Bluestem Prairie

Congratulations, Senator Franken

Minnesota's long senatorial slumber is over, with the State Supreme Court ruling unanimously that:

. . .we affirm the decision of the trial court that Al Franken received the highest number of votes legally cast and is entitled under Minn. Stat. § 204C.40 (2008) to receive the certificate of election as United States Senator from the State of Minnesota. Affirmed

Governor Pawlenty, sign that certificate. It's time that Senator Franken, his marvelous state director Alana Petersen (one half of rural Minnesota's nicest power couple), and others to be named get to work.  I'm on hold with the Governor's office waiting to share my opinion: sign the certificate. Contact him yourself.

Senator Klobuchar and her staff, and the staff in congressional offices have for too long been burdened with the added workload brought on by the senate vacancy. For the sake of fairness and the citizens of Minnesota, do the right thing.

Update: Loyal readers know that Bluestem Prairie originally focused just on the First Congressional District, where the editor was born and where the site takes its avatar (the editor's ancestor's cabin in Mankato's Sibley Park). And though BSP has expanded to cover all of the agricultural part of Greater Minnesota, Congressman Walz is still our favorite House member.  His statement on the affirmation of Al Franken's election is below the fold.

Greater Minnesota health care activists and labor members take on Washington

by Laura Askelin

Over the years, I’ve watched as union members sacrifice wage increases in order to maintain health care coverage. The major issue emerges in every union contract negotiation.

And now that I’m a new employer I’ve experienced the health care crisis from the other side of the negotiating table. As President, one of my duties was to secure health care for the Labor Council staff. I know there are many responsible employers like me that want to provide quality health care benefits. But as health care costs keep increasing, employers will be forced to provide less and less.

Working families are in danger of losing health coverage because of these out-of-control costs. Right now, we are at the mercy of the private insurance companies. That’s why it is so important to provide a public option.

So, on June 24th and 25th, I joined more than 10,000 citizens from across the country for "Health Care 09 - We Can’t Wait," in Washington D.C. Sponsored by Health Care for America Now, the two day event included an interfaith service, candle light vigil, town hall meetings, Congressional meetings and the largest health care rally in the country.

The interfaith service was held in Freedom Plaza, just a few blocks from the White House and within eyeshot of the capitol. I listened to religious leaders from a variety of faiths offer prayers for health care. Speaker after speaker shared their health care stories, including a representative from the Red Lake Nation in Minnesota.

The night ended with a candle light vigil and a sense of urgency. We need to fix our health care system now. It cannot wait.

The next morning a delegation of over 70 Minnesotans met with members of the Minnesota congressional delegation, including U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar, to stress the need for a comprehensive, affordable plan that covers everyone. I was joined by union brothers and sisters from SEIU, MNA, BCTGM & CWA to offer our views of the healthcare system as union members.

Small business owners, nurses, doctors, Mayo Clinic employees, Native Americans, and faith leaders joined us as we called on our leaders to support legislation that gives the option of a public health insurance plan

Congressman Tim Walz and Congressman Keith Ellison restated their commitment to a public plan. Both Walz and Ellison told us that they would settle for nothing less. Although neither Senator Klobuchar nor Congressman Peterson were willing to commit to a public option without seeing the details of a bill, both are keeping an open mind.

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.

Outposts from the Small of America: June clouds

by Tom Driscoll

Growing season. The year of yellow flowers. Yellow flowers everywhere. Crazy like Van Gogh spattered all over variegated greens along the river running muddy’s chocolate milk with soil. It’s all this rain. Makes yellow flowers flame. Greens up the beans.

Must be a thousand cobalt butterflies anchored in a cranberry sea of eagle scat. Dog noses by. Butterflies fritter away like stars at dawn. Sky screams blue. No-wait. There’s a cloud in the corner. The corn grows some. Another yellow flower opens. Here comes another cloud, round-bellied like an invading spacecraft. Greens moan as more-and-more clouds chisel precipitous shadows across hardwood and cedared bluffsides. Soon, there’s a cloud for every yellow flower. There’s a cool pizzle. Growing season, like a hungry cat, mews for more rain.

* * *
According to the LA Times, some 40 swing district Democrats in the House of Representatives risk angering conservative constituents if they dare to support “a pathway to citizenship” for roughly 12-million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S..

This despite the 21st Century rain-dance being performed by farmers, food-processors, meat-packers, manufacturers, contractors. Indeed, entire rural communities all around the Midwest have bought-into a compulsory economic growth model, the rain-dance that shifts the risk of drought onto temporary, low-wage, uninsured immigrant workers.

Don’t let terms like "Undocumented Alien" vex you, for it is neither Christian nor humane to even consider the possibility that immigrants you’ve invited to live 15-or-30 to a 3-bedroom, 1-bathroom house across the tracks may be technically – “finger quotes” – illegals. The poor after all take all the risk. And it’s growing season. And need the rain.

When the North Star turkey plant burned in St. Charles, MN last April, something like 200-temporary workers were left jobless. The exact number is fuzzy because the actual employers, Masterson Personnel and Global Employment of Rochester, have been fuzzy about providing the exact numbers. But a month after the fire, Workforce Development in Winona confirmed that none of the temporary workers had filed for unemployment benefits.

Since when does the rain take the risk?

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

Did state House Republicans lose sight of Greater Minnesota?

Photo: Randy Demmer

Update June 28: Looks like Zellers suddenly got a little sensitive about the sensibilities of rural Minnesotans, according to Tom Scheck at Polinaut.

We will be commenting in a new post  in a bit. [end update].

Earlier this week, Maple Grove's Kurt Zellers defeated Hayfield's Randy Demmer in the contest to replace Marty Seifert as the MInnesota House Minority Leader. I was hoping that Representative Demmer would get the job--though we disagree, I do respect his knowledge of agriculture and contemporary rural life.

Smart Politics noted that the suburban Zellers is the most politically vulnerable GOP caucus leader slected by its members in years. At the newly invigorated I Don't Hate America, D.J. Danielson examined the enormous costs of Zellers' 2008 win to the GOP and its allies.

Both posts are great reads, the sort of analysis Bluestem would like to read more frequently on Minnesota blogs.

Residents of Greater Minnesota--like me--might ask two questions of the changing of the guard in a Republicn caucus that hangs on to relevance by the slightest of margins.

First, How much money will Zellers have to raise as House Minority leader to defend his own seat? Just as former Senate Majority Leader Dean Johnson's  seat in a central Minnesota swing district made an attractive target for the Republicans, so Zellers' equally risky west suburban district might draw the attention of Minnesota's House DFLers, eager for a high profile "kill" on the path to a veto-proof majority. 

Danielson points out that the GOP was forced to spend a lot to hold a seat the DFL passed on when doling out campaign cash:

Campaign finance reports show the House Republican Campaign Committee (a group which Zellers now leads) spending a whopping $41,305.50 on independent expenditures in favor of Rep. Zellers in 2008.  It doesn’t end there:  the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Leadership Fund spent $18,296.88 and the Republican Party of Minnesota dropped $11,772.01.  The Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life PAC threw in $716.47 for good measure.. . . .

In the 2008 campaign, the Minnesota Chamber of Commerce Leadership Fund spent $11,558.16 against Zellers’s DFL opponent Lee Carlson.

This adds up to a very significant figure of $83,648.52 spent by outside groups either in support of Zellers’s campaign or against his opponent’s.  For context, the House DFL Caucus, Conservation Minnesota, and Education Minnesota combined to spend $6,856.61 for Carlson and against Zellers.

Zellers would go on to win the 2008 race by 6.29 percent. . . .

Second,the Republican Party has made much of the fact that both the state house speaker and senate majority leader come from Minneapolis--we who live in rural Minnesota hear about this a great deal from Republicans.

However, the House Majority Leader is from the Range, while Tarryl Clark, the assistant majority leader in the Senate, hails from St. Cloud in Greater Minnesota.

The House Republicans, however, now draw both their top two leaders (Zellers and Steve Smith, Mound) from Minnesota's Third Congressional District and suburban Hennepin County.

Draw your own conclusion just how often the old rhetoric of urban DFL versus rural Republicans will be thrown at those of us who live in Greater Minnesota in the next session. Will the Twin Cities media even notice, or just dumbly repeat a political rhetoric made obsolete several cycles ago?

Coming up this weekend on the Bluestem Prairie: SE MN Labor Council President Laura Askelin on the DC Health Care rally, and a close look at Representative Laura Brod's campaign style from a the DFLer who knows it best.

Photo: Randy Demmer, not the Minnesota House Minority Leader.

Southeast Minnesota rank and file union members talk health care reform

It's easy to find talking points for and against reforming America's health care system. Bluestem Prairie wanted to know what personal stories motivate working people in Southern Minnesota to demand health care reform, so I asked organizer Liz McLoone to gather stories for BSP at last night's member meeting.

We'll have a follow-up post later (probably tomorrow) about the rally this week in Washington DC, written by SE MN Labor Council President Laura Askelin, who experienced the joys of modern American travel on her way home.

Her story will focus on the political action in Washington. The union members' words themselves illustrate the tens of thousands of similar stories that drive Americans to ask for something better. And while I might spend a couple of hours pieces together more conventional reportage about last night's meeting, the passages speak for themselves.

“Last year, June 8th, I suffered a heart attack. I was fortunate because it was a relatively small one. But before it was all said and some I had racked up a bill in excess of $50,000. My insurance company covered most for the bill, but now I am extremely concerned about obtaining any insurance coverage, should I leave my current position, due to my pre-existing heart condition.”

Lloyd-AFSCME union member
Rochester

“My brother-in-law was uninsured and in a car accident. He rolled his truck during the winter and was taken to the closest hospital. They checked him out but didn't take x-rays or do other more expensive tests because he was not covered. They sent him home that night. He was in extreme pain and ended up at the public hospital in town. Upon further look he had in fact broken his neck! Had he moved the wrong way after he was sent home from the first hospital he would have died. We need coverage for all!”

Katie-Steelworkers union member
Rochester

“My brother-in-law worked for a school. For 20 years he had great health care insurance. Then they raised my sisters health insurance portion so high, they kept his but my sister had to drop hers. She is now 62 years old with no insurance. People should not be priced out of healthcare.”

Shell-SEIU Health Care MN union member
Byron

Beating their pruning hooks into spears: combine demolition derbies

While most Americans know the passage from Isaiah about men of war forging their weapons into the implements of peace, fewer people know that the opposite formula is also found in the Good Book.

Joel 3:10 reverses the formula, and throughout rural Minnesota, old farm combines are being crafted into engines of destruction for upcoming county fairs. The drivers are studying war, or at least aggressive driving.

I first saw a combine demo derby in sylvan New Auburn, Minnesota, fortunate enough to be represented by both Collin Peterson and Laura Brod in the halls of Congress and the state House respectively. The lumbering behemoths were made for reaping, but that July night in 2004, the prairie air was heavy with the sound of crunchy metal. My boyfriend at the time, who collected vintage tractors, noted that none of the combatants had value in the rare farm machinery market.

Two years before while I was lit dropping in New Auburn, a man working in a garden cautioned me about going against divine plans. Indeed, he claimed that Earth had just experienced a near miss from a comet; God intended that as a warning for schools to quit teaching evolution. To judge by the devolution of farm equipment that night, New Auburn had little to worry about.

But for those who love a good crash, combine demo derbies are the ticket. So far, we know of several at local heats and county fairs, where the first place driver may received about a $1500 or so first prize:

Race and Crash Day, Milroy, June 27, 5:30 p.m.
Cannon Valley Fair, Cannon Falls, July 2, 7 p.m.
Big Stone County Fair, Madison, July 12, 2:30 p.m.
Sherburne County Fair, Elk River, July 19, following 1:30 p.m. demo derby
Meeker County Fair, Litchfield August 2, 2009, 1:00 p.m.
Murray County Fair, Slayton, August 12-15, date and time TBA
Wright County Fair, Howard Lake, August 12, 7:00 p.m.
Brown County Fair, New Ulm, August 14, 7:00 p.m.
Mower County Fair, Austin, August 15, 7:00 p.m.
Swift County Fair, Appleton, August 20, 2009, 7:00 p.m.

Below the fold, a video from last year's Brown County Fair derby, for those who need a taste of the action:

Outposts from The Small of America

by Tom Driscoll

Air’s heavy here with all the little stinks secreted in drier times. Old oak woodwork’s sticky patina’s encoded with dog burps & cat splashes & mouse bones & the last bird feathers lost in the attic.

Not a crisp time, humid early summer. Rattlesnakes pancake in tall, stoop-shouldered grasses, perfectly satisfied after last night’s meal to lie-about to store more day’s heat. A twilight wind storm obscured by the milky blue sky.

Except for of course firm fresh lettuce stems that pop when pinched off. Or Swiss chard, the snap the sound of lightning too far over the horizon to see. But smells stray ions, the sweat, the ocean of sniffs surrounds summer outside the city.

Consider then, the permanently starched self-congratulations and coolly conditioned airs at the Mall of America on 18-June when Mayo Clinic CEO Genn Forbes pronounced partnership between what is arguably the definitive symbol of consumer over-indulgence with what is definitively the symbolic argument for health care reform in rural America. Coming soon to nowhere near you, double-cheese Wellness Central at the MOA, and real Mayo.

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

This article is crossposted at TSOM.

Arugula: the new zucchini? A note on culinary change

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

I nonchalantly sauntered over.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Small cities confront mixed economic development picture

By Nancy Larson

Governments from top to bottom are doing all they can to spur economic development in these trying times, but the state’s smallest cities have special hurdles to overcome in working to provide stability in their communities.

Those hurdles are especially evident in rural Minnesota, which is dominated by small cities struggling to remain vibrant despite declining property values, aging populations and limited staff and other resources. But in 18 years of traveling the state as the executive director of the Minnesota Association of Small Cities, I found what small cities lack in material resources can be replicated in ingenuity and a sense of community.

Where else but a small town would you find enough citizens to work free-of-pay to staff a café that was threatening to go out of business? Having a place to meet made that a priority for people living in one small city in Southwest Minnesota. In a small city located in Northeast Minnesota, building materials and cash donations were collected over a three year period, after which local carpenters donated time to build a new grocery store.

These examples may not be typical, although they occur much more frequently than people would suspect, but the willingness of citizens to make their communities work is typical. You see that in the flower boxes and gardens that line many main streets – all maintained by nearby store owners and residents. And things like those flower boxes are critical to the future of small cities because the attractiveness of a community is often the primary factor in deciding on whether to buy home or open a business in a community.

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.

Making it wonderful: a tale of rhubarb bars

 by Kris Fultz

I worked at St. Peter Herald for many years and always enjoyed the close-knit family feeling I had there with my co-workers. We used to say that we could write a great sitcom from our adventures and escapades there, putting together the St. Peter Herald, LeSueur News Herald and the LeCenter Leader.

I think about Ceil Headlee the front office person and writer of her own column, who always wore her flowered dresses with the rolled down nylon knee-hi's. The many publishers and a few editors we went through were all such colorful characters; and my friends and co-workers Susan, Bill, Jeremy, Kirsten, Tom, Lynn, Sara and all the others made working there more of a playdate than a job.

But the one person who in my mind will always embody St. Peter and the St. Peter Herald is Marilyn Witty. Marilyn was married to George Witty, who was the local sheriff. They were two people so much in love that George brought a red rose to Marilyn at work every Friday of his life.

 Marilyn kept us all on our toes, and entertained. If you needed to know where something was, or who somebody was, or anything else about the St. Peter Herald, (or the St. Peter area), you didn't check the archives, you checked with Marilyn. Marilyn Witty worked as one of the salespeople, and I worked in the production department doing ad design.

 Marilyn used to bring in home baked treats and my favorite was her Rhubarb Bars. I liked them so much that Marilyn used to make them for me every year on my birthday. I called them the "Make it Wonderful Rhubarb Bars" because whenever Marilyn brought me back an ad to do she would always tell me to "make it wonderful." I never saw Marilyn eat a piece of those bars, she would put them on the break room table and stop back for "just a sliver" every now and then. Marilyn said there were no calories in a sliver.

 When I moved on from the Herald and worked at another business in downtown St. Peter, Marilyn surprised me on my birthday that year, marching down the street from the Herald office and followed by some of my old co-workers like a pied piper, she bore a single piece of that wonderful rhubarb dessert on a plate out front.

Click on the image for the recipe for "Make It Wonderful Rhubarb Bars."

A 1976 graduate of St. Peter High School, Kris Fultz now lives in Wisconsin. She dug out the recipe and her memories of the Herald at the request of Bluestem's editor and posted a version of this post as a note on Facebook. We reposted it here with her permission.

Editor's note: This recipe marks a new feature on Bluestem Prairie. We'll be presenting recipes using local, seasonal ingredients, along with the stories behind them. Food is culture, after all.

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.

A ghastly solution for Minnesota's alien earthworm invasion?

by Andrew Pruett

On a rainy grey day, I grabbed an ice cream pail, and my hat as I headed out the front door. I picked up big ‘night crawlers,’ and little ‘angle worms’ and lots of them. I do not know the scientific names of these slimers but that does not matter for what I will share with you. The two dozen worms collected from the road and sidewalk outside my house I put into my garden and covered with dirt and grass clippings.

I have the worst soil in Rochester for gardening, clay. Maybe my yard is all back fill.  I have heard that developers harvest the black dirt from a property before they build and use clay and rocky soil for back fill thus creating a market for good soil. In any event, I figured I needed all the help I could get to turn this clay into gardenable soil. Earlier I had tilled in a full pickup load of horse manure but it had not changed the consistency of the soil much.

I own half an acre of land in NW Rochester; there were no trees on the lot when I moved in. Before I went out to buy trees for my yard I got to thinking about those earthworms that are so good for our gardens and lawns.

Fifteen species of nonnative earthworms in Minnesota, and of those fifteen species, seven are invasive. So what, you might think. They're good for our yards, they're good for the robins, and they've been a boon to the moles. What harm could a slimy, wriggling earthworm possibly do? There are no native earthworms to North America, and that should ring alarm bells for those of us who are environmentally minded. 

Under a prairie rose: reflections on June 4 and recent memory

Twenty years ago in late May, I went to Green Forest, Arkansas, with my fellow graduate student CJ, to conduct a two-day Poets in the Schools workshop in the local junior high

Since Green Forest was rumored to be a hornets' nest of Klan activity and my colleague was a young man from Shanghai. I fretted about what might befall us on the trip in his rickety Chevy Vega into the miasmatic jungles of Arkansas, fears that loomed even larger when we got a flat in the back country.

But there were no hooded boys on the stretch of road those days, and the greatest terror I livedthrough was listening to a tape of Neil Diamond clunk through its endless loop on CJ's 8-track player, a relic even then.

The students' reaction to our PITS team drew from events unfolding a world away in CJ's homeland. Suddenly, for them, there stood before them a Chinese student, like those they had been seeing via satellite since April, protesting as part of the Chinese democracy movement in the streets of Beijing.

From Corner House Comments: Ammonia leak in JBS Swift plant

by Dale Moerke

Yesterday at approximately 10:00 A.M. a portion of the JBS Swift plant was evacuated due to an ammonia leak. The Worthington Daily Globe was on the scene and covers the story in 40 JBS employees treated after ammonia leak.  Daily Globe photographer Brian Korthals was able to take a few pictures from the roof of  a vehicle just outside the JBS property (we watched you from the cafeteria windows).

I was one of the many evacuees who hastily left the building and fortunately was not affected by ammonia. The group of employees I was with were at the back of the property for about 35 minutes when we were told we could reenter the building through the front and proceed to the facilities cafeteria which was unaffected by the leak.  I was then able to get a better idea of what was going on because I had a good view of all the emergency vehicles that were gathered outside the front of the building. My thoughts were with the brothers and sisters who were being transported to the hospital. I hoped that they would all be ok and according to published reports most were treated and released with only a few admitted for further observation. The leak was contained and after the affected areas were cleared of the ammonia we returned to work.

UFCW Local 1161 officials were on the scene and will be actively involved in the ensuing investigation of the cause of the leak and the effectiveness of the evacuation. I have my own observations and thoughts which I will share with the Local 1161 and JBS Swift.

Ammonia leaks are serious.

They can be deadly.

Read the rest at Dale Moerke's blog, Corner House Comments.

A resident of Luverne, Dale Moerke blogs about labor issues, progressive politics, family and Southwestern Minnesota at Corner House Comments. A member of UFCW Local 1161, Moerke drives a forklift in the JBS Swift plant in Worthington. Bluestem Prairie solicited this post, first published at CHC, when we learned of the ammonia leak in the plant.

Photo via Workday Minnesota.

My songs of the open road

by Chad Larimer

As a child of the car-crazed culture of southern California, I’d rather be behind the wheel, speeding down two-lane country roads with the windows down and the music cranked.

Anticipating the next corner, hitting my mark on entry, using the brakes to plant the nose of the car and accelerating through the apex of the corner puts a smile on my face on even the worst of days.

Olmsted/Fillmore County Road 1 between Rochester and Spring Valley is one of my favorite routes to let off a little steam. The undulating hills mixed with the flat farmland make for a fun drive.

I enjoy that set of corners north of Spring Valley – the first, a blind corner to the left where the road falls away downhill. It quickly banks into an uphill right-hander. There’s light feeling in my stomach as the road falls away: pure driving love.

 A little further up Fillmore County 1, I hit an area where the trees have grown over the road. It gives the effect of driving through a tunnel, and the faster I drive the narrower the road feels, but the town of Simpson signals the approach of my favorite set of corners on County Road 1.

Four corners, alternating left and right-hand turns. The first is a 90 degree left, followed by a 90 degree right, followed by another 90 degree left. The final right-hander isn’t sharp and can be taken “flat-footed” – if I  have the courage and the right song playing. A relaxing and exhilarating drive--but it can’t be done without the right music.

While testing the limits of my car on County Road 1 this past weekend, I decided  to create an appropriate playlist on my iPod. It’s too difficult to search for “the right” song while preparing to head into a corner at 80 mph. Shuffle is out as an option: nothing can break a driver’s concentration and rhythm more than the wrong song coming on.

A beta version of Bluestem 2.0

Come back later in the afternoon for the relaunch of Bluestem Prairie.