Minneapolis, Minnesota
In 11 days, delegates of Minnesota's Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party will begin gathering in Duluth to endorse candidates for statewide office. My schedule and stamina will not permit me to join them on the convention sidelines to help seal the deal that makes Paul Thissen our candidate for governor. Thus, I offer these thoughts to the delegates, particularly to my GLBT friends and colleagues.
I met Paul several years ago through his wife, Karen Wilson Thissen, with whom I served on a nonprofit board of directors. They are good people.
As lifelong Minnesotans, Paul Thissen and I share a deep appreciation and affection for the land, the people, and the traditions that give color and meaning to our lives. Both of us have traveled extensively throughout our state and understand the inherent goodwill, sense of fair play, and yearning for integrity that characterizes our people. Paul embodies these traits with a fresh and enthusiastic optimism matched by a can-do spirit of pragmatism.
As the number of days behind me continues to outpace those ahead, I still want to "win" at life's various adventures and to follow my heart with as little compromise as possible. Paul is a solid candidate on the issues that voters and candidates of all stripes should care about. Nonetheless, our party is given to imposing a 100% purity test on issues and - especially - nuances, and then tries to take the safe route by endorsing the candidates who seem to have the greatest name recognition, money, and insider connections. I am old enough to recall the last time Minnesota elected a DFL governor, and I know how well our past patterns of endorsing behavior have not worked.
Given the temper of our times, the personality and character of the next governor will be prime in determining the outcome of legislation and policy. We need to play this election to win.
As a gay man who never could have imagined the possibility of marrying his high school boy friend, I have experienced personally and vicariously the profound changes of attitude, heart, and behavior within myself and others that have replaced shadows with sunshine, fear with strength, and despair with hope. Like the best of leaders, Paul calls forth the higher angels of our nature. He has done this in speeches to assembled throngs, in one-on-one conversations, and in the introduction and passage of legislation.
As the real deal, he also does it in the raising of his own kids, all of whom accompanied us in last year's Pride Parade through the streets of downtown Minneapolis. Would that our own parents ever would have placed in our hands signs that read "Our friend has two mothers, and we think it's great!"
As a one-time political candidate, I know about the ineffable campaign experience that Paul has undertaken. I am inspired by his work ethic, the competence and confidence of his campaign team, and the equanimity of his person. I will be proud to have him serve as governor of my state, and I ask you to join me and other Minnesotans for Thissen to help make that happen!
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Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Sunday, April 11, 2010
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Walking the streets of downtown Minneapolis, 1
Minneapolis, Minnesota
For 37 years, I have worked in or very near downtown Minneapolis. For 29 of those years, I have lived close enough to walk to work. That has been time enough to absorb, process, and take for granted the countless changes that have infiltrated the cityscape.
Ours is a city that tears things down and builds newer things back up with no regard for any value that might attach to historical or architectural significance. After 20-30 years, we start over again. Witness our unending dialogue about the need for a domed or open-air stadium. If I am still on the planet in 25 years, whatever I then use for newspapers will report on the latest debates to place a retractable roof on the new Target Field that opens for professional baseball next month.
I am not sure that we enjoy this repeating cycle; it just seems embedded in our civic DNA. Perhaps it reflects a collective, obsessive-compulsive personality of the people who built Minneapolis and were never satisfied that they got right anything they were building. In other words, we can't help ourselves.
My new place of employment for the past two months is situated near downtown, near the Mississippi River, and near the University of Minnesota, but at a somewhat further remove from my house than previous workday destinations. As temperatures and pavement conditions have improved with the waning winter, I have begun walking the nearly three miles at least once per day, usually at night.
Such is good for reducing my personal carbon footprint, containing the anxieties of modern life, and for retaining a figure of relative fighting trim.
Treading through downtown this evening, I passed the Accenture Tower on the city block bounded by 3rd and 4th avenues south, and 7th and 8th streets. When constructed in 1987, the 31-story office project was called Lincoln Centre. The "re" spelling of Centre aways struck me as an affectation. Many people have thought it a cold and uninviting structure and have had no hesitation about saying so. I always have regarded it as one of the more classy buildings that have gone up in the last four decades. The tower situates toward 4th Avenue, and has left room for development of a corporate looking park along 3rd Avenue. At the time of construction, there was an expressed intent to build an identical tower along 3rd to mirror that along 4th. Never happened. Now, if another structure rises on that block, it will, no doubt, serve the ego and vision of its designer. A pity.
Nonetheless, I enjoy the park's presence even if it does not invite pedestrians to approach and enter in. In this it is different from the nearly full-block park across 7th Street – also bounded by 3rd and 4th avenues – that serves as a pedestal for the Hennepin County Government Center. The grounds there boast berms and a variety of forestation among pink brick paths. Originally, the bricks were red, imported from someplace in Italy. However, they provided such slick surfaces during our Minnesota winters that, after any number of lawsuit settlements with people who slipped and fell, the bricks got sandblasted down to a dull shadow of their former selves, or were replaced outright.
Construction of the 24-story Government Center, completed in 1977, caused a bit of a scandal because of its cost. Although Hennepin County has been, far and away, the largest of Minnesota's 87 counties in population, prior to the new building few people were aware that county government existed. Previously, it shared space in Minneapolis City Hall.
Hennepin County Commissioner Richard O. Hanson's person and personality drove construction of the Government Center, just as they had earlier won civil service protections for county employees, built county highways, and built the welfare and library programs. First appointed to the county commission by Mayor Hubert Humphrey in 1948, Hanson became the longest-serving commissioner in county history, until his defeat at the hands of fellow Democrat Jeff Spartz in 1976. Construction of the government center was a key issue in that year's campaign.
Hanson was a true Renaissance man. In his 20s, he taught political science at the University of Minnesota. Later, he co-founded a Minneapolis investment firm, Craig Hallum, Inc., helped found the Citizens League, and served on the boards of the United Hospital Fund, Family & Children's Services, the Legal Aid Society, and others. He died at 79 in April 2000.
I first met Hanson in a professional capacity during his 50s, and my 20s, in the 1970s. Later, we came to know each other as closeted gay men who operated largely under the radar of the larger society. His was the first example to me, in those late-Carter and early-Reagan years, of a man who could accomplish worthwhile things in life and still be gay. I am grateful for his unconditional support during a crucial crucible of my life's journey. I think of him often as I pass by the building, plazas, and park that earned him such opprobrium at their creation.
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For 37 years, I have worked in or very near downtown Minneapolis. For 29 of those years, I have lived close enough to walk to work. That has been time enough to absorb, process, and take for granted the countless changes that have infiltrated the cityscape.
Ours is a city that tears things down and builds newer things back up with no regard for any value that might attach to historical or architectural significance. After 20-30 years, we start over again. Witness our unending dialogue about the need for a domed or open-air stadium. If I am still on the planet in 25 years, whatever I then use for newspapers will report on the latest debates to place a retractable roof on the new Target Field that opens for professional baseball next month.
I am not sure that we enjoy this repeating cycle; it just seems embedded in our civic DNA. Perhaps it reflects a collective, obsessive-compulsive personality of the people who built Minneapolis and were never satisfied that they got right anything they were building. In other words, we can't help ourselves.
My new place of employment for the past two months is situated near downtown, near the Mississippi River, and near the University of Minnesota, but at a somewhat further remove from my house than previous workday destinations. As temperatures and pavement conditions have improved with the waning winter, I have begun walking the nearly three miles at least once per day, usually at night.
Such is good for reducing my personal carbon footprint, containing the anxieties of modern life, and for retaining a figure of relative fighting trim.
Treading through downtown this evening, I passed the Accenture Tower on the city block bounded by 3rd and 4th avenues south, and 7th and 8th streets. When constructed in 1987, the 31-story office project was called Lincoln Centre. The "re" spelling of Centre aways struck me as an affectation. Many people have thought it a cold and uninviting structure and have had no hesitation about saying so. I always have regarded it as one of the more classy buildings that have gone up in the last four decades. The tower situates toward 4th Avenue, and has left room for development of a corporate looking park along 3rd Avenue. At the time of construction, there was an expressed intent to build an identical tower along 3rd to mirror that along 4th. Never happened. Now, if another structure rises on that block, it will, no doubt, serve the ego and vision of its designer. A pity.
Nonetheless, I enjoy the park's presence even if it does not invite pedestrians to approach and enter in. In this it is different from the nearly full-block park across 7th Street – also bounded by 3rd and 4th avenues – that serves as a pedestal for the Hennepin County Government Center. The grounds there boast berms and a variety of forestation among pink brick paths. Originally, the bricks were red, imported from someplace in Italy. However, they provided such slick surfaces during our Minnesota winters that, after any number of lawsuit settlements with people who slipped and fell, the bricks got sandblasted down to a dull shadow of their former selves, or were replaced outright.
Construction of the 24-story Government Center, completed in 1977, caused a bit of a scandal because of its cost. Although Hennepin County has been, far and away, the largest of Minnesota's 87 counties in population, prior to the new building few people were aware that county government existed. Previously, it shared space in Minneapolis City Hall.
Hennepin County Commissioner Richard O. Hanson's person and personality drove construction of the Government Center, just as they had earlier won civil service protections for county employees, built county highways, and built the welfare and library programs. First appointed to the county commission by Mayor Hubert Humphrey in 1948, Hanson became the longest-serving commissioner in county history, until his defeat at the hands of fellow Democrat Jeff Spartz in 1976. Construction of the government center was a key issue in that year's campaign.
Hanson was a true Renaissance man. In his 20s, he taught political science at the University of Minnesota. Later, he co-founded a Minneapolis investment firm, Craig Hallum, Inc., helped found the Citizens League, and served on the boards of the United Hospital Fund, Family & Children's Services, the Legal Aid Society, and others. He died at 79 in April 2000.
I first met Hanson in a professional capacity during his 50s, and my 20s, in the 1970s. Later, we came to know each other as closeted gay men who operated largely under the radar of the larger society. His was the first example to me, in those late-Carter and early-Reagan years, of a man who could accomplish worthwhile things in life and still be gay. I am grateful for his unconditional support during a crucial crucible of my life's journey. I think of him often as I pass by the building, plazas, and park that earned him such opprobrium at their creation.
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Sunday, January 3, 2010
Jottings as one ends, one begins
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Saturday, Dec. 19, 3:04pm – The absence of open water matches that of geese, ducks, and gulls from Lake Calhoun today. 23º with low, dark-gray clouds portending snow. The snowed-over pedestrian path means that walkers, runners, skaters, and cyclists share the vehicular path in both directions – with signs telling all but walkers to yield. A lone, hatless fool skis Nordic style across the ice ("fool" being relative viz brisk walkers on solid ground). Rifle volleys somewhere west in St. Louis Park suggest military honors, but whoever heard of a 33-gun salute? If not a funeral, then an odd place to practice. A mind trick of Minnesota winters: bulky-attired runners retain allure and sex appeal. Some of them, anyway. Two, in particular. Wind bites only while rounding the southeast bend. Two women bundled as in burqas (with only eye slits), descend steps at the 32d Street Beach talking excitedly about prospects for some kind of Bush Foundation grant. North of the beach, two clumsy skaters collide, kiss, and continue out to where the ice does not yet support snow. One hopes not to reach Christmas Day news items of divers searching for bodies. A windboarder tows his sailboard toward two companions waiting just offshore from the boat launch. Frozen pavement amplifies the sound of Lake Street traffic between lakes Calhoun and Isles. Nonbermed areas sound like Daytona Speedway, relatively.
Sunday, Dec. 20, 12:09am – Spent a great evening with Chari, friend of 43 years, at Medina Entertainment Center to see and visit with Dennis, friend of 42 years and member of the Rockin' Hollywoods band!
Monday, Dec. 21, 4:35pm – Solstice. 17º. Two days' snowfall blankets all. Seven walkers, five runners, two cyclists, and no partridges in trees – nor other aviators. Optimists: nine canoes and kayaks still chained in place on north shore of lake. So very Calhoun quiet save for occasional vehicle on parkway or plane above clouds.
Wednesday, Dec. 23, 10:31pm – So, the new, late-20-something guy next door moved here from Texas with his family in October to assist his elderly uncle and manage the apartment building. He never saw snow before last week. As we completed our second shovel-out of today, he was horrified to hear that it could snow for four more months. Told him: "If this doesn't send you back to Texas, nothing will!"
Thursday, Dec. 24, 11:31am – Tonight: Christmas Eve Services at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral - religious service, cultural ritual, artistic production. 10pm - Be seated to insure a place. 10:30pm - Congregation/audience caroling. 11pm-12:45am - Midnight Mass with choir, organ, brass.
Saturday, Dec. 26, 11:01am – The Young Victoria is a perfectly lovely film. The best line in a preview trailer was spoken by Chrisopher Plummer's character to Helen Mirren's, in The Last Station: "You don't need a husband, you need a Greek chorus!"
Tuesday, Dec. 29, 12:54pm – Back! The crash-and-burn by MinnesotaPlaylist.com, a primo-must-have for Minnesota theater, is fixed! Check 'em out!
Thursday, Dec. 31, 9:24am – Minnesota Public Radio reports that the mood is jubilant as fireworks welcomed the new year over the harbour and opera house in Sydney, Australia – folks happy to leave 2009 behind. My Facebook Live Feed reports that not everyone has cause for jubilation today. Nonetheless, as the bitter matches the sweet, a blessed 2010 to all!
Thursday, Dec. 31, 10:53am – The Nuclear Cowboyz present a motorcycle ballet – a motocross spectacle – in 15-city tour. http://tinyurl.com/ydoxy4v
Thursday, Dec. 31, 11:36am – Happy New Year wishes to the four fabulous artistic founders of Live Action Set!
Friday, Jan. 1, 1:50pm – The 189-seat Commonweal Theater in tiny Lanesboro, Minnesota, drew 20,283 in 2009. With great work, others can too! http://tinyurl.com/yjpbwr7
Friday, Jan. 1, 2:04pm – Where I-35W enters downtown Minneapolis, across from Central Lutheran Church and one block from Convention Center (and five blocks from home), Hilton Garden Inn offers neighborhood discounts on breakfast buffet, seven days a week (hours vary). Today, that discount was 32%. The discount for evenings is 25%. It's off the beaten track but appears to be a quiet wine hang-out for evening.
Friday, Jan. 1, 7:53pm – A waning full moon over Lake Calhoun. Last night, this was the Blue Moon. –1º and clear, with the mildest of breezes at the lake tonight. Two runners moving briskly on their rounds.
Friday, Jan. 1, 11:42pm – Deborah Howell, former editor at Star Tribune and Pioneer Press struck and killed by a car in New Zealand. Husband, C. Peter McGrath (former U of M president), with her at the time. http://tinyurl.com/ydom6wo
Saturday, Jan. 2, 2:20am – "With or without you!" Felt 28 again, closing up the 331 Club in NE Minneapolis, listening to Venus spin 95% real vinyl tunes. Just like 28, however, after thinking I was making eyes with the cute – but wasted – breakdancer, excitement at his approach died as he instead, in slurred manner, asked my partner if he had been his history professor at St. John's University four years ago! Had to laugh uproariously at all of us!
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Saturday, Dec. 19, 3:04pm – The absence of open water matches that of geese, ducks, and gulls from Lake Calhoun today. 23º with low, dark-gray clouds portending snow. The snowed-over pedestrian path means that walkers, runners, skaters, and cyclists share the vehicular path in both directions – with signs telling all but walkers to yield. A lone, hatless fool skis Nordic style across the ice ("fool" being relative viz brisk walkers on solid ground). Rifle volleys somewhere west in St. Louis Park suggest military honors, but whoever heard of a 33-gun salute? If not a funeral, then an odd place to practice. A mind trick of Minnesota winters: bulky-attired runners retain allure and sex appeal. Some of them, anyway. Two, in particular. Wind bites only while rounding the southeast bend. Two women bundled as in burqas (with only eye slits), descend steps at the 32d Street Beach talking excitedly about prospects for some kind of Bush Foundation grant. North of the beach, two clumsy skaters collide, kiss, and continue out to where the ice does not yet support snow. One hopes not to reach Christmas Day news items of divers searching for bodies. A windboarder tows his sailboard toward two companions waiting just offshore from the boat launch. Frozen pavement amplifies the sound of Lake Street traffic between lakes Calhoun and Isles. Nonbermed areas sound like Daytona Speedway, relatively.
Sunday, Dec. 20, 12:09am – Spent a great evening with Chari, friend of 43 years, at Medina Entertainment Center to see and visit with Dennis, friend of 42 years and member of the Rockin' Hollywoods band!
Wednesday, Dec. 23, 10:31pm – So, the new, late-20-something guy next door moved here from Texas with his family in October to assist his elderly uncle and manage the apartment building. He never saw snow before last week. As we completed our second shovel-out of today, he was horrified to hear that it could snow for four more months. Told him: "If this doesn't send you back to Texas, nothing will!"
Thursday, Dec. 24, 11:31am – Tonight: Christmas Eve Services at St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral - religious service, cultural ritual, artistic production. 10pm - Be seated to insure a place. 10:30pm - Congregation/audience caroling. 11pm-12:45am - Midnight Mass with choir, organ, brass.
Saturday, Dec. 26, 11:01am – The Young Victoria is a perfectly lovely film. The best line in a preview trailer was spoken by Chrisopher Plummer's character to Helen Mirren's, in The Last Station: "You don't need a husband, you need a Greek chorus!"
Tuesday, Dec. 29, 12:54pm – Back! The crash-and-burn by MinnesotaPlaylist.com, a primo-must-have for Minnesota theater, is fixed! Check 'em out!
Thursday, Dec. 31, 9:24am – Minnesota Public Radio reports that the mood is jubilant as fireworks welcomed the new year over the harbour and opera house in Sydney, Australia – folks happy to leave 2009 behind. My Facebook Live Feed reports that not everyone has cause for jubilation today. Nonetheless, as the bitter matches the sweet, a blessed 2010 to all!
Thursday, Dec. 31, 10:53am – The Nuclear Cowboyz present a motorcycle ballet – a motocross spectacle – in 15-city tour. http://tinyurl.com/ydoxy4v
Thursday, Dec. 31, 11:36am – Happy New Year wishes to the four fabulous artistic founders of Live Action Set!
Friday, Jan. 1, 1:50pm – The 189-seat Commonweal Theater in tiny Lanesboro, Minnesota, drew 20,283 in 2009. With great work, others can too! http://tinyurl.com/yjpbwr7
Friday, Jan. 1, 2:04pm – Where I-35W enters downtown Minneapolis, across from Central Lutheran Church and one block from Convention Center (and five blocks from home), Hilton Garden Inn offers neighborhood discounts on breakfast buffet, seven days a week (hours vary). Today, that discount was 32%. The discount for evenings is 25%. It's off the beaten track but appears to be a quiet wine hang-out for evening.
Friday, Jan. 1, 11:42pm – Deborah Howell, former editor at Star Tribune and Pioneer Press struck and killed by a car in New Zealand. Husband, C. Peter McGrath (former U of M president), with her at the time. http://tinyurl.com/ydom6wo
Saturday, Jan. 2, 2:20am – "With or without you!" Felt 28 again, closing up the 331 Club in NE Minneapolis, listening to Venus spin 95% real vinyl tunes. Just like 28, however, after thinking I was making eyes with the cute – but wasted – breakdancer, excitement at his approach died as he instead, in slurred manner, asked my partner if he had been his history professor at St. John's University four years ago! Had to laugh uproariously at all of us!
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Monday, November 30, 2009
Lake Calhoun in November
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Saturday, Nov. 7 – Hordes of humanity circling Minneapolis' Lake Calhoun on a glorious afternoon lend an illusion of strolling the streets of Manhattan or San Francisco! A bald eagle, large as a fire hydrant, held court above the south side of the lake, tieing up traffic.
Sunday, Nov. 8 – November in Minneapolis, and nightime runners circling Lake Calhoun are shirtless! Very warm out there, and very quiet.
Friday, Nov. 13 – I love that I can own exclusively for 75 minutes the luscious and quiet Minnesota mist that shrouds Lake Calhoun tonight! Gorgeous!
Tuesday, Nov. 17 – Kissed by another November day of sun!
Friday, Nov. 20 – A season suspended against itself! Yet another day of warm light, perfect for circling Lake Calhoun to frame up the structure of a performance review. Yet...1 in 10 Minnesota kids is hungry every day; 91,000 mortgage foreclosures in our state; sick people will be denied care at our county hospital; and people's fortunes, families, and souls are stressed. My task today: absorb the light and unleash compassion.
Saturday, Nov. 21 – Several times I have run into Dick Maw of Dick Maw Fine Art, Elk River, Minnesota, who holds court with his artwork on the west side of Lake Calhoun. He also keeps a place in Mineral Wells, Texas, just outside Ft. Worth.
Monday, Nov. 23 – Scenes of the day: The giant bald eagle held court on the north end of Lake Calhoun today. The IDS Crystal Court in downtown Minneapolis has its holiday decor in place. Given 51º temps, the ice-skating rink next to downtown St. Paul's Landmark Center is nowhere near frozen, but the Saint Paul Hotel has its holiday finery in place!
Wednesday, Nov. 25 – Steel-gray shadows and a brisk-brrr, northwest wind skimmed the surface of Lake Calhoun today. Scores of Canadian geese anchored in the southwest bay. Hordes of crows rested in the southern woods leading to Lake Harriet. The main dock, set loose two weeks ago to drift for the winter, rests several yards offshore at the northwest corner. Water level down noticeably in the last two weeks. No bald eagle today.
Thursday, Nov. 26 – Morning at Lake Calhoun. Intensely quiet. Small groupings of ducks replaced yesterday's geese. Stumps from trees removed yesterday. 7-foot emergency rescue boards at intervals, lashed to signs reading "Keep Off Dangerous Ice Not Safe." Dog walkers: some really do look like their dogs. Runners: some have trouble breathing in good air of life, others troubled exhaling used life, and some have perfect balance of both.
Saturday, Nov. 28 – White light to the west and south meets and mixes with blue light to the east and north over Lake Calhoun. So does warm sun and cool air. Busy! Proficient roller skater to one less so: "I am glad to see you again." Dick Maw and his artwork in residence on west side. Crows heard not seen in Lakewood Cemetery woods on southeast side. Seagulls maintain staked claim to floating dock. New puppies strain at leashes; old dogs amble with slow gait. Silent, stoic faces of an extended family unit surely belie their inner enthusiasm and excitement for each other and the day. Trees with golden leaves still shimmer with joy against the sky - all others bare. Wake of two lone ducks slices glass surface of north side where surrounding buildings reflect their full height. Distant smoke suggests large fire in north Minneapolis. This suspension of real winter is like the quilt of a Sunday afternoon before Monday morning.
Sunday, Nov. 29 – Rained last night. Dark, steel-gray and gentle waves on Lake Calhoun under quiet, heavy clouds. Cool, but not too. Could be snow clouds if temp drops.
Monday, Nov. 30 – Bright sun filtering through high layers of white clouds, layered with a bit of blue. Calm silver waves on western Lake Calhoun today. Dick Maw and artwork in residence on west side. 100+ geese at rest and chatting quietly in the southwest bay. Unusual clarity for the lines, settings, and landscaping of the manses lining the south side. Very unusual train whistle from somewhere in western Linden Hills to the southwest; cannot picture the location of those tracks. Snow fence and new lamp posts installed today around new parking bays on south side. Last evening, a stranger responded to my comment to a Facebook friend asking whether I had ever taken the ferry from Boston to Provincetown, as my name is familiar and she has a picture that looks like me. Replied that I have never been to Boston or P-Town but would like to, but did we meet in New Delhi in 1986 because her name also is familiar? She has never been to Delhi, but would like to. Golden leaves have all left the circle of the lake. Waves lapping in continuously on east side. Two ducks at the north side - same as made the wake two days ago? - approached within three feet, on land, totally unimpressed by the presence of humans. Chill, but not cold. November = 30 days x 3.1 miles = 93 miles.
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Saturday, Nov. 7 – Hordes of humanity circling Minneapolis' Lake Calhoun on a glorious afternoon lend an illusion of strolling the streets of Manhattan or San Francisco! A bald eagle, large as a fire hydrant, held court above the south side of the lake, tieing up traffic.
Friday, Nov. 13 – I love that I can own exclusively for 75 minutes the luscious and quiet Minnesota mist that shrouds Lake Calhoun tonight! Gorgeous!
Tuesday, Nov. 17 – Kissed by another November day of sun!
Friday, Nov. 20 – A season suspended against itself! Yet another day of warm light, perfect for circling Lake Calhoun to frame up the structure of a performance review. Yet...1 in 10 Minnesota kids is hungry every day; 91,000 mortgage foreclosures in our state; sick people will be denied care at our county hospital; and people's fortunes, families, and souls are stressed. My task today: absorb the light and unleash compassion.
Saturday, Nov. 21 – Several times I have run into Dick Maw of Dick Maw Fine Art, Elk River, Minnesota, who holds court with his artwork on the west side of Lake Calhoun. He also keeps a place in Mineral Wells, Texas, just outside Ft. Worth.
Monday, Nov. 23 – Scenes of the day: The giant bald eagle held court on the north end of Lake Calhoun today. The IDS Crystal Court in downtown Minneapolis has its holiday decor in place. Given 51º temps, the ice-skating rink next to downtown St. Paul's Landmark Center is nowhere near frozen, but the Saint Paul Hotel has its holiday finery in place!
Thursday, Nov. 26 – Morning at Lake Calhoun. Intensely quiet. Small groupings of ducks replaced yesterday's geese. Stumps from trees removed yesterday. 7-foot emergency rescue boards at intervals, lashed to signs reading "Keep Off Dangerous Ice Not Safe." Dog walkers: some really do look like their dogs. Runners: some have trouble breathing in good air of life, others troubled exhaling used life, and some have perfect balance of both.
Saturday, Nov. 28 – White light to the west and south meets and mixes with blue light to the east and north over Lake Calhoun. So does warm sun and cool air. Busy! Proficient roller skater to one less so: "I am glad to see you again." Dick Maw and his artwork in residence on west side. Crows heard not seen in Lakewood Cemetery woods on southeast side. Seagulls maintain staked claim to floating dock. New puppies strain at leashes; old dogs amble with slow gait. Silent, stoic faces of an extended family unit surely belie their inner enthusiasm and excitement for each other and the day. Trees with golden leaves still shimmer with joy against the sky - all others bare. Wake of two lone ducks slices glass surface of north side where surrounding buildings reflect their full height. Distant smoke suggests large fire in north Minneapolis. This suspension of real winter is like the quilt of a Sunday afternoon before Monday morning.
Sunday, Nov. 29 – Rained last night. Dark, steel-gray and gentle waves on Lake Calhoun under quiet, heavy clouds. Cool, but not too. Could be snow clouds if temp drops.
Monday, Nov. 30 – Bright sun filtering through high layers of white clouds, layered with a bit of blue. Calm silver waves on western Lake Calhoun today. Dick Maw and artwork in residence on west side. 100+ geese at rest and chatting quietly in the southwest bay. Unusual clarity for the lines, settings, and landscaping of the manses lining the south side. Very unusual train whistle from somewhere in western Linden Hills to the southwest; cannot picture the location of those tracks. Snow fence and new lamp posts installed today around new parking bays on south side. Last evening, a stranger responded to my comment to a Facebook friend asking whether I had ever taken the ferry from Boston to Provincetown, as my name is familiar and she has a picture that looks like me. Replied that I have never been to Boston or P-Town but would like to, but did we meet in New Delhi in 1986 because her name also is familiar? She has never been to Delhi, but would like to. Golden leaves have all left the circle of the lake. Waves lapping in continuously on east side. Two ducks at the north side - same as made the wake two days ago? - approached within three feet, on land, totally unimpressed by the presence of humans. Chill, but not cold. November = 30 days x 3.1 miles = 93 miles.
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Friday, October 23, 2009
What happens to dreams when they die?
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Destiny lives in the choices we make that result in dreams realized, deferred, or denied. Regardless of the intention or merit of one's choices, they often substitute for what we originally wanted, whether for ourselves or others. Ten years ago, on Oct. 24, 1999, my niece Bernadette Lewis realized her destiny in a fatal choice at a railroad crossing in Baltimore.
A barren landscape of anguish, regret, and sorrow confronted her survivors with the loss of possibility and the futility of hope. Yet, while her dreams for herself had ended, 10 years on ours for her and for ourselves have continued, changed forever by the choices she had made.
In the climactic scene of Bright Star, Jane Campion's current film about the 19th century Romantic poet John Keats, Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne receives news in England that Keats, her betrothed, has died at 25 in his rooms overlooking the Spanish Steps in Rome. In her grief, Cornish is wracked by the suffocating spasms of angina pectoris and cries out that "I can't breathe."
Ten years ago, I could not breathe after hearing the news of Bernadette's death, and believed I would suffocate in the middle of the night on a hillside above a lake. The intensity of my emotional turmoil in the months that followed exceeded by many factors that of the multi-year mess that had marked my coming out as a gay man many years earlier. I discerned few choices and no dreams in the wake of Bernadette's demise.
Over coffee with my friend Florence, a retired dance educator, I asked when the pain would end. "It never stops," she answered. "The intensity may diminish and surrender to time, but it will keep coming back. When it does, you need to let it wash over and through you."
Every person experiences these dynamics from a different perspective. The members of my family have made new choices and adjusted their dreams in different ways. Bernadette's mother, my sister Debra S. Lewis, published a book in 2007, Song of Bernadette: A Mother's Memoir of a Daughter.
As I have done on other occasions before and since, I entered into the loss and gradually harnessed the power of its pain, bending it to new choices in pursuit of new and old dreams.
One of the choices led to the life-changing journey of a two-week tour of Kansas in 2000. My brother joined me for a few days from his home in Denver. We met new relatives who were more excited than anyone had been to see either of us for a long time. We found the lost roots of our paternal grandfather, and from there we found a story of family, country, and dreams stretching back nearly 400 years. The outcomes of those choices led to the launch of this blog and inspiration for a future book that ties the story together.
Three years ago, when I visited Baltimore and the place where she died, I told Bernadette all the news that had happened since, and told her that as long as we all lived, so would she.
Thwarted dreams can resurge and lure us to create new possibilities, testifying to the resilience of things we do not fully comprehend, and providing evidence that while people die, dreams never do.
Destiny lives in the choices we make that result in dreams realized, deferred, or denied. Regardless of the intention or merit of one's choices, they often substitute for what we originally wanted, whether for ourselves or others. Ten years ago, on Oct. 24, 1999, my niece Bernadette Lewis realized her destiny in a fatal choice at a railroad crossing in Baltimore.
A barren landscape of anguish, regret, and sorrow confronted her survivors with the loss of possibility and the futility of hope. Yet, while her dreams for herself had ended, 10 years on ours for her and for ourselves have continued, changed forever by the choices she had made.
In the climactic scene of Bright Star, Jane Campion's current film about the 19th century Romantic poet John Keats, Abbie Cornish as Fanny Brawne receives news in England that Keats, her betrothed, has died at 25 in his rooms overlooking the Spanish Steps in Rome. In her grief, Cornish is wracked by the suffocating spasms of angina pectoris and cries out that "I can't breathe."
Ten years ago, I could not breathe after hearing the news of Bernadette's death, and believed I would suffocate in the middle of the night on a hillside above a lake. The intensity of my emotional turmoil in the months that followed exceeded by many factors that of the multi-year mess that had marked my coming out as a gay man many years earlier. I discerned few choices and no dreams in the wake of Bernadette's demise.
Over coffee with my friend Florence, a retired dance educator, I asked when the pain would end. "It never stops," she answered. "The intensity may diminish and surrender to time, but it will keep coming back. When it does, you need to let it wash over and through you."
Every person experiences these dynamics from a different perspective. The members of my family have made new choices and adjusted their dreams in different ways. Bernadette's mother, my sister Debra S. Lewis, published a book in 2007, Song of Bernadette: A Mother's Memoir of a Daughter.
As I have done on other occasions before and since, I entered into the loss and gradually harnessed the power of its pain, bending it to new choices in pursuit of new and old dreams.
One of the choices led to the life-changing journey of a two-week tour of Kansas in 2000. My brother joined me for a few days from his home in Denver. We met new relatives who were more excited than anyone had been to see either of us for a long time. We found the lost roots of our paternal grandfather, and from there we found a story of family, country, and dreams stretching back nearly 400 years. The outcomes of those choices led to the launch of this blog and inspiration for a future book that ties the story together.
Three years ago, when I visited Baltimore and the place where she died, I told Bernadette all the news that had happened since, and told her that as long as we all lived, so would she.
Thwarted dreams can resurge and lure us to create new possibilities, testifying to the resilience of things we do not fully comprehend, and providing evidence that while people die, dreams never do.
Bernadette "Berni" C. Lewis passed away Oct. 24, 1999. She was 26 yrs old. Berni was born in Fridley, MN on March 15, 1973. She lived in Mpls until she was 11 and moved to Kenton, Ohio, where she graduated Valedictorian from Kenton High School in 1991. She graduated from Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA in 1995 with a Biology Major. Following graduation, Berni worked at Henry M. Jackson Foundation in Rockville, MD as an AIDS researcher until 1997 when she accepted a position at the University of Maryland. Berni loved her family, her soul mate, Su-hun, her friends, her dog "Lola" and the outdoors. Her future plans were to attend Medical School and become a rural family Physician. Berni is survived by her parents, Jeffrey & Debra Lewis of Ashland, WI; her grandparents, Kenneth & Millicent Vetsch of Monticello, MN and Dr. L. Clifford & Jacqueline Lewis of Mantoloking, NJ. She also leaves her sisters, Jenine N. Lewis of St. Paul, MN and Emily J. Lewis of Ashland, WI, along with her brother, Peter E. Lewis of Ashland, WI. A Memorial Service will be held in Washburn, Wisc., on Sat., Oct. 30, 11 AM at the Messiah Lutheran Church.
Monday, September 14, 2009
The president's Minneapolis rally for health care reform
Minneapolis, Minnesota
The president spoke at Target Center in Minneapolis, Sept. 12, to rally support for health care reform.
The robust debate about health care reform touches everything throughout the land: the definition of freedom vs. coercion, capitalism vs. socialism, nice vs. not-nice, and anything else we don't much cotton to. All of it possibly is an excuse to acknowledge how little we really like each other – and we aren't going to pretend otherwise anymore – regardless of what we might say in church.
We pride ourselves on being Americans who can do anything. Yet, we lag every other major democracy and capitalist society in dealing with health care.
I have run three small businesses and helped manage others. None of us can afford to kill health care reform and do nothing. Nor can we afford to let the free market solve our health care challenges.
The time to act is now.
-
The president spoke at Target Center in Minneapolis, Sept. 12, to rally support for health care reform.
The robust debate about health care reform touches everything throughout the land: the definition of freedom vs. coercion, capitalism vs. socialism, nice vs. not-nice, and anything else we don't much cotton to. All of it possibly is an excuse to acknowledge how little we really like each other – and we aren't going to pretend otherwise anymore – regardless of what we might say in church.
We pride ourselves on being Americans who can do anything. Yet, we lag every other major democracy and capitalist society in dealing with health care.
I have run three small businesses and helped manage others. None of us can afford to kill health care reform and do nothing. Nor can we afford to let the free market solve our health care challenges.
The time to act is now.
-
Sunday, July 26, 2009
Mists
Pickerel Lake, Barnes, Wisconsin
Among others, the memorable elements of a weekend retreat to northwestern Wisconsin can include rain-drenched woods, the fourth movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C# minor, the second act of American Ballet Theatre’s 1977 “Giselle,” four weeks worth of The New York Times Book Review, and an aging Scottish terrier’s inability to sustain long walks in high humidity.
We have visited this extended family hideaway since 1989, each visit reflecting both stability and change. Trees inch upward imperceptibly, their changes in height observable by comparing annual photographs. Declining lake water levels become noticeable only after a few seasons. New construction on neighboring parcels occurs quickly and one later recalls that the new always was there.
The summer season – Memorial Day through Labor Day – has its rhythms of grilling, boating, and fishing, with late July being a quiet interlude with few visitors. Fall brings a relatively early frost and finds a few deer hunters combing the woods. Winter hosts activities by skiers and snowmobilers, organized loosely around the pro football schedule. Spring means transition, a time for preparation.
For years, one particular place across the lake was busy throughout the summer, with constant arrivals and departures by car and boat, and with swimmers daily visiting their anchored raft. Last year, however, the pace of activity over there slackened. This year, the raft remains landlocked and the winter covering continues to protect the pontoon boat. Incrementally, the kids have grown up and life patterns have changed for the extended L---- family. In a few years, perhaps, one might observe a group of college students taking their departure following a New Year’s Eve blowout, similar to that of a few years ago at the cabin next door to us.
Forever is a long time.
Those words have tugged at me for the nearly three weeks since Robert S. McNamara died at age 93. His passing serves to remind that we write our epitaphs incrementally by what we do and by what we leave undone. McNamara’s summing up is a tortured one:
In Lippman’s words, McNamara served as the “primary architect of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.” During his tenure as Secretary of Defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, from 1961 to 1968, 16,000 American soldiers died, with another 42,000 succumbing in the succeeding seven years under Nixon.
To these may be added the countless others who were wounded physically, psychically, and spiritually – just among Americans. Millions of Vietnamese also were killed, injured, and displaced.
As McNamara’s thinking in 1967 turned away from waging war and toward negotiation, he could have made a difference by making a public break with Johnson and resigning his post. Instead, he traded his loyalty and silence for an appointment in 1968 to lead the World Bank.
In his 1995 memoir, “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” McNamara said we were “wrong, terribly wrong.” At the time, notes Weiner, the New York Times editorialized:
Indeed. As millions of people found their voices to oppose the war the longer it carried on, McNamara owed them his in their effort to stop the bloodshed carried on in their names.
Still, he and his many colleagues in leadership need not twist in the wind by themselves. As Halberstam noted, McNamara was "a prisoner of his own background...unable, as indeed was the country which sponsored him, to adapt his values and his terms to Vietnamese realities."
I was 12 years old and attending summer camp on Green Lake near Chisago City, Minnesota, when North Vietnamese torpedo boats reportedly attacked U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Tuesday, Aug. 4, 1964. Three days later, The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was approved by both houses of Congress, passing unanimously in the House of Representatives and nearly so in the Senate. The resolution provided presidents Johnson and Nixon with the authorization – and the implied blank check – that they needed to conduct the military operations of the war. The attack on Aug. 4 never happened.
It took three days to mobilize the country for war. It would take years to mobilize the people for peace in sufficient numbers to elect a congress that would shut off the war's funding.
I spent the summer of 1977 campaigning in south Minneapolis as a candidate for the city council. Every citizen should stand for office at least once as the undertaking is among the best educations one can receive. Visiting with voters at their doors provides the opportunity to be embraced, rejected, applauded, dismissed, and challenged in every way. You meet everyone you can imagine.
One hot day, I was invited inside by a resident of one house. It was the home of a family whose son had been killed in Vietnam. At the time, I told myself I would never forget the particulars of their story; unfortunately, I have. What has stayed with me, however, was the utter emptiness and absence of life in that house. For its residents, time had stopped. I was running for municipal office, but for these folks their enduring relationship to government would always focus on the national forces that had taken their child. It was my first personalized insight into the sacred trust that should bind citizens and their elected officials.
Frequently, presidents talk to or meet with the surviving relatives of soldiers killed in the nation's service. In his diary entry for Sept. 6, 1983, President Reagan noted his call to the parents of two U.S. Marines killed in Lebanon: "One father asked if they were in Lebanon for anything that was worth his son's life." Although their policies and directives may not change as a result of such interactions, I think it is important that presidents and others have the experiences.
My friend, John, graduated from Columbia University last year and since has been working with AmeriCorps. He came here to Pickerel Lake with us during a too-brief visit last fall. We had met 10 years earlier when he moved to Minnesota as a young dancer, fresh from high school. After two years, he returned to California to dance with a company there. He has dropped in to visit us a few times over the years, and we have traveled to both coasts to see his performances.
As a dancer, as a student, and on his own initiative, John has had the opportunity to travel and take the measure of most of the U.S. and much of the world, including Australia, South America, and Europe.
Various sets of past circumstances could have conspired to make of him a soldier, fighting in my name, and yours. I mean no disrespect to any soldier when I acknowledge that I cannot dwell long on that thought – it is too painful to contemplate. In following the dictates of his own conscience, John may become a lifelong warrior of a different sort, but one who also makes it more difficult for nations and people to choose wars.
I am grateful that he added his essence to the mists on these shores. Among others, his presence was a memorable element of a weekend retreat to northwestern Wisconsin.
Among others, the memorable elements of a weekend retreat to northwestern Wisconsin can include rain-drenched woods, the fourth movement of Mahler’s Symphony No. 5 in C# minor, the second act of American Ballet Theatre’s 1977 “Giselle,” four weeks worth of The New York Times Book Review, and an aging Scottish terrier’s inability to sustain long walks in high humidity.
We have visited this extended family hideaway since 1989, each visit reflecting both stability and change. Trees inch upward imperceptibly, their changes in height observable by comparing annual photographs. Declining lake water levels become noticeable only after a few seasons. New construction on neighboring parcels occurs quickly and one later recalls that the new always was there.
The summer season – Memorial Day through Labor Day – has its rhythms of grilling, boating, and fishing, with late July being a quiet interlude with few visitors. Fall brings a relatively early frost and finds a few deer hunters combing the woods. Winter hosts activities by skiers and snowmobilers, organized loosely around the pro football schedule. Spring means transition, a time for preparation.
For years, one particular place across the lake was busy throughout the summer, with constant arrivals and departures by car and boat, and with swimmers daily visiting their anchored raft. Last year, however, the pace of activity over there slackened. This year, the raft remains landlocked and the winter covering continues to protect the pontoon boat. Incrementally, the kids have grown up and life patterns have changed for the extended L---- family. In a few years, perhaps, one might observe a group of college students taking their departure following a New Year’s Eve blowout, similar to that of a few years ago at the cabin next door to us.
• • •
Forever is a long time.
Those words have tugged at me for the nearly three weeks since Robert S. McNamara died at age 93. His passing serves to remind that we write our epitaphs incrementally by what we do and by what we leave undone. McNamara’s summing up is a tortured one:
“Architect of a Futile War,” read the headline for his obituary by Tim Weiner in the New York Times.
“’Terribly Wrong’ Handling of Vietnam Overshadowed Record of Achievement,” said the Washington Post in introducing its obit by Thomas Lippman.
“A fool,” wrote the journalist and author David Halberstam in his book “The Best and the Brightest.”
In Lippman’s words, McNamara served as the “primary architect of U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.” During his tenure as Secretary of Defense under presidents Kennedy and Johnson, from 1961 to 1968, 16,000 American soldiers died, with another 42,000 succumbing in the succeeding seven years under Nixon.
To these may be added the countless others who were wounded physically, psychically, and spiritually – just among Americans. Millions of Vietnamese also were killed, injured, and displaced.
As McNamara’s thinking in 1967 turned away from waging war and toward negotiation, he could have made a difference by making a public break with Johnson and resigning his post. Instead, he traded his loyalty and silence for an appointment in 1968 to lead the World Bank.
In his 1995 memoir, “In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam,” McNamara said we were “wrong, terribly wrong.” At the time, notes Weiner, the New York Times editorialized:
Mr. McNamara must not escape the lasting moral condemnation of his countrymen. Surely he must in every quiet and prosperous moment hear the ceaseless whispers of those poor boys in the infantry, dying in the tall grass, platoon by platoon, for no purpose. What he took from them cannot be repaid by prime-time apology and stale tears, three decades late.
Indeed. As millions of people found their voices to oppose the war the longer it carried on, McNamara owed them his in their effort to stop the bloodshed carried on in their names.
Still, he and his many colleagues in leadership need not twist in the wind by themselves. As Halberstam noted, McNamara was "a prisoner of his own background...unable, as indeed was the country which sponsored him, to adapt his values and his terms to Vietnamese realities."
• • •
I was 12 years old and attending summer camp on Green Lake near Chisago City, Minnesota, when North Vietnamese torpedo boats reportedly attacked U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Tuesday, Aug. 4, 1964. Three days later, The Tonkin Gulf Resolution was approved by both houses of Congress, passing unanimously in the House of Representatives and nearly so in the Senate. The resolution provided presidents Johnson and Nixon with the authorization – and the implied blank check – that they needed to conduct the military operations of the war. The attack on Aug. 4 never happened.
It took three days to mobilize the country for war. It would take years to mobilize the people for peace in sufficient numbers to elect a congress that would shut off the war's funding.
I spent the summer of 1977 campaigning in south Minneapolis as a candidate for the city council. Every citizen should stand for office at least once as the undertaking is among the best educations one can receive. Visiting with voters at their doors provides the opportunity to be embraced, rejected, applauded, dismissed, and challenged in every way. You meet everyone you can imagine.
One hot day, I was invited inside by a resident of one house. It was the home of a family whose son had been killed in Vietnam. At the time, I told myself I would never forget the particulars of their story; unfortunately, I have. What has stayed with me, however, was the utter emptiness and absence of life in that house. For its residents, time had stopped. I was running for municipal office, but for these folks their enduring relationship to government would always focus on the national forces that had taken their child. It was my first personalized insight into the sacred trust that should bind citizens and their elected officials.
Frequently, presidents talk to or meet with the surviving relatives of soldiers killed in the nation's service. In his diary entry for Sept. 6, 1983, President Reagan noted his call to the parents of two U.S. Marines killed in Lebanon: "One father asked if they were in Lebanon for anything that was worth his son's life." Although their policies and directives may not change as a result of such interactions, I think it is important that presidents and others have the experiences.
• • •
My friend, John, graduated from Columbia University last year and since has been working with AmeriCorps. He came here to Pickerel Lake with us during a too-brief visit last fall. We had met 10 years earlier when he moved to Minnesota as a young dancer, fresh from high school. After two years, he returned to California to dance with a company there. He has dropped in to visit us a few times over the years, and we have traveled to both coasts to see his performances.
As a dancer, as a student, and on his own initiative, John has had the opportunity to travel and take the measure of most of the U.S. and much of the world, including Australia, South America, and Europe.
Various sets of past circumstances could have conspired to make of him a soldier, fighting in my name, and yours. I mean no disrespect to any soldier when I acknowledge that I cannot dwell long on that thought – it is too painful to contemplate. In following the dictates of his own conscience, John may become a lifelong warrior of a different sort, but one who also makes it more difficult for nations and people to choose wars.
I am grateful that he added his essence to the mists on these shores. Among others, his presence was a memorable element of a weekend retreat to northwestern Wisconsin.
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Thanks for YES
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Vote Yes Minnesota, the organization that advocated for the Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota constitution that voters approved last November by 56+%, raised $3.97 million for its efforts. Writing for Finance and Commerce, July 13, Steve Perry reported that $1.82 million, or 46% of the total, was received in 15 donations of $25,000 or more. The single largest gift, $1 million, was contributed by Alida Messinger. Names of those donors accompanied Perry's report and are on file with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board.
Thanks to all who provided the money, the muscle, and the votes for a statewide crusade of civic and moral responsibility!
Vote Yes Minnesota, the organization that advocated for the Legacy Amendment to the Minnesota constitution that voters approved last November by 56+%, raised $3.97 million for its efforts. Writing for Finance and Commerce, July 13, Steve Perry reported that $1.82 million, or 46% of the total, was received in 15 donations of $25,000 or more. The single largest gift, $1 million, was contributed by Alida Messinger. Names of those donors accompanied Perry's report and are on file with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board.
Thanks to all who provided the money, the muscle, and the votes for a statewide crusade of civic and moral responsibility!
Friday, July 10, 2009
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):
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:
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:
By what rationale would you not want to tell MSAB how to spend Minnesota's public arts money?
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.
By what rationale would you not want to tell MSAB how to spend Minnesota's public arts money?
Sunday, May 24, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, April 26, 2009
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.
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.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
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!
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!
Saturday, January 31, 2009
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
Minneapolis, Minnesota
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.
"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.
Thursday, January 22, 2009
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.
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.
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
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
Thursday, January 8, 2009
Jenny
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Byron Shire Echo, Mullumbimby, NSW, Australia
Published Wednesday, 7, January 2009
Farewell to Jenny Verroen
Byron Shire Echo, Mullumbimby, NSW, Australia
Published Wednesday, 7, January 2009
Farewell to Jenny VerroenWritten 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.
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.
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