The Rake Magazine

Month: December 2002

  • Hack and Sack

    About a year ago, we recall reading several pieces on “war chalking,” a trend in San Francisco, L.A., and New York, where electronic freedom fighters were developing a system for letting each other know where to find wireless interent access out on the street. They developed graffiti symbols akin to the mythical code of hobos from a bygone era.

    Well, no code is necessary here, because the Strib has broadcast the names and locations of a half-dozen businesses that give it up to anyone with a wi-fi enabled laptop–and do so more or less willingly. (The 8th Street Grill, which hiply offers wireless DSL to its customers, seems sensible enough to realize this: Why would you sit outside in your cold van to “hack” into their wi-fi, when you could do it inside, over a nice turkey sandwich?)

    As everyone knows, the news is not really news until someone gets hurt. And throughout Steve Alexander’s engaging article, you can feel editor and writer straining together to try to make this story somehow scandalous.

    Let’s acknowledge here that most Americans can barely find the on-switch and the AOL icon. That being the case, the only real potential culprit in the mix is that old bugbear, the computer hacker. Since any phreak can already launch a nuclear missle by simply whistling into a payphone, why would anyone bother with the 8th Street Grill’s wireless port to the web? There is nothing a hacker can do with free wi-fi access that he can’t do at the public library.

    Still, even with so many other pressures on our collective psyche, paranoia about cyber crime continues apace. Witness The New York Times magazine’s interview yesterday with uberhacker Kevin Mitnick–still so feared that he’s not allowed to take a crap alone, if there’s a circuit-board anywhere in the room. Mitnick will have paid his debt to society at the end of the month, after five years in the clink. And what he’s always said–and is still saying– is that serious, high-powered hacking has always depended on “social engineering,” that is, good old-fashioned human-to-human confidence games. (Forgot your password? Mother’s maiden name?) If anything, con artists are up against significantly more challenges in the online world, due to technology. Every digital transaction leaves a deep footprint in the six-inch snow of networked cyberspace. If Mitnick is so goddam smart, why did he get caught? Instead of hacking computers, he should have stuck to dumpster-diving for credit carbons.

    No, the most serious electronic mischief has been perpetrated by Steve Case and AOL/Time Warner. Securing mediocre internet access for 12 million Americans, at $21.95 per month each, may be the greatest feat of “social engineering” ever. The true evil genius of AOL is that it’s a backstop–your permanent email, your last-resort ISP when everything else has gone fubar. There is undoubtedly a special term the industry has for retaining customers through neglect–thanks to that automatic debit every month, until you go through the considerable trouble to close your account. Why do it? Holding down this little escape costs a virtually painless $270 a year.

    Then there’s the natural decline in the quality of content that comes with opening the door to the masses. We’re not sure about the full extent of AOL’s crime, but judging from our inbox, the world is a more exciting place, what with all those hidden Nigerian bank accounts, penis enlargement pills, and Tiny RC Race Cars! (Completely sold-out in stores!) We feel sure that we have the info-architects at America Online to thank for lowering the bar so far that even Dr. Laura has figured out how to put together a web site.

    Given that tremendous contribution to human progress, no one could have known that a company as pragmatically arrogant as Time Warner would chafe under so much pragmatic populism. These are, after all, the people who publish People, the most widely read periodical in the country.

    As anyone who has ever spent a half hour in a dentist’s waiting room knows, tight control of information is no guarantee against crime in any medium–particularly violations of good taste and the assault on your intelligence. Seeing AOL pull this off just as well as People must be very irritating indeed. It’s no wonder they’re looking for a concrete parachute for that little weasel.

  • Tree Porn

    A few months ago, the local papers reported the kind of story I love to read– a delightful item about the Minneapolis street widely regarded as the finest example of an old-fashioned Twin Cities avenue. The salient distinguishing feature was the street’s towering American elm trees which had somehow survived numerous plagues of Dutch elm disease.

    Then in October, I learned that Minneapolis had a rough year for Dutch elm. The park board cut down 4,000 elms in 2002. Among them was “the Sentinel,” a huge streetside attraction on Stevens Avenue near the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The passing of this remarkable tree was commemorated by a white sash, a poem, and a memoriam in the Newspaper of the Twin Cities.

    Now this morning in the Strib, I see where a farmer in Le Sueur county has been granted the rare distinction of owning the state’s finest American elm. The 87-foot tall tree was cited by the DNR, who keep track of more than 50 species of trees in their “Big Tree Registry.” The Strib also reports that the largest tree of any species currently in the logs is a cottonwood tree almost 130 feet tall. (The DNR has a three-point system that takes into account height, circumference of trunk, and canopy size. This particular cottonwood has the highest score of any species.)

    Aside from the bizarre government impulse to record these kinds of “size matters” stats, it’s provocative to me that the Strib chose to lead this interesting story with the news about Monty Braun’s elm. Why not the state’s tallest white pine? How about its biggest poplar? I chalk it up to their desire to create a hook most readers will instantly want to read. Oddly, elms sell better than cottonwoods.

    This is not as petty as it might seem; it goes to the heart of an important conversation about how we see our environment, or more accurately, what we see in our environment–and what we don’t see. More and more, environmentalists and scientists are warning us that our preferences are leading to biological monocultures. This is a fancy way of saying that we love those American elms so much, that we neglect the other species.

    There is, of course, a price to be paid for this monomania. When Dutch elm disease thrived in the 70s and 80s, the whole face of Minnesota was scarred, because of a prejudice for these beloved shade trees. In 1977, 50,000 were cut down in the Twin Cities alone. That tells you not that Dutch elm disease was so much more virulent back then; rather, it tells you just how biased our arboriculture was until the 80s.

    One wonders if this is the kind of phenomenon we can expect to see more of in the future. Is nature, biologically speaking, trying to regain its own balance in spite of its human stewards? This is where ethics and biology intersect. The growing gospel of ecology and the interconnectedness of all life throws cold water on some age-old philosophical and scientific questions. For example, if we somehow managed to eradicate small pox–because it was a scourge to human beings–is there some other price to be paid elsewhere on the circle of life? If we successfully killed all the mosquitoes, how long would the dragonflies survive? And then the songbirds? And so on.

    This is tricky territory, of course. One can come dangerously close to making repellant, Malthusian kinds of pronouncements– that plagues of disease and famine are “nature’s way” of responding to overpopulation and its imbalances. It would be inhuman to believe that, particularly since the weak, infirm, and impoverished are inevitably the first to expire. This is a truism for all species, but we like to believe that humans–ethical ones, anyway–will take care of the neediest first.

    If these kinds of change are, in fact, the planet’s way of trying to regain some sort of balance, then it might be wise to consider what we can do to help, rather than hinder. In recent years, the environmentalists have been touting the esthetic of biodiversity as a good first step. This line of thinking argues that if we want nature to thrive (so that we might survive), we should try to make sure that the widest possible range of the natural is given the opportunity to renew itself.

    This seems like sound advice in any case. No matter what you might believe about “the greenhouse effect,” it certainly won’t hurt the planet to entertain the idea that it is changing, and that we may have a hand in it, for better or for worse. The alternative–to go on pretending that environmental problems like global warming are the fictions of those who only want to damage American business–is to risk considerably more than just our “way of life.”

    Here in the Twin Cities, the old monoculture of public plantings is hopefully a thing of the past. We learned the painful lesson of Dutch elm disease, when hundreds of thousands of our stately streets were razed by a simple little beatle. A healthy mix of trees, including old favorites like maple and oak, along with modish species like ginkgo and linden, would have saved us the sorrow that we now prudently bank against.

    Veneration of the “stately elm” is, to be sure, one of the prerogatives of our pride of place. The elm is as central to the Minnesota identity as lefse, Lake Wobegon, and driving in the left lane. As with so many other things in life, though–politics, art, society, biology–we must evolve to embrace new realities, or our traditions will end up in the wood chipper.

  • That Time of the Year

    As you know by now, Time magazine has, with the usual fanfare, announced their “Persons of the Year.” They’ve selected three “whistleblowers” from the past twelve months of corporate malfeasance and government ineptitude. This is troublesome stuff. Not because people shouldn’t stand up for what they believe is right, but because when they do, and they are idolized, we find ourselves on a slippery slope of demagoguery.

    In the Jewish tradition, great deeds qualify for special status as mitzvot–acts of loving kindness, real karmic capital–by remaining anonymous. There is something corrupting about Time magazine putting heroes of this kind on its cover as a publicity stunt, designed first as a ploy to sell Time magazine. We’ve got nothing against making money. God knows, we’d like to do more of that ourselves. Still, it’s easy to be cynical about the phenomenon, when it’s directly connected to Time’s bottom line, while posing as something more.

    Years ago, Time sold out Henry Luce’s vision for Man of the Year. Luce wished to identify the person who had the most impact on the world and news from the previous year. (Stalin and Hitler, you’ll recall, both made Man of the Year in their time.) Instead, the editors use the issue today as a cheerleading opportunity, to rile the literal-minded mob of Americans who lack the imagination to see it as anything other than a public honor heaped on a more or less deserving person, not unlike the Oscars. (Indeed, one might argue that this year’s “whistleblowers” failed to change the course of history or make news at all, until it was too late.)

    On the other hand, what makes us squirm is the real possibility that across the nation, bureaucrats are trying to figure out how to institutionalize this type of heroism. The simpleminded corporate lackey or government patriot does not understand that whistleblowers are remarkable for the very fact that they work against the grain, against the overwhelming pressure to conform in the workplace. They act out, and they act alone, and they are–under any other circumstance–the bad apple that spoils the bunch. If one wants to truly follow their example, one must first identify the overwhelming social climate against which to tilt. That climate has turned 180 degrees from what it was 18 months ago.

    Recent experiments in emulating this type of behavior have been disastrous. We think of the ill-fated “TIPS” program, by which the government hoped to encourage Americans to snitch on anyone that seemed suspicious to them. And now TIA–the program for “Total Information Awareness,” overseen by Iran-Contra felon John Poindexter–has also foundered, thanks to some refreshing media scrutiny and hacktivism. When the impulse to blow the whistle is coopted by the government and converted into a witchhunt, we should all be very nervous indeed.

    It’s been a tough year, to be sure. And it’s natural enough to look for heroes in the midst of so much corporate and government ugliness. It’s certainly easier in hindsight to find and celebrate the prophets in the wilderness than it is to ask why their whistleblowing didn’t effect change in time to avert catastrophe. Would FBI agent Coleen Rowley’s agitations have landed her on the cover of Time, if 9/11 hadn’t happened? Would Sherron Watkins be a Person of the Year if Ken Lay had been chastened by her warnings about Enron’s shell game? No.

    And what are we to make of the fact that Time’s persons of the year are all women? First, of course, one must point out that editors love aesthetic symmetry above almost anything else. (Hence three persons of the year; odd numbers are resolved, balanced on a center point.) It’s a happy coincidence that all three are women. And yet many will be gratified by this, as if history’s dialectic is itself committed to equal opportunity. The subtle implication, intentional or accidental, real or perceived, is that men could not or would not have done what these women did.

    Are women both the nobler and fairer sex? It certainly is true that they commit less crime than men. But as they achieve positions of real authority–and being a white-collar whistleblower is getting pretty close–we should expect that they are just as capable of committing all kinds of felonious acts of selfishness.

  • Celebrating Sid

    There have been a lot of great journalists to come out of this town, starting with Eric Sevareid and going right on through to three guys writing for the New York Times right now: Tommy Friedman, David Carr, and Ira Berkow. But for my money, I think the best of them all is the Midwest’s number one sports personality, Sid Hartman, and I don’t care who knows it.

    Sid gets a lot of grief from geniuses who think he’s not a “journalist” in the modern sense of the word. Let me tell you something, those people don’t know what they’re talking about. He may be from a different generation that didn’t care as much about “objectivity,” whatever that means. He may blur the line between what he calls his “close personal friends” and what the New York Times may call “a source.” He may even be guilty of what some pointy-headed journalism professors would call being an “actor” rather than an “observer” of local news.

    But in the Snapper’s book, all that stuff is irrelevant because what Sid is most of all is a winner. Nobody has ever beaten him when it comes to what newspaper readers want most—and that is the scoops, the exclusives, the inside stories on the sports heroes in this town. I don’t care what the bleeding hearts who run the newspaper business nowadays say. They owe their paychecks to guys like Sid who get the eyeballs off the boob tube and into the newsprint.

    Listen, who else can come anywhere near the number of scoops he’s had? Who first reported that legendary Notre Dame football coach Ara Parseghian was leaving the school? Or that Bud Grant was retiring as the best coach the Minnesota Vikings will ever have? Nobody gets the stories like Sid does, because even though he’s in his 80s, nobody outworks him. And because he’s not afraid to count athletes, politicians, businessmen, and hundreds of “little guys” as his personal friends. You treat a friend as a friend, you don’t rip them just because you can.

    And that’s all a lot of these so-called modern journalists want to do: rip, rip, rip. They think it’s wrong to have friends. Let me tell you, that’s why these jerks don’t have any. Sportswriters who have gone up against Sid and have lost know better than anyone else that he’s the best. That’s why I’ve contacted some of them (I have all their home phone numbers) and persuaded them to share some of their favorite memories of the Man Himself. There’s nothing Sid hates more than a reporter getting his story from other reporters—but this story is about Sid!

    Early Lessons
    Sid got plenty of early lessons about the value of having friends and being loyal to them in his formative years in Depression-era Minneapolis. His childhood was a true Horatio Alger story in which he was forced to fend for himself and his family by selling newspapers on wintry street corners, desperately competing for a slice of the meager economic pie that was available to members of the Jewish immigrant clans of those days. Competition was tough for the choicest paper-hawking turf on the most lucrative corners—the winners were the ones who were the smartest and most driven.

    Young Sid got obsessed with the minutiae of sports, and it would serve him well later in life. Among the main reasons for Sid’s success were the connections he made and carefully maintained as a young man, not only with his North Side neighborhood chums but with people he met in that gray area, shunned by the city’s “respectable” pre-war WASPs, where pro athletes, bookies, reporters, organized crime figures, and politicians mixed socially. Booze and gambling is what this scene was all about. It was a great way to learn who really mattered in a small town like Minneapolis.

    Has All the Phone Numbers
    As anyone who has ever worked with Sid knows, the secret to his success is his little black book of contacts. No one has ever compiled a greater sports reference tool than Sid’s collection of names and phone numbers, which he has painstakingly amassed over the years. Anyone who wants to go up against Sid must take this into account.

    Just how powerful is this weapon? I asked Bill Peterson. Peterson is a St. Paul Park native who started at the Star Tribune as an “agate clerk” in the mid-1980s and later went on to his own sports-writing career at the Cincinnati Post. An agate clerk is a guy who collects all the high school sports scores that get printed in tiny, or agate, type on the sports pages—meaning Peterson was a nobody. He says this enabled him to avoid the newsroom conflicts that so-called “real sports writers” had with Sid. Those bozos thought Sid was too close to his sources.

    “Back then, there were some serious power struggles between Sid and guys like Jay Weiner, but Sid kind of liked me,” Peterson says. “He pulled me into his office one day and asked me to do him a favor. He says, ‘Go through my files and throw out anything more than a few years old.’ So I had the full run of his files. I was just amazed. Sid had complete in-season and off-season lists of the addresses and phone numbers for everybody on every team in every league, NHL, NBA, whatever. He had all this stuff. I came to learn not long after that, in Cincy, just how valuable that info is. Nobody else has all that stuff. He got updated lists every year.”

    How’d he do that? “Say the Kansas City Chiefs were coming to town to play the Vikings. Sid would take the key Chiefs players and coaches out to lunch before the game, and then send each of them a personalized letter afterwards. In the letters he’d say everything they did was first class. He was extremely good at cultivating and maintaining sources this way. The old slogan about Sid is that he always gets his man, he always did because he had those numbers.”

    Listen, the nit-wits out there who say Sid doesn’t really have all these personal friends don’t know anything. He’s got more friends than all the other sports writers in this town put together. Big shots return his calls all the time not only because they know he gets the story right, but because Sid knows the names of their kids. If some of these know-it-all writers we’ve got now would take a minute to get to know the athletes as people instead of always ripping them, then maybe when the star receiver gets arrested on some trumped-up charge they’ll get the scoop.

  • Genius Lessons

    THE RAKE: What is the scoop you’re most proud of?

    Sid Hartman: The two biggest ones were about Ara Parseghian and Bud Grant. In 1975 I got the scoop that Parseghian was leaving as football coach of Notre Dame and that he would be replaced by Dan Devine. And in 1983 I reported first that Bud Grant was stepping down as the coach of the Vikings.

    THE RAKE: What about non-sports scoops?

    Sid: Well, there have been a lot. I helped the Star Tribune get the names of the finalists for the job of president of the U of M a couple of times. I do know a lot of people in town, and when you get to know a lot of people you hear a lot of stuff.

    THE RAKE: If you get a good scoop, but it means losing a friend, what do you do?

    Sid: I’d print the scoop, if it’s accurate, even if it meant upsetting a friend. If the friend knows it’s accurate, they might be mad for a short period. Bud Grant was probably my closest friend, and he used to get upset with me all the time. When cut-down day came at the Vikings training camp, I had friends in the NFL with the waiver list of who was going to be let go, and I’d print the names. Bud would get upset, because he hadn’t told the players yet. But my loyalties are with the Star Tribune and with WCCO Radio. I’m paid to do a job and that’s the number-one concern for me.

    When you write something that’s a criticism or a rip, if it’s accurate, there’s no problem. They’ll get mad for a week or two. But here’s the thing: If you write something that’s going to upset some athlete or coach, be sure you show up the next day and face them. The biggest mistake these writers make is that they hide for a couple of weeks and it hangs out there and gets worse. If you face the guy, he’ll be pissed off, but if you show them that you’re willing to take the heat, they’ll respect you. I go out of my way to do that, I’m there the next day. I don’t rip that much, but I’ll do it if it’s right.

    THE RAKE: Who is the greatest athlete to ever play on a Minnesota team?

    Sid: There have been so many of them. Bud Grant may have been the greatest athlete that the U of M ever had. He was a starter in all three major sports. Dave Winfield would be up there, too. They’re both great, great athletes. On the pro side, well, I think Kevin Garnett rates at the top. He and Kobe Bryant [of the Los Angeles Lakers] really stand out, in that they have been the most successful players to go right from high school to the NBA.

    THE RAKE: Will you ever retire?

    Sid: I’ll never forget when I was in third grade. I had a teacher, Mrs. Nettleton. One of the kids in our class was always looking at the clock. She said, “I hope when you boys and girls grow up, you get jobs that you like enough where you don’t have to be looking at the clock all day.” And that’s exactly what I’ve got. I love the relationships I have with people.
    My job is all an adventure. I contact every beat every day. How many people do you think want my job? I’m the luckiest guy in the world.

    THE RAKE: Could anyone today take the same path to success that you did?

    Sid: I never went to college. If I went and tried to get my job today, they’d laugh at me. I was delivering papers for the old Minneapolis Times and working in their sports department at the same time when I was 17 years old. You could never do anything like that now. My friend gave me a job delivering papers to newsstands when I was a teenager. Before that I was selling newspaper on the street corners, starting when I was 8 or 9 years old. You were supposed to be 12 years old to sell papers to people, and this guy, Nathaniel Johnson, chased me all the time to get me to stop. He caught me when I was 10, but he left me alone and let me sell the papers, because he said anyone who worked that hard should be allowed to do it. After that we became lifelong friends. At one time, I sold Sunday papers at Fifth and Hennepin, starting at 7 p.m. and working through to 3 a.m. [The Minneapolis Times was an evening newspaper—Eds.] I worked that corner because that’s where the streetcars would line up, leaving every hour at 1, 2, and 3 in the morning. It would be 15, 20 below zero, and I’d ride my bike home to 525 North Humboldt Avenue after I was through.

    THE RAKE: Do you still travel to away games?

    Sid: I don’t do much traveling anymore. I’ll go if I can go to the game in the morning, and then come back, maybe with the team, in the same day. I didn’t make a single Vikings or Gophers road trip this year. That was a first. I’m sick of all that travel. It’s a joke. You have to wait around in airports forever. Why should I do that, if I can watch the game on TV and then call the coach and the players afterwards? I’ve got all their numbers.

    THE RAKE: You’ve done radio and newspapers. How come you never got into TV reporting?

    Sid: I was never that interested. TV’s just a pain in the rear end. It’s not the reporting that’s the problem, the problem is they only get about three minutes on sports. They’ve got to do the weather for about ten. You don’t get the chance to really cover sports on TV.

  • Uncle Franky’s

    Close readers of this magazine know how we are obsessed with the Chicago-style hot dog. We’re pleased to report that The Wienery and Joey D’s have been joined by a serious contender in this life-sustaining work—and in the heart of sausage country, Nordeast! Uncle Franky’s is the real deal, working from the foundation of an authentic Vienna Beef dog, all the way up to the crucial celery salt. Several early sorties gave evidence that Franky’s minions were overloading the Chipico relish (that Day-Glo green stuff you learn to love), but we’re gratified to note that they’ve since adjusted the mix to allow the sport peppers and onions a little territory on the tongue. Even if you’re not partial to the Chicago dog, Franky’s serves a mean Manhattan chili dog, hamburgers, and—get this—an all-you-can-eat deal ($10 will set you up with your own wiener-eating contest). Maybe best of all, the French fries. We’ve never seen ’em like this—sort of the equivalent of ruffled potato chips, which lends more surface area to the fryer, and makes for a crispy snap. In other words, the fries snap just the way the hot dogs do, giving your whole lunch a kind of heel-click-in-the-air sensibility. A fiver plus change will get you a Chicago dog, fries, and a soda. Uncle Franky’s, 728 Broadway Ave. N.E.

  • New Year’s Eve: Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board

    Here’s a kid-friendly (not too late into the night) way to celebrate the New Year on the actual holiday, on the west side of the Mississippi. Well, actually right in the Mississippi. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board is pitching their tent on Nicollet Island. Skating, skiing, sledding, hayrides, and more are the order of the afternoon—and there’ll be indoor activities in the pavilion if it’s unreasonably cold (or hot, we suppose). It all wraps up at the perfectly reasonable hour of 9 p.m. Fireworks at 8:30. www.minneapolisparks.org

  • New Year’s Eve: Bremer Capital Holiday

    If you want a wild bash with the lampshade-wearing and the drinking-champagne-out-of-a-shoe, look elsewhere. (Above, maybe.) For one thing, this civic cavalcade, formerly Capital New Year, is being held three days early. (The official auld lang syneing falls inconveniently on a Tuesday, and gosh, that’s a weeknight—though if you have to work Wednesday, you should fire your boss.) For another thing, the big fireworks finale takes place at 10 p.m. All this is perfect, however, if you’re in charge of some short people. (Kids, we mean. Verne Troyer can hit the bars if he feels like it.) Lest ye think we think it’s a snoozefest, know that there are dozens of performers on eight stages from blues belter Mick Sterling to the Flanagan’s Wake improv comedy troupe. If you can’t find something you like, you’re not trying. www.capitalholiday.org

  • New Year’s Eve: Debbie Duncan/Nachito Herrera at the Dakota

    New Year’s is one of those holidays where you can find yourself in a roomful of friendly strangers. In recent years, though, we’ve come to view it more like Thanksgiving—it’s so much more fun to be with people you know and love. Well, Debbie Duncan certainly qualifies. She’s one of the Twin Cities’ most beloved jazz artists, and we can’t think of a more suave New Year’s party than hanging at the Dakota. In with the new, too: Cuban pianist Nachito Herrera, who emigrated to the Twin Cities last year, shares the chores. Herrera didn’t waste any time setting up shop at Bandana Square—his recent and acclaimed debut album was recorded live at the St. Paul bastion of beat. If hot and cool jazz doesn’t bake your New Year’s brownie, perhaps you’ll want to make twang your thang, over at the Turf Club’s third annual bash with alt-country locals Accident Clearing-house. Last year’s was so well-attended we had to wait half an hour in the freezing cold to get in—and it was worth it. Dakota: (651) 642-1442, www.dakotacooks.com; Turf Club: (651) 647-0486, www.turfclub.net

  • Oz: The Final Season

    Launched in 1997 by Barry Levinson (Diner, Rain Man), Oz showed other theater and film vanguards that the path to creative freedom on the small screen led to HBO. The Sopranos, Six Feet Under and The Wire soon followed. Oz follows the lives (and untimely and/or gruesome deaths) of the prisoners in Oswald Penitentiary’s experimental unit, the Emerald City. The cast of neo-Nazis, murderers, and arsonists make Tony Soprano and his goombas look like the Backstreet Boys. Long-timers have only eight more episodes, but new kids on the (cell) block should check out seasons one and two, newly released on DVD, featuring early cast members like Edie Falco (Carmela Soprano) as corrections officer Diane Whittlesey, alongside lifers like Rita Moreno as Sister Peter Marie, still going strong 52 years after her screen debut.