The Rake Magazine

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  • Custody: Still in Dispute

    Recent articles [“Dealing From the Bottom,” September] and letters in The Rake compel corrections of the record. Disagreements about custody will occur; places for their resolution are required. Many are resolved privately by written agreements without attorneys involved. Mediation works for more. Collaborative law works for others. Only a few custody cases actually go to trial. The late Honorable Joseph Summers, Ramsey County judge and first Almanac host, once said to me, “When divorce cases go to trial, it’s because there is a jerk somewhere in the group of parties and lawyers. If I can figure out who the jerk is, we can settle the case.” There is truth to that, but I would not go as far as Judge Summers. Every month, I see civilized presentation of divorce cases in my court. The original article did a great disservice to the many attorneys who, in the last twenty-five years, have drastically changed custody and divorce cases for the better. If you want to know more about that quiet revolution, contact the Minnesota chapter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, the Collaborative Law Institute, and the Honorable James Swenson, presiding judge in Hennepin County Family Court. Finally, Glenn Bruder’s letter [November] is filled with inaccuracy. While gender-based arguments are made to the legislature every year, the legislature has given us laws that are child-focused and helpful. There is nothing about our current system that devalues fathers. For example, about forty-four percent of custody studies done by Hennepin County Court Services result in recommendations of either joint or father’s custody. The system of twenty-five years ago was a “win”-based system for most people. That has changed dramatically, in the last few years especially, to a problem-solving model. Fathers who were significantly involved with their children before the divorce are seeing their children much more often than alternate weekends. If they don’t have joint physical custody, they have evening and overnight access during the week; they coach their children’s teams; and they take children to the doctors, attend school conferences and performances, and provide alternate care when mothers are unavailable. The child support guidelines do assume that the custodial parent has financial responsibility for children. It is rare that a child support order covers all the costs of raising the affected children. One can righteously quibble about the details of the guidelines and how they are implemented. But the evidence is strong that, overall, the Child Support Guidelines have corrected financial inequities, not created them. On the issue of divorce and custody, the Rakish angle needs to be tipped toward telling the whole story.

    Stephen C. Aldrich
    Judge of Hennepin District Court
    Family Court Division

    The author was a family law practitioner for twenty-two years before taking the bench in 1997. He has served in the Family Court Division since 1998.

  • The First Shall Be Last

    You got one thing wrong in “Iron Will” [December]. You said Steger’s was the first dogsled team in Antarctica. It was actually the last, due to the Antarctic Treaty banning dogs for potential diseases affecting native species. Ever heard of a rabid leopard seal? Dogs were used there when Roald Amundsen first cruised to the Pole in 1911, with a pack of strong dogs. Dogs have not been used in Antarctica since 1993. The ban was enacted because of evidence that the canine disease distemper was spreading to Antarctica’s seals. (This evidence is up for debate.) The British, who had used their dogs intensively through the early 1970s, were the last to remove their dogs. Maybe they were making up for not using them earlier: Robert Falcon Scott’s expedition’s failure to make good use of sled dogs, while the Norwegian explorers were experts at dog handling, is considered one of the main reasons that Amundsen beat Scott to the South Pole. Also, the Norwegians used skis. (Hello?! Does this make any sense on snow?) They also dressed like the Inuit, with mukluks and native fur clothing. Scott and his gang did not want to sink that low and take part in the ways of the “primitives.” They chose a more “noble approach,” with canvas clothing and leather boots, no dogs and no skis.

    Per Breiehagen
    Minneapolis

    Breiehagen’s photos from Antarctica appeared in last month’s cover story.

  • Soundtrack to Mary

    POPULAR CREEPS

    My hopes for the future include the following:
    1. That we finally see a real end to the war that officially “ended” last spring.
    2. That we finally see an end to makeover-decorating-themed TV shows. I can make over your rock ‘n’ roll crib, easy. Give me a pile of oily rags and a match.
    3. That with losers like Jack Osbourne and Rush Limbaugh going public with their addiction to Oxycontin, most self-respecting hipster addicts will realize this drug is so over. They will promptly replace their daily habit with a Flintstones vitamin and a warm bath.
    4. That Fiona Apple makes several more good records but never speaks in public again.
    5. That the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of the Overrated inducts new members Chris Cornell, Radiohead, and the Shins to keep Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Alex Chilton company.
    6. That polite, Midwestern, God-fearing Timberwolves fans muster the courage now and again to boo some of those phoning-it-in millionaires.
    7. That if you see Latrell Sprewell out on a non-game night you’ll consider throwing your own coat over a puddle for him.
    8. That you, realizing it’s no one’s lifelong dream to work in a coffee shop, will leave only paper currency in the tip-jar for at least one month.
    9. That the next time you go out for drinks, you go to a bar where a local band is playing, face the stage occasionally, and, if they weren’t altogether or even partially responsible for rock’s ultimate demise, or if it looks like even one band member might cut his own hair, buy their CD.
    10. That in the interest of science, as well as my entertainment, at least one victim of a freak farm or surfing accident will throw caution to the wind and have the forelegs of a chihuahua surgically attached where their own arms were ripped off.

    Little Jimmy Scott
    If You Only Knew
    Mary sez: This one’s for you, Hal.

  • Big Sister Is Watching

    Despite the overnight snowfall and a route through some of the metro’s most notorious traffic hot spots, I pulled into the well-salted parking lot almost fifteen minutes early for my appointment to look at the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s new Roseville compound. It’s a brushed aluminum affair, called the Water’s Edge building. Together with the attached Operations Center, the facility looks spanking modern indeed, especially standing abreast of the aging Rosedale Shopping Center just across Snelling Avenue.

    Mary Meinert, a traffic information officer and occasional tour guide, greeted me with an enormous cup of coffee in hand. Arriving as early as 5:30 a.m. some days and leaving as late as 8 p.m. others, she counts java second only to her ID badge as a workplace necessity. After I was fitted with a visitor’s badge, she took me to the Operations Center to show me exactly why my rush-hour drive had been so efficient. In the tour room, Meinert projected a computer display onto a large screen, made selections from a network of more than two hundred live-feed cameras, and toggled the cameras to show me, in real time, the route I had just driven from Highway 100 to I-394 to I-94 to the Lowry Tunnel, to 35W to Highway 36. “People were pretty well behaved today,” she said with the tone of a satisfied preschool teacher. She expertly panned a camera to check on a stalled car I had passed on I-94 just twenty minutes before. “You are Big Brother,” I accused. “You can call me Big Sister,” she quipped.

    If there is a place where Minnesotans need some babysitting, the highways are certainly it. Pretty much everyone knows anecdotally about our atrocious driving. Last January the Minnesota Department of Public Safety released statistics from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirming that Minnesotans drive like, well, morons. Minnesotans crash and die more often per mile than the national average, comparing favorably to only a handful of retrograde states, such as Mississippi. In 2002, there were 94,969 crashes reported in the state, fifty-nine percent of them concentrated in the metro. These crashes yield nearly seven hundred fatalities annually. This particular morning two Anokans had perished on Highway 10.

    To shepherd the metro’s endangered commuters, Mn/DOT completed the new facility last February. Meinert admits that they didn’t publicize the opening aggressively; the political climate hasn’t exactly been ripe for an announcement that we’ve spent $23.5 million on a fifty-three-thousand-square-foot facility just to help folks drive around. I was, in fact, the first journalist allowed to prowl the floor of the Traffic Operations Group. It’s an impressive room, right out of Hollywood’s imagination of such places. Three banks of thirty screens each monitor more than two hundred locations on 170 miles of metro highway. The top row of each bank keeps accident sites locked onscreen, while the rest scroll through various camera angles and locations, monitoring rush-hour progress. At an array of a dozen or so desks, Mn/DOT dispatchers and state troopers watch the screens and keep track of other data streams, from electronic in-road traffic counters (called loops) to air patrols. Unlike the CIA, Mn/DOT has a pretty good idea what to do with the information: They adjust ramp meters, post messages on changeable signs, and dispatch help where needed. (Alas, they are powerless to rid the world of its most disturbing and intractable evil—the gawker slow-down.)

    None of this can be done on the cheap. System architecture design supervisor Terry Haukom sat down with me to defend some of the gadgets he clearly loves. “A changeable message board costs about $60,000,” he said, “and to the average guy that sounds like a lot of money.” But the average cost of a crash is now close to $20,000, said Haukom. “If we can prevent just three secondary crashes, we’ve made our money back. And I expect to get twenty years out of each sign.”

    Since this is all about safety, I asked Haukom about the new microwave technology being installed for traffic counting. I wanted to know if this is roasting drivers. He patiently explained that “microwave” can refer to any radio-wave signal frequency in the gigahertz range. “Your radar detector will go off. But you won’t be able to heat up your sandwich.”

    With all these devices at the ready to spot trouble, I wondered if Mn/DOT plans to roll out the heavy artillery for the notorious New Year’s Eve commute, which, after all, will be an hour later and an hour drunker this year. As it happens, they’ll leave on the lights, but Mn/DOT staff will turn night operations over to the State Patrol, just like any other night. Operations manager Nick Thompson apparently doesn’t relish the thought of driving home in the wee hours himself. “We hope to be out of here by about 8:30.” Besides, the morning commute often supplies more entertainment anyway. “Up on 169 for the last few weeks we’ve seen a pig,” said Meinert. “People would call on their cell phones and tell us they saw something.” Eventually, she said, “they had to shoot him.”
    —Joe Pastoor

  • Tejas

    So what if you haven’t waxed the Lexus lately? Trend food is now in reach of the proletariat on the Tejas lunch menu. We once walked into the Southwest-style eatery at the spiritual (if not geographic) center of Edina and asked for a takeout menu and instead received a withering glance. Now, three years later, they have one. Yes, trend food can be as obnoxious as a cosmetic surgeon who trying to parallel-park his Suburban. But Tejas fare is not just fashionable—it’s good. For lunch, you can’t go wrong with the fresh-tasting Maine lobster roll and fries. For more of a trip, try the only open-faced tamale we’ve ever seen, with barbecue pork and other nice morsels resting on yam masa and a cornhusk. Bring a bigger wallet for dinner. We recommend the beef tenderloin with barbecue bernaise. This sauce may sound more like heresy than innovation, but we’ve never left a drop on the plate.

  • Oklahoma!

    It was the first Broadway musical to be commemorated by a postage stamp. It has earned dozens of accolades, including a Pulitzer Prize, an honorary Grammy, and two Academy Awards. It held the record for longest-running Broadway show for fifteen years, playing longer than any other brainchild of Roger and Hammerstein, including South Pacific, The Sound of Music, and The King and I—even longer than Curley holds the opening note in the theme song. If that isn’t enough to make you want to saddle up for a revival of the landmark musical, how about a good old-fashioned family hoedown to cure your holiday homesickness? With quirky characters like Aunt Eller, Ado Annie, and Gertie Cummings kicking up their heels to classic showtunes “Oh, What A Beautiful Morning” and “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” audiences are sure to leave loving Oklahoma! all over again, in all its grits and glory. OK? Sure, sounds good to us. Orpheum, 910 Hennepin Ave., (612) 339-7007, www.hennepintheatredistrict.com

  • Out There 16

    When it comes to art, we’re never quite sure where the line is between a reading, a recital, a performance, and an exhibition. After sixteen years, we’re beginning to realize that maybe we’re looking at it all wrong. What better way to prepare for the Walker’s imminent yearlong shutdown than by reminding yourself that they’re not shutting down at all; they’re just going to be invading and inhabiting the city while their headquarters gets its makeover. Lots of grist here for anyone who’s grown weary of two-dimensional definitions of art, from spoken dance, to music video, to sculptural movement. Don’t look at the hand that points. Look at where it points: www.walkerart.org. All performances are at the Southern Theater, 1420 Washington Ave. S., Minneapolis.

  • Symphony in Black and White: 100 Etchings and Lithographs by James McNeill Whistler

    One can hardly recall the name James McNeill Whistler without thinking that he was a bit of a mama’s boy. In a fate similar to that of Norman Bates, Whistler the Artist has almost been overshadowed by Whistler the Painting, popularly known as “Whistler’s Mother” but officially titled “Arrangement in Grey and Black.” Whistler rarely named his works other than by color; he was hoping to force the art community to consider printmaking and etching as art forms in their own right rather than mere reproductions. A hundred years after his death, this exhibit celebrates his success as the most influential printmaker in art history and credits him for his lasting influence on later generations, including American painter John Singer Sargeant. Whistler’s colorful personality and turbulent life can be traced through these hundred works. They are taken from the institute’s permanent collection, and include a series of gritty etchings known as the Thames Set along with his Venetian prints, the swan song of a career in which a high regard for printmaking is fully realized. Move over, mama! MIA, 2400 Third Ave. S., (612) 870-3131, www.artsmia.org

  • Refugees at Home

    I swear to heaven that it sounded like a good idea at the time.

    Hypnotized by HGTV, we took a perfectly good kitchen (if not our aesthetic ideal), ripped it out by the seams, and have for the last four months given a painful, bloody Lamaze-style birth to the placement of each pantry cupboard, each major home appliance, each light fixture.

    We have weathered swirling Iraqi sandstorms of sawdust as new floors were placed and finished, fled clouds of toxic polyurethane gas as wooden surfaces were sealed, and watched the dumpster in our front yard fill up with the shattered remains of our once calm lives. My husband estimates that it’s also half full of hundred-dollar bills.

    Our entry in the brutally competitive South Minneapolis home-remodeling derby got out of control in a classic example of mission creep. The kitchen remodel begat the brainstorm of knocking down the living room walls and making everything flow. That led to the inspiration to replace the first floor’s retirement-age windows with modern ones. The great new light and sightlines made the old fireplace look frowsy, so we ordered a radical facelift. Each project dominoed into a half-dozen others.

    We can hold no one but ourselves responsible for this, our own personal Alamo. We cannot indulge in a soul-exfoliating self-pity party, and neither can we finger-point our way to blamelessness. Note to the contractors: Please send all future invoices and correspondence to Husband and Wife, Chumptown, USA.

    Our household consists of three teenagers, two adults, and a predictable stream of neighbor kids. That makes for one busy kitchen. Oh, I promised in the beginning of this unrest that I’d drink Slim Fast and Instant Breakfast every morning, and hand the kids piping hot toaster strudels on the way to school, then make it up to them nutritionally with crisp, sweet apples and a balanced, root-vegetable-laden slow-cooker meal in the evening. But no. Pizza it is, three times a week, and pizza it will be, until this is all said and done with.

    Not all the feathers in our humble nest are ruffled. The mini camp kitchen in our basement TV room is like a dream come true to our kids. Now, they need only slog five feet’s distance from the beanbag chair to the microwave oven, jab at the buttons blindly while keeping both eyes focused on the Cartoon Network, and in thirty seconds yank out a salty, yellow gravy-rich Santa Fe chicken pocket. The middle teen eats a diet that consists of Wonder Bread, peanut butter sandwiches, and microwaved bacon. While he remains Keith Richards-thin, we’re convinced that he’s on his way to total cholesterol collapse. We’re thinking of stirring a Flintstone vitamin/Lipitor drug cocktail into the Skippy. It’s chunky style; he’ll never notice.

    We actually bought the components of this dream kitchen last year. They sat out on our breezy sleeping porch during the warm months, ruining our summer. And now, rested by their vacation, they’re ruining our winter, disrupting the school year, business trips, and major holidays.

    Maybe that’s not a bad thing. On the last two holidays we’ve hosted, major snafus have gone down. Last Christmas, we forgot to turn the oven on and we served up a fully frozen ham for dinner. And the Thanksgiving before that, I set the turkey on fire. I was trying to save time, using one of those newfangled Reynolds Oven Bags. The fire department tracked the problem to me shoving a twenty-two-pound turkey into a fifteen-pound bag. Old habits die hard, I guess. That’s the same logic I apply to my wardrobe.

    Or maybe it’s just that our kitchen space is cursed. I should look at this project as an exorcism. A healing time to clear out the bad culinary juju and begin afresh. The next holiday we’re set to host is Easter, and if all goes well, we might have the countertops in by then. We’ll say a prayer of Thanksgiving. Jesus saves. And Domino’s delivers.

  • The View From Here: Pictures from Central Europe and the American Midwest

    If the Midwestern inferiority complex has a lot to do with our location in flyover country, imagine what it must be like to live in Poland, traditional butt of the “dumb” jokes of nations thousands of miles away. But there are other similiarities, too—the wide expanses of plains, for instance, or the starkly utilitarian architecture of our cities. The View From Here, a touring exhibit put together by the Columbus Museum of Art, aims to find the spirit connecting those of us living in the heartlands of the Old and New Worlds. That’s probably most apparent in the pairing of eight photos, four each, by Krzystof Zielinski of Poland and Ohio’s Andrew Borowiec; they are clearly kindred spirits in documenting their respective working-class hometowns. Three Minnesotan photographers are part of the American contingent, including a couple shots from Paul Shambroom’s terrific series of portraits depicting small-town city councils. MCP, 711 W. Lake St., (612) 824-5500, www.partsphoto.org