Bluestem Prairie

Sacred local beer worshipped in new documentary, premiers Tuesday in New Ulm

"Volstead Fever: Prohibition in Minnesota," a new documentary about the dry times, will premier tomorrow night in New Ulm's Turner Hall, the Journal reports in Prohibition movie premier Tuesday.

The sacred local brewery that snuggles in the German American Disneyland makes a cameo appearance in the flick:

In April 1923, federal agents tested some Schell's beverages produced under a government permit authorizing cereal beverages containing less than one half of one percent of alcohol.

Agents claimed tests showed alcohol contents slightly exceeded the allowed percentage.

Schell Brewing claimed that if the tests were right, the slight increase was unintentional and due to the light winter and spring beverage demand and that the beverages tests were unusually old.

Schell's was found not guilty of any law violation and charges were dropped by a federal judge.

Schell's Brewmaster Ted Marti said federal agents were at the brewery almost every week back then, checking for alcohol level violations.

Marti and Elmer Rolloff Jr. were interviewed for the PPT documentary at Schell's.

The documentary, produced by Appleton-based Pioneer Public Television (PPT), gave people in Brown County a chance to recall when they ran their own stills south of town. Essig and Springfield were hot spots:

"Lots of moonshine was made on alcohol stills on farms south of Essig and out in the woods, south of the Cottonwood River," Rolloff added.

Alcohol raids were by local and federal law enforcement were common in that era.

"Sometimes, they shot up the bottles on the site," Rolloff said.

A Burnstown Township farm south of Springfield generated an estimated 400 gallons of alcohol a day, according to Dan Hoisington's historical research that appeared on a Lifestyle page of the Sunday, Oct. 10, 2004 edition of The Journal.

A still near Essig that was raided included a large number of railroad cars filled with still equipment, according to Brown County Historical Society files. The property where the still was located was owned by Howard Gimbel, reportedly a member of Al Capone's gang.

. . ."Rum runners had a mail order business on the side....My dad ordered a new Remington 12-guage shotgun that's still in the family," Rolloff said.

Of course, people in Southern Minnesota haven't distilled their own corn, save in ethanol plants, since Prohibition was repealed, despite what readers may have heard or drunk over at the neighbor's place. All of the wisdom gained about making liquor during the Noble Experiment simply vanished with the melting snows in the spring of 1934.

Photo: Andrew Volstead's place in Granite Falls.

Sacred local beer honored among "Top Ten" breweries in 2011 US Open Beer Championships

Although the state shutdown continues, Minnesotans won't just be crying in their beer this weekend. Gopher State residents can raise a glass of sacred local beer with pride, since New Ulm's Schell's Brewery has placed again among the "Top Ten" breweries at the 2011 US Open Beer Championships.

The Mankato Free Press reports in Schell's "top 10" at U.S. beer open:

The company said Schell’s line-up of beers impressed judges spanning the globe with the judging panel representing such countries as Australia, England, Canada, and The United States.

"It’s rewarding to know that our efforts here at our modest brewery in Southern Minnesota are making an international impact,” said president Ted Marti.

“Being able to compete with the likes of nationally known breweries with deep pockets for the latest equipment and technology is tribute to the personnel we have here at the brewery."

 “I also suppose our standards for brewing beer comes from living in a community filled with thirsty Germans- if you don’t make a damn good beer, you’re sure to hear about it!”

This doesn't explain the popularity of Nordeast, New Ulm's stealth brew for the Twin Cities, but Bluestem will leave that question for more sophisticated tipplers.

Photo: Deer from brewery mural.

BREAKING NEWS: New Ulm Irish community lacks permit to bury toxic German cuisine

We were warned.

At the urging of Range DFLers hungry for jobs, and Republicans eager to widen the gulf between the rich and poor, earlier this month Governor Dayton signed into law a measure to make the permit process in Minnesota move at "the speed of commerce."

The pristine Minnesota River Valley will be the first of the state's wilderness areas to suffer the consequences of the rush to nonjudgement. Indeed, the Brown County metropolis's Irish community has moved at the speed of a quick slip jig to test the new limits of the law.

The New Ulm Journal reports in St. Patrick’s Day to have heart healthy theme:

The annual Sauerkraut Burying Contest will begin at 3:15 and will continue until all of the kraut in town is gone, so resident are asked to search their cupboards and bring what they can to Irish Park.

"This event was so popular last year that we will also be burying Lutefisk," said Kearney. "We are hoping no one lets the MPCA know about this because we could get in trouble for polluting the soil and groundwater."

However, the Irish believe the improvement in air quality will more than make up for the soil and water pollution.

Given the predictions of widespread, record flooding for the New Ulm area, and the city's dearth of resources for flood mitigation, the improper disposal of sauerkraut and lutefisk could trigger widespread degradation of the Minnesota and Mississippi Rivers if that stuff oozes into the river.

Bluestem Prairie's sources in the area recommend a full investigation by citizen journalists.

"I don't know what those folks are thinking," local wind energy expert Millie Seppmann said.

Local Tea Party activists are outraged by another item in the New Ulm Journal's reporting:

City Attorney Hugh Nierengarten called in and said he had heard the state was going to put a tax on brains to help settle its budget problems. Nierengarten asked if he could qualify for a refund.

A rally to protest the proposed tax on brains is in the works. No word if Representative Glenn Gruenhagen plans to seek a temporary restraining order to halt the "Kiss Me, I'm Irish" kissing contest:

Other causes for concern include potential violations of the state's brewing laws:

The St. Patrick's Monument steering committee has been working with the Schell's Brewery to develop a green beer called Blarney Beer. The committee hoped to have it in the liquor stores by the first of this year to raise money for the St. Patrick Monument, but Schell's has been so busy due to the popularity of its Grain Belt and Nordeast beer that it hasn't had time to make Blarney Beer. The committee was told that if it bought Schell's beer this year it would definitely turn green within eight or nine months and be ready for sale in 2012.

Read the rest of the atrocities in the New Ulm Journnal.

Because, pardner, Ol' T-Paw done grew up punchin' cows in South Sain' Paul

A Facebook friend wondered yesterday morning, "Anyone just hear Pawlenty on MPR?  Where did this new cowboy accent come from?"

At the Washington Post, Dana Milbank noticed the same thing in With Pawlenty's Iowa speech, a side of syrup:

But now Pawlenty is campaigning as if he's some sort of Southern preacher. At the Faith & Freedom event, he was dropping g's all over the place, using "ain't" instead of "isn't," and adding a syrup to his vowels not indigenous to Minnesota. He didn't utter the word "jobs," made only passing reference to economic woes, and instead gave the assembled religious conservatives a fiery speech about God, gays and gynecology.

There's a logical explanation.  When Tim Pawlenty grew up in South St. Paul, the stockyards were still going. Little Timmy probably slipped out of the house and his father's Teamster vernacular to punch a few cows and pick up the inflections of the High Plains drifters who herded Elsie through the streets to her fate.

It doesn't sound like he was talking to Minnesota farmers who raised the cattle, by golly.

Milbank notes that the problem for the GOP in 2012 might not be inflection, grammar, or diction, but content:

In 2010, Republicans harnessed anger at Obama for his perceived overreaching, particularly on health care. But that theme has been blunted: Now in power, Republicans such as Scott Walker have demonstrated that they are every bit as capable of overreach. Likewise, the Republicans' economic message is beginning to atrophy as private-sector job growth improves and the new House Republican majority struggles to focus on the economy.

Instead, the religious conservatives who dominate primaries are pulling Republicans back toward themes such as abortion and gay rights. The Tea Party is morphing from an economic movement into a conventional moral crusade.

Or as in the case of Minnesota, they might follow Glenn Gruenhagen's lead and mix it a bit, blaming both "sodomy" and, as I noted yesterday in Playing politics with pain: Glenn Gruenhagen blames Hutch Tech lay-off on taxes, taxes--in cases where manufacturing lines (set up during the administration of  a Democratic governor of a neighboring state or in Thailand) were the greatest factors influencing restructuring.

But why play straight with the facts?

Note: As someone who studied poesy at the University of Arkansas with some wonderful writers from North Carolina, Mississippi and Arkansas, I appreciate an authentic southern accent. But those of us from South St. Paul and Southern Minnesota have our own dulcet tones.

Photo: The last days of South St. Paul's Central Livestock Association in 2008. via the NYTimes.

Offended by launch of Spanish language website, Hanska's resident hater rejects Heritage

Posting on the Confederate Americans for Secure Borders elist last week, Ruthie Hendrycks, who does business under the assumed name Minnesotans Seeking Immigration Reform (MinnSIR) has called for her followers to decide whether they wish to be removed from the mailing lists of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation.

She shared her rejection email with the list:

My removal from Heritage Foundation

I sent this to a few Patriots last night and am forwarding to all now

You decide - what your thoughts are on the matter

my short email follows

RE: Concerning this action.................

Meanwhile, the GOP-leaning Heritage Foundation will soon unveil a website called Libertad.org (Spanish for "liberty").

Erin Bender

staff@... [redacted by Bluestem]

website www.heritage.org

Please remove my following email addresses from your database immediately I am proud on the English language, and believe America – [sic] s strength is in unity not in division - this decision by Heritage Foundation DOES NOT garner my support and I will have no further involvement with your organization – [sic] including the forwarding of your educational material etc.

In 2006, Hendrycks told a Star Tribune reporter that a traumatic shopping event helped spur her to founding MinnSIR:

There were little things, too, such as when she went to the store to buy her hair coloring and the writing on the box was in Spanish.

"I think our sovereignty in the U.S. is at risk,'' she charged. [Jean Hopfensperger,"Standing firm in opposition to illegals. . .," Mpls. Star Tribune, April 28, 2006, Nexis All News database, accessed January 30, 2011]

That section of Preference and Excellence by L'Oréal Paris in the local Target always causes me to have the fantods, too--mostly because the store never seems to stock enough Dark Auburn, in whatever language.

I'm equally disturbed by preposition choice errors like being "proud on the English language" on the part of people whose first language is English. One wonders what Hendrycks learned about English composition while studying at LaCrosse University. Or maybe not.

MinnSIR's castigation of the Heritage Foundation ranks right up there with its call to boycott the Marine Corps. Clayton Schoolcraft has more Ruthie goodness in a YouTube produced following MinnSIR's famous Tea Party Against Amnesty in November 2009.

Hendrycks apparently didn't get the memo from Norm Coleman's American Action Network, which calls for promoting Hispanic Leadership, after fueling independent expenditures supportive of anti-immigrant, pro-SB1070 Congressional candidates. Perhaps such slickness is beyond the frozen shores of Lake Hanska.

Photo: A little Ruthie Hendrycks cheescake, served with a generous topping of Latino loathing.

ISO time-wasting, divisive legislation? WDN says hookup w/ Draz!

Earlier in the week, Bluestem Prairie hailed the dedication of the Drazkowski clan, of Bluff Siding, Wisconsin, to job creation. The post, Drazkowski: In age of widening wealth gap, let working people choose to earn less received a fair bit of attention as Drazkowski's fame spreads.

The Winona Daily News thinks that its readers should look elsewhere for evidence of Drazkowski's legislative brilliance. In Our view: The good and the bad bills in St. Paul, publisher Rusty Cunningham writes on behalf of the editorial board:

. . .If you’re seeking Exhibit A for time-wasting, divisive legislation, look to Rep. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa.

For the third time, Drazkowski has introduced legislation that demands that English be used as Minnesota’s official language.

He says it will promote unity and cut costs.

Instead, it will promote cultural divisiveness and tell businesses interested in pursuing a global economy that Minnesota isn’t the place to do business.

Cut costs? We’ve yet to see a dollar figure — never mind that this is the third time around for this bill. . . .

. . .Our motto does not say — and should never say — speak English or get out.

That wasn’t what our state stood for when the French and Polish and other Europeans came here. It isn’t what the state stands for now that Hmong and others have settled here.

In 2009, former Rep. Cy Thao — born in Laos —  challenged Drazkowski to a spelling contest in English on the House floor, and promised that he would vote for Drazkowski’s English-only bill if he lost.

Drazkowski’s response was to say that he would agree as long as the tie-breaker was in Polish.

There’s nothing funny about this bill. There’s nothing productive about the debate.

From the era depicted in the state seal and into the future, hatred in any language is wrong.

It’s not what Minnesota or Minnesotans stand for.

The board must not have noticed the jobs the bill would create, predicted in our post,Tongue in cheek: WSU English teacher gets cheeky about official English bill.

Will Bachmann propose retroactive repeal of 1862 Homestead Act in fight against federal hand-outs?

In English-only bill is unnecessary but assures Drazkowski's re-election, a recent column about anti-immigrant legislation sponsored by state representative Steve Drazkowski, St. Paul Press columnist Ruben Rosario observed:

Which leads me to what's really the bedrock driving this English-only push: a perception that the immigrants of today are refusing to learn English or not quickly enough when compared with those very romanticized European-centric immigrants of yesteryear.

B.S., to put it as plainly as I can in a family mainstream newspaper. Joe Salmons, who heads the German department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, pretty much debunked that often-anecdotal myth.

Analyzing old census data and other historical documents, Salmons and a university colleague concluded in a 2008 study of the German immigration experience in Wisconsin that "many immigrants and their descendants remained monolingual, decades after immigration had ceased.

Elsewhere in the column, Rosario suggests that Drazkowski's introduction of an Arizona-style law might predispose the Mazeppa pol to throw other back-to-the-future style bills in the hopper like opposition to observing Martin Luther King Jr's birthday and the revived "displaying those "no dogs or Mexicans" signs that once adorned Arizona eateries and other public venues in the not-too-distant past."

Word comes to tonight from Iowa that Michele Bachmann, the competitive gentlewoman from Minnesota's Sixth Congressional District, may have felt a need to upstage the Draz. Kathie Obradovich, political columnist for The Des Moines Register, reports in Bachmann impresses some top Iowa Republicans:

Bachmann’s speech included a lengthy description of her ancestors’ arrival in America from Norway, their hopes and aspirations and the challenges they faced. She didn’t segue into today’s immigration issues, but noted that the country’s original settlers “didn’t come here for a federal handout.”

This is a stunner, even by Michele Bachmann's high standards of truth telling. After all, as one timeline of immigration to America notes:

The Homestead Act provides free plots of up to 160 acres of western land to settlers who agree to develop and live on it for at least five years, thereby spurring an influx of immigrants from overpopulated countries in Europe seeking land of their own.

In fact, many European settlers came to this country to get a handout: 160 acres of land west of the Mississippi; one didn't need to be a citizen, merely have the desire to become one. Norwegians jumped on it:

The end of the Civil War brought about a great increase in Atlantic crossings. The number of Norwegian emigrants leaped from 4,000 in 1865 to 15,726 in 1866, heralding the era of mass migration. The migration occurred until 1873 when, in the course of only eight years, some 110,000 Norwegians left their homeland. The second, and also the greatest, period of emigration lasted 14 years from 1880 to 1893, when on the average 18,290 left annually—ten for every 1,000 Norwegians. During this time Norway's emigration intensity was the second greatest in Europe, surpassed only by Ireland. . .

. . .The majority of Norwegian agrarian settlements developed in the northern region of the so-called Homestead Act Triangle between the Mississippi and the Missouri rivers. The upper Midwest became the home for most immigrants. In 1910 almost 80 percent of the one million or more Norwegian Americans—the immigrants and their children—lived in that part of the United States.. . .

That federal hand-out--along with crushing poverty in Norway--provided an incentive to come to America. Like today's immigrants to the United States, they worked pretty hard. There is one big difference between today's and yesterday's immigrants, though, when we consider "federal handouts."

Today's documented immigrants are ineligible for most federal benefits until they have been here for five years or have become citizens; the undocumented worker can legally receive very few "federal handouts." The federal hand-out of 160 acres of land to improve that the nineteenth century immigrant  received was touted as an economic development tool. Not that there wasn't any protest about this: indigenous people weren't very happy about the federal handouts.

Since immigrants coming to the United States to bag federal hand-outs bothers her so much, perhaps Bachmann will propose a reactive repeal of the Homestead Act and a radical unsettling of America west of the Mississippi. It's not a new idea.

Next, she might demand an apology from all those Norwegian-Americans who, like Germans, clung to their traditions and language long after their ancestors got off the boat:

The cultural baggage of Norwegian immigrants included their specific local dialect and a Danish literary language. The latter played a significant role in the immigrant community, attaining a nearly sacred quality. It was the language of their institutions, secular and religious, and of sacred and profane literature. The immigrants had little appreciation for the linguistic reforms in the homeland; often such changers were viewed as a betrayal to a common cultural heritage. Changes in the official written language in Norway made the older form even more difficult to retain in America. A newspaper such as Decorah-Posten in Decorah, Iowa, persisted in using a Dano-Norwegian orthographic tradition from the 1870s well into the 1950s. The situation created confusion among teachers of Norwegian at American high schools, colleges and universities, who felt obligations to the language of the immigrant community. Only just before World War II did they in principle agree to teach the written standard—generally the Dano-Norwegian bokm'al — which at any one time was recognized as the official one in Norway.

English was another threat to the maintenance of the Norwegian language in America. Rural settlement patterns protected spoken Norwegian so it still can be heard in some Norwegian communities. According to researcher Joshua A. Fishman, about half of second generation Norwegians in the period 1940 to 1960 learned the language; and in 1960 there were as many as 40,000 of the third generation who had learned Norwegian. As of 1990, about 80,000 speakers of Norwegian remained in the United States. In Minnesota, Norwegian, with 16,000 speakers, is the second most common European language after German. Across the country there are still two bilingual newspapers, Western Viking in Seattle and Nordic Times in Brooklyn. The bygdelag promoted the use of rural vernaculars and, indeed, their annual reunions provided an environment where rural speech was honored and encouraged. It was, however, a mixed language with English words and phrases integrated.

Perhaps Bachmann could find an expert to free the children of those immigrants from the numbing cycle of living off federal hand-outs.

Tongue in cheek: WSU English teacher gets cheeky about official English bill

Demonstrating the Republican House Majority's firm commitment to jobs creation while leaving divisive social issues behind, Mazeppa's Steve Drazkowski has introduced a bill to make English the North Star state's official language.

While I'm not certain of job creation potential in The Draz's bill as written (his rationale for the  bill is found here on his campaign website), it will dial back on over 150 years of official tolerance in Minnesota for speakers of languages other than English. In 1896, election instructions were printed in nine different languages, including Polish, the language of Draz's ancestors.

I shorten his name, a standard practice employed by the representative and candidate himself. The cost-saving of such a move are also explored in an op-ed piece by WSU English department member Chuck Ripley in today's Winona Daily news, Let’s outlaw lunch meat while we’re at it.

Like members of the Church of the Later Day Saints who seek out ancestors in order to include them in the "saving ordinances" of their faith, Ripley playfully suggests that the bill could require reparations from all people whose ancestors ever spoke languages other than English on Minnesota soil:

The bill must also make it a penalty for not speaking English at any time, applying it not only to the living but also to all of our grandparents, great-grandparents, who did not speak English or spoke it poorly.

The living descendants of these foreign-word smugglers ought to have enough shame to pay for any cost that the language of their ancestors did to our society with any legislative action. But as many people today remember these foreign words with misplaced nostalgia, the force of law will be required to instill a proper amount of embarrassment at one’s non-English-speaking ancestry and the social and financial harm their bizarre languages did to us all.

The least such people can do is to change their foreign-sounding last names to clear, simple English ones. The Minnesota Polish population alone costs the state millions in extra ink and paper with their long last names and harsh-sounding combination of consonants. . .

Would Draz challenge that? Only the Draz can answer that.

Ripley does suggest adding a job-creation angle to the bill:

Finally, as an English professor, I hope that Drazkowski will include an amendment to deputize English teachers to enforce the rules and customs of the language and the power to levy fines, imprison and deport all users of foreign languages as well as those who offer facile and divisive solutions to real problems.

Surely, with that added public safety responsibility, class sizes in MNSCU composition and developmental English classes would have to be smaller, requiring new hires across the state.

 

Congress on Your Corner: Walz to meet with constituents at Mocol's Super Market in Mankato

Will Jared Loughner's self-described "assassination" attempt outside a Safeway in Tucson make United States representatives less accessible to average citizens? Doesn't look like it in Minnesota, where even statewide politics still maintains a retail flavor.

Earlier today, fifth district congressman Keith Ellison announced a "Congress on Your Corner" event Friday at the Global Market Atrium, and Congressman Walz's office has scheduled a store stop in Mankato:

Today, Congressman Walz announced he will host a grocery store stop Friday morning in Mankato.

 

“Hearing the thoughts and ideas of southern Minnesotans is the cornerstone of our representative democracy. I am looking forward to the opportunity to hear from folks,” said Walz.

 

What: Congress on your Corner with Rep. Tim Walz

When: 11:00am – 1:00pm on Friday, January 14

Where: Mocol’s Super Market, 1001 N Broad St, Mankato

The Post Bulletin has more:

Walz's Press Secretary Sara Severs said the event is a way for the congressman to honor Giffords and to also show his commitment remains when it comes to being accessible to the public.

This has always been important to him and obviously that was one of the most shocking things about what happened on Saturday, (Giffords) was doing her job and doing what she was elected to do and he has always felt strongly about doing events like that and being accessible," Severs said.

Work will keep me away from the gathering, but I wish I could go. I've been to other grocery store stops that Walz has held, but this store has sentimental value.  Mocol's, the last remaining small, family-operated grocery store, is a Mankato institution, opened in 1917 by a Lebanese immigrant. The city's "Syrian" community should be familiar to the thousands of Maud Haud Lovelace fans who read her children's book, Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill. Some of the stories about immigrants, language and bigotry in that book still strike a familiar chord.

The Mocol family is interviewed here in Mocol Boys..., a piece for the Voices in the Valley oral history project; I hope you go listen.  Then, if you live in the First and have time on Friday, go talk to your representative.

Photo-- What the store would have looked like when my own immigrant grandfather went down to Mocols with my late father--then a small boy--in tow. True or not, my father always said Grandpa learned Arabic from Lebanese immigrants in the Americanization class he took around the time of the First World War, and would haggled over fruit in Arabic. What did that language sound like with a heavy Danish accent?  Photo swiped from the audio project.

 

Recycled: Corn night: St. Peter's forgotten tradition?

Modified from an October, 30, 2009 post.

Today is "Mischief Night," and, appropriately enough, friends say, my birthday. While October 30 is a fearful Devils' Night of arson in Detroit, Michigan, the evening was the more mild Corn Night of teen pranks when I was growing up in the St. Peter area in the 1960s and early 1970s.

While the tradition has a longer lineage than any of us knew according to Wikipedia, we understood St. Peter's Corn Night as a time when older youth could go out and pull pranks on neighbors and friends.

Throwing shelled corn was more or less officially condoned, and I remember walking down corn-littered sidewalks in the pleasant college town when I was still trick-or-treating age. As an older kid, I learned that t-ping a home involved little more risk, as did soaping car windows, but mostly the police turned a blind eye on all but the most destructive behavior.

And of course, our parents discouraged the use of the notorious go-bang-go bag as friends who grew up in New Jersey and Philadelphia called them.

If an old high school friend with teenagers of his own now living in St. Peter is correct, Corn Night is forgotten. He received blank looks from his teenage sons, and there's no Internet chatter anywhere about the old custom.

One blogger who grew up in Red Wing, where the tradition lives on, tells about her escapades here, as well as providing more background on its origins:

Once, when I was in the third grade and had time to kill, I picked up Mrs. Blomme's Encyclopedias for some light reading. For some reason, I happened upon a section that explained the origins of not only Halloween, but Corn Night. Corn Night's original intent was for residents to roam their villages and throw corn at people's houses as a sign of protection from the spirits that would come a'visitin' on Halloween.

Corn Night's original intent in Red Wing was to give kids one night in their young lives to band together in mutiny and stick it to The Man by smashing pumpkins, overturning garbage cans, chucking various objects at people and their houses (preferably eggs if we didn't like you) and T-P'ing people's trees and lawn ornaments. It was awesome, especially if you had watched "Children Of The Corn" right before you traipsed out to join your neighborhood buddies.

Others write about how teens set the bluffs on fire for uncontrolled burns, so some activities are not so benign.

My correspondent Joel speculated that the police are no longer as tolerant as the officers in the St. Peter of our childhood, but didn't know how or when St. Peter's Corn Night vanished into the past.

Perhaps Corn Night prepared my for an adult appreciation of tricksters and pranks. Or perhaps I learned the difference between harmless tomfoolery ad destructive behavior. Whatever the case, here's hoping for safe trick-or-treating for the kiddies, and civility and civil rights in the coming Tuesday.

Ruthie Hendrycks, Minnesota's most famous teabagger, to seek state senate seat

As recently as April 21, the Marshall Independent fretted that it was Time for candidates to step forward in the contest to replace moderate Republican State Senator Dennis Frederickson, who retires at the end of the session after 30 years in the legislature.

Neither a Republican nor a DFLer had stepped forward.

Two candidates have now presented themselves. The first is conservative Republican Redwood Falls businessman Gary Dahms, whose bio reads as if it stepped of a Sinclair Lewis novel. The other? Dental hygienist and anti-immigrant activist Ruthie Hendrycks of Hanska.

While Dahms announced his bid in the Marshall Independent, the Sleepy Eye Dispatch, and the Redwood Falls Gazette, Hendrycks went full Palin and announced her intentions on Fox News. In From Minnesota to Georgia, Politicians Lend Support to Arizona Immigration Law, the fair and balanced cable network reports:

If it's good enough for the desert, it's good enough for 10,000 lakes. That's what a group in Minnesota is saying as it calls for an Arizona-style crackdown on immigration in the North Star State. . . .

. . .Ruthie Hendrycks, president and founder of Minnesotans Seeking Immigration Reform, says Arizona's new immigration law should be mirrored in Minnesota, where roughly 125,000 illegal immigrants lived as of 2007, according to some estimates.

"This issue of illegal immigration and addressing it is long overdue," Hendrycks told FoxNews.com. "The situation is out of control, and until the federal government steps up to the plate to enforce our laws, the states have no other choice than to enforce federal law through state law."

Hendrycks, a Republican who will announce her candidacy for state Senate later this week, said she plans to contact Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty regarding her proposal. Hendrycks anticipates widespread support among the state's residents.

The passing of an immigration reform bill, SB1070, has received a mixed reaction among politicians and residents in Arizona.

"Although there are voices on both sides of the issue, Minnesotans are not blind to what's happening across the nation and how it is affecting them on a state level," she said. "I believe that the majority of Minnesotans understand the issue and would be in favor of enforcing our laws." . . .

Loyal readers will recognize Hendrycks as one of the organizers of last November's Tea Party Against Amnesty at the state capital in St. Paul, an event that drew about 65 supporters and nearly 40 protesters.

The gathering would be long forgotten had it not marked the public debut of immigration activist Robert Erickson, whose speech to the crowd went viral on Youtube. The long version, which features  vintage Hendrycks:

She makes some wonderful contributions to public discourse throughout the clip.

Hendrycks has made two earlier attempts at public office. As Sue Jeffers' running mate in a 2006 primary challenge to Governor Pawlenty, she received 11.13 percent of the vote on the Republican ballot. In 2008, she sought the GOP endorsement for the open house seat in HD21B, and collected a mere handful of votes.

In 2008, Bluestem looked into her degree from LaCrosse Unversity, a diploma mill so disreputable that it was de-certified by both Louisiana and Mississippi. Not long after, I looked at the legal status of MinnSIR, which appears to simply be an assumed name under which Hendrycks does business.The group is not a nonprofit nor does it issue annual report. Membership figures are unknown.

Fox News cites her as a credible source and candidate. Draw your own conclusions.

Photo: Ruthie Hendrycks, trying for the Palin glam shot.

Erickson and other illegal European immigrants turn themselves in to ICE for self-deportation (updated)

Update: Indymedia has posted its YouTube about the action:

Early his morning, DJ Danielson and I went to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement offices in Bloomington to watch Robert Erickson and seven others turn into the authorities for deportation as illegal European Immigrants.

Robert Erickson claimed that as a European Immigrant he is part of the group of people who are responsible for the largest genocide in history committed against the Native peoples of the "Americas" and that he and his immigrant ancestors never obtained any legal status from the people who were inhabiting this land before they colonized it for their own self-serving purposes.

Thirty supporters including members of the Minnesota Immigrant Rights Action Coalition were present to document the reaction of ICE and to provide encouragement for the self-deporters who took part in what a representative of self-described "Federal Protective Service"  officers called a "major demonstration" as they communicated with each other on walkie-talkies and phones.

I Don't Hate America, Twin Cities Indymedia and Bluestem will be posting video throughout the day.

Update: IDHA has a video preview:

Here's some of my raw footage of Robert Erickson and the other protesters turning themselves in:

Erickson's speech is below the fold:

All Saints Day, Jeffers Petroglyphs, Cottonwood County

All Saints Day is an edgy holy day, dangerously syncretic, carved as it is over early layers of pre-Christian worship--Samhain, when observed at the harvest, and the Feast of the Lemures, in which the unsettled spirits of the dead were propitiated, if kept as a spring festival.

In the Episcopal churches where I have been a member, All Saints didn't simply honor the canonized, but those who had died as faithful congregants as well.

As the days grow short, those blessed dead can seem nearer and restless perhaps, if only in our memories, and so yesterday I traveled to an old sacred site, where some worshipers say people gathered on a rock outcropping in what is now Cottonwood County. When they drowned, the Dakota story goes, their blood stained the quartzite red. For 7000 to 9000 years, people have been drawn to those rocks, flood or drought.

Some friends passed over the last couple of years, and I found myself drawn to remember them and pray at the Jeffers Petrogylphs, though my common prayer is not the same as those who carved some 2000 drawings in the rock. But then, the waves of rock carvers--from different native nations--may have also had different ways to pray.

I drove across McLeod, Renville and Brown Counties, passed farmers harvesting corn and sugar beets, past shattered jack-o-lanterns, past frost ruined pumpkin fields, through the Minnesota River Valley, to Cottonwood County's Jeffers Petroglyphs to honor those recently departed saints.

All Saints is an edgy holy day. Even the readings appointed for the day in Rite I of the Episcopal Church begin with a deuterocanonical book in the Apocrypha, drawn from Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus the Son of Sirach. After the famous first line which calls the singer to praise famous men, the lectionary offers this:

There were those who ruled in their kingdoms,
   and made a name for themselves by their valor;
those who gave counsel because they were intelligent;
   those who spoke in prophetic oracles;
those who led the people by their counsels
   and by their knowledge of the people's lore;
they were wise in their words of instruction...

Some are remembered, the passage says, the names of others fade from memory.

Those who put together the interpretative materials at Jeffers understood the that some things are not known.  The rubrics along the path suggest that the rock carvings might have been hunting tales, prayers, prophecy, vision quest, map-making and kinship initiation. Listen to what the place says, a sign recommends.

Though I was the only person at the historic site, I was not alone. A few late-season moths flew by; a flock of snow buntings nosed around on the rock. The sound of combines and corn dryers hummed in the background; pheasant hunters' shotguns peppered that constant drone. I drew myself into the rocks, studying the shadows, watching the moon rise before the sun set.

Night falls swiftly this time of year, and I was happy I'd brought my parka along with. The sunset was gorgeously orange, but cold. As the prairie darkened, the grass around the rock suddenly blossomed with cackling pheasants; about a dozen took random wing and coasted across the light of the setting sun.

Across Cottonwood County 2, the silhouette of a six-point buck ran south on the ridge.

The moon rose and grew brighter, cooler. By the time I reached the outcropping polished by five thousand years of buffalo rubbing off their winter coats, the moonlight was strong enough to reflect in that mirror rock.

I can't say if the new saints were peaceful by then, but I reflected on the Gospel for the day, the Sermon on the Mound, and thought it time to go. Rolling south toward Minnesota 30, I slowed to a stop when a six-point buck stepped onto the county road. He stopped too, for thirty seconds or so, then meekly sauntered off into a standing corn field. A blessing, certainly.

Corn night: St. Peter's forgotten tradition?

Today is "Mischief Night," and, appropriately enough, friends say, my birthday. While October 30 is a fearful Devils Night of arson in Detroit, Michigan, the evening was the more mild Corn Night of teen pranks when I was growing up in the St. Peter area in the 1960s and early 1970s.

While the tradition has a longer lineage than any of us knew according to Wikipedia, we understood St. Peter's Corn Night as a time when older youth could go out and pull pranks on neighbors and friends.

Throwing shelled corn was more or less officially condoned, and I remember walking down corn-littered sidewalks in the pleasant college town when I was still trick-or-treating age. As an older kid, I learned that t-ping a home involved little more risk, as did soaping car windows, but mostly the police turned a blind eye on all but the most destructive behavior.

And of course, our parents discouraged the use of the notorious go-bang-go bag as friends who grew up in New Jersey and Philadelphia called them.

If an old high school friend with teenagers of his own now living in St. Peter is correct, Corn Night is forgotten. He received blank looks from his teenage sons, and there's no Internet chatter anywhere about the old custom.

One blogger who grew up in Red Wing, where the tradition lives on, tells about her escapades here, as well as providing more background on its origins:

Once, when I was in the third grade and had time to kill, I picked up Mrs. Blomme's Encyclopedias for some light reading. For some reason, I happened upon a section that explained the origins of not only Halloween, but Corn Night. Corn Night's original intent was for residents to roam their villages and throw corn at people's houses as a sign of protection from the spirits that would come a'visitin' on Halloween.

Corn Night's original intent in Red Wing was to give kids one night in their young lives to band together in mutiny and stick it to The Man by smashing pumpkins, overturning garbage cans, chucking various objects at people and their houses (preferably eggs if we didn't like you) and T-P'ing people's trees and lawn ornaments. It was awesome, especially if you had watched "Children Of The Corn" right before you traipsed out to join your neighborhood buddies.

Others write about how teens set the bluffs on fire for uncontrolled burns, so some activities are not so benign.

My correspondent Joel speculated that the police are no longer as tolerant as the officers in the St. Peter of our childhood, but didn't know how or when St. Peter's Corn Night vanished into the past.

It is a night for mischief in other cultures as well. In some parts of Mexico, October 30 is part of the Day of the Dead, when either the souls of the unbaptized or the lonely dead return. Given the wretched weather tonight, tiny tots, teens and the tormented, living and dead, will likely be excused for staying in.

American Legion national convention: Rural health care panels today; Walz speaks Wednesday

Politics in Minnesota mentioned earlier this month that Congressman Walz will be speaking at the American Legion's National Convention in Lousiville, Kentucky. 

Walz will be speaking on Wednesday, August 26; readers will be able to watch his remarks online via Legion TV. The time listed on the site says 9:30; Louisville is in the eastern time zone.

Asa member of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Congressman Walz has championed the needs of rural veterans. A press release in Nexis notes that today the Legion will be conducting two panels about rural health care for veterans as part of its pre-convention activities. I hope to learn more about the discussions in these panels:

2:10 p.m. PANEL: Consolidation/Rural Health Care
Thomas J. Pamperin, Deputy Director, Compensation and Pension Service, Dept. of Veterans Affairs
Robert W. Baker, Acting Assistant Secretary for Information & Technology, Dept. of Veterans Affairs
Mike Dusenbery, Southern Area Director, Dept. of Veterans Affairs

3:25 p.m. PANEL: System Worth Saving/Rural Health Care
Kara Hawthorne, Director, Office of Rural Health, Dept. of Veterans Affairs
Tony Guagliardo, Director of the Health Eligibility Center, Dept. of Veterans Affairs
John Dandridge, Jr., Network Director (VISN 9), Dept. of Veterans Affairs
John Hickey (IN), SWS Task Force Member, The American Legion
Todd White (WY), SWS Task Force Member, The American Legion

An aside: Looking through Legion TV, I came across an interesting slice of life from Minnesota's 7th Congressional District. In April,  Legion TV featured a clip of Bagley's Irvin Blix Post 16 in Clearwater County. To watch the short clip, select the "Popular Videos" tab and scroll to those released in April, then click on the Bagley material.

The post weaves the Native American heritage of many local veterans into its architecture, designs and ceremonies. According to a naval historical site, " It is well recognized that, historically, Native Americans have the highest record of service per capita when compared to other ethnic groups."

Minnesota Nice, CARS, and Collin Peterson

An incident just before Friday's Health Care Town Hall meeting illustrates for me the sort of common courtesy that helped keep Collin Peterson's forum in Willmar on task and civil.

While I'd hoped to get to Willmar early enough to snag a good seat and parking spot, the latter was hard to find. Searching for a spot in public parking, my Focus Hatchback and a Focus sedan hit the parking lot intersection at exactly the same moment.

I nodded to the white haired man driving the other vehicle in the fleeting Foci stand-off, as good manners dictate, only to notice a split second later that the driver was Congressman Peterson himself. Driving himself and alone in the car.  It fit the unpretentious image the representative enjoys in the district. 

The incident set the tone of the largely polite meeting for me, with common respect guiding the agenda. A Swedish friend notes that among Scandinavian cultures, when you raise your volume in a debate, you've lost. Some of those Old Country manners--still at home in a part of the country where surnames like Johnson and Peterson are pretty common--seemed at work in Friday's forum.

When I can remember my manners, they're reflexively the same as those of my Swedish friend. On a visit north with my grad school boyfriend, an Ozarks native, he remarked after a meal in a small town cafe, "Everybody is so quiet!"  He then wondered how rural Minnesotans could have ever organized penny auctions and other direct actions in the 1930s. "We didn't have to shout," I said, "just keep the bids down."

Back to the parking lot. The car Peterson was driving looked fairly new, and I wondered if the Congressman had traded his old Buick in for a more fuel efficient vehicle.  The Focus is the top new vehicle being purchased in the CARS program.

The case for savory baby beet pickles

However tardy our tomatoes may be this mild summer, there's no shortage of beets in Minnesota's home gardens. This surplus, along with the reasonable temperatures, made yesterday an ideal day for canning beet pickles.

Pickled beets are a noted Midwestern favorite, an immigrant good that is a favorite from Scandinavian countries. It's no surprise that with our Norwegian and Danish heritages, Michael and I are pickled beet fanatics.

Most beet pickles include more sugar than the recipe Michael and I used to can baby beet pickles at his weekend home in Kandiyohi County, but he thought the more savor concoction would incorporate the root vegetable's natural sweetness.

Savory pickled baby beets

1 pound beets
1 white onion, sliced
1 cup cider vinegar
1/4 cup sugar (or quantity to taste)
1 tablespoon cardamom
1 tablespoon whole cloves
1 teaspoon ground allspice

Follow standard instructions to prepare two quart jars or four wide-mouth pint jars, lids and screw bands for canning (we used wide mouth pints). You'll also need a boiling water canner and a jar lifter.

1. Trim off the leaves and tap roots of the beets, leaving 1/2 inche of tap root and leaf stalk to prevent too much "bleed out."  (Beet leaves work well in any Swiss chard recipe).

2. Place your beets in a large saucepan, adding enough water to cover them two inches. Heat to boiling, then reduce heat to medium low. Simmer the beets for 10-15 minutes.

3. When the beets are tender but still firm, drain, reserving two cups of the liquid for the pickling brine.

4. Cool the beets in cold water.

5. While you're waiting for the beets to cool, combine the two cups of reserved beet cooking water, vinegar, sugar, cardamom, cloves, allspice and salt in a saucepan and warm using medium heat. Stirred until the sugar dissolves. Reduce heat to low.

6. When the beets are cool enough to handle--and while the pickling brine  slip their skins off. This is done easily while the beet is in the cooling water. Trim off the remaining stem, tap root, and any skin or blemishes that remain. Quarter any baby beets which are extra large.

7. Place a slice of onion in each jar, then pack the beets in. We put the larger baby beets in the bottom of the jars (wide-mouth jars allow home canners to pack in the whole baby beet).

8. Pour enough of the pickling brine in each jar to cover the beets totally, leaving  1/4 inch at the top of each jar.

9. Using a hot, damp towel, wipe the rim of the jars clean. Seal each jar with a lid and screw band.

10. Using the jar lifter, place the jars in the hot water canner for 15 minutes.

11. Using the lifter, remove the jars and place them on a cooling rack or a thick towel spread on a sturdy table or counter.

12. After the jars cool, check for a good seal. (You'll hear the soft popping sound as the jars cool and a seal is made). Refrigerator any jars which didn't take a seal.

13. The pickles should be ready in a week of so, though most people wait a bit longer. Consume the beets within three months.

Use the pickled beets as a garnish, a side dish, or as an ingredient in salads.

Photo: Beets, from the National Garden Bureau.

Outposts from the Small of America: Hunting to survive

by Tom Driscoll

Omar Bongo, president of Gabon for 41-years, died on the 8th of June at a hospital in Barcelona, Spain. The autocrat-for-life who many believe pilfered the country’s treasure, was buried in Franceville, an easy hour’s drive on a paved road that leads to Lewai, the small village where Bongo was born, aptly renamed Bongoville.

Not far past Bongoville, in Leconi, the asphalt ends. Or it did 26-years-ago when I was a Peace Corps volunteer there. After Leconi, the highway disintegrated into deep sand tracks meandering like rivers all over le Plateau Bateke looking for passage to the next remote village, and the next, 14-in-all as I recall, scattered along the watershed straddling the border with Congo-Brazzaville.

There were no gas stations up on the Plateau, no grocery stores, no hospitals or clinics. Every village had a little shop though that sold warm beer, canned sardines and soap, provided their supplier had passed through in recent weeks to restock them.

No electricity in those 14-villages. No wells. Little measurable wealth by economic standards. Just mud huts, an occasional tin roof. Every family farmed a small plot of sand. Every family member carried a rusty knife or a machete sharpened on rocks. Some villagers maintained fish ponds, others fished in Plateau rivers and lakes. Men, women and children alike trapped animals, birds, insects for food.

Hunting big game was the job of men and boys of every age from every family. Hunting parties used nets to surround islands of forest dotting the otherwise barren Plateau landscape. With machetes, hunters broke the necks of smaller animals chased into the nets by wily dogs and leathery sorcerers. Once in a great while, an elder marksman would expend a precious shotgun shell to drop a large antelope.

When enough meat was harvested, but not so much it couldn’t be cooked-and-eaten or smoked before spoiling, hunters cleaned the fresh kill, butchered it right there in the sand. One trusted black hand weighed lumps of rump, loin and shoulder, livers, tongues, stomachs and intestines while everyone looked on, nodding, grunting approval as meat piled up on dozens of broad green leaves. Everyone got a package of meat wrapped in a leaf and tied with liana, men too old to hunt, women too pregnant to farm, children too small to carry a knife. Everyone in the village benefited from the hunt.

That’s the way it worked, simple and fair, little competitive market prejudice to warp an essential human service with speculative motives. While Omar Bongo siphoned oil revenues into offshore bank accounts and Parisian real estate, members of Bongo’s tribe living in those remote villages on le Plateau Bateke sustained the welfare of the collective by caring for the individuals.

President Barack Obama appealed to Congress, health care providers, drug manufacturers, insurers and the nation last week to pass a health care reform bill estimated to cost one-trillion-dollars. Majority Leader Harry Reid announced yesterday that the Senate will not take up reform legislation until after the summer recess. Delaying the debate until fall won’t upset 1st District Congressman Tim Walz. According to the Mankato Free-Press, Walz is more concerned about getting health care reform right than getting it done quickly. “I don’t think an issue like this is going to lose momentum (between now and the end of the year),” said Walz.

Meanwhile, Minnesota’s largest employer, the Mayo Clinic, continues to lobby for value-based healthcare using a quality care index as an incentive to providers to improve outcomes and lower costs.

Read about subsistence hunting on le Plateau Bateke.

Read another cultural tale, Hmong Deer Hunters in 2005.

Minnesota writer Tom Driscoll reports on politics, economic development and life in rural America at The Small of America.

Need a dish to pass? Vampire issues? Garlic dipping sauce solves both dilemmas

There's nothing more Minnesotan than a good potluck or cookout. Lately, the members of the South Fork Secret Supper Club^ in Hutchinson have been roasting meat over wood fires.

More on that in a later post. One of the SFSSC hit side dishes is provided by a Moldovan-American member of the eating club, Yuriy Gritsenko. His mother's garlic dipping sauce, served with French bread, disappears faster than ice cubes on a hot summer evening. 

Here's his mom's recipe, written down for the first time. According to Yuriy, most of the traditional recipes the family brought from Moldova when they immigrated during his childhood are still part of an oral tradition.

For the recipe below, you'll need these ingredients:

One dozen eggs
One dozen cloves of garlic
Three pinches of salt
Six teaspoons of cider or red wine vinegar
Sunflower oil
Paprika

Note that the one-to-one ratio of eggs to garlic cloves make the recipe easy to expand or contract with your guest list.

Yuriy notes:

Here is the recipe pretty much how I wrote it as my mom made it. 

Garlic Dipping Sauce:

1. Hard-boil a dozen eggs and peel them.

2. Take egg yolks only and mash them up in a bowl. Use whites for something else (deviled eggs? potato salad?)

3. Add 3 fingers-pinch of salt to the bowl and some paprika.

4. Add 1 clove of minced garlic for each egg. (12)

5. Mix!!!

6. Add apple cider (or red wine vinegar) - ½ teaspoon for each yolk so 6 teaspoons.

7. Mix!!!

8. Add sunflower oil (or olive oil) – oil must be absorbed by yolks, so this will take some pouring and some mixing. Continue until a thick liquid (not paste) consistency is obtained.

9. Add salt and paprika (and vinegar) as necessary, to taste.

10. Stir prior to serving as the sunflower oil and the yolk/garlic will separate after standing for only a few minutes..

The resulting amount disappeared in a few minutes along with two loaves of bread when served to six.

*Secret supper clubs are far less mysterious than the traditional Southern institution suggests. Friends in the Hutchinson area have adopted it to pin a name on flash dinners we have every week or so.

Arugula: the new zucchini? A note on culinary change

Working in my community garden plot yesterday, I was pleased to look up and see John, the county DFL chair, weeding his own piece of paradise on the other end of the lot.

I nonchalantly sauntered over.

"Say, John," I said casually. "Your garden is looking great."

"Thank you," the genial retired psychologist said, hacking as his crabgrass.

"Yep," I said, easing into my pitch. "This rain has done wonders to my greens. Do you like arugula?"

"Funny that you asked," the mild-mannered gentleman replied. "I never tried it until today. But [a friend] gave my wife and I a full bag of it" --his hand sketched out a large grocery bag in the humid June air--"and we had it for dinner. Wow! It's delicious."

We exchanged pleasantries, then I sauntered back to my own garden. Foiled again, even by a man with impeccable progressive credentials.

Today, I still have a lot of arugula, a green much maligned in last year's Presidential election as somehow Not The Iowa, an exotic taste that never graced traditional Midwestern landscapes. Back then, I was puzzled at the reaction to a vegetable my ultra-conservative, lifelong-member-of-the NRA father taught me to grow and appreciate.

This year, though, I'm struck with the green's abundance. Yep, the stuff grows like the dickens. Like zucchini. Indeed, in these new days of the Obama administration, arugula may be The New Zucchini. Indeed, few Americans probably remember that zucchini--perhaps the most fecund garden vegetable--was itself little known in this country two generations ago.