The Rake Magazine

Category: Article

  • The Well-Worn Mind

    For starters, let’s say that I’m not going to write about the election or the war. You and I have both been around the block enough to recognize that I am no Bill Hillsman, and nothing I say is going to change your mind on these matters. This is because you are a stubborn creature who is determined to see things your own way, and who, just like me, mostly recycle your threadbare thoughts over and over, rarely allowing anything new to cross the threshold of your imagination.

    Nine out of every ten thoughts you think today are the same ones you thought yesterday and the day before. And the few stray novel ones aren’t likely to be revolutionary, since they had to fight their way through the heavy-duty security system you employ to scare off anything that doesn’t validate your current belief system.

    That’s why it’s such a mind-boggling privilege to work with kids as I do. Kids think new thoughts every day, and, I believe, catalyze the adults around them to think new thoughts as well. But the touchy issue is that the thoughts the children think don’t come from the ether. They come from me, or whoever else stands in front of them. Is anyone fit for that kind of role?

    The first time I walked into the classroom and looked out at 23 children’s faces “looking up, holding wonder like a cup,” the enormity of the responsibility was nearly paralyzing. It was immediately obvious that when I spoke, these children believed me. About everything. This is handy when you are setting out to teach something tricky—say the alphabet, or how to read, or complex mathematical concepts like carrying and borrowing. If I tell them they’re smart and talented and capable and that they’ll soon be able to do everything that comes in front of them, despite the confusion and struggle, they genuinely trust my optimism. This dynamic has been a powerful inspiration in my classroom—and that’s nothing new, since research has shown repeatedly how teacher expectations for students tend to be self-fulfilling. Over time, students internalize the beliefs teachers have about their ability, and they rise or fall to the teacher’s level of expectation.

    Some would call this, tritely, the power of the mind. A watered-down version of levitating a spoon with your brain, which for some reason I have never been able to do. But still I can’t understand why the power of thought is so under-rated, when reams of good research—from a variety of disciplines—back it up so compellingly. As my friend Sean said to me the other night, “Oh yes, you do like scientific studies, don’t you?” And the answer is yes, I do, because on the one hand, I find sociology and anthropology endlessly fascinating, and on the other hand, every once in a while a grown-up will believe something I say if I provide peer-reviewed statistical evidence to fortify the claim.

    The placebo effect is a fantastic illustration of all this. When researcher H.K. Beecher published his groundbreaking 1955 paper, “The Powerful Placebo,” he concluded, based on analysis of 26 studies, that an average of 32 percent of all patients respond to placebo. This average has held constant in all the years and studies since. “Expectation is a powerful thing,” says Robert DeLap, M.D., of the Food and Drug Administration, in an interview for FDA Consumer magazine (January-February 2000). “The more you believe you’re going to benefit from a treatment, the more likely it is that you will experience a benefit.” (I’m not convinced this justifies one particularly well-publicized study sponsored by the National Institutes of Health, in which half of the Parkinson’s disease patients enrolled in the trial underwent a “placebo” surgery in which doctors drilled holes into their skulls but didn’t implant the potentially beneficial human fetal tissue in their brains, but I suppose that’s a tangent.)

    The point is, there’s more to this stuff than a bunch of mind-over-matter New Age psycho-babble. And as I said, when you work with children, you don’t really need a scientist to tell you that perception becomes reality. But while children’s perceptions are malleable, most adults are bogged down by a pattern of thinking that has grown so stale a sledgehammer could hardly dent it.

    This is why instead of swinging a sledgehammer over the election or the war, I’m going to do something more likely to make some small difference: pry my mind open a crack to make room for a few new ideas. Tough going, but stand by.

    Jeannine Ouellette is associate editor of The Rake.

  • Either & Neither

    If you mix blue paint with yellow paint, you get green paint. If a Finn and an Indonesian “get together,” as my teenage boys would say, a child produced by that union would be Finnish-Indonesian. However, in our race-warped culture, when a black person and a white person produce a baby, something different happens. The baby is black. The “white” side ceases to exist in a meaningful way for most Americans. Now, in any other context, such a result would be dismissed as illogical and absurd. But in America, most of us still passively accept the racist “one-drop” notion.

    A quick recap: Ever since Africans were first dragged by Europeans to this continent, they and their descendants have been kicked to the bottom of the caste system. Maintaining separation required making consensual sex between the two groups the ultimate taboo. And, if sex occurred (as it often did, if one can call the rape of millions of African women sex), the resulting offspring had to be black. Any other result flew in the face of the Declaration of Independence, with its soaring eloquence about a certain kind of equality. Slavery could not exist in a land where “all men were created equal” with the “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” unless the slaves were tainted, not quite human beings. If blacks were tainted, then their “blood” would be as well, forever corrupting anything it touched.

    And so, in this world, black plus white equals black, no matter what. Most Americans, regardless of color, bought into this racist line of thinking. And, until very recently, I did too. I have two fine sons from my first marriage to a woman of European descent. Even before they were born, I told her my boys would be African American. For me, calling them “bi-racial” was a bourgeois cop-out used only by folks in serious racial denial. I knew that most of the world would view them as black, and I did too.

    I am now in my second marriage, this time to a woman of Swedish-Irish descent. We are expecting our first child, a son. His impending arrival has made me rethink my ideas on racial identity. My wife wanted assurances from me that our son would not have to choose racial sides. I said he would not, thinking deep down that he would be African American, just like his brothers and his dad, whether she liked it or not. I said to myself, the world will see this child as black, I have to get him ready for reality. More important, he is black, legally speaking. Finally, I said to myself, black people are the only people that will accept him as he truly is.

    Historically, there was some truth in the first two arguments. The world—at least our world—will view this young boy as solely a black person, for all the reasons discussed above. Beyond that, American law does presume black parent plus white parent equals black child. And, yes, black people were—and often still are—more likely to embrace a person of black and white parentage than white people. However, that acceptance often comes at the cost of denying the white side of that person. This so-called “acceptance” has done untold psychological damage to many bi-racial children. No one should be forced to deny part of his or her cultural heritage as the price of social acceptance.

    The last population census forced people to rethink what constitutes a black person. It was threatening to many people, including many African Americans. There is no question that the “one drop means you’re black” thinking has increased African American political clout. Census numbers are used for everything from political redistricting to government aid to schools. Therefore, who’s who and who’s what has far-reaching implications. The fact that the concept is based on intellectual hokum means little when money and power are at stake.

    What does this all mean for my wife, my sons, and me? Not much, really. Our little family will not be defined by antiquated, racist notions of “blackness” or “whiteness” because that’s the way it has always been done, or because it increases black political clout. Instead, we will raise this boy to be proud of who he is, which is part African, part Native American, part Irish, part Swedish, completely human, and all American.

    Clinton Collins Jr. is a Minneapolis lawyer and ABC Radio commentator. His email address is ccollins@collins lawfirm.com.

  • Still working on that?

    I’ve been a waitress for seventeen years. That’s pre-pepper grinder, fusion cuisine, touch screen, and “Sparkling, still, or tap?” If you look me up on the chronology of food-service evolution, I’m right there close to the beginning, walking upright and sporting thumbs, but with a hump on my back and a heavy, weighted brow indicating a double shift on all-you-can-eat brunch Sunday. This month, this very year, I mark an anniversary. And I’ll tell you something about that. No one ever starts out thinking they’ll be a waitress for 17 years; it’s just something that sort of sneaks up on you. You start out that first year thinking to yourself, “Hey! This’ll be fun… for a summer! After that I’ll figure out what it is that I really like to do!” The next thing you know, you’re 34 years old, discussing the obvious merits of catfish “fingers” over chicken “fingers,” while wearing a nametag.

    Please, don’t get me wrong. I’ll come clean—I like it. I like people, I like bustling around, and I really really really like to snack. If I had an office job, I’d be forced to stuff coins into a vending machine in order to snack on hard, dry kibble like a dog. Where I work, hors d’oeuvres fall like manna from heaven… fresh, hot, and plentiful. Mostly, I forgo the three squares in favor of a constant stream of tidbits. As far as I can see it, this profile leaves me with two career choices: socialite or waitress.

    The other thing I like about working in restaurants is the people-watching. A café is the perfect place to see a demonstration of all kinds of mating rituals. On a Friday night, it can be like Wild Kingdom with high heels and hair gel. (Look how the double-breasted braggart preens and stomps to dominate the attention of the hollow-eyed Uptown warbler. Uh oh! Their plates are empty, let’s send my wait assistant Jim in there to clear the debris so we can get a better look. Be careful, Jim! They still look hungry!)

    I like the theory that anyone can do restaurant work. It’s democratic. People re-entering society often get placed in food-service jobs because of this. Anyone can try. Three restaurants ago, I worked with a woman I’ll call Baby. Baby was in an outpatient treatment program after touring with several odd heavy-metal bands in a county fair circuit. Hey, it could happen to anybody. Baby, although beautiful, was unaccustomed to flirting while sober. During one shift, Baby asked a 40ish man in her section, “Sir, what would you like for lunch today?”

    The man eyed her form filling out the snug uniform, and leered. “Oh, don’t call me sir.” He began laughing at his own joke. Baby laughed too, but with a hint of fear to it, not understanding what the hell the guy meant. I could smell Baby’s confusion from all the way across the dining room. After several tense seconds, Baby hit on an answer. “Um, okay, what would you like for lunch today, dude?” I was so happy for her I could have cried. Unlike an office, where someone else’s failure might mean your success, in a restaurant, you have to watch each others backs, because if the guy next to you goes down, you’re next. This creates kind of a pirate-ship mentality that all food-service workers past and present share.

    Of course, there aren’t many lifer buccaneers. What about folks like me, who are working on their 20-year pin? I recall the words of an early career food-service mentor, Paul, a slight man who watched my back at Mickey’s Diner off and on in between writing western novels. “You know, Colleen, how people on the highway slow down to look at an accident while they are passing by? People slow down and stay in this business because they just have to see how it turns out!” I’ll keep you posted.

  • Marx Brothers Retrospective

    They were the Mr. Show of their day—sarcastic, wildly inventive, and a hit with the college crowd, but sometimes almost a little too smart for their own good. And that’s why Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and sometimes Zeppo have stood the test of time, while Charlie Chaplin now seems mawkish and Laurel and Hardy seem quaint. (For purposes of this argument, pretend Harpo’s lo-o-o-ong musical interludes never happened.) When given free rein, they were zany and anarchistic, with no regard for dramatic structure, if there was a joke to be had. The Three Stooges had the attitude but were almost entirely slapstick, lacking the crazed insouciance of Harpo’s mime-from-Mars shtick and Groucho’s machine-gun genius for loopy punning riffs. (“You can leave in a taxi. If you can’t get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that’s too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff.”) Though some of his dialogue was scripted, his wit was the real thing, and he delivered his daggers with dry, eyebrow-wagging, subtle hostility and the skill of a Charlie Parker. This series screens what’s generally agreed to be the four best films, but if you only see one, see Duck Soup , their gleefully scathing satire of dictatorship, war, and mirror impersonation. It was the zenith of their madcap style, but audiences weren’t ready for it in 1933. When it bombed, the Brothers changed strategies (and studios) for A Night at the Opera , their biggest popular success but the start of a slow slide into suffocating structure and tacked-on romantic subplots. Oak Street Cinema, (612) 331-3134, www.oakstreetcinema.org

  • Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

    A Harry Potter book is that rare children’s title we’ll read in public without shame, not even hiding the cover under a Thomas Pynchon dust jacket nor claiming loudly that we’re “just holding it for someone else.” Truth be told, we’re looking forward to Book Five more than Film Two. But while J.K. Rowling continues to struggle with Order of the Phoenix , now delayed until 2003, Chris Columbus’ film franchise zips forward. It has the advantage this time of lowered expectations—not to say that it won’t do huge box-office, but Pottermania has died down since its peak. Having met expectations with the first film, the main thing now is for Columbus not to screw this one up, and wreck the rest of the series. It helps that the story is less byzantine than subsequent installments, which all begin to feel like setup for whatever Rowling has planned for the seventh novel. In this episode, something is turning students at the Hogwarts wizardry school into stone, and when suspicion falls on Harry, he and his friends have to track down the real culprit. Kenneth Branagh comes on board as Gilderoy Lockhart, Harry’s insufferably vain new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher. Lockhart provided some of the books’ best laughs, and while we think Branagh’s a better Shakespearian than a comic actor, he can certainly pull off pomposity.

  • Billy Wilder Collection

    Just about the only thing these three films have in common, besides starring William Holden and beginning with the letter S, is director Billy Wilder. He was a director equally at home with chilling psychological breakdowns and sunny romantic comedies, and had a rare aptitude for coaxing just the right tone from his lead actors to color the mood of his films. Sunset Boulevard is the best of his career, a twisted, claustrophobic descent into the madness of obsolete movie queen Norma Desmond, superbly portrayed by Gloria Swanson, whose final close-up is one of the iconic images of screen dementia. Holden’s cynical screenwriter was a fine foil for Swanson’s shrill petulance and unnerving stare. But of his three performances here, we’ll take him in the prisoner-of-war thriller Stalag 17 . The actor won his only Oscar as the disillusioned sergeant whose facility at fleecing his fellow POWs backfires when someone in the camp is suspected of being a German spy—and he must find out who before his bunkmates happily string him up for the crime. Wilder had a nice touch for comic romance too, but we’d point you toward The Apartment , not Sabrina . No movie with Audrey Hepburn’s elfin innocence can be all bad, but she’s got zero chemistry with dour and much older Humphrey Bogart.

  • John Waters Collection

    This Christmas season, is there any better way to say “I love you” than to make someone watch a 300-pound transvestite eat dog excrement? The only honest answer here is “yes.” We joke, because we love. But if you’ve got a strong stomach or need to buy a gift for someone who does, feast on this six-pack from John Waters. The self-proclaimed Pope of Trash, Waters was a no-budget Baltimore filmmaker with a taste for true weirdness and a group of likeminded deviants (like the gigantic Frankenstein-fabulous Divine) all willing to do anything to help get their movies noticed. We mean anything. His early films can’t be called good by any normal meaning of the word. But he knew how to pile on the shock value, presenting a warped and scatological vision of a suburbia populated by freaks and perverts (there are chickens involved sometimes, and that’s all we’ll say). The shocks were so appalling that you can’t help but admire his audacity—Waters was the Ionesco of the sewer, the original Johnny Knoxville of the big screen. Divine’s between-meal snack makes Pink Flamingos still his most infamous movie, but each of the pre-Hairspray bunch here go for broke in their own lurid way. True, the man mellowed with age. Hairspray is his cracked, nostalgic look back at the world of 1960s TV dance shows. It’s still utterly strange judged against mainstream teen-dance stuff like Footloose . But when you can only describe a John Waters comedy with words like “sweet” and “sentimental,” something very strange is going on. That’s an attitude completely at variance with the ironic vulgarity he’d embrace again for Cecil B. Demented , but he nails Hairspray’s abnormal innocence with surprising aplomb.

  • Lucy Jago

    The Vikings thought the northern lights were the unearthly spirits of Valkyries pointing the way to the warrior’s afterlife in Valhalla. Eskimos thought they were evil spirits who decapitated the heads of children for sport. A former BBC documentarian tells a true story no less strange and tragic in The Northern Lights . Turn of the century Norwegian scientist Kristian Birkeland was obsessed with unlocking the mystery of what causes the aurora borealis, believing (correctly, as it turned out) that it was the interaction of solar wind with the Earth’s magnetic field. It was a gifted deduction, but after that his career was guided by an unlucky star. Other scientists refused to accept his unorthodox theories, forcing him to scrounge for money as an inventor. Despite some spectacular successes, that backfired when his business partner attempted to cheat him out of his profits, and even scuttled Birkeland’s Nobel Prize nomination out of jealousy. Meanwhile, Birkeland became so fixated on scientific pursuits that he absentmindedly double-booked his own wedding, and began to spiral into drug abuse. Strung out and paranoid, he died alone in a Japanese hotel room, armed with a pistol to protect himself from the British spies he thought were out to steal his ideas. (A fear that may not have been entirely unfounded.) As is so often the case, his ideas were accepted only years later, long after it was too late to halt his downward spiral. Jago’s clear prose, quoting extensively from the letters of Birkeland and contemporaries, is a worthy attempt at posthumous vindication. It’s also a compelling portrait of an archetypal unheralded genius, destroyed by forces both external and internal. Ruminator Books, (651) 699-0587, www.ruminator.com

  • John Freyer

    For some reason Ebay has inspired more than its share of goofy pranks and not-quite-legit satirical auctions—we still get a chuckle over the guy who tried to sell his soul to the highest bidder. But a few people have crossed the line from prank to performance art, including John Freyer, an Iowa grad student, graphic designer, and snowboard instructor. Tired of the clutter and kitschy junk that was starting to overwhelm his life, Freyer decided to go one step beyond an everyday garage sale and sell off all his possessions on the online auction site—a Slinky, a canned ham, a beat-up green couch, and more. As each item sold, he recorded the details on his own web site, allmylifeforsale.com, capping off the project by selling off the domain name itself. The truly inspired part is what he did next: Using the proceeds from the sales, he took the project off the Internet and on the road, traveling around the country visiting his old possessions and the people who now owned them. Initially he wrote up these experiences as an online travelblog, and those writings have now been collected and expanded into a book, like his website titled All My Life For Sale . Designed by Freyer himself, it’s a quirky look at the American love of material goods, casting a clever eye on the way we define what is junk and what is treasure. If it’s true that the things you own end up owning you, Freyer is a free man. Ruminator Books, (651) 699-0587, www.ruminator.com

  • Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga

    If you’re one of the many Lundgrens or Nelsons or Nordbergs living in these parts, some of your ancestors’ belongings might very well be on display here. This traveling Smithsonian exhibit showcasing Old Norse culture and heritage makes its final stop in St. Paul. Encompassing more than 300 artifacts, it’s so large that the Science Museum literally had to knock down walls to make room for it. Artifacts on display include some beautifully crafted Viking jewelry and weapons, including the 1,000-year-old, silver-inlaid Mammen Axe, and some historic Icelandic manuscripts so valuable that their Parliament had to OK their inclusion in the exhibit. In a kid-friendly Viking Village, the littlest Olafs and Sigrids can clamber around a model ship, dress up in the latest in 11th-century fashion, and even find out what Viking bathrooms looked like, which might be more information than we needed to know. The exhibit will also work to show that the Vikings were more than just barbarian raiders, but accomplished artisans and sailors of truly astounding skill who beat Columbus to the New World by half a millennium. (We can think of some other Vikings who could use some image rehabilitation too, but that’s another story.) Science Museum of Minnesota, (651) 221-9444, www.smm.org