The Rake Magazine

Month: August 2003

  • To Honor All—or Just One

    What do the Episcopal Church and Kobe Bryant have in common? Both are being forced to face the consequences of earlier moral commitments that may take them to places they never wanted to go. For the Episcopal Church, the initial commitment was to social equality. For Kobe, it was marital fidelity. Next year at this time, the Episcopalians may be splintered into several factions, and Kobe could be on permanent loan to the Colorado penal system. Like most conundrums, by the time the shouting started, it really was too little too late, because the ending was ordained by the beginning.

    The Episcopal Church has historically helped lead the spiritual charge for social change. When Martin Luther King Jr. marched on Selma, Episcopal clergy were right alongside him. When women demanded a more authoritative voice in mainstream churches, the Episcopal Church was among the first, albeit reluctantly, to hear their cry. It was not surprising that the Episcopalians were also among the first to accept openly gay people as leaders in their church.

    And so, in Minneapolis on August 6, the Episcopal Church of the U.S.A. confirmed the openly gay Rev. Gene Robinson as a bishop. The historic vote, hailed variously as a “calling by God” or the beginning of the apocalypse (hey, in a metaphysical way, isn’t that the same thing?), the Episcopalians made the front page of every newspaper in America. Strangely enough, nearly everyone acted as though the vote caught them by surprise. Considering the past forty years of Episcopal commitment to equality and basic human nature, this decision was a foregone conclusion.

    Can an organization make a commitment to equality for all (as the Episcopalians say they do), and then deny equal access to its entry-level management position (priest)? Well, enough church members did not think so, and admitted openly gay people like Robinson into its divinity schools, knowing that eventually, they would want to be priests. And once they became priests, they would want all the perquisites that come with the job—including the chance to move up the food chain.

    How does this have any possible connection with hoopster Kobe Bryant? Think about it: Kobe, like the Episcopal Church, also made a commitment, one that involved the words “honor” and “forsaking all others.” Once he made that commitment, he certainly knew that most people, especially his wife and the companies who paid him millions to hawk their stuff, expected him to keep it. He’s not married to his sponsors, but they’re certainly married to a reputable image of him; that’s why they pay the big bucks.

    Yes, basketball made Kobe a prosperous sports star, but what made him really famous and really, really rich were his endorsements. The Nikes of the world realize that being tight with a clean-living good guy makes you look like a good guy, too. And Kobe, unlike the Dennis Rodmans of sportsdom, epitomized clean living. He spoke Italian, had a drop-dead-gorgeous wife, and boycotted the after-game parties where his teammates consumed booze and women with equal gusto.

    Therefore, once Kobe made his decision (or more likely, continued to make his decision) to trash his commitment, there were several possible consequences. Some were immediate, such as sexual gratification. Others—for example, disease, pregnancy, divorce, scandal, loss of endorsements—were only possibilities and, Kobe apparently thought, worth the risk.

    What is the lesson learned from these two summer headline grabbers? First, publicly committing to high ideals creates the entirely reasonable expectation that one will live by them, too. In other words, when the Episcopal Church says, as it does on its official website, that its mission is to “restore all people to unity with God,” then does it have any choice but to make its priesthood (and higher positions such as bishop) accessible without regard to how gay is too gay? And when Kobe promised to forsake all others, and then made that commitment an integral part of a public image worth millions, can he honestly be surprised when his fans and his corporate sponsors drop him like a used jock strap?

    This brings us to the most important lesson of the past six weeks. One should never forget when making a commitment—either to treating every person the same or being intimate with just one—that keeping it can be just as costly as breaking it.

  • Werner Bischof Photographs: 1932-1954; Sid Kaplan; The Last Picture Show: Artists Using Photography, 1960-1982

    Shutterbug buffs have a busy month ahead of them, with three diverse exhibits sure to help build a sense of camera-derie. Two are, more or less, single-artist retrospectives. At the MIA, it’s a look at the 22-year career of Swiss photojournalist Bischof, one of the leading lights of the Magnum agency. Best known for documenting shattered postwar Europe and famine-struck India, he was in the midst of a massive South American tour when his car fell off a mountain road in the Andes. Over at Icebox, a loosely organized show of several decades of Sid Kaplan’s work provides an excellent excuse to check out the new gallery space in the Northrup King complex. Kaplan will be in town to introduce the show October 9; he’s got 50 years’ worth of stories about working with the greats of the New York scene, so mark your calendar. But the big development is the Walker’s aptly titled Last Picture Show, running until the building closes for a year in February. With nearly five dozen artists on display, this ambitious exhibit takes as its subject nothing less than the changing meaning of photography itself as an art form. It looks like a superb show; a year without the Walker sounds very long indeed.
    MIA, 2400 Third Ave. S., (612) 870-3131, www.artsmia.org
    Icebox, 1500 Jackson St. N.E. #443, (612) 788-1790, www.iceboxminnesota.com
    Walker, 725 Vineland Pl., (612) 375-7622, www.walkerart.org

  • Dard Hunter: Master of Graphic and Book Arts

    DIY? As a graphic designer for New York’s Roycroft Colony, Dard Hunter invented the concept. Hunter’s participation in the Arts and Crafts movement (which embraced an ideal of human craftsmanship over the machine-made) yielded impressive results. Hunter dabbled in a variety of media, including stained glass and metal, but his true legacy lies in his accomplishments in papermaking and typographical design. This exhibit reveals a diligent American artist whose designs are cleverly handsome, making even the decapitated head of John the Baptist, a cover design for Oscar Wilde’s Salome, into an elegant work of art.
    MMAA, 505 Landmark Center, St. Paul, (651) 292-4380, www.mmaa.org

  • Handsome Family

    It was cosmically appropriate that our review copy of The Handsome Family’s sixth disc, Singing Bones, arrived the day that Johnny Cash died. The New Mexico husband-and-wife duo of Brett and Rennie Sparks are true artistic children of the Man in Black, mixing traditional roots music with postmodern macabre about haunted all-night chain stores and doomed expeditions down bottomless pits. Brett’s deep bass is a perfect complement to Rennie’s lyrics, which aren’t so much standard verse-chorus-verse as melancholy story-poems with a dark, dry humor Flannery O’Connor would have appreciated. Bones is rich with somber alt-country, recorded and mixed entirely in the Sparks’s living room. Turn down the lights, knock back a whiskey and sing along.
    400 Bar, 400 Cedar Ave., (612) 332-2903, www.400bar.com

  • St. Paul Is Not the Hero of This Story

    As I read Craig Cox’s article, I couldn’t help but be impressed with his knowledge of the sometimes tough and always dangerous job firefighters perform twenty-four hours a day and 365 days a year. Still, the article does unfortunately gloss over the ax–wielding occurring across the river in St. Paul. Cox wonders how it is possible that St. Paul, with a population of 100,000 less than Minneapolis, can afford to have a fire department approximately the same size as Minneapolis’s department. Both fire departments respond to fire alarms and are EMS first responders. However, in St. Paul, firefighters also provide the emergency ambulance service for the city, to the tune of more than 25,000 medic runs per year. Although St. Paul is smaller in population than Minneapolis, the SPFD does have more runs, and therefore the need for added personnel. Cox also mentions St. Paul’s plan to hire laid-off firefighters from other departments. St. Paul’s fire administration is doing this out of desperation. Mayor Randy Kelly eliminated fourteen already-vacant firefighter positions. Although nobody was laid off, this move had the same effect. Staffing levels in St. Paul are so poor that on many occasions rigs have had to be placed out of service and entire fire stations have had to be shut down because there were not enough personnel to man them. Randy Kelly won St. Paul’s fire union’s endorsement in 2001 because he promised to make public safety his number-one priority. Since his election, Kelly hasn’t done one single thing to increase the public’s safety. If anything, he has continually sought to compromise safety through misguided policies—for example, his plans to cut three fire rigs and then build two new fire stations. Any firefighter can tell Mayor Kelly that fire stations don’t put out fires, firefighters and fire rigs do. Often I wonder if I will have the resources to put out the fires in the city where I work, and if the Minneapolis Fire Department will be able to protect my family’s home in the city where I live.

    Chris Parsons, Minneapolis
    St. Paul firefighter,
    member, IAFF Local 21

  • Blame the Republicans, Part II

    Minneapolis city officials certainly have a duty to provide adequate and effective fire protection service to their city, but it’s unfair to single out that one city and one department for criticism as The Rake does, when the true fault lies with the decisions imposed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty and Republican legislators. The governor and Republican lawmakers who backed him in his “no tax hike” pledge utterly failed to recognize that this policy would have real-world effects—and the reduction of firefighters, police, and other essential city services is one of the biggest. They talk about “the budget” as if it were some mathematical abstraction, but as mayors, council members, and fire and police chiefs can testify, there are real people, real communities, and real challenges attached to every digit in the document. That’s why House Democrats proposed a budget that avoided these devastating cuts in aid to cities. Every citizen ought to be concerned about the ability of our city governments to protect them. But blame ought to be laid where it truly belongs: with the governor and the Republican legislators who put their own narrow ideological and partisan interest above the public interest.

    State Representative Len Biernat, District 59A, Northeast Minneapolis

  • Pat’s Baby

    I found it very interesting that your July article was promoting Pat Awada for sainthood [“Is This Woman Ruining Our State?,” July], not mentioning any lasting effects about what her plan on reducing aid to the cities would do to the Metropolitan area. Your August article on the cuts to the Minneapolis fire department did not mention that they were a legacy of our illustrious auditor and her pet governor. Funny how you didn’t mention who was responsible for the cuts. If I recall, this was Pat Awada’s baby from the word go.

    Pat Vauk
    Minneapolis

  • Blame the Republicans, Part I

    The article about the Minneapolis Fire Department was very good. I think it missed one key point, though. The cuts to basic services in our cities are a direct result of actions taken by our state legislature and governor. The Republican mindset is very hostile to the core cities, and they have reneged on the Local Government Aid formula put in place to return revenue to the economic engines that produce much of our wealth yet also have great needs. Now we city dwellers can deal with the consequences.

    Jeff Farnam
    Minneapolis

  • Fire in the Hole

    Thank you for doing what the rest of the press and media had been afraid to do for the last year. Up until now, no newspaper or radio program has addressed the real issues, and Chief Forte was well aware that if he did not comment on policy/politics, the local papers would not take him to task. It had been intimated that unless he would give the press his side of the story, they would not address the issues. Your article [“Is 911 a Joke?,” August] was on the money. I have attended meetings in the past, and, as you pointed out, Chief Forte “controls” the numbers quite well and masterfully dazzles the crowds. When questioned by someone who understands or has researched the facts, he has responded by attacking the individual’s motives (in the case of a firefighter at a community meeting) or telling the group that the facts were incorrect (as he did to me even though I had documented proof from the National Organization of Fire Chiefs). I encourage readers to look up an article entitled “Death by Staffing” on www.firehouse.com. It details the risks to citizens and firefighters when staffing falls too low. It also documents the liability to a city budget when deaths are caused by reduced staffing. The City Council should have read this article since it was forwarded to them prior to the budget-cutting vote. Knowing that there is danger and not acting diligently could cost the taxpayers millions more than we have saved by axing the firefighters.

    Bob Nielsen
    Minneapolis

  • Not so Fast, Waltz!

    There are just so many ways to dislike Waltz’s essay. Start with the facile, faux Hunter S. Thompson prose style; the lack of insights (spoken word has been around for, oh, ten years or so. Thanks for noticing, William!); the defense of Billy Collins (in the sixties the popular poet was Rod McKuen. Anyone happy about that?); or the commercial plugs for his buddy Gabriel Gudding (go talk to your own buttocks, fellas). What’s most appalling to me is that like most “cultural commentators” discussing poetry, Waltz assumes it’s an academic game. The writers I’ve come into contact with in the nearly thirty years I’ve been writing write poetry for love, not grades. And among those people, poetry has never been in danger of dying as an art.

    R.T. Castleberry
    Houston, TX

    Oddly, a large number of letter writers who disliked Waltz’s essay accused him of shilling for “his buddy” Gabriel Gudding. The two are not aquainted socially or professionally, just one poet admiring another—a shocking enough state of affairs, we guess.—Editors