The Rake Magazine

Year: 2002

  • It's a Small World—and the Chinese Found it First

    The nondescript, institutional door on the fourth floor of the University of Minnesota’s Bell Library is a portal to the past. Stepping through it, you find yourself in an oak paneled English renaissance room with carved stone columns, a working fireplace, and delicate stained-glass windows. Just beyond, in a modern reading room, lies a trove of rare books and maps. One amateur historian has been coming here for more than two years, trying to unravel a mystery that could have a revolutionary solution.

    Gavin Menzies is retired from the British navy, where he commanded a nuclear submarine. In his leisure, he’s come to believe that a large Chinese fleet led by a eunuch admiral explored much of the world and circumnavigated the globe early in the 15th century—long before Christopher Columbus was a glint in his father’s eye. Maps from these journeys then found their way into the hands of European mapmakers and explorers. An expert on navigation, Menzies bases his theory on European maps, records of Chinese expeditions to East Africa, and what he claims are seven Chinese shipwrecks in the Caribbean. He plans to publish a book detailing his findings this fall.

    In researching his theory, Menzies turned to the University’s James Ford Bell Library, which owns two important pieces of evidence: a hand-drawn Venetian navigational chart from 1424, and a globe from 1507. Founded in 1953, the Bell Library is perhaps the most famous rare book and map library in the United States, and is well known around the world for its large collection covering European expansion from 1400 to 1800.

    The Portolan 1424 chart is a piece of yellowed sheepskin measuring two by three feet. It’s colorfully ornamented with wild animals and the cardinal points. The chart circumscribes the western coast of Europe and North Africa. The names of ports and tributaries are recorded in fading ink, and far out in the Atlantic, two chains of islands are rendered in brilliant red and blue pigment.

    “Some people say these are Florida and Newfoundland, some say it’s Taiwan,” explains Carol Urness, curator emeritus of the library. A short, gray-haired, no-nonsense professor of history, she says Menzies believes the islands are Puerto Rico and Guadaloupe in the Caribbean Sea. “I find his arguments convincing,” she adds, with the smile of a professional skeptic. After working with Menzies for two years, Urness has come to respect him for his creative thinking—although she’s not sure whether he can prove his theory.

    The other alluring clue is the globe. German geographer Martin Waldseemuller’s globe was the first to be printed on a press, not hand-drawn. It’s also the first map that refers to the New World as “America.” Of the 1,200 that were originally published, only three have survived—the Bell’s and two others. Manufactured shortly after Columbus’ first voyage in 1492, it shows the general shape of the west coast of South America, as well as virtually all the of the earth’s major landmasses. “How do you get the west coast of South America when the Europeans hadn’t yet been there?” Urness asks with a twinkle in her eye.

  • Yelling "Tired" in a Movie Theater

    They were decked out in sweatpants and fuzzy bunny slippers, and equipped with coolers of Mountain Dew, beef jerky, and Little Debbie snack cakes. One morning a few weeks ago, 34 committed souls bivouacked at the Heights Theater in Columbia Heights. They came prepared to spend an entire weekend watching films they’d already seen while forsaking sleep, showers, and unscheduled bathroom breaks. Their motivation? A new Guinness world record for non-stop movie watching.

    ACT II, a Twin Cities company that is the world’s largest manufacturer of microwave popcorn, sponsored the marathon as a fund-raiser for local Boys and Girls Clubs. Some participants claimed to be drawn by the bargain appeal: 27 movies for a one-time $5 admission. But most were clearly motivated by the event’s “extreme” nature. Sure, the schedule mixed revered classics such as Ben Hur and Casablanca with guilty pleasures such as Animal House and Top Gun. But in truth, the bill could just as well have been filled with the likes of Waterworld and Freddy Got Fingered. After all, no one seemed concerned when a poorly assembled print subjected the audience to a version of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid that briefly ran scenes out of sequence, and played “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” at least three times. Attendee Nick Gipe was lucid enough to dub this “the Quentin Tarantino version.”

    Running continuously from Friday morning through the following Sunday evening, the movie marathon generated its own drama. To accommodate contestants during designated bathroom breaks, portable johns were set up in the theater parking lot. But a blast of unexpected winter weather obviated the convenience considerably. “If you sit down on the seat at 10 degrees, it pretty much locks everything up,” confirmed William Pike, whose shaved head wasn’t helping him retain body heat. “It’s tough to make it all work in five minutes.” Pike, a relatively mature marathoner at 38, brought foam seat cushions to the Heights to help ease anticipated pain. St. Olaf College student Pip Gengenbach drew hourly hash marks on his arm as if logging prison time. Brent Swanson had conducted Internet research on sleep deprivation and came equipped with smelling salts. Others asked official witnesses to smack them periodically with Nerf implements. Army reservist Jason Dreyer drew upon military training for battle fatigue, contracting facial muscles to keep his blood pumping. Food stashes were strategic too. Swanson’s included 18 hard-boiled eggs. “It’s just a matter of eating good and not eating junk food,” explained Nicole O’Donnell, with a Burger King cup in hand, and a cookie dough/Oreo Dairy Queen Blizzard on order.

    By 4 a.m. Saturday—after nine films —few record-chasers had dropped out, but there were hints of a hard road ahead. “There’s a really bad stretch coming up, with Annie and then a silent film and then another movie from 1931,” noted Nathan Wickman. “That’s going to be tough.” At 8:30 Sunday morning, nearly 48 hours after the first reel of Dr. Strangelove, half the original 34 contestants remained. When Greta Guck quietly picked up her cooler in the middle of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, her exit garnered the kind of slow, respectful applause usually reserved for athletes who walk away from on-the-field injuries. “I’m out,” Guck managed to mumble on her way through the theater door, speaking in a low growl that made her sound as though she’d been stuck in a refrigerator. “I’m really lightheaded. I can’t take it anymore.” She wasn’t alone. Although 12 participants (including Gengenbach, Swanson, Dreyer, and O’Donnell—the sole woman among them) saw their way into the record books and landed their faces on future packages of microwave popcorn, others were happy to go home early, even if the decision wasn’t their own. Soon after Guck’s departure, event staff spotted a row of young girls and their adult chaperone, all with their eyes shut. Sally Matthews, 15, insisted she had been awake when the disqualification came down, but she stopped short of registering a formal protest. “We are not going back in there,” she declared, relieved to avoid “that Russian film” (Dr. Zhivago). “I skipped 40 Days and 40 Nights for this,” she said in disgust. “At least we got a T-shirt.”

  • From Africa: Seven cows for my hand in marriage?

    I got drunk with three educated Basotho gentlemen the other night. We sat at Chocke’s Corner Bar in the scrub-and-bush mountains of Lesotho, sipping a red variety of South African boxed wine. The discussion revolved around colonial America and the situation in Israel. My mind wandered. I debated which of these men was HIV-positive; I considered making the short but chilly trek outside to the loo. Then the mechanic, five years of life in Britain under his tool belt, said something interesting. “Westerners not only live differently, they think differently as well,” he declared adamantly. I thought about what this difference meant to us (slavery, exploitation, apartheid—we whiteskins have always had the upper hand) and pondered what it meant to them. Wealth, no doubt; what else? As if to emphasize the point, the bricklayer offered seven cows in return for my hand in marriage. I chose sleep instead.

    Several days later my brother and I made our way through the country’s highlands, on the bare backs of Basotho ponies. After seven hours of peaceful trudging, we arrived at the evening’s temporary home, a one-room hut perched on a hilltop. The stone-and-thatch structure was one of several on the family compound which housed Madame Selima, her unnumbered grandchildren, a cat and dog, some chickens, and a couple dozen feed bags full of Lesotho weed, which Taxman, our minimum-English guide, justified simply as “business.” Though Mme. Selima’s English was also quite poor, she was warm in that grandmotherly way, somehow being both friendly and unobtrusive. The kids, decked in layer upon layer of mismatched clothing cast off long ago by their counterparts in the United States, amused themselves with plastic bags and tin cans. They paused to peek curiously at our pale skin. They were interested in us, but not envious of us. They were also well-behaved, well-loved, and well-trained. The youngest, who still would have been in diapers had she been born in the other hemisphere, ignored us entirely. Instead, she focused her attentions on stripping the fuzz off a peach, an astonishing demonstration of the proper way to use a paring knife from a one-and-a-half-year-old.

    Yesterday we made the treacherous journey down the abrupt Sani Pass, descending the 2,000 meter cliff that acts as an eastern border between the “kingdom in the sky” and South Africa. There we said our final goodbye to the rocky dirt roads, to the endless greasy plates of cornmeal and greens and to the drop-pit toilets of developing Africa. Exports from South Africa supply the southern half of the continent with Nescafé, car parts, and diamonds. And after six months of backpacking through eastern and southern Africa, this country that is said to be “the cradle of mankind” appears both lovely and foul, both urban and suburban.

    Today I type this letter to Minnesota under the buzzing fluorescent lights of a chain store, surrounded by a vast tarred parking lot. Westerners think differently indeed. Crossing the border into the Africa that whites built, we trade subsistence for abundance, adequate for super-sized, polio and bilharzia for carpal tunnel and attention deficit disorder. It’s an awesome world that western civilization has built. It can also be garish, bland, and overworked. There are countless aid organizations, entrepreneurs, and volunteers determined to create a new Africa, a modern Africa. Perhaps it’s arrived. Tomorrow we head off to the largest Easter party on the continent—thousands of kids are expected to show up at a much-publicized rave in Johannesburg.

    Katie Quirk

  • Run of the Mill

    Feels like the base of my skull could just about touch my shoulder blades, I’m craning my neck so hard. Still I can barely make out the terra cotta sculptures high atop the new Washburn Lofts on the recently hoity-toitified Minneapolis riverfront. There are three millers 11 stories up, an homage in stone to the industry that earned Minneapolis its title as the world’s flour superpower from 1885 to the mid-1930s. Created by Minneapolis sculptor John Karl Daniels—better known for his ominous bronze statue of Leif Erickson on the Capitol grounds—the works depict the history of flour milling. The industrial equivalent of Darwin’s march from primordial ooze to proper man, the figures advance from a half-naked brute squatting over a mortar and pestle to a vaguely Dickensian worker, his hair neatly parted, as he crouches over an updated version of the same tools, to a fully erect modern miller, standing tall in a peaked cap and trim jacket as he casually oversees a milling machine. While it’s difficult to see from this distance, the machine could be a “middlings purifier,” a device introduced here around the turn of the century to sift husks from wheat, leaving the pure white flour heralded worldwide for its Gold Medal quality.

    Carved by Daniels at half size and enlarged to eight feet in height by a commercial reproduction firm, these regionalist idealizations of the working man are fitting ornamentation for this 1914 landmark. In the first half of the 20th century, employees of the Washburn Crosby Company (a precursor to General Mills) packaged flour here. They tested recipes in the original Betty Crocker kitchens and broadcast the “Betty Crocker Cooking School of the Air” on WCCO radio (whose call letters came from the mill’s name). Most chilling about the works is their accidental accuracy. Like so many flesh-and-blood workers of Mill City’s heyday, the central figure has lost an arm. This industry of pulleys and water wheels, flour-dust explosions, and churning gears propelled Minneapolis to the top of another less lauded industry—production of prosthetic limbs. While someone living in one of these million-dollar lofts today would have to make about $170 per hour, its first tenants made about $6 a week—and sometimes paid an arm and a leg for the privilege.

  • That's a Hard Split

    For its second season on Comedy Central, the locally based crew of Let’s Bowl shot 10 episodes in just four days. They did it on Lane 27 at Wells Lanes. This South St. Paul bowling alley offers food, adult beverages, and several oversized TVs. The other day, we met Steve “Chopper” Sedahl there. The co-host of the game show promptly ordered a bedwetter-sized MGD to wash down a sampling of batter-fried appetizers.

    “The first season, I think we were a little stifled,” Sedahl said, visibly excited about the new episodes. “I think we did a good job last year, I think it worked. But this is season two. It’s a make-or-break kind of thing.” In addition to feeling more comfortable with the show’s swift, segmented format, he studied up on the finer points of bowling. He wanted to sharpen his skills as a commentator.

    Judging by the buffalo wings, the cook at Wells has some overdue homework of his own. The so-called Inferno Wings suggested a hellish snacking thrill, but our batch was a dry and uneven assortment of deep-fried drummies with only occasional pockets of heat. The classic onion rings were to be preferred, and the mozzarella sticks were plump, with thick innards flavorful and chewy. Meanwhile, the oddly tasty fish sticks presented a dual mystery. How can breading this thin taste so rich and buttery? And what exactly is this flaky stuff in the middle? (Sedahl: “I don’t think that’s walleye.”)

    A few days later, Sedahl and his cohort Rich Kronfeld greeted fans and colleagues at the season-premiere of Let’s Bowl. The screening was held at the recently reinvented Suburban World theater in Uptown. Laughter snowballed throughout the show, which featured a Burnsville man and his 18-year-old son. In keeping with the parameters of the show, they bowled 10 frames to determine whether or not the boy would be allowed to get a tattoo while living under dad’s roof. (The kid bowled over 200—a Let’s Bowl first.) Looking ahead, the new season will feature disputes involving a woman in her “dirty 30s” who used her boss’s computer to access gay porn, deer hunters vying for the best turf, and a married couple with differing views on vasectomy.

    As Sedahl raffled mounds of bowling-related junk he bought on eBay, the Suburban World’s servers distributed appetizers such as avocado grapefruit salad with a red chili vinaigrette and macaroni croquettes with a cayenne-brandy dipping sauce. These offerings went nicely with a glass of Pallodino Dolcetto, though the salad—in contrast to the crowd—was a bit overdressed. It felt incongruous to consider the delicate canapes of white anchovy while Kronfeld, between South Park ads on the big screen overhead, exposed his butt to his admirers and colleagues.

  • Forgive and Forget

    It’s astonishing. Every spring, round about May Day, the world remembers to wake up. After months of cold and barren winter, the ground softens, the sun rises a little higher, the grass greens, the crotch-rockets line up around Lake Calhoun, and we’re back on our way—resurrected and ready to join the parade. The Midwestern memory is a funny thing. It’s often connected to morality, and it’s a function of our nordic demeanor. One of the dirty little secrets about Minnesota Nice, which is really just a smiling variety of stoicism, is its corollary. We’re nice to a point—a point way beyond reason, as a matter of fact. But once you’ve crossed that line, you will never be forgotten or forgiven.

    Brenda Oldfield crossed that line. In March, the puffed-up former Gophers basketball coach was poached by Maryland—a superior basketball program at what is otherwise one of the nation’s most ignorable schools. Last year, she arrived in the Twin Cities with a powerful hairdryer, lots of empty language about dream jobs, and a mantra of absolute loyalty. And then she left on the same platform. She turned tail and sold her wares to the highest bidder. She now joins the infamous ranks of Norm Green, Chuck Knoblauch, Lou Holtz, and everyone else who ever violated our sense of decency and loyalty. Her next appearance in the Barn should be a real hoot.

    For some reason, we Minnesotans find it easiest to hate sports figures. Even our most deplorable, self-serving shysters—the politicians—are forgiven and forgotten without a second thought. Brian Herron and his cronies aren’t hated so much as pitied. Rod Grams is the butt of a few harmless jokes, but no one wastes any energy actually despising the poor duffer. John Grunseth? You don’t even remember him, do you.

    If you forget, then there’s no need to forgive. When Mark Yudof announced a few weeks ago that golf and men’s gymnastics may be released from the University’s stewardship, we had mixed feelings. Golf is not a sport. It’s a game, and we say good riddance. In the grand scheme of things, it belongs somewhere between bowling and billiards. Men’s gymnastics, on the other hand, is one of the most noble amateur sports, dating back to the cradle of democracy in Greece 2,500 years ago. The U of M’s program is 100 years old.

    Although Gopher gymnastics coach Fred Roethlisberger is kind of a pushy jerk, we’ve excused him. We realize you don’t rise to this level in college athletics without being a pushy jerk. It’s the nature of the business, and we can’t think of one Gopher coach we’d actually sit down with and have a beer. (When Gophers coaches rallied round a podium last month to fight the cuts, it frankly gave us the willies seeing so many elastic waistbands in one room.) But with these venerable traditions lying in the dust, folks will quickly forget about Fred, even though his bullying ways have produced dozens of national champions and All-Americans in his 30-year career.

    Fred undoubtedly feels like a martyr. Why couldn’t they pick on, say, J. Robinson, the belligerent coach of men’s wrestling who has been bad-mouthing Title IX for years? The coach who has been complaining that equal funding for female sports is anti-male? His would be a more perfect martyrdom, since these sacrifices never would have been made in the Good Old Days. Robinson can neither forget nor forgive Title IX, despite the fact that it clearly hasn’t prevented his wrestling squad from capturing its second straight national championship.

    May Day is a holiday with long traditions among pagans and the proletariat—the kinds of people who, incidentally, make good college coaches. But memory is a powerful, two-edged thing. Here in Minnesota, where memory is indelible and forgiveness is rare, the Maypole might easily be mistaken for the whipping post. And some deserve the lash more than others.

  • 'Shrooming Through the Ages

    Goodness, it’s spring and the woods are infested with mycophagists. The warm sun and the stirring breezes bring out the madness, the mushroom hunters. They’re out there turning dead logs, rustling through the dark and damp places where most bipeds will not tread. They walk for miles, minding neither dirt nor rain, all in hopes of snaring some elusive and delectable fungi. Some have fever dreams the night before a hunt, in which they stumble upon a pristine patch of morels—oh, to dream. Though most come home tired and achy, nearly all will admit they are addicted to hunting ‘shrooms.

    As the many hunting clubs and associations will attest, ’shroom hunting has become quite the sport. Anyone with a good guide and a stout walking stick can foray into the wilderness and scrounge for toadstools. But the wise and long-lived hunter knows that it’s an extreme sport, nay a deadly one. The danger may even follow you home. The bluefoot, chanterelle, enoki, hedgehog, pompom, and chicken of the woods are just a few of the edible varieties of mushroom found here and there. The Great Lakes area alone contains more than 2,000 varieties. Unfortunately, only about 5 percent of those are edible.

    The very-good/very-bad nature of mushrooms has long been known. Some 4,600 years ago, Egyptian Pharaohs were so enamored of mushrooms that they decreed them to be food for kings, never to be touched by mere commoners. In ancient cultures across the world you can find sacred rituals involving mushrooms. Many believed in their powers to heal, to deliver enlightenment, and to guide lost souls to the netherworld.

    But it’s the dark side of mushrooms that has propelled myth and legend. Ever since Claudius choked down the last mushroom dish his wife would prepare for him, there’s been mycophobia. The Middle Ages identified the mushroom with the occult because of its uncanny ability to grow three times in size the morning after a rain. Fairy rings, the circles in which some varieties of mushroom grow, were thought to be where elves cavorted and the devil churned his butter.

    The French, of course, love mushrooms. It’s widely believed that around the time of Louis XIV, Parisians began to cultivate mushrooms in the caves surrounding the city. Even now there are miles and miles of mushroom beds in suburban caverns near the capital. But Americans have far surpassed the Europeans in mass consumption. The biggest commercial operation in the world is located in Pennsylvania, where the legendary pickers harvest with miner’s hats and lamps.

    At the grocery store, you’ll most easily find Agaricus bisporus, a mass-produced hybrid cousin of the modest field mushroom. Though you’ll find it on your pizza or in your cream of mushroom soup, the common ‘shroom is not on the radar screen of the serious hunter. Spring is morel season, and the self-proclaimed “morel capital of the world” is Boyne City, Michigan. Each May, the town holds the enormous National Mushroom Festival. ‘Shroomers from all over the country come to share stories and tell kooky mushroom jokes. But not to reveal their hush-hush hunting grounds.

    Morels, like many mushrooms, have a rolling season, peaking at different times in different parts of the country due to the changing weather. Hunters forage in field and forest, park and golf course. For this lurking sportsman, private property is pure enticement if they suspect a morel may be thriving somewhere beyond the fence. If they scored in a particular place last year, it’s a safe bet for this year. But forget about simply asking directions. The coveted morel is hoarded by those who are lucky enough to happen upon it. It is typically found in moist areas, among dying or dead elm, sycamore, and ash trees. Old apple orchards are often a happy hunting ground. And here in the Twin Cities, it’s not uncommon to see them popping up in the backyard. Morels have short, thick, hollow stems, topped with sponge-like pointed caps, resembling honeycombs. Morels may be tan, yellow, or black. They have a rich, nut-like flavor and woodsy fragrance. With this in mind, it weakens the devout to think how many are dispatched by lawnmowers, rakes, and undeserving squirrels.

    The best way to get with the in-crowd is to join up with the Minnesota Mycological Society (Bringing People and Mushrooms Together for Over 100 Years!). This University of Minnesota group has a newsletter with hunting tips, and they lead two or three collecting forays each month into proven growing areas all over Minnesota and western Wisconsin. Following them around in the city is a prudent thing to do too. They recently held their annual awards dinner at Chet’s Taverna. Chef Mike Phillips has been known to create several amazing dishes with many varieties of wild mushroom. Chef Mike won’t reveal his local sources for mushrooms. He does admit that he prefers local mushrooms over any imports. “Especially imported morels which you can get any time of year now, but are grown in Turkey and are a little odd.”

    If you’d rather leave the sleuthing to the booted and bedraggled, you can beat a path to the Bayport Cookery where, from May 1 to June 30, they’re hosting their 12th annual Morel Festival. Chef and owner Jim Kyndberg tells The Rake that he buys his morels from a “licensed forager” in order to comply with Health Department codes and standards. Kyndberg has become a bit of a local resource, with crazed people calling on him to identify all kinds of things they’ve dug up in various backyards. Seems the true ‘shroomers are a little bit damp and nutty themselves.

    Chet’s Taverna
    (651) 646-2655

    Bayport Cookery
    (651) 430-1066

    Stephanie March is a Minneapolis writer.

  • If wine be the crime, then hang me

    Strong drink has a long association with immorality. There is an engraving of “Gin Lane” in 18th century London by William Hogarth (the artist also responsible for “The Rake’s Progress”) showing a sign: “Drunk for a penny, dead drunk for twopence, clean straw for nothing.” From the same period is “The Beggar’s Opera,” in which assorted villains, cutthroats, footpads, highwaymen, and desperadoes (not to mention pimps and trollops) gather at a pub in one of the British capital’s less fashionable quarters to sing crude drinking songs. You can tell a man who boozes by the company he chooses. I suppose it’s obvious why so many people have made gin rhyme with sin. But intelligent wine-bibbing, it can be argued, actually increases moral refinement. It promotes honest introspection, accuracy and rationality; it promotes moderation.

    Think about it. Of all the five senses, taste is the most intimate. Taste is also the sense with the smallest vocabulary. No wonder wine writers are so often driven to peculiar metaphor and periphrasm. My favorite is the observation of Thurber on serving the cooking wine to guests. “A naïve little domestic burgundy; I think you will be surprised at its presumption.” But it is desperation with the inadequacy of the English language that drives us to say that a white wine “smells like wet dog,” or has “a hint of burnt matches in the nose.”

    This means that the first quality a serious drinker needs to have is honesty. If he does not note with care what is happening to his palate during the ingestion process, he has not got an earthly chance of describing it accurately. What is more, a mouthful of wine changes its taste all the time from first sip to final swallow (and aftertaste). So a second moral benefit induced by good wine is introspection. The unexamined life is not worth living and the unexamined wine is not worth drinking.

    Finally, these other fine qualities will not develop in the mouth or the mind of someone who has had more to drink than is good for them. Shakespeare’s Porter may be right in saying that drink is an equivocator with lechery (“it taketh a man up and it putteth a man down”). In excess, it is an outright enemy of intelligent discrimination, and if we do not discriminate we might as well be swilling White Lightning from a paper bag.

    These rather portentous thoughts sprouted on the first decent day of sunshine this extraordinary Spring. Sunshine seemed to indicate Chardonnay, so I fetched out a bottle of Chateau St. Jean Sonoma County Chardonnay (easily available locally for less than $15) and found immediate joy. Let me just say this: The promise of the nose was confirmed by the first bite into the wine, reminiscent of sinking the teeth into a crisp apple, fresh from the tree. I was inspired to open one of those bags of instant salad and grill a small steak. The wine made a pleasing counterpoint to the spinach and rocket, and masked the deadly dullness of iceberg lettuce. The common argot of wine-drinking says you should pair red wines with red meats, but that’s for the simpleminded. This chardonnay’s fruity flavor stood up really well to the meat. If we get any more sensible sunshine this summer (as opposed to burning heat followed by thunderstorms and snow) I will be opening additional bottles. You should too.

    Oliver Nicholson is a classicist at the University of Minnesota, and former Secretary of the Wine Committee at Wolfson College, Oxford.

  • Character Assassination and Resurrection

    After a two-year obligation to the “Peacetime Army” I ended up at the U of M, continuing as a junior in Liberal Arts. It was 1957, but my real education was at The Scholar. I have no bones to pick with either Bobby Zimmerman or Bob Dylan and anyway it matters not a jot what I might think of him/them. What I do find sleazy and irresponsible is your treatment of Scholar owner Clark Batho [“Desire Revisited,” April 2002] whom you assassinate as “a distrusted and despised character” on the word of others who were at that time distrusted by many of us. I would describe Batho simply as a character—which he was in every sense of the word—and that would have been true and sufficient. It may interest you to know that Clark Batho has responsibly grown and sold Christmas trees in Southwest Minneapolis for at least 15 years, and is a much more solid person than your brief, slanderous phrase leaves us with.

    Bill Savran, owner
    The West Bank’s now-extinct
    Savran’s Books

  • High Beamers

    An article was posted on your web site quoting me [Native Son, April 2002]. It stated that I agreed that 200 or so interviews for Lisa Beamer was reasonable. I remember our conversation well. I told you that I would estimate 20, perhaps 30 interviews. You have printed an absolute lie! I suggest that you print a correction in your next issue and send me a copy or I will take this matter to our attorney.

    Helen Cook
    The B & B Media Group, Inc.

    Steve Perry responds: I have my notes from our phone conversation. It’s true that you initially said Lisa Beamer had spoken to about 30 media organizations—many of them multiple times, you added. I then said it was the latter number I was interested in: How many times in all has she spoken to people from media? You said you were unsure, and asked if I could phone back later after you had checked. I did, and you were still unsure. So I suggested the figure of 200. You indicated that might be a little high. So, I replied, what then? 150? 100? No, you finally said, 200 was probably a reasonable number so long as I took care to present it as an estimate. Which I did.