews, thinks that readers of daily newspapers would be served better by a focus on "actual journalistic coverage of the arts."


Insisting that journalists are storytellers and that thousands of stories are not being written, Bahan says "Stop writing reviews and start writing news."


Oh, honey!


Surely you at least thought twice about such a position after the Star Tribune newspaper reported last month about the $682,300 salary and benefits that were paid to Guthrie Director Joe Dowling in 2007. (That is less than 3% of the Guthrie's budget, by the way.) Even though an editorial noted that Dowling and others had earlier taken 20% cuts, and even though a reader observed the sum is less than 5% that paid to three roster members of the Minnesota Twins, I would bet that you and your colleagues did not welcome the writing of such news. Nor the discussion that has reverberated since.


Nonetheless, let us assume that the arts are somehow as real as the rest of the world, that they are created and sustained by real people, that they impart meaning and value to other real people, and that they should be subject to real journalism. What real, or surreal, stories would then be written, and with what timing?


Relative to Dowling, we would have read in 2003 that he and others took 20% pay cuts to tide over a rough patch in the Guthrie's finances. That would have been as laudable then as was last week's welcome news that Jeff Immelt, CEO of General Electric, opted to forego a 2008 performance bonus of $11.7 million after the company's stock price tanked by 56%. As noted by Forbes, this action by Immelt and GE set an example both of good governance and good public relations. The example stands in contrast to the more than $3 billion in bonuses approved for employees of Merrill Lynch by former CEO John Thain following 4th quarter losses in 2008 of multi-millions of dollars.


We would read, as we did last week, that the New York City Ballet would not renew the contracts of 11 of 101 dancers next year; that senior staff already had taken 10% salary reductions; that junior staff will take 5% reductions next year; that ticket sales and donations are down 6-8%; that this year's deficit of $5.5 million will equal 8.8% of the $62.3 million budget; that next year's deficit is projected at $2-3 million; and that the endowment has dropped from $187 million to $138 million. We would read, as we have not, how the company intends to finance multiple years of deficits totalling multi-millions of dollars. We would read, as we have not, why the company believes it cannot institute balanced budgets for the current and succeeding years.


Such stories would juxtapose nicely with today's congressional testimony by Chesley Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who landed Flight 1549 safely in the Hudson River, not far from City Ballet's headquarters at Lincoln Center. Sullenberger told the aviation subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee that his pay has been cut 40% in recent years and his pension terminated. He has started a consulting business to augment his pilot's pay and works seven days a week to make ends meet.


We would continue to be outraged by news such as that greeting us this morning: (1) After investing $150 billion in American International Group (aka A.I.G., the insurance giant that is "too big to fail") where the collective we now own 80% of the company, they tell us they need tens of billions of dollars more. (2) After investing $45 billion in Citigroup, we need to give them more, raising our ownership stake to 40%. (3) General Motors and Chrysler need $22 billion on top of the $17 billion we already have lent. No doubt, some top staff people at these outfits would continue to complain about the government's salary compensation caps because they have contrived a lifestyle for themselves that does not work with less than seven figures.


(You read it here first: I can and will run any company into the ground for $500,000 a year. I will bring along my own cronies to help me do it. Where do I sign my contract?)


An age of real-arts-news-not-reviews would continue to include hard facts in stories such as appeared in the New York Times nine days ago (Sun., Feb. 15, 2009, AR5). Writer Kate Taylor reported on the viral fund-raising efforts by the Magic Theatre in San Francisco to raise $350,000 to avoid closing for good after 40 years. The theater has enjoyed a national reputation for its creation and production of new plays.


Basically, as reported by Taylor, a former artistic director drove the subscription audience away with crappy work that even the board of directors did not like. Still, the staff and board let the budget (i.e., expense budget) double to $2 million while debts mounted. After a $75,000 shortfall in this season's subscriptions "the board took a closer look at the balance sheets....The theater had maxed out its $300,000 line of credit and had $300,000 in other debts."


I have been looking for a new gig in the arts, am up for a challenge, and saw that the Magic had a leadership position posted. So, I started digging deeper to find out more of the back story on $600,000 of debt – representing 30% of the budget. A Dec. 31 story in the San Francisco Chronicle quoted the artistic director as saying "There was a lot of debt we didn't realize we had....This situation is the result of years and years of mismanagement."


A Jan. 19 Chronicle story related a combination of causes and quoted the board chair thusly: "The reports we were getting at the finance committee level and at the board level were not thorough enough for us to fully understand the mounting accounts payable....That's our fault." The future of the Magic Theatre remains in doubt.


Indeed.


Rep. Kingston down in Georgia should take comfort in the knowledge that mindless risk-taking and financial mismanagement are traits shared by incompetents in for-profit and non-profit enterprises.


Ms. Bahan is right: there are a lot of stories not being written. Some of them could include the tales of mismanagement and poor governance within organizations in Minnesota that pre-date the current economic downturn. To be fair, however, many organizations do have their acts together, and we should read about those also.


Just as I read this morning about many of Minnesota's good "Banks That Had a Brain" in a laudatory essay by Minnesota's solo senator, Amy Klobuchar. Not all banks lost their heads and ran off to the land of Oz, Klobuchar writes. "They did well, both for themselves and for the people they serve."

Signs of it

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Spring! The air retains a chill, but this morning's clear sky reflects a deeper shade of blue here in Twins Territory. Meanwhile, members of the Minnesota Twins baseball team began convening in Fort Myers, Florida, this week for the start of spring training. Opening day at the Metrodome in Minneapolis is seven weeks away: Monday, Apr. 6, 7:10pm, hosting the Seattle Mariners.

Leading

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Kate Barr is one of the stars in the firmament of nonprofit organizations in Minnesota – or, anywhere, for that matter. I have known her for years, first for her appreciation of the arts, particularly dance, but also for her stellar leadership of the Nonprofits Assistance Fund. As a former senior banker, Kate is versed in the "can't-argue-with-certain-basics" that should underpin all nonprofit organizations. Her background has given her expertise in how to use the tools of finance and good management to make things happen and get things done.


I wish often that I could channel Kate's wisdom which she shares periodically and succinctly in her blog. The best I can do is link to her posts in the column to the left. Her latest offering, "Who Said Leadership Was Fun?" sums up a great deal in a small space. Some excerpts:

The Minnesota Council on Foundations invited Judith Alnes from MAP for Nonprofits and me to contribute an article for their current issue of Giving Forum.... When I read the article in print today, this statement in the conclusion really jumped out for me:

Those of us in leadership roles should remember that this time will be judged by the actions we take or the actions we fail to take.

That’s a lot of weight being carried by leaders of nonprofits....

Sometimes, being a leader requires you to take responsibility for tough problems and be held accountable for the results.... If you’re the one who has to stare at the budget column or read the letter informing you of a funding reduction you know what this feels like....

This is a time to learn a new leadership approach or adapt well developed leadership practices. I have some ideas about what needs to change and I hope that you will weigh in as well.... [Read the whole post.]

• • •

My two cents: Who was it that said “Know thyself”? This seems particularly necessary in a time when so many organizations are dealing with existential issues and fighting/hoping for survival. When we cannot change the world, we only can change our perceptions of and reactions to it. I always have found that when I make myself vulnerable and open to the worst possible outcome I find great strength and energy. Still, it can be challenging to maintain a posture of openness in the presence of inertia or the absence of reciprocity. One needs an immersion and grounding in the realities of his/her organization’s “numbers” and in the limits of one’s individual capabilities, knowing at all times what is the bottom line. With and without other people, I ask two questions: What is the worst thing that could happen? If it happened, can I live with that? If the answer to the second question is “yes,” then anything short of the worst is a gift, and I can live with it. GP

Vignettes

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The Minnesota Orchestra presented the world premiere of its commission, "Oboe Concerto," by composer Christopher Rouse this week. A thoroughly pleasant work, it was given a fine reading by Basil Reeve and his colleagues under the baton of Osmo Vänskä. Along with other works, the program also included Tchaikovsky's "Pathétique." I have not heard this symphony live since Eiji Oue led the Orchestra. As conducted by Vänskä, the work had more energy and nuance than one hears on many recordings.

• • •

Why do some Republicans insist on speaking about real Virginians, real Americans, and now real people?


Michael Kranish reported in the Boston Globe last week about criticism of the economic stimulus bill moving through Congress. The House version – passed without a single Republican vote – contains $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts. The funds are not in the current draft of the yet-to-be-passed Senate version. Kranish cited Rep. Eric Cantor of Virginia, the third-ranking Republican in the House, "who has urged Obama to 'get the pork barrel spending out,'" and Rep. Jack Kingston, a Georgia Republican, who wants to transfer the proposed NEA funding to highway construction. "We have real people out of work right now and putting $50 million in the NEA and pretending that's going to save jobs as opposed to putting $50 million in a road project is disingenuous," Kingston said [emphasis added].


Michael Steele, the newly-elected GOP chairman, shares that line of thought. Speaking on ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos this morning, Steele said "What this administration is talking about is making work. It is creating work.... It's not a job."


It makes one wonder what is real.

• • •

The Minneapolis Convention Center stands four blocks from my house and serves as the portal to the downtown skyway system – enclosed bridges that span streets to connect buildings on the second level. Over the years I have observed and overheard the buzz of many convenings, including those of varied religious organizations. For three days last week, nearly 1,400 pastors swarmed the hallways and skyways leading to the Hilton Hotel for the "Desiring God" conference. According to their literature and website, this is a Baptist-related group that follows the ministry of John Piper, a senior pastor at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis. Piper's congregation has played a positive role in its community, including as an advocate for affordable housing. Nonetheless, it was a bit startling to understand how divergent are some of its perspectives from one's own. To-wit, this answer to a question about the Desiring God conference:

Can Pastor's Wives Attend? We intentionally seek to foster a male fraternity because it is rare and uniquely refreshing for pastors to fellowship with men who carry similar burdens and to counsel one another with the kind of frankness that is awkward to do in mixed company. However, we do not prohibit wives from attending, knowing that there are circumstances where it is the best choice for marriage or ministry

This is startling because I have become used to churches where women serve as full partners in ministry and whatever burdens come with it.

Food, glorious food!

Minneapolis, Minnesota


You can help alleviate hunger in Minnesota by buying and eating loads of bananas.


Through a mechanism of recovery and donation, the empty cartons in which the Chiquita company ships bananas to wholesale grocers and retail stores find their way to a 65,000 sq. ft. warehouse in New Hope, a suburban community of Minneapolis. There, an army of volunteers packs 35-40 pounds of food into each box for distribution to a network of 200 foodshelves and relief programs in 35 Minnesota counties.


This distribution process is the centerpiece of the programs operated by the Emergency Foodshelf Network, a nonprofit foodbank founded in 1976 to collect, warehouse, and distribute high quality food and provide essential support services.


The foodbank system can be reduced to numbers, each number ultimately representing individual people in the system.


EFN's warehouse itself would be a performing artist's dream facility. The second floor of the Hennepin Center for the Arts in downtown Minneapolis has two, freespan dance studios – each two stories high – and accompanying office space that occupy roughly 7,500 sq. ft. The EFN space is larger by more than 8-1/2 times!


Volunteers provided EFN with more than 200,000 hours of service last year, worth $3.9 million. Nearly 75 hours were donated today by 27 members of the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus in an outing organized by Jason Schuck, the chorus president.


The day's efforts were inspired by the theme of the chorus's March concert performances: "Food, Glorious Food!" Songs with a culinary flavor will be accented by advice from guest food diva Lynne Rosetto Kasper, host of The Splendid Table® on American Public Media.


Under the direction of Volunteer Coordinator Sarah Cobb, 17 guys sorted through tons of donated canned and packaged goods for 2-1/2 hours, discarding a motley variety of paper bags and boxes while checking expiration dates. For present purposes, all peanut butter items, a considerable number, were set aside. Then, they assembled a balanced collection of foodstuffs into the Chiquita cartons – whose ratio of tops to bottoms was duly noted by some to be equal. Packed cartons were stacked on pallets, three deep, three wide, and five high. Just shy of eight pallets were stacked containing nearly 13,000 pounds of food.


Ten other men re-packed meat into 365 "mega-meat packages," each providing servings for an average family unit of four.


Once the statistics are entered into the tracking system, EFN will send an email to its member agencies telling them it has 13,000 pounds of food ready for distribution. Agencies will then order what they need, either for delivery by EFN or pickup by the agency. Approximately 4,900 people will eat food from today's packaging.


The average foodshelf site in EFN's network receives 800 pounds of free food per month, equal to 50 bags of groceries. On average, this translates into a distribution of one bag of food per person, per family.


According to EFN's website, for each individual, corporate, foundation, and government dollar donated, 92¢ is expended directly on programs. The agency does not charge its members fees of any kind for its services, and operates with a lean staff of 27 and a fleet of five vehicles. In addition to distributing free food, EFN makes bulk purchases at discount to resell without markup to its members.


The United States does not lack for sufficient food to feed its people. What is lacking is the capacity of individuals to purchase what is needed. A recent survey by Hormel Foods reported that one in four Minnesotans said they or a family member had visited a food shelf. One in 10 said they or someone in their family went to bed hungry in the past month because of lack of money for food.


Each year, 96 billion pounds of food, 27% of the U.S. food supply, is wasted and thrown away. EFN's Lost Harvest program attempts to salvage some of this. Here's how.


Consumers have become accustomed to purchasing produce of uniform size and color from their grocery displays. Consequently, at the U.S./Mexico border at Nogales, Arizona, thousands of tons of perfectly good, fresh produce are sent to landfills because they are misshapen or off-color. One truck, 35,000 pounds, of such produce is worth $100,000 and can feed 8,000 individuals. EFN's only cost is that of its transport from Arizona to Minnesota for $4,000 per truck. In 2008, EFN transported and distributed 1 million pounds of produce – with a value of $2.8 million – at a total transport cost of around $114,000.


Like the rest of this operation, that is nonprofit and free market efficiency at its best. Even our new, Wall Street socialists should support that!


The Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus will present "Food, Glorious Food!" at the Ted Mann Concert Hall, 2128 4th Street South, Minneapolis, Fri-Sat, Mar. 27-28, 8pm. Tickets: $23-$43, 612.624.2345.

Exhibit: A dance legacy, University of Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minnesota


In 1962, Loyce Houlton founded a small dance school near the University of Minnesota that became the Minnesota Dance Theatre (MDT). Known for blending classical with contemporary dance, MDT engages the community and cultivates young dancers. For four decades, the company has performed the “Nutcracker Fantasy,” originally choreographed by Houlton and one of the most sought after holiday events in Minnesota.


“Houlton’s Legacy: The Magic of Dance” is a colorful survey and exhibit of MDT's evolution. The exhibit features selections from the University of Minnesota Libraries’ Performing Arts Collection and includes personal notes and choreographic sketches from Houlton, photos of the company, original costumes, props, set designs, and continuous viewing of live performances from the past to the present.


An essay by arts journalist Camille LeFevre, "A life in Dance, Resurrected" details the horrifying and dramatic story of how MDT's records were saved from destruction 20 years ago, and describes how they are displayed in the current exhibit.


Houlton's Legacy: The Magic of Dance, thru Feb. 20, 1st floor gallery, Elmer L. Andersen Library, West Bank Campus, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. 8:30am-4:15pm M-F; 9am-1pm Sa. Free.

Saturday morning Zen

St. Paul, Minnesota


James Sewell, a choreographer friend, wrote several years ago that he loves "to watch how musicians move when they play. They perform an expressive dance." He would have enjoyed watching the four energetic members of the Enso String Quartet.


Violinists Maureen Nelson and John Marcus, violist Melissa Reardon, and cellist Richard Belcher moved in the groove this morning when they performed Mendelssohn's String Quartet No. 2 in A Minor. Their efforts did not disappoint the audience of 100 in The Music Room at the SPCO Center in downtown St. Paul. The occasion was a free, 9am concert to help celebrate the 50th birthday of The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra.


Marcus employed the greatest amount of footwork, and his dynamic eyebrows are a match for those of Reardon who seemed to have the most engaged facial expressions. Nelson had the most articulated and commanding upper torso, and one would not want to mess with her stiletto heels. Constrained by his cello, Belcher poured great energy into his fingerings.


Inspired by Beethoven, Mendelssohn provided the romantic raw material – composed at age 18! – with which the quartet delivered a rich and passionate finished product. There was no way to discern that they had just learned the piece this week. It was a great 20 minutes to be alive!


In one of the SPCO's fine traditions, new music also was included on the program. The composer, violist, and arranger Ljova (Lev Zhurbin), born in Moscow in 1978, hails from an artistic family. His father, Alexander Zhurbin, is a Russian composer for film and musical theater, and his mother, Irena Ginzburg, is a poet, writer, and journalist. Ljova originally scored "Bagel on the Malecón" and "Ori's Fearful Symmetry" for five violas. Here, they were arranged for string quartet, both embodying a klezmer air.


The Enso String Quartet, formed in 1999 when the four principals were at Yale University, is serving in the SPCO's Young Artists Program. Collectively, its members have several degrees from Yale, the Curtis Institute of Music, The Juilliard School, the New England Conservatory of Music, the University of Canterbury, and the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.


The ensemble's name, enso, is derived from the Japanese Zen painting of the circle which represents many things: perfection and imperfection, the moment of chaos that is creation, the emptiness of the void, the endless circle of life, and the fullness of the spirit.


Against a clear sky outside the SPCO Center, the sun shone brightly on the ice sculptures in Rice Park, created for the St. Paul Winter Carnival. "Fountain of Unicorns," by Chris Swarbrich and Greg Smotzer, took first place in the ice carving competition. Photos here.


Enso String Quartet photo by David Mehr (l-r): Richard Belcher, Melissa Reardon, John Marcus, Maureen Nelson.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?

Minneapolis, Minnesota

"Honey, I'm twice the woman you are, and more of a man than you'll ever be!" – A drag queen at Baton in Chicago to a heckling straight woman in the audience, as recounted by Ironwood, a gay man who came out in the Twin Cities in the 1970s.

Anyone who still thinks that all GLBT folks share one common experience or perspective need look no further than "Where have all the drag queens gone?," an article by Thomas Rogers for Salon.com, and the 48+ letters it has generated in response.


A 20s-something writer, Rogers posits his positive experience as a gay teenager ("For many men of my generation, coming out registered on the personal trauma scale somewhere between our first pimple and the pain of our first breakup.") against the campy spectacle that has lost favor with a generation of young gay men.


His readers applaud and maul him, and each other, as they discuss the role of drag queens as party favors; as symbols of liberation vs. performance/folk art; or as symbols of authority, along with priests and judges. One reader found Rogers's experience and article to be pretentious and shallow. Another bemoaned the omission of drag kings. Another cautioned that, appearances of progress aside, 20-40 per cent of GLBT adolescents still attempt suicide each year. More than one reminds that it was the drag queens who provided the gay movement with its Rosa Parks moment at New York City's Stonewall Inn. Yet another laments the seeming disappearance of these cultural unicorns.


It is nice to note, however, that the spectacle of men in dresses still resonates among a generation of older straight men; see YouTube images of a Republican-candidate-for-president-in-drag (Rudy Giuliani) flirting with Donald Trump.

Writers to share

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Allow me to introduce four writers – Brittany Fridenstine-Keefe, Penelope Freeh, David Frum, and Nicholas Nash – whose words I find valuable for various reasons. Collectively, their thoughts fit within the mission of Minnesota Mist: Writings about dance, the arts, politics, and culture. Links to their blog sites are listed in the left-hand column of this blog, under "My Favorite Places on the Web."


Brittany Fridenstine-Keefe pens and posts Empowering Thoughts for Dancers. She also chairs the Dancer Council of Dance/USA, the national service organization for nonprofit dance in America. Currently, she performs as a member of the American Repertory Ballet in New Jersey, and appeared last summer in a solo program in Germany and Italy. I have known Brittany and her husband, Matthew Keefe, for several years; both danced with James Sewell Ballet during my tenure as its executive director. Born in Idaho, Brittany grew up in Seattle where she studied dance at the School of the Pacific Northwest Ballet. Her performance credits include Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, Ballet Memphis, and Minnesota Dance Theatre. Brittany has developed a dance therapy program for children with special needs and is certified in the GYROTONICS® exercise system.


Penelope Freeh has written Thoughts on Dance for three years, since January 2006. A native of Ohio, Penny started her dance studies at the Dayton Ballet before moving to New York City where she danced with several companies. She came to Minnesota in 1994 to join James Sewell Ballet, where she continues to perform and serves as artistic associate. As a choreographer, her work has been produced by the James Sewell Ballet, Minnesota Orchestra, Walker Art Center / Southern Theater, Weisman Art Museum, and Ballet Builders. Penny is the monthly dance writer for TC METRO magazine; she wrote a feature column for Dance Magazine in May 2008.


I have been aware of David Frum since his days as a special assistant and economics speechwriter to President George W. Bush in 2001-2002. During last fall's campaign, some members of the conservative movement branded him as a traitor and persona non grata for questioning the credentials of Sarah Palin and her fitness to serve as president. I wrote to David on Nov. 14, following his appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC:

For a few brief moments last evening, you and Rachel Maddow had very human and real conversation. You and I are not fellow travelers, politically, but I appreciated your quoting of Gandhi and planting a seed with Rachel – whose style I mostly enjoy – regardless of whatever combination of things motivated you. Thanks for making the appearance.

He replied to thank me, and I have since followed his writing. Regardless of the party in power, we need a strong, loyal opposition, one that is reasoned, principled, and civil. David's voice provides that on the new website he edits, NewMajority,com. The site is dedicated to the reform and renewal of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. I do not vouch for the other writers he features, nor do I share his objective of a new majority of the right, but he provides an intellectually honest discourse with his own words.


Born in Toronto, David earned BA and MA degrees from Yale and a law degree from Harvard, and became a naturalized U. S. citizen in 2007. He is a resident at the American Enterprise Institute, the author of six books, and a regular commentator on American Public Media's "Marketplace." Like me, he is a fan of Abraham Lincoln and American Civil War history. His wife, the author Danielle Crittenden, is a contributor to the HuffingtonPost.com. Here is an example of David's viewpoint from a recent post:

Today's Republican Party is an unhealthy and unhappy organization. ...Parties do not rebuild by shutting out their members – or engaging in tough guy talk when asked basic and obvious questions about past promises. They rebuild with transparency, responsiveness and competence. Let's have some, please.

I have known Nicholas Nash for many years through my work in Minnesota's arts community, and always have regarded him as what "they" used to call a "true gentleman and scholar." Like me, he has had more than one Scottish terrier in his life and household, and that is just the beginning of the good character traits of this self-described teacher, school administrator, professor, public radio program director and broadcaster, entrepreneur, and theater aficionado.


Educated at Harvard, Nick carries the title Le Grand Fromage at The Nash Company where his largest selling products include nose flutes and conducting batons. He is a man of character, conviction, and subtlety who maintains several blogs, including Hobbling Through The Zeitgeist, Islay The Scotty, and Thoughts While Shaving. Here is a sample of this Renaissance man's prose:

You should be willing to discover our own contemporary artists and composers with enough oomph so that whether their time comes now or not for another century and a half, they might believe that their commitment to their art will always have value.

Spending the dough

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Chris Roberts reported on Minnesota Public Radio yesterday about efforts by members of Minnesota's local music scene to organize themselves to take advantage of proceeds from the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment approved by voters on Nov. 4. "Organized" might be too strong a word, according to Roberts's report, but the effort is being led by Chris Riemenschneider, the Star Tribune's music critic.


The amendment to Minnesota's constitution will increase the statewide sales tax and provide $58 million annually to arts and culture. Logistical details need to be worked out by the legislature and state agencies. One of my October posts (see Chapters 3 & 4) advanced an agenda for how $30 million of annual support for the arts should be structured. There will be plenty of funds to include local musicians.

Covering the bases

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The website of MusicalAmerica carries an account of the meeting held in Washington last Thursday among members of the Presidential Transition Team and the CEOs of 20 arts service organizations. Bill Ivey, former chair of the National Endowment for the Arts, convened the gathering whose attendees included people from Opera America, Dance/USA, Chorus America, League of American Orchestras, Association of Art Museum Directors, Theatre Communications Group, and Meet The Composer, among others. Interestingly – and encouragingly – the agenda was not all about obtaining more money for the arts!

And the Oscar goes to ...

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The nominees for Academy Awards were announced today. Here are my 2008 "best picks" in several categories:

Picture: "Slumdog Millionaire"

Original Screenplay: Martin McDonagh - "In Bruges"

Director: Danny Boyle - "Slumdog Millionaire"

Leading Actress: Meryl Streep (Sister Aloysius Beauvier) - "Doubt"

Leading Actor: Sean Penn (Harvey Milk) - "Milk"

Supporting Actress: Viola Davis (Mrs. Miller) - "Doubt"

Supporting Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman (Fr. Brendan Flynn) - "Doubt"

Original Score: "Slumdog Millionaire"

Original Songs: "Slumdog Millionaire"


Doubt, In Bruges, Milk, Slumdog Millionaire

Yes, they can!

Minneapolis, Minnesota


When everything in the world seems to be going wrong, it is easy to overlook the things that are going right.


Things will be going very right for the four artistic co-directors of Live Action Set when they head to Campinas, Brazil, Jan. 27, for three weeks of study, collaboration, and preparation for their debut at the Guthrie Theater in June.
The directors, Noah Bremer, Megan Odell, Galen Treuer, and Vanessa Voskuil, will study together in week-long workshops with the collaborative, physical theater artists of Lume Teatro, located in the Barão Geraldo district of Campinas.


Although the trip was not planned for the middle of Minnesota’s most biting winter in years, none of the quartet are complaining about the prospect of Campinas’ tropical climate and temperatures in the 80s and 90s. Their timing also will allow them to participate in Brazil’s Carnaval, ending on the eve of Ash Wednesday, Feb. 24.


The travelers see the trip as a rare opportunity for themselves as individual artists and as an organization. "The four of us have never had the opportunity to train together, to focus on growing, and learning a shared performance vocabulary,” said Treuer.


“We are very much looking forward to spending some focused time away, studying, and doing some research for our next performance at the Guthrie Theater."


With a population exceeding one million, Campinas is a city and county in the state of São Paulo on Brazil’s southeastern coast. It hosts an international business presence by the likes of IBM, Motorola, Nortel, Compaq, 3M, Texas Instruments, and Honda, among many others.


During two decades, the Lume company has become a global magnet for theater and dance artists interested in studying clown, Butoh, Noh, Kabuki, and other styles within an atmosphere of collaboration and exchange. In addition to its workshops, the company creates and performs original productions, touring with them to more than 20 countries to-date.


The Live Action Set artists will devote four hours daily to classes, followed by hours of thematic, physical, and language research needed to develop their latest original production, “My Father’s Bookshelf.”


“My Father’s Bookshelf” is a new work about dementia, neuroscience, and the mortality of families. This original play is a mix of family drama and gentle humor, interlaced with a neuroscientist’s passionate lecture on Alzheimer's.


It will be the company’s 13th production since the four artistic directors began creating ensemble-driven performances in 2003. Their work has been a favorite of Fringe Festival audiences and others at several Twin Cities venues.


The Brazilian adventure is supported by a Travel & Study Grant from the Jerome Foundation and additional, individual fundraising. Live Action Set’s artists will share their experience with other Minnesota artists in a two-day workshop in Minneapolis, Mar. 21-22.


[Related Minnesota Mist post.]


My Father’s Bookshelf will be presented in the Guthrie’s Dowling Studio, 818 S. 2nd Street, Minneapolis, June 18-28. Single tickets are priced from $18 to $30, with opening night seats at $34. Tickets are on sale through the Guthrie Box Office at 612.377.2224, toll-free 877.44.STAGE, and online at www.guthrietheater.org.

The court erred

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Don't group me with the chatterers who think the recount in Minnesota's election of a U.S. senator was all fouled up. For sure, some problems have surfaced that need to be fixed, and they will be. Overall, the process was as fair and transparent as anyone, anywhere, could have made it. In this, Minnesota's election milieu remains a model for others.


On the issue of "wrongly rejected absentee ballots," however, things went haywire. Minnesota election law has four criteria/reasons by which absentee ballots can be "rejected and not counted." Election officials in the state's 87 counties identified a small universe of 1,300+ that did not fit one of the four reasons for exclusion. These ballots were not counted on election day. They need to be counted.


Unfortunately, Minnesota's Supreme Court, in a 3-2 decision, directed that representatives of both the Coleman and Franken campaigns must agree with the local officials about the merits of a ballot's wrongful rejection before it could be counted. As a result, three-way agreement was reached only for 900+ ballots. Some 400-500 ballots were not counted and their voters were disenfranchised.


This decision to inject partisan veto power – which was exercised by both sides – into the recount process was wrong. The court should have directed that the 1,300+ ballots be counted. Then, if either campaign had a problem with a particular ballot, they could take the matter to court after the State Canvassing Board certified the election results.


Many members of the state legislature seem to agree and are moving to clarify this aspect of our recount procedures in the statute books. Good for them!

Jenny

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Byron Shire Echo, Mullumbimby, NSW, Australia
Published Wednesday, 7, January 2009

Farewell to Jenny Verroen

Written by Eve Jeffery
Wednesday, 07 January 2009


Jenny Verroen, Mullumbimby identity and much loved Echo staff member, died of complications arising from a recent stroke, at Tweed Heads Hospital on Monday December 29, aged 63.


Born Jennifer Dorothy in March 1945, Jen was the oldest of Ted and Dorothy ‘Doff’ Wareham’s three children. The family including Jenny’s younger brothers Steven and Geoff, lived at Maroubra in Sydney’s southeast.


She was an extremely bright child, which was recognised when she won a scholarship to Sydney Girls Grammar. Jenny grabbed all knowledge from every source and at quite a young age headed overseas to explore the world, arriving in the US in the late 60s where she worked firstly for Chris Craft Boats then at the Radio TV Station, KMSP.


In 1969 she became the administrative assistant to Jack Chestnut, the campaign manager to former Vice President of the United States, Hubert H Humphrey, in his successful bid to be reelected to the Senate.


DJ Leary, political commentator and former media director for Vice President Humphrey has fond and vivid memories of Jen. ‘That campaign was where Jack, Jen and myself first forged a friendship that has weathered time for almost 40 years,’ says DJ. ‘After the campaign, Jen went briefly to Australia but Humphrey was being pressed to run for President in 1972. When he decided to make the run for the White House, he told his campaign manager to bring Jennifer back from Australia, as he wanted her in the US to help him campaign. Humphrey lost the nomination to George McGovern, who lost to Nixon and then came Watergate.’


In 1972 Jen moved to Duluth, Minnesota, as comptroller for the Upper Great Lakes Pilots. The pilots navigated foreign ships through the Lakes. She was also comptroller for Seaway Services, an umbrella corporation whose companies provided tug boats on the Lakes, stevedoring services for the Port of Duluth, and line handling services in several Great Lakes ports. Jen stayed in the shipping industry for about ten years, finally becoming the overall administrator of the entire operation.


Love of her life


It was during her service on the Lakes that she met ‘Verroen’, the love of her life.


Gerard Verroen had retired from his career as a ship’s captain and was the general manager of the freezer terminal for shipping in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The corporation that Jenny worked for bought out the firm which employed Gerard and he was ready to fight for the jobs of his workers when the new company rep entered the room.


‘She was dressed in a white ruffled blouse and a purple jacket,’ recalls Gerard. ‘She had flaming red hair and I thought “God, what a picture”. I was worried that she was going to fire us all but it was settled well, though Jenny kept coming back to Wisconsin for the most minuscule reasons. I thought it a long way to travel for such small things. Then I caught on.’


The two became a pair and were inseparable for almost 30 years.


When Jenny fell in love with Gerard she also became a part of the Verroen clan, and Gerard’s son Hans Peter in Holland found a kindred spirit in Jen. ‘I found a new mother and a good mother she was to me. We “spoke the same language”. She was so clever and understanding. I could discuss any and all topics with her and our kids felt like they had a new “Oma”.’


In the late 70s, Jenny and Gerard moved to a house on St. Clair Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota, and in the early 80s she brought her parents over for a lengthy holiday in the US. During their stay, her mother suffered and eventually succumbed to a recurring incident of cancer and Jen along with her father Ted and Gerard, decided to return to Australia, eventually settling in their home at Wilsons Creek.


Jen was involved in so many local projects and associations they are beyond count – she was a champion of the Bush Fire Brigade, the Chincogan Fiesta Committee, the Northern Rivers Wildlife Carers and the Brunswick Valley Historical Society. It was through these community groups she became well known throughout the shire. There was never a time when the Verroens did not have a box of ‘babies’ in the den, a bird flying through the kitchen to a perch on the mantelpiece or a phone call to rescue a snake from some hysterical human, and as members of the historical society, Jenny and Gerard will be well remembered as the Mullumbimby Market managers, for which Gerard says they didn’t miss a single market in 12 years.


The Verroens were new arrivals in Mullumbimby when Nicholas Shand and David Lovejoy started a newspaper in 1986 and with the wealth of accounting practice behind her, she set up a bookkeeping system and became an important part of The Echo team.


Veteran Echo receptionist Felicity Gaze remembers Jenny as an accommodating and patient teacher. ‘I didn’t have any of the skills I needed for this job when I started. She was a very welcoming person who showed me how to do everything. I wouldn’t be in this job today if it weren’t for Jen.’ This was also true for many Echo staff members who were employed over the years simply because of the faith Jenny had in their ability, myself included. Jen worked in some capacity for The Echo right up until her trip to Europe and the US in 2005.


The Verroens had a joyous family gathering in Holland on their European leg. ‘They came to visit us in Holland in 2005,’ said Hans Peter. ‘It was a wonderful occasion and afterwards they continued on to the USA. That was the last time we saw Jen but she will always be our dear mum and oma.’


The Verroens travelled to St Paul. They were staying with their good friend ‘Princess’ Pam Arledge when Jen collapsed on May 26 with a stroke caused by an arterial venous malformation, AVM, a rare condition that occurred deep in her brain. Thanks to Cyberknife technology, Jen survived the stroke and with friends and family across the globe awaiting her every breath, she rallied enough to be transported to Australia to continue her recovery.


Because of her reduced physical capability, Jenny and Gerard moved from their much loved haven at Wilsons Creek to a more manageable house in Mullumbimby and Jen continued to progress with her recovery. But not for this world was such an angel and her recovery was merely a long goodbye, as Jen was struck again by a stroke in November last year. This time her revival was not as stellar. Sadly just before the new year she let go her hold and flew away.


Jenny Verroen leaves behind a legion of broken hearts. She will be sorely and sadly missed and her presence will never be forgotten.

Kenny

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Monticello Times, Monticello MN
Thursday, January 8, 2009


Kenneth J. "Kenny" Vetsch, 84, Monticello

Kenneth J. "Kenny" Vetsch, 84, Monticello, died Tuesday, Dec. 30, 2008, at his residence.


A Mass of Christian Burial was 10:30 a.m., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2009, at The Church of St. Henry in Monticello. Father Timothy C. Rudolphi was the Celebrant. Visitation was Friday, Jan. 2, 4-8 p.m., at The Peterson Chapel St. Michael-Albertville Funeral Home. A Prayer Service was held at 7 p.m.


Kenny was born Nov. 8, 1924, in Buffalo Township, Wright County, the son of William and Antonia Wey Vetsch. He honorably served his country in the U.S. Army.


He married Millicent I. Peterson July 24, 1971, at St. Timothy Lutheran Church in Columbia Heights.


Kenny worked in dairy farming in Monticello Township for many years. He later became a construction laborer and belonged to The Construction & General Laborers Local # 536.


He was a faithful member of The Church of St. Henry in Monticello. He was also a longtime active member of The American Legion, V.F.W., Catholic Order of Foresters and Knights of Columbus.


Kenny loved the outdoors, especially working at Beebe Lake Park for 17 years and having a large garden.


He is survived by his wife; children, Gary Peterson (James Davies), Debra (Jeff) Lewis, Patti (Patrick) McCann, Tim Peterson and Sandy Peterson; 11 grandchildren; two great-grandchildren; brothers and sisters, Orville (Marlene) Vetsch, Willard "Willie" Vetsch, Anna Mae (Gilbert) Valerius, Earl (Joan) Vetsch, Fred (Alice) Vetsch, Nona (Lyle) Lindenfelser, and Dianne (Duane) Kemmetmueller.


He was preceded in death by his parents; four brothers, Ralph, Lloyd, Joseph and Donald Vetsch; a granddaughter, Bernadette Lewis, and by first wife, Kathleen.


Casket Bearers were Kevin McCann, Aaron McCann, Kelly McCann, Ryan McCann, Peter Lewis and Brian Vetsch.

Kenneth Vetsch Eulogy, St. Henry’s Catholic Church, Monticello MN
by Tim Peterson - January 3, 2009

Good morning. Happy new year everyone. This would certainly be Kenny’s wish for each of us on this fine day of remembrance and celebration.


How does one even begin to summarize the essential character of someone as beloved and dear as my step father Kenny?


The author Dr. Stephen Covey wrote that in order to truly become fulfilled, each of us seeks to live, to love, to learn, and to leave a legacy. I would add my own personal fifth item: to laugh often. Kenny’s life had the gift of many years to master fulfillment in each of these areas.


As I stand before you today, I am struck by the greatest of ironies among my many reflections over this past week. When Kenny married my mother back on July 24, 1971, I was but a scared, awkward, pimple faced, 12 year old kid. Beginning way back then, I literally ached to emulate and to always be as much like him as I possibly could. This was apparent in everything from wearing my Jacques seed corn cap, my leather work gloves, my blue jeans, and my red wing brand work boots that we acquired from a big trip down to Minneapolis. I must confess to you all that here I am now today, almost 38 years later, and I still ache as ever to be as much like him as I can!


Although certainly more numerous, there are at least six reasons why:

1. Kenny had a Quiet Kindness to him. He was authentic, non-superficial, the REAL deal. Kenny was not a talker. He let his actions speak more loudly than his words, as was shared so eloquently last night in comments from both my brother, Gary, and my brother-in-law, Patrick McCann.

2. Patience. Kenny showed this in spades throughout his years, but perhaps no more directly than after the April 26, 1973, construction accident when, at roughly the same age of 49 that I am at today, he fell three stories off of an apartment building that he was working on. He landed upon his seat on the hood of the cement truck below and his hard hat also came off from the fall. Moments later, he was struck in the head by the wheel barrow full of concrete which followed him in the fall. Kenny was nearly killed from this mishap and he suffered through great pain during his recovery and was challenged by great disability and hearing loss throughout the remaining years of his life from that point forward. I cannot even imagine how difficult that must have been to endure such an ordeal.

3. Dutiful. Kenny was the guy who always showed up with his legendary work ethic. He pulled his weight, or in his own words, he "cut the mustard." He always did his job and he did it well.

4. Adaptable Kenny was often resourceful in overcoming adversity and embracing change. I will be forever amazed by how well both he and my mother made the proactive decision 12 years ago to move off of the farm and into town as they proceeded in age into their early 70s.

5. Kenny could be tremendously Humorous. He liked to pull the occasional prank in order to tease my mother. He would help to lighten her up and keep things easy going. Many of you may not know this, but Kenny spoke German, learned long ago from his early farm family upbringing, and this would happen often when he would get together with his many siblings. We kids would be utterly fascinated by this and would beg them to say something in German. "Spechen se Deutsch, spechen se Deutsch," we would plead.

Kenny would then glance at his conspiring brothers with a twinkle in each of their eyes and state something like the following (hopefully, those of you who are fluent will forgive my attempt to pronounce correctly here): "Ah-Bay-Say, Kat-Schlecken-Sneigh. Sneigh-Dey-Vet, Kat-Schlecken-Det!" Fully believing that we had just heard something very deep and profound we would then plead with Kenny to translate what we had just heard. "Say it in English, say it in English," we would beg. Kenny and his brothers would by then be laughing so very hard as they let us all into their little linguistic joke by stating the following: "A-B-C, the cat sleeps in the snow. The snow then melts, the cat sleeps in the dirt!" I guess you just had to be there in order to most fully appreciate how humorous and priceless of a memory this is!

6. Finally, Kenny was very Spiritual. He would never let on himself outwardly about such a thing, but his very persona once again spoke volumes through his love of husbandry and all agrarian activities. His actions were almost always in sync with the seasons. Kenny seemed to get the "inside stuff" right. I did not realize it then, but looking back, it is very apparent that his ongoing, quiet example of living opened many doors to the unfolding of my own spirituality which has continued over the years since he came into our lives.

To conclude my comments, I wish to share some timeless wisdom from my friend, Joe Henry, who lives as a rancher on the western slope of the Continental Divide along the roaring Fork River Valley in southwest Colorado. My friend Joe is an elder of native American, Cheyenne tribal ancestry. His words provide a significant measure of calm and comfort ... so appropriate as we all remember and honor Kenny this day:

I know that love is seeing ALL the infinite in one.

In the brotherhood of creatures; Who the father? Who the son?

The vision of your goodness will sustain me through the cold.

Take my hand now to remember, when you find yourself alone.

You are NEVER alone!

For the spirit fills the darkness of the heavens.

It fills the endless yearning of the soul.

It lives within a star too far to dream of.

It lives within each part, and is the whole.

It is the Fire and the Wings that fly us home.

Fly us home … fly us home.

Ah-ho, Ishinyuwanta … you are the blessed servant Kenny, filled with joy and peace.

Ah-ho, Ishinyuwanta … we are all the blessed ones this day, filled with joy and peace.

For all the saints

St. Michael, Minnesota


I am the eldest of my mother and stepfather's five children.


As we have gathered over the past several days and shared stories and memories, I have felt envious of my three youngest siblings who had the opportunity, as our oldest sister and I did not, to live day-to-day for many years with our stepfather. I was living across the country when my mother and Kenny met and, beyond an occasional extended visit, I never lived here in Wright County.


On Tuesday, my youngest sister, an aunt, and I joined my mother at her house. On Wednesday, my carpenter sister returned from vacation to join us. My brother arrived from Denver on Thursday. With the arrival of our oldest sister today, all of us are together for the first time since the somewhat-expected-but-unbelievable happened.


Throughout the week, we have had an awareness that the news of Kenny's passing, at home and at night, was rippling out to the extended network of his friends and family of 84 years. This is similar to the way that news of a whirlwind courtship emanated from these environs during the spring of 1971.


In addition to brief phone calls, I relied on letters to keep me posted. First came a letter from my godmother, in March, 1971: "Your mother has met a man." Then, in a letter from mother, he had a name: Kenny. In a subsequent letter, she shared news of one of their first dates, on Apr. 10, the day before Easter, at the Monti Club in Monticello: "He seems to know a lot of people around there." [He hailed from a family of 12 children, each of them networked with hundreds of others in ways that only Facebook could hope to unravel.]


A letter from my youngest sister, age 10 at the time, told of Kenny's first date with just the three kids: "It was May 2nd, to be exact," she wrote. He introduced them to his farm and had them painting fences.


Mother and Kenny married in July.


As we sorted through pictures for the display boards this week, it was clear that, when it came to being the subject of photos, Kenny always took a good picture. He is smiling in nearly every one, just as he is now, lying in repose.


More than anyone else I know, Kenny took seriously the dictates of the Old and New Testaments to practice hospitality. His farm, and later his home in town, was the destination of a regular and unending stream of visitors, young and old, from all walks of life. All were welcome. Always.


All of us do our best to deal with what life throws at us. Like all of us, Kenny did not have – or was not able to give – everything that someone else might need in a given circumstance. Unlike some of us, however, Kenny always gave everything he had when it was needed.


ADDENDUM [01/04/09]: Kenny was buried yesterday at Crystal Lake Cemetery in Minneapolis. His death last Tuesday marked the end of both an era and an extraordinary number of departures from my circle during 2008. Last Monday, I received word that Jennifer, a friend since 1970, had died that morning in Australia. In October, two political friends of longstanding, Allan Spear and Gene Lourey, passed away, as did Sam, a friend and arts patron. Jim Dusso, a longtime arts advocate, departed in September. The mother of an artist friend died in an auto accident in August. My father's cousin took his leave, at 102, in July. The mother of my best high school friend died in April. In February, another political friend, David, and the father of another good friend passed away. Last January, I gathered with others to celebrate the life of a friend and former employer. On the same day that Kenny left us, the final court proceedings took place by which a sister and brother-in-law adopted J and R, my brother-in-law's nephews. Blessings on them all.

"Mass" and "Missa Brevis" on Minnesota stages

Minneapolis, Minnesota


In the new year, Minnesota stages will feature two major musical works rooted in the liturgy of the Mass and themes about war. The Minnesota Orchestra will present Mass, A Theater Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers, at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, Jan. 22-23. Composed by Leonard Bernstein, the work received its first performance at the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Missa Brevis will take the stage of the Northrop Dance Series, Mar. 19. This modern dance classic, choreographed by José Limón, will feature members of the New York-based Limón Dance Company.


Read my Oct. 3 preview of both productions here.

In the beginning

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Forty years ago, on Dec. 21, 1968, Apollo 8 lifted from its Florida launch pad for a three-day journey to the moon, the first time humans traveled to and from another world. Once in lunar orbit, astronauts Frank Bormann, James Lovell, and William Anders circled 10 times in 20 hours.


During their ninth orbit, on Christmas Eve in the United States, the men delivered a television broadcast showing the lunar surface below them while reading the first 10 verses from the Bible's book of Genesis. It has been estimated that a fourth of all the people alive at the time saw the broadcast.

Apollo 8 returned to Earth on Dec. 27. Time magazine named the three astronauts Men of the Year for 1968. Their command module is displayed at Chicago's Museum of Science & Industry. Seven months later, July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon for the first time, touching down on the Sea of Tranquility.

Slavery in the 21st century

Minneapolis, Minnesota


There are now more slaves on the planet than at any time in human history. So says E. Benjamin Skinner who spent four years researching the subject. His A Crime So Monstrous: Face-to-Face with Modern-Day Slavery (New York: Free Press, 2008) provides a firsthand account of the global slave trade and explores why efforts to stop it have failed. An article, A World Enslaved, is adapted from the book.

Snow!

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Snow today in Las Vegas!


Aren't we glad we did not spend money to be there on vacation right now? Especially since it is time to go outside and shovel the snow that fell on the sidewalks in Minneapolis last night!


I received a call today from the daughter of a decades-long attendee of the Camel Party. This daughter's son had written a paper about Festivus Camelus for school. His teacher, who has never attended the party ("That's really sad!" I heard the son say in the background), had expressed skepticism and asked him to revise and re-submit the paper. The purpose of the call was to do some fact-checking about the origins of the Camel Song and whether the party had been named after the song. (Not!) The young man already had done some original research while attending this year's camel experience, and I suggested to his mother that he cite the blog entry below in his references. About this teacher, what was it Jesus said? "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."


Four more days until the Winter Solstice!

In the bleak midwinter

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The Dec. 13 broadcast of A Prairie Home Companion with Garrison Keillor took place before a live audience at New York's Town Hall. Guests Renée Fleming, Yo-Yo Ma, and Edgar Meyer joined The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band to perform a special and "must hear" holiday version of "In the Bleak Midwinter".

Festivus Camelus

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Her presence delighted as much as it startled. Neither she nor any of her relatives had attended the previous gatherings, held for 29 consecutive years on the first Saturday of December in a tony neighborhood of Minneapolis. While not prepared for it, members of the clan took her appearance on the scene in stride, feeling a brimming excitement and joy that she had finally joined them in year 30.


Her name was Claudia, and she was beautiful, embodying and confirming hopes and dreams that everything was possible.


She was taller and classier than some had imagined her to be, and her pouting mouth, long eyelashes, and long neck – moving with an easy grace – lent an air of affectionate assurance and captivating charisma. A temperature in the single digits, accompanied by wind gusts to 38mph, turned her exhalations steamy.


Still, she stood on the front lawn for two hours in the new snow, greeting guests with a gentle familiarity that suggested all of them were old friends. Camera flashes accentuated the floodlit scene as she held court with anyone seeking a record of their encounter with her celebrity. An escort stood nearby to insure safety and propriety. Her daughter had sent regrets, having her own holiday party to attend.


Her family's dynastic name, Camelus Dromedarius, placed her among the 90% of its members with a single hump on their backs, and distinguished them from their Camelus Bactrianus cousins who carry two.


That she had joined the Camel Party festivities in person felt perfectly natural. After all, her family had provided the organizing iconography of the clan's convenings from the beginning. From two original tapestrys, the founders's collection of items camelus grew to include photos, postcards, drawings, and statues small and large. In addition, there is the annual cake, sculpted in the form of a dromedary in repose, covered in colorful icing, and measuring up to three feet long.


The robust rendition of the Camel Song, composed sometime around year nine, opens the last third of songs on the caroling list, while a life-sized camel puppet wends its way through the throng. New verses have been added over the years to mark milestones and reflect the changing zeitgeist. The 30th year introduced lyrics celebrating a dawning era of change.


The Camel Party always celebrates the change within continuity and the continuity within change.


What started in 1979 as a non-sectarian holiday gathering of relatives and friends has evolved into an experience, a production, and a "happening" (a term for those alive in the late 1960s) that has hosted thousands of souls in ways beguiling, bemusing, and sometimes outrageous.


Colored lights. Wreaths. Garlands. Poinsettias. Potluck foodstuffs. Piles of shoes. Dancing socks. Rock 'n roll. Blues. Rhythm and blues. Chicken dances. Instrumental ensembles of piano, accordion, trombone, oboe, flute, guitar. Carols, naughty and sacred. Desserts for days. Wine, water, and soda. Crowds and conversations of hundreds. Welcome and inclusion. Fashions new and old. Santa and elves.


For attendees constant and episodic, Festivus Camelus notes and incorporates transitions of education, career, conception, birth, health, and death. It forever marks its participants who return from all corners of Minnesota, Madison, San Diego, San Francisco, Boston, New Haven, New York, Washington, Canada, Germany, and China.


Along with everything,

It warms the cockles, cockles, cockles of our fiery pagan hearts,
In the cold of icy December,
Wild revelries remember,
The heat of the golden sun! *

* Refrain from The Camel Song, © 2008, Davies/Schiller

Harvey Milk and 30 years

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Milk movie trailer

On Tuesday, on one of the rare occasions she has done so during the past 30 years, Dianne Feinstein spoke about the events in San Francisco, Nov. 27, 1978, that started her on the path to national prominence as a United States senator from California.


In an interview with Rachel Gordon of the San Francisco Chronicle, Feinstein, who in 1978 was president of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, recounted how she had found the bullet-riddled body of her colleague, Supervisor Harvey Milk, and checked for his pulse by placing a finger into one of the bullet holes.


Milk had been murdered with five shots fired at close range from the gun of former Supervisor Dan White. Minutes before killing Milk, White had used four bullets to kill Mayor George Moscone in his City Hall office.


Moscone was a progressive figure, intent on opening up San Francisco's political culture to a host of groups who had not been part of the city's power structure. Milk had been elected in 1977 as the first openly-gay official in California, representing the Castro neighborhood. White, who had represented a more conservative district, had recently resigned his seat on the Board and then changed his mind. Moscone, who had stated publicly that he would reappoint White, was persuaded not to do so by Milk and others.


The murders capped a tumultuous period in San Francisco's history. Nine days earlier, Leo Ryan, the area's congressional representative, was one of 900 people – many of them from the Bay Area – who died in a wave of homicides and suicides at the People's Temple cult community in Jonestown, Guyana. Even earlier, the city had been the scene of the Patricia Hearst kidnapping, the Zebra killings, and the Golden Dragon restaurant massacre.


Feinstein became interim mayor and later won election to the post in her own right.


White's conviction, May 21, 1979, on two counts of voluntary manslaughter – instead of premeditated, 1st degree murder – prompted the White Night Riots by San Francisco's gay community. His trial gave rise and national prominence to the "Twinkie defense."


White's release on parole after a mere five years in prison occasioned a protest rally on Castro and Market Streets. Live entertainment was provided by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, the Dead Kennedys band, and the folk singer Blackberry. James Davies and I were in San Francisco at the time and attended the January 1984 event.


White asphyxiated himself, Oct. 21, 1985.


Three weeks before the 1978 assassinations, Milk and the nascent, national gay and lesbian communities had celebrated the defeat of California Proposition 6, The Briggs Initiative. The initiative would have banned gay men and lesbians from teaching in California's public schools. Sponsored by John Briggs, Orange County's representative in the state assembly, the measure received overwhelming initial public support. Milk helped lead the statewide opposition. Opponents included Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter. Voters defeated the measure by more than a million votes.


• • • • •


On Wednesday, my reading about the Chronicle's interview with Feinstein prompted a visceral sadness that brought tears to my eyes as I recalled the turbulence of those days. Consciously, we may move on in life, but feelings stay with us. However, at the same time this emotion surged, the instant realization that fully 30 years had passed gave me a mental image that felt as though an intellectual file drawer had slammed shut on those events. The passage of 30 years suddenly had relegated them to a more objective and non-present lens of history.


I was startled to read Feinstein's comments that Milk and White had met weekly as colleagues, if not friends, for morning coffee in the Castro neighborhood. This information is confirmed in an essay for the Chronicle by Willie Brown, a former member of the California Assembly and a former mayor of San Francisco. Somehow, this bit of history has not been part of the popular myths and legends that have evolved surrounding the life and times of Harvey Milk.


Milk, a film by Gus Van Sant about that life and those times, opened nationally on Wednesday. It received its world premiere showing at the Castro Theatre, Oct. 28. It features Sean Penn as Milk, Josh Brolin as White, Victor Garber as Moscone, Emile Hirsch as Milk confidant Cleve Jones, and James Franco and Diego Luna as Milk's lovers.

We value water, land, legacy

Minneapolis, Minnesota


In an email to supporters today, Paul Austin, executive director, Conservation Minnesota, thanked volunteers for their work to pass The Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution:

Minnesotans proved yesterday that clean water and conservation are a top priority. More Minnesota voters cast ballots for the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment than voted for either Barack Obama, John McCain, Norm Coleman or Al Franken. More Minnesotans voted for the Amendment than voted in 2002 and 2006 for Governor Pawlenty or for Senator Amy Klobuchar in 2006.

As of mid-morning, the total voting in favor of the Amendment was 1,634,027. Counting unmarked ballots, which are considered ‘no’ votes, 56.08% of voters supported the Amendment! ....

Congratulations to all of you and all Minnesotans for making a lasting difference for our magnificent state.

Credo

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Some poets romanticize it as "the majesty of the people," those long lines of folks waiting to celebrate winning events or pay respect to fallen leaders. On this day, we simply call it waiting to vote, and in Minneapolis the morning dawned with picture perfection.


The precinct where I live on the edge of downtown Minneapolis consists of 28 city blocks. About 4,500 of us live there. Until today, I have never seen so many people from the neighborhood on the streets at the same time.


After joining the line a block from the entrance to our polling place at the Minnesota Church Center, it took an hour of waiting before my ballot was handed to me. It was a lovely wait. Bright blue skies. Temperatures approaching 70 degrees – on Nov. 4! Sunlight sparkling off the golden leaves still clinging to their trees. The slightest of breezes. Some quiet conversations taking place here and there. Mostly, though, quiet.


I remarked to the woman in front of me that it felt like waiting in line before an Obama rally. "Isn't that what this is?" she replied.


The residents of my neighborhood are 98% renters and mostly young, students, and others starting to get their bearings in life and the city. Such a wonderful and motley lot! In small groups they share daily the tales of their toils on front stoops, in coffee shops, and online.


To look at them waiting to vote is to see calm, certitude, and strength. They are the future. They know why they are there. A few ideologues there may be, but no one has brainwashed them. Things have gone awry and they are there to take it back. They are voting their hopes and their dreams.


I love every one of them for it.


McCain may receive 60 votes from Precinct 6-4. There will be a handful of votes for four or five others. The rest belong to Obama.


When Marilyn finally handed me my ballot, I remarked that today's turnout will make up for all those years when she and her colleagues waited all day for 95 of us to show up. For the past 36 years, I have not missed a primary, general, or special election save one. People who think their votes do not count should participate in a primary election for municipal candidates!


There are small-print decisions to be made on two sides – three columns to a side – of a legal sized ballot. In addition to state and city questions, we have candidates for president, Congress, the legislature, school board, soil and water conservation commission, and more than 30 judicial races.


When I feed my ballot into the tabulating machine at 11:24, the counter notes that I am number 738. I calculate that 190 have voted each hour since 7am. After applying the red "I Voted" sticker to my sweater, I head out and count another 150 people standing in line, with more approaching from all directions. At that rate, 2,500 will complete their voting by 8pm.


Walking through downtown on the Nicollet Mall, the red stickers appear everywhere. These are our badges of majesty, worn by us who have drunk the kool-aid of America.


We believe.

The Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Jay Weiner has written a comprehensive overview for MinnPost.com about the 10-year efforts leading up to the Nov. 4 ballot initiative known as The Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment:

"Voters to write the ending on a 10-year capitol tale about the future of the state's quality of life"

Even the livestock are talkin' about it

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution that will appear on the Nov. 4 ballot has succeeded in generating a great deal of commentary and debate throughout the state. Even animals are getting into the act.


George, a singing moose, has posted a special, two-minute message for voters on YouTube.


Vote YES! for Minnesota on Nov. 4.

Scandal v. Incompetence

Minneapolis, Minnesota


CNN often promotes its team of pundits by airing a video clip of Lou Dobbs posing the question "Doesn't anybody deserve a government that works?" When it comes to conducting presidential elections, one wonders.


Early voting started in Florida today, as it has and will in many states. Already, there are problems. Not with the voting per se (at least, not yet – stay tuned). It seems that some of the machines into which voters insert their driver's licenses to verify identity and prevent fraud are not working. As a result, people are standing in line for up to three hours waiting to vote.


Surely, Kurt S. Browning, Florida's secretary of state and chief elections officer, knew that voting would start today. Why did he not have these machines tested and in working order? Cue the allegations of voter suppression and bring on the lawyers! Because Browning is a Republican, appointed to his post in 2006 by Florida's Republican governor-elect, Charlie Crist, you just know these snafus are only the beginning of a Republican plot to steal the election for John McCain.


Up in Ohio, the Democratic secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner, already has been through the federal appeals process to the Supremes in Washington. In essence, the high court said that voter registration lists did not have to be verified against the database of driver's licenses. Hopefully, however, Brunner will have instructed her election judges to phone the cops and the media should Mickey Mouse or other suspect registrants actually show up to vote. Everyone will be watching because, you just know, the Democrats stand ready to fraudulently steal the election for Barack Obama.


You just know. Eight years after Bush v. Gore, the United States of America still cannot conduct a presidential election free from the taint of voting scandal or plain incompetence.


The whole mess is foreign to me. In Minnesota, where I vote, we fill in oval blanks on a paper ballot to indicate our voting preferences before we personally feed those ballots into a machine that counts them. Before the election judges give us a ballot, we sign our names next to our name and address on the computer printout of the registration list. Those of us who can produce sufficient identification – that proves we-are-who-we-are and live-where-we-do – can register and vote on election day. We have the highest rate of voter participation in the country, and we make it work every time.


In our primary election balloting in September, two candidates for the Minnesota Supreme Court were so close in vote totals that a statewide re-count was required for the first time since 1962. Election officials surprised even themselves by accomplishing the task in two days, rather than the several they had allotted. There were no partisan or non-partisan arguments about the process or the outcome.


Maybe in Minnesota we just understand the meaning of "Yes we can!"

Review: Minnesota Dance Theatre, Minneapolis

Minneapolis, Minnesota


For the fall performances of the Minnesota Dance Theatre, Artistic Director Lise Houlton assembled a group of dances that mirrors much of Minnesota's dance community, reflecting a diversity of choreographic impulses, a strong level of technical competence and artistic expression, and an earnest desire to impress. While the articulation of a clear and compelling purpose and vision has not been the troupe's strong suit, the present program was more cohesive and satisfying than many of its recent stagings.


The program, presented this weekend at The Lab Theater in Minneapolis's Warehouse District, offered two world premieres. Mathew Janczewski's Trébuchet was the more successful. Working with a variety of pulsing music tempos by Alexander East, Janczewski created a tight ensemble work that featured dynamic duets for Sam Feipel and Eve Schulte, and Justin Leaf and Melanie Verna, along with brief solos for each. The dance contains the large, athletic movement that characterizes Janczewski's signature style, but injected a welcome level of textured subtlety and nuance that has been absent in his modern choreography. His own company, Arena Dances, will perform next weekend at the Southern Theater.


Choreography comes less easily to Houlton. Her strong concepts benefit from decent ensemble patterns whose flow often is interrupted by awkward movement and phrasing for duets and trios. Point of Departure, her new ballet set to Haydn's Symphony No. 45, introduced a sharp and angular vocabulary that repeated and became more rounded and fluid over the course of the four movements as she connected more fully with the music's whimsy and humor. The company's three women, particularly Verna, smiled and moved gracefully in this showcase for the company's seven dancers. The men, however, were pressed to keep pace and to own the sometimes inorganic movement. An exception was Maxamillian Neubauer's solo turn in the last section when moments of personality emerged. Overall, a pleasant 30 minutes of dancing.


The choreography of Lynne Taylor-Corbett is a frequent choice for many artistic directors who came of age as dancers during the 1970s and 1980s. Her Appearances, created for the Atlanta Ballet in 1984, juxtaposed gestures and imagery that loomed large against the cool jazz music of Pat Metheny with a smooth movement texture, not unlike good yogurt! It was danced cleanly by Verna, Schulte, Leaf, Feipel, Justin Marie Miller, and Abdo Sayegh.


Excerpts from two other ballets were performed expertly by guest artists Kaitlyn Gilliland and Ask la Cour. If one must see the Act 2 pas de deux from Swan Lake yet again, it should be performed with the high level of precision and effortless partnering displayed by these members of the New York City Ballet. While technically masterful, I found their performance cold and passionless, a view my companion did not share. On the other hand, there was no dispute about the passionate commitment that coursed through the duet from Agon, George Balanchine's neoclassic classic from 1957. Gilliland and la Cour danced it exquisitely, providing the evening's artistic highpoint.


Unlike their counterparts in theater and music who enjoy larger and more consistently loyal audiences for their work, many dancemakers and dance organizations eschew the use of program notes to explain what they are about. Not so with Minnesota Dance Theatre for these performances; let us hope their inclusion continues and inspires others.


Like a good many dance organizations, Minnesota Dance Theatre's persona could benefit from a scouring of its marketing materials to remove misnomers such as "groundbreaking," "extreme," and "daring." Along with quotations from long-dead critics who have not seen the current company and its work, these should be replaced with straightforward descriptors and more contemporary commentary.


The performances this weekend were the first for dance presented at The Lab Theater which opened last month under the direction of Mary Kelley Leer. As the former empress of Ruby's Cabaret from 1985 to 1992, Leer helped birth Moore by Four, Ballet of the Dolls, and many others. The Lab's limestone brick walls and cavernous space lend the enterprise a stronger air of flexibility and solidity than did Ruby's various venues. Going forward, however, more than one ticket seller will be needed to accomodate the 350 guests who will flock to the new venue's more popular attractions; it is not acceptable for a program to begin 11 minutes past the posted curtain time.


Minnesota Dance Theatre's fall performances continue, Oct. 18 at 7pm and Oct. 19 at 2pm, at The Lab Theater, 700 North 1st Street, Minneapolis. 612.338.0627 or www.mndance.org.

The Hunter's Moon

Minneapolis, Minnesota


I want to acknowledge that the full Hunter's Moon rose several hours ago. I always find this moonlight comforting, associating it with turning inward, walking at night, and the theater. There is a story here, one that begins in 1966. Unfortunately, Gabe wants his nightly walk in the park and time is scarce. The fall foliage is particularly stunning this year, and the trees in Fair Oaks Park, across the street from the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, are at their peak, even at night!

Nov. 4: Vote YES for Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Chapter 1: Vote YES for Minnesota
Chapter 2: Scenes and reflections
Chapter 3: The arts's need
Chapter 4: Allocating the resources

Chapter 1. Vote YES for Minnesota


Growing up with a Republican father and Democratic mother, I developed an early propensity for telling other people how to vote. The impulse was reinforced one very rainy day when my dad and I walked door-to-door distributing leaflets that told people to vote for taxes to build schools. He told me I would take pride and satisfaction in having helped to build them. He was right. This posting continues that tradition.


On Nov. 4, Minnesotans should Vote YES √ on the Clean Water, Land, and Legacy Amendment to protect the Minnesota we love. Those voters who skip this ballot question will be counted as voting no.


YES will amend the Minnesota Constitution to dedicate funding to protect drinking water sources; protect and restore wetlands, prairies, forests, and fish, game, and wildlife habitat; preserve arts and cultural heritage; support parks and trails; and protect and restore lakes, rivers, streams, and groundwater by increasing the sales tax by 3/8 of 1% beginning July 1, 2009. The tax increase will expire after 25 years.


YES will generate $300 million annually, beginning in 2010:

• 33% for a clean water fund;

• 33% for an outdoor heritage fund;

• 19.75% for arts, arts education and access, and preservation of history and cultural heritage;

• 14.25% for parks and trails of regional and statewide significance.

Our natural heritage and arts and culture play important roles in our economy, the tourism industry, and our quality of life. They must be protected and enhanced.


YES will cost an average household $56 per year in sales tax. It will prevent long-term priorities from falling victim to short-term budget needs, and will produce benefits both tangible and not.


YES invests in the future of our state. Residents of that time and place will applaud our collective foresight, although our individual motivations for voting YES will vary. My own reasons are complex, hold special meaning for me, and have a particular focus on arts and culture.


Chapter 2. Scenes and reflections


Recently, I passed through several Minnesota River towns, traveling south on U.S. Highway 169 from Minneapolis to Mankato. That drive on a sputtering Saturday morning brought to mind many of the stories and things I love about Minnesota.


The city of Shakopee, 17 miles southwest of my house near downtown Minneapolis, serves as the seat of Scott County government and home to the Canterbury Downs racetrack. For decades, it also has hosted the Minnesota Renaissance Festival, a cultural state-of-mind as much as it is a geographical place. The festival serves as an imaginative commercial venue for many of our artists, crafters, and performers from mid-August through September, a time when sumac turns red and seasonal vendors along the roadsides display the enticements of apples, pumpkins, sweet corn, and potatoes – plus loads of caramel for the apples.


Past the town of Belle Plaine, one reaches Le Sueur in the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant, 30 miles from Minneapolis. Here, the Giant Celebration, known formerly as Corn on the Curb Days, takes place for three days every August.


As it passes through the Nicollet County seat of St. Peter, Highway 169 assumes the name of Minnesota Avenue. State residents worth their salt know the story of how Joseph Rolette, a senator, thwarted the attempt in 1857 to move the territorial capital from St. Paul to St. Peter when he absconded with the legislative bill that was on its way to the governor for signature. Gov. Willis Gorman is said to have owned the land on which the capitol building would have been constructed. St. Peter never became a major center of population and commerce.


The town nonetheless became an aspiration of Lutheran boys and girls after Gustavus Adolphus College set up shop a few blocks off of Minnesota Avenue. A liberal arts college of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Gustavus offers study in several artistic disciplines and hosts visiting performers on its campus.


Once upon a time, until life led elsewhere, the college and its iconic Christ Chapel beckoned to me. I have since become increasingly interested in stories about King Gustavus Adolphus, founder of the Swedish Empire during 30 years of warfare that helped preserve the Lutheran Reformation. After his death in 1632, the throne passed to his daughter, Christina. One of my Peterson forbears was among the Swedes who settled the area around Wilmington, Delaware, in the late 1630s, and named the Christina River there after the queen.


Back in present-day Minnesota, Highway 169 soon reaches the cities of Mankato and North Mankato at the place where the Minnesota and Blue Earth rivers meet. Nearly 50,000 people live in the area. I almost joined them for two years.


In 1984, I had been accepted into a Master’s program at Minnesota State University. My partner, James Davies, and I rode a Greyhound Bus from Minneapolis to Mankato to check out the city and the 303-acre campus of 14,000 students. Comparing notes at the end of the day, we learned that both of us had experienced an uninterrupted series of encounters that felt “not quite right.” After some reflection, I interpreted these encounters as “signs” and declined the invitation to study.


That decision had three major consequences in the following years. First, I increased my attendance at various dance classes, leading to more than 20 years of involvement with Minnesota’s dance world and stints as manager of Zenon Dance Company, Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theatre, and James Sewell Ballet. Then, I started co-hosting a radio program for more than eight years, turning my part of the show into a public affairs forum for the Twin Cities GLBT community during the development of the community’s social, political, and commercial infrastructure. Finally, I planned the trip that Davies and I took in 1986 to England, France, Italy, India, and Hong Kong.


From Mankato, Highway 169 continues south through Garden City, Amboy, and Blue Earth, before entering Iowa just past Elmore, the hometown of Vice President Walter Mondale. During a social lunch that Davies and I had with him three years ago, he mentioned that he strongly supports Mrs. Mondale’s advocacy for the arts, but wishes that orchestras played more music by Benny Goodman instead of more classical composers.


American taxpayers have invested in the development and well being of the U.S. highway system since the 1920s. I applaud the foresight of their investments. U.S. Highway 14 begins in Chicago, Illinois, and runs west to Yellowstone National Park, another taxpayer project, in Wyoming. Highway 14 intersects 169 in Mankato.


Within Minnesota, Highway 14 passes through more than 30 towns and cities, including Winona, Rochester, Owatonna, New Ulm, Sleepy Eye, Walnut Grove, Tracy, and Lake Benton. Those who have lived here for any length of time have heard of these places; lifers have visited many of them.


Winona is a college town on the Wisconsin border, home to Saint Mary’s University and the Page Artist Series, the largest presenter of performing artists in southeastern Minnesota. Rochester hosts a large presence by IBM in addition to serving as the world nerve center of the Mayo Clinic. Included among many music and theater organizations in the Rochester region is one of our strongest community theaters, the Rochester Civic Theatre.


Walnut Grove was the real life setting for the Laura Ingalls Wilder book On the Banks of Plum Creek, while Tracy received honorable mention in The Long Winter. I started kindergarten when we lived in Tracy for a year while my dad helped string telephone wires throughout Lyon County. During his visit with us in 1957, my grandpa and I searched the night sky outside our house on Roosevelt Street for a glimpse of Sputnik.


For 49 days between April and June this year, many of us cheered vicariously the unfolding adventure of Sean Bloomfield and Colton Witte. After graduating a month early from Chaska High School, this duo-with-a-dream set off to paddle 2,200 miles up the Minnesota River to Big Stone Lake, “down” the Red River to Lake Winnipeg, across that lake to the Hayes River, and then through several rapids to York Factory on Hudson Bay.


The men drew their inspiration from Canoeing With the Cree, the book by Eric Sevareid that recounted his trip with Walter Port along the same route in 1930 at age 18. After receiving his BA from the University of Minnesota, Sevareid built an international career as a print and electronic journalist and commentator. Bloomfield and Witte are now freshmen at Minnesota State University, Mankato. Reportedly, one of their next adventures will be a kayak race in Alaska. We look forward to following their adventures.


Recently, I wrote about the role that water and lakes have played in my life and in the lives of Minnesotans. My family’s camping, swimming, and fishing experiences included Lake Minnetonka in Hennepin County, Fish Lake near Cambridge, Crooked Lake in Anoka, the North Shore of Lake Superior, and lakes near Alexandria, Bemidji, Annandale, Buffalo, and Chisago City. Years ago, we caught small mouth bass while standing in the middle of the Mississippi River downstream from the nuclear power plant in Monticello. More years ago, my parents and I stood in Lake Itasca at the Mississippi’s headwaters.


One specific lake eluded me.


In the late 1960s, I ran with a crowd that had an affinity for the theater department at St. Cloud State University where many of us vowed to pursue our careers as thespians. St. Cloud is located 72 miles northwest of Minneapolis, just off I-94. Seventy miles further is Alexandria, where St. Cloud State is affiliated with Theatre L’Homme Dieu, a professional summer theater situated on Lake L’Homme Dieu. We thought – at least, I did, until life led elsewhere – that spending summers performing on the L’Homme Dieu stage would mean we had arrived in life.


The Minnesota Historical Society preserves our stories by operating archives, museums, and 26 historic sites, including the Minnesota History Center, Mill City Museum, Historic Fort Snelling, Split Rock Lighthouse, Mille Lacs Indian Museum, Charles A. Lindbergh House, and others. In addition, many of the state’s 87 counties maintain their own historical societies; I saw a couple of them on Highway 169.


I gained first-hand appreciation for the value of these repositories from my travels in Kansas rather than in Minnesota. In a journey of great discovery and insight eight years ago, supported by the Jerome Foundation, I spent two weeks reviewing old newspapers, census records, photos, and histories in Topeka, Junction City, Salina, Dodge City, Meade, and Arlington. From the individual threads gleaned at each of these stops, I was able to weave together the 360-year story of one family’s pursuit of the American Dream and to place it in the context of a nation’s effort to perfect itself.


I applaud the foresight of those who established and have maintained historical societies, large and small, in all parts of our country.


Minnesota’s 19,600 individual artists and nearly 1,600 nonprofit arts and culture organizations provide full-time jobs for more than 22,000 people. An additional 10,400 for-profit arts businesses employ more than 58,000 people. This industry generates annual state and local government revenues of $94 million, and nearly a billion dollars of economic activity.


In 2004, statewide attendance for arts and culture activities totaled 14,487,592, more than triple the combined attendance of 4,610,201 for all professional sports teams. I have enjoyed attending both arts events and sports events.


In addition to direct economic returns, our arts and culture industry attracts businesses and their employees, stimulates development, and drives tourism. Five of our top tourist draws are the Walker Art Center, Guthrie Theater, Ordway Center, Orchestra Hall, and the Children’s Theatre.


I know this scene well. With dance companies, I worked with people in more than 50 communities, as far ranging as Grand Rapids, Crookston, Morris, Fergus Falls, Scandia, Little Falls, and Ely. Over the years, I have been a member of 18 panels that reviewed arts grant applications and recommended funding. This process has made me familiar with hundreds of individuals and organizations, in all disciplines and corners of the state – Lanesboro, Duluth, and Rochester among them.


At whatever stage of their artistic development, all of these people embody the core values of artistic excellence, accountability and transparency as stewards of public resources, innovation, and respectful partnering in the intellectual and creative development of our people.


Chapter 3. The arts’s need


The legislature established the first state arts agency in 1903. Successive changes fixed its name as the Minnesota State Arts Board, and established 11 regional arts councils to distribute funds and to maintain a degree of local involvement and decision-making. Public investments in the short- and long-term health of our arts and culture industry reach all 87 counties.


Although the legislature has been episodically very generous in its appropriations for the arts, its overall investment has not kept pace with inflation and growth of field since 1977:

• The 1977 appropriation of $500,000 is worth $1.8 million in 2008 dollars. A lobbying effort by Minnesota Citizens for the Arts succeeded in raising the 1978 appropriation to $1.77 million – equal to $5.98 million in 2008. Subsequent appropriations increased or decreased modestly from 1978 until 1983, when the appropriation was cut to $1.5 million.


• The 1983 appropriation of $1.5 million was equal to $2.48 million in 1997 dollars, a year when the actual appropriation was, more favorably, $6.98 million. However, the annual appropriations in that 14-year period fluctuated, year-by-year, within a range from –7% to +52%.


• With passage of the initiative by Gov. Arne Carlson, the legislature appropriated $13 million for 1998. This was reduced somewhat to $12.6 million for 2002, and to $8.59 million for each year 2003 to 2007.


• The appropriation for 2008 is $10.33 million – 73% higher than 30 years ago, after 1978 is adjusted to 2008 dollars. The average annual rate of inflation over the 30 years was 4.14%.


• The average annual inflation rate of 2.71% during the 10 years from 1998 to 2008 makes the $13 million appropriation for 1998 equal to $17 million in 2008 and, if extended, $17.9 million in 2010.

http://www.dollartimes.com/calculators/inflation.htm

Along with our natural heritage, the arts need a stable and protected source of funding. The YES amendment will provide that.


Chapter 4. Allocating the resources


The legislature will retain oversight of the designated funds generated by the YES amendment. It is estimated that $58 million will be generated annually for arts and culture beginning in 2010. A possible $28 million of those funds will be allocated to historical societies and cultural heritage.


It is expected, but not yet established, that the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Regional Arts Councils will serve as the legislature’s vehicles for administering $30 million of new resources for the arts. Members of those bodies have been holding conversations with artists and organizations about how the money might best be spent. I also have a list of suggestions for them to consider.


First, however, let us assume that – instead of having $30 million of new money, added to $10.3 million of existing money, making $40.3 million available for 2010 – we will have $30 million of total money actually available.


A number of factors could produce that scenario. We know that (a) the legislature that convenes in February to craft budgets for 2010 and 2011 will face a projected deficit for that biennium of at least $1 billion, and possibly as much as $4 billion; (b) the governor is loathe to raise taxes; (c) the state and national economies are in less than sterling shape; and (d) a major lobbying effort will probably be required to maintain the current appropriation. As prudent stewards, we should plan for how we will “make do” under the more conservative scenario.


My wish list begins by restoring all arts programs for 2010 to the level they enjoyed in 1998 when funding was $13 million. This will require an allocation of $17.9 million to fund the same programs for the same number of communities, organizations, and individual artists, adjusted for inflation.


The following funding increases should then be made to allow for inflation and growth of field: (a) Individual artist initiatives - $1 million; (b) Institutional organization support - $1.5 million; (c) Presenting organization support - $500,000; (d) Arts Across Minnesota touring - $500,000; (e) Arts education initiatives - $2 million.


The powers-that-will-be should make an annual grant of $250,000 to the Performing Arts Archives at the University of Minnesota. This grant should be earmarked specifically to accelerate the acquisition, processing, and retention of records for archival purposes from performing arts organizations throughout Minnesota.


Prior to 2003, the McKnight Foundation’s capital program made equipment and technical assistance grants to its grantees over and above its general operating grants. Grantees were eligible for one capital grant every five years. Applications were straight-forward, and their approval helped build an organization’s physical infrastructure, including such things as telephones that work, computer networks that can talk to each other, lighting equipment, portable floors, etc.


Anyone who has participated on a Regional Arts Council panel to decide which six of 18 equally meritorious applicants should get computer hardware and software will understand this need. An $850,000 pool of technical assistance funds should be administered by the Regional Arts Councils for all grantees of the Arts Board and the RACs, regardless of budget size.


If innovation and collaboration are keys to advancement in any endeavor, then funds should be available to any individual artist or arts organization to commission new work from Minnesota artists in all disciplines. A $500,000 pool of commissioning funds, administered by the Minnesota State Arts Board, should be available to applicants in amounts up to $50,000, with 20% of the available pool reserved for grants of $15,000 or less.


Once annually, members of the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Forum of Regional Arts Councils should convene as the [new] Minnesota Cultural Facilities Commission. The commission should have a $2.5 million pool of funds with which to make annual planning grants of up to $500,000, and capital construction grants of up to $2 million, for projects whose total cost will be $10 million or less. This body also should recommend statewide priorities to the legislature for capital bonding projects costing more than $10 million.


Finally, as a consequence of present economic conditions and activities, it is probable that portfolios of many of the more than 100 foundations that provide grants to the arts in Minnesota will be adversely affected, leading to a decrease in the numbers and sizes of their grants. A funding pool of $2.5 million should be reserved for emergency budget relief for existing arts organizations for 2010, and subsequent years as needed. The criteria and logistics of such a program are beyond the scope of this essay.


That is how I would spend $30,000,000.


How would you spend it?


All of it is academic until you Vote YES on Nov. 4!

Obama for president

Minneapolis, Minnesota


St. Louis Post-Dispatch: Barack Obama for president

By Editorial Board
Oct. 10, 2008

Nine Days before the Feb. 5 presidential primaries in Missouri and Illinois, this editorial page endorsed Barack Obama and John McCain in their respective races.

We did so enthusiastically. We wrote that either Mr. Obama’s message of hope or Mr. McCain’s independence and integrity offered America “the chance to turn the page on 28 years of contentious, greed-driven politics and move into a new era of possibility.”

Over the past nine months, Mr. Obama, the junior senator from Illinois, has emerged as the only truly transformative candidate in the race. In the crucible that is a presidential campaign, his intellect, his temperament and equanimity under pressure consistently have been impressive. He has surrounded himself with smart, capable advisers who have helped him refine thorough, nuanced policy positions.

In a word, Mr. Obama has been presidential.

Meanwhile, Mr. McCain, the senior senator from Arizona, became the incredible shrinking man. He shrank from his principled stands in favor of a humane immigration policy. He shrank from his universal condemnation of torture and his condemnation of the politics of smear.

He even shrank from his own campaign slogan, “County First,” by selecting the least qualified running mate since the Swedenborgian shipbuilder Arthur Sewall ran as William Jennings Bryan’s No. 2 in 1896.

In making political endorsements, this editorial page is guided first by the principles espoused by Joseph Pulitzer in The Post-Dispatch Platform printed daily at the top of this page. Then we consider questions of character, life experience and intellect, as well as specific policy and issue positions. Each member of the editorial board weighs in.

On all counts, the consensus was clear: Barack Obama of Illinois should be the next president of the United States.

We didn’t know nine months ago that before Election Day, America would face its greatest economic challenge since the Great Depression. The crisis on Wall Street is devastating, but it has offered voters a useful preview of how the two presidential candidates would respond to a crisis.

Very early on, Mr. Obama reached out to his impressive corps of economic advisers and developed a comprehensive set of recommendations for addressing the problems. He set them forth calmly and explained them carefully.

Mr. McCain, a longtime critic of government regulation, was late to recognize the threat. The chief economic adviser of his campaign initially was former Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, who had been one of the architects of banking deregulation. When the credit markets imploded, Mr. McCain lurched from one ineffectual grandstand play to another. He squandered the one clear advantage he had over Mr. Obama: experience.

Mr. McCain first was elected to Congress in 1982 when Mr. Obama was in his senior year at Columbia University. Yet the younger man’s intellectual curiosity and capacity — and, yes, also the skills he developed as a community organizer and his instincts as a political conciliator — more than compensate for his lack of more traditional Washington experience.

A presidency is defined less by what happens in the Oval Office than by what is done by the more than 3,000 men and women the president appoints to government office. Only 600 of them are subject to Senate approval. The rest serve at the pleasure of the president.

We have little doubt that Mr. Obama’s appointees would bring a level of competence, compassion and intellectual achievement to the executive branch that hasn’t been seen since the New Frontier. He has energized a new generation of Americans who would put the concept of service back in “public service.”

Consider that while Mr. McCain selected as his running mate Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, a callow and shrill partisan, Mr. Obama selected Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware. Mr. Biden’s 35-year Senate career has given him encyclopedic expertise on legislative and judicial issues, as well as foreign affairs.

The idea that 3,000 bright, dedicated and accomplished Americans would be joining the Obama administration to serve the public — as opposed to padding their resumés or shilling for the corporate interests they’re sworn to oversee — is reassuring. That they would be serving a president who actually would listen to them is staggering.

And the fact that Mr. Obama can explain his thoughts and policies in language that can instruct and inspire is exciting. Eloquence isn’t everything in a president, but it is not nothing, either.

Experience aside, the 25-year difference in the ages of Mr. McCain, 72, and Mr. Obama, 47, is important largely because Mr. Obama’s election would represent a generational shift. He would be the first chief executive in more than six decades whose worldview was not formed, at least in part, by the Cold War or Vietnam.

He sees the complicated world as it is today, not as a binary division between us and them, but as a kaleidoscope of shifting alliances and interests. As he often notes, he is the son of a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, an internationalist who yet acknowledges that America is the only nation in the world in which someone of his distinctly modest background could rise as far as his talent, intellect and hard work would take him.

Given the damage that has been done to America’s moral standing in the world in the last eight years — by a preemptory war, a unilateralist foreign policy and by policies that have treated both the Geneva Conventions and our own Bill of Rights as optional — Mr. Obama’s election would help America reclaim the moral high ground.

It also must be said that Mr. Obama is right on the issues. He was right on the war in Iraq. He is right that all Americans deserve access to health care and right in his pragmatic approach to meeting that goal. He is right on tax policy, infrastructure investment, energy policy and environmental issues. He is right on American ideals.

He was right when he said in his remarkable speech in March in Philadelphia that “In the end, then, what is called for is nothing more, and nothing less, than what all the world’s great religions demand: that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. Let us be our brother’s keeper, Scripture tells us. Let us be our sister’s keeper. Let us find that common stake we all have in one another, and let our politics reflect that spirit as well.”

John McCain has served his country well, but in the end, he may have wanted the presidency a little too much, so much that he has sacrificed some of the principles that made him a heroic figure in war and in peace. In every way possible, he has earned the right to retire.

Finally, only at this late point do we note that Barack Obama is an African-American. Because of who he is and how he has run his campaign, that fact has become almost incidental to most Americans. Instead, his countrymen are weighing his talents, his values and his beliefs, judging him not by the color of his skin, but the content of his character.

That says something profound and good — about him as a candidate and about us as a nation.

http://www.stltoday.com/blogzone/the-platform/campaign-2008/2008/10/sunday-editorial-barack-obama-for-president/

Preview: Mass in times of war

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Minnesota audiences will be able to experience major musical works rooted in the liturgy of the Mass at least twice during the 2008-2009 performance season.


The more ambitious production will be that of the Minnesota Orchestra when it presents Mass, A Theater Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers, at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis, Jan. 22-23. Composed by Leonard Bernstein at the request of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the work received its first performance at the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D. C., Sept. 8, 1971. Its antiwar theme contributed to a climate of controversy around its premiere. I followed news reports and gossip about the gala opening; although I resided in Washington at the time, my finances permitted entrance to the JFK Center only for free public tours.


Music Director Osmo Vanska will conduct the Minnesota performances which will feature 250 performers, including Raymond Ayers, baritone, as the celebrant, along with members of the Minnesota Chorale, Minnesota Boychoir, and James Sewell Ballet.


Owing to the work's scope and the expense of its production, Mass is performed rarely by professional orchestras. However, as 2008 marks the 90th anniversary of Bernstein's birth, Mass will be the centerpiece of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra's current season with performances in Baltimore (Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, Oct. 16-18), New York (Carnegie Hall, Oct. 24; United Palace Theater, Oct. 25), and Washington D. C. (JFK Center, Oct. 26).


Missa Brevis, a production on a smaller scale, will take the stage of the Northrop Dance Series, Mar. 19. This modern dance classic, choreographed by José Limón, is a 40-minute work for 22 dancers. It will feature members of the New York-based Limón Dance Company joined by eight students from the University of Minnesota's Dance Program. The Oratorio Society of Minnesota will perform the score by Zoltán Kodály.


As one of America's modern dance pioneers, Limón's force and presence as a dancer did much to establish a role for men in dance. Born in Mexico in 1908, he arrived in New York City in 1928 and soon began studies with Doris Humphrey and Charles Weidman. He founded The Jose Limón Dance Company in 1946, with Humphrey serving as artistic director until her death 12 years later. Limón also began teaching at The Juilliard School in 1951. His own death, from prostate cancer, came in 1972.


Limón's choreography has been noted for its dramatic expression, technical mastery, and its expansive, nuanced movement. Many of his works are considered classics of modern dance and continue to be studied and performed widely by students and professionals.


When the Limón Company toured Europe in 1957, sponsored by the U. S. State Department, Limón was impressed by his first-hand witness, particularly in Poland, to the widespread devastation, efforts to re-build, and the indomitable human spirit that marked the post-war era.


According to company program notes, the experience inspired him to create Missa Brevis as a memento to the cities destroyed during World War II and to the human qualities that compel the spirit to rise and survive after near destruction. The dance received its first performance at the Juilliard Dance Theater in New York, Apr. 11, 1958. Deborah Jowitt, the long-time dance writer and critic for The Village Voice, was an original cast member.


The music, Missa Brevis in Tempore Belli – "Short Mass in Time of War" – was completed by the Hungarian composer Kodály during the Siege of Budapest in the winter of 1944-1945, when he extended his original scoring for solo organ to include mixed chorus.


The University of Minnesota's Dance Program sponsors annual residencies by dance professionals to benefit its BA and BFA students. Underwritten by the Cowles Guest Artist Program, more than 120 people over the years have shared their knowledge and expertise with students as creators and repetiteurs of new and existing works.


Sarah Stackhouse, one of this year's five visiting artists, set Missa Brevis on 22 students in a residency that ended with an open rehearsal this week at the University's Barbara Barker Center for Dance. Stackhouse danced with the Limón company from 1958 to 1969, and has served on the faculties of The Juilliard School, the American Dance Festival, and the SUNY-Purchase Conservatory of Dance.


Introducing the open rehearsal, Carl Flink, chair, Department of Theatre Arts & Dance, said that Missa Brevis fills the "classic" slot in this year's repertoire of the University Dance Theatre. Flink, who danced with the Limón Company from 1992 to 1998, noted that the men and women are cast in a traditional structure, something that is rarely done at the university anymore.


In remarks, Stackhouse related that the objective for artists in the 1920s and 1930s was not necessarily great choreography but dealing with social movement issues. Although Missa Brevis follows the order of the Catholic Mass and Limón saw the work as his prayer for peace, it is not a religious piece, she said. "Although raised in Catholicism, he was what might be called a religious atheist."


At rise, 21 dancers stand clumped and motionless at center stage, hands joined. A male dancer, the outsider, stands downstage right. The group greets the music of the Kyrie with a gentle plié and tendu accompanied by a shifting of weight and opening to second position. At its end, the work returns to this same grouping and movement with the final "Amen."


Some of the imagery for the dance was unconventional, if not controversial, for 1958. A trio of women in the Sanctus section represented the Trinity, and a woman offered herself as the sacrifice for crucifixion in another. The latter, Stackhouse explained, represented Limón's mother who died while birthing her 12th child.


As a classic, Missa Brevis is great choreography that deals with social issues. It would be a good primer for those wanting to understand the antecedents of vocabulary, phrasing, patterns, and structures of contemporary dance in 2008. Flink observed that this dance uses time and space in a way that lacks the frenetic energy and tempo of life and dance today. Stackhouse agreed, noting the work's generosity, allowing the viewer to enter in, its use of space and time allowing for metaphor.


Auditions for entry into the University of Minnesota's BA and BFA programs in dance will be held at the Barbara Barker Center for Dance, 500 - 21st Avenue South, Minneapolis, Dec. 6 & Feb. 7. Information: 612.624.5060 or dance.umn.edu.

The University Dance Theatre will perform at the Whiting Proscenium Theatre, Rarig Center, Minneapolis West Bank Campus, Feb. 6-8. 612.624.2345 or www.theatre.umn.edu.

The Limón Dance Company and UDT will perform at Northrop Auditorium, Minneapolis East Bank Campus, Mar. 19. 612.624.2345.

Review: Green/Pizzarelli at Dakota Jazz Club, Minneapolis

Minneapolis, Minnesota


After hollering through three baseball games in four days, I welcomed the chance to quietly witness one of the sweetest interludes of music at the Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant.


John Paul "Bucky" Pizzarelli and Benny Green played together for the first time at the Dakota in August this year. It was such a great experience for them and their audiences that they have returned for a two-day set of performances and CD recording sessions for the Dakota Live label.


Pizzarelli, a renowned, classical jazz guitarist from New Jersey, resembles, at 82, the late Minnesota senator Eugene McCarthy with his white hair and benevolent face. Pianist Green, whose wavy chestnut locks and slight, youthful build belie his 45 years, was born in New York and grew up in Berkeley. Both have enjoyed prolific performing and recording careers.


Their 75-minute set on Sunday included a variety of classical favorites, including "Green Dolphin," "Body and Soul," "If I Had," and "Easy to Remember, So Hard to Forget." A lengthy medley of Ellington and Strayhorn tunes included "Satin Doll," "Do Nothing Til You Hear From Me," "Mellow Tone," and "Sentimental."


The two played in joyful synchronicity, Green deftly touching the Yamaha keyboard in harmony with the tone, tempo, volume, and spirit of his elder partner. Theirs was a gracious and generous collaboration between generations that more than lived up to the billing for "satisfying" music.


According to Lowell Pickett, the Dakota's impresario, Pizzarelli and Green may tour together. Watch for them at a venue near you.


Benny Green & Bucky Pizzarelli continue at the Dakota Jazz Club, 1010 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis, 7pm & 9:30pm, Mon., Sept. 29. 612.332.1010 or www.dakotacooks.com.

Minnesota Twins: Metaphor for arts, life

Minneapolis, Minnesota


"[My team] is hoping to win instead of playing to win." – Orlando Cabrera, shortstop, Chicago White Sox


Yes! Yes! Yes! The Chicago White Sox can come back to Twins Territory any time!


On Tuesday this week, the Minnesota Twins stood 2-1/2 games behind Chicago in the American League Central Division standings. Tonight, after sweeping Chicago in three games at the HHH Metrodome in Minneapolis, they hold first place – for the first time since Aug. 23 – by 1/2 game.


The Twins have served as a metaphor this year for working in the arts and living life: mix a wild and (pretty/)ugly inconsistency with teamwork balanced by experience and youthful energy, then power it with endless persistence to achieve success. In one of the best games ever, tonight's 7-6 Twins victory was as good an example as any.


After scoring one run in the first inning, the Twins gave up six demoralizing runs and earned two more in the fourth, then clawed another out of the sixth inning, two more in the eighth, and a final tie-breaker in the 10th. They did it with seven pitchers, 15 hits to Chicago's seven, and a stronger set of individual and collective batting averages.


Fans did their part to keep hope alive with nonstop waves of thunderous ovations. Few exited the dome able to hear or speak.


The season is not over. Starting tomorrow, the Twins face Kansas City in three games at the Dome while the Sox return to Chicago for three final games against Cleveland.

Congratulations!

Minneapolis, Minnesota


They are holding the annual Minnesota Sage Dance Awards at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis tonight. I have been asked for days whether I plan to attend. I do not.


I extend good wishes to the organizers and participants, and will congratulate the awardees as I see them after they are known. However, it is just a simple fact that the Sage Awards hold no compelling relevance for me and the work I have done in Minnesota's dance milieu for more than 25 years.


The stated purpose of the Sage Awards is to recognize outstanding achievement of the past year in six categories: Dance Performance, Dance Performers, Educator, Design, Special Citation, and People's Choice. It puzzles me that for four years so little outstanding achievement has been found either for nomination or recognition among the state's most visible and traditional dance companies, particularly for Dance Performance.


Members of an anonymous panel of up to 18 jurors attend countless performances and bi-monthly meetings during a year before hammering out a consensus about the nominees and "winners" for each category.


Camille LeFevre, a long-time dance writer and critic, has written a post for mnartists.org in which she muses about a perceived insiders' game among Sage Award jurors.


Truly, it puzzles me that in four years, little or no outstanding work has been identified as emanating from Arena Dances by Mathew Janczewski; Ballet of the Dolls; Black Label Movement; Beyond Ballroom Dance Company; Joe Chvala and the Flying Foot Forum; Live Action Set; Minnesota Dance Theatre, Ragamala Music & Dance Theatre; Shapiro & Smith Dance; James Sewell Ballet; Zenon Dance Company; and Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theatre, to name just some of the overlooked Twin Cities companies. We also have the Minnesota Ballet in Duluth, which seems to have enough artistic mojo going for it to license works by George Balanchine and Agnes DeMille.


Although it appears that something is amiss in this juried process, I do not believe that anyone is manipulating the outcomes, consciously or not. Nor do I believe that anyone else thinks so.


What I do believe is that many people in this dance milieu have limited their dance experiences, expectations, and judgments to small areas around their comfort zones. I also suspect that some allow their likes and dislikes of various personalities to cloud their judgments. Where true, all of this affects the decisions of jurors and, to inject the requisite p.c. disclaimer, none of this makes anyone a bad person.


I try to congratulate everyone who works in dance on a regular basis. So, to all of you who may be reading this: "Thank you and congratulations!"


ADDENDUM [09/25/08]: Morgan Thorson, a choreographer, has posted her thoughts about the Sage Awards on the Walker Art Center's blog: http://blogs.walkerart.org/performingarts/2008/09/24/insidery/.


ADDENDUM [09/28/08]: Caroline Palmer, a longtime dance writer and critic, has crafted In Defense of the SAGE Dance Awards on the City Pages website: http://blogs.citypages.com/ctg/2008/09/in_defense_of_t.php.

Keeping score a day at a time

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The Chicago White Sox really hate playing the Minnesota Twins at our HHH Metrodome. The Twins' record against Chicago at the Dome is 6-1 this season and 50-26 overall. Each such encounter usually means a humdinger of a game. That was the case for the Sox's last visit in July, and it definitely was the experience last night.


I was there. With 35,224 others. Row 29 behind the 3rd base line. A game not to be missed – or lost.


Entering last night, Chicago held a 2-1/2 game lead over Minnesota in the American League Central Division. With six season games left to play, it was make-or-break for the Twins. Lose last night, and a path to the division title was gone. Allow Chicago to sweep the three-game series, and they would spill champagne on the Dome's artificial turf while celebrating their clinch.


Ha! Tonight, the Twins stand 1-1/2 games behind the Sox following their 9-3 rout/romp 12 hours ago.


Of highlights there were many, led by seven innings of strong Twins pitching by 27-year-old Scott Baker. First baseman Justin Morneau set a club record by reaching his 47th double. For those of us who looked close-and-quick from the chaos in the stands, the back-to-back homers by Jason Kubel and Delmon Young in the Twins 7th provided the best moments. The only bleck-note occurred when the Twins gave up two runs in Chicago's 9th; shouldn't have happened.


The Minnesota Twins conclude their 2008 season with five games at the HHH Metrodome, Minneapolis: vs. Chicago, Sept. 24 & 25 @ 7:10pm; vs. Kansas City, Sept. 26 @ 7:10pm, 27 @ 2:55pm, 28 @ 1:10pm. www.twinsbaseball.com

Cheers for young people, jeans, and scuffed shoes

Minneapolis, Minnesota


They held the annual Ivey Awards in downtown Minneapolis last night to celebrate our 68 professional theaters and to recognize artistic excellence among organizations large and small and people old and new.


Festivities began with a VIP pre-party at Seven on Hennepin, followed by the main awards show at the State Theatre. The red carpet post-party took place at Mission and its spill-over "patio," the IDS Crystal Court. Thanks are due to the financial sponsors.


Melissa Gilbert and Steve Blanchard, lead actors in the Guthrie Theater's production of Little House on the Prairie, served loosely as emcees of the tightly-run State Theatre proceedings, attended by 2,000 of the onstage, backstage, and front-of-house people who make the theater community tick.


Performers from several organizations provided entertainment throughout the 90-minute production, including members of the Brave New Workshop, Buffalo Gal Productions, the Guthrie Theater, Nautilus Music-Theater, Theater Latte Da, and Cantus.


Awards for overall excellence were presented to Open Eye Figure Theatre for Prelude to Faust, and to Workhouse Theatre for 'Night Mother. Recognition also was bestowed upon Frank Theatre for the emotional resonance of The Pillowman; Interact Center for the innovative concept and idea behind Broken Brain Summit; Ordway Center for the Performing Arts for costume design, scenic design, and choreography of Cabaret; Gremlin Theatre – and Gary Geiken, Katie Guentzel, John Middleton, Carolyn Pool, Matt Rein, and Alan Sorenson – for ensemble acting in Orson's Shadow; and to Chanhassen Dinner Theatres and Tamara Kangas for choreography in 42nd Street.


The Ivey Awards recognized three actors for individual performances: James A. Williams as Troy Maxson in the Penumbra Theatre production of Fences; Kate Eifrig for her portrayal of nine characters in 9 Parts of Desire at the Guthrie Theater; and Jarius Abts for his performance as Hedwig in Hedwig and the Angry Inch at the Jungle Theater.


Matthew Amendt, a 26-year-old actor, received the Emerging Artist Award for writing The Comedian's Tragedy, presented at the Theatre Garage last summer.


A 90-something-year-old Don Stolz was summoned to the stage to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award from Diana Pearce of KARE TV and from the Guthrie's legendary – and last year's lifetime recipient – Sheila Livingston. Stolz founded Minnesota's Old Log Theater 67 years ago, pre-Guthrie, pre-Children's Theater, and pre-all-the-rest. According to the couple next to me, Stolz was still giving pre-show curtain talks as recently as Sunday night.


I had a blast and enjoyed every minute of the evening save one. Following his introduction by Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Rybak, I joined whole-heartedly in the standing ovation that greeted Dominique Serrand's arrival to present an award. He could and should have made the presentation and dispensed with his lament for the demise of Theatre de la Jeune Lune, the organization he co-founded 30 years ago that crashed and burned earlier this year, following a recognition that years of financial mismanagement and accumulated debt necessitated closure.


"The angels we hoped for have not appeared," he mourned. "The powers that be have spoken with their silence." Invoking Samuel Beckett in blessing, Serrand concluded, "Go on failing. Only next time, try to fail better."


I appreciate that Serrand has a background in European traditions where generous and indulgent support for the arts is a given and carries the character of an entitlement. While I laud the sensibility of that approach, my sympathy has its limits. Enough!


Too many of us work too hard to convince our fellow citizens, of all political stripes, that the arts merit even a pittance of public support. At our best on this side of the pond, we offer investment in artistic endeavors that require the reciprocity of good stewardship: pursuit of artistic excellence, good governance, and fiscal responsibility. Ultimately, Jeune Lune failed on the latter two points.


Several young people took the stage to receive awards last night. Unable to afford fancy suits, in their jeans and scuffed shoes they represented all the starving artists who seek only a chance to create and present their work. The tears they choked back bespoke their disbelieving amazement that, for a brief moment, the community in which they labor had lifted them from the ashes of their chimney hearths and welcomed them to the ball.


Serrand and his colleagues burned their tickets to the dance on the altar of organizational dysfunction and inattention to business basics. In this, they were abetted by what I call "the collective we" that looked away when deficits became chronic, plans became unrealistic, and the ties that bound them to the community frayed beyond repair. Finally and, perhaps, unfairly, we acknowledged that we owed no more and, in the tradition of Minnesota Nice, we kept the angels at bay and allowed the silence to speak for us.


I believe in second and subsequent acts, however, and hope that in his next adventures Serrand will be able to "fail better," if fail he must.

Review: Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra opened its 16th season for an audience of 300 at the Ted Mann Concert Hall in Minneapolis, Sept. 20, with a competent and accomplished rendition of four compositions that are performed rarely on the concert stage.


The music of Bedrich Smetana, represented by Three Dances from The Bartered Bride, was new to me and opened the evening. The full work received its premiere in 1870, its composition marked by the ferment of political turmoil and rising Czech nationalism that permeated the composer's native Bohemia at the time. Three excerpts – Polka, Furiant, and Dance of the Comedians – offered a musical picture of the milieu into which John and Lena Tapper, two of my paternal great grandparents, were born.


Playing from memory, guest pianist Paul Kovacovic displayed full control of the Piano Concerto No. 5 in F Major by Camille Saint-Saëns, composed in Egypt and premiered in Paris in 1896. The motifs of the second movement form the basis of "Egyptian" as the concerto's nickname. To my ear, the upper register piano hammers that were supposed to represent the sounds of chirping crickets were less than tunefully bright. Kovacovic's many domestic and international projects included a collaboration earlier this year with Live Action Set at the Southern Theater.


If her skills as a registered nurse match her facility with the flute, then the patients of Hamsa Isles are well-served at Children's Hospital in Minneapolis. This native of Cleveland and founding member of the orchestra displayed her artistry in Voyage for Flute and String Orchestra, a small gem from 1988 by John Corigliano.


The program closed with the Symphony No. 99 in E-flat Major, an unflashy but solid and satisfying work composed by Franz Joseph Haydn in Vienna in 1793.


Under the direction of Joseph Schlefke since 2001, the Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra and its 53 members have become an articulate ensemble of individually strong, often exceptional, players, prompting no embarrassment and requiring no apology. The opportunity to see and hear them at the Ted Mann Concert Hall was a welcome change from their traditionally smaller and less formal venues. But.


They hold in their grasp the readiness to kick it up a notch artistically. Their collective posture and stage presence reflects an unwarranted reticence and a lack of visible esprit and conviction. Rather than owning the stage, they appear as shy and uncertain visitors. As the organization's front man and most public face, Schlefke could inspire his troops with a more practiced and self-assured persona. His years of experience and accomplishment should have banished his verbal and physical insecurities long ago.


If it chooses the pursuit, this group is ready to stretch itself into the big-time of higher visibility, greater artistic accomplishment, and heightened public scrutiny and support.


The Minnesota Philharmonic Orchestra's 2008-2009 season continues: Dec. 5-6, 7:30pm, Hopkins High School Auditorium, Minnetonka; Mar. 14, 7:30pm, Hamline University, St. Paul; and May 30, 7:30pm, Hamline University, St. Paul. www.mnphil.org

A political discourse with substance

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The Edge Foundation, Inc. was formed in 1988 to promote inquiry into and discussion of intellectual, philosophical, artistic, and literary issues, and to work for what it calls the intellectual and social achievement of society. It is a nonprofit, private operating foundation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.


The Foundation's website posted an academic discourse this month by Jonathan Haidt, What Makes People Vote Republican? One should not be put off by the presumption or apparent bias behind the title of what is, essentially, a fascinating exploration of why liberals and conservatives have trouble getting along. The article presents a meaty alternative to the vapidity of our anointed political analysts in the media.


Haidt is Associate Professor of Psychology at the University of Virginia where he does research on morality and emotion and how they vary across cultures. He is the author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom.


Edge also posted several responses to Haidt:

The Ties That Bind, by Daniel Everett, linguist; chair, Department of Languages, Literatures and Cultures, Illinois State University; author, Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazon Jungle.


Essay, by Howard Gardner, psychologist, Harvard University; (currently) Jacob K. Javits Visiting Professor, New York University; author, Changing Minds.


The Conscience of the Conservative, by Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine, monthly columnist for Scientific American; author, Why Darwin Matters; and How We Believe.


How Religion Creates Moral Society, by Scott Atran, anthropologist, University of Michigan; author, In Gods We Trust.


Why do People Vote at All? by James Fowler, political scientist, University of California, San Diego; coauthor, Mandates, Parties, and Voters: How Elections Shape the Future.


The Morality of Childbearing, by Alison Gopnik, psychologist, University of California, Berkeley; author, The Philosophical Baby: What Children's Minds tell us About Trust, Love and the Meaning of Life (forthcoming).


Brain Science and Human Values, by Sam Harris, neuroscience researcher; author, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation.


Essay, by James O'Donnell, classicist; cultural historial; provost, Georgetown University; author, The Ruin of the Roman Empire (forthcoming).


Report From Florida, by Roger Schank, formerly professor, Stanford, Yale, and Northwestern; latest projects: grandparentgames.com; and an alternative to the existing school systems described on engine4ed.org.


Allow at least an hour for a first read through, including the responses.

Choices

Minneapolis, Minnesota


There is an election on Nov. 4th. It does not take much to get people talking about it.


An account executive for my cell phone service provider called today. She thought that I might not know that 53 text messages had been sent to my phone recently or how much I would be charged for them. I assured her that I knew where most all of the messages had originated and how much they would cost, and that I believed there would be no more of them.


"How can you be sure?" she asked. "We have a low-cost plan designed for such volume."


I thanked her for the expression of concern and told her the messages were from my Libertarian brother who disagrees with my Democratic affinities. "He hopes to convert me," I said. "It would not matter if I was a Republican; my thinking would still be misguided and wrong."


"Well!" she responded. "I am on the phone with people all day long and let me tell you–– No,
I really should not. I mean–– Well, let me just say this: There are an awful lot of people who tell me that they are not going to vote!"


"That's terrible!" I said. "We may not like the choices we have, but we do have a choice and we need to honor that."


She wasn't having any of it, and I suspect she may be one of those who has resolved not to vote. If so, that's most unfortunate.


I give my brother his due. While he may not like his choices, he does choose and he does vote. So should we all.

Minnesota's Primary Election

Minneapolis, Minnesota


Tuesday, Sept. 9, is primary election day in Minnesota. Vote!

spark24

Minneapolis, Minnesota


If you want anything cultural promoted in the Twin Cities, Scott Mayer is the go-to guy to get it done, even on Labor Day weekend when any resident who has not left town is either sleeping-in or preparing for a day at the Minnesota State Fair.


Mayer's latest project, spark24, showcased the Minneapolis-St. Paul arts scene to a global audience in a 24-hour marathon, running from 5pm, Aug. 30, to 5pm, Aug. 31.


Activities centered on Orchestra Hall and the adjacent Peavey Plaza in downtown Minneapolis. The Minnesota Orchestra kicked things off, followed by 27 half-hour blocks filled by the likes of VocalEssence, the Minnesota Opera, Zenon Dance Company, Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus, Mu Daiko, Arena Dances, Chanhassen Dinner Theatres, and many more.


More than 60 public and private venues around downtown got into the act with some form of live entertainment between 10pm and 2am. At 4am, 800 people were attending activities inside Orchestra Hall.


When performances moved back outside to Peavey Plaza at 6am, five hardy souls had been present since 5pm. By 9am, one stalwart remained and vowed to stay the full 24 hours! A complimentary breakfast was served from 6am to 9am to anyone on the scene.


The excuse for this activity was the presence in the Twin Cities of 50,000+ visitors, including global media, for the Republican National Convention, which opens tomorrow. A press center for spark24 was set up in the IDS Center, three blocks from Peavey Plaza.


Mayer's prolific promotional activities have been chronicled for more than 20 years. I interviewed him on my radio program in the 1980s when he inaugurated the annual Hollywood Academy Awards events in Minneapolis. When the mayor needed help organizing and funding MOSAIC, an annual summer arts festival, he turned to Mayer six years ago. More recently, Mayer founded the annual Ivey Awards to celebrate and honor professional theater in the Twin Cities.


Peavey Plaza has become the outdoor venue of choice for summer performances in downtown Minneapolis. Located on the Nicollet Mall and adjacent to Orchestra Hall, its bubbling fountains and the historic spires of Westminster Presbyterian Church across the street provide an open air, jewel-box setting.

Vignettes

San Francisco, California


Although both locales attract global travelers, one could never mistake a walk along the four miles of San Francisco's Ocean Beach on an August afternoon for a morning stroll next to the dunes of Miami's South Beach in July. The brisk breeze, overcast sky, and wind-whipped waves of the Pacific Ocean contrast sharply with the blazing heat, diamond blue horizon, and sparkling waters of the North Atlantic. In Miami, one finds a sensation of arrival, of settled repose and personal security. San Francisco confronts with the possibilities of challenge, risk, and adventure. Metaphorically, one needs little clothing for protection on Southern Florida's shores, while sweat shirts and bonfires may provide at least psychological comfort on the beach sands of Northern California.

• • •

The culture of the Ming dynasty, spanning the years from 1368 to 1644, is the subject of Power and Glory: Court Arts of China's Ming Dynasty, an exhibit running through Sept. 21 at the Asian Art Museum. More than 200 treasures from the old Southern capital of Nanjing and the Northern capital of Beijing include porcelain objects, ink and colors on silks and papers, garments, and jewelry.

• • •

The year 2008 marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the San Francisco Ballet, the oldest professional ballet company in America. Its 2007 operating budget of $38 million also makes it one of the largest. Russell Hartley, one of the company's designers, created the costumes for the country's first, full-length Nutcracker in 1944 and, in 1947, founded the Museum of Performance & Design. The museum's exhibit, Art & Artifice: 75 Years of Design at San Francisco Ballet, runs through Aug. 30, featuring original sketches for sets and costumes, set models, costumes and accessories, photos, programs, and videos.

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Visual Aid, an organization that assists and encourages Bay Area artists with life-threatening illnesses to continue their creative work, is presenting TREASURE, a solo exhibition by Jerry Lee Frost, through Sept. 11. The exhibit features 13 of Frost's abstract, oil-on-canvas paintings from 2007 and 2008, at the San Francisco LGBT Community Center, 1800 Market Street.

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The Hotel Union Square, 114 Powell Street, offers many perks: windows that open, free phone calls, free internet access, free newspapers, free morning coffee, and free California wines at afternoon happy hour. Its unadvertised and better-kept secrets include regular cable car runs and a constantly surging sea of world travelers viewed from its second floor windows. The chaos generates many gem-like surprises, such as a perfectly harmonized, sidewalk serenade of Down by the Riverside by an un-miked male quartet, delivered on a gloriously balmy Sunday afternoon!

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Most evenings, singing along with an international assemblage can be done downstairs at Foley's, 243 O'Farrell Street, where dudes Chris and Jerry hold court and take requests with their dueling pianos.

Review: San Francisco Lyric Chorus

San Francisco, California


The prospect of a choral program comprised of five Te Deums might leave one asking "How interesting could that be?" The answer, as provided by the San Francisco Lyric Chorus, was "Quite." The ensemble presented five settings at an afternoon performance, Aug. 24, of its summer concert at Trinity Episcopal Church in San Francisco.


Originally sung in Latin and translated into English during the 16th century, Te Deums are Christian hymns of praise and celebration that date from the fourth century. The Te Deum consists of 29 verses of prose divided into three sections. The extensive list of composers who have contributed settings includes John Taverner, Jean Baptiste Lully, Henry Purcell, Mozart, the Haydn brothers, Verdi, and many more. Prior to reading Helene Whitson's fabulously detailed program notes (references fill 1-1/3 pages of the printed program), I had no idea that the form filled such a niche in the musical canon.


Housed at Trinity since its 1995 founding, the San Francisco Lyric Chorus is an auditioned ensemble of 40 that performs music of all periods with an emphasis on lesser-known works.


To open the program, tenors Kevin Baum and Benjamin West led a procession of the chorus while singing Te Deum Laudamus (Latin rite, solemn tone) a cappella. Keyboardist Robert Train Adams with Trinity's 1924 Skinner organ and timpanist Allen Biggs accompanied the balance of the program, which was directed by Robert Gurney.


The Te Deum in A Major, composed by George Frideric Handel in the 1720s for the Chapel Royal, featured Jennifer Ashworth, soprano, Daniel Cromeenes, countertenor, Kevin Baum, tenor, and William Neely, bass. Generally, I am not a fan of the countertenor voice, but am happy to make exception for the sweet, haunting quality of Cromeenes's upper register. All of the soloists were in perfect voice throughout the program.


The setting of Te Deum in C used in the performance was the second composed by Joseph Haydn, and was commissioned by Austria's Empress Marie Therese in 1799.


Benjamin Britten wrote his Festival Te Deum in 1945 for the 100th anniversary of St. Mark's Church in Wiltshire, England. Ashworth sang the soprano solos.


Antonín Dvorák's Te Deum closed the program, and again featured Ashworth and Neely. The work was commissioned in 1892 for the 400th anniversary of Columbus' discovery of America and was performed that year at Carnegie Hall for the first time.


Trinity's acoustics and 19th century architecture contributed a special richness to the sound and ambience of the chorus's lovely presentation.

Wine

San Francisco, California


The hillsides and flatlands of California's Napa Valley and Sonoma Valley, north of San Francisco, have become home to hundreds of vintners known throughout the world for the variety and quality of their wines. It is impossible to visit all of them but, I am told, some folks are determined to try!


One of the best ways to learn first-hand about how grapes are turned into wine can be found at the Sterling Vineyards in Calistoga at Napa's northern end. There, one can fly 300 feet above the valley floor in a cable tram to the hillside winery founded by Peter Newton in 1964. Sterling features a self-paced, self-guided tour of its wine-making facility. Posters and flat-screen televisions relate the processes of harvesting, crushing, fermenting, and aging grapes. One can come away knowing how to "toast" wood for barrels and how soil type, air, vine, sun angle, and other factors affect the characteristics of various wines. Admission tickets also provide a five-wine tasting of whites and reds. The breath-taking panorama of the Napa Valley should not be missed!


Castello di Amorosa is situated just down the road from Sterling. Reservations are required for the 50-minute castle and winery tour followed by 35-minute, private tasting. Castello specializes in Italian style wines which can be purchased only in-person or online.


Noted for its distinctive Red Barn, the Frog's Leap Winery in the Napa town of Rutherford has been family-owned and operated since 1981. The land was a commercial frog farm in the 1800s. Half of this winery's annual production becomes Sauvignon Blanc.


A terrific lunch spot may be found at Bistro Jeanty, a French restaurant in Yountville, a charming community in the Napa heartland.


Count Agoston Haraszthy established Buena Vista, California's oldest premium winery in 1857. The original site in Sonoma is a California Historic Landmark, built into a wooded hillside. Its longevity makes it a romantic and nostalgic favorite for many regional residents.


The Sebastiani Vineyards & Winery is the oldest, continuously family-owned winery in Sonoma. Although the history of its vineyards dates to 1825, it was acquired in 1904 by Samuele Sebastiani, an 1895 immigrant from Tuscany.


Sonoma's The Olive Press produces and sells a variety of olive oils, citrus and infused oils, Balsamic vinegars, and olive oil soaps and salves.


The Rodney Strong Vineyards and J's are two of many wineries located on Old Redwood Highway near Healdsburg in Sonoma County's Russian River Valley.


A perfect dinner stop at the end of a touring day is Boca, an Argentine inspired steak house in Novato. Take the Ignacio Boulevard exit off of U.S. 101 on your way back to San Francisco!

Review: West Wave Dance Festival, San Francisco

San Francisco, California


The West Wave Dance Festival 2008 showcased the work of more than 45 Bay Area dance and digital media artists, Aug. 16-24. Dancers' Group and DanceArt presented the 17th annual event in partnership with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.


The curated festival divided participants into three programs (waves) of dancemakers for live stage performances and one for performances on film. Each live program featured the work of a dozen choreographers and was presented twice over four evenings at Yerba Buena's Novellus Theater. Choreographers were challenged to create segments of at least 4 minutes, 32 seconds, and no more than 5 minutes.


DanceWave 2, which closed the festival on Friday evening, Aug. 22, presented many interesting and striking images but little of lasting consequence. With a couple exceptions, major choreographic voices do not appear to be emerging from this group.


Kara Davis, who involves her dancers in her creative process, excelled at showing how much material can be presented in 4-1/2 minutes – and how well – with one Tuesday afternoon..., set to sound by Gustavo Santaoalla. Although her performing and teaching background is primarily in ballet, this work had a distinctly contemporary coloring. Danced beautifully by David Harvey, Daniel Howerton, Alex Jenkins, Nick Korkos, Erin Kraemer, Adam Peterson, Alicia Pugh, Sierra Stockton, Dinah Walker, Sarah Wenzel, and Jenna Wozer, one Tuesday afternoon... was the most cohesive, complete, and satisfying part of the program.


In My Shoes, the evening's one aerial work, the feet of choreographer and solo performer Alayna Stroud spent more time on the floor, stepping out of and into shoes, than they did either in the air or wrapped around a vertical, silver pole apparatus. The music, engineered by Austin Donohue, was too loud.


The dancers lifted Robert Sund's neoclassical offering, Our steps will always rhyme, beyond a pastiche of boring ballet cliches. Robin Cornwell and Olivia Ramsay provided en pointe window dressing for Ryan Camou in his bravura and emotional opening solo. He then served as engaged audience to their elegantly-danced duet. Both segments were performed to sound by Leonard Cohen. Minnesota's dance scene would be well-served by a male dancer of Camou's prowess, particularly if he was given regular opportunities to soar.


Gorgeous, green and orange costumes adorned seven dancers who performed with bright smiles but limited conviction in Vakratunda Mahakaya, a spiritual prayer in the Odissi style of Indian dance. Ratikant Mohapatra choreographed the work to music by bansuri artist Hariprasad Chaurasia. The dance was performed by Shradha Chowdhury, Akanksha Kejriwal, Rasika Kumar, Niharika Mohanty, Vasanta Rao, Divya Saha, and Lavanya Viswanathan. Bronx cheers for the gall of Audience Member A, who twice snapped flash photos with a cell phone during the performance; bravos for the gutsy, Audience Member B who stood up and told A to stop.


Long, sheer, and white head scarves and skirts lent a visually pleasing presence to There, a trio choreographed by Wan-Chao Chang to "Form 3" by Greg Ellis. Wan-Chao was joined in the performance by Hannah Romanowsky and Kris Sague.


A six-foot-high wagon wheel, harnessed to a dancer's lower back by an eight-foot-long axle, served as the primary prop of the Cocktail Hour, a cute diversion by Cynthia Adams and Ken James, with sound by Marimba Chapinlandia. Early on, dancers balanced empty martini glasses while ducking beneath the slowly rotating axle. Later, James and a woman removed, exchanged, and donned each other's black shirt and pants (his) and red dress (hers) while ducking the axle. Later still, a dancer pushed a vacuum cleaner from stage right to stage left. Pick your own choreographic metaphor(s). The performers – in addition to Adams and James, Fiona McCann, Shawn Oda, Kimm E. Ward, and Andrea Weber – also are known as the Fellow Travelers Performance Group.


The artist statement that Christy Funsch provided to the Dancers' Group newsletter about her solo work, Dapper Indiscretion Blues, was either incoherent or clear as mud. Either way, it aptly described her choreography and supports my preference to view more of her apparent strengths as a modern performer.


The dancing by Natalie Greene, Elizabeth Morales, and Wendy Rein in Deborah Slater's Gone in 5 was not so good, but the portions that did not partner with props (a table and three chairs of varying heights) were stronger and more interesting than those that did.


Carolena Nericcio and the other performers of her FatChanceBellyDance – Kristine Adams, Wendy Allen, Sandi Ball, Anita Lalwani, and Marsha Poulin – used a process of improvisation that left their performance of Lifting the Mist of Illusion lacking in focus. Including more structure in their work might make their dancing more compelling and at least as interesting as their multi-hued costumes and sparkling jewelry.


May bird poop someday crown the head of Audience Member C who took a flash photo during the FatChanceBellyDance performance. This is not mere contempt on my part. A pre-performance announcement stated that the practice was strictly prohibited. Furthermore, unexpected flashes can be dangerous for performers. Plus, one's ticket purchase entitles the holder to view a live performance and to carry away whatever sensations and memories one will. It does not sanction the theft of intellectual property in the form of choreography; costume, set, and light design; or music. Finally, it is just plain rude, crude, and socially unacceptable to interfere in this manner with the experience of other audience members.


The original and live cello, violin, and guitar music by Andy Eggleston, Fay Ferency, and Matthew Herz was, far and away, the best part of How many presents/balls/ chips/scarves/books/hearts/circles can you wrap/catch/win/throw/ read/ cut out/make in four minutes thirty two seconds? The work, choreographed by Amy Lewis, featured more than 30 performers and should have been titled How much crap can you cram on stage in 4-1/2? Lots!


Micaya had a fun hip hop concept for To the Rear...March, set to music by DJ ACL. The performers, Stavroula Arabatgis, Daniel Derrick, Kim Dokes, Natalia Hellems, Meegan Hertensteiner, Clyde Lachica, Brandy Logue, Stephanie Lynn, Fumihiko Nishimura, and Christina Paoli, dived in and gave new meaning to "shake your bootie!"


Reuniting a host of characters in the aftermath of Pele's wrath might seem a daunting challenge for a five-minute segment, but it is one that Kumu Hula Kawika Alfiche pulled off reasonably well in Hi'iakaikapoli'opele. The choreographer and his students provided their own song and drum accompaniment to their dancing. This was my first exposure to Hawaiian dance in a concert setting; I would like to see more.


The opportunity to sample so much dance in a concentrated period is rare. The organizers, choreographers, performers, and funders deserve applause for making the effort. However, that the 757-seat Novellus Theater was not half full on the fourth and final night of the West Wave Dance Festival suggests that the enterprise may need more tweaking, with particular examination of scheduling, curating, pricing ($25), and location.

Evensong

San Francisco, California


San Francisco's Grace Cathedral offers the service of choral Evensong on Thursday afternoons throughout the year. It is a particularly Anglican service that evolved from the monastic hours and combines features of the office of Vespers and Compline. It is sung regularly in many cathedrals and parish churches throughout the country, and daily in many places in England. At Grace, one is invited to sit in the choir for the service which draws just under 100 people, including members of the choir. Yesterday's anthem, with text from Ephesians 5, was composed by Thomas Tallis, a 16th century contemporary of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.


Evensong happens four evenings a week at the General Theological Seminary in New York. I attended twice while staying there last October. The entire chapel on the seminary grounds would fit comfortably, with room to spare, within the choir of Grace Cathedral.


Grace is the third largest Episcopal cathedral in the U.S. and, like much of San Francisco, it has become a global icon. Situated atop Nob Hill, its construction was started in 1928 and completed in 1964. It is a successor to the Grace Church which was organized during the 1849 Gold Rush. Its French Gothic architecture shares many features with the National Cathedral in Washington.


The central, Ghiberti Doors of Grace Cathedral, were cast from the same molds used in the 15th century for the Baptistry of Florence Cathedral. James Davies and I saw the Italian originals during our 1986 visit to Florence.


Following the 1906 earthquake and fire that destroyed much of San Francisco, William H. Crocker, a Grace parish member, donated the land of his ruined home on Nob Hill for the construction of a cathedral, with the requirement that "Grace" remain the name of the new structure. In 1934, William's daughter, Harriet Crocker Alexander, donated the Alexander Memorial Organ in memory of her husband, Charles Beatty Alexander; the organ was designed by the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company of Boston.


Crocker was a banker and civic leader, and a son of Charles Crocker, one of the four original investors in the transcontinental railroad. The other three investors, Leland Stanford, Collis P. Huntington, and Mark Hopkins, also made their homes on Nob Hill. The Huntington and Mark Hopkins hotels stand today on what were the ruins of their mansions.


Before his days as a successful railroad man and merchant in Sacramento, California, Charles Crocker started life in 1822 in Troy, New York. After a falling-out with his father, he began working his way West. In 1849, he joined two of his brothers and a few other young men in leaving from Quincy, Illinois, to seek their fortunes in California.


The Peterson family lore relates that my great-great grandfather, William Peterson (b. 1815, New Jersey; d. 1899 Pineville, Missouri) joined his brother Dean and a few other young men to seek their fortunes in 1849 California. They would have departed from Adams County, Illinois where they lived, and for which Quincy is the county seat. The Petersons returned "busted."


Following Evensong, James and I located Johnny Foleys Irish House at 243 O'Farrell Street, a favorite from our previous visits. It is a mere block from our current lodgings at the Hotel Union Square, 114 Powell Street. The Powell Street cable cars run past our second floor window regularly.

Exhibit: Friedlander photography, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The Sunday Styles section of today's New York Times included Alex Williams's report about trends in the use of Photoshop software to alter still photographs by adding or subtracting one or more elements ("I Was There. Just Ask Photoshop."). Williams cited the example of a divorcée who removed images of her former spouse from family vacation pictures. The apparent point of such subterfuge is to alter narratives and to view and document past realities as one wishes they had been, rather than how they were.


This goes beyond photography that emphasizes different aspects of landscape elements or variations of individual perception. This is John Edwards narcissism and Karl Rove cynicism. People who do this are committing fraud and creating falsehoods. It is not cute. It is not art.


That they are doing it at all matters because, as Williams noted, people who look at doctored photos come to believe and mis-remember such things as Uncle Frank having attended his son's wedding when, in reality, he was incarcerated on another continent for drug smuggling.


One finds no such lies in the work of Lee Friedlander.