Trina Rodel (right), a St. Paul resident who works at Mississippi Market, visited her sister, Angela Rodel (formerly of Burnsville), in Bulgaria. Her sister is doing her doctoral research in Slavic singing. They are at the Rila Monastery. Photos submitted by their mother and Rake fan, Kendra Rodel of Eagan.
Send along your Rakish travel snaps, and if we publish yours, we’ll send you a non-thermal, non-extreme Rake T-shirt and a $25 gift certificate from West Photo (21 University Ave. N.E., Minneapolis).
Mina writes: How did I spend my summer vacation? With my husband and sons in Hiroshima, Japan for the anniversary of the Atomic Bombing, “Peace Day”. We shared the day with our Japanese hosts, the wonderful Nogamis, and 60,000 other Peaceful People from all over the world! That’s me in front of the A-Bomb Dome, an eerie remnant of that terrible day. The rest of the city is completely rebuilt and modern. I highly recommend the Peace Museum (we should have one here). I also recomment reading the autobiographical comic novel “Barefoot Gen” by Keiji Nakazawa. He was seven when the A-Bomb exploded over his hometown. A survivor, “Hibakusha”, a witness, a great artist and story teller, his hero, little Gen, really tells it as it is, War is Hell, especially for children. No More Hiroshimas! Your peacenik pal and (TV’s) Wife Swapper, Mina — Peace out.
Here’s Barb Pratt of Minneapolis taking a little rest on her van trip with Alan Kahn (also of Minneapolis) in upstate New York—–yum!! What a pie it made!!
I greatly appreciated the thoughtfully written article on the Outdoor Scripture Sign Crusade [“The Ruin,” by Joe Hart, September]. Kudos to Hart for gracefully rendering the sincerity of his subject’s Christian faith. Mr. Hart’s personal theological commitments, however, seem marred by some muddled thinking. While he admits to having “a kind of rueful respect for the great mysteries of life and death,” he says that he has “come to believe it necessary not to name them. Because as soon as they are named, they cease to be mysteries and become human interpretations, steeped in all our folly and hubris.” Now human interpretations are, as Hart rightly notes, inevitably susceptible to human folly and hubris. But does attempting to use language to describe any mystery necessarily do violence to that mystery? This seems to me an untenable assertion. Does it hold true that that when we assign names to “things” that are externally transcendent to us, that they cease to be mysterious? Think of Love.
In your October cover story, “We Live Here,” you wrote about the new mosque being built in Rochester. Your writer said, “When complete, it will be the first new mosque ever constructed in Minnesota.” I would like to let you know that this is not true. There has been a new mosque built in Richfield, Minnesota, and the name of that mosque is Masjid ul Rahman. It was built a few years back, I think in 2003.
Asbah Hadi
Minneapolis
Congratulations on your article about University Grove [Sweet Spot, October]. Your large photo of the building with colorful panels is a two-story library addition to a fifties Close house now owned by professors Helen Foster and Fred Cooper. The firm’s “Wolfe House” next door (now owned by Dudley Riggs and his wife) featured panels with wood battens. For the library addition, the current “Close Associates” chose to cover the panel joints with aluminum cover strips. The owners arranged the strips according to LeCorbusier’s “Modulor.” The colors are the owners’ choices from a Josef Albers palette. This lively newcomer respects the past while celebrating the spirit of the Grove your article chronicles.
Gar Hargens
President, Close Associates Inc., Minneapolis
I read with amusement the hand-wringing implicit in the article “Newspapers in Turmoil” by Brian Lambert [October]. What is noteworthy is that this is newsworthy at all. I have been avoiding the likes of the Star Tribune and the Pioneer Press since 1985, when I first moved to Minneapolis. Even by the standards of American journalism—notoriously self-centered—such newspapers have not been serving their readers well for these twenty years. Sure, there was an occasional investigative article in the Pioneer Press that was informative, but by and large these two papers wrote at a sixth-grade level of English and required about the same level of complexity of thought. That their standards have declined even further because of the onslaught of weblogs and pressure from the right-wing pressure groups should come as no surprise. There was not much of a core to sustain.
Bharat Pant
Minneapolis
In regard to the article in your October edition “Newspapers in Turmoil,” if daily newspapers are in trouble, first and foremost they should be in trouble for destroying old-growth Canadian forests. Most newsprint used in the U.S. comes from Canada, and ninety percent of all logging in Canada is done with clear-cutting. Newsprint, which is the paper used to make newspapers, has an average recycled content that runs between zero and thirty percent. So many daily newspapers in America (more than sixty million of them) are seventy percent virgin forest. Nothing eats more forests than daily newspapers, they may be the most destructive and wasteful product in America. Newsprint is the principal wood product that comes out of Ontario, and the boreal forest in Northern Ontario is being destroyed. Our local papers get much of their newsprint from Northern Ontario, and continue to write editorials about saving America forests, while they are playing a large part in the destruction of the last intact old-growth forest in North America … odd.
Late in September each year, Gustavus Adolphus College conducts its “Nobel Conference” in St. Peter, Minnesota. But this should not be confused with its namesake back in the Old Country. The actual Nobel Prize awards ceremony is an extravagant affair that takes place far away from academe. In the next couple of weeks, this year’s nominees will be announced, and the prizes will be awarded around Christmastime.
Alfred Nobel, the Swede who invented dynamite, willed that all of his awards be given in Stockholm except for one: the peace prize. In 1900, when Nobel established the awards, Norway was united with Sweden, and some speculate that he wished to honor the Norwegian Parliament’s facility with international disputes.
Two years ago, I got my hands on a ticket to the ceremony through the Fulbright Foundation, but it was a pyrrhic victory; I had to endure an eight-hour bus trip south over the mountains to Oslo, and to a slightly less stoic breed of Norwegian. On the other hand, I’d get to see the king and the awarding of the world’s most prestigious prize. Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi won the prize that year; she is an activist who poses a serious challenge to the conservative mullahs in Iran.
When I arrived in Oslo, rainbow flags draped from windows all around the city with the word “FRED!” emblazoned across the colors. I assumed Fred was a local politician, perhaps an incumbent in search of re-election. My trusty dictionary explained Fred in one word: “peace.” In front of the Rådhus, the City Hall building where the prize is awarded, four thousand children gathered, waving little flags proclaiming “Redd Barn” (“Save the Children”). Traffic was diverted for a block around the Rådhus by policemen who carried no guns in deference to the peace prize ceremony. This low-key security stood in stark contrast to the nearby U.S. embassy, which was surrounded by razor wire and two sets of checkpoints with metal detectors.
Inside, just as the thousand or so diplomats were ready to take their seats, Michael Douglas walked in with a beautiful young woman. A buzz rippled through the crowd: a movie star was here to promote peace. “It’s Catherine Zeta-Jones!” exclaimed the bejeweled woman next to me who was doused in Chanel No. 5. “Excuse me, I have to meet her!” She pushed me aside, her pendulous earrings swinging into snag radius. She used her elbows and apologies to approach the movie stars. A crowd gathered around Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones, and the normally aloof diplomats eagerly put out their hands or a slip of paper and pen for an autograph. The stars graciously signed a few programs and shook hands awkwardly stretched over the shoulders of the inner ring. The excited crowd grew as my fellow Americans tried merely to sit down because they were late.
Meanwhile, the woman in the earrings walked right up to the famous couple and held her camera a foot from their faces. Paff! The flash startled them. The movie stars blinked repeatedly to regain their eyesight, but more cameras were thrust forward. This was the only time I’ve ever seen Norwegians lose their cool.
Two regal guards rolled a red carpet down the aisle. Trumpeters stood at attention in the balcony as the Nobel committee and the prizewinner walked the carpet to a standing ovation. Then the royal heralds blasted through their bugles. Embroidered cloths dangled from the extended bells of their horns. In strutted Sonja, Queen of Norway, accompanied by her son, Crown Prince Haakon. The woman next to me provided color commentary, whispering, “It’s only because the king is in hospital that Sonja’s son can accompany her.” After I’d endured a hellish eight-hour bus trip to see the king, he’d eluded me.
Prince Haakon’s wife, Mette-Marit, walked behind him wearing an enormous purple velvet hat. She managed to avoid the pregnant-woman waddle despite being just a month from her due date. Nearly constant flashes sparkled from the press cameras in the balcony; Mette-Marit is front-page material for the Norwegian tabloids—they loved to speculate on the sex of her unborn baby.
The Nobel committee leader gave an extended speech followed by some quiet piano music—Grieg, of course. Then a Persian group, the Kamkars, dispelled any formality, lighting up the hall with a wild and melodic folk song.
Against the backdrop of a three-story mural entitled Work, Administration, and Celebration, featuring stone-faced bricklayers raising their hands in victory, Shirin Ebadi accepted the peace prize from a man two heads taller than she. He lowered the microphone to her level, but when she spoke from the lectern, she seemed like a giant. Her speech not only urged reform in Iran, but condemned the United States for not abiding by all United Nations Security Council mandates.
Before climbing back on the bus for the eight-hour return trip to Trondheim, I saw the jubilant crowd gathered in front of the Grand Hotel, waiting to see the prizewinner greet them from her balcony before her return to Iran. The next day on Norwegian newsstands, Zeta-Jones beat Ebadi for the cover photo because of her own accomplishment that day—a dramatic, dazzling hairstyle change sometime between the ceremony and the reception.—Eric Dregni