Category: Letter

Richard Parnell, of Minneapolis, Rehab Tech at Courage Center on wheelchair distribution with the Mobility Project in Afghanistan, April 1-24, 2005. Bibi Mauro Hill in Kabul, Hindu Kush Mountains on right. With Saleem, from Qale Fatalah neighborhood.

LETTER OF THE MONTH

When the significant other tossed the carefully torn Rake page with the pickle recipe [Down the Hatch, July], my hair was on fire, and only pickle juice could put it out. We’d already been to the farmers’ market to capture the things we needed to make the lovelies … I didn’t want to face a bag full of soggy cukes while I ran after the garbage truck trying one last time to sort through the pile. All this by way of saying thanks for being online in a way that made it an easy couple of keystrokes to recapture the article and the recipe. I’m loving your efforts. Every month. The Rake is on the coffee table with the rest of the gang.
Michele Periolat
Maplewood

ODDYSSEUS OF THE AIRWAVES
I can’t decide which grabbed me the most, Jennifer Vogel’s perceptive style or T.D. Mischke’s peripatetic journey—both the literal aimless search and his dedicated exploration of life’s nuances at the “cutting edge” [“Old-Fashioned Cutting-Edge Radio,” July]. The daunting journey of Vogel through the maze of Tommy’s cortex seemed at times bound not to find an exit—and yet she did. In the end we see a variation of the everyman/woman theme. It’s that combination of luck, serendipity, and the pervasive drive to find the right niche: a quiet place—a nest to explore and to emerge as the adult without losing that precious whimsy of the inner child. In that reservoir of curiosity and fantasy too often hidden from the world, Mischke invokes the “tapoceta tapoceta” of Walter Mitty, or perhaps he is more akin to Robin Williams’ Good Morning, Vietnam. Then for contrast we see the emergence of another facet of this performance artist: The Iconoclast. One can only congratulate this versatility. Add his refreshing honesty amid the current cacophony of phony snake-oil salesmen on the air and one finds a budding renaissance man. T.D.’s odyssey

“on the rods” conveyed me to a distant place: the 1927 front-page story in my hometown Daily News relating my three-day sojourn at age twelve with the 101 Ranch and Wild West Show. It was only one of several later extended departures by freight train and hitchhiking in search of the golden dream of an acting career in Hollywood. I finally found my niche in a book on the shelf of a World War II troop ship. We were part of a convoy headed for the European front. The book was Where Do People Take Their Troubles, by Lee R. Steiner. It opened a window to the then-new field of clinical psychology. After the war and thirty very satisfying years in that profession, I am still intrigued and continue to explore the drive and motivation of the “fledgling’s” irrepressible inner forces. Mischke’s tale exemplifies the essence of the rite of passage shared by countless pilgrims. Unlike some less fortunate others, his tour landed him in a good place thanks to his unique, unfettered talent.
Eugene Kline
Minneapolis

Your commentary on the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s planned “adjustment of Highway 1” [The Rakish Angle, August] brought to mind an oft-repeated and varyingly attributed proverb. To wit, God writes straight with curved lines.

Stuart Klipper
Minneapolis

I would like to correct a statement attributed to me in the round-table discussion of the Musicapolis photography exhibit [“Music City!” August].  In response to a question about whether we thought of ourselves as artists, I was quoted as saying that I didn’t think that a photographer doing commercial work was an artist and, while I can’t recall the exact words of the conversation where several people were talking, I have to say that nothing could be more opposite of my actual opinion. I absolutely think commercial work can be art, even great art. I look for inspiration from photographers like Irving Penn, Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, and Anton Corbijn, all of whom have done incredible, important work while shooting commercially. As a working commercial photographer currently exhibiting work in a gallery, I fear I came across as both hypocritical and insulting to other photographers, some of whom are showing work in this same exhibit.

Tony Nelson
Minneapolis

I was so stoked to get The Rake in my mailbox today and I had to use severe discipline to not actually dive into it while I was supposed to be working. My indelible Minnesota work ethic accompanied me to California. So I waited until I finished my day and took my walk, cooked myself some dinner, poured myself a nice glass of chardonnay (I live in the Napa Valley after all) and sat down to enjoy my Rake in the midst of one of our rare hot summer evenings. I immediately dove right into The Rake masthead where I ever so eagerly await your personal answers to some really profound question like “how to beat the heat,” then I turned to the Rakish Angle. How can it be that everyone in Minnesota bitches about the heat all summer long? Now that I have moved away, I have two words for you (which I utter all the time when people ask “what brought you to California?”): Minnesota winters! Still, I love all Minnesota has to offer.

Ronda Carlson
Yountville, CA

Kim Klisch sends us this pic—The Rake being read on a bike trail in Lanesboro, Minnesota, where the Klisch sisters gathered for a reunion from July 17 to July 22. Fifteen people attended the reunion, including the six Klisch sisters, two sisters-in-law, grandma, and half a dozen daughters. The women have been meeting in different places for the past five years. This is the first time The Rake has crossed their path, however.

Nora Wilson and her mother Tracy take a break from giving birth (and
being born) to read a first bedtime story.

Nick writes: This is my beautiful wife Shelley on our honemoon in Playa Del Carmen, in Mexico. She loves the Rake and not just for the articles. Keep up the great work.

Enjoying the most recent issue of the Rake at Cabo De Roca in Portugal, the western most point of continental Europe. “where the land ends and the sea begins” (and people read the Rake).