Category: Letter

After making a pissy comment about Ann’s Ashland Wi.article I would like to thank her for the wonderful review of Milda’s Cafe. It was one of the best things I have ever read in your webzine. Hats off to a great writer and magazine!

Congratulations on your coverage of the tragic bridge collapse. Getting individual stories from local media was insightful.

However, you missed one of the public’s most important media sources for information on that day. Jazz 88, KBEM, broke this story at 6:10 that night…just a few minutes after the bridge fell and provided vital traffic reports directly from the Minnesota Department of Transportation.

That day, Susan Spongberg sat in for our regular Afternoon Cruise host Kevin O’Connor and at 6:07 she took a phone call from a panicked driver on the scene who called KBEM with the news.

At the same time, Don Zenanko, reporting from the Regional Transportation Management Center, watched as the MNDOT camera on the bridge went dark. At 6:10, KBEM went into continuous coverage of the collapse and the traffic affected by it, immediately giving people alternatives to their normal route.

We stayed with continuous coverage until 8, pre-empting our regular music programming with only two short breaks for weather, news and for Don to catch his breath. Don and Susan handled the situation with calm and common sense, providing virtual on-the-scene coverage. One listener told me: “After listening to KBEM, CNN’s coverage sounded like a joke.”

The next day, and the rest of the week, we continued to provide our audience with detour routes and valuable information straight from MNDOT.

Your coverage of the media’s response to the bridge collapse was excellent but incomplete when you failed to acknowledge the role KBEM played in providing the public with the most comprehensive coverage. Thank you for this opportunity to congratulate Susan and Don on their great work on KBEM that day.

Cheers to The Rake for recognizing that bicycling (and walking) is indeed taking off in the Twin Cities; one need only look to the streets to see how many people are using their own two feet (and increasingly creative wheels!) to reach their destinations. As you mentioned in your June 2007 issue [“Twin Cities on Two Wheels”], the Bike/Walk Twin Cities initiative will bring $21.5 million in funding to the Twin Cities. What you didn’t mention was that a local nonprofit was managing the program. After a community engagement effort that involved neighborhood organizations, nonprofits, small businesses, citizen activists, elected officials, and government agencies, Transit for Livable Communities’ board of directors recently allocated $7 million to 31 innovative projects to improve bicycling and walking in the region. Ever seen a bicycle roundabout? Colored bike lanes? Check out our website (www.tlcminnesota.org) for more projects, and give us call to find out how you can be involved in Bike/Walk Twin Cities!

Katie Eukel, Transit for Livable Communities, St. Paul

We love it when readers take us along on trips to the world’s loveliest places. (We also get a kick out of the occasional dispatch from seedier destinations.) Siri and Bent Iversen of Northeast Minneapolis recently toted The Rake to one of Norway’s great geological wonders. While visiting Bent’s homeland of Vågsøy, an island off the country’s west coast, the couple carved out some quality reading time as they checked out the great, mushroom-shaped Kannesteinen Rock. It’s “actually bedrock,” explained the Iversens in their accompanying missive. As it turns out, the oft-photographed formation assumed its unusual shape after a thousand years of being battered by the surf.

Dear Rake,
The author of your July fiction piece—which I edited—was actually Dan Hendrickson, and not Don Hendrickson as was printed. I’m sure you regret this embarrassing error as much as I do. I’m also sure that you, like I, would very much like to apologize to Dan Hendrickson, his friends and family, and everyone he knows. I realize that this is in no way an adequate defense, but I can only tell you that from the very moment I received Dan Hendrickson’s fine story, “Dog Day,” I was incapable of thinking of its author as anyone but Don Hendrickson, to the extent that I actually changed the byline on the man’s own manuscript, certain (for some inexplicable reason) that he didn’t even know his own name. I believe I may even have called Dan Hendrickson “Don” in a phone conversation or two, but, polite fellow that he undoubtedly is, he didn’t bother to correct me.
Somewhere in the past I knew a Don Hendricks. That’s my only possible excuse, and it’s not a very good one.
I really am sorry.
As, I’m sure, are you.

Tom Bartel’s editorial [“To the Barricades,” July 2007] based on Michael Moore’s film Sicko, was misleading in many ways.

The sub-headline mentions health care but the article focuses on health insurance. There is hardly a subtle difference between the two. Few would disagree that the U.S. offers the world’s finest health care, and what’s more it’s available to all, insured and uninsured alike. Twin Cities headlines are replete with daily tales of gunshot victims being treated and released at HCMC (if the Bloods and Crips are offering comprehensive medical insurance, perhaps they should serve as the model rather than Cuba). Illegal aliens flood California emergency rooms, the law stipulating that no one can be turned away.

And before progressives scrawl angry letters claiming race- and class-baiting, rest assured that middle-class folks like me are to blame as well. On the occasions I’ve possessed “Cadillac” health insurance I’ve run to the doctor at the first sign of trouble, sometimes just to catch up on People magazine. Over-consumption is rarely cited as a cause of our nation’s insurance woes; it’s invariably Big Pharmaceutical, reviled until people need medicine or seek a sound investment for their 401Ks.

Bartel is to be forgiven; his article clearly wasn’t intended for critical thinkers. Rather, it was aimed squarely at reactionary types who will rush to theaters and pay eight dollars for the privilege of downing three-gallon buckets of butter-drenched popcorn, slurping sixty-four-ounce sodas, and watching a 400-pound man lecture them about health.

Reading the Rake in front of the Haitian National Presidential Palace.

Mark Wange of Richfield mailed this photo taken during a recent trip to Zambia, where
he traveled with his daughter, Ginger.

Wisely, Wange brought along an issue of The Rake to help pass those lazy afternoons. Could it be that the text was so captivating he didn’t even notice when an elephant passed by?

We can’t say that we much appreciate the suggestive position of the mammoth’s tail as it casts its eye over Wange’s reading material. But then, everybody’s a critic.

Where should the civil engineering community send the honorary pocket protector for Michael Nordskog? [“Moving Water and Earth,” June] His description of the St. Anthony Falls Lab’s global importance and local invisibility brought back memories of my university days. Youngsters start playing with slush dams in the winter streets and gravy reservoirs in their mashed potatoes and eventually (lured by the prospect of engineer groupies) graduate to help restore rivers for the benefit of society. Do you think he’d like the 5-, 8-, 12-, or 32-pen size?
Steve Woods, P.E., Shoreview

P.S. If The Rake wanted to send me and my friends (both of them) a Rake pocket protector, I would wear it faithfully.

Proud as we are to have Medina resident Greg LeMond amongst us, he is just that—a non-native resident, born in California. [“Twin Cities on Two Wheels,” June] Apparently he moved here to pursue Nordic skiing to train in the off-season after being accidentally shot while turkey hunting. Keep up the good work.
Karl Herber, Minneapolis