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You wouldn’t expect a United Nations press officer to write a book about an aging Faulknerian simpleton on a rural farm. But that’s what we have in Laird Hunt’s second novel, Indiana, Indiana, just out from local publisher Coffee House Press. Hunt’s hero is a Hoosier State farmer named Noah Summers, somewhat bitter and uncomfortable in his 77-year-old skin and struggling to come to terms with his family history—which includes a lifelong series of psychic flashes and a house fire that killed his parents and threw his wife on the harsh mercy of electroshock-era mental hospitals. The stream-of-consciousness prose style and Southern Gothic plot are quite consciously indebted to works like The Sound and the Fury, but if this is Yoknapatawpha County pastiche, it’s certainly well done. Noah himself sums up the book’s appeal well during a conversation with an itinerant saw player who tells him, after some cajoling, how he lost a finger. “My daddy would like that story. He likes stories that don’t make regular sense,” says Noah. “Well then,” says the saw player, “I reckon he likes most stories.” Ruminator Books, 1648 Grand Ave., St. Paul, (651) 699-0587, www.ruminator.com

We’ve taken our licks, and Garrison Keillor just keeps ticking. In fact, our resident superhero of literature is aging like fine wine. Honestly, he just gets better and better, and pretty soon he’ll have earned the comparisons that immoderate people (mostly on the coasts, you know) have been making between his writing and the truly timeless of American literature, by which we mean hall-of-famers like Mark Twain and F. Scott Fitzgerald. There has been a gratifying improvement in quantity along with quality; we don’t know how the maestro manages to crank the stuff out, but we ain’t complaining. Love Me may be Keillor’s most honest and funny novel to date, covering the latter period of his autobiographical oeuvre, and venturing beyond the well-established brand of Wobegon to describe the transcendently debased world of the solitary author. A writer writing about writers writing is rarely this effortlessly entertaining. Barnes & Noble Galleria, 3225 W. 69th St., Edina, (952) 920-0633, www.bn.com

Kessler has a talent for finding singularly larger-than-life women to write about. She previously told the life story of fast-living lady stunt-pilot Pancho Barnes in the memorably titled Happy Bottom Riding Club. Clever Girl has an equally juicy story behind it: the tale of Elizabeth Bentley, a seemingly straitlaced Vassar grad who wound up converting to communism and became the KGB’s most important spy in America during World War II, running rings of agents that infiltrated dozens of agencies in Washington. When her lover and KGB contact died, the spy whom the Russians code-named “Clever Girl” came in from the cold and found herself under some very hot public scrutiny. What she knew, or claimed to know under oath, was political dynamite; she was instrumental in the infamous Rosenberg trial, and lived for a time as the darling of the anticommunist right wing. Kessler makes the most of her fascinating subject, though her efforts are weakened by a lack of solid evidence to draw on. Speculation and conjecture are unfortunate but necessary given Bentley’s shadowy early career and her later isolation, dying practically alone and friendless.

It didn’t quite rival the fever-pitch anticipation of Order of the Phoenix, but fans of Chris Ware’s work (Jimmy Corrigan, Acme Novelty Library) have been waiting since the original release date of November 2002 for Quimby the Mouse. Quimby chronicles the life of a long-suffering mouse, drawn in the style of 1920s and 1930s comic strips, like George Herriman’s Krazy Kat, which Ware recently helped bring back to life by redesigning bound reprints. Quimby, like Jimmy Corrigan, is packed full of amazingly complicated graphics, cut-and-paste paper projects, and nostalgic-looking fake advertisements and newspaper columns that should take you the rest of the year to read. And you’ll enjoy every single minute of it.

We’ve known for a long time that Minnesotans practice a kind of karmically correct stoicism. But who knew that Minnesota Nice was just a variation on one of the world’s most ancient spiritual practices—Zen Buddhism? You’re really going to send that medium-rare steak back to the kitchen? You’ll carry the black cloud of unnecessary confrontation for months—possibly into your next lifetime, when you’ll come back as a pushy New Yorker.

The five ethical precepts of Zen & the five pillars of Minnesota Nice

Buddha nature is mindful and reverential
of all life. Do not be violent. Do not kill.

Avoid confrontation at all costs.

***

There is no self. Respect the property
of others. Do not steal.

Checks still gladly accepted!

***

Desire is an illusion. Be conscious and
loving in your relationships. Do not
give way to lust.

Do not stare. If you must look,
keep it above the shoulders, please.
Below the knees is also OK.

***

All is one beyond the cloud of unknowing.
Honor honesty and truth. Do not deceive.

If you can’t say something nice,
don’t say anything at all.

***

Transcend the pain of unreality. Exercise proper care of the body and mind. Do not
be gluttonous. Do not abuse intoxicants.

No liquor sales after 10 p.m.
Great walking paths! (Don’t stare!)

On June 30, LouAnn Clarissa Kilpatrick was killed by a turtle just outside of Grand Rapids. The 66-year-old swerved to avoid hitting a turtle and died when her car careened off the road. Her tragic accident was a reversal of the usual state of affairs between turtles and humans. Each year, thousands of these reptiles meet their end crossing the pavement. As anyone who has ever adopted a highway knows, the animal’s evolved defense mechanism is no match for a two-ton SUV. Unfortunately, here in the metro area, turtle habitats are increasingly fragmented by new exurban roads. Their nesting areas have been paved over by new driveways and parking lots.

To alert drivers during the turtle nesting season—most of the summer—the Three Rivers Park District posts turtle-crossing signs (which are, incidentally, quite popular with urban sign thieves). Although she encourages drivers to avoid hitting these slow-moving pedestrians, naturalist Madeleine Linck tells people it is far preferable to hit a turtle than to cause a car accident by swerving violently to avoid it. If you do come across a turtle in the road, Linck says, you can pick it up and ferry it to the side it was heading for. “But don’t get hit by a car in the process!” she adds sensibly.

Three species of turtle, the Western painted, snapping, and the endangered Blandings turtle, are most commonly found crossing the road. In a daylong journey, the females seek higher ground with dry, sandy soil and good sun exposure. This is where they want to bury their eggs. Most migrating turtles travel a few hundred yards, although the Blandings turtle, distinguished by its long, yellow-throated neck, may cover more than a mile to reach its nesting ground.

As if the encroaching concrete jungle weren’t enough, some of the state’s unluckier turtles might find themselves trapped, crated, and loaded onto a plane to Asia, where indigenous turtle populations have been crashing dramatically. In China, turtles are used for everything from soup to cures for cancer (a mysterious and disturbing substance called turtle jelly is highly prized for its alleged medicinal properties). Locally, taking turtles for a family or church dinner is also a Lenten tradition in the Catholic communities around St. Cloud.
The DNR recently proposed significant changes to the regulations that govern turtle harvesting, changes the agency hopes will stem the apparent decline of Minnesota’s turtle populations. The DNR will allow the twenty or so current holders of commercial turtle licenses to continue operations, though under tighter rules.

The Minnesota Herpetological Society, the state’s biggest and most active group of reptile enthusiasts, helped pass the legislation that led to the new rules on taking turtles, but one of the group’s members recently dealt with a much more bizarre abduction. Bill Moss, a bearded fiftysomething who lives on St. Paul’s East Side, is an active member of the society. On an unseasonably warm day last November, Angus, his 45-pound African spurred tortoise, was nabbed from his lawn. “I came back outside after some work indoors and he had vanished,” Moss said. “I knew he couldn’t have jumped the fence!”

Although Moss did not suspect celebrity as a motive for the disappearance, Angus’s local fame is rivaled only by the long-suffering and now retired giant tortoises that children used to ride like ponies at the Como Zoo. For years Angus had made an annual appearance the Minnesota Renaissance Festival as a mascot for the Minnesota Herpetological Society’s booth. He’d roamed the grounds as “Angus of Clan McTortoise,” festooned with a plaid kilt and bearing a donation cup on the top of his shell.

After a frustrating month of near misses and dead ends, Moss eventually recovered Angus in a warehouse apartment in Northeast Minneapolis. His pet’s involuntary migration apparently included three successive short-term owners, numerous unsuccessful attempts to sell the animal to local pet stores, and, finally, a custom-built plywood platform complete with a warming light and a garden pond inside the warehouse apartment. Although he hit up Moss for the $200 he had spent on the plywood habitat, owner number three had let his conscience get the better of him. After receiving one of Moss’s missing-tortoise flyers via owner number two, he called Moss. Luckily, Angus seemed unaffected by his time in trendy Nordeast. “Honestly, I suspect he was fairly oblivious to the whole thing,” said Moss with a chuckle.—Dan Gilchrist

For decades now, cigarettes and hospitals have not mixed. Long before any clean-air act or tobacco settlement, there were islands of exiles—many of them standing sheepishly in scrubs—outside the whispering doors of the ER. Paradoxically, smoking persists in one place inside the hospital: the psych ward. There are reasons. When smoking is banned in psychiatric units, there frequently are outbursts of violence, anger, and resentment.

John Gray is the nursing supervisor for inpatient psychiatry at Hennepin County Medical Center. His unit provides patients with a smoking room, which is more or less a well-ventilated closet. Gray is old enough to remember a time not too long ago when it was common for a doctor to light up with a patient during a psychiatric interview. He also remembers the dark days when his unit adopted a strict nonsmoking policy, in 1994. The results were nerve-racking, to say the least. “During that year, the doctors were all for the non-smoking policy,” Gray said. “And the same doctors decided it wasn’t a good idea after dealing with the patients.” An exemption was granted.

On the whole, people are comfortable with the current policy, which allows smoking in designated areas during restricted times. It is a singular liberty and a comfort to troubled souls. Gray has received only one complaint from the family of a patient, but has received quite a bit of appreciative feedback. In fact, one family whose son was a patient shows its appreciation by donating cartons of cigarettes a few times a year. Not a smoker himself, Gray is careful to clarify that the unit does not endorse smoking. It’s a hospital, after all, and alternatives are available. “We have offered tobacco cessation. But it’s a rare patient that has any interest.”

From her comfortable office over on Nicollet Mall, Dr. Maureen Hackett disagreed. She is a forensic psychiatrist in private practice, who specializes in legal issues in psychiatry. She teaches classes at William Mitchell College of Law. Hackett believes that most people who smoke want to quit and that it’s medically irresponsible to allow smoking in any health care facility. As a result of her convictions, she launched what she called a “one-person campaign” seeking legislation that would explicitly require all health-care facilities, including psychiatric units, to be smoke-free. With the support of the Minnesota Medical Association, her efforts were successful. “A bill was signed and is going into action in 2004 that will eliminate smoking on hospital grounds,” she said. According to Hackett, this will include the HCMC psychiatric unit. She anticipates grumbling from both the staff and the patients, but feels education will change the minds of many health-care workers. “These nurses are clueless,” said Dr. Hackett. “And I’m not being disrespectful, because I was clueless too. There is a perception on the part of the staff that hostility is going to grow, and really it lessens.” There are plenty of studies, she said, where this has been shown. “I think the unit needs to offer other options. The smoking room could be turned into a place that offers time out, maybe with running water, a fountain, or mood music.” Perhaps they’ll also consider punching bags.—Sarah Sawyer

As heads bobbed lazily in Cedar Lake, the Mud Man hopped along, letting the regulars at Hidden Beach know, “It’s ready.” He greeted late arrivals with a formal welcome: “Good afternoon!”

On the right day, when there’s just the right amount of water in the mud, the mixture sucks your feet in and produces hilarious flatulent noises. Mud fights among the willing are inevitable. After some nonpolitical mudslinging, the facial war paint is applied, like they do in Lord of the Flies and Fear Factor. This is followed by a full-body mud bath, a complete drying, and a final glorious dive into the water, leaving behind a wake of redistributed silt.

The mud at Hidden Beach could be a noxious brand of urban glop, containing sticks, rocks, and the sort of trash that proliferates in Minneapolis parks. But the Mud Man wouldn’t have that.

Stephen Vasseur is a landmark to regular beach dwellers. He speaks with a dramatic severity that instantly makes you think you’ve done something wrong. “I started coming down here more or less in the summer of ’93, but I started what you would call the caretaker assignment on a seasonal basis the following year, ’94,” he said, with an odd, unsolicited precision. Vasseur constantly monitors the pit for foreign objects, mostly sticks and beer cans. He is proud of the relative cleanliness of the mud, and he has a strong sense of ownership.

“I have never had any problems. There are some who have very sensitive body chemistries and who get what you would call an allergic reaction after playing in this stuff,” he said, diplomatically alluding to the occasional mud-transmitted rash. A friend of mine claimed that a bullhead in the mud pit once nipped him, but Vasseur had no knowledge of any bullheads in his domain.

“We occasionally get small sunfish and perch in here, but that’s only when the water levels are high,” he assured me. We waded in together. By way of conversation, Vasseur schooled me on the clearing of some trees leading up to the beach last year.

“In Aught-two, that’s when the Park and Rec forestry department had to clear the buckthorns, mulberry, and standing dead trees.” Now he was really getting warmed up. Words flew out of him in an abrasive but informative torrent. “But they had a problem. They only had five days on site, and that wasn’t enough time to do everything they wanted. That one big dead tree down there,” he said, pointing vaguely to about a half-acre of heavily wooded parkland, “the five days were up before they could get to that!” Vasseur looked and sounded like Dr. Emmett Brown in Back to the Future, but with thick glasses, shorter hair, and a beach cap.

The Mud Man is a resident of the Beltrami neighborhood, but he hops the bus (number 25) to the lake, “time and weather permitting.” As the season winds down, he will gear up for his wintertime vocation: He is a scoreboard operator and announcer for boy’s high school hockey.

Summer was fading around the edges, and a toddler squealed hysterically as her mother lowered her into the goop. Vasseur scooped up a handful of the good stuff and showed it to the child, who was soon chucking mud with gusto. Vasseur is not only a caretaker, but in a lazy, summertime kind of way, he’s an educator too. “This is something that God has given me to do on a seasonal basis,” he said. “And I will do the best I can.”
—Geoff Ziezulewicz

Since our yard has more creeping charlie than all the kudzu in Georgia, we’ve been seriously thinking about having our lawn treated. The problem is those little green and white signs that warn “This Lawn Has Been Chemically Treated—Keep Children and Pets Off for 24 Hours.” Leery of both the chemical industry and a massive crabgrass infestation, I called the toll-free number of a major lawn-care company to ask what hazard the signs address.

“We’ve added a green dye to the treatment because some customers requested a way to recognize when their lawn had been treated,” the customer representative said. “And you don’t want to get that stuff on your kids and pets.”

“I thought it was because some of the chemicals you spray in there could be dangerous to kids,” I replied.

“Well, no. It’s so they don’t get any of that green dye on them,” she answered in Ari Fleischer style—consistent, if not entirely convincing. When I asked if she could tell me, just for kicks, exactly what chemicals my kids and pets would be playing in, she forwarded me to a local office. When the local fellow picked up, I recounted the green dye story.

“No, no, no, that’s not right,” he answered, clearly annoyed with his national coworker. “Our treatments have a fertilizer and a weed-control substance, and it’s the weed-control products that can be dangerous to kids,” he said. How dangerous—has anyone ever gotten sick? “No, we’ve never had any problem with it,” he assured me. “A kid would have to eat three times their weight to cause any harm.”

Of course, a child eating three times their weight in anything would not be healthy, but I let that slide. Instead, I made a few phone calls to the Minnesota Department of Health, where I talked with Chuck Stroebel at the Health Risk Assessment Unit in the Environmental Health Division.

He emailed me a bushel of pesticide fact sheets (broadly, pesticides include herbicides, fungicides, and insecticides). When we met at his St. Paul office a week later, I asked him what he thinks when he sees the green and white warning signs posted on a lawn.
“I think it’s just smart to minimize unnecessary pesticide exposure,” Stroebel explained. “Kids are at more risk because of their size and their hand-to-mouth activity, and pets because they tend to roll or lie in the grass.”

Looking through the pesticide safety data, I was surprised to see how well pesticides have been studied, both for acute and chronic toxicity and carcinogenic effects.

“Yeah, there’s fairly stringent regulation in pesticides in comparison to many other chemicals, because pesticides are designed to repel or kill a plant or pest. So there’s an immediate recognition that these could be dangerous.”

Naturally, it’s easy to scrutinize some toxins because of their intended use. If they are designed to kill things, we want to make sure they’re killing the right things, and experts are all over it, like flies on…well, you know. But consider PCBs. They weren’t designed to retard or kill anything, and yet we’ve found them to be harmful. “Very harmful, exactly,” he agreed.

For pesticides used in professional lawn treatments, here is the worst-case scenario: If you let the kids come out three hours later and have, say, a greased cat contest, some of the kids could develop minor skin and eye irritation.

“I think that’s accurate,” Stroebel nodded, “and you could track it into the house for a more prolonged exposure.”

So pesticide risk is a function of exposure. In other words, getting a weak solution on your feet is logarithmically safer than eating a handful of granules out in the garage. It seems like it might be safer to have a professional come out, rather than to do it myself and have the leftovers hanging around.

“Yes, and if you call a professional service, you’ve got someone who is applying the pesticide that’s a trained, licensed applicator, versus a homeowner who may be incorrectly diluting a product or putting it in the wrong area.”

Before leaving his office, I felt it my public duty to brief Stroebel on my earlier conversation, and the terrifying green dye that threatens lawn-tromping kids statewide. He did not stick up for other “experts” in this field. “It’s real hit or miss, depending on who you get,” he laughed.—Craig Bowron