Author: Adam Minter

Viewed from room 1238 of the White Swan Hotel, the jagged ten-story tenements of Guangzhou, China, are softened by smog. Below, the United States Consulate complex sprawls beside century-old British colonial structures. “Pretty good view, isn’t it?” asks Paul Stueber, an earnest forty-four-year-old drum instructor from Minneapolis. He packs a baby bottle into a blue…

Every Wednesday morning at 10 a.m. during the legislative session, Chaplain Dan Hall hosts a two-hour prayer meeting. It is held around a long wooden table in Room 118 of the State Capitol building, just around the corner from the governor’s office. Attendance varies, averaging about twenty people who know Hall from his work as…

On December 1, a mandatory three-day orientation begins for newly elected members of Minnesota’s House of Representatives. It all starts with a jovial chartered bus ride to a conference center outside of Monticello. Meanwhile, back in St. Paul, fourteen defeated, soon-to-be-former House members will be closing up their offices as part of a disorienting, but…

A red sun is setting over the lake, its hue cast through the shutters of a rustic living room where a small television atop a white wicker stand is tuned to a Twins game. “Get some hits, damn it,” seethes the increasingly agitated sports agent on the wicker couch. “Crying shame.” The agent glares at…

The administrative areas at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts can be rather labyrinthine, and are also closed off to the general public, so Corine Wegener, the diminutive assistant curator for the Department of Architecture, Design, Decorative Arts, Craft, and Sculpture, agrees to meet me outside the gift shop. After we pass through the security doors…

The bells have been ringing for thirty minutes, but it is the sound of a cane rattling through the empty, cavernous church that suggests prayer. It is held by an old man, his stooped body covered in the flowing black habit of a Benedictine monk. He enters from the sacristy, clicking, clacking, up a barely…