Month: April 2007

“David Lynch meets Mother Goose”: That’s the vision Hardcover Theater’s writer/director Steve Schroer has for his new play, inspired by an obscure Victorian fantasy called The New Mother. This source material was written for children—it’s a fable that warns, with rich imagery and plenty of fright, against being naughty. And yet Schroer insists his play is for grownups. He lists a secondary source of inspiration as Edgar Allan Poe’s essay, “The Imp of the Perverse,” which allows him to riff on the human compulsion to behave badly at any age. Schroer also has layered in enough sexual tension and bone-chilling ambience (via set, sound, and lighting designs) to turn this creepy kids’ story into a hair-raiser for adults. Hardcover Theater at the Playwrights’ Center,2301 Franklin Ave. E., Minneapolis; 612-581-2229.

The annual celebration of Minnesota books and publishing has new sponsors (the entire city of St. Paul seems to have gotten behind this thing), new digs, and plenty of fresh faces this year. But in a state with so much literary activity going on it’s hard to screw up something so basically virtuous. We could quibble about some of the nominations (and oversights), and will likely squawk about a number of winners, but that’s the pure blood-sport fun of such galas, the nasty flipside to all the merrymaking and clinking of champagne glasses. There’ll apparently be (actually, there better be) plenty of the latter; cocktail and business attire are suggested, and tickets are forty bucks a pop. Crowne Plaza Hotel, 11 Kellogg Blvd. E., St. Paul; 651-222-3242.

Sherman Alexie was born hydrocephalic, and doctors predicted he would suffer severe retardation. However, the very opposite occurred; he showed signs of prodigy, devouring novels by age five. Still, he endured effects of his condition—seizures and bed-wetting—and was subject to bullying on the Spokane Reservation where he grew up. In his new novel Flight (Alexie’s first in ten years), the celebrated author of Indian Killer and Reservation Blues seems to channel that ostracism into a fifteen-year-old protagonist whose acne is so bad he’s known simply as “Zits.” Today more glitterati than geek, Alexie is known for acerbic wit that causes his audience to laugh while their hearts break. Lake of the Isles Lutheran Church, 2020 West Lake of the Isles Pkwy., Minneapolis; 612-374-4023.

While a graduate student at Harvard, Dr. Elaine Pagels spent years studying the Nag Hammadi Library manuscripts, and she has turned that research into a sort of Gnostic cottage industry. Her 1979 classic, The Gnostic Gospels, won both the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and was included on the Modern Library’s list of the hundred best books of the twentieth century. Throughout her subsequent work, Pagels has demonstrated a dogged and occasionally controversial scholarship, as she has consistently probed and questioned the early history of Christianity, often in the context of her own faith. She continues to pose big and important questions for believers and skeptics alike. Hopkins Center for the Arts, 1111 Mainstreet, Hopkins; 651-209-6799.

The Rake’s parenting editor Renata Frears recently had an opportunity to speak with Roy “Buck” Prescott, controversial author of Breaking the Spirit of Your Unborn Child and Breaking the Spirit of Your Newborn Child (Regnery Publishing). Prescott was in town for the first annual “It’s a Man’s World” symposium at the Best Steak House in Richfield, where he was honored for his pioneering work on the benefits of fetal deprivation.

You argue that not a single drop of breast milk should ever touch a baby’s lips. What’s wrong with breast-feeding?
The breast is the incubator of all manner of harmful pathologies. Every time a mother takes an infant to her breast she’s teaching that child to say, “Give! Give! Give!” while at the same time ensuring that for the rest of her life she’s going to be viewed as a sort of unhappy and unfulfilled ATM machine molded out of flesh. Breast-feeding is the infant’s introduction to America’s pernicious culture of permissiveness; if a child can have easy access to its mother’s breast, what can’t it have? Where do you draw the line?

But many so-called experts claim that breast-feeding helps the mother and baby to bond, and increases the baby’s immunity to many common and potentially devastating diseases.
I have another word for what you refer to as ‘so-called experts’: parrots. Teach any addled child of the ’60s to utter a handful of useless phrases—“nurture,” “self-esteem,” etc…—and you have a so-called parenting expert on your hands. These characters have sown the seeds for an epidemic of social erosion.

You’re a proponent of infrequent physical contact between parents and their newborn. How is a child harmed when it cuddles with its mother or father?
I despise all those feel-good words with doubled consonants—cuddle, snuggle, coddle, etc. Look up ‘affection’ in the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary; it originally meant a sort of passion or lust that was in direct opposition to reason. The primary job of the parent is to communicate rigorous expectations and strict personal boundaries that convey the severity of the life experience and the sort of discipline necessary to survive in a world that is generally indifferent if not outright hostile to any individual’s feelings of self importance or ‘self-esteem.’ I would hope that you have some way to indicate the horror with which I speak that phrase.

In your book you say that corporal punishment is the only way to discipline a child. This goes against the wisdom of many other writers on this subject. Why do you advocate spanking?
Quite simply, because hundreds of years of historical evidence indicates that it’s the single most effective means of communicating parental displeasure and the consequences of misbehavior. This notion that you can bargain with a child without relinquishing the necessary upper hand in a parent/child relationship is utter hogwash. Children are brutal, unscrupulous, and relentless negotiators, and recognizing the distinction between behavior and misbehavior is critical from the moment an infant is born.

What do you say to those who call spanking abusive?
I’d say they’re dangerously naive. These are the people who have turned America’s children into a zombie army of overweight therapy drones. They’ve produced what I call “the unaccountable generation.” When it comes to the nature vs. nurture debate, believe me, nature wins every time. The nurtured child is the child that gets eaten alive when it is eventually thrown to the wolves.

Several other experts, including Dr. Phil, have called your methods “the ranting of an unqualified lunatic.” How do you respond?
I’d say that’s a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Dr. Phil is a charlatan of the sort this country has been producing—and rewarding with obscene wealth—with alarming frequency for far too long. One of his own children is married to a former Playboy bunny, and anyone who would take parenting advice from such an odious fraud is guilty in my mind of criminal child neglect. I’ve repeatedly offered to arm-wrestle Phil McGraw on the Oprah show, but thus far he has ignored my challenges and spared himself further humiliation.

You’re unmarried and don’t have any children of your own. How have you developed your approach?
You don’t have to build a banana to know how to peel and eat one. I was a staff sergeant in the United States Army for a decade. I bred and trained bloodhounds for almost twenty years. I’ve had more dinners, dates, holidays, and public outings ruined by the misbehavior of other people’s infants and children than I could even begin to count.

You write that every child is born with “serious inherent defects,” yet others have argued that every child is born perfect. How are babies
defective?
Every baby is a constellation of defects, some of them unique to the individual child, others endemic to all infants—some might call this constellation of defects ‘human nature.’ Parenting is precisely the process by which these defects are eradicated and the child is trained to be a competent, responsible, and functioning adult. Show me a child who doesn’t learn conformity and strict obedience to authority in the home and I’ll show you a monster that hasn’t yet burst from the laboratory.

How do you explain sex to a young child?
You don’t.

What would be the effect on society if all children’s spirits remained intact?
A nation of ‘enlightened’ depressives who buy their potatoes at co-ops and are prisoners to their increasingly disenchanted and depressed children. ‘Spirit’ is one of the most abused words in the English language, and what this world does not need at this moment in time are any more spirited—and spoiled—children. Deprivation and disappointment breed initiative, and what we desperately need are responsible, realistic kids who are fully prepared to take their licks and who recognize their place in a functional, moral, and civilized society. Dog eat dog, of course, implies that some dogs are going to be eaten. That, in a nutshell, is life, and it’s the essential message of both my books.

It seemed like a bold move at the time, but when Ini Iyamba opened a second store—his Ivy Men’s + Design boutique at 1220 Glenwood Avenue—just this March, design devotees started buzzing about the potential of his new address. This street, which fans out from International Market Square’s nest of interior design businesses while brushing against such unseemly destinations as the Minneapolis Impound Lot, is the latest subject of urban renewal. As of late, the Glenwood Avenue streetscape has been getting a makeover thanks to some new lighting fixtures. Iyamba and plenty of others think it will one day be a “design corridor,” chock-full of trendy boutiques and restaurants—much like Los Angeles’ Melrose Avenue.

Glenwood Avenue has not yet been branded, à la Nicollet Avenue’s “Eat Street,” but the un-manicured neighborhood still boasts several attractions. The area is easily accessible from both downtown and Bryn Mawr. Later this summer, Glenwood will be a straight shot from Kenwood, too, when Van White Boulevard, a link between north and south Minneapolis, is completed. And it doesn’t hurt that the avenue has a rich history of design and textile businesses. For seventy years, International Market Square and several other buildings along the lane served as Munsingwear factories, whereat fashionable undergarments were manufactured between 1915 and 1981. Then, in 1985, what we now know as International Market Square opened its doors. Seven years ago, Ligne Roset and Abitaré, two impressive furniture and interior design studios, opened just across the street. But Iyamba’s move to an address four blocks from IMS represents the boldest endorsement of the neighborhood to date. “It’s just like in L.A.” he said. “One designer moved in over there, and, before you knew it, everyone followed … Somebody has to start it all. And in this instance, I guess that’s me.”

Read Christy DeSmith’s fashion blog.

The towering, and fairly dangerous, espadrille platform shoe is being passed off as the season’s must-have accessory. This is partially because it so nicely complements another, presently gangbusters, fad—the skinny jean. Platforms function much like high heels, elongating the leg and making it appear slimmer than it actually is (thus buttressing a woman’s confidence as she wears those tight, tight pants). As an added benefit, the thick, solid heel of the platform works as a safety feature of sorts; it is far less likely to catch on the wearer’s pant leg, and so prevents the embarrassing and all-too-common phenomenon of the face plant.

When kicking around town a couple of weeks back, we encountered scads of platforms adorning the boutique and department-store displays. However, we saw fewer of the towering shoes in action on the streets. More common were sensible heels and myriad variants of sandals and ballet flats. While skimmers don’t do the elongating work of platforms, they show much-needed mercy to their peripatetic wearers. Ballet flats, in particular, don’t get much attention from fashion mags, but are a robust trend (now several seasons strong) unto them selves. Thankfully for our feet, they’re also widely available for purchase.

Read Christy DeSmith’s fashion blog.

A few miles north of Bemidji, there’s an old-world mini Bavaria: A cluster of white stucco and brown-timbered buildings that surround a quaint central fountain. The street signs are auf deutsch, schnitzel and sauerkraut are on the menu, and the speaking of German is strictly enforced. When this Concordia language village, a German immersion camp for kids, needed a new dormitory, however, the staff voted to promote a modern vision of Germany rather than further perpetuate this idealized version of the past.

Enter Eddie Dehler. Lured from his native Germany in 1987 to work as a language teacher at the youth village, Dehler tapped into his environmental-studies background to initiate the construction of North America’s first certified Passivhaus: an airtight, super energy-efficient structure that utilizes passive solar and geo-thermal energy for year-round temperature control.

The project began in the fall of 2005, when special triple-pane, heat retaining, argon-filled windows from a factory in the Black Forest were flown in. The roof was covered with dirt and seeded with purple sedum flowers that help retain water, avoid erosion around the house, and provide extra insulation.

The project was not inexpensive. Concordia Language Villages built Dehler’s five-thousand-square-foot modernist Bauhaus vision at a cost of around $1.3 million. But owners of these ultra-green buildings are destined to save on utility bills. Beneath the house, a tube filled with food-grade glycol-water solution runs two hundred feet into the earth. This creates a constant-temperature mixture that gets pumped back up to the house and into a reverse refrigeration system, thus providing low-cost heating and cooling.

The house still uses some electricity. “It’s on the energy grid—so we could [improve efficiency by installing] photovoltaic solar panels on the roof,” Dehler said. With them, Dehler said, the building would actually produce more energy than it consumes.

In order for the house to be certified as an authentic Passivhaus, the structure had to be assessed to determine whether it met the German government’s strict standards. Gary Nelson, president of the Energy Conservatory, a local building-performance testing service, came to the language village to conduct something called a blower-door test.

“We created a negative pressure in the building to test every wall and window for air leaks,” Nelson explained.

Heating the building “requires less than one watt per square foot. A typical toaster or hairdryer uses 1,500 watts, so one of these could heat a 1,500-square-foot Passivhaus,” Nelson concluded. In the end, the house was deemed twenty times more airtight than required by German standards.

Using the Passivhaus (which officially opened in July 2006) as an instructional tool, the German camp now offers a four-week environmental credit program for high school students. Inside the big blue box with giant southern-facing windows, twenty-eight campers can learn about the first Passivhaus (built in Darmstadt, Germany in 1990), and about how passive solar heat, when combined with super-insulation, makes for one of the most energy-efficient buildings ever made.

Dehler proselytizes visitors to what he calls the “tightest home in North America” in hopes of spreading the German ideal for sustainable living, proclaiming that the extra money spent to reach these strict standards — around twenty thousand dollars — will be recovered through energy savings in as little as eight years.

“The Passivhaus uses about ten percent of the energy of a regular house,” Nelson, the house-tester, said. “The six thousand of them already built [in Germany and Austria] use the same amount of energy as six hundred regular houses. Why can’t we do that in Minnesota? If we made enough of them, we could shut down the Monticello nuclear power plant.”