Festivus Camelus XXXV

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Claudia Dromedarius • Dec. 7, 2013

Such joy! It felt so good to see her again after our first meeting five years ago.


Her name is Claudia. She is beautiful, embodying and confirming hopes and dreams that everything is possible. Her first visit, December 6, 2008, had delighted as much as it had 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.


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 38 mph, turned her exhalations steamy.


Still, she stood on the front lawn for two hours in the new snow that night, 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.

Gary Peterson and Claudia Dromedarius

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 has joined the Camel Party festivities in person feels perfectly natural. After all, her family has provided the organizing iconography of the clan's convenings from the beginning. From two original tapestries, 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.


Several days after Claudia's 2008 visit, I received a call 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 had 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 that year's camel experience, and I suggested to his mother that he cite this blog in his references. That young man is now 16 years old. We can hold out hope for his former teacher, about whom Jesus might have said "Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe."


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 35th year introduced new lyrics that reflect The Camel Party's celebration of the change within continuity and the continuity within change:

Yes the air is chill year 35, And from Claudia's nostrils steam does rise. But indoors it's hot and folks gyrate, Til for babes and all the floor does shake. Here's to all loved ones at Cameltide, Both here and on the other side! *

Claudia Dromedarius • Dec. 7, 2013

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, violin. Carols, naughty and sacred. Desserts for days. Wine, water, and soda. Crowds and conversations of hundreds. Welcome and inclusion. Fashions new and old. Santa, Rasta Santa, and elves – Santa and Rasta remain the same, but the elves have grown up and started replacing themselves.


Nothing lasts forever, though, and these annual trysts are guaranteed to none. For attendees constant and episodic, Festivus Camelus has noted and incorporated transitions of education, career, conception, birth, health, and death. It has forever marked its participants who have returned from all corners of the globe: Minnesota, Madison, Chicago, San Diego, San Francisco, Boston, New Haven, New York, Washington, Canada, France, 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! *

* From The Camel Song, © 2013, Davies/Schiller

Of dogs and men

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The Friday, Dec. 6, Star Tribune newspaper reported about the sentencing in Scott County District Court of one Rudolph Poppe, 71, a resident of Shakopee, Minnesota. Poppe was sentenced to 90 days in jail, with credit for 24 days served already, plus five years probation and a $500 fine.

Poppe pleaded guilty in October to one count of animal cruelty. A neighbor was reported to have seen Poppe hit his 13-year-old golden retriever over the head with a sledgehammer – allegedly 15 times – earlier this year, in order to put the aged animal out of its misery. I read the article while my own dog slept next to the radiator at my feet.

The man is barred from owning another animal for five years. 

You think?!

At 5:40pm on Friday, I was walking on Third Avenue South from the Minneapolis Convention Center to my house, a few blocks away. The temperature was 4ºF with a windchill index in the mid-20s degrees below zero. 

At East 16th Street and Third Avenue, on the northwest corner of the Sharon Sayles Belton Bridge spanning Interstate 94, I came upon a 71-year-old man who was conscious and sitting on the curb. 

The man wore neither hat nor gloves. He was attired in a thin, gray hoodie sweat shirt with a plaid-patterned shirt-type jacket over it. His light green pants were thin for summer. His hands were white with cold. He was freezing.

I had not seen if he had fallen, and I could not raise him up. He was marginally coherent.

Reaching for my cell phone, I dialed 911. "You have reached Minneapolis 911," the recording said, "we will answer your call as soon as we can." 

I could not believe it – I have called 911 many times over the years, mostly to report open air drug trafficking, an occasional car wreck, and random sounds of gunfire – and this was the first time I was put on hold. 

After a pause, the message repeated once or twice more before a live man's voice asked "Do you have an emergency or can I put you on hold?"

Something about the call set me off and I shouted, "By all means, please put me on hold!" 

He had the presence of mind to then ask "How can I help you?"

"I am a pedestrian," I said, "and have come upon this man sitting on the curb in this cold." 

"That's an emergency," the 911 guy said.

I described what the man looked like and what he was wearing, and agreed to stay with him until help arrived. 

A firehouse was located two blocks away, on the back side of the Convention Center, and a truck with four men pulled up within two minutes. Within four minutes, an ambulance from Hennepin County Medical Center also arrived on the scene. 

As I continued walking the final three blocks to my house, I began to cry – and then to sob uncontrollably until after I was running water on my own cold hands inside my toasty warm house.

The bus to St. Paul and equality

Minneapolis, Minnesota


The advance of same-sex marriage around the globe gained major traction during the first 18 days of May, as Rhode Island became the 10th U.S. state to legislate in favor on May 2, followed by Delaware on May 7. On May 14, the National Council of Justice in Brazil voted 14-to-1 to require notaries public to register same-sex marriages. On May 18, France became the 14th country to legalize gay nuptials when its president signed earlier legislation that had been challenged in court.

In Minnesota, the state House of Representatives voted for marriage equality, 75-to-59, on May 9, followed by the state Senate, 37-to-30, on May 13.

Minnesota State Capitol • St. Paul • May 14, 2013

At 4:10pm on Tuesday, May 14, I stood on the corner of 6th Street and Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis to board an express bus to the State Capitol, 10 miles distant on the edge of downtown St. Paul. Minnesota's governor, Mark Dayton, was scheduled to sign the new legislation at a 5pm ceremony on the Capitol steps. It will take effect August 1.

I was not alone. 


A friend, Christopher, and one of his friends were waiting at the corner, attired in black-and-white "Marry Us" t-shirts generated by the Twin Cities Gay Men's Chorus. Other men and women sported various shirts from the 2012 campaign to defeat the amendment to Minnesota's constitution that would have banned gay marriage in the state. Jerry and Travis already were on the bus when we boarded.


We moved through downtown's rush hour traffic, picking up fellow travelers until packed, cheek by jowl, with no room for more. We represented a wide range of ages, with the majority clearly being part of the Millennial Generation, people born since 1980. If most of us gay baby boomers had raised kids, they would be part of this cohort: folks who generically hold the world in the palm of one hand while they reach to touch and create their experience of it with the other.


It was an excited, but relaxed, happy ride. One fellow nearby remarked that "Most of my exes will probably be there – this could get interesting." I observed that he could probably handle it unless all of them arrived together. 


Rolling along the I-94 freeway shoulder, I found myself reflecting about how many years we had been riding and about all the people who had missed this bus. I included my former, 16-year-old self: that ridiculous kid trying to find and understand others like himself in the cocoon of Sutton's bar in 1968 Minneapolis.


There were the gay men and drag queens, whose grainy images may be found in documentary films about the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City, rounded up and herded into paddy wagons following police raids on gay bars. Some of those warriors still survive, but most have passed on.


There was Thomas, a Minnesotan of my acquaintance, who was fired from his job as a legislative assistant on Capitol Hill when I worked there in 1971; years later, in May 1984, I read in the New York Times that his body had been fished out of Baltimore's harbor. There were friends and acquaintances, like Ankha, who died by their own hands. John Chenoweth, a former Minnesota state senator, and Earl Craig, one of our civil rights activists, were murdered in 1991 and 1992, respectively, like many others over the years – and still this week on the streets of New York City.


There were, of course, the countless souls lost to AIDS, recognized at the first unfolding of the AIDS Quilt on the National Mall, October 11, 1987, and since.


All of them returned to mind last evening as I listened to the words of Mozart's "Requiem" at St. Mark's Cathedral in Minneapolis:

Sacrifices and prayers of praise, Lord, we offer to You.

Receive them in behalf of those souls we commemorate today.

And let them, Lord, pass from death to life,

which was promised to Abraham and his descendants.

The debate on the floor of the Minnesota House, May 9, had inspired awe. The outcome of the vote there was not certain until the roll was taken and closed. Many of the 134 members gave emotional voice to the higher angels of their natures and their callings to public service.


The Senate debate last Monday also had much of that, but with half as many members as the House and the outcome certain, its speeches lasted longer and  were more painful and difficult to hear. Power and privilege do not yield without a fierce fight. 


With their backs against the wall, many opponents averred that "I am not a bigot," "I am not a homophobe," and "I am not a hater" before giving voice-and-vote evidence to the contrary. Many of us listening from our workplaces and elsewhere recognized the denial and kept a running commentary with each other in Facebook chats. We have seen and heard it all before in our schools, workplaces, houses of worship, and halls of government from people who ultimately do not believe in a shared humanity.


People with "sincerely and deeply held beliefs" insisting on their religious freedom but finding endless justification for denying it to others. Folks believing all of us should embrace the full responsibilities of citizenship and having no compunction about denying many of the rights and privileges that should accompany the responsibilities. Parents professing love and concern for "the children" but voting against the future happiness of their own children or those of their friends and relatives.


With strokes of a pen under a sun-drenched sky on Tuesday afternoon, Governor Dayton gave all of Minnesota's citizens the freedom to marry the person they love and, as importantly, of their choice.


The signing ceremony and subsequent parade and open-air concert at downtown's Ecolab Plaza spanned five hours of joyful celebration and inaugurated a new era in all of our relationships with each other.


As James Davies, my partner of 30 years, and I broke bread with friends that evening, one of them, Mark, asked, "I may be naive, but with this done, is there anything more that we still need to do to secure equal rights for gay people?" 


Certainly, if we need to bat clean-up on the state level, there are people who will let us know what needs to be done. We have the small matter of getting 38 other states and the federal government right with God. Around the world, we must defeat the state-sanctioned thugs who squelch anything gay on the streets and in the statutes of Russia, the state-sanctioned religious objections of the United Kingdom, and the evangelical missionaries sent from the U.S. to advocate the death penalty for gay people in Nigeria and elsewhere.


Closer to home, as the aspirations of immigrant, Muslim people seek expression and realization in Minnesota, we must meet and assimilate into their world views the tenants of our civic creeds, enshrined in our constitution and laws.


One of the speakers on the Capitol Mall last Tuesday was a physician, attended by his husband-to-be and their twin children. He told of making his early rounds of the newborns at the hospital that morning. As he moved among them, he realized that they would grow up knowing from the outset all the possibilities of their hearts. 


That prologue for those and all newborns is the true legacy and real revolution wrought by the bus to St. Paul. For that, all that is past can be forgiven.

Shaping young dance dreams in Grand Rapids, Minnesota

Minneapolis, Minnesota


With long and productive performing careers largely behind them, ballet dancers Amy Earnest and Lance Hardin now voice their contentment to inspire and prepare new generations of dance students for the stage. Since the late summer of 2012, their base of operations has been the Reif Dance Program, housed in the Myles Reif Performing Arts Center, in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.


There, they teach and choreograph 18-20 ballet classes in a program that serves 200 students, aged three-to-adult, with a dance curriculum of 50 weekly offerings in fundamentals, ballet, jazz, modern, and tap. Though only in their 30s, the husband and wife duo have nearly three decades of teaching experience between them.

Lance Hardin and Amy Earnest
Ballet Co-Directors of Reif Dance, Grand Rapids, Minnesota

Their own dance studies extend even longer. Earnest began dancing at age three in Atlanta. After studying with the School of Atlanta Ballet from age 11, she moved to Seattle at 18 to pursue professional development with the Pacific Northwest Ballet. She is certified both with the American Ballet Theatre National Training Curriculum and as a Pilates instructor. Hardin, a native of Chicago, began his dance training at age 11 at the Ruth Page Foundation School of Dance and, later, at the Academy of Houston Ballet. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Ballet from Indiana University.


Earnest and Hardin both have performed principal roles from the Balanchine repertoire, as well as works by Paul Taylor, William Forsythe, Nacho Duato, and Alonzo King, among others. 


In addition to Pacific Northwest Ballet, Earnest has performed with the Tulsa Ballet, North Carolina Dance Theatre, Hartford Ballet, and Chautauqua Ballet in venues as far afield as Portugal and Hong Kong. Hardin's credits include the Milwaukee Ballet, Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre, North Carolina Dance Theatre, and Chautauqua Ballet. The couple met while dancing in North Carolina.


Both cite as highlights of their dance company experiences the few opportunities they had to work with choreographers – King, Duato, and Dwight Rhoden – as they created a new dance from nothing, as opposed to the more usual practice of having existing works "set" on them by repetiteurs.

Reif Dance serves 200 students
aged three to adult

Prior to moving to Minnesota, Earnest and Hardin owned and ran the Avant-Garde School of Dance in Centennial, Colorado, part of the Denver-Aurora metropolitan area. Grand Rapids was not unknown to them when they responded to the Reif Center's national search for a director(s) of its ballet program; both had performed there on tour in 1998, and it looked like a good opportunity to make a difference.


Situated on the banks of the Mississippi River, near its Lake Itasca headwaters, Grand Rapids is home to 10,869 residents in a county of 45,000 people and 1,000 lakes. Located 175 miles north of Minneapolis-St. Paul, 80 miles northwest of Duluth, and 100 miles south of the Canadian border, the city's largest employer is the Blandin Paper Company.


It was Myles Reif, a former general manager, plant manager, and president of Blandin, whose foresight and leadership prompted the creation of an arts center that would partner with its community; he did not live to see the January 1981 opening. Owned by Independent School District 318, the 645-seat Reif Center is operated by the Reif Arts Council. In fiscal 2011, the Center sold nearly 25,000 tickets to patrons, 40% of whom traveled more than 25 miles to attend performances of theater, dance, music, and popular entertainments.


David Marty, the Center's president, enjoys a national reputation as a savvy and visionary leader who knows how to effectively connect artists and audiences in meaningful ways while balancing a budget of approximately $950,000.

Chicago native Lance Hardin

In addition to its state-of-the-art theater, the Reif Center has three spacious dance studios with sprung floors (1,200 sq. feet, 1,800 sq. feet, and 2,250 sq. feet), private dressing rooms, and a newly refurbished observation room for parents.

Evidence of the dedication and investment of some of those parents in their children's artistic development can be found in the distances they drive four and five times a week: 34 miles and 45 minutes one-way from Hibbing to the east, and 69 miles and 70 minutes one-way from Bemidji to the west.

Amy Earnest started dancing
at age three in Atlanta

Hardin says the number of boys enrolled in the dance program is pushing double digits and has prompted thoughts of offering a boys class beginning in the fall. The program also is looking for three instructors, in jazz, tap, and fundamentals.


Reif Dance presents three annual productions: The Nutcracker in December, the Reif Dance Company show by advanced students in March, and the spring dance theater show in June.


In November 2011, Reif Dance named James Sewell, artistic director of the James Sewell Ballet in Minneapolis, as its artistic advisor. The partnership includes regular workshops and performances in Grand Rapids by Sewell and his company, and regular visits by the Reif students to Minneapolis throughout the year.


On April 13 and 14, 2013, 39 dancers from Grand Rapids joined members of the James Sewell Ballet and the Greater Twin Cities Youth Symphonies to perform Camille Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals" at The Cowles Center for Dance in Minneapolis. When the Sewell dancers take the stage at the Reif Center a week later, April 20, the Reif dancers will perform "Percussive," a new work choreographed by Hardin to music by Peter Gabriel.


For its annual spring production, the Reif Dance Program will present "The Wizard of Oz," June 7-9.

The 645-seat Reif Center in Grand Rapids, Minnesota

Then, rounding out their first year in Grand Rapids, Earnest and Hardin will be joined by Sewell dancers for the ballet-focused 2013 Summer Dance Intensive, July 29-August 17. The three-week intensive also will offer classes in contemporary styles, modern, jazz, tap, choreography, and Pilates, with a free, Summer Showcase performance on Saturday, August 17. A housing and meal package at Itasca Community College is available for out-of-town participants.


Earnest and Hardin say they enjoy the sense of community they have found in Grand Rapids, a place where they can know many people and be known for the work that they do in developing dance artists. They look forward to many days of sharing their experiences and helping to shape young dreams.

Credit where due

Minneapolis, Minnesota


One has to give the Catholic church a touch of credit: for as screwed up and dysfunctional as it is with the depth of its problems around the world, it took a mere three weeks to find new leadership. On these shores, Congress can't decide whether to debate a piece of legislation after years, and most businesses can't return a phone call in less than a week, if at all. 

Supreme Court of the United States

Minneapolis, Minnesota

The Court will provide the audio recordings and transcripts of the oral arguments in Hollingsworth v. Perry, scheduled to be heard on Tuesday, March 26, and United States v. Windsor, scheduled to be heard on Wednesday, March 27, on an expedited basis through the Court's Website.

The Court will post the audio recordings and unofficial transcripts as soon as the digital files are available for uploading to the Website. The audio recordings and transcripts should be available no later than 1 p.m. on March 26 and no later than 2 p.m. on March 27.

Anyone interested in the proceedings will be able to access the recordings and transcripts directly through links on the homepage of the Court's Website. The homepage currently provides links to the orders, briefs, and other information about the cases. The Court's Website address is www.supremecourt.gov.

Seriously? Jackie Cherryhomes wants to be mayor?

Minneapolis, Minnesota



Jackie Cherryhomes, a former president of the Minneapolis City Council, has announced her candidacy for the mayor's office in the November 2013 city elections.


From a Star Tribune interview: "She said in an interview that she would no longer lobby in City Hall if elected, though she said she could continue to serve nonprofits and other clients on various types of work."


Really? In what warped universe does that make any sense?


Beyond that dubious promise of conflicted actions to come, one must wonder about her desire to keep businesses in the city and bring jobs downtown. As council president, she presided over the development of Block E on Hennepin Avenue, an ill-advised project that sits nearly as vacant today as it did before Minneapolis threw away $39 million to support its building.


Cherryhomes should quit the race now, while she is ahead.