Bluestem Prairie

Chronicles of Cottonwood County: it's time for real beer to come out of the shadows in Windom

Cottonwood County is one of Minnesota's rural gems, and Windom's Mari Harries would like more people to get to know it. The young policy associate at Minnesota 2020 is working on opening River City Eatery and she's run into a regulatory roadblock that will prevent diners from truly appreciating the prairie.

3.2 beer.

More precisely, Windom's beer license regulation, which unlike her restaurant's state license, restricts her to serving 3.2 beer. This is a real shame, because she won't be able to serve the great sacred local beers flowing from the waters of nearby Lucan and New Ulm, nor any of the truly micro breweries in Southwest Minnesota.

She writes at Hindsight 2020:

As River City Eatery starts to take shape and my dream of opening a restaurant in my rural southwest Minnesota town are coming true, I'm getting thirsty from all this hard, but oh so much fun work.

I'm getting thirsty for some great, local craft beer.

The beer and wine license I have obtained from the state of Minnesota allows River City Eatery to sell “strong beer,” but the Windom city ordinance only allows us to serve 3.2 beers. It’s an issue I’m certain many other small towns face.

Local micro brews don't come in the 3.2 style, which leaves my only options as a restaurateur in the City of Windom being Miller or Budweiser. . . .

As one friend tweeted, "Strong beer for a strong local economy."  This is true, and Windom itself is the place--during the government shutdown-- I first learned of the Prohibition-era song popular in labor circles, "No Beer, No Work." (Revised version here).

Minnesotans brew up some pretty tasty beer, and our local economies could use the boost it can give restaurants. Here's hoping that Windom and other small towns drink in Harries' wisdom.

Her restaurant looks like it's going to be pretty swell, too. Follow her progress at my $.02: Finding Windom. 

Related posts: No Beer, No Work: a song for the end of the shutdown

Last call on shutdown: Minnesota's looming beer riots send state's leaders back to bargaining table

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

Prairie ramblings: Brau Brothers Brewery in Lucan

New Ulm's creator of sacred local beer honored for service to humanity

Spring flooding report: New Ulm budget woes jeopardize sacred local beer reserves

All Saints Day, Jeffers Petroglyphs, Cottonwood County

KARE-11 to air "River Revival: Working Together to Save the Minnesota River" on June 12

I was born in Mankato, where the Blue Earth River meets the Minnesota at its bend. That's where the cabin that my maternal ancestors the Otts built in the 1850s now stands nearboth rivers in Mankato's Sibley Park. I think that watershed was my first love, and remains so.

Not that it's an easy love, because the Minnesota River can be difficult, flooding, muddying the waters, and dropping a load of dirt at her mouth. We all have our moments.

But I'm not alone in my riparian romance, as the coalition of groups that launched the site for a documentary, "Working Together to Save the Minnesota River" attests. The hour-long documentary (which I haven't seen) will be aired in a week on KARE-11 at 6 p.m.

Those who want to learn more about the river and efforts to clean up the old hag's image can join watch parties along the river and her companion streams. Via Citizens United for the River Environment's (CURE) Facebook event, here's a list:

River Revival: Working Together for a Clean Minnesota River
June 12th, 2011 at 6:00pm on KARE 11 TV

Gather together with friends up and down the river to watch and discuss this documentary which highlights the river's problems but also showcases the fact that citizens are doing something about it.

LOCATIONS:

Ortonville:
Headwaters Grill and Bar
17 2nd St NW, Ortonville, 320-839-2270
4:00-7:30
Hosts: Dale and Mary Homan, Duane Ninneman

Montevideo and Granite Falls:
5014 Highway 212 SW, Montevideo, 320-269-9055
5:30-7:30
Hosts: Patrick Moore and Butch Halterman, Steve Virnig

New Ulm:
Concordia Lanes and Kegel Klub
416 19th St N, New Ulm,507-354-2923
5:30-7:30
Hosts: Scott Sparlin, Jack Lauer
Call Scott at 507-276-2280
Free Refreshments will be served

Mankato:
Rounders Sports Bar and Grill
414 South Front Street, Mankato, 507-388-776
4:30-7:30
Hosts: Shannon Fisher
RSVP Scott Kudelka at 507-389-2304 or scott.kudelka@mnsu.edu

Red Wing
Jimmy's Pub 5th Floor Summit Room St. James Hotel
5:30 - 7:30 p.m.
Host: Mike McKay and the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance

There's even a location in the Cities for my urban hipster readers who might find it ironic to attend:

Bloomington:
MN Valley National Wildlife Refuge Visitors Center
3815 American Blvd, Minneapolis, 952-854-5900
5:00-7:30
Hosts: Lori Nelson and Shelly Miller
Call Shelly at 952-881-9055

Here's a montage of clips from the documentary, which closes with former Gov. Arne Carlson saying, "It should teach the current array of policy leaders, cut all this negative nonsense out and learn to work together."

The Youtube:

Photo: via The Minnesota River Valley Scenic Byway.

Bleg: If you enjoyed this post, please consider throwing some coin in Bluestem Prairie's tip jar during its early June bleg-o-thon. To learn more, read Bluestem Prairie preservation drive: help keep a different prairie voice publishing.

Who asks question WDN's goat prairie chickens answer? NOM, group protecting marriage by sneaking around

Today's editorial at the Winona Daily News wonders who's raising the question about gay marriage that local legislators The Draz, Greg "I Hate Bike Parking" Davids and Jeremy Miller are too chicken to take responsibility for answering.

There has been a poll taken, asking the question, that the MNGOP legislators wave around. But the Minnesota Independent's intrepid blond greyhound Andy Birkey has been keeping an eye on that bird, as he reports in Details scant on marriage amendment poll touted by GOP.

In short, the WDN editorial board is spot on by questioning the question.

Writing for the board, editor Darrell Ehrlick begins in Lawmakers answering a question no one is asking:

Chicken. It’s not nice to call names, but what other word is there that describes it? Spineless? Pandering? Mean? Are those any better?

Reps. Steve Drazkowski, R-Mazeppa and Greg Davids, R-Preston, as well as Sen. Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, are chickens.

They’ve ducked any responsibility for terrible legislation and tried pinning it on the voters of Minnesota.

The issue: Writing an amendment into the Minnesota Constitution that would define marriage as only between a man and a woman.

In other words, a ban on gay marriage.

These weak Republican politicians have tried to convince constituents that they’re merely trying to let the voters decide the question.

But the voters weren’t asking for this question.

Where’s the outcry for the voters to decide this issue?

(Insert silence here.)

We’d suggest the only people clamoring to settle the gay-marriage issue are the fringe conservatives who would rather cloak their bigotry by self righteousness, making the bogus argument that two people marrying somehow threatens the institution marriage itself. . . .

Read the rest of the editorial, as feisty and fine as the WDN's editorials tend to be. No bland, voice-of-institutional-reason opinionating down on the Big River media in Winona.

So who are these fringe conservatives and how are they asking the question--and in such a way as to give cover to goat prairie chickens in the southeast corner of the state?

Birkey looked looked into it:

A recent poll finds that a majority of Minnesotans want to vote on whether to put an amendment to ban gay marriage in the Minnesota Constitution, but the groups touting the survey are remaining mum about the poll’s details. The data has been used by testifiers in committees in support of banning gay marriage, by Republicans at Capitol press conferences and by interest groups to the media. It was commissioned by the Minnesota Family Council and the National Organization for Marriage — two groups that oppose relationship rights for same-sex couples — and was conducted by Lawrence Research, whose president is a Mormon organizer who worked to pass Prop 8 in California.

Neither the Minnesota Family Council nor the National Organization for Marriage responded to requests by the Minnesota Independent to see the polling data, and Lawrence Research said it could not release polling data that was purchased by an outside group.

Lawrence Research is run by Gary Lawrence, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and the grassroots director of Project Marriage, a group that helped halt gay marriage in California’s contentious Prop 8 initiative campaign.

According to State of California records, Lawrence research was paid $528,877.35 from gay marriage opponents in 2007 and 2008.

Birkey cites other polls in Minnesota for which the details are available, with somewhat different results:

A Hubert H. Humphrey Institute poll in October of last year showed that 49 percent of Minnesotans opposed same-sex marriage compared to 41 percent who supported it. In that poll, 64 percent of Minnesotans said they would support civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. The poll shows most Minnesotans were opposed to gay marriage by 49-41 percent, but 64 percent of Minnesotans across the categories favor civil unions for same-sex couples, which grant many of the same rights as marriage.

A 2009 Star Tribune poll found that only 33 percent of Minnesotans wanted a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, 35 percent said leave it to the courts, and 25 percent backed legalizing same-sex marriage.

One older poll, from 2006, was in line with the NOM poll, Birkey writes, but other polls taken this year in other states are finding support for same-sex marriages or civil unions.

And that MFC/NOM poll didn't ask itself. Someone contributed money to NOM that helps it walk into a partnership with the Minnesota Family Council and ask the questions.

However, Minnesotans don't know who is supporting NOM in the manner to which it is accustomed, and Common Cause is on that, as Birkey reported in Complaint: Nat’l Organization for Marriage, Family Council violated lobbying laws.

Check it out about how they're sneaking around to avoid answering questions about who is paying the bills:

When the National Organization for Marriage and the Minnesota Family Council spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on ads promoting a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage and civil unions last fall, the groups should have reported those expenditures, according to a complaint filed with the Minnesota Campaign Finance and Public Disclosure Board earlier this month. The complaint, which focuses on ads launched throughout the 2010 campaign cycle in support of gubernatorial candidate Tom Emmer, asks for financial penalties as well as an audit of NOM’s spending in Minnesota.

The filing by Common Cause Minnesota alleges that the Minnesota Family Council — and in particular its lobbyist, Tom Prichard — failed to report lobbying expenses related to several ads. Since the ad urged the public and legislators to act on legislation, in this case a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, it constitutes lobbying, the group argues in the complaint. The ads in question include references to an actual bill, SF120, and were created and distributed in partnership with NOM. . . .

Read the whole thing at the Minnesota Independent. Who's asking the question? Who's paying for the polling?

 

 

Worthington Globe tells MNGOP legislative mall rats: big cities and small, we're one state

Yesterday, the editorial board of the Albert Tribune compared suburban Republican legislators to sucker plants pulling strength from the main trunk of a city; today the editors at the Worthington Globe decline to use any colorful and invidious comparison in their editorial, Keep metro LGA, too.

Their restraint doesn't restrict my own poetic license. From this distance, the Republican GOP caucus leadership, drawn mostly from the suburbs, are cavorting like a bunch of entitled suburban mall rats, playing out a teenage drama that doesn't do much for anyone but the players.

Enough. We're one state.

The Globe gets it right:

We’ve made no secret of our disdain for plans to reduce local government aid, asserting that LGA cuts would do severe harm to already-tight budgets in communities across the region.

This state aid, however, doesn’t just get spread out across Greater Minnesota, though there are apparently some state lawmakers who would like to see that change. New legislation being advanced by Republicans from the Minneapolis-St. Paul suburbs would do away with LGA for the Twin Cities and Duluth. But as far removed as life in our corner of the state may be from that in a metropolitan area, state aid is as vital there as it is here. . . .

Places with lower property values, thanks to LGA, receive money. while suburban locales with higher property values pay in. Should LGA again be cut substantially or disappear outright, the rich will get richer and the poor poorer — and Minnesota’s metro areas, so critical to the entire state, could suffer exponentially. . . .

For the good of all of Minnesota, let’s stop trying to balance the budget in a way that only exploits inequities at the ultimate expense of all of us.

Go read the whole editorial at the Globe. It's interesting that while Republican caucuses blather on during elections about "rural values," their leadership doesn't seem to get our basic values like fair play and unity. Resentment doesn't get you too far in a flood or blizzard--out here, most people learn to pull together and help each other out.

Photo: MNGOP leadership thinking pretzel thoughts. A little melty but damn are they exquisite.

Related posts: Legislative lamprey logic; or, farmers and editors in Albert Lea know suburbs are like sucker plants

A little learning will be an expensive thing: MNGOP budget cuts to drain the higher ed spring

The potential effects of drastic cuts in Minnesota Republican higher education funding bills are beginning to make news in Greater Minnesota. Particularly damaging to students and employers alike? Cuts to MNSCU institutions, including tech colleges.

Southeast Technical feels the sting

The Reg Wing Republican Eagle reports in State budget cuts mean fewer services at technical college:

Minnesota lawmakers voted to cut $300 million from college and university spending as they craft a state budget while plugging a $5 billion deficit.

Opponents of the Republican-written bill said that some campuses are threatened and up to 1,500 higher education workers could lose their jobs if the bill becomes law.

Jim Johnson, president of Minnesota State College-Southeast Technical, said because over 80 percent of the college's budget goes to staffing, the cuts would definitely mean laying off employees.

"We will be looking at less staff, doing some layoffs, looking at how we can do things more efficiently," he said.

Bills passing the House and Senate Tuesday set a $2.5 billion two-year budget for state-run colleges and universities. That is down from $2.8 billion in the current budget.

The technical college would have to shave off about $1 million from its budget this year and another $1 million next year, Johnson said. . . .

But the GOP legislators say they're not hurting students by cutting funding to the public colleges and universities:

Rep. Bud Nornes, R-Fergus Falls, said his higher education bill allows schools to make up a third of their lost money by raising tuitions.

However, both the House and Senate bills place a limit on how much colleges and universities may raise tuition, ranging from 2 percent to 5 percent.

Both bills increase funds for grants available to students attending public and private schools.

"We did preserve a lot for the students," Sen. Michelle Fischbach, R-Paynesville, said.

However, Johnson said the tuition cap puts the technical college, which has campuses in Red Wing and Winona, in a hard place. He said in the past, the college has been able to make up for cuts in state money by raising tuition. Because of the cap, that wouldn't be possible, and the college would have to cut services more.

"Whenever you're looking at downsizing, you like to have as much flexibility," Johnson said. He said the cap on tuition would really "hamstring" the college.

Rep. Tom Rukavina, DFL-Virginia, said the state budget cuts are the deepest he has seen to higher education.

The cuts come at a time when the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system serves 40,000 more students than a decade ago, with less state money than it received then. The University of Minnesota, with 12,000 more students, also would get less money than 10 years ago.. . .

The failing logic of the privatizers: "high aid, high tuition" = high debt, high barriers

The Republican logic follows the line of the "high-aid, high tuition" model that has not lived up to its promises.

Back in the day, Minnesota's public technical schools were known as vo-techs, and the post-secondary education they afforded to students was essentially free. That's because the guiding philosophy in those days was to fund the institution, making school as affordable as possible. While not free, going to school at what was known as Mankato State was a lot cheaper for my brother than my sister's classes at Gustavus were.

Of course, this sort of arrangement couldn't last. Enter one of the most boneheaded, longterm policy decisions ever: the introduction of "high aid, high tuition" for public post-secondary institutions. If these schools cost more, the logic want, they'd have to get better in order to "compete," and if the funding went to the students (ah, a little conservative voucher love), then the marketplace for education rather than government would make everything peachy, and the benefits of higher education would flower through the land.

Fat chance. While public institutions receive less of their money from the legislature, financial aid, other than loans, didn't increase, while student aid itself took on shades of "welfare." And so more roadblocks go up on access to higher education, one of the avenues to the middle class and cradles for American ingenuity.

Mankato presidents feel students' pain

In the Mankato Free Press, Minnesota State University-Mankato president Richard Davenport and South Central College president Keith Stover spell out more problems with the axe-murdering bills in No matter the enrollment, cuts hurt:

Because we have fewer faculty members and more students, our class sections are larger. This means that students who need personal attention must wait longer to see their professors. Some students won’t or can’t wait, reducing the quality of their education.

Because we have fewer faculty members, we are offering fewer sections of classes. This means students have fewer opportunities to get the courses they need to graduate, and some must delay graduation.

We have cut some academic programs, which gives current students fewer choices and turns some prospective students away from higher education. We have fewer student services staff members, which delays financial aid processing, advising and other needed services, as well as reduces the extracurricular activities and the life experiences that we can provide to students.

Over the last decade state support for higher education has consistently declined, shifting greater financial burden to students.

These impacts on students do not help the state to recover from the recession. Each student who can’t get personal attention is a future employee who’ll need more on-the-job training. Each student who must delay graduation is a person who doesn’t contribute to the economy this year. Each student who quits college is a potential loss to business and industry.

A lost generation on the prairie?

And in Marshall, Worthington and other towns served by Southwest Minnesota State University and the network of five small campuses that make up Minnesota West, the talk is of closing and consolidating campuses.

MPR's Tim Post reported in MnSCU studying potential for campus consolidation:

The Minnesota State Colleges and Universities system is studying the potential for consolidation and alignment among some of its schools in southwestern Minnesota.

MnSCU officials will hold a public forum Tuesday night at Southwest Minnesota State University in Marshall to get input from residents on the educational needs of the region.

MnSCU's spokeswoman Melinda Voss said the study corresponds with the retirement of Southwest State's president, along with the changing demographics in the region.

"We just really want to identify the key higher education programs and services that are needed by this region now and in the future and the most efficient way to deliver those things," Voss said.

The Marshall Independent reported in Study to determine regional higher ed needs:

"Some students need face time, but only a small percentage," [MNSCU consultant] Thompson said. "But some places have been trimmed down so much already that they're working with a skeleton crew. Some people might be wearing 10 hats already."

So as the population drain from the prairie continues, the cycle will speed up as opportunities for education and employment shrink.

Tim Pawlenty Memorial Berm: MNGOP legislative majorities hold back rising tides of higher ed

Year after year, the news from Minnesota isn't good. It's so bad after eight years of Pawlenty, that the Iowa Democratic Party issued a statement in advance of T-Paw's tiger-bloodless pandering to the Iowa College Republicans last week explaining the Pawlenty record that the current Republican Senate and House Caucus seem determined to top with their own anti-prosperity berms.

That record includes:

UNDER PAWLENTY, HIGHER EDUCATION IN MINNESOTA COST MORE BUT DELIVERED LESS

2008: “Students Are Leaving Minnesota Colleges With Record Debt,” With 2008 Minnesota Graduates Shouldering The Sixth-Highest Average Debt In The Nation. [Star Tribune, 12/1/09]

2008 Minnesota Office Of Higher Education Report: “Minnesotans Pay Twice As Much As The National Average To Get A Public College Education, But They’re Not Getting Double The Results.” [Star Tribune, 3/13/08]

• Star Tribune: “For A State Where High Schools Students Traditionally Fare Well On College Entrance Exams, That’s Disconcerting To Those In Charge Of Assessing The Quality Of Higher Education In Minnesota.” [Star Tribune, 3/13/08]
• Only 36.7 Percent Of College-Bound Students Graduate In Four Years And “Only Five Of The State’s 36 Four-Year Schools – Public Or Private – Had A Four Year Graduation Rate Of Better Than 70 Percent.” [Star Tribune, 3/13/08]
• Only 20 Percent Of Black College-Bound Students Graduate In Four Years And More Than Half Didn’t Graduate Within Six Years. [Star Tribune, 3/13/08]

AS A RESULT OF PAWLENTY’S CUTS TO HIGHER EDUCATION, TUITION HAS INCREASE BY 60 PERCENT

Minnesota 2020 Economic Policy Fellow: Under Pawlenty, “State General Fund Support For Higher Education Has Declined By $521 Million… As A Result, Tuition Has Risen By A 60 Percent Real-Dollar Average Across Minnesota’s Higher Education Institutions.” [Lee Egerstrom op-ed, Bemidji Pioneer, 10/24/10]

2010: Pawlenty Proposed Cutting $47 Million From Higher Education, But Said He Would Have Liked To Cut More – And Claimed “They Got Off Relatively Easy Here.” [Star Tribune, 2/16/10]

2009: Pawlenty’s “Hit To Higher Education [Was] Big” When He Unilaterally Cut Minnesota’s Higher Education Budget By $100 Million. [Star Tribune, 6/16/09]

• University Of Minnesota President Called Pawlenty’s Proposed Cuts “Savage And Severe.” [Minnesota Public Radio, 5/16/09]

Photo: Shuttered building. Will there be a closing of the Minnesota mind?

Lewis & Clark Rural Water: Franken steps up

Just over a month ago, Bluestem looked at how a freshman Republican state legislator was asking Minnesota's congressional delegation to go to bat for the Lewis & Congress Clark Rural Water Project.

It's the Republican paradox: hate earmarks, but love the local projects they fund. I can't fault Rep. Schomacher for supporting the project, however. Potable drinking water is a basic necessity.

Senator Franken is stepping up for Lewis & Clark--a worthwhile one regardless of GOP hypocrisy on its funding. The Sioux Falls Argus Leader reports in Franken seeks to boost pipeline: Water project will 'never get done' at this rate, senator says:

Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., whose state will benefit from the project along with South Dakota and Iowa, told Salazar he was disappointed that President Obama included only $493,000 in his 2012 budget plan for a water project that already has secured 99 percent of the money promised by state and local governments but only half of the $400 million Washington pledged.

"This budget proposal does virtually nothing to move this forward. At this rate, the project will literally never get done," Franken told Salazar during a hearing before the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. "I just do not believe that's fair to the communities that have put up their full share and are waiting for the federal government to pull its weight."

Lewis & Clark officials had hoped for at least $10 million, though even that would not be enough to keep the project on track for completion by the end of the decade. . . .

. . ."What are local communities to think if they hold up their end of the bargain on a water project or any other project, and they start to build it?" he said. "This feels like a waste of money if you start something and then it's not funded (because) the federal government doesn't hold up its end."

Read the entire article at the Argus.

Sarah Anderson: Civil War and the Safety Net

Sarah Anderson, who directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, grew up in nearby Litchfield, Minnesota, where her family members are respected business people and farmers. Litchfield is also home to the last remaining authentic Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) hall in Minnesota, one of the few anyway in the country.

In a recent column, Anderson's harkening  back to the 19th century origins of the American safety net is grounded a bit to the that past, in her great-grandfather's post-war experiences in Rhode Island and North Dakota .

Her commentary from the IPS's Other WordsProject, was published by the Sunday Winona Daily News:

With this year marking the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, get ready for grand pontificating on its meaning for whites, African-Americans, the nation, and the world.

Here's what it meant for my family.

My great-grandfather Albert Cordner was a private in the Union Army. In a pocket-size diary, he recorded battlefield experiences that were the stuff of movies.

"Commence the fight at daylight," he wrote on Sept. 17, 1862. "First we drove them and then they drove us. Then we drove them back again. The fight lasted all day."

The next day's entry: "No fighting today. We are burying the dead."

This was the battle of Antietam, the bloodiest day in U.S. history, with 23,000 casualties.

Few movies have bothered to explore what happened to Civil War soldiers after the South surrendered.

Looking at great-grandfather Albert's experience, I'm struck by the efforts of a young nation, ravaged by war, to invent new ways of creating economic opportunities and protections-at least for one segment of its citizens.

As today's deficit hawks push for massive spending cuts, it's revealing to look back at these early experiments with social safety nets.

After three years at the front, Albert mustered out with all of his limbs still attached. He was one of the lucky ones. One out of every three men who served in his unit wound up dead, wounded or missing.

Back in Rhode Island, Albert got a job as a mail carrier on a route from Westerly to Newport. During the war, President Abraham Lincoln had introduced free postal delivery service in a few areas. In peacetime, the government expanded the service, in part as a way to create jobs for former soldiers.

Some years later, Albert set out for new adventures as a homesteader in Dakota Territory. The Homestead Act required that applicants spend five years on a plot of land before they could claim ownership. As a Union Army veteran, Albert could deduct his time served from the residency mandate.

Homesteading was no picnic for this East Coast city slicker.

"Mr. Cordner has been unfortunate in grain raising," the Bismarck Tribune reported in 1890. "His crops have been hurt by hail twice since he located here and one fall he lost his barn and several head of stock and some farm machinery by fire."

In these rough times, Albert got another leg up from the government. According to his pension records, which my nephew and I found at the National Archives, his payments began in 1890. They started at $6 per month and rose to $24 in 1906, which would be $566 in today's dollars. After he died, the pension passed to his widow.

The Civil War pension system was a precursor to Social Security, at one point accounting for 37 percent of federal expenditures.

It's important not to paint too rosy a picture of these benefits programs. Some historians note that the pension system was biased against African Americans. At 160 acres, Homestead plots were so small that it was tough to make a decent living off farming them. Far too many veterans lived out their post-war lives in grinding poverty.

And yet, we should reflect on how these modest benefits from long ago may still be paying off. My great-grandparents had received good public educations in Rhode Island and probably would have been fine without these perks. But the public jobs and land giveaway programs certainly expanded their horizons-and their children's.

Albert's son followed his path into the postal service and became the North Dakota postmaster. The security of that post helped insulate the next generation from the Great Depression. It paid for my mother's advanced education, which she used to teach children, including her own.

So thank you, 19th-century legislators, for making those early steps toward building a nation that cares for its citizens. Let's hope we aren't about to take a massive slide backwards.

Photo: Albert Cordner. Photo and column via Other Words.

Confluence: why the mayor of Minneapolis was a voice in Montevideo

What would bring a big-city mayor out to a small Minnesota River Valley town on a Saturday night in February?

What that prairie river signifies, meandering across the state from Big Stone Lake on the western border with South Dakota to its confluence near Fort Snelling south of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Minneapolis Mayor Rybak was a Clean Up the River Environment (CURE) Annual Meeting speaker on February 12 in Montevideo.

A bad cold kept me home; fortunately, John G. White, editor of the Clara City Herald, and Tom Cherveny, a staff writer for the West Central Tribune, cover the event, which drew around 300 people from across the region.

Cherveny reports in R.T. Rybak endorses local foods, clean water economy:

Those promoting a local foods and sustainable, agricultural economy as the way to clean water and a healthy landscape in the Upper Minnesota River Valley have a partner in the urban center of Minneapolis.

“We are part of two, big grassroots efforts that are about to meet in the center,’’ Mayor R. T. Rybak told a crowd of nearly 300 at the annual meeting for Clean Up our River Environment in Montevideo on Feb. 12.

Rybank [sic] applauded the efforts taking place in rural Minnesota. “The land is a mirror. It reflects back the values of those who love on top of it,’’ he said, adding: “I have to say that the land that you live on looks back and smiles, you do wonderful things but you have to keep up the work.’’

He pointed to efforts in Minneapolis as well to promote a local foods economy. He cited examples ranging from “Home Grown Minneapolis’’ which teaches young people how to raise and prepare their own foods to school lunch programs that feature foods from Minnesota farms.

Rybak said Minnesota needs to “reconnect’’ and redevelop the farm-to-town markets that existed when the state was first settled.

Go read the WCT article. In the article first published in the Clara City paper, White notes that Rybak and his wife, local food activist Megan O'Hara, sat with small town mayors:

He was seated at the “mayor’s table” with the mayors of Montevideo, Granite Falls, Watson and Belle Plaine, along with his wife, Megan, the Minneapolis mayor told a guest, “If we were back in Minneapolis at an event like this people would have been gone after two hours. This is just so comfortable.”

Two documentary filmmakers were the keynote speakers:

Keynoting the event were John Hickman and Jon Carlson, who are collaborating on  a documentary of “Working Together for the Minnesota River.” The two spoke of their challenges and successes in putting together the film and interviews that is scheduled to run as a series on Ron Schara’s Minnesota Bound in March and April.

That should be worth watching. CURE is a deeply social-and-legacy media savvy organization that gets it about statewide collaboration, as Bluestem noted in a post late last year, Montevideo's CURE wins $25,000 Bush Foundation collaboration grant.

One of the standard tropes inflicted upon rural voters by social conservatives is that somehow "rural values" exist in a Pale surrounding the Twin Cities; usually, these "rural' values seem to center on being afraid of someone else, and using that fear to punish.

CURE and other groups learning the lesson of the Minnesota River Valley can teach us all that maybe our economic and moral values are much more alike in terms of the future we can seek together, and that geography unites us--and a very pretty river runs through it.

Photos: Megan, Grace and RT Rybak meet some cattle on Prairie Horizons Farms (above); CURE's storefront in Montevideo (below).

An appreciation: Senator Gary Kubly

Back in 1998, the "hog wars" were raging in Renville County, pitting neighbor against neighbor over stench and related problems generated by a large CAFO built by local farmers. For my first freelance contract since moving back to Minnesota a couple years before, an old college pal then editing the St. Paul legal Ledger assigned me a series of articles about rural politics; the House race in the old 15B seat was at the center over the struggle.

First-term legislator Gary Kubly faced a challenger more aligned with the interests of " Big Pig." I drove out to fragrant Renville County to interview both candidates; much of the interview with Kubly was conducted while he doorknocked a Granite Falls neighborhood. Friendly home turf for the genial Lutheran pastor: his subtle sense of humor emerged more as we strolled through the Minnesota River Valley town.

I came away impressed with Kubly and his wife Pat, the best sort of pastor's wife, a woman with her own wits about her. Kubly seemed a great fit for the district--having done a lot of work for what were then three major Lutheran denominations  during the farm crisis of the 1980s--and the citizens agreed that fall. They continued to agree, electing Kubly through re-districting in 2002 and elevating him to the Senate. He's consistently won by large margins for a rural Democrat, in part because of his relentless door knocking.

Our paths would cross in farm and Democratic politics over the years. In 2006, I witnessed one of those moments of political courage that seemed straight out of a movie when, at a local convention, Kubly explained how he could no longer support measures like a marriage amendment because of the hate-filled politics he had seen during the past session. In his quietly passionate remarks to the delegates, he anticipated a lot of opposition from the somewhat socially conservative rural Democrats; what he got was rousing applause.

I last saw Gary and Pat at the MFU Convention in November, and congratulated Gary for returning to the Senate in a bad year for Democrats. 

Thus, I was saddened to read Sen. Gary Kubly diagnosed with ALS; remains focused on legislative duties, in the West Central Tribune, an article which captures Kubly's personality and commitment to public service pretty well. Longtime reporter Tom Cherveny reports:

Trying to solve the state’s massive budget deficit, and meeting the needs of his constituents are the challenges that remain front and center in the mind of State Sen. Gary Kubly, DFL-Granite Falls. He’s not going to let a recent diagnosis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis keep him from doing his job. “I can’t just sit around here feeling sorry for myself,’’ said Kubly, 67.

Known also as Lou Gehrig’s disease, ALS is a neurological disease that causes muscles to weaken and eventually leads to paralysis and death.

Kubly was diagnosed Dec. 9. He believes the disease was caught early, he said. The progression can be fatal in as little as two to three years after diagnosis, according to the Mayo Clinic.

. . .He jokingly refers to the walking cane he uses now as “Citizen Cane,’’ and he keeps a sense of humor about his own trials with the disease.

Its effects were showing themselves as tired legs as he campaigned in his large, sprawling district in western Minnesota last summer. “People look at you kind of funny if you sit on the curb,’’ he said, laughing. . . .

Read the whole thing at the Tribune.

On Tuesday, I drove home through a large portion of Kubly's sprawling district, which is also served by DFLers in the House. Everywhere the prairie was awakening in a January thaw worthy of Aldo Leopoldo, the relief after bitterly cold days.

I tuned the radio, skipping across stations from South Dakota until I found something more local. The news came on, and Gary's diagnosis was faithfully read by the announcer.  Traveling across his district just then, I couldn't quite muster Kubly's stoicism, but I kept driving as I blinked away the rising sadness just then.

Montevideo's CURE wins $25,000 Bush Foundation collaboration grant

Montevideo is a lovely, vital small town on the Minnesota River, northwest of the bend at Mankato. Though remote from the Twin Cities, the town is home to people with progressive ideas about food and conservation. It's home to the Western Minnesota office of the Land Stewardship Project and some great sustainable farmers.

It's also home to Clean Up the River Environment, which was founded in 1992 to "restore, celebrate and protect the Upper Minnesota River Watershed." The group, which has over 500 members, has done great work to clean up the Minnesota, as well as organizing to promote clean energy--leading the way for citizens with questions about the need for the now-stalled Big Stone II coal-fired power plant.

Via the West Central Tribune, I learned that CURE's Friendship tour wins statewide contest with $25,000 prize:

A project designed to foster friendly relationships between up-streamers in the Minnesota River Watershed with down-streamers from the Mississippi River and Lake Pepin area has received the most votes in a statewide on-line contest to promote collaboration. . . .

. . .CURE worked with the Lake Pepin Legacy Alliance, based in Red Wing and the Minnesota Ag Water Resources Coalition (a statewide coalition of agricultural organizations), the Minnesota River Board, the Minnesota River Watershed Alliance and the Cannon River Watershed Partnership to sponsor the tours in August and September of 2010.

CURE organizes tours on an ongoing basis, though less hardy Twin Citians may wish to wait until spring to come out and see what people working together can do for better food and a cleaner environment along what should be a pretty prairie river:

Contact CURE to arrange your personal guide service to the region's environmental and cultural assets. For a fee, we can arrange tours of the area's:

• Rivers
• Wildlife Refuges
• Prairies
• Rock Outcrops
• Cemeteries
• Art Studios

More on the story from the MonteNews. And there's even a CURE Facebook page for readers to like.

2012: How should Minnesota remember the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862?

In August, I served as a guide for Twin Cities freelance journalist and theater artist Sheila Regan in a tour of sites related to the U.S. -Dakota War of 1862.

The three-part series is a fascinating read over at the Twin Cities Daily Planet. As a partner of the TCDP, I'm posting one of the articles today, and links to the other articles are below.

By Sheila Regan, TC Daily Planet

September 16, 2010

In 1987, on the 125th anniversary of the execution of the Dakota warriors who were hanged at the end of the war, Minnesota's Governor Rudy Perpich declared a Year of Reconciliation.  A statue, called Winter Warrior was created at the site of the execution, and the remains of the executed men were returned from museums to the Dakota for proper burial. 

[As the sesquicentennial of the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862 approaches, our series addresses the ongoing "war" about the accuracy of historical description, about the naming of events, and about the relation of peoples and history in Minnesota in the 21st century -- and about the remembrance and commemoration of the historical events of 1862.  The series:

Forest City to Fort Snelling: The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862
Trail of treaties: The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862
Telling the story today: The U.S.-Dakota War of 1862]

 

Naming events and places is a powerful part of history-making, and today's battles center over both naming and telling the story.

Many historians and activists insist that Fort Snelling was, in fact, a concentration camp for the 1600 Dakotas interned there after the U.S.-Dakota War of 1862. Those interned in the camp were women, children and old men, not combatants. Hundreds died as a result of the cold and abuses, and those who lived were removed from Minnesota in the spring.

The Minnesota Historical Society, which has a historical interpretive center at Fort Snelling, doesn't call it a concentration camp and doesn't mention the concentration camp on their website's Brief History Page.  However, the Visitor Center at Fort Snelling State Park, which is run by the Department of Natural Resources, does have a memorial for the Dakota who were held at the camp and uses the term "concentration camp." 

In Native Roots: How the Indians Enriched America, Jack Weatherford writes about a picture from the 1862-3 encampment at Fort Snelling:

The tepees seem so traditional, yet the identical appearance of the tepees, neatly arranged with an enclosure, offers a strange glimpse of a form that was to haunt the twentieth century.  The pictures show us the birth of an institution, the beginning of a whole new social practice of concentrating innocent civilians into an area and imprisoning them for protracted periods without charging them with any crime.

 Mankato State University's Minnesota history website also describes Fort Snelling as a concentration camp:

The remaining Dakota surrendered. Sibley's force rounded up 1700 Dakota women, children, and elders and began a forced march from the Lower Sioux Agency to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. They walked 20 miles a day. Along the way they were subjected to physical and verbal violence by local white people. New Ulm residents poured hot, scalding water over their heads. Many were killed or died from hunger and sickness. ...

The remaining Dakota prisoners were treated with brutality. Soldiers held prisoners at Fort Snelling through the winter. The soldiers treated them brutally, violating the women and then killing them. Many people died from disease because of the crowded conditions. Others committed suicide because of the horrors they saw there. Some days soldiers buried as many as 50 people in a mass grave.

The Lower Sioux Agency historical site, which is run by the Minnesota Historical Society, also does not use the term "concentration camp." Instead, the term "prison camp" is used.   The problem with "prison camp," is that it implies that the inhabitants of the camp were criminals, which they were not. 

At the Lower Sioux Agency Historical Site, which is run by the Lower Sioux Community with funding from Minnesota Historical Society, Anthony Morse provided documentation for changes that were made on the historical markers inside the visitors' center.  The changes were made, he said, in 2000. 

The documents indicate historical information that used to be shown at the site and which now has been removed.  For example, there was information about Major Lawrence Taliaferro, an Indian Agent at Fort Snelling.  Previous signage spoke of Taliaferro's "sincere interest in the welfare of the Dakota and Chippewa," who "came to respect his truthfulness."  The marker read:  "His efforts went far to keep peace on the Minnesota frontier for many years." 

Another marker, about Fort Ridgley, formerly titled "Big Guns Hold the Fort," then was changed to "The Door to the Valley." 

Prairie Rambles: visiting 1862 U.S.-Dakota War sites

On Sunday, Twin Cities Daily Planet reporter Sheila Regan was my guest for a tour of places associated with the 1862 U.S. Dakota War. Regan had not traveled before to the upper Minnesota River Valley where many of the significant actions of the conflict took place, as her coverage of indigenous people's issues for the Twin Cities Daily Planet, The Circle and other publications focused on the Twin Cities.

Though the day was sweltering and part of our travels took us down dust-choked gravel road, the beauty of the wide valley impressed Sheila after driving miles through Meeker County's rolling hills and Renville County's flat farmland.

Not that either county was just drive-through. Leaving Hutchinson, we stopped at the marker near where Thaóyate Dúta (Little Crow) was murdered in 1863. The commemorative plaque on the side of Meeker County 18 used the name "Little Crow," while a red wooden stake stake near it honored the Dakota leader with his name in his own language.

The contrast underscores the tensions surrounding the story Regan is researching for the TCDP, described in Spot.us:

2012 marks the 150th Anniversary of the U.S.- Dakota war of 1862. The war ended with the largest one-day execution in American history, where 38 Dakota warriors were hanged on December 26, 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota. Some 1,700 Dakota women, children, and elders were forcibly marched to a concentration camp at Fort Snelling. 

Many American Indian advocates hope to bring attention to what happened, although there is disagreement about the best way to honor this dark history.

Some American Indians focus on the need for better American Indian representation both in cultural institutions such as the Minnesota Historical Society and in school curricula. Others call for the razing of Fort Snelling, which to them symbolizes the genocide of the Dakota people. 

I propose to write a story about the ramifications of the Dakota war for Minnesota today, and on the events and actions that will lead up to and mark the 2012 anniversary.

Spot.us is a tool for funding projects by freelance journalists like Regan who take on more extensive projects. Please consider visiting the Spot.us page set up for Sheila's project, and contributing what you can to help her with the expenses for the story.

The trip wasn't all business, though. As we tooled eastward on Renville County 15, I ordered Sheila to stop and back up, for there was a stand of ripe wild thicket plums beside the road.

While we grabbed a bag to put them in, we may have eaten more warm, ripe plums on the spot, the slight wild sour bite in each fruit surprising the palate inside the more familiar domestic plum sweetness.

When we reached the Lower Agency, the supervisor for the historical site noted that elders in the nearby community had observed that wild plum were now less abundant, given the use of farm chemicals.

I'll be dreaming about that sweet and biting memory of warm fruit on a northern slope for awhile, I think.

Photos: Roadside marker, photo by Sally Jo Sorensen (above); Wild Plums, photo by Sheila Regan (below).

Note: Bluestem Prairie is a Contributing Blog for the Daily Planet; we exchange articles at no cost to either venue under this agreement.

Birds of passage: prairie rivers and sloughs, Deepwater, and winter habitat

I write in a studio with a south-facing window, four blocks north of the Gopher Campfire Wildlife Sanctuary on the Crow River in Hutchinson. This morning, the usual suspects took wing: a few bachelor mallards, Canada geese and herons. American White Pelicans soared, riding the thermals. The squeaky-pump calls of yellow-headed blackbirds flow from a nearby storm-water pond.

Their presence is a counterpoint to the images coming out of the Gulf of Mexico, where tarballs and oil  from the Deepwater Horizon disaster have reached the beaches and marshes of Louisiana.

This spells trouble for the migratory birds that now grace the skies in my neighborhood. The Christmas Bird Count range map from the USGS's Patuxent Bird Identification Infocenter above illustrates the places where the pelicans winter. They're not the only birds who will be heading to Louisiana this winter.

News accounts now say that the leak itself may continue until August, and the cleanup many months after. How will that effect Minnesota's migratory birds?

It doesn't look good for them.

PRI's The World discussed the potential effects of the spill on migratory birds wintering or passing through the ruined habitat in the Impact of Gulf oil spill on migratory birds:

MARCO WERMAN:  Even if you live far from the Gulf coast, you may eventually see the effects of the oil spill in your own backyard.  That’s because millions of migratory birds pass through the spill area on their way to nesting grounds across North America.  Some of those birds could be sickened on their annual journey.  The World’s environment editor, Peter Thomson spoke to a conservationist about that concern and filed this report.

PETER THOMSON:  Imagine you’re a gray cheeked thrush, you weight about one ounce, you’ve flown 3,000 miles from your wintering grounds in Brazil on your way to Northern Canada.  You’re tired and hungry.  You settle into a patch of coastal Louisiana to rest and eat.  Say it’s the spring of 2011, a year after the Deep Water Horizon blow out and the gloppy brown oil from the wrecked off shore rig has been scooped off the beaches.  Everything here looks like it always did before the spill, but there’s still a problem.

MIKE PARR:  Oil, it has the capacity to soak into marshy areas and be held there and released slowly over a really long period of time.

THOMSON: That’s Mike Parr, Vice President of the American Bird Conservancy, which advocates for protection of birds and their habitats.  He says oil’s tenacity means that even long after the obvious effects of a spill are gone, oil can linger in coastal environments and work its way into the food chain.  Eating contaminated food might not kill the birds outright, like direct contact with the oil might, but it can have what are called “sub lethal” effects.

PARR: All those types of things can affect breeding success.  It starts to have effect on the liver, the GI tract, and on vision and obviously that’s going to make it difficult for birds to forage and probably difficult for them to feed their chicks effectively. . . .

How bad is it?

 At its annual meeting last week, the board of directors of Ducks Unlimited unanimously passed a resolution stressing the group's commitment to restoring wetlands along the Gulf Coast. In a video on the DU site, Dr. Tom Moorman, director of conservation planning for  the Southern Region calls the coastal Lousiana "the most important wintering area for waterfowl on the continent of North America."

As many birders know,the habitat preservation efforts groups like Ducks Unlimited doesn't simply help game species, but other wildlife as well.

 The National Audubon Society has created a Gulf Oil Spill media page, Oil Spill Impact and Response Expanding. While its focus is on the immediate effects of the spill on species now nesting on the coast, the implications this winter for the birds I see now in Minnesota is sobering.

The environmental impact of what is now reckoned as the largest oil spill in U. S. history continues to unfold. Oil is now being seen from Louisiana to Mississippi, and there are fears that the loop current will carry it up the Atlantic Coast. Read more

 Audubon staff are seeing increasing numbers of oiled birds, and fears of long term effects on birds, marine life and Gulf coast communities are mounting. Audubon has urged speedy Congressional authorization of emergency funding to address the unfolding crisi.s Read statement

. . .Audubon has joined with other conservation leaders in calling for the Administration to exercise more direct oversight of public safety protection, environmental monitoring, and environmental testing in response to the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. Read letter

It's rare for me to look into a research subject and find that I can look no more into the truths that inquiry discloses.

I'm going to do some birding now.

Images: Christmas Bird County locations of American White Pelicans (above); Pelicans in flight (below).

Cinco de Mayo class act: Drazkowski unveils MN version of "The Arizona Immigration Act"

  An email being circulated to state legislators was passed along to me:

Rep. Drazkowski has a bill to "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act".  The Arizona Immigration Act.

The bill will be outside of Room 247 until 11:30 AM today and Rep. Drazkowski will have it available on the floor today.

Cyndee Fields
Legislative Assistant to:
    Rep. Randy Demmer (29A)
    Rep. Steve Drazkowski (28B)
    Rep. Tim Kelly (28A)

Now, Cinco de Mayo, commemorating the Mexican victory over the French in the Battle of Pueblo, isn't a major holiday in Mexico, but in the United States, it is a celebration of Mexican culture.  Is the timing intended to stir the pot?

News sources indicated that Drazkowski, whose wife is an immigrant from Canada, had planned to introduce the legislation. Yesterday, the City Pages blotter reported Drazkowski defends Arizona-style immigration bill:

"I have reviewed the Arizona law and am in the process of drafting a parallel bill," he confirms. "The Democrats won't let us pass it, but we'll get some discussion started on it, and then after the elections, I expect we'll have a legislature that will be ready to pass it."

Extrapolating from a 2005 study by the state's Office of Strategic Planning and Results Management, Drazkowski claims that undocumented immigrants are costing taxpayers a quarter of a billion dollars a year in state services. . .

. . .Drazkowski realizes this probably isn't going to win any Hispanic converts to the GOP, but he's not worried about folding up the big tent.

"This isn't about politics," he says. "Sure, there are some open-border constituencies out there and they are tied to the Democrat Party, but then there are those of us who just want to bring safety to families. We've got really got widespread support on this."

Will there be a robust public debate on this bill? A recent U of M study, commissioned by the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce, Minnesota Agri-Growth Council, Minnesota Nursery and Landscape Association, Minnesota Milk Producers Association and Hospitality Minnesota supports comprehensive immigration reform, while inventorying study after study that contradicts the 2005 Pawlenty report Draz references, which looked only at short-term costs.

Indeed, the researchers concluded:

In fact, the question that the state of Minnesota and the nation should be addressing is what will be done if economic conditions and harsh immigration policies further reduce the number of foreign-born workers. As a number of researchers have demonstrated, the potential consequences are dire indeed.

The report is worth the read. Another answer is found in this Indymedia Youtube:

A case for transparency, bonding and earmarks: waiting for a slow train in Sibley County

The Mankato Free Press reported on Monday that South Central Minnesota didn't so well in the bonding bill, as local projects met with Governor Pawlenty's veto pen. One project remained:

The only area project left in the bill was $5 million for an improvement to the Minnesota Valley Regional Railroad between Gaylord and Winthrop.

Yesterday, on my way down to Henderson to cover the flooding Minnesota River, my path crossed the tracks. A train happened to be coming down the tracks and I shot a short video with my phone while I waited:

That's the usual speed for the train in that area, since the tracks are in such bad shape; this stretch is a bit east of Gaylord, but it gives readers a fair idea of why the project was let through by Governor No. The rail authority also submitted an earmark proposal through Congressman Walz's office. The proposal can be read here. It notes that trains can only travel at 7-10 mph in this stretch, which is included in the earmark proposal.

No word yet if this is one of the earmarks Walz will be requesting.

Improving the tracks on the shortline railroad will help farmer co-operatives, the Winthrop ethanol plant and other area businesses haul material out of the rich and productive farmland.

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.