Author: rakemag

Thanks so much for your recent tribute to Richard Pryor, “In Memory of Richard Pryor” [Free the Jackson Five, January]. From the moment I first heard Richard in the early seventies, I knew I was listening to comic genius. I had never laughed so long or so hard before I listened to Richard. He could be funny reading a phone book. My brothers and I would sit and listen for hours to the routines and memorize the lines and even when we had heard them fifty times and committed them to memory, we still laughed every time. Richard also taught me to “use humor as a sword and shield as we make our way through a world riddled with pain.” I cannot ever know the deep pain of racial prejudice but Richard taught me, a fifty-two-year-old white guy, about the pain and humor of many African-Americans and I am a better person for it. His death was a blow to me too.

Dave Rasley
Tempe, AZ

Jennifer Vogel reportedly drove across North Dakota in writing her article, “No. 1 Hard: Notes on the emptying of North Dakota” [February]. Was she just looking for images and people to interview who would capture her predetermined story about North Dakota? Or was she looking to write about the economics that are actually at play here? I have to wonder, because as someone who recently moved back to North Dakota from Washington, D.C., my view about what’s happening here is much different. Many communities throughout the state are growing, not just Fargo and Grand Forks, as she suggests. North Dakota was one of only three states in the nation to show real growth in manufacturing. Minnesota was not one of the other two. In the most recent reporting period, the U.S. Census Bureau shows that North Dakota was one of only five states with a positive change in household income. In fact, ours was the largest change. Unemployment is at historical lows in many communities and job opportunities surpass people to hold them.

Yes, you can find ghost towns here–just as you can in Minnesota or any state where the railroads created towns every ten miles. But from the headline, to the photos, to most of the text within, “No. 1 Hard” uses a ghost town to illustrate life as a whole in North Dakota. This is no more accurate than a story focusing on inner-city Minneapolis to depict the state of affairs in all of Minnesota.

Shane Goettle,
commissioner North Dakota Department of Commerce

As somebody who endured five years in North Dakota, which felt more like twenty-five, I relished your article about the state’s ongoing economic desperation and youth outmigration issues. Well, “youth outmigration” is a polite term for anybody young and smart leaving the state in any kind of vehicle that will run just as quick as they can get together enough jack for gas and enough courage to go someplace with decent career opportunities. The article was, if anything, too damned kind to North Dakota, a place best described as a “rural ghetto” and the “economic hurt bag of the nation.”

John Hoff
Appleton, MN

I was raised on a small family farm in central North Dakota but have been a resident of Minnesota since I married in 1991. Since then I’ve lived in cities and towns varying in population, and I have never been able to understand one thing many Minnesotans seem to have in common. This one thing is the apparent need to look down their noses and belittle North Dakota and her inhabitants. Why? What has North Dakota done to merit such regard from Minnesota? Yes it is a sparsely populated state. Yes it is cold and windy and has mosquitoes. Yes the economy needs a boost. Why do you feel the need to publish something that would be more injurious to North Dakota’s image? Does The Rake feel threatened in some way that it sees fit to advertise North Dakota’s difficulties? Shame on you for sneering at the state’s attempts to boost its economy, and for trivializing its successes. I find articles such as yours personally insulting as well. It insults the intelligence, hard work, values, and choices of my parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. I couldn’t imagine a better way to have grown up, and I am fiercely proud of my North Dakota heritage. One thing that North Dakota and Minnesota actually do have in common is that The Rake is a tool used to spread manure.

Brenda Reister
Waconia

“In the Altogether” by Colin Covert [cover story, February] contained an unfortunate claim that Covert had once “picked up a wretched case of psoriasis from the slimy sauna in the Detroit YMCA.” In fact, psoriasis is not contagious. Researchers posit that a combination of genetic and environmental factors cause psoriasis to occur in an individual. Stress or overexposure to the sun are examples of what may lead to the outbreak of psoriasis in someone with a genetic predisposition. Psoriasis is not “picked up” in saunas or from anywhere or anyone else.

Clinton Dietrich
Minneapolis

We were expecting a bag-full of complaints for our slightly racy cover last month, but none arrived. Several readers, like Dave and Dave, did ask which of our staff members posed for the nudey photos, and we’re not telling. Thanks, too, to Dan, Joan and a couple others (see letters above) for pointing out that psoriasis is not, in fact, contagious.

Send along your own rakish reflections to: letters@rakemag.com. But please remember: We assume submissions are intended for publication, and we cannot return materials sent by mail. (Don’t send valuable originals!) Letters may also be edited for length and clarity.

Melanie and Patrick of NE Minneapolis write: This picture is from our fantastic honeymoon through Scotland & England. Here we were enjoying the history & views of Rosslyn Chapel, which everyone knows by now is featured in The DaVinci Code. The chapel is ornate and
entirely made of stone; and it’s location on the hillside suggests there could be something buried below it. Sadly Tom & Ron were not there while we were visiting, but they along with a Hollywood size film crew had invaded this tiny town of Midlothian just outside of Edinburgh only a couple weeks earlier.

Nate Maddux and Mary Schwarz (Minneapolis) introduced the locals of Ronda, one of Spain’s southern “pueblos blancos”, to The Rake over a glass of sherry and some tapas…seen here perched above the town’s old arabic bridge spanning the 300 foot-deep Tajo Gorge.

The Andalusian town, about an hour north of the Mediterranean, was one of the last to fall during the Reconquista. It was taken from the muslims in 1485 AD, shortly before the king and queen expelled everyone but the Christians (and in doing so, much of the intellectual capital) from the peninsula.

“Ronda was the inspiration for Hemingway’s violent tenth chapter in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’…the views from the cliff walls are pretty inspirational for something like that. Dizzying. ”

Paula and George Lopuch, of downtown Minneapolis, take Red-Handed to a whole new level with three different trips and three different issues of The Rake.

Africa: Our trip included a one-week safari in Kenya, where we held The Rake up exactly over the equator, much to the amusement of the locals.

Mexico: San Miguel de Allende, a most beautiful and historic arts colony in the Central Highlands of Mexico, is four hours’ north of Mexico City. This colonial city was founded in 1542, and the central part of town (El Centro) has been preserved as a national monument, no traffic lights, no neon signs, no fast foods, cobblestones, with a magnificent gothic church in the center (see behind my shoulder). Just wish we could have a copy of The Rake sent to us for the four months we’re away each winter.

Bali: Had a massage almost every day—at ten dollars for ninety minutes, how could one resist? Got in some temple-viewing as well; there are temples and shrines everywhere.