Bluestem Prairie

Clown car politics: MNGOP circus strategy travels to Minnesota's Eighth CD

On Tuesday, I posted Road trip: MNGOP brings clown car politics to Minnesota's Seventh, which looked at the expansion of the Clown Car Syndrome as a political strategy into the sprawling rural district:

Back in 2007, potential candidates started lining up in Southern Minnesota to run against then-freshman representative Tim Walz. By 2008, FDL/Mercury Rising blogger Phoenix Woman soon identified this as "The Clown Car" Syndrome, a strategy the MNGOP appears to be repeating in the First.

Given the anemic fundraising by the candidates running against Walz, it's more of a kiddies' party than three-ring circus.

The Republican Party seems to be taking the clown car on the road to Minnesota 's Seventh Congressional District, a seat now held powerful House Agriculture Chair and Blue Dog Collin Peterson. While progressives across the country are dismayed by Peterson's voting record, he remains quite popular in the sprawling rural district.

Four potential candidates have hitched a ride.

Since then, Forum newspapers have learned to check the Minnesota CD7 website, since the new candidates aren't sending out press releases. Unlike Bluestem, the papers' accounts-- and Minnpost's digest of them--aren't acknowledging the Clown Car Syndrome, or the long shot nature of the bids. 

Aaron Brown, the marvelous journalist-blogger chimera behind Minnesota Brown, does a much better job at looking at the Clown Car Syndrome's outbreak in Minnesota's Eighth CD in Five GOP candidates seek Oberstar's seat:

This demonstrates more enthusiasm from GOP party regulars than has been seen recently when party bosses tried and failed to get plausible candidates to run at the last minute.

Nevertheless, the electoral math of the 8th CD remains largely the same, regardless of the national mood. Oberstar, a pro-life, pro-gun labor Democrat, has enjoyed wide victory margins in his stunning 36-year tenure. If you think this year's GOP field is large, wait until you see the size of both DFL and Republican fields if and when Oberstar retires (a prospect that remains planted firmly on a distant, unknown horizon).

Numbers and enthusiasm aren't markers of vulnerability, though doubless readers will see races in all three seats framed this way by the spokesters of the MNGOP. In the comments at Aaron's place, I suggest a standard for judging reportage:

. . . I'll be using a journalist's acceptance or scrutiny of the MNGOP frame as a test of that writer's laziness, integrity and mental acumen.

Those who actually examine a district's profile and campaign coffers will get a gold star. Those who uncritically accept the notion that a large and peculiar field indicates an incumbent is in trouble deserve public ridicule on twitter as press release lackeys.

Mankato Free Press gives thumbs down to Quist and Hagedorn tone

One tradition kept by the Mankato Free Press is the short Saturday "Thumbs up" or "Thumbs down" editorial.

On Saturday, the editorial board wrote:

Quist comments unhelpful

Thumbs down: To the tone of the campaign by challengers to U.S. Rep. Tim Walz, D-Mankato.

In a recent speech that can be seen on YouTube, Republican Allen Quist said this:

“Terrorism, yes (but) that’s not the big battle. The big battle is in D.C. ... Obama, Pelosi, Walz — they’re not liberals, they’re radicals. They’re destroying our country.”

He also called the health care reform bill the “most evil” legislation he’d seen in his lifetime.

Another Republican candidate in the race, Jim Hagedorn, has a history of blog comments that include an anti-gay rant filled with sexual double entendres and one in which he said he hoped the building was “fumigated” after those attending the Paul Wellstone memorial service had left.

Campaigns are all about debates and occasional rants. But too many candidates have focused on anger-filled demagoguery, name calling and personal attacks.

Voters in the 1st District instead deserve to hear about clear policy and philosophical differences of candidates.

Thumbs up went to local groups like Kids Against Hunger, for their swift response to the suffering caused by the Haitian earthquake and to the Mankato READY! for Kindergarten program, an organization whose mission is fairly self-evident.  Pat Robertson gets a thumbs down too, for his hateful remarks about Haiti.

Fair play, a helping hand, cooperation, tolerance. These are the real rural values I grew up with, among people who learned the practicality of respecting others. We never knew who'd pull us out of that snowbank. Just saying.

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.

Outposts from The Small of America: Early Warning

Elegy for Samoans and Sumatrans.

By Tom Driscoll

Cold wind shreds the upper branches of a thick-waisted oak. The woods, the more dark with wet black bark, whispers loudly, “No secrets here.”

Underbrush up and evaporated weeks ago. Leaves rain brown. Cinch up my hood, hunch a shoulder into the blow and head dead north on a trail of stooped-over grass where once, as heedless dogs approached, a possum woke up with a warning hiss and bared a currycomb of teeth filed down to puncturous steel points. Should have recognized then the harbinger, but hate to admit to naturalistic superstitions.

Then, at the bifurcation of purpose near the river where the first settlers must have peeled back redheaded reeds and peered down narrow native Indian trails, one doglegging you back to where you come from, the other a point vanishing forever far into their future, I heard the foreboding crack of an overhead limb.

Wind’s ablowin’ thorns about like ice. Frozen there at the exact center of What Happens Next thinking, “October,” in a protracted, breathless instant falls faster than light an oak limb still swelling with weather heavy in its million green sails. Boom. Far enough into the future by just this much, it missed me and the dogs with unintentionally beautiful claws that could rip the hide off a deer.

Well, heh heh heh, should have seen the sign. When I was little, in the early fall when the first cold winds rattled the windows, my Dad liked to drink a cup-or-two of green tea and then read the leaves for me. But augury didn’t save him when the roar of the last big wave sat him up straight in the middle of the night, then fell him like an elm.

Whistled-here the dogs and sent them ahead around the fallen limb to reconnoiter least resistance. Thinking back, the dialogue between wind and leaves, the possum trail, and pausing where past and future part ways just long enough to let the oak talk to me, the oracle had clearly spoken. The dogs, as if in response to a forecast for more thunder, high-tailed it up the hill toward Nothing Happens while I squirmed through knotty fingers and a snaggle of raspberry fiddle bound for Safely Home.

A few minutes later, somewhere between here-and-there, a whimpering one-handed clap shivered through the forest as the great oak sprawled across possum trail, sparing nothing where once its opaque early morning shadow fell.

Minnesota writer Tom Driscoll reports on politics, economic development and life in rural America at The Small of America. He can be reached at smallofamerica@aol.com.

Hundreds from ND and MN rally in Fargo for health care reform

 by Ted Fiskevold

 Chet Nettestad and I just returned from a fairly successful health care reform rally ("Go Back and Get 'er Done") at the Fargo Dome parking lot in Fargo, ND. Over 800 activists attended the event co-sponsored by: AFL-CIO, SEIU, AFSCME, People's Alliance (CWA, USWA, UAW, IFPT), Faith for Reform, Nurse's Association, AFT, North Dakota Farmers Union and several Fargo-Moorhead area community organizations.

The North Dakota Farmers Union brought a bus of members to the rally.

Attendees were given the use of cell phones and tablets and pens and provided numbers and addresses for phoning and/or writing members of their U.S. Congressional Delegation.

I coined the following slogans at the rally: "No highway to health is a highway to hell" and "Public Option not Coop-tion."  The first slogan is a riff on the AFSCME slogan, "Highway to Health care," which decorated their green kerchiefs.

Speakers included Joel Heitcamp, who replaced Ed Schultz on KFGO's News and Views radio show, and his sister, activist Heidi Heitcamp who once ran for Governor of North Dakota.

Photos by Ted Fiskevold: North Dakota activist and breast cancer survivor Heidi Heitcamp (above); Hundreds rallying in Fargo Dome parking lot (below).

Ted Fiskevold is a member of the National Writers Union/UAW Local 1981/ Twin Cities Local 13.He lives in Detroit Lakes.

More photos below the fold. The Fargo Forum covered the rally here and Workday Minnesota has posted a report as well.

Prairie ramblings: Brau Brothers Brewery in Lucan

After last Tuesday's excursion to Farmfest, the Bluestem team to joined some friends who were touring the Brau Brothers Brewing Company in Lucan, Minnesota. Neither Eric nor I knew anything about the brew or proprietor--or tiny Lucan, for that matter.

"Oh, wow," I said, turning to Eric as we pulled up to the brewery. "They grow their own hops."

Minnesota has never been a hops growing center, though I saw a few feral plants growing in the Minnesota Rover Valley in my childhood. The hop yard was the first surprise of the late afternoon tour.

Plainly, the three Brau brothers aren't plagued with an edifice complex: the brewery is housed in a plain metal building that could just as well be a machine shop in the tiny Redwood County town of just over 200 souls. The building is a step up from the brewhouse pub--the BrauHaus still in operation on the hamlet's main drag--where the Brau Brothers got their start.

We heard our friends John and Chris conversing inside the brewery with another person and walked toward the gleaming brewing vats. The unfamiliar voice explaining the brewing process belonged to Dustin Brau, CEO and brewmaster. Dusty's abilities as a beer ambassador were immediately evident, as well as his pride and enthuasism.

And ingenuity. Dusty explained how the small company, which employs 12 full and part time workers, keeps costs low creating equipment from scratch or adapting second hand machinery. Dusty, and later his father Dale, showed us their low-cost solutions for bottle pasteurization, labeling, and molding tap handles that accompany kegs of beer to bars serving Braus Brother on tap.

The highlights of the tour were checking out the hopyard, where twelve varieties of hops grow, and an impromptu beer tasting in the cooler. Perhaps it was the relief of chilling after a day at Farmfest, but the beer tasted amazing. We split bottles of Scotch Ale, Pils and a single batch beer, Sheephead, named for the meanest German card game still popular in small town taverns and living rooms.

Fortunately, that bitter hoppy beer still tastes great away from the brewery, if the six packs I've bought in Hutchinson's muni are any proof.  The brothers serve a strictly local and regional market, primarily in southern Minnesota and northern Iowa.

Note to Twin Cities readers: Brau Brothers will be put of the beer sampling tomorrow night at Brew in the Zoo in Apple Valley.

To schedule a tour, call (507)747-BEER . To find Brau Brothers brews in your neck of the woods, check here. Follow the brewers at @BrauBeer.

Photo: Dustin Brau in the beer cooler. Photo by Eric Adams.

Prairie ramblings: Fort Ridgely and the U.S.--Dakota War of 1862

After we left Farmfest last week, Bluestem photographer Eric Adams and I rambled over to a DFL fundraiser near Lucan, then stopped at Fort Ridgely State Park at dusk to check out the old fort.

Wishing he owned equipment that could shoot at better speeds for low light photography, Eric snapped the following picture of the moon rising behind a monument.

Later in the week, I visited several other historical sites connected with the 1862 treaty conflict. It seems right to do so in August when the war between Dakota and white settlers was fought, including the Lower Sioux Reservation and the Birch Coolue Battlefield.

I saw few people at any of the spots, despite the proximity of the crowds coming to Farmfest or the approaching anniversary of the war itself.

The empty battlegrounds might provide a gentle reminder of the importance of settling conflict through civic engagement and the democratic process, rather than through anger.

Memories from Minnesota's on war frequently inform the way I look at contemporary troubles; not surprising, given how much of my family on both sides were among some of southern Minnesota's first white farmers.

I remember driving home from the Cities a couple of years ago, listening to the shocked outrage of people on public radio talking about the murder and mutilation of American civilian contractors in Fallujah. What kind of people could do that? People like those who once lived in the place where I not rest my head:

Little Crow's body was transported back to Hutchinson where it was again mutilated by the citizens. His body was dragged down the town's Main Streetwhile firecrackers were placed in his ears and dogs picked at his head. After their celebration, the town disposed of the body in an alley, where ordinary garbage was regularly thrown.

I do not think that remembering the actions of irate pioneers justifies equally barbaric actions on the part of modern Iraqis; rather, that the memories of an old local war that was brutal for both sides ought serve as an cautionary tale when we talk to each other in passionate anger.

Whatever the current tensions may be, this is a good time to visit south central Minnesota's historical sites, from the Jeffers Petroglyphs and the ruins of Farther and Gay Castle to the battlegrounds of the 1862 war.

Outposts from the Small of America: Smellin’ Red

by Tom Driscoll

August again already. Seein’ red everywhere in unmowed ditches, burning up the sides of steep hills, wheat and corn tops when the light’s right, patches of red quilt-stitched to lawns and flowerbeds. Seein’ Red.

What happened in Kasota on July-22? All the public really knows – based on a media quilt of eyewitness accounts and police statements – is that Todd Waldron, a Le Sueur County Sheriff's investigator and 10-year department veteran, shot 24-year-old Tyler Heilman 4-times. Heilman, whose widely-reported last words were, “I’m done, man. I’m done,” died in the parking lot of his apartment building. Results of the official investigation probably will not be available until September. So all there is, for now, is the discombobulating sensation of seein’ Red.

Seeing red grass and fireweed is one thing. But seein’ Red, the classic metaphor of anger and conflict, communicates in an instant a minefield of complex feelings. Who can say that the Red one person sees is not heard by another, or smelled. In the end, an afternoon of swimming with friends that reportedly involved drinking and driving home and pursuit by a plain clothes Sheriff’s Deputy and a verbal argument that led to a so-called scuffle that escalated to the use of deadly force. I am reminded of Paul Newman’s memorable last words in Cool Hand Luke, “What we have here is a failure to communicate.”

The year Cool Hand Luke hit theaters, 1967, was Neil Haugerud’s last year as Sheriff of Fillmore County. (He was first elected in 1959.) Haugerud went on to serve in the Minnesota House where in 1977 he authored a bill, which passed, requiring all Minnesota law enforcement agencies to report the details of every single on-duty firearm discharge. After leaving the legislature, Haugerud spent time trying, unsuccessfully, to convince those same law enforcement agencies to add extensive communication training to academy programs.

Jailhouse Stories, Haugerud’s 1999 recollection of his years as Sheriff, put him on the thinly-populated small town and rural county literary map. I met Neil some Christmases ago over dinner, drinks and tales. We sat across from each other among half-a-dozen guests, and when Neil began explaining how Neurolinguistics could aid communication between law enforcement officials and citizens, suspects and perpetrators, he looked right at me. “Do you HEAR what I’m saying?” he asked, “Or do you SEE what I mean?”

In a July 27 Star-Tribune op-ed, Neil used the tragic Kasota shooting to once again call for changes in officer training. He specifically recommended that all police, “have extensive training in communications that would include neurolinguistics and other up-to-date methods of interactions before they ever pick up a gun.”

Reaction to Haugerud’s commentary by some in law enforcement has been swift. In a Strib Counterpoint, retired State Patrol officer Steve Mengelkoch called Haugerud’s piece Amazing. “I can think of no other printable word to describe Neil Haugerud's recent commentary.”

Most disconcerting to Mengelkoch – and others – is Haugerud’s assertion that firearms training trains officers to shoot rather than to communicate. A representative to the Board of Training Academy Directors, Mengelkoch does not dispute that officers are trained to shoot, but points out that, “Use of force is a required part of initial and ongoing training. That training has saved the lives of many officers in Minnesota.”

Last Sunday, in a Letter to the (Strib) Editor, Edina Police Chief Mike Siitari took aim at Haugerud’s recommendation that the Peace Officer Standards and Training Board (POST) be eliminated, and that communication training come before firearms training. “The author's suggestion that neurolinguistics would solve our problems,” stated Chief Siitari, “sounds like something Barney Fife would suggest. Unfortunately, we no longer live in Mayberry RFD.”

Wait a minute? Who you calling Barney Fife, Chief? Us bumpkins hearin’ Mayberry? Why, them wrastlin’ words! And, I’m a’smellin Red!

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

DFL Senate District 27 Pumpkin Patch Politics: governor's race straw poll and great press

A recent DFL fundraiser near Austin--and an upcoming Republican gathering in Rochester--demonstrate that the wide-open 2010 gubernatorial contest is already catnip for attracting partisan activists. The media isn't far behind, if coverage of the DFL event is any yardstick.

Over at mnpACT!, Dave Mindeman has posted the results of Saturday's straw poll at DFL Senate District 27's Politics in the Pumpkin Patch fundraiser:

Total ballots = 129

21 - John Marty (16.28%)

20 - Mark Dayton (15,50%)

16 - Chris Coleman (12.4%)

16 - R. T. Rybak (12,4%)

12 - Tom Bakk (9.3%)

10 - Matt Entenza (7.75%)

10 - Susan Gaertner (7.75%)

10 - Paul Thissen (7.75%)

6 - Steve Kelley (4.65%)

4 - Margaret Anderson-Kelliher (3.10%)

4 - Tom Rukavina (3.10%)

Mindeman notes that these results can be interpreted just about any way his readers wish. i'll be equally bland and suggest that the results illustrate that there's no clear frontrunner. 

Less subject to interpretation is the great press the event received in area media. The Austin Herlad and  sister paper the Albert Lea Tribune previewed the fundraiser, coverage that was digested by MinnPost's Joe Kimball.

The Herald and the Tribune followed up with It's politics at the pumpkin patch:

The brainchild of state Rep. Robin Brown, DFL-Moscow Township, and her husband, superintendent of the Grand Meadow Independent School District Joe Brown, Politics in the Pumpkin Patch was a new event this year designed to generate grassroots interest in the party and do it in a fun way.

Joe Brown said the event reminded him a bit of the Iowa caucuses, and there was even a straw poll to make that comparison more complete — won by Sen. John Marty of Roseville, who edged former U.S. Sen. Mark Dayton by one vote. . . .

In an article digested by MinnPost, the Rochester Post Bulletin's Heather Carlson reported in Gubernatorial hopefuls gather in Farmer John's Pumpkin Patch:

The utility of goldfinches: a defense of the beautiful and useless

Never mind what the National Sunflower Association preaches about the usefulness of sunflowers. I refuse to pull up "volunteers" simply because they attract goldfinches. I waste additional perfectly good space that could be devoted to turnips and potatoes to plant even more sunflowers.

That's no small sacrifice in a small plot in a community garden during tough financial times. But I find I'm not alone. Though my sunflowers were the first to blossom in the garden, nearly half of my fellow gardeners also plant or encourage sunflowers, and none of us rescue their seeds to eat for ourselves.

They literally are for the birds.

Drawn by the colorful flowers, a male goldfinch stopped by my plot late last week to remind me of my own wastefulness. First he explored the first open blossom, and finding no seeds, perched on the top of one of my cucumber trellises, just four feet from where I weeded golden beets.

But he did not seem discouraged: rather, he tweeted with the abandon of an intoxicated press secretary, filling the garden with song. This was the essence of finch, described in the Life Histories of Familiar North American Birds:

Major grant to expand teaching of MN River Valley history

I was born in Mankato to parents whose own families had lived in Southern Minnesota for generations. My late father could proudly point to the tiny Ott Cabin (the building at the right) in Sibley Park as an ancestral home. George Ott and his family moved from Dubois County, Indiana, to the Minnesota Territory in the 1850s, before statehood.

That early introduction to the area's past sparked a lifelong interest in history and deep love of the Minnesota River Valley. It's geologically fascinating as well, for the wide valley itself was formed by an earlier river, the massive Glacial River Warren, which once filled the valley, bluff to bluff.

This story was pure catnip to the imagination of a little tomboy roaming the bluffs east of St. Peter with her dog, as I sometimes fancied what it might have been like to have been one of the state's real first settlers, Paleo-Indians hunting wooly mammoths across would would become the prairies. It didn't take much work to realize that my own ancestors' experience on the frontier paled in comparison to that of the first Minnesotans, and that the relationship of the tiny Minnesota River to the Glacial River Warren was a handy analogy for comparing the two waves of New World settlers.

I'm still grateful for that wild childhood along the Minnesota River Valley, which--along with the guidance of some gifted teachers in the St. Peter Public Schools--nurtured a sense of wonder at the historial and natural world, along with an appreciation of the past.

Congressman Walz's office today announced that a grant will help another generation of Southern Minnesota's school children to learn about the area's history and culture. The South Central Service Cooperative  has been awarded a major grant to expand teaching of the valley's history in local schools. Nearly $1 million over three years will be used to educate educators about the valley under the Teaching American History Grants Program.

For those readers not familiar with the area, the Minnesota River Basin Data Center is a good starting point, with virtual tours, suggested real world tours, and a calendar of events along the river.

Full press release below the fold.

A prairie home companion: Tarryl Clark

Bluestem Prairie received notice from St. Cloud area DFL activist Scott Wells about a cameo appearance by Assistant Senate Majority Leader Tarryl Clark on Prairie Home Companion:

The “News from Lake Wobegon” will be broadcast from Avon on Saturday, July 4. Senator Tarryl Clark will read a poem as part of the program. Garrison Keillor is offering a free show to the public from 5-7 p.m. on July 4 at the park along Lake Wobegon Trail in Avon for the 35th anniversary of the show. The live national broadcast will be outdoors rain or shine and is open to the public. Everyone is encouraged to bring lawn chairs and picnic blankets.

Poetry on the Prairie? I can think of few better ways to enjoy a pleasant July evening before watching some fireworks once it gets dark.

The show's site notes that the good people of Avon will have a varied dinner menu for sale at the event. Who could resist the entertainment and the dessert: Beebop-A-Reebop Rhubarb Pie & Powdermilk Biscuit-Strawberry Shortcake.

Update: Was the GOP minority caucus feeling a bit touchy about rural MN late last week?

On Friday afternoon, Bluestem posted about the GOP House minority caucus's election of Kurt Zellers as Minnesota House Minority Leader over Hayfield Republican Randy Demmer.

Since both Zellers and his deputy minority leader, Steve Smith, live in suburban Hennepin County, I asked whether Minnesota's Republicans were about to lose their bitching point about the DFL's Speaker and Senate Majority Leader hailing from Minneapolis.

Saturday afternoon, Polinaut's Tom Scheck posted about Zeller's creation of a fifth assistant minority leader position in the diminutive caucus. The new Minority Leader had sent an email--passed along to Scheck--announcing that Rod Hamilton had been picked for the new slot.

According to Scheck's answer to a question I raised in the comments, Zellers had sent the email announcement of the additional post and its occupant that very day:

Zellers sent out the e-mail on Saturday.. . .  I was told by a few folks that this was an attempt to ease concern about a suburban heavy presence in leadership.

A couple of things surprise us. First, we're not sure why the Incredible Shrinking Caucus needs another Assistant Minority Leader. Like land in rural Minnesota, it's not as if anyone is making any more Republicans in the Minnesota House's next session.

The frugal weeds

 "These weeds certainly are frugal," Colette said, as she hoed through an unkept garden plot with a vigor surprising for her 91 years.

Her word choice caught my ear as I hand-weeded lambs-quarter beside her.  It struck me as an odd use of the word, and when I hear older country people bend meaning, I start paying closer attention.

Colette next questioned the value of clearing the scraggly twin rows of peas that were all that remained in our garden citizen outreach. I had pointed out that the cottontail rabbit that frequents the garden had made some inroads on the unfenced peapods, and she pondered the poor rate of germination.

"Those peas aren't very frugal," she said, adding that if we cleared the weeds, the rabbit would have an easier time of it.

Sitting here tonight at my desk with an open volume of the Oxford English Dictionary, that attention has turned to delight. For while the word now implies parsimony or the sparing use of a resource, her use of the term hearkens back to the word's root in Latin and French, "fruit."

Those weeds were certainly fruitful in the absence of the holder of the community gardener assigned the double plot we were clearing. Colette's observation was dead on, as was the impulse that set us to weeding our neighbor's soil.

"When I had a heart attack a few years ago," she said, as she began to attack the pigweed sprouting in the onions growing on the opposite end from the peas, "some of the other gardeners ook care my plants until I could get back here."

She paused. "Of course, it wasn't quite what I'd do for myself, but I was surely grateful they'd pitched in like that." 

Local food: aiming for the soul, reaching our stomachs

Yesterday, I took advantage of a break in the rain to weed my plot in the local community garden. I'd broadcast lettuce, kale and quick-growing greens between my tomato plants, and it's time to separate the domestic edible from the unwanted.

An older fellow gardener stopped by and furrowed his brow.

"Your weeds look sick," he said, then paused as he got a closer look at the pale plants dotting the ground between the tomato cages. "Oh, that's lettuce."

I took a moment from rooting out ragweed, crab grass, and lambs quarters to explain the method in my madness. The green crops provide cover for the loose soil, as well as being mostly played out by the time the tomato plants elbow out everything near them. In community garden, it's an effective strategy for boosting yields and variety on the small plot.

My neighbor considered this. "Well," he finally concluded, "I don't know how you tell the weeds from the seeds you planted."  We said our good-byes, leaving me to make that distinction as I continued my garden chore.

I'm pretty sure he's been gardening longer than I have; that he knew little of the weeds nor the small space gardening technique wasn't surprising. It's not just urban dwellers who lack knowledge about raising food. A former colleague once related the sad tale of outreach education she conducted in public schools in nearby Kandiyohi County for the Soybean Growers Association. Over half the students in each class didn't know what soybean plants looked like, though the town was surrounded by thousands of acres of bean fields.

Earlier in May, I had good reason to be happy that I'd secured the soil in my little piece of heaven. For the first time in my life--most of which has been set in the Midwest--I saw dust storms rip through town and field. Taking the photograph below the fold left my face and eyes gritty, while my next shower helped create micro-mud puddles in my ears that took four Qtips to remove. I'm all for getting close to the soil, but it was a bit much.

Both the dust storms and my garden conservation were underscored by a recent re-reading of 1980s exploration of the ethics and spirituality of land stewardship, as well as more recent news from the Land Stewardship Project and The Minnesota Farmers Union. Both organizations' commentary hit my inbox as I was taking a look back at "Soil and Survival," a book by the late Carol Bly and local (for me at least) writers Joe and Nancy Paddock.

An apprenticeship to small things: a rural editor's story

  by Randy O. Olson

One day in mid-November 2008, a co-worker handed me a clipping from a Classy Canary (a western Minnesota "shopper") with a help-wanted ad. The Hoffman Tribune was looking for an editor.

"You should apply," she said.

Her confidence exceeded mine. I was working full-time hours at the outbound call center, sucking air financially. My great love, though, was a part-time gig as a newspaper stringer covering Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa high school sports for the Sauk Herald.

At first I didn't consider her suggestion seriously.  I had no experience in layout or graphic design.  Then I realized that my fresh-out-of-college run for the local House seat in 2000 had introduced me to the owner and the area. Could I finally put my undergraduate studies to work, eight years after the fact? Would I finally break into a rare-as-hen’s-teeth professional job while staying in my beloved central Minnesota?

The paper’s owner, Nick Ripperger of Herman, thought it was worth an interview. I drove up to Hoffman that Friday for a 2:00 p.m. interview. Nick let me go home five hours later, after I took a crack at some editing and layout work for the next week's issue.

We agreed that I would be on a trial period for a couple weeks; then, if I didn't wreck the place, I could stay longer. I had gone from a slave-wage call-center job to newspaper editor in two days flat.

Seven months later, I'm still there, an unlikely survivor in a small corner of the newspaper industry.