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Last night my son Max got jolted awake by a nightmare. In his dream, our car got slammed from behind and Max catapulted out of his seat. His head got wedged in the crevice between the front passenger seat and the car door, and it knocked the wind out of him. “But the scariest part
wasn’t that, or being stuck,” Max told me. “The scariest part was that I was screaming and screaming but no one heard me.” A few days before the nightmare, Max turned 10. Develop-mentally speaking, he’s been driven out from the hazy garden of early childhood and he now sees the world in an irrevocably more realistic light. It’s not surprising that it sometimes terrifies him.

I’ve been thinking about death lately. I visited my grandmother’s grave for the first time in five years, and I watched with fascination as my 7-year-old daughter Lillie and her brother and sister and two cousins placed unwrapped Hershey Kisses gingerly around the edges of the marker, because Nana loved candy. Then, in search of a way to express something she could not name, Lillie busied herself scraping the mossy growth out from the carved letters of the gray marble headstone of a woman she never knew. She had no idea how to show reverence and yet she did so with aching tenderness.

I felt the same way recently when I looked after my friend’s two children whose grandfather had died that morning. Later on, my friend and her husband came over to share dinner. I set the table, choosing the better linen table cloth with small embroidered daisies and the pretty linen napkins I’d never used before. I told my friend that I felt helplessly unable to be graceful in the face of death. It seemed somehow surreal for us to be eating pad Thai and mock duck just as if life goes on unaltered. As slender yellow elm leaves begin to litter my sidewalk, I brace myself for the irresistible beauty and melancholy of September, now entangled with painful memories of terrorism, tragedy, and war.

Last month I traveled east for an intensive training program for third-grade Waldorf teachers. The presenter was Eugene Schwartz, master teacher at Green Meadow Waldorf School and New York native. He understood the unease we teachers felt about the best way to face a first week of school that will forever coincide with the commemoration of September 11. The collapse of the Twin Towers had a harrowing impact on Schwartz’s students and school community. At the moment the news of the attacks broke at Green Meadow, Schwartz was outside with his fifth-grade class for picture day. The school administrator was advised by local district officials to keep students indoors until they could be picked up by their parents, who trickled in over the course of the rest of the day. Except for the two fathers who died.

On that same morning in Minneapolis, I got a call at school from my sister just before the morning bell rang. I picked up the phone and my sister shouted that there had been this bizarre plane crash at the World Trade Center, and had I heard from our older sister, who lives in Brooklyn? Of course I hadn’t, and it was a grueling day before we were able to get through to her and piece together the story of how she’d boarded the last train out of Penn Station on her way to teach a class at Rutgers when the first tower collapsed. She ended up stranded in New Jersey overnight before she eventually wended her way back to a dust-covered apartment in Brooklyn.

From there I slogged along with the rest of middle America through the dirty waters of a distant horror on the one hand and the need to go through the usual daily routine on the other. The daily routine prevailed without a contest, and although I cried my eyes out when my son’s parakeet died last winter, it wasn’t until visiting the memorial wall at Ground Zero this summer that I cried about September 11. But even then my tears were clumsy.

Unlike Lillie, I don’t so easily know how to scrape moss from the cracks of what I can’t comprehend. I can only hold Max tight until his silent screams fade away and he breathes peacefully back to sleep, and I can only stand in uncertainty before the schoolchildren in September, drawing inspiration from their willingness to revere a world they will understand less before they understand it more.

Jeannine Ouellette is associate editor of The Rake.

You could run but you couldn’t hide. In the weeks surrounding the release of Bruce Springsteen’s new record, the man was everywhere. Interviews in Time, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times, a live concert from the Jersey shore, Letterman appearances on two consecutive nights, three installments of Nightline—yes, Nightline, because even though it’s not an arts and culture show, you have to understand that this was more than a record. This was about 9/11. This was about Healing A Nation. If the media blitz was all you had to go on, you could have been excused for wondering if that was the World Trade Center in Bruce’s pocket or he was just glad to see us.

The hype made it Springsteen’s fastest-selling record out of the box; it also made a remarkable piece of work a whole lot harder to hear. By the time most of us got around to listening, you already knew the question you were supposed to ask of it (the first great work of art about 9/11?) and the answer you were compelled to offer up (yes!). The way pundits and publicists everywhere (and, wittingly or not, Bruce himself) used 9/11 to flog the record grew offensive, not least because the very notion of “9/11 art” is a category that—for now, at any rate—has far less to do with art than with marketing.

Sure it’s a 9/11 record, if you want to be literal about it. The events of that day crystallized something for Springsteen. They got him off the couch and into the studio. There wouldn’t be a new Bruce Springsteen record now if it weren’t for September 11. But it’s easy to make too much of that, and practically everyone has. Here is Joyce Millman describing one song, “The Nothing Man,” in her Salon review: “A shell-shocked rescue worker can’t fit back into everyday life.”

I guess it does sound that way. Except for this: “The Nothing Man” is eight or nine years old. It first appeared on an album Springsteen completed but never released in 1994. There are two other songs on the record written prior to last fall’s attacks, and at least two more that sound to me like fairly radical rewrites of other little-known or unreleased Springsteen songs. The song genealogy isn’t important in itself. The point is that if you listen to all the shouting about 9/11 you’re going to miss the real heart of The Rising—a work that was a long time coming, and one that’s both of a piece with Springsteen’s past and an unsettling departure from it.

Some reviewers did get it, in their own fashion. Writing in the Village Voice, Keith Harris observed, “If there hadn’t been a September 11, Bruce Springsteen would have had to invent one.” (Is that supposed to be a bad thing?) Dave Marsh affirmed the same thing, minus the sneer. He wrote a single line about the record: “A middle-aged man considers death and chooses life.”

A lot has changed in Springsteen’s little corner of the universe since The Ghost of Tom Joad in 1995. In that time he turned 50, buried his father, and began the process of watching his children grow away from him and into the world. And, no doubt, wondered how he would ever make a Bruce Springsteen record again. Bruce records have always borne a special burden, of which no one is more conscious than Springsteen himself. They involved a pact with his audience forged a long time ago: It’s a mean world, but come along with me and I’ll get you to the other side. The promise was of redemption and a kind of transcendence. Kick around these badlands long enough, refusing cynicism and holding to your dreams, and you’ll reach a promised land.

That’s a young man’s creed and an older man’s cage. Unless you are exceptionally blessed, or a dolt, you cannot help noticing as you get older that there really is no promised land. Or rather, that life has innumerable means of snatching it from your grasp time and again. Of these none is more potent than mortality itself, and that’s the real subject of The Rising, a collection of 15 death-struck prayers to a God who’s not there and to a constellation of friends and loved ones who may or may not have enough left inside themselves to answer.

I mean, what’s all this shit about healing? I certainly see all the lyrical gestures in that direction, and there’s a measure of healing in the music itself, which sounds more vibrant than any Springsteen album since Born to Run. But to my ears this is the most harrowing record he’s ever made. (That title is supposed to belong to Nebraska, or alternately Tom Joad, but those records had their comforts, chief among them the satisfaction of hearing Springsteen bear stubborn witness to lives that, for official purposes, did not exist.) It’s telling that the most beautiful song on the record is also the most chilling. “Paradise” contraposes two characters from very different circumstances, each of whom is squandering a life on some vision of deliverance from earthly troubles. In the end the singer concludes it’s all a lie: “I search for the peace in your eyes/ They’re as empty as paradise.”

It’s a song I don’t believe Springsteen could have written until now. The Rising represents the first time he’s dared to be so explicit about breaking his old pact, revoking that assurance about reaching the promised land through might and mettle. You are never going to live there, he admits in “Paradise” and elsewhere. Sorry. But there’s something else you can have: moments of the promised land, of unexpected joy and grace, that are capable of sustaining you if you possess the humility, good faith, and good sense to treasure them when they come.

What makes the record harrowing is the fleeting, provisional nature of those connections. In the face of all the death and heartache on The Rising, the mere assurance that you will be able to rise above it from time to time can feel like cold comfort indeed, especially coming from an artist with as much faith in redemption as Springsteen once had. In that sense the record demands more of its listeners and promises less than the Bruce of old. There’s not much fun or much scent of the Hero’s Journey about it, just whatever strength there is to be derived from facing one’s own life, and the fact of loss, as unflinchingly as possible. That’s grown-ups for you. Always changing the rules.

Steve Perry is a contributing editor to The Rake.

According to the guidebook at my dentist’s office, we live in one of the best metropolitan areas in America, and recent census figures say our incomes are among the highest nationally as well. Indeed, the McKnight Foundation reported recently that more people visited the five major Twin Cities museums in 1998 than went to see the Twins, Timberwolves, and Vikings combined. Dance and theater is growing by leaps and shouts. The Walker Art Center is an unabashed world player in contemporary art, and Bruce Dayton and director Evan Mauer seem driven to put the Minneapolis Institute of Arts on the international map. Ask the National Endowment for the Arts and you’ll learn that more cultural centimes are spent here per capita than any other state in the country. But still, where are those artist types? The vanguard? The painters, sculptors, photographers, videographers, multi-mediaists, the ones who actually make art, who are the scene, who put a place on the map?

By and large, they’re waiting your table, or painting your house, or doing freelance ad layout for Best Buy. Being an artist in these parts means you’re doing it in your spare time—after you’ve brought home a paycheck. Many have chosen to swim for friendlier waters. Nancy Robinson, a painter who’s been working in Minneapolis since the mid-80s, has watched the scene—and artist friends—come and go. Two years ago she received a travel grant from the Jerome Foundation in order to pursue exhibiting in Chicago. She visited Chicago and later New York, and had the almost unheard of fortune to get shows in both cities. In the process, leaving Minnesota became an option. “There was just so much more going on elsewhere,” she says.

The experts estimate that Minnesota has an abundance of the creative poor. McKnight counted 300,000 artists a few years ago. But that same survey also noted that more than 60 percent of those artists were making less than $7,000 per year. There’s a lot of art being made here, but not much of it is selling.

The gap between local art and local pocketbooks is longstanding. Big collectors pick up Artforum or Jansen’s History of Art and they’re off to Chelsea or Madison Avenue. They buy it there, bring it back here, and—voila!—we’re a cultural capital. It’s reassuring to be told what’s good. Just so, small collectors are an endangered species. Galleries have been closing over the past five years as if a plague had gone through, and visual arts coverage in the local press has been little more than an afterthought. But the oft-heard cry over shrinking show space and a blind press is only begging the question. If the interest is going elsewhere and the money is going to the estates of Picasso and Rothko, then maybe there’s no reason to open the gallery doors or dedicate the column inches. Certainly there are plenty of people here who are passionate about art, but most of them are the ones making it, the ones with the empty pocket books. “I know plenty of people who didn’t make a dime on their work last year,” laments one painter friend. The few galleries that are shouting in the wilderness, like Flanders and Kellie Rae Theiss in the Warehouse district, are struggling valiantly for every penny. “We celebrated our fifth year in January,” says Theiss. “Things have been hard, but this year there’s been a turn for the better.” Heidi Andermack, former president of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association, adds, “The number of artists in Art-a-Whirl went from 150 to 300 in just a two-year period.” In the studio enclaves of Nordeast Minneapolis and Lowertown in St. Paul, artists have organized open house-style tours like Art-a-Whirl and the St. Paul Art Crawl. They’re festive events. But at a combined seven nights out of a year, they still seem like a novelty.

Elsewhere, scattered widely across this gulf, are a handful of islands known as nonprofit/alternative spaces. Irrigated mostly by mercurial grant dollars (thank God for the likes of McKnight and Jerome) and led by a new generation of hardworking art prophets, local artists have found a few good places to mix it up, even sometimes with bigger boys and girls from the coasts. The Soap Factory is the grandaddy provocateur on the scene, with a truly impressive history of exhibits going back to 1988. Dozens of emerging artists have found a friend in director Christi Atkinson, who offers an open door but high standards. PARTS Photographic Arts has been doing the same for its genre nearly as long. PARTS’ presence, along with Intermedia Arts and more recently Jungle Theater, has turned a little corner of Lyn-Lake into an oasis. New to the ’hood are Soo Visual Arts Center and High Point Center for Printmaking.

Suzi Greenberg, executive director of Soo, is pleased with her accomplishments thus far. “Many artists are having their first real shows here and the response has been great.” High Point, maker of very fine, limited-edition prints, has been drawing on local as well as national and international talent. Across town, in a former porn theater near the corner of Franklin and Chicago Avenues, is Franklin Art Works. Executive director Tim Peterson is jubilant. “We’ll have had three years of programming come November and expect this fall to be big. We’re adding a video gallery, a reading room, and the bathrooms are being redone.” That’s in addition to shows by two highly respected artists—Argentinian Santiago Cucullu, opening September 14, and Mary Esch, opening November 13. FAW is also unique in that it’s dedicated to solo exhibits. “It’s an important step,” says Peterson. “We’re pleased to offer such an opportunity for the first time to many of these artists.”

Ironically, while the events of 9/11 and the sagging economy have had a chilling effect on finances, the effect on attendance has been the opposite. “People are definitely looking for something, a reflection of their feelings, their fears,” says Kelly O’Brien at PARTS. Last February, the show “Image of Afghanistan” by British photographer Simon Norfolk, depicting the war-ravaged country, was a highlight of the season and went on to tour the country. On September 11, PARTS will open “Promised Land,” four topical exhibits including John Sharlin’s “Letters from the Middle East,” a haunting installation of large-scale portraits of Palestinians and Israelis printed on transparent film. On the same evening Soo will open “Twins,” an unusual meditation on self and sibling. This comes on the heels of another introspective show at Franklin Art Works by Patrick Maun.

Clearly there’s fine work being made here. Twin Cities artists are beginning to reach outside the narcissism of an arts scene that is never given an opportunity to mature through real financial and moral support. Maybe in the near future, more people will have a yearning—and a reason—to support local artists. More important, perhaps we’ll start buying the great art that’s right under our noses.

Jon Zurn is a Minneapolis writer.

With seats on the Minneapolis City Council, and tens of thousands of supporters in the Twin Cities, the Green Party is the liberal vanguard of Minnesota politics. So why don’t you take Ken Pentel seriously?

Photos by Terry Gydesen

The Rice Street parade hasn’t started moving yet, and this is causing problems for Ed McGaa, the endorsed Green Party candidate for U.S. Senate. “I’m just trying to give people a choice,” he mumbles to an elderly and angry supporter of Senator Paul Wellstone. “Yeah, and you’re gonna throw the race to Coleman,” the Wellstone supporter snaps back. “Are you at all capable of appreciating that?”

Ken Pentel, the endorsed Green Party candidate for governor, has been monitoring this exchange, and he now decides to join it. “Don’t you believe in democracy?” he demands of the Wellstone supporter. “Don’t you believe people should vote what they feel instead of what they fear? Why do you want to oppress us?” His voice begins to rise. “Why do you tell us to go home without voting, without having our voices heard? What makes you think that’s okay?” The Wellstone supporter backs off. “You don’t have a clue what you’re doing.”

Actually, Ken Pentel has a very good idea what he’s doing. “Green Party banner to the front! Green Party banner to the front!” The parade has finally begun to move, and Pentel instructs his volunteers to carry the orange “Pentel for Governor” banner behind the Green Party banner. “This isn’t about me,” he explains earnestly. “It’s about a movement.”

Ken Pentel’s Green Party colleagues credit him as being the primary force for transforming the Minnesota Green Party from a Twin Cities-based confederation of activists into a cohesive statewide organization with multiple chapters and candidates. Indeed, many, if not most, of the non-metro Green Party chapters would not exist if Ken Pentel, in his capacity as a party organizer, had not personally developed them.

As of early August 2002, there are more than 40 endorsed Green Party candidates running for office in Minnesota, as well as Green Party members on the Minneapolis and Duluth city councils. This is all the more remarkable in light of the fact that, from the Minnesota Green Party’s first electoral outing in 1996 until 2001, there were fewer than three Green Party candidates running at any time in the state.

Ken Pentel’s career as a professional activist, and his accomplishments on behalf of the Minnesota Green Party, demonstrate a singular talent for grassroots politics, as well as a genuine commitment to a more ecologically balanced society. But success in statewide electoral politics is usually about more than organizations and issues; for better or worse, it’s also about knowing how to communicate a message that excites voters.

From its beginnings in 1970s Germany, the Green Party has attracted charismatic figures. The German artist Joseph Beuys, one of the founders of the German Greens (and thus, a founder of the International Green Party), engaged in political activities that he considered artistic “actions” in their own right, such as 7,000 Oaks which, as its title suggests, was 7,000 oak trees planted for aesthetic as well as urban renewal reasons. Ken Pentel shares Joseph Beuys’ appreciation of politics as a fundamentally creative enterprise. Over coffee at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, he even concedes, “Yeah, in its own way running is a performance.” It’s an admission that is central to understanding Ken Pentel.

At the State Fair, conscientious mothers frequently warn against the Midway because “Dangerous people hang out there.” Who are they afraid of? In a word, carnies. Last year, Sheila brought her 10-year-old son Ivan, who couldn’t wait to hit the Midway. She begged him to go to the Poultry Barn first, to look at the funny chickens and rabbits. It was a transparent bid to help him stretch his allowance that much longer, but Sheila quickly realized how foolish and Mom-like she sounded. “OK, pal,” she said. “Let’s you and me head to Sin City.”

Ivan ran to the games and quickly converted $20 into energy, whipping baseballs at china plates, shooting darts at balloons. Pat Benatar wailed in the background. (KQRS truly is the soundtrack of desperation.) Fifteen minutes later, Ivan trudged up to the ticket booth with the last of his money. He saw a game he was sure he couldn’t lose: the Ring Toss.

Armed with a $5 bucket of rubber O-rings, Ivan stood as close as permitted, leaning over the edge of the booth, strategizing every toss. Would putting spin on this one hook it over the pop bottle? How about slamming the ring down in a sort of overhanded spike? Finally, it was over. Sheila wrapped her arm around him and led him away, remarking all the close calls and good tries. Just then, a black O-ring landed right in front of their feet. Ivan snatched it up and ran back to the game. He closed his eyes and tossed. Nothing. They walked away again, this time talking about how freaky it was to get a second chance like that. Three more rings fell at their feet. This time, as Ivan shouted and scooped up the rings, Sheila turned to see where their luck was coming from.

Black steel-toed motorcycle boots, used-to-be blue jeans, and a tobacco smile, leaning against the support post of the Ring Toss booth. The carnie’s expression was somewhere between a leer and a laugh. “Here, little buddy, compliments of the house.” He dispatched another full bucket of O-rings for Ivan. Ivan’s eyes bugged. “Thanks, dude!” He set to work. The carnie had hooked the little one. Now he set about reeling the big one in. “So, taking your little brother out to the fair on this nice day?” He lit a cigarette. “Oh, this isn’t my brother, it’s my son.” She giggled, knowing there was only so far she could take this mating dance. The carnie smiled and leaned in closer. “Never would have guessed. But then I’m not the age guesser, I’m the Ring Toss guy.” They laughed together, taking in the chorus of rubber rings bouncing off glass, like some kind of weird xylophone music. Sensing her relaxation, the carnie closed in for the kill. “That ring on your hand mean anything?” She said, “I’m married.” He’d heard that before. “How long you two been together? Maybe you’ve got the seven-year itch.”

“We only just got married this past year.”

“Damn, Baby. Tell me this, was it for love…” his eyes swept down to Ivan, still sweating over his bucket of rings “…or obligation?” They laughed again and he backed down saying, “I’m just kidding.” They settled into a companionable silence. Sheila was completely lost in the heat and the sugar smell of the place. The carnie wrapped his arm around the tent pole, so he was dangling about three inches away from her, breathing Miller High Life all over her Lancôme. It was so ridiculous that instead of jumping away, she smiled up into his crinkly maw. “Alright then. This here’s my last shot. You wouldn’t have one of them ‘Open Marriages,’ would you?” She told him there was no chance she was going to toss her ring over his Coke bottle. He laughed and said, “Aw, well, you hang around anyway. It looks good for me to be talking to a woman.”—Colleen Kruse

“You can smell the underwear,” said textile curator Linda McShannock as she opened the door to the nation’s largest museum collection of panties, girdles, brassieres, and other unmentionables. We were two stories underground, deep in the heart of the Minnesota Historical Society, where the real rubber waistbands are slowly disintegrating. More than 3,500 historically significant undergarments are carefully stored in this high-security vault. The temperature is a constant 65 degrees, and sodium vapor light insures that no ultraviolet rays will damage these priceless pieces. Bust pads, boxers, petticoats, corset covers, and of course, hoops and tournures for that 19th-century wide-load look—they are all stored in these lockers, which are funded by the National Endowment of the Humanities. Of the Historical Society’s 40,000 square feet of storage, a substantial portion is taken up by underpants. The collection is not currently open to the public, but next summer it will replace the “Up North” display for the letter U in the permanent “Minnesota A to Z” exhibit.

“Munsingwear was as visible in Minneapolis as milling,” said McShannock, by way of explanation. If not for the booming flour business, our city might have been known as the underwear capital of the world. When Munsingwear downsized and moved out of state in 1979, the motherlode of museum collections was bestowed upon the MHS.

“It’s my favorite subject,” confessed McShannock. After getting a degree from the University of Minnesota in fashion merchandising, she volunteered at the MHS and spent months cataloging 900 bras and girdles—a mere fraction of the Munsingwear collection. She dated them, photographed them, wrote descriptions, and put it all in a searchable database. Her meticulous work is now used by underwear researchers across the country.

McShannock opened one drawer to show a masochistic corset stiffened with whale bone, and she pointed out how women were literally constrained by underwear. Put under too much pressure, these bones could splinter with painful results, at least until steel-reinforced corsets were developed. Enter underwear revolutionary Amelia Jenks Bloomer who pushed for female freedom in the 1850s. (Her famous “bloomers” are not to be confused with knock-offs like knickers—short for “knickerbockers,” or copycat “scimp scamp” underpants.) The mutiny against the petticoat and other vagaries seemed unstoppable in the 1870s.

Some of these innovations left skeptics sour. Gustav Jaeger ranted that “only animal fibres prevented the retention of the ‘noxious exhalations’ of the body, retained the salutary emanations of the body which induce a sense of vigour and sound health and ensured warmth and ventilation.” In other words, Jaeger was arguing for wool. George D. Munsing, on the other hand, saw an opening. By plating silk over wool, the silkiness of the garment touched the skin, while the garment retained its woolen warmth. Munsing’s famous “itchless underwear” was all the rage and helped keep to a minimum the embarrassing scratching incidents.

Minneapolis was a special challenge, of course, since warm underwear meant the difference between life and death in the frigid winter. Munsing saw real opportunity for a volume business, and he marketed his famous scarlet union suit in the 1890s. By 1917, Munsingwear produced 30,000 undergarments a day, and one-tenth of the nation’s union suits. The company did more than just free women from the confines of corsets. During the 1920s, it was the largest employer of women in Minneapolis and the largest underwear producer in the country. To celebrate their success and show their patriotic fervor after V-Day, Munsingwear even produced a prototype American flag bra and girdle in 1946—a racy treasure that is jealously guarded by McShannock.

“When I was 22 years old I was an actor, and I met a playwright who suggested that I write a play and submit it for a Jerome Fellowship. I got the fellowship, so I decided that I’d become a writer, which was really good because I wasn’t a very good actor. But it wasn’t until 1997, when I wrote a play called Molly’s Delicious, that I really started to have a career. In between I did all kinds of crazy things. I worked in a fish store; I worked at a hotel development company; I was a fund-raiser for a camp for children with AIDS; and I was a minister. All of those things helped me as a writer, because you have to be out in the world doing something. You can’t just sit and write, or else you get real solipsistic real quick. How I’ll manage to continue that process out in L.A. I’m not sure, but I’ll have to be doing more than just writing.

“I’m going to be one of the writers for Six Feet Under on HBO. The job came about because I wrote a play called Orange Flower Water. The Jungle Theater staged it in July, and my agent told me that if I wanted to get movie or TV work, I could use that play as a work sample. The executive producer for Six Feet Under liked me and passed the script on to Alan Ball, the creator of the show. Then they flew me out for a second interview, and gave me the job. They’ve got me watching tapes of the show now. I’m slightly daunted, but just enough that it’s healthy.

“I’m going to miss living in Minneapolis. I’m going to miss Al’s. I’m going to miss the snow. And my friends. And the Jungle Theater. But I’ve written a lot of plays recently, and over the next twelve months I’ll have four world premieres. That’s enough plays. It’ll be fun to take a break and work in a different medium, and I think Six Feet Under is definitely a matrix in which I can operate successfully. It deals with mortality and spirituality, and not in a heavy-handed way. That’s something I try to do with my work as well. Writing for television means you don’t have to make the whole universe up every time. It already exists and you just have to work within it, which is a relief. Also you work with a team of people. Even though I’ll write my own episodes, other people will work on them too. It’ll be a great relief from writing plays, because it’s not all up to me. The fact that I didn’t create all of the characters is definitely going to be part of the challenge. But it’s also part of what makes it pleasant. It’s like mimicry.

“If you want to be a writer, stick with it. A lot of it is just attrition. If you just stick around long enough, and if you don’t totally suck, then you can probably make a career out of it. Even if you suck every now and then, you can still have a career. I hate all those people who get on NPR’s Fresh Air and say, ‘You have to write every day. A writer writes.’ I just don’t believe that. You should write when you want to, write when you have to. The rest of the time you should do interesting things with your life.”

—In conversation with Chuck Terhark

Paul is an affable retired orthodontist who, between firing rounds from his .45, is conscientious enough to sweep up the spent shell casings that have accumulated around his lane at Bill’s Gun Range in Robbinsdale. Two lanes down, a couple of bumbling boys just out of their teens, “first-time shooters,” as Paul describes them affectionately, have been inquiring of his expertise. “Should we shoot with one hand or both?”

“Uh, most people shoot with two,” Paul answers with minimal concern. One of the boys points the gun downrange, at a portrait of Osama bin Laden. Paul watches as he misses the target almost entirely and asks, “Mind if I shoot his eyes out?” The boy agrees and Paul, in an impressive display of marksmanship, takes out bin Laden’s eyes from 21 feet away.

Bill’s Gun Range is located in a strip mall, sharing the building with the Institute for Athletic Medicine and a U.S. Bank branch. Customers arrive in a barren fluorescent lobby with matted carpet, vending machines, and a television tuned to KTCA. A row of windows faces 16 shooting lanes, and the muffled sound of gunshots thumps beneath the conversation. Victoria, a tough-talking blonde in her mid-40s, presides, exercising an authority that tends to correct even the slightest deviation from what she terms “my range rules.” When I ask her if there are ever problems between shooters, she just smiles. “Lots of guns here, so everybody kind of behaves.”

Bill Penney, the 73-year-old owner and patriarch of the range, breaks down “everybody” as follows: gang members (“We make them toe the mark. If their pupils are wide, we send them home”), “Let’s-have-a-blast” customers (“First-timers trying to impress their dates with big guns”), dedicated shooters (“Guys who join leagues”), private security officers (“We set up accounts with companies for training”), bounty hunters (“One guy looks like Joe Pesci”), police officers, hunters, and those simply interested in self-defense.

Penney himself does not fit into any of his own categories. He is a retired Ph.D. chemical engineer with an impressive portfolio of patents. He enjoys target shooting and some hunting, but actually owns “few guns” personally. Same for Victoria, who claims to be “the oddity around here” because she only owns two guns and self-identifies as “just a mom who loves her job.”

Though Penney won’t divulge his profitability, he concedes that he runs “a good business.” It sure seems lucrative: Lane fees are $20 for a single shooter, $30 for a pair; gun rentals start at $15; traditional targets, as well as those with pictures of bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, are available for $2; ammunition starts at $5 for a box of 50 bullets. And the range sells lots of bullets. “Last year,” Penney tells me, “we recycled about twenty tons of lead.”

It’s mid-afternoon when I ask a young and affluent-looking couple if they’d be willing to talk to me. They happily oblige on the condition that they not have to divulge their names. I learn that they live on Lake of the Isles, that she’s “in marketing,” and that he’s a former musician and current photographer. A native of Kentucky, he did some sport-shooting in his youth and still enjoys indulging the interest on occasion. Today’s occasion is an antique .44 Auto Mag that he “spent a fortune” buying at a gun auction. “It’s never been fired,” he announces, and after several furtive attempts, it stays that way. The couple has more success with a .380 automatic that she self-consciously describes as having “nice lines.”

While chatting we are interrupted by a massive blast that resonates painfully through my ear protection (ear muffs allow conversational frequencies while excluding most “high-decibel events”). Everyone turns to lane seven where a middle-aged man has just fired something with a nine-and-a-half-inch barrel. I approach carefully.

“Four-eighty Ruger,” he announces before firing five rounds at yet another photo of Osama bin Laden. When I ask what he does for a living, he laughs. “Oh, I run a detox center.”

A few minutes later Paul is taking aim at his own targets when he notices a young black kid in warm-up pants, a black T-shirt, and an Oakland Raiders cap, misfiring his Glock. Paul strolls over to the younger man who, under ordinary circumstances, would be unlikely to take an interest in a 60-ish white man who used to straighten teeth in the Sons of Norway building. But the younger man seems to recognize a valuable level of expertise in the older man, and he pays careful attention as Paul demonstrates proper aiming technique. “I like to help out,” Paul tells me later, as he relaxes in the lobby with a cigar. I look out on the range and see that the younger man has benefited from the tutorial: his shots have become much more accurate. “That’s just part of the fun of coming down here,” says Paul.