Author: rakemag

Acrid smoke billows from the open loading doorways as I adjust my face mask and move tentatively into the smelting room. Above, a muscle-powered crane is lifting a small pile of stainless steel scrap over the dirt floor, toward two men standing over the white-orange burn of a smelting furnace. As they reach out for the load of scrap, I move closer, but the heat is so great that I stop ten feet from their platform. I notice that the men are in short sleeves and jeans; they do not wear gloves or respiratory protection. My guide, Mr. Jian “James” Li, president of Shanghai Metallink, taps me on the shoulder and yells, “Let me show you what happens.”

I follow him out of the building and remove my mask. Though the air in Shanghai’s Pudong New Area is some of China’s most polluted, I find the contrast with the smelting room’s air to be refreshing. We walk around to the back where a pile of half-meter-long, solid stainless-steel cylinders are stacked haphazardly against the building. They look like bombs. “Minneapolis garbage, Shanghai gold,” James tells me proudly. He leads me past another smelting room, and across the fetid dirt road that serves as a main street for the workers who choose to live in Shanghai Metallink’s company dorms. Through a gate, we arrive in a newly laid concrete unloading area, about two acres in total, where dozens of pallets containing scrap stainless steel are being sorted by manual laborers.

“Over here.” James points. “That’s from Minneapolis. American Iron, that box. Alliance Steel, that box.” He is referring to American Iron & Supply Company (famed builders of a soon-to-be-operational metal shredder on the Mississippi waterfront), and Alliance Steel, respectively. Both are large Minneapolis scrap recyclers, and both have developed successful export markets into mainland China. Several times each year, James visits Minneapolis scrap yards to arrange for the shipment of low-grade scrap stainless steel and electronic scrap to his facility in Pudong. The stainless steel being recycled during my visit left Minneapolis, by rail, about six weeks earlier.

James invites me to examine the Minneapolis material. It’s a wild assortment of broken or defective industrial components, ranging from high-temp thermometers to circuit boards. One box is a mixed assortment of valves stamped “Rosemount, Inc.—Eden Prairie, Minnesota.” American Iron has been purchasing Rosemount’s high-tech scrap and defective equipment for years, though the decision to ship it to China is recent. American Iron paid around three cents a pound for the material. It will be processed and resold in China for around a dollar a pound. “Labor is cheap,” James explains. “So I can afford to have my people take it apart, sort it, by hand. It’s too expensive to do in my Chicago warehouse. A lot of it would be burned or thrown away.”

Joe Chen, another Chinese scrap processor who has bought Minnesota’s industrial scrap metal, explains it this way: “In China we can afford to have a no-landfill policy. I can pay people to pull the gold off a circuit board, separate the insulation from copper wire. All of it gets recycled. But in America, most of it’s garbage, unrecyclable. And it ends up in a landfill.”

As James leads me into his office at the edge of the smelting operation, he muses, “China is the best place for recycling now. But one day it’ll be too developed.”—Adam Minter

Eric Dregni should be congratulated on his new fedora [“Put a Lid on It,” December]. I think he’s right, too, in locating the decline of the fedora (and the homburg) from about the time of JFK’s inauguration. I think lower car headroom played a part. I remember my father always wore a hat, and so when I got my first real job in 1958, I bought a brown fedora because that’s what you wore when you were grown up. Trouble is, I never could bring myself to wear it, and it ended up on a Guy (a Guy Fawkes Day dummy) 20 years later. Then a few years ago I read Billy Collins’ wonderful poem “The Death of the Hat” which begins “Once every man wore a hat. / In the ashen newsreels, / the avenues of cities / are broad rivers / flowing with hats.” So, I too wanted a fedora. Because I could not find any in Minneapolis, I got a brown one from Lock & Co. in London. Unlike Eric Dregni, I have met only with compliments. “Wonderful hat!” from a Marshall Field’s salesperson. “Great hat!” from a man on Sixth Street. Headwaiters’ eyes gleam when I enter a restaurant (they never did before). I owe it all to my fedora. Fedoras are back.

George Soule, Northfield

Just a short note to let you know you failed to write about the amalgams in most of your readers’ teeth [“Grin and Bear It,” December]. Yes, I know that my health is better without the mercury in my body. Jesse Ventura was the first governor to appoint a mercury-free advocate to the Minnesota Dental Board—Ron King, D.D.S.

Leland Roth, Spring Park

I’m a fan of The Rake, but do you just toss that award-winning attention to detail and critical thinking to the wind when you write about anything concerning animals? In December, you (1) profiled Horst [“The Fine Art of Living Well”] without mentioning a top Aveda selling point—their refusal to test their cosmetics on animals, (2) extolled the virtues of hat-wearing [“Put a Lid On It”], and reminisced for beaver-donning days without mention of the fact that this little fashion trend nearly extinguished Minnesota’s furry buck-toothed population and (3) detailed Katie Quirk’s transformation from vegetarian to butterburger lover [“Minnesota Fats”]. Now, don’t get me wrong, Quirk is a fantastic writer, but shouldn’t something as common as “Former Idealist Returns to Hamburger” be left to The Onion? In November, you published “Oh, fer cute! Ouch!” and offered a glimpse into the hip pocket-pet trend of the year, sugar gliders—from a pet dealer’s perspective. To balance this out, I sent the article to Nick Mooney, a wildlife professional in the gliders’ native Tanzania. It turns out that the cute little animal whom Dan Gilchrist describes as “desperately trying to get out of your hands” is probably “stressed and not happy about being handled,” says Mooney. And even when the glider seems mellow and content—Gilchrist describes owners who put the marsupials in their shirt pockets “while they watch TV or work on the computer”—they’re really freaking out, according to Mooney. Gliders, he says, “curl up and withdraw as a response to stress.” Mooney wrote, “All in all I’m appalled to see our wonderful marsupials become ‘pocket pets’ with little or no dignity, a likely sticky end with no benefit whatsoever to sugar gliders.” Want more? Mooney was also concerned about the impact on individual gliders and the local environment should they escape and compete with hollow-nesting birds and animals, and the temptation to declaw the claw-needing critters. Mooney was curious to know whether welfare legislation protects such unconventional pets. Concerns for animal and environmental welfare have prompted many states and municipalities to make ownership of the marsupials illegal. According to the online store K & D Exotic Pets, sugar gliders are illegal or restricted in nine states (not yet including Minnesota) as well as many municipalities. Keep up the good work, Rake editors. But maybe you could leave the critters be.

Sue Rich, North Minneapolis

I enjoyed the beautiful pictures of the Blessed Virgin Mary [“Something About Mary, Mother of God,” December]. However, the accompanying article is very offensive to me in a few places. Being that I was raised a Catholic, I want to know the source for stating that Mary is a “figure of adoration.” I’ve always been taught that only God is to be adored.

Stella Lundquist, St. Paul

Jeannine Ouellette claims increased interest in Mary has caused the Church more trouble trying to manage her image, meaning, and legacy. It’s been a problematic, unnecessary, and equivocal sore spot with modernist Catholic theologians, catechists, and in various liberal Catholic circles. This has been especially true in U.S. parishes, colleges, and seminaries since the Second Vatican Council in 1962-1965. Soon after Vatican II, many priests—tacitly approved of by their bishops, and despite the protests of their own congregations—willfully spawned their own iconoclasm in churches, convents, and seminaries. Yet while these misinformed Catholic “experts” were trying to take Mary from her pedestal and lock her in the closet, pockets of Catholics—especially conservative and traditionalist groups—never would or could let Mary “die.” Just as the traditional Latin mass never disappeared depite serious opposition from many bishops and priests, Marian devotions not only survived but thrived, even in parishes where modernism took a powerful hold during the 60s and 70s. There are more churches celebrating the Tridentine Latin Mass today than there were in 1975. Maybe, just maybe, the renewed interest in Mary, especially among secular and Protestant groups, is simply a fad. (A few years ago there was apparently an interest in “angels.”) In those circles, perhaps the “cult of Mary” will stick. I’m not betting on it.

Howard A. McQuitter, Minneapolis

It’s silly to suggest that American men stopped wearing their hats just because JFK took his off during his 1960 inaugural address. In fact, he wore a silk top hat that whole day—and tails! Some people claim that he actually revived this tradition; Truman wore a topper for his inaugural, but Eisenhower wore a homburg. And both men—especially Ike—went around bareheaded all the time. I guess you could make the argument that they weren’t as young and handsome as JFK, and thus had less influence. Still, the hat was undoubtedly already in decline, as the 50s gave way to the more permissive 60s. It’s always been interesting to me that this myth persists. It’s obviously more about glorifying the memory and the martyrdom of JFK than it is about explaining why men just don’t wear hats anymore. And show me the Minnesotan who insists on going hatless through the winter, and I’ll show you a moron with frostbitten ears.

Noel Sims, Cambridge

It was great to discover that I wasn’t the only person who wondered what happened at Supervalu [“Superdeval-ued,” November]. My mother (retired, living on a fixed income) owned 400 shares of Supervalu and she was thinking about selling them. I researched the stock and recommended holding the shares, because the stock had good ratings and with the stock market and the economy not doing so well, I figured a grocery store stock would do well, after all, people have to keep buying groceries. Then the stock tanked. I tried to talk my mother into hanging onto the shares until the price came back up but she sold at the very rock bottom. Of course, my mother and my siblings blame me for all the money my mother lost. It’s great to have your article to show them. Also, I was completely unaware of the class action lawsuits. I hope my mother can still get in on the lawsuits, just in case anything comes from that.

Rick Cheney