The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • Embodied Spirits Revisited: Ritual Carvings of the Asmat

    There are very, very few cultures left even partly free from the homogenizing touch of the modern world. The Asmat people are one of them. A tribal culture of about 65,000 from the rainforests of New Guinea, they only recently stopped practicing headhunting and ritual cannibalism. The St. Paul museum’s current “Embodied Spirits” exhibition of carvings takes its title literally—the Asmat believe that invisible spirits with great power are all around them, and that human artists can actually force the spirits into a tangible shape and thus make them less dangerous. The museum’s overall collection of 2,500 pieces is one of the largest around, and it plays a crucial role in preserving Asmat artwork, often made of soft wood and perishable matter that doesn’t last long in a tropical climate. The AMAA is hosted at the province headquarters of the Crosier Fathers and Brothers, an order of Catholic missionaries who have been working on New Guinea to help preserve Asmat culture for nearly 50 years.
    AMAA, 3510 Vivian Ave., St. Paul, (651) 287-1132, www.asmat.org

  • The Handmaid’s Tale

    also: Margaret Atwood on MPR’s Talking Volumes
    Fitzgerald Theater, May 8

    You most likely know Margaret Atwood from her chilling 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale, the book that made her modern literature’s prophetess of feminist and ecological doom. It was made into a rather dull film in 1990, but the story’s lately found new life in a surprising new medium—opera. Adapted by Danish composer Poul Ruders and librettist Paul Bentley, the all-singing Handmaid’s Tale gets its North American premiere here this month in a staging by the Minnesota Opera. This is a major new work with a chorus of international acclaim and sellout crowds behind it, and we’re privileged to have it debut in our town. (If that’s not enough reason to see it, know that there’s a scene where the heroine and villain play a game of Scrabble. Sheer drama!) May 6 will also see the publication of Atwood’s 11th novel, Oryx and Crake. It’s a highly readable, often disturbing vision of humanity engineering its own destruction; it follows a pathetic figure named Snowman, maybe the last human on Earth, who fights to survive among gene-spliced mutants in the post-apocalyptic wastelands and broods over his role in the disasters that befell mankind. Atwood talks with MPR’s Katherine Lanpher about the opera and her own work in a live radio broadcast at the Fitzgerald May 8. Ordway, 345 Washington St., St. Paul, (651) 224-4222, ordway.org

    Theater: Perfect Crime
    Jungle Theater, through June 15
    At 6,000 performances and counting, the New York production of Warren Manzi’s Hitchcockian thriller is the longest-running nonmusical in Broadway history. Such longevity is doubly amazing in view of Manzi’s criminally sloppy handle on the mystery story; his script is so overstuffed with red herrings, dropped subplots, implausible twists and flat-out plot holes it could be retitled Dial I For Incomprehensible. But as the man said, 50,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong. Perfect Crime’s perfect attendance happens for a reason—namely, its terrifically watchable and funny villain, the casually domineering femme fatale Margaret Thorne Brent. It’s a juicy role, and the Jungle’s Jodee Theleen sinks her teeth into it, playing Margaret as a self-absorbed empress for whom contempt is so second-nature that she can’t stop launching her brutally dry barbs of sarcasm even when she’s seducing their target. If you want a good reason to commit to Crime, her performance is it. Jungle, 2951 Lyndale Ave. S., (612) 822-7063, www.jungletheater.com

    Theater: The Sound of Music
    Chanhassen Dinner Theater, opens May 30
    This is, of course, the show that asked the musical question “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” What a lot of people don’t realize is that in a very early draft of the play, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s song actually asked “How do you solve a problem like multivariate normal distribution in orthagonal matrices of probability density functions?” And instead of cute kids singing about does and deers and stuff, a dozen pale grouchy mathematicians hunched silently at their desks, scribbling furiously to solve the problem before the others and thus gain tenure at M.I.T. There was no singing, and the only line of dialogue was “quit hogging the pencil sharpener.” And would you believe they were forced to rewrite this to make it more commercial? At any rate, Chanhassen will be staging the much better-known “real” version, with the singing and the Von Trapps and the Edelweiss and everything. CDT, 501 W. 78th St., Chanhassen, (952) 934-1525, www.chanhassentheatres.com

    Restaurants: Red Fish Blue
    1681 Grand Ave., St. Paul
    (651) 699-6595
    Forget about those suburban seafood chains where the waiters break into the macarena every half-hour. This self-described “ocean diner” (hey, a pun!) over Macalester-way has a pleasantly casual atmosphere with prices that won’t bite like a shark. The walls are dominated by solid reds and blues, getting a subtly undersea theme over without needing to nail up kitschy lobster traps and plastic octopi everywhere. The presentation is also very impressive—your meal will look beautiful, though the food itself may not be anything particularly revelatory. Our recent lunch visit consisted of the generously meaty and flavorful crab cakes and the zingy open-faced rib sandwich topped with sesame-orange slaw. Neither was a world-changing culinary event, but we’d definitely return and order them again with pleasure.

  • Perfect Crime

    At 6,000 performances and counting, the New York production of Warren Manzi’s Hitchcockian thriller is the longest-running nonmusical in Broadway history. Such longevity is doubly amazing in view of Manzi’s criminally sloppy handle on the mystery story; his script is so overstuffed with red herrings, dropped subplots, implausible twists and flat-out plot holes it could be retitled Dial I For Incomprehensible. But as the man said, 50,000 Elvis fans can’t be wrong. Perfect Crime’s perfect attendance happens for a reason—namely, its terrifically watchable and funny villain, the casually domineering femme fatale Margaret Thorne Brent. It’s a juicy role, and the Jungle’s Jodee Theleen sinks her teeth into it, playing Margaret as a self-absorbed empress for whom contempt is so second-nature that she can’t stop launching her brutally dry barbs of sarcasm even when she’s seducing their target. If you want a good reason to commit to Crime, her performance is it. Jungle, 2951 Lyndale Ave. S., (612) 822-7063, www.jungletheater.com

  • The Sound of Music

    This is, of course, the show that asked the musical question “How do you solve a problem like Maria?” What a lot of people don’t realize is that in a very early draft of the play, Rodgers & Hammerstein’s song actually asked “How do you solve a problem like multivariate normal distribution in orthagonal matrices of probability density functions?” And instead of cute kids singing about does and deers and stuff, a dozen pale grouchy mathematicians hunched silently at their desks, scribbling furiously to solve the problem before the others and thus gain tenure at M.I.T. There was no singing, and the only line of dialogue was “quit hogging the pencil sharpener.” And would you believe they were forced to rewrite this to make it more commercial? At any rate, Chanhassen will be staging the much better-known “real” version, with the singing and the Von Trapps and the Edelweiss and everything. CDT, 501 W. 78th St., Chanhassen, (952) 934-1525, www.chanhassentheatres.com

  • Red Fish Blue

    Forget about those suburban seafood chains where the waiters break into the macarena every half-hour. This self-described “ocean diner” (hey, a pun!) over Macalester-way has a pleasantly casual atmosphere with prices that won’t bite like a shark. The walls are dominated by solid reds and blues, getting a subtly undersea theme over without needing to nail up kitschy lobster traps and plastic octopi everywhere. The presentation is also very impressive—your meal will look beautiful, though the food itself may not be anything particularly revelatory. Our recent lunch visit consisted of the generously meaty and flavorful crab cakes and the zingy open-faced rib sandwich topped with sesame-orange slaw. Neither was a world-changing culinary event, but we’d definitely return and order them again with pleasure.

  • Building the Boys of Summer

    There’s no tarp on the ball field at Cretin and Grand, though snow sprinkles the brownish grass and the morning promises more. A white portable fence arcs in awkward sections from the right to leftfield foul lines, where orange foul poles stand uncertainly against a wicked northwest wind. For a clueless pilgrim seeking the heart of American small-college baseball, it’s all a bit underwhelming.

    I’ve crossed the river on this early April morning in search of everything that is pure and wholesome in the world of college sports, a place where students go to school to learn, and where they play ball for fun. It’s a world completely foreign to followers of March Madness and the Bowl Championship Series, recruiting wars, and academic scandals. Casual readers of the sports pages would know little of this universe, but hardcore fans may get an occasional glimpse, as some of us did last fall when the Johnnies of St. Johns University played for the Division III football championship, or in 2001 when the University of St. Thomas baseball team beat Marietta (Ohio) 8-4 to become only the second Minnesota team to claim a national college baseball championship (the Golden Gophers did it in 1965).

    But I’m not here at McCarthy Gym to rehash past glory. I’m looking for edification—enlightenment even—on the sticky subject of college athletics. I want to know what can be done to unravel the tightening knot of money, media, and malfeasance that plagues major college sports. And Tommies baseball coach Dennis Denning may be one of the only guys in town with an answer that makes any sense.

    Dennis Denning stands at the front desk in corduroys and a sweatshirt. He extends his hand—a fleshy, gnarled mitt that betrays a lifetime of foul tips and bad hops—and shows me to his office. I notice the framed and autographed photos on the wall of the cramped room, and the stocky, white-haired coach describes some of the more notable of the batch: Tommies alum Buzz Hannahan in a Philadelphia Phillies uniform (“Three for five in his first spring training game this year”); Twins farmhand Jake Mauer (“Only four errors last year at Quad Cities”); son Wes wearing the Montreal Expos colors (“He’s a St. Paul cop now and doing great”). I remark innocently on the potential of Jake’s brother Joe Mauer, the Cretin-Derham Hall phenom whom the Twins drafted out of high school, and Denning launches into a detailed explanation of Joe’s batting stance and swing—neglecting only to mention that the young Twins catcher may have picked up some tips at Denning’s long-running summer baseball camps.

    Before we can get to the exploits of his other star pupils, guys like Paul Molitor, Chris Wienke, and Steve Walsh, the phone rings, and Denning is quickly pulled into what seems to be an emergency academic counseling session. “Yeah, OK, uh-huh…Well, if you drop it, you’ll be ineligible, you know…” he says. The conversation ends with instructions on where to get help. He hangs up and describes the forlorn player on the other end of the line as a junior varsity player having trouble with chemistry. “A lot of these kids come here after getting real good grades in high school, but they’re not prepared for how hard it is here,” he explains.

    It turns out that Denning’s job at St. Thomas extends far beyond running a baseball program that has become a perennial NCAA Division III powerhouse. He’s in charge of programming at the gym, acts as an informal academic counselor, and even does a little groundskeeping on the diamond outside. “It’s like running a park and rec center,” he says.

    No administrative assistants, no PR flunkies, no sycophantic boosters. It is a small-budget operation in a conference full of small-budget operations. “Our facilities are terrible,” he says, almost apologetically. “The worst facilities in the MIAC.” And yet, Denning’s baseball team can boast a national championship, two second-place finishes, and NCAA tournament berths in seven straight seasons.

    “His team consistently improves throughout the year,” says Concordia College baseball coach Bucky Burgau. “Along with getting very good players, Dennis is a very good teacher of all phases of the game.”

  • Feeling Minnesota, Looking Nebraska

    Illustration by Christopher Henderson

    I’m going to miss Minnesota—not because I’m going away, but because Minnesota is. The north woods? There’s a fairly good chance I will outlive them. A walk through the spruce, the cry of a loon—a lot of experiences we think of as quintessential Minnesota may disappear. Or emigrate to Canada.

    In February of 2000, the American Birkebeiner, the largest cross-county ski race in North America, was canceled for lack of snow for the first time in its 30-year history. Although the region of northwest Wisconsin that’s home to the Birkie received 16 inches of snow in the week leading up to the race, that winter wonderland was liquefied by four subsequent days of rain and warm winds. Pastor Lynn Larson of Cable, Wisconsin, remembers the week well. “We had a snowman holding a pair of skis outside our church at the beginning of the week,” he says. “By the middle of the week, we replaced the skis with an umbrella.”

    A direct son of Norway via eight immigrant great-grandparents, Larson has skied the marathon 17 times. That year, he watched thousands of crestfallen skiers—nearly half of whom had come up from the Twin Cities—trudge around Hayward with a sour look on their faces. “That really got the wheels turning for me,” he says. “I’m convinced that this is all related to climate change—the greenhouse effect.”

    Worried that the Birkie was in jeopardy, Larson started a group called Cross Country Skiers for Global Cooling. To join, members must take “the patriot’s energy pledge,” vowing to conserve energy and do whatever they can to minimize their own greenhouse emissions. Forty people have joined this very loose club, which, as it turns out, is mostly about the nifty T-shirts.

    Many winter-lovers in the upper Midwest believe that the halcyon days of consistent cold and snow in the region are behind us. The state of Wisconsin seems to agree; Tourism Secretary Kevin Shibilski recently announced plans for a program that will offer loan guarantees to businesses that depend on snowmobiling or cross-country skiing in low-snow years.

    Ahvo Taipale has run a cross-country ski shop in the Twin Cities since 1973 and is widely seen as the dean of Minnesota cross-country skiing. He says that Minnesota and western Wisconsin used to get fairly consistent snow. Until the mid-1980s, when warming spells began forcing event organizers to cancel ski races. “In particular, the last five years have been very weird,” he says. Another telling phenomenon: He says he can be fully stocked with new equipment an entire month and a half later than he could 10 or 20 years ago.

    A look back at the record with longtime Birkie staffer Shellie Milford seems to underscore Taipale’s anecdotal and personal take on the trends: Half of the races in the last ten years have been characterized by challenging snow conditions. In the previous decade, four races lacked snow or cold compared to only one race in the Birkie’s first decade.

    It’s not just the carbo-loading set that’s starting to worry. On the motoring side of things, it’s also been tough sledding for the past five years. Pete Bohlig sells recreational vehicles for the Hitching Post in South St. Paul. With the less reliable snow he’s seen lately, he sells a lot more four-wheeled ATVs than snowmobiles. “If I had a nickel for every time someone tried to trade in a sled for an ATV, I’d be a rich man,” he says.

    John Prusak, editor of several national snowmobiling magazines, says one should take such doom-and-gloom talk with a grain of salt, noting that the industry has gone through six distinct boom-bust cycles in the last 30 years. Snowmobile sales follow snowfall more closely than they do the economy, and the industry did very well in the upper Midwest as recently as 1998, he says.

  • The March of Madness

    We’re sports fans around here, no matter what our other pretensions. One of our favorite diversions is watching the tournaments that clog the calendar in this season. This year, though, we’re oddly sensitized to the fact that most sports coverage is heavily dependent on military metaphors. To judge from our local sports journalists and commentators, it’s virtually impossible to call a game without resorting to some battlefield turn of phrase. It’s cool, though. We live in confrontational times. Now that the DFL and progressive politics are a thing of the past, we can expect other quaint Minnesota traditions like non-confrontation to go away too. If you can’t beat ’em—well, you know the rest.

    The battles all started a few weeks ago, with the high schools. We’re convinced the one Minnesota tradition really worth defending is the state high school hockey tournament—what used to be the only pure (single-class) thing left to us. Who could have foreseen the perfect symmetry of the Warroad Warriors humiliating Simley for the Class A championship? In the less prestigious Class AA tier (the moneyed suburban schools), Anoka took no prisoners against Roseville Area. (Sorry, Area? Now there’s a moniker that smacks of a military lack of imagination.)

    There’s been a lot of flak over the failures of Gopher men’s basketball late in their campaign to get into the NCAA tournament. A show of force in the NIT is, of course, a little like a show of force at the Y on Sunday afternoon, but there’s some consolation in being the best among the losers. Personally, we think it’s a crime against humanity that sports fans and journalists aren’t getting more excited about a couple other contests: The Gopher women are poised to crack the top five in basketball this year, and there’s a fair chance the women will repeat as national champions in hockey.

    There’s also an exciting story blowing up in the WCHA: Mankato State and St. Cloud State both survived into the final five, just months after making the big jump from Division III to Division I hockey. (The Gophers, the Fighting Sioux, and the Bulldogs have kept hostilities limited to JV scrimmages through the years—many of which resulted in serious embarrassment that could be blown off as easily as an NIT result. Now they’re wishing they hadn’t been so diplomatic in expanding the conference.) Mankato State has been the most exciting story in college hockey this year—but why should we be surprised? They’d been policing Division II for decades, playing in three national championships (and winning one) going back to the 80s.

    It’s tough to compete with a war, of course. The other day, CBS television announced that they’d asked ESPN to cover day games in the NCAA tournament—because the network has responsibly decided to cover the war in Iraq. The only question that remains is how many viewers will go AWOL and switch to buckets or hockey.

  • It Only Hurts When I Act

    Once upon a time, medical students learned from real people in actual hospitals, interviewing them about their all-too-genuine conditions. But thanks to the insurance-industry bean-counters, hospitals began discharging patients after shorter and shorter periods of time, and only the sickest hung around long enough for study. These patients could tolerate only so many repeated exams from a stream of medical students, and they began to suffer from the stress of having to answer the same tedious questions again and again.

    The University of Minnesota’s solution was the standardized patient program. Basically, it’s a theater that employs a small cast of actors—professional hypochondriacs. Rookies need only to play themselves and act natural, as medical students look into their eyes and ears and down their throats, check their reflexes, and walk through other non-intrusive aspects of a standard exam. No blood is drawn. “Patients” are invited by doctors and recruited by on-campus fliers. “They don’t need to have any particular problem,” said Josh Chapman, who was a paid patient before he was hired to coordinate the program for the U’s medical school. “But it’s nice if they have an enlarged liver from a drinking problem or they had a stroke twenty years ago and their reflexes aren’t quite normal.”

    Many standardized patients are people with disabilities who can’t work full-time jobs; others are retired. The average age is 50, but several U students work for the program, and one five-year-old employee gives medical students a chance for pediatric practice. Typically patients work for three hours a week. They’re often used in testing too, during which students go room to room and diagnose as many as 20 different patients with teachers grading them.

    Once standardized patients have some experience playing themselves, they begin to take on more challenging roles, dramatizing different scenarios that aspiring physicians are likely to encounter, such as a confrontational patient or a patient who’s tested positive for a terminal disease. Scripts are used, and the actors practice with staff before meeting with the students. “Ideally the patients act the same way for every student so they can be graded fairly,” explained Chapman. His office can’t afford professional, dues-paying actors, but he said the people they have do a good job.

    Evaluations suggest that the patients gain as much as the students do. “It’s almost therapeutic for some patients,” Chapman said. “They can talk to medical students and teach them how to interact with other people who have the same problem.” The continuing dialogue means that patients gain an understanding of doctors’ perspectives, and they feel less intimidated and more empowered to speak up and ask questions of their real doctors.
    So how much does hypochondria pay? Employees of the program start at $10 an hour, and work their way up to $15 for the more challenging starring roles. It’s not exactly Screen Actors Guild scale—but probably better than a similar program over at the U’s school of veterinary medicine.—Katherine Glover

  • The Jayhawks, Rainy Day Music

    You can keep your J.Lo; we’ll take the Jayhawks. Rainy Day Music, their seventh disc, pulls back from the slickness of 2000’s Smile for a sound anchored more deeply in the acoustic. It’s an evolution that sprung in part from continued lineup shifts and the impossibility of touring with a full band in the wake of 9/11’s chaotic effect on air travel, but the effect is positive nonetheless. We liked Smile quite a bit, but it’s a real pleasure to hear Gary Louris and company pushing toward a rootsier sound; that’s always helped make the joy and humanity in their music more manifest. And there’s no shortage of the Byrdsesque singable tunefulness that has always been our favorite part of the Jayhawks sound. The bright pop tunes “Save It For a Rainy Day” and “Tailspin” are the most obvious earworms, but for pure, unadulterated harmonic splendor, we’ll go with “Madman,” so reminiscent of Crosby Stills & Nash that all it’s missing is for Neil Young to refuse to go on a reunion tour with them.