Category: Article

One hundred and fifty years ago, when a Methodist pastor stumbled into
what became Trempealeau County, Wisconsin, he thought he’d found the
Garden of Eden. Dotted with apple trees and surrounded by lush green
bluffs, no other place, he argued, conformed so closely to the biblical
description of Eden. Even now, despite upstream polluters that have
wreaked havoc on Trempealeau’s stretch of the Mississippi, the town of
Trempealeau continues to offer a slice of Midwestern paradise.
Trempealeau’s distinctly easygoing character, along with a persistent
mist that hangs in the air, brings to mind many of those woodsy havens
found along the beautiful Pacific Northwest coast. Driving to
Trempealeau from any direction is a pleasure, pocketed, as it is,
within a cluster of rolling knolls and crags (typical in this part of
Wisconsin, especially along the river). Every which way, hills offer
panoramic views of farmland furrows and wooded wildlife preserves. A
road down the back end of one such hill deposits you into the town’s
modest commercial area, where two city blocks are lined with gift
shops, law offices, taverns, and lawns that are often overwhelmed by
the Mississippi. (In French, Trempealeau means “soaked in water”.)

Downtown’s centerpiece is the Trempealeau Hotel, a nineteenth-century
inn, restaurant, and saloon that has become a fashionable destination.
Dining rooms paneled in natural wood, wall-to-wall bay windows, and
Green Bay Packers paraphernalia set a laid-back tone. Couples gaze out
on the river as they nosh on kraut ’n’ cheese or walnut burgers—yes,
this rural restaurant serves a number of vegetarian dishes. In the bar,
which is darker and cozier than the dining areas, the walls are covered
with antlers, taxidermied fish, and autographed celebrity head shots.
Because the town’s population is just 1,600, most of whom make their
livings in nearby Winona or LaCrosse, the bar seems to service more
spandex-ed cyclists and city slickers than it does locals.

There is no doubt that during the warm seasons, the town draws a
far-flung, outdoorsy crowd. That’s because it’s surrounded by miles and
miles of gorgeous trails that trace the riverfront and wind around
mountainous bluffs. Off-road cyclists can cruise alongside prairies and
buffalo farms or take grueling, uphill treks. Trempealeau even
organizes a series of bike races, including the Catfish Days 50 Mile
Bike Race and Tour on July 9. Hikers are free to hopscotch
stone-studded footpaths in Perrot State Park or bird-watch in the
wetlands of Trempealeau National Wildlife Refuge, one of the nation’s
best spots to see bald eagles.

For those who don’t feel like sweating, Trempealeau Hotel proprietor
Jim Jenkins offers another option. A blues and reggae aficionado,
Jenkins organizes a summer concert series that sends couples and
families alike out into the hotel’s grassy backyard, where they can
lounge before a rickety concert stage featuring regional bands.
—Christy DeSmith

Your mission this coming Saturday afternoon: without upstaging the happy couple. It behooves you to be both fashionable and appropriate, because the mother of the bride might cast you a disapproving glance if you are anything less. So grab your pastel neckties, dust off some chic but not overly sexy footwear, and wiggle into those strapless gowns. Provided your dress is dazzling enough, even the bride¹s imminent mother-in-law can’t be too shocked at your tattoo.

Lowriding isn’t about how close your Impala sits to the concrete. It’s
about flexing your muscles, gritting your teeth, and shining your wheel
covers. At least that’s what we came away thinking after the “Hydraulic
Showdown” event, which was part of last month’s Cinco de Mayo festival
in St. Paul. But the art of lowriding was not lost on us—not with all
that horsepower on display, and all those eye-popping paint jobs,
ornate mags, painstakingly detailed decals and astonishing tattoos. The
owners of these automotive masterpieces smiled mischievously from
behind goatees and dark glasses. Then they hopped into their rides,
cranked the tunes (a lowrider’s nothing without massive subwoofers),
and rolled ever so slowly by the honeys.

In the photo, he’s twenty-five or so. Quite obviously, the picture was taken in the early 1970s. He is wearing loud plaid pants, a shiny pink shirt with ruffles down the front and at the cuffs, and a huge bowtie and vest. His afro is cropped, but not too close, and he’s smiling, one of those big, open-mouthed smiles that shows the gap in his front teeth. But there’s something off in the man’s expression, too. It’s in the eyes. They look hollow and sad, as though deep down the man is missing something. Something he’s never had and will never get.

The picture is a little wrinkled and stained, as if it had gotten wet, and set crookedly in a frame that’s much too large. It dangles haphazardly from a nail on a basement wall in a suburban Minneapolis rambler. It’s one of thousands of things left behind by this man with the smile—piles and boxes and suitcases full of stuff, which are being pawed through by a crowd of bargain hunters. Whatever goes unsold will wind up in an enormous black trash bin that stands out front, menacingly, under the picture window.

This sale was different from a typical estate sale, which is different from a typical garage sale. While a garage sale represents a thinning out, the happy prospect of making room for a den or a sauna or a new season of dresses, an estate sale represents obliteration—the end of a life, or at least a life in a particular home. Usually, the endless array of items, which range from lamps to pantyhose, are neatly tagged and arranged throughout the house by a relative, or by a company that takes a cut. Everybody wants a cut. But this particular sale was chaotic, the fallout from some ongoing disaster.
Because the arrangements are normally so logical, with their displays and tidy categorizations, it’s easy for browsers to trace the arc of a person’s existence. You can see that when they were young they traveled, went to Mexico a couple of times or Greece. There may even be Spanish language textbooks, or books on reading Latin. Reading habits are generally more ambitious in youth; there’s often a focus on modern literature and classics (which may themselves have been modern when purchased) like Fitzgerald, Hemingway, or even Rimbaud. Or there is evidence of curiosity in science or nature or philosophy. But as life progresses, ambitions dissipate or are sacrificed and the books get more modest and practical: mysteries, romance novels, true crime, and exercise guides like Stretching for Seniors. Often the newest books describe how to go on without a spouse, cook for one, cope with diabetes, or beat lung cancer. Books on diseases present significant clues. So do stacks of old TV Guides and matchbooks from Treasure Island casino. At some point, it seems, living becomes simply a matter of passing time.

Clothing choices evolve, too, of course. Sizes generally increase as the wearer ages; the fabrics become more uniformly polyester and rayon. Wash and wear. And there are more cardigans with wadded tissue in the pockets. With shoes, women’s heels get lower and the styles wider, to accommodate foot problems that result from a life of moving around.

In all, visiting an estate sale is like going on an archeological expedition through the ruins of somebody’s life; you, the explorer, make guesses and assumptions based on the evidence at hand. An abundance of holiday decorations usually means grandchildren. Lots of hammers and tools mean a handyman—someone who had no children to inherit them or had children who went to law school. And if, when you go into the bathroom, you see bars of soap and cans of half-used shaving cream and hairspray, all for fifty cents each, well then you have to face facts. The people who lived in the house are dead.

At those moments, you feel like a vulture picking at a sun-dried carcass by the side of the highway. But, hey, this stuff has to go somewhere, you think. Maybe it’ll help pay for the funeral. And you reassure yourself that at least you’re not part of the network of hardcore collectors who stand outside a house at seven for an eight o’clock sale. Those are the true vampires, hoping to snap up the dishes, records, antique bureaus, nineteenth-century silver spoons, and anything else that might objectively be worth something. That might be sold on eBay for a profit. These shoppers rush from table to table with poker faces and pockets full of cash, laughing to themselves—these people don’t know what they have. Me, I go late, on the last day of a sale usually, which is often bag day. That means you can have as much junk as you can stuff into a paper sack for one or two dollars. What I look for are the sentimental items, which some might say makes me the worst type of vampire of all. I want those things that, while worth next to nothing monetarily, were special to whomever owned them. A homemade painting of a frowning poodle. A crocheted pillow that reads, “World’s Greatest Postman.” Photographs from birthday parties and Thanksgivings. Men smiling in shiny pink shirts.

It’s an attempt, I suppose, to gather sentimentality all in one place. I’m a glutton for meaning, even somebody else’s meaning. And so my own collection of stuff is largely made up of items that once made somebody else laugh or cry, trinkets and keepsakes that were stowed in drawers and albums and chests, propped on kitchen windowsills. They are idyllic farm scenes embroidered quite obviously without patterns and little houses fashioned from matchsticks, examined and perfected as much as the builder’s talents allowed. Part of the appeal is that that these items, sitting on the “bargain” table on the last day of a sale, seem orphaned. I’m consistently surprised that nobody wants them, for they, more so than the Tiffany lamp or the ruby pendant, carry on the spirit of their former owner. Perhaps that’s why people don’t want them—nobody likes to think about the past, it seems, only tomorrow. Except for people like me. My house is full of ghosts.

Our things speak for us, especially when we are gone. They do this both by their specificity and their context. I think about my own home: What will somebody, someday, make of my collection of other people’s poorly executed art projects, photos of unrelated relatives, and a video library that includes Ikiru and Road House? Will someone get excited about the dress in which I was married, the one my husband bought at a garage sale, and will she wear it proudly to a cocktail party in the twenty-second century? Or will it be cut up and made into sofa pillows? Or, worse, will it go directly into the big black trash bin that will be waiting under my picture window? It’s a disconcerting notion, that the fate of my possessions is out of my hands. I might choose to bequeath some things, but, really, I don’t have much that’s worth bequeathing. I won’t be around to tell the stories, funny and sad, that make my things meaningful—to describe the spot where I found the rock that looks like Abe Lincoln’s head, or relate how a napkin comes from a bar where I was served free drinks by an eighty-five-year-old birthday boy. I won’t be able to define my own history. It will be defined by estate-sale shoppers, just as I attempt to define the history of the smiling, gap-toothed man.

***

The man’s suburban home was stuffed with clues, but they were muddled, confusing—they didn’t add up. Items weren’t organized or labeled. They sat in slowly rotting piles, abandoned, perhaps suddenly, reminding me of those Robert Polidori shots of Chernobyl where dingy stuffing spills from forgotten teddy bears and paint peels from walls in blisters. The man’s cupboards still contained cans of food and jars of pickles. The paper towel holder held paper towels. There were albums full of photos—the man next to a gravestone, him with a circle of kids completing some sort of craft project, him on a sofa with his arm around a pretty woman in a red dress—and a selection of African artifacts: drums, masks, and carvings, all a
little beat up. But they’d certainly taken effort to collect. These were not the kinds of things you leave behind unless you have to.

The most striking thing about this estate sale, however, was the sheer, surreal volume of what the man had accumulated. One room was floor-to-ceiling electronics. There were maybe thirty telephones, some working, some not; fifty or more radios of various types and sizes; an impressive collection of small televisions; and a couple of electric organs. Two children were banging on the organs. Nobody told them to stop. What difference did it make? Desperation breeds disrespect. And, besides, it was bag day. Everything had to go. Everywhere in the house, there was clothing—piled up along the walls, flowing out of half-crushed boxes, covering floors like torn wrapping paper on Christmas morning. Aside from what was plainly visible, in room after room there stood towering piles of suitcases stuffed tight with clothing—men’s, women’s, children’s, from all eras. Some rooms you simply couldn’t go into, as there was nowhere to begin. People threw up their hands. Flicked off the lights. Walked away.

Sales like this one are always rife with gossip. Pickers wondered aloud what had happened, and stories were circulating. Those running the sale, white people, not too friendly, seemed to be disgusted with the gap-toothed man. He’d been evicted, they explained. Couldn’t say why. But what about all the radios, the suitcases, the institutional cans of refried beans? Were these the remains of a garbage house or what? A paunchy man in a white Vikings sweatshirt carrying a receipt pad said he wasn’t sure. He scratched his head. He thought the man had been African and that he had been gathering materials and goods for a relief effort. So the man, at least in his own mind, had intended one day to send all this stuff to wherever in Africa he came from. This was evidence of best laid plans not just gone awry, but exploded.

I walked into a side room, where there was a small book collection on a shelf. I picked out two dictionaries and placed them in my paper sack, next to a carved, cracked wooden statue of a man with his head in his hands, and the photos. Browsing the rest, I spotted a book about living with schizophrenia. So there was that.

The picture of the man in the shiny pink shirt haunted me. I put it away when I got home. Then I took it out again. And then I pinned it above my desk. What had happened to him? I opened his dictionaries and found a name inscribed meticulously inside, along with dates and origins: “November 10, 1997—Diggers.” It was an African name. I started searching. First, I drove back by the house, which had gone up for sale. I called the listing real estate agent, who was abrasive about the inquiry, probably because he, for whatever reason, had been the one who evicted the man. No doubt, he must have been a handful, but the one-man-relief-effort also couldn’t have been all bad. Regarding the motive behind the many mounds of stuff, the agent said, “I believe he was going to ship it off, but he wasn’t very good with follow-through.” Most of what remained at the end of bag day wound up in the big black trash bin. Now it was officially garbage. The agent verified the man’s name, said he was around fifty years old. He wouldn’t put me in touch with the owner of the house, couldn’t tell me how long the man had lived there, didn’t know where he had gone. “As far as I’m concerned,” the agent said via cell phone, busy, on his way to a showing, “he fell off the face of the earth.”

Google came next. There were a couple of people in the Midwest with the man’s last name, a doctor in Wisconsin and a yoga instructor who had just moved from Minnesota to California. I left messages for them both, and for the property owner, whom I found through Hennepin County tax records. No one returned my calls. My curiosity growing, I phoned people at local homeless shelters, but they aren’t allowed to say who stays where, for privacy reasons. I even performed one of those online background searches that cost fifty dollars, which turned up a couple of scrapes with the law, a drug possession charge, another for domestic abuse. Some nonpayment of taxes.

Finally, a phone message came from the doctor in Wisconsin. He spoke with a heavy accent. “Yes, he is my older brother,” he said. “If you have any questions you can call me at my office. He is still in Minneapolis.” I, of course, did call his office. Several times. But I didn’t hear another word from the doctor in Wisconsin. I only know that his brother is alive somewhere in the city. Who he is, what happened, why things fell apart, remains a mystery. And maybe, in the end, the details of his life are none of my business anyway. I will simply enjoy the items that were once his—the wooden statue, a bowl, a pickax with a loose head. I will imbue these items with my own meanings, create a truth for them based on the thinnest of clues, just as somebody, someday, will do again after I am dead or gone.

Last summer, the “Space T.U. Embrace” project performed for the first time at the Southern Theater in Minneapolis. Space to embrace? Space tee-you embrace? Why so cryptic? There was definitely buzz around Toni Pierce-Sands (“T”) and Uri Sands (“U”). They had launched their experimental project the year before, at the University of Minnesota, and the rumor was that the couple had created something unusual and captivating.

That was immediately clear at the Southern, as the muscular Sands powered across the stage with weightless precision and god-like intention. He was a revelation, effortlessly sculpting space with an original blend of African and Indian, ballet and modern dance, symbolic and ritualistic moves.

His perfect complement, Pierce-Sands was long, lean, and lithe as she gathered the space around her; then she turned loose-limbed goddess as she and Sands became the core of “Lady,” with the project’s entire cast—fifteen dancers of varying skin tones, ages, and sizes—engulfing them in a celebration of grace and generosity. Little question remained as to what space the dancers were embracing. This was a performance of uncommon openness, and the audience reciprocated with emotional enthusiasm.

In the year since that performance, “T” and “U” have transformed their experiment into a proper dance company, complete with nonprofit status and new name, TU Dance, which debuts with a program of premieres this month (June 16-18 and 23-25 at the Southern Theater, 612-340-1725). Just as one of the Twin Cities’ most beloved companies, Jazzdance by Danny Buraczeski, was performing its final concerts and closing a remarkable fifteen-year chapter in local dance history, TU Dance was making a commitment to some kind of longevity. Coincidence? Perhaps. More likely the turn of events is a testament to the fertile ebb and flow of creativity in the local dance community.

Still, it’s not every day that dance companies get founded here, and so the question remains: Why start a company? Why here, and why now? Sands and Pierce-Sands have enjoyed fruitful, high-profile careers as performers, in the U.S. and abroad. Sands’ choreography is in the repertories of numerous dance troupes. “We wanted to grow as artists and individuals, and to bring that growth into our community,” says Pierce-Sands of their decision. “The dance world has given us so much,” Sands adds; creating a company is a way for the pair to give back.

But behind that contribution is a mission. “The Twin Cities is at a point where art isn’t reflecting the cultural richness that exists here,” Sands says. “So we decided to create a company that demonstrates that diversity, as well as the expertise of this area’s dancers. We think audiences, even people new to dance, will gravitate toward that.”

The pair trace the origins of TU Dance back to Johnye Mae Pierce, who, according to her granddaughter, Pierce-Sands, was the first African-American woman to work in downtown St. Paul (she operated an elevator). Grandma Pierce’s support was unwavering as Toni grew up at Minnesota Dance Theatre, joined the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theatre in New York, moved to Paris to dance with Company Rick Odom, came back to St. Paul to have a son, returned to Ailey, and, eventually, began dating the company’s charismatic star, Uri Sands.

“I met Uri twelve years ago in Philadelphia. He was dancing with Philadanco, and I was visiting a friend who was the rehearsal director,” recalls Pierce-Sands. “He was topless and wearing black spandex jazz pants,” she adds, laughing. “I honestly thought he was a little cocky at first.”

Two years later, they met again at Ailey. “It took time for us to get to know each other, because we were both involved with other people at the time,” Pierce-Sands says. “Uri very much kept to himself and wrote a lot in his journals. He’s a thinker and that’s what attracted me to him.”

The true test of their devotion came when Pierce-Sands returned to St. Paul to raise her son and be close to the rest of her family; she also had offers to join the faculties of the Minnesota Dance Theater school and the University of Minnesota dance program. Sands followed for two reasons: “Toni and walleye fishing,” he says. (An avid angler while growing up in Miami, Sands fishes Minnesota’s rivers and lakes, often with his stepson. Last year, his wife bought him a fishing boat for his birthday.)

After briefly dancing with James Sewell Ballet, Sands became a Minnesota Dance Theater company member and resident choreographer. In 2002, he signed on as a dancer and choreographer with North Carolina Dance Theatre in Charlotte, where he’s been stationed about half of the year. “It’s a lucrative situation for me and my family,” he explains. But after a couple of years of watching the couple run hither and yon, Grandma Pierce sat them down. “She told us, ‘Why don’t you guys try to work for yourselves and make your own stuff look good, instead of making everybody else’s stuff look good?’” says Pierce-Sands. “That really inspired us.”

The duo started off with research, assessing foundation support, opportunities for performances, and the variety of dance artists and companies already in the Twin Cities. “We were looking for something we could piggyback on, some way to enhance what the community had started,” says Pierce-Sands. While they’re hesitant to say they discovered an unfilled niche, the couple did find one characteristic troubling. “The Twin Cities has one of the most diverse communities I’ve ever seen,” Sands says, “but its audiences are segregated.”

Audiences, he argues, are loyal to specific niches—ethnic, ballet, modern, improvisation, dance theater, or even ballroom—but they rarely cross into other disciplines. TU Dance aims to attract those various niches, in part by featuring dancers schooled in a variety of disciplines, who “reflect the cultural diversity here in the Twin Cities,” he says.

***

Among the company’s eighteen members are guest artists from Complexions in New York City and Alonso King’s Lines Ballet in San Francisco—both of which have African-American artistic directors and repertories with work inspired by the African-American experience—and from North Carolina Dance Theatre. For local representation, TU’s founders cherry-picked from Twin Cities companies, including Venezuelan charmer Abdo Sayegh, a longtime company member of Minnesota Dance Theater; Stephanie Fellner, the petite powerhouse from Ballet of the Dolls; and Penelope Freeh and Peggy Seipp-Roy, who are dynamic regulars with James Sewell Ballet. The exquisite Mary Ann Bradley was a Jazzdance member, and also performs with the postmodern troupe ARENA Dances.

In other words, TU Dance may aim to draw together and integrate audiences, but it will not sacrifice artistic excellence. “They [Toni and Uri] are driven to be an exemplar of high-quality dance performance,” says Jeff Bartlett, curator of programming at the Southern Theater. “Actually, they’re somewhat intolerant of a mindset that allows for anything less. For them, that’s not okay.”

A third component of TU Dance’s strategy is accessibility. Pointing to the long-term success of their alma mater, Sands says that Alvin Ailey’s shows consistently sell out because the company’s works “speak to the human experience.” Similarly, the pieces he has choreographed for TU Dance “reference particular cultures, social situations, or life events. Accessibility comes through work that taps into the emotional, spiritual, and psychological aspects of our being.”

Audiences may find other ways into TU Dance’s work, adds Pierce-Sands. “One of the lessons we learned at Ailey was that you could bring your father, who doesn’t know anything about dance, but he enjoys the music. That’s making dance accessible. We don’t have any expectations on how some
one should look at dance. We just try to give audiences as many opportunities as possible to grasp something meaningful.”

Sands and Pierce-Sands didn’t just look locally for dancers; teachers, choreographers, company managers, and presenters throughout the Twin Cities offered advice, especially on the mounds of paperwork necessary for incorporation and tax-exempt status. “As we launch this endeavor, one thing in particular we’ve found is that nothing in life is done on your own,” Sands says. “The dance community is helping us form this company.”

The Southern’s Bartlett has been instrumental. “They have good heads on their shoulders,” he says of the couple, “and part of why they do is because of their experience outside this town, specifically in the Ailey company. A life in that company educates you about the reality of the dance world, it provides a lot of tools, and gives you a glimpse of what success looks like.”

Danny Buraczeski also played a critical role. “He’s an incredible artist and mentor, whether through advice or example,” says Pierce-Sands. “Does his company folding make us apprehensive? No. Actually, we feel even more compelled to continue.” Her partner sounds equally determined. “The only way we know to start a dance company is like the only way we learned how to swim,” he says. “Just jump in the water.”

Not much has changed in the hoarse conversation about pro sports stadiums here in the Twin Cities, at least not in the last five years. Public antipathy and skepticism remain about the same, which is to say very high. If decision-makers have learned anything, it is that one does not speak about a new stadium and a public referendum in the same breath. Almost every poll in memory has shown a clear majority of Minnesotans rejecting the idea of public funding for new sports facilities. Yet here we are again. The latest plan to make its way through the daisy chain of hearings, committee meetings, and newspaper editorials would build a $478 million downtown ballpark for the Twins, to be funded mostly by raising sales taxes in Hennepin County.

Sports professionals and fans seem to be taking advantage of the public’s exhaustion with the subject. It is hard to deny the success of the Xcel Energy Center. New stadiums in many other cities certainly raise the pulse of billionaires everywhere. And if the University of Minnesota can drum up thirty million dollars in seed money from TCF Bank, surely the Twins and the Vikings can do the same. Oddly, public outrage also has mellowed with time, as the threat of leaving has time and again turned out to be a feather-filled bluff. Minnesotans will not be blackmailed into an immediate payout, but if the empty threat is repeated for a decade, perhaps we’ll eventually cave.

At some point, though, Minnesotans need to accept certain unpleasant realities. The more inflexible we are about a public payout today, the more likely it is that we’ll pay twice as much tomorrow. It is not a particularly righteous thing, but professional sports are permanently woven into our civic identity. The fact is, we see ourselves as a Big League city, and we will not stop seeing ourselves that way if the Twins decamp to Iowa, or the Vikings move to Nevada. In other words, only a fool would fail to see that, within five years, we’d be paying top dollar to lure professional sports back to the Twin Cities.

You disagree? Let history be a guide: The National Basketball Association approved moving a Detroit basketball team here in 1947. That team cost $15,000, and thirteen years later, the Lakers moved to lakeless Los Angeles. Three decades later, the Timberwolves cost $30 million, the going rate for an expansion team in 1989, and we shelled out $104 million for a new facility. The Minnesota North Stars packed their bags and left “the state of hockey” in 1993. Seven years later, the Wild expansion fee cost $80 million, the team price tag rounded up to about $116 million, and St. Paul coughed up $175 million for a new arena.

Thus it seems to be a question not of whether we’ll pay, but how much and when. Our main problem with the present plan is part of a larger, more general gripe. Just as the cities of blue America pay the bills for red America, it’s generally assumed that people in the city will shell out for what is a region-wide amenity. Normally, this is justified in one way: People who use the stadium will pay for it. But that is not exactly how it works. For years, those of us who live and work here have been forced to pay higher prices—whether or not we are buying tickets at the Target Center or the Metrodome. If you come downtown, you already pay a higher rate of sales tax, there are plenty of fees, and parking costs are almost criminal. Thus there has been a slow but perceptible outflow of leisure dollars from our downtown districts to our suburbs, where parking is free, taxes are anathema, and surcharges minimal.

However, now that the Twins have delineated “Twins Territory” (discovered to be roughly the entire state for which the team is named), why not reduce the burden for any proposed stadium by further spreading the cost? A microscopic sales tax increase statewide would easily pay for an amenity all Minnesotans can appreciate and use and lend their name to. We should stop punishing the city for being so popular.

Everybody seems to have a blog these days. Your angry libertarian neighbor probably has one, not to mention the cat hoarder across the street, and the tortured teenage poet up the block. In the public mind, unfortunately, the excitable political bloggers tend to be regarded as representative—or perhaps symptomatic—of the whole phenomenon, and they certainly hog the media attention and the traffic. That’s a shame, because there are all sorts of other blog niches—literature and music, for instance—where the spirit of the enterprise takes on the quality of a lively and civilized dinner party conversation, rather than the cacophony of Babel.

In Minnesota, there has been an unusual proliferation of baseball blogs devoted to everything from the history of the game to hardcore statistical analysis to general Twins love.

In the Twin Cities, there are dozens of good baseball blogs and a number of excellent ones. A fascinating give-and-take has developed between the creators and readers of many of these sites, to the point where there now seems to exist a genuine symbiosis in which the various blogs feed off each other for traffic and fodder.

In a couple of notable cases, a real sense of community has been achieved. John Bonnes’s already successful Twins Geek site (www.twinsterritory.com), for instance, has evolved this season into a group blog in which readers are welcome to become members and create their own regular posts, or simply join in the fray through the comment threads.

Anne Ursu’s Batgirl (www.anneursu.com/batgirl) has in the last year become a true phenomenon that is generating the kind of traffic and reader enthusiasm that would be the envy of most political bloggers. Ursu is a Twin Cities writer (she has published two novels, Spilling Clarence and The Disapparation of James) and a lifelong Twins fan. With the help of her husband and her brother, Ursu launched Batgirl early last season. The site’s colorful logo, lively voice, and truth-in-advertising slogan, “Less Stats, More Sass,” quickly distinguished it from the prevailing boy’s-club vibe among local baseball blogs. Its unabashed enthusiasm for the Twins, along with an entertaining mix of imaginative prose, playful graphics (including Lego re-creations in lieu of a highlight reel), and interactive game threads have also garnered Batgirl a huge and fiercely loyal audience that is too large to be dismissed as a mere cult.

That audience includes Twins manager Ron Gardenhire and, apparently, the majority of the players in the clubhouse. The crowning achievement for the Batlings thus far has been the creation, earlier this season, of a short animated DVD starring Gardenhire and a handful of Twins, entitled “Oh Five, The Musical!” Gardenhire got his hands on a copy, allegedly called the team together, and showed the clip in the clubhouse to uproarious laughter, creating in the process the most high-profile legion of Batgirl fans to date.

On a recent Friday night, I talked Ursu into accompanying me to the Dome to see the Twins play the Angels. An acute observer of detail, she immediately took note of the World Series trophies on display in the Twins office, something I hadn’t noticed in nearly a half dozen years of trekking through there en route to the field and clubhouse. I am, of course, a Batgirl fan, and well aware of her loyal following, but I wasn’t prepared for the reception she received at the Dome that night. It was humbling, to say the least.

As we made our way through the bowels of the Metrodome to the field for batting practice, Ursu was greeted like a celebrity singer of the national anthem by virtually everybody I paused to introduce her to, from clubhouse legend Wayne Hattaway to the beat writers who cover the team for the papers and wires, and even the batboys.

As a rule, women are still seriously underrepresented in the press box at a baseball game, but Ursu settled in and held her own—it surely helped that the place was packed with Batgirl fans. Although she seemed to be sincerely thrilled to meet Andy Price, the Twins’ game-day ringmaster and the genius who invented Twingo (the fan participation game based on Bingo), she managed with considerable and obvious effort to avoid breaking the press-box interdiction against cheering.

After the game, which the Twins won 7-4 behind a gutsy performance from starter Carlos Silva, we ventured into the inner sanctum of the clubhouse. When Ursu was introduced to Gardenhire in his office, the Twins manager reacted with almost terrifying enthusiasm, and gave her a spontaneous bear hug. He followed us into the clubhouse, announced Batgirl’s presence to Joe Mays, Johan Santana, Terry Mulholland, and bench coach Steve Liddle, and even taunted Mulholland by singing the veteran lefthander’s single line from “Oh Five!”: “My life is over.” Mulholland looked at Ursu with a bemused expression and deadpanned, “What’s that all about?”

From that point on, everything else was pretty much a blur. I got bored as Ursu and Lew Ford yakked about video games for what seemed like fifteen minutes, and walked over to talk with Torii Hunter, who was nursing a giant ice pack on his knee. When I told Hunter that Batgirl was in the clubhouse, he went … well, batshit. He hobbled across the room and waited patiently as Ursu and Ford continued their conversation. When I finally got Ursu’s attention and she turned around to find Hunter standing there, her impressive composure wobbled noticeably for the first time. Hunter expressed his admiration, requested copies of the DVD, and gave her a hug.
“I’m sorry,” Ursu apologized to Hunter. “I swore I wasn’t going to be a gomer.”

“Oh, man, that’s all right,” Hunter laughed. “We’re all fans in this clubhouse.”—Brad Zellar

Just the other day, tickets for the next Cirque du Soleil show in Minneapolis went on sale. Cirque du Soleil has a lot to answer for in these parts. Five years ago, Charlie and Julie Zelle took their children, Charlotte and Nick, on a family trip to see the trampoline queens and contortionists at a Cirque show. It appears to have changed the course of Zelle family history.

“Nick was absolutely transformed,” Charlie said proudly.

“Afterwards he started hanging from bedsheets tied to the banister.”

Nick, now ten years old, is hard at work chasing his big-top dreams. He takes both private and group aerialist lessons, studying, among other things, hand-balancing and trapeze. His parents don’t lose sleep over his threats to run off with the circus one day; rather, they’re encouraging him. Charlie takes his son shopping for tight-fitting, glittery costumes. He recently rigged an eighteen-foot gymnastics structure in the backyard. In February the family even traveled to Montreal so Nick could audition for a part with Cirque du Soleil.

In the Twin Cities, there are enough brave parents like the Zelles to sustain two circus performance schools: St. Paul-based Circus Juventas and Minneapolis-based Xelias Aerial Arts School. Nick began his studies at Circus Juventas soon after his first encounter with Cirque du Soleil. Then, as his enthusiasm grew, he moved on to study with Xelias, regarded as the more “serious” circus school. (Juventas and Xelias offer classes for adults, too. It is said to be great exercise—fear undoubtedly burns a lot of calories.)

Lessons are a little pricey, but no more than sending a child to an average dance studio. At Xelias, a one-on-one lesson costs eighty dollars, whereas a more affordable group class costs fifteen dollars. It’s certainly less expensive than hockey, which many parents regard as the money pit of all sports. Nick, standing four feet tall and with round, daydreamy eyes, doesn’t want to play hockey because he can’t stomach the thought of falling on the ice.

The Xelias studio is in a small warehouse in Northeast Minneapolis. Inside, the floor is carpeted with mats and crash pads. Aerialist playthings hang from the ceiling like dense jungle undergrowth, giving the place a tangled feel. Students can climb as high as thirty feet, but generally hover at a comfortable ten. During a recent session, Nick performed an exhausting hour-long circuit workout that took him from trapeze to ropes to silks (huge diaphanous drapes suspended from the ceiling). Then, after pausing to give a visitor a wet-noodle handshake, he completed an acrobatic routine of round-offs, handsprings, and backward tucks. Soon he was supporting his own body weight on a high hoop and doing no-handed “dead man” dismounts. After his feet hit the floor, he raised his chin, stuck out his chest, and stretched his thin, white arms toward the sky with a little flourish. Then he glanced over to see if anyone had been looking.

“I’m torturing the children,” joked Meg Elias, a professional aerialist and founder of the school, who was drilling another student through sit-ups and pull-ups. (The would-be aerialist has plenty of earthbound exercises.) All along, the lithe and bendy young Nick bounced between apparatuses. He made a string of elegant poses on the high hoop, even touched his heel to his head while hanging upside-down from the thing. Then he gracefully climbed and wound himself in the silks. In between sets, he panted and sipped orange Gatorade.

Most of the training is directed toward a performance, the aerialist’s version of a recital. At one such event, two years ago, Nick performed thirty feet above the audience on an apparatus called the Spanish Web. It is a long, hanging rope with a high loop in which the aerialist can tie a hand or a foot. Nick’s little wrist was knotted in, and a seemingly wicked grown-up aerialist on the ground violently twirled the rope cowboy-style. Nick’s rigid body quickly picked up RPMs, like a ceiling fan turned to high. It was a sight that induced not just gasps, but actual knuckle-chewing. Charlie remembered, too: “Nick was spinning around and the whole audience went Ohhh! Everybody was thinking, What kind of parents would let their kid do that?”—Christy DeSmith

The Michael Jackson trial in Santa Maria, California, is actually an autopsy. Anyone with a pocketful of perspective understands that the King of Pop has already died a slow public death, remembered less and less for his musical gifts, recognized more for his eccentricities. The best that can be said about this is that it makes most of us happy to be neither rich nor famous.

Autopsies on TV are hot these days (see Law & Order, CSI, HBO’s Autopsy and so on). And luckily for viewers, not even a crab-apple superior court judge can keep Jackson’s salacious postmortem off the air entirely. Using fresh-from-the-courthouse transcripts—they’re public records, you know—and a cast of look-alikes, the E! network’s The Michael Jackson Trial: An E! News Presentation has become an instant basic-cable addiction by delivering the juiciest bits of each day’s proceedings as live-action re-enactments. The producers may have stopped short of building a scale model of the courthouse parking lot, but they do take the trouble to re-create a gallery of faux courtroom spectators. On a sunny spring day in Los Angeles, a visitor from Minnesota was among them.

The actor who plays Michael Jackson is Edward Moss. Unlike the rest of the cast, he has his own dressing room, in which his makeup and fake hair are applied. On camera, he’s pretty much restricted to occupying his seat at the defense table, silent and vaguely wounded-looking. Between takes, he’s very chatty, flirting with a few girls in the gallery and drawing pictures of his fellow cast members. There’s banter among the lot of them; sometimes they take congenial swipes at one another in character.

Because the court transcripts come straight from Santa Maria as soon as they’re released, and because the program is on deadline to assemble each episode as quickly as possible, an actor may not receive his lines for a particular scene until moments before the cameras and teleprompters roll. There are lots of stops and starts, perhaps more than usual, since the production is shooting as little as thirty seconds of testimony at a time. At a couple of points, everyone takes a break simply because there are no freshly edited scenes to shoot. The actual script pages arrive in chunks throughout the evening, presumably after somebody somewhere has pored over the day’s unabridged record and selected which segments are best for prime time.

Some casting has to be done on the fly, too, since it’s tough to say how many or what kinds of actors might be needed until it’s known who actually testified that day. Numerous witnesses have been auditioned right there on the set. But there’s also a lot of downtime. The chatter gets heavy between takes. Cast members and the extras in the gallery volley opinions about the actual trial; a few of the latter even talk to themselves. Others read or doze off. A director frequently asks actors to simmer down (or wake up) and focus as the evening wears on.

On a first take, when the script reveals some new juicy bit of testimony, someone might let loose a bona fide gasp or a click of the tongue. One wonders if the same is true at the crowded courthouse about three hours to the north, and if not, whether the actors here might be corrupting the reenactment, or slandering someone by not looking or behaving like their real-life counterparts.

The Michael Jackson Trial has a few key advantages over most television shows. For one, the dialogue is unimpeachable, coming as it does from court stenographers instead of screenwriters. For another, the characters, including a global pop icon who’s better known than any pope or president, were fully developed from the outset. Not even the sexy coroners on CSI enjoy such assets.

As the night drags on, a bewigged actor named Rigg Kennedy, who is playing defense attorney Thomas Mesereau Jr., echoes an objection that took place in the real world several hours ago. The visitor realizes with a sinking feeling that she’s missing CSI.—Sarah Benedict