Hear hear on the fleecing we cross-country skiers are now suffering at Three Rivers [“Getting Fleeced,” February]. It is a pain in the rear, but if it makes skiing better, I guess I can take it. Now we hear that the state DNR is cracking down on skiers as well, but you just have to ask why, when by their own admission the vast majority of skiers have state ski passes, and those who don’t are merely getting warnings? Anyway, I’d like to clarify that this issue is not with the city parks per se but what we used to consider the county parks out in the suburbs. Thanks to Mayor R.T. Rybak, among others, city parks are actually the same price they always were—free—and the quality and quantity of ski-trail grooming has gone way up. The City of Lakes Loppet was a great success, not just as a race but as an organizing and training device for city skiers, who were treated to a world-class course on which to train throughout the season—right here in our front yards. I, for one, am going to stop driving out to Bloomington and Elm Creek, not just in protest of the sky-high fee hikes, but in celebration of city skiing.
Tom Anderson,
Minneapolis
Month: February 2004
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So. How Was Your Birkie?
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Mitch & Moan
Brian Beatty’s review of Mitch Hedberg and his new CD Mitch All Together [Over the Coals, February] is well-informed and credible. I am a big Hedberg fan and also felt that his first CD Strategic Grill Locations captured a too off-the-cuff performance that epitomized the “throw it all against the wall and see what sticks” cliché. I think the material on Mitch All Together is strong (though some of the best bits from the Acme shows I attended did not make it onto the disc), but I agree that the rushed pacing of the material is a disconnect with Hedberg’s historical stage manner and at times diminishes what is overall a solid effort. I still lobby my friends to see his excellent live shows every time he performs locally.
Kevin O’Keefe,
Minneapolis -
Take It Off, Men!
I am writing in regard to Peter Christensen’s letter to the editor regarding whether married men should go to strip clubs [Letters, January]. I agree that the human body is a thing of beauty. But what about male nudity? It seems that it is always about women. Are men not comfortable with baring their bodies? Men have gorgeous bodies, and I personally would like to see more of them. Christensen writes “you don’t see men decrying the ‘exploitation’ of male dancers who strut their goods…” Where are these male strip clubs? I can’t find them anywhere. There are tons of commercials, TV shows, magazines, and movies exposing women’s bodies, but what about the men? I remember a couple of TV commercials advertising men’s underwear, and the male models were dancing seductively. But the commercials were pulled immediately because it was too shocking to show men in revealing clothing. Give me a break. What about the controversy surrounding Abercrombie & Fitch? They have the only catalog I know of that features naked men as well as naked women. But it was pulled because of the backlash. If it was just another catalog with naked women, no one would have blinked. Yes, nudity is a thing of beauty. So let’s drop the puritan attitude about men’s bodies and start showing them as well.
Name withheld by request -
So Many Lives
I was heartened to read Mr. Collins’ column on the Dru Sjodin phenomenon [Free the Jackson Five!, January]. I share his concern for the inequitable distribution of compassion by citizens, leaders, and media alike. That is why I spend a whole day in a vigil fast every time someone, no matter what color, is killed in my community. So many lives have been taken in the poor and brown communities of America and so much indifference has followed. It is time for us all to recognize the predictable and conditioned disparity in responses of passion and apathy we express when lives are lost. And it is time for us to pledge to resist those prejudicial urges and respond to the quiet, more humane, pleadings of our ailing consciences and our rational minds. The call is for an evenhanded disbursement of value. It requires a deliberate and willful changing of our behavior. Whether or not we feel like it, we must consider and mourn all equally.
Don Samuels,
Minneapolis City Council Member,
Third Ward -
Blame the Mirror
Maybe the reason Dru got so much attention is because her white family and friends were right there to search, hold fund-raisers, and publicize her story. What did you do the last time one of your black sisters were in trouble? Did you pass out posters? Did you go to the media then, when you weren’t the center of attention as in your column? Or do you only write when the article is accompanied with your picture? Did you climb the countryside looking for her? Did you organize fund-raisers to help prolong the search privately when the military ended their commitment? If you answered no to these questions, maybe you should rethink what the problem really is.
Gerri Woodbeck,
Inver Grove Heights -
Face Time
Thanks very much for the wonderful story about Sami Rasouli’s return to Iraq [February]. So much of the media coverage concerns itself with politics, or even with the gruesomeness of war. I find myself increasingly interested in Arab and Muslim culture. It’s as if the news media’s efforts to sanitize the story, or make it a typical geopolitical story, have made me more curious than ever about what real people are doing and saying on the streets of Iraq, what life must really be like there, irrespective of any agenda related to either re-electing or defeating George W. Bush. The fact of the matter is that the world does not revolve around the U.S., and as hard as that lesson seems to be for us to learn, there’s going to be a lot more American blood spilled before it’s all over, I’m afraid. It’s not about us. Your story put a wonderful, human face on this terrible war-torn world.
Ben Levin,
New York -
It Is Snot!
About Stephanie March’s column on oysters [Down the Hatch, February], in particular the line, “But if you liken it to snot, you should be slapped. Grow up.” Well, Ms. March, I’m a very intelligent, mature man, and now hear this: The texture of oysters is like snot! Truth is truth. I find them to be the most repugnant food on this planet. I don’t believe for a moment that they’re an aphrodisiac. Casanova must simply have had a high level of testosterone. Besides,who needs an aphrodisiac? And to Oliver Nicholson, in defense of champagne [Wine, February]: You’re very knowledgeable, and I generally enjoy your column. However, I must say that I love champagne—as well as red wine—anytime. And it doesn’t give me a worse hangover than anything else. As Dom Perignon said when he first discovered champagne, “Come quickly, I am tasting stars!”
Jerry Westermann,
Fridley -
Gagging on the Patriot Act
If the title of patron saint of journalists were not already held by the seventeenth-century French priest Francis de Sales, many American reporters would be ready to canonize Professor Jane E. Kirtley of the University of Minnesota for her steadfast support and defense of their work. Through a serendipitous career as a reporter, attorney, advocate, and academic, Kirtley has built a reputation as the nation’s leading expert on the First Amendment and its practical application to the media. She has also emerged as a major critic of increased government secrecy since September 11.
In journalism circles, Kirtley gained renown for leading the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press (RCFP) from 1985 to 1999, helping to shape the Washington, D.C., organization into a substantive, respected resource on First Amendment issues for reporters across the country. As director of the Silha Center for the Study of Media Ethics and Law, she still serves as a source for scores of media inquiries each year, while teaching media law classes that are in great demand and continuing her crusade for press freedom issues, both at home and abroad.
Slight of build, with green eyes and a thin, regal nose, the amiable Kirtley seems an unlikely champion for America’s often boisterous fourth estate. When on a soapbox for freedom of the press, she is more beatific than belligerent, a joyful missionary for the First Amendment. She once told her law school alumni magazine, “I suspect that if you asked some of my professors, they never would have believed it was possible that shy little Jane Kirtley could actually be taking on Jerry Falwell or Pat Buchanan on Crossfire.”
Since coming to Minnesota four years ago, Kirtley has maintained a busy schedule that combines public engagement and scholarly research. She has given 115 lectures, presentations and speeches outside her own classrooms; written or co-written thirty-seven publications; served on seventy-seven panels or seminars; consulted on freedom of information and the press in ten countries; and been interviewed by the media nearly three hundred times.
When The Rake caught up with her in January, Professor Kirtley was preparing to leave town for a semester as a visiting professor at Suffolk University Law School in Boston. Kirtley, an admitted Anglophile who quotes the fictional Rumpole of the Bailey in law review articles, was also nursing a cold that she had picked up on vacation in London with her husband, law professor and playwright Steve Cribari. Despite the sniffles and the peripatetic schedule, she was true to her reputation as an accessible and “above and beyond” resource for journalists.
Even after three decades in the news business, Kirtley still gets choked up over what most Americans take for granted. “It’s really hard for me to talk about the First Amendment without getting extremely emotional,” she declares a little bashfully. “It’s such an article of faith with me. It’s what makes our country different from any other democracy in the world.” Kirtley sees one of her roles at the University of Minnesota as “passing the torch” to budding journalists. “We have a new generation that needs to understand the importance of the First Amendment,” she says.
Los Angeles Times media writer Tim Rutten says it’s clear that principle, rather than a love of publicity, drives Kirtley’s work. “Some people believe in free expression because they think it’s a bedrock value of a free society,” he says. “Then there are those who adore malicious license. Jane is in the first camp—that sets her apart from many lawyers interested in media.” Adam Liptak of the New York Times, a libel attorney turned reporter, lauds Kirtley for her comprehensive knowledge of the law and her “authentic commitment to First Amendment values.”
Even those who disagree with her views hold Kirtley in high esteem. “I enjoy sparring with Jane a tremendous amount,” declares Minneapolis attorney and former federal prosecutor William Michael, Jr., who has debated her on the USA PATRIOT Act and other Bush-administration security initiatives. “It’s good for the country that she continues to speak on her views. It leads to a better-informed public and better-informed decision-making authority.”
Kirtley grew up in Indianapolis, the daughter of a research physician who subscribed to the city’s three daily papers. “Eugene Pulliam, who published two of those papers, was—bless his heart—slightly to the right of Attila the Hun, but he really believed in freedom of the press,” Kirtley says. Bitten by the journalism bug early on, Kirtley says she regarded the profession as a way to do interesting things without overspecializing. Arts reporting was a particular interest, and today Kirtley remains an avid opera fan with a soft spot for Verdi. (One can only wonder how Verdi’s tales of skullduggery and betrayal amongst the rich and powerful might turn out differently, were a gaggle of reporters suddenly to horn in on the storyline, exposing key secrets for benefit of the public.)
Her career took an unexpected turn while studying at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism. As part of her master’s program, she was assigned to cover nuclear energy and nuclear-weapons policy in Washington, D.C., for the Oak Ridger, the newspaper serving Oak Ridge, Tennessee, home of a major nuclear-weapons and energy facility. “At that time, Oak Ridge had one of the highest concentration of Ph.D.’s anywhere in the U.S., so I had to get everything right. You couldn’t fudge it because you were writing for an audience who knew this stuff inside and out.”
That assignment led her to a critical realization. “What really struck me was the fact that if I couldn’t get the information, then I couldn’t really write. Over the years, working in emerging democracies and so forth, I’ve come to the conclusion that the right to say or report anything you want is only half of the idea of freedom of the press. You also need to have the right to get information. Otherwise you have nothing to say, or what you do say is nothing but hot air.”
In these days of zealous government secrecy, Kirtley is fond of quoting federal Judge Damon Keith, who wrote that “democracies die behind closed doors.” She adds that “Democracy is not self-executing. Just because we declare a democracy doesn’t mean it really exists. If we want to preserve it and have it be what it’s really supposed to be—that only happens if we have access to information.”
In a recent article, she makes the claim that “democracies can’t accomplish much of anything without the free flow of information—including waging the war on terrorism.” She notes that a congressional investigation into the events of September 11 showed that relevant CIA and National Security Agency reports were so highly classified that FBI agents in the field—the actual law enforcement officials who might have been able to pre-empt the attacks—did not have access to these reports. Her point was underscored by Tom Kean, co-chair of the federal September 11 commission and former Republican governor of New Jersey, who observed in a December interview with CBS: “I’ve been reading these highly, highly classified documents. In most cases, I finish with them, I look up and say, ‘Why is this classified?’ Maybe out of our work, a lot of these documents that are classified will be unclassified.”
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Innie or Outie?
When visiting sculptor Joe Anton’s split-level rambler in Brooklyn Park, it might take a while for the subject to come around to art. Horsepower TV might be on, demonstrating the latest muscle-car trick modifications. You might need to help unload an awning from the bed of his Ranchero. Plaques in the rec room display his name on General Mills patents, the most recent for a machine that marks extruded cookie dough to show exactly where to slice it. You may unexpectedly receive a humongous bag of dehydrated strawberries or Green Giant asparagus spears.
The stainless steel sculptures, large and small, are everywhere in the Anton home. Mostly they show whimsical animals and humans—somewhat akin to Alexander Calder’s early wire sculptures, but constructed from a boggling array of household items. In Anton’s hands, common objects achieve a sort of visual onomatopoeia: forks become feet, spatulas fold into wings, spoons overlap to form reptilian scales, a caulking gun handle forms the beak of a penguin, spark plugs suddenly look strangely facial and snoutlike. Already loaded with gifts of food, I tried once to decline the offer of a sculpture, a frog made from forks, spoons and nuts. “Be a cheerful receiver,” scolded Anton.
The living room contains a steel mesh chair and a galvanized end-table made from scrap for which Anton dumpster-dives (an activity he refers to as “the fine art”). He takes the outsider artist’s benevolent view of utility: art doesn’t have to be useless. The chair is comfortable, the table functional. He once welded a figure of a firefighter onto a hot-dog skewer, the skewer anatomically located (if not accurate). It, too, bears evidence of regular use.
Anton’s gift for perceiving organic forms in almost any hunk of metal may derive from being “a machinist from birth.” But it also grows out of the way he lives, including his Tao-like version of Christian faith, the central doctrine of which is adaptability.
“A chameleon who can’t change colors is a dead chameleon,” he quipped. “You have to make yourself ready for a window to open, for an opportunity. God doesn’t test you. He gives you chances.”
Putting this faith at the center of their lives, Anton and his wife, Sue, are always seeking to know how their actions “reflect the mind of Christ,” as Sue puts it. Practically speaking, this means that if God provides you with chances for good fortune, you must also be alert for opportunities to do good. “We tithe. We go beyond tithing,” said Anton, without a trace of evangelical mania. “Does that make you a Christian artist?” I wondered. “And is this Christian art?” “That’s like saying if you’re a Christian farmer, you can only grow Christian vegetables,” replied Anton, clearly amused by the thought.
Windows of opportunity have indeed opened for Anton recently. While his work has sold mostly in the gift market, in February 2002 General Mills installed his first large commission, a four-by-eight foot stainless-steel abstract piece titled “Genesis.” This came to pass, he explained, when he called attention to an irritatingly blank wall near the human resources offices. Then a public-relations manager noticed that a flower he made from spoons resembled the Yoplait division’s trademark daisy. Rather than litigate for copyright infringement, she ordered 150 copies.
He still works as a machinist, but Anton has also become General Mills’ house sculptor of sorts, turning out extra daisies on demand and welding whimsical award plaques. At the moment, he’s working on a modular piece for 8th Continent, the soy milk division. This good fortune, however, has taken some serendipity out of his work. He orders spoons wholesale, in lots of four hundred. “You can only hit your kitchen drawer so many times,” he lamented.
—Joe Pastoor -
Seeking Refuge
Sleeping birds are vulnerable. This is why the lucky ones flock by the tens of thousands to roost for the night on the low, gnarled branches of the mangrove trees that flourish in the back bay waters of Estero Island, Florida, where I just spent a week with Jon and our kids.
In these quiet, tidal waters, masses of entangled leaves, boughs, and trunks spring out of the sea itself—there’s no ground at all above water. On the landless Bird Island, some fifteen thousand birds gather at dusk to nod off in peace. No ground, no predators. These birds are fearless for the night. How I envy those birds on Bird Island. The romance of it makes me shudder: What would my life look like if I erased all predators?
Oh Lord, I’d have my work cut out for me. Obviously, at this very moment, I’d eradicate my proclivity to sun rash (an unfortunate ailment I’ve passed along, much to her horror, to my elder daughter). Without sun rash, I could enjoy a week at the beach without red blisters, ice soaks, antihistamines, cortisone, calamine, and Desitin ointment.
What is sun rash, anyway, my daughter wants to know as her hands and feet swell and itch painfully with small blisters and under-the-skin bleeding. Is it some sort of allergy? Indeed, it is, known medically as the exotic-sounding “polymorphous light eruption.” When I was little, my mom used to call it “heat rash,” a term decidedly less flattering than either sun rash or polymorphous light eruption. Heat rash sounds oddly private, and vaguely unclean. We girls will take our sun rash, no matter how gruesome, to any form of “heat rash,” thank you. But if we had the chance to be as free of menaces as the birds on Bird Island, then we’d banish sun rash, and all other rashes for that matter.
There are other things I’d ditch faster, though, come to think of it. Based on today’s mail offerings, I’d erase the mean people from the law firm that handled my divorce almost four years ago—the ones who now send unpleasant letters regarding the obscene amount of money I still owe them and the inadequacy of my regular monthly payments. Maybe all bills could be eliminated.
But first I would erase my son’s melancholy for all things dead and gone: his first house, friends who’ve moved away, his homemade cardboard mailbox that I threw to the floor and broke (it still hurts to recall the snapping sound) in a sleep-deprived fit of frustration when he was three years old, and his several deceased pets, including Popsicle the parakeet who dropped dead while my son was traveling, adding shock and guilt to his inevitable heartbreak. I would get rid of it all, and more, until he was a free eleven-year-old boy, alight on a mangrove branch with his blond head tucked under a sturdy wing.
Though I imagine the melancholy could wait until I’d done away with assaults. The boys who jumped out at my friend and me in a haunted house twenty summers ago, grabbing us and tearing the buttons from our shirts, bruising our wrists, scaring us senseless before the next person who’d bought a ticket for fear stumbled down the darkened hallway. The crazed men who’ve assaulted so many women I know. The stepfather nicknamed Mafia by his friends, not enemies, who picked up my sister by her long straight hair. All assaults would be erased on my Bird Island.
And how about psychic assaults, those haunting bad memories and humiliations? I’d can them. The time my friend and writing colleague called from Knoxville to say our editor at Simon and Schuster had received our manuscript and was demanding a total rewrite. “She hated it,” drawled my friend. “Just hated it.”
It’s exhausting, this process of elimination. It’s not the same as feeling somewhere in your ancient psyche that the light is waning, and taking wing to a certain spot far out in the water where you know you will rest easy for the night, safe, fearless.
So I throw the mail in the mail basket and carry my daughter’s blanket up to her lofted bed. I tuck it in around the edges, smooth it out. I lie down with her while she reads Caps for Sale. A spray of freckles has emerged on the tan skin across the bridge of her nose (unlike her sister, she does not get sun rash). I run through all of the kids in my mind, their faces, their quirks. Who needs what, who’s doing okay, who’s struggling. Eventually, they all sleep.
Sleeping children are vulnerable. There is no Bird Island in sight, and only flawed parents to keep them safe. Let us rise to it, even if barely. That’s ultimately all I ask. That’s my real Bird Island.