Category: Article

As you know by now, Time magazine has, with the usual fanfare, announced their “Persons of the Year.” They’ve selected three “whistleblowers” from the past twelve months of corporate malfeasance and government ineptitude. This is troublesome stuff. Not because people shouldn’t stand up for what they believe is right, but because when they do, and they are idolized, we find ourselves on a slippery slope of demagoguery.

In the Jewish tradition, great deeds qualify for special status as mitzvot–acts of loving kindness, real karmic capital–by remaining anonymous. There is something corrupting about Time magazine putting heroes of this kind on its cover as a publicity stunt, designed first as a ploy to sell Time magazine. We’ve got nothing against making money. God knows, we’d like to do more of that ourselves. Still, it’s easy to be cynical about the phenomenon, when it’s directly connected to Time’s bottom line, while posing as something more.

Years ago, Time sold out Henry Luce’s vision for Man of the Year. Luce wished to identify the person who had the most impact on the world and news from the previous year. (Stalin and Hitler, you’ll recall, both made Man of the Year in their time.) Instead, the editors use the issue today as a cheerleading opportunity, to rile the literal-minded mob of Americans who lack the imagination to see it as anything other than a public honor heaped on a more or less deserving person, not unlike the Oscars. (Indeed, one might argue that this year’s “whistleblowers” failed to change the course of history or make news at all, until it was too late.)

On the other hand, what makes us squirm is the real possibility that across the nation, bureaucrats are trying to figure out how to institutionalize this type of heroism. The simpleminded corporate lackey or government patriot does not understand that whistleblowers are remarkable for the very fact that they work against the grain, against the overwhelming pressure to conform in the workplace. They act out, and they act alone, and they are–under any other circumstance–the bad apple that spoils the bunch. If one wants to truly follow their example, one must first identify the overwhelming social climate against which to tilt. That climate has turned 180 degrees from what it was 18 months ago.

Recent experiments in emulating this type of behavior have been disastrous. We think of the ill-fated “TIPS” program, by which the government hoped to encourage Americans to snitch on anyone that seemed suspicious to them. And now TIA–the program for “Total Information Awareness,” overseen by Iran-Contra felon John Poindexter–has also foundered, thanks to some refreshing media scrutiny and hacktivism. When the impulse to blow the whistle is coopted by the government and converted into a witchhunt, we should all be very nervous indeed.

It’s been a tough year, to be sure. And it’s natural enough to look for heroes in the midst of so much corporate and government ugliness. It’s certainly easier in hindsight to find and celebrate the prophets in the wilderness than it is to ask why their whistleblowing didn’t effect change in time to avert catastrophe. Would FBI agent Coleen Rowley’s agitations have landed her on the cover of Time, if 9/11 hadn’t happened? Would Sherron Watkins be a Person of the Year if Ken Lay had been chastened by her warnings about Enron’s shell game? No.

And what are we to make of the fact that Time’s persons of the year are all women? First, of course, one must point out that editors love aesthetic symmetry above almost anything else. (Hence three persons of the year; odd numbers are resolved, balanced on a center point.) It’s a happy coincidence that all three are women. And yet many will be gratified by this, as if history’s dialectic is itself committed to equal opportunity. The subtle implication, intentional or accidental, real or perceived, is that men could not or would not have done what these women did.

Are women both the nobler and fairer sex? It certainly is true that they commit less crime than men. But as they achieve positions of real authority–and being a white-collar whistleblower is getting pretty close–we should expect that they are just as capable of committing all kinds of felonious acts of selfishness.

A few months ago, the local papers reported the kind of story I love to read– a delightful item about the Minneapolis street widely regarded as the finest example of an old-fashioned Twin Cities avenue. The salient distinguishing feature was the street’s towering American elm trees which had somehow survived numerous plagues of Dutch elm disease.

Then in October, I learned that Minneapolis had a rough year for Dutch elm. The park board cut down 4,000 elms in 2002. Among them was “the Sentinel,” a huge streetside attraction on Stevens Avenue near the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The passing of this remarkable tree was commemorated by a white sash, a poem, and a memoriam in the Newspaper of the Twin Cities.

Now this morning in the Strib, I see where a farmer in Le Sueur county has been granted the rare distinction of owning the state’s finest American elm. The 87-foot tall tree was cited by the DNR, who keep track of more than 50 species of trees in their “Big Tree Registry.” The Strib also reports that the largest tree of any species currently in the logs is a cottonwood tree almost 130 feet tall. (The DNR has a three-point system that takes into account height, circumference of trunk, and canopy size. This particular cottonwood has the highest score of any species.)

Aside from the bizarre government impulse to record these kinds of “size matters” stats, it’s provocative to me that the Strib chose to lead this interesting story with the news about Monty Braun’s elm. Why not the state’s tallest white pine? How about its biggest poplar? I chalk it up to their desire to create a hook most readers will instantly want to read. Oddly, elms sell better than cottonwoods.

This is not as petty as it might seem; it goes to the heart of an important conversation about how we see our environment, or more accurately, what we see in our environment–and what we don’t see. More and more, environmentalists and scientists are warning us that our preferences are leading to biological monocultures. This is a fancy way of saying that we love those American elms so much, that we neglect the other species.

There is, of course, a price to be paid for this monomania. When Dutch elm disease thrived in the 70s and 80s, the whole face of Minnesota was scarred, because of a prejudice for these beloved shade trees. In 1977, 50,000 were cut down in the Twin Cities alone. That tells you not that Dutch elm disease was so much more virulent back then; rather, it tells you just how biased our arboriculture was until the 80s.

One wonders if this is the kind of phenomenon we can expect to see more of in the future. Is nature, biologically speaking, trying to regain its own balance in spite of its human stewards? This is where ethics and biology intersect. The growing gospel of ecology and the interconnectedness of all life throws cold water on some age-old philosophical and scientific questions. For example, if we somehow managed to eradicate small pox–because it was a scourge to human beings–is there some other price to be paid elsewhere on the circle of life? If we successfully killed all the mosquitoes, how long would the dragonflies survive? And then the songbirds? And so on.

This is tricky territory, of course. One can come dangerously close to making repellant, Malthusian kinds of pronouncements– that plagues of disease and famine are “nature’s way” of responding to overpopulation and its imbalances. It would be inhuman to believe that, particularly since the weak, infirm, and impoverished are inevitably the first to expire. This is a truism for all species, but we like to believe that humans–ethical ones, anyway–will take care of the neediest first.

If these kinds of change are, in fact, the planet’s way of trying to regain some sort of balance, then it might be wise to consider what we can do to help, rather than hinder. In recent years, the environmentalists have been touting the esthetic of biodiversity as a good first step. This line of thinking argues that if we want nature to thrive (so that we might survive), we should try to make sure that the widest possible range of the natural is given the opportunity to renew itself.

This seems like sound advice in any case. No matter what you might believe about “the greenhouse effect,” it certainly won’t hurt the planet to entertain the idea that it is changing, and that we may have a hand in it, for better or for worse. The alternative–to go on pretending that environmental problems like global warming are the fictions of those who only want to damage American business–is to risk considerably more than just our “way of life.”

Here in the Twin Cities, the old monoculture of public plantings is hopefully a thing of the past. We learned the painful lesson of Dutch elm disease, when hundreds of thousands of our stately streets were razed by a simple little beatle. A healthy mix of trees, including old favorites like maple and oak, along with modish species like ginkgo and linden, would have saved us the sorrow that we now prudently bank against.

Veneration of the “stately elm” is, to be sure, one of the prerogatives of our pride of place. The elm is as central to the Minnesota identity as lefse, Lake Wobegon, and driving in the left lane. As with so many other things in life, though–politics, art, society, biology–we must evolve to embrace new realities, or our traditions will end up in the wood chipper.

About a year ago, we recall reading several pieces on “war chalking,” a trend in San Francisco, L.A., and New York, where electronic freedom fighters were developing a system for letting each other know where to find wireless interent access out on the street. They developed graffiti symbols akin to the mythical code of hobos from a bygone era.

Well, no code is necessary here, because the Strib has broadcast the names and locations of a half-dozen businesses that give it up to anyone with a wi-fi enabled laptop–and do so more or less willingly. (The 8th Street Grill, which hiply offers wireless DSL to its customers, seems sensible enough to realize this: Why would you sit outside in your cold van to “hack” into their wi-fi, when you could do it inside, over a nice turkey sandwich?)

As everyone knows, the news is not really news until someone gets hurt. And throughout Steve Alexander’s engaging article, you can feel editor and writer straining together to try to make this story somehow scandalous.

Let’s acknowledge here that most Americans can barely find the on-switch and the AOL icon. That being the case, the only real potential culprit in the mix is that old bugbear, the computer hacker. Since any phreak can already launch a nuclear missle by simply whistling into a payphone, why would anyone bother with the 8th Street Grill’s wireless port to the web? There is nothing a hacker can do with free wi-fi access that he can’t do at the public library.

Still, even with so many other pressures on our collective psyche, paranoia about cyber crime continues apace. Witness The New York Times magazine’s interview yesterday with uberhacker Kevin Mitnick–still so feared that he’s not allowed to take a crap alone, if there’s a circuit-board anywhere in the room. Mitnick will have paid his debt to society at the end of the month, after five years in the clink. And what he’s always said–and is still saying– is that serious, high-powered hacking has always depended on “social engineering,” that is, good old-fashioned human-to-human confidence games. (Forgot your password? Mother’s maiden name?) If anything, con artists are up against significantly more challenges in the online world, due to technology. Every digital transaction leaves a deep footprint in the six-inch snow of networked cyberspace. If Mitnick is so goddam smart, why did he get caught? Instead of hacking computers, he should have stuck to dumpster-diving for credit carbons.

No, the most serious electronic mischief has been perpetrated by Steve Case and AOL/Time Warner. Securing mediocre internet access for 12 million Americans, at $21.95 per month each, may be the greatest feat of “social engineering” ever. The true evil genius of AOL is that it’s a backstop–your permanent email, your last-resort ISP when everything else has gone fubar. There is undoubtedly a special term the industry has for retaining customers through neglect–thanks to that automatic debit every month, until you go through the considerable trouble to close your account. Why do it? Holding down this little escape costs a virtually painless $270 a year.

Then there’s the natural decline in the quality of content that comes with opening the door to the masses. We’re not sure about the full extent of AOL’s crime, but judging from our inbox, the world is a more exciting place, what with all those hidden Nigerian bank accounts, penis enlargement pills, and Tiny RC Race Cars! (Completely sold-out in stores!) We feel sure that we have the info-architects at America Online to thank for lowering the bar so far that even Dr. Laura has figured out how to put together a web site.

Given that tremendous contribution to human progress, no one could have known that a company as pragmatically arrogant as Time Warner would chafe under so much pragmatic populism. These are, after all, the people who publish People, the most widely read periodical in the country.

As anyone who has ever spent a half hour in a dentist’s waiting room knows, tight control of information is no guarantee against crime in any medium–particularly violations of good taste and the assault on your intelligence. Seeing AOL pull this off just as well as People must be very irritating indeed. It’s no wonder they’re looking for a concrete parachute for that little weasel.

The American legal system and the parents of a certain Breck School senior took a pounding in the press and on talk radio last week. For the few of you who missed it, here is the story: Andrew Stanoch, a high school senior at Breck, was caught with a small amount of marijuana during the morning of a school day. Breck expelled him. Stanoch’s parents sued Breck, and Hennepin County Judge Allen Oleisky ordered Breck to readmit him.

Essentially, Judge Oleisky’s reasoning was that Breck’s policy on possession of drugs was sufficiently vague so as to make their expulsion of Stanoch arbitrary. Although the Breck policy clearly states that a student who is found to possess drugs “faces dismissal,” the policy also says a student who “possesses, uses, or comes under the influence of alcohol or other harmful chemicals is required to follow the appropriate recommendations as set forth by the school in order to remain in the Breck Community.”

What I think Breck was trying to accomplish by their wording “faces dismissal,” was the total discretion to act however they please whenever they please. That is, if they like the kid they can find a way to keep him. If they don’t, he’s gone. As Breck is quick to point out, they have hundreds on the waiting list ready to fill the spot. (I am discounting any suggestion that Breck was just sloppy in the way they wrote their policy. God knows there are enough lawyers around the place they could get it right if they wanted.)

The criticism leveled at Stanoch’s parents and Judge Oleisky was vicious. The talk radio crowd and the letter writers to the Strib were near unanimous in their condemnation. As a parent of a Breck sophomore and a recent Breck graduate, my first inclination was to agree with them. But I’ve read Oleisky’s decision, and I’ve spent some time looking into the policies at another private high school I know, and I have come to the conclusion that Breck not only blew it legally, they also blew the opportunity to do what they are supposed to do best—educate.

The other private school I contacted has an extensive disciplinary policy regarding drug and alcohol possession that involves three levels of offenses. The Level 1 offense is possession with intent to sell, or actually selling drugs. That gets you expelled, period. The Level 2 offense is hosting a party where alcohol or drugs are used. That gets you suspended or expelled, depending on the discretion of the dean of students. The Level 3 offense of simple possession or being under the influence gets you a parent conference, chemical dependency evaluation and in-school suspension for a first time offense. The second offense gets you mandatory rehab and out-of-school suspension. Only the third Level 3 offense gets you expelled. And even then, you may be able to come back if you can convince the school your behavior has changed.

When I asked the president of that school why their seemingly lax policy worked for them, he answered, “We want to be partners in helping that student become a better person. If we simply expel him, we lose that educational opportunity.” He also pointed out that a more lenient policy also encouraged students who aren’t using to tell the school if another student “needs help” without worrying that their friend will be expelled. “We have had several students approach us on that basis,” he said. “They want to help, and they know we want to help, too.”

Now perhaps the Breck administration wanted to get rid of Andrew Stanoch for other reasons and took this opportunity to pull the trigger. Perhaps they wanted to get rid of his parents. That is exactly the sort of arbitrary power Breck’s policy was intended to protect.

Stanoch’s parents certainly squandered their opportunity to teach their son a lesson about the consequences of his actions. Since they didn’t seem to know or care that the lawsuit made it a matter of public record that their son uses drugs, as well as made it much less likely that any exclusive college would admit a litigious family, we wonder if they understand the concept themselves.

But maybe if the Breck administrators were to reexamine their own role in the education of Andrew Stanoch, they would come to the conclusion they could have done a better job, too.

Last week, the whole office adjourned to the Walker to see the British TV advertising awards. It got me wondering, among other things, whether somewhere in Great Britain , there was a crowd of urbane hipsters gathering to see the American TV commercial awards. Probably not.

Which is not to say that we can’t make great ads here too. I don’t doubt that there may be such an awards screening for our own TV commercials. (The Superbowl functions in this way, I suppose, but the high entry fee–up this year to something like $4 million per minute– insures that these are merely expensive ads, not necessarily artful ones.) It’s been said many times that the best minds of the present generation are working in advertising, rather than writing novels or making films or painting masterpieces or any of the other things brilliant people are supposed to be doing with themselves. As I tried to think of a few good examples of the American art form, I didn’t have much trouble. In other words, great British TV commercials don’t necessarily asperse their American counterparts. Buck up, friend–we have some great ads here too, for what it’s worth.

No, the real attraction is in the exotic otherness, the subtle differences in what’s allowed and expected in TV abroad. The nifty thing is that Brits, having sent most of their Puritans to America hundreds of years ago, treat themselves to more nudity and swearing. That salaciousness adds up to more than just fart jokes and bare breasts, though–it cultivates a permissiveness throughout the whole medium, and that means TV will occasionally be challenging and even artful in ways you never see here. (The artful and the challenging tend to find a home here at HBO–where there are no commercials per se.)

Humor of course is almost as effective as sex as a selling device—and it’s much more difficult to do well. As you might expect, most of the best ads in this year’s awards are laugh-out-loud funny. But the relative freedom of the British medium also pushes the envelope in disturbing ways. British public service announcements, for example, tend to be shocking beyond description. In particular, there are a series of highly graphic car-accident PSAs this year, including a heartbreakingly realistic reenactment of a car colliding in slow-mo with a child crossing a street. This ad has already given me nightmares—and I’m a guy who’s fully versed in Unreal Tournament, Wes Craven, and all the other signifiers of red-blooded American violence-as-entertainment.

The main distinction in British and American advertising, from my point of view, is the same distinction that exists between good and bad advertising in any culture. Like anything else in media, we remember the good and forget the bad—the average being perhaps the most forgettable of all. Good advertising works the way a good book or movie or CD works—it stands out, you remember it, you talk about it with your friends. And if the advertisers are lucky, you associate it with whatever brand it is that they’re peddling.

One can only hope that the capacity audience at the Walker last week was filled with Twin Cities advertising professionals (there are as many here as practically anywhere, as a matter of fact) walked away with this endorsement: The finest ads in the British TV commercial awards are powerful and funny and sexy and mighty creative in themselves, as miniature movies. “Extending the brand” of their bankrolling advertisers is, though certainly not accidental, almost incidental.

Ad people undoubtedly fight this battle every day—convincing advertisers that good advertising needs to innovate, and in some cases that may not mean hiring a supermodel to scream a brand name and a price for 30 seconds. They should approach their clients with the rare attitude of the wisest writers—that good writing flatters all writers. Good ads are not nearly as pernicious as bad ones.

There’s an interesting flip of the script going on here. Movies, books, CDs are increasingly driven by bottom-line formulas. It’s the advertisers who are, in many cases, given more freedom to explore creatively and artistically. It’s no accident that some of our most artful and credible musicians, movie directors, actors, and writers are working in advertising. And even if they never come back over from the dark side, we can still take a moment to appreciate it when they use their powers for the attenuated good of a memorable commercial.

It’s easy to be cynical about certain holiday traditions—especially the one where we’re expected to buy presents for a list that begins to read like the phone book. What’s more, we must stay ahead of increases in the cost-of-giving index by which we quietly measure ourselves each year. (What is the minimum expected for a present between adults? Do I stop at second cousins twice removed? Will I still respect myself Christmas morning?) In this contrarian household, there are strange fellows all snug in their beds—religious fanatics and secular cranks, visions of charcoal dancing in their heads. They complain in unison: Isn’t the holiday about something more than crass consumerism?

It is not. Or at least it shouldn’t have to be. Ever since the babyboomers were in diapers, consumerism has slowly but surely replaced the isms of a more traditional confession. Shopping has become our civil religion. True, many of us still go to church, synagogue, or mosque. Eight in ten Americans still express a preference for some specific denomination, while five in ten are dues-paying members. But if spirituality is about putting your most sacred beliefs into action, we spend a lot more time with the gospel according to Visa and Master Card than we do with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

It’s no great paradox that our spirituality, our patriotism, and our consuming habits are so tangled. Just a year ago, we were measuring both our economy and our spiritual health by how many big-ticket items we could afford. Success in life is measured not by calculating the distance between our moral goals and achievements, but between our financial ones. In a foot-race with human nature, idealism is easily lapped every time. We don’t mind boosting the underdog, but we do get tired of booing the capitalist spirit. For better or worse, buying Christmas presents is not antithetical to American spirituality. It’s critical to it.

We don’t need Max Weber to tell us that financial worries today sting worse than the prospect of Hell’s fire tomorrow. Last year was the worst in a decade for holiday revenues. This year, consumer confidence is once again clanking around in the empty tin bucket. Do Americans stop buying and start praying when times are tough? Probably. Then again, we doubt that a reward in the next life really trumps one in the next recovery.

This year, the downtown council is promoting its 11th annual Holidazzle—the daily parade on Nicollet Mall from Thanksgiving to the New Year that crassly celebrates the glory of Christmas consumerism. Sure, it’s populated by storybook characters, and Disney-like artifice. Sure, it generates as much as 4,000 pounds of food charitably donated to local food shelfs, and as much as $30,000 for good, if seasonal, causes. On top of all that, shoppers who spend at least $150 downtown will be rewarded with tickets to the “Hot Seats” section, the heated grandstand at Orchestra Hall. It doesn’t exactly count as a trip to church. But in the American context, you can scarcely find a better way to prove your mettle.

For a half-million locals, there is no more fitting ritual than Holidazzle. No matter what you think of it, or how you pronounce it, the word is etymologically perfect. Holidays are holy days, but the gods don’t dazzle the way they used to—or if they do, then they’re not in Heaven but downtown.

To avoid the static of a wool ski cap, I bought a black, small-brimmed fedora. My friends greeted me with “Hey mafioso!” An Italian friend of mine had the opposite reaction. “Hey Tex! Ciao Cowboy!” he said. Obviously, we have become a hat-illiterate society.

John F. Kennedy wore a silk top hat to his presidential inauguration. But when he rose to give his inaugural address, he left his overcoat and hat on his chair. Americans were shocked at their hatless president. Many spectators were surprised simply because it was so damn cold—22 degrees. Army units supposedly used flame-throwers to get rid of more than nine inches of snow around the Capitol building earlier that morning.

While Jackie still wore her Sunday bonnets through most of her husband’s presidency, JFK’s hair flowed in the wind, giving him that daring look Charles Lindbergh had perfected decades before. The king of Camelot had removed his crown.

Kennedy’s fashion statement was also a salvo against class segregation. Up to his time, brimmed hats—from fedoras to bowlers—distinguished a white-collar man, someone who sat at a desk and left his lid on the rack. Blue-collar workers wore caps, and lower-class women wrapped their locks in a kerchief. Going hatless wasn’t an option. What you wore on your head was an advertisement of your social status, at least until this class cue was forever nixed by JFK.

As sales plummeted, many hat stores closed their doors for good. In the Twin Cities, few hatters remain, except for several small boutiques with unbearably cute names like “Whatahat” and “Hats Meow.” Meanwhile, back in the mainstream, hats have been relegated to sports and war—baseball caps and helmets. Neither hipsters nor Alberta clippers seem to be able to affect a real resurgence in hat-wearing. You’d be surprised how many “sensible” Minnesotans avoid wearing a hat even in the dead of winter. “Hat head” is an especially uncool affliction.

The search for the perfect hat brought Europeans to Minnesota. At about the time Westerners first explored the Midwest, there was nothing more chic in the salons of Paris and the pubs of London than the beaver-skin hat. One of the Voyageurs’ most important errands was transporting beaver pelts to hat-makers back East.

The other day, I dropped off a Borsalino beaver-skin fedora at Hamline Cleaners. The Snelling Avenue shop is the last in town to clean and block hats. Joe, the hatter, was thrilled. He exclaimed, “This is the second Borsalino I’ve had in two weeks! I usually only get a handful all year round. The best hat made is the Borsalino.”

I asked Joe, Who still wears hats? “Older guys, mostly. And the black clientele wears a lot of Homburgs and derbies. They take pride in what they wear. Not to say that white guys don’t, but they usually have them blocked for sentimental reasons—maybe the hat belonged to their grandpa.”

Oddly, Joe doesn’t wear a hat. “I’ve just got big ears, that’s why I don’t wear one,” he said.

Tucked away in cardboard boxes in hundreds of basements and attics lie the forgotten, dusty remnants of “artistic phases” from our younger days, often remembered, if at all, with mortification. A couple of years ago, D.R. Martin found his cardboard box, and what he thought was, “Hey, these aren’t bad.” He had 200 sheets of negatives from his days as a photographer, pictures he’d taken in Duluth, Minneapolis, and Europe in the late 1960s, when he was 18 and smitten by the methods of Henri Cartier-Bresson. That French photographer specialized in the spontaneous shot—what he called “the decisive moment” when the lighting, setting, and subject was suddenly just right. Life organized the composition; the photographer’s art was to recognize those moments and even hunt them down. Martin’s compositions are striking, now with an added sense of being removed from time. An old man peers into an Italian newspaper, oblivious to the frenzied activity of birds around him. A young girl leans against a wall, staring into the distance. Four protesters rest after an event, each lost in their own thoughts. Photography is an instantaneous art, all about being in the right place at the right time. It’s good that these found a new place and time as well. Icebox, 2401 Central Ave. N.E., (612) 788-1790

It sounded like something only a Wisconsin native could crave: a butterburger. As a strict vegetarian from Minneapolis going to college in Madison, I couldn’t imagine anything more disgusting. Yet Culver’s, the fast-food restaurant offering it, were everywhere. For years, I wondered what could possibly be good about a sandwich whose name was so suggestive of an inevitable angioplasty.

I was driving home from the lake recently, and there it was, right along I-94 just outside Albertville: a Culver’s. They’ve expanded their silly operation into Minnesota, I thought; no outer-ring suburb is safe. Traffic slowed and my thoughts came to a similar standstill. I found myself obsessing about butterburgers. A primitive curiosity stirred in my animal-brain: Could it, as the name implies, be a burger coated and fried in butter? Are we living in 1953? There was only one way to find out.

I enlisted a friend to act as a witness—and to drive, in case this experiment somehow went horribly wrong—and we headed for the nearest Culver’s. Twenty minutes later we pulled into the parking lot of a franchise in suburban Plymouth. There were butterflies in my stomach as we approached the door. Here, a G.I. tract that had not seen a hamburger in 12 years was about to do battle with a butterburger. I felt nauseated and tried to turn back, but no way. My carnivorous friend hadn’t driven this far for nothing. This was the moment in our friendship, begun in the early days of my allegiance to a vegetative idealism, that she had been waiting for. We pushed onward.

Inside, the bright lights drew our eyes to the menu, where the plain, unornamented butterburger ranked lowest on a list of doubles, triples, combos, and various other carnival variations. I stepped up and ordered a single deluxe meal. I received an empty soda cup and claim plate number 8.

Now for the moment of truth, which came with the modest price tag of $4.46: What is a butterburger? A hamburger patty cooked in butter? The teenage cashier looked at me sheepishly and explained. “They just butter the bun,” he said. “They’ll bring it out to you when it’s ready.”

I approached the soda machine in a state of mild shock. I pressed “here for ice,” and carefully blended Diet Pepsi with Wild Cherry Pepsi. I unwrapped a straw and paused a moment, deep in thought. Could I truly sacrifice both my stomach and my vegetarian ethics for a mere mortal of a burger—even if it came on a buttered bun? A burger precisely like any other that is mass-produced and mass-consumed all over the world every day? I pumped a splurt of ketchup into a paper cup and considered. We took a seat at one of the plastic booths lining the windows in the dining area. An employee, her blond ponytail spouting triumphantly above her blue visor, set down our trays.

The envelope of fries looked so light and carefree next to the object-in-question. The burger—my burger—was folded recklessly in a body bag of white paper. I flipped it over, stripped it of its wrapper, and peered suspiciously under the crown of the bun. It was indeed buttered. Animal-on-animal action. So I did what any other self-respecting Minnesotan should do: I bit into the butterburger.

And then something unexpected happened. The long-forgotten taste of ground beef invited a flood of hamburger-related memories: childhood birthday parties long flushed out in a sea of salad, family barbeques erased by the voodoo of tofu. It was as American as the Thanksgiving holiday when, almost a decade ago, I had eaten meat for the last time. But it was much better than the dry, overcooked turkey that had so thoroughly turned me off to meat. And I say the wondrous white bun will never be obsoleted by its multi-grained cousin. Not as long as it’s buttered, anyway.