Across the Great Divide

Getting There is Also Being There.

Now that I'm committed to driving the speed limit, a round trip to Door County, Wisconsin — which has great country-road biking — is just about the right length for listening to an entire book on CD.

Only one problem. The novel we found available at the library was overwritten, the main character was most unsympathetic and self-centered, and there were entirely too many romance-novel adorations of strong, muscular withers.

But since I was already doing one unfavorite thing — driving to get from point A to point B —  I challenged myself to find ways to enjoy the experience. Based on this trip and an earlier one, I've come to this realization: I'd rather listen to a bad book than ponderous one.

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The Metropolitan Council, which sets transit policy for the Twin Cities, has announced a fare increase to help cover increased fuel costs. To State Senator John Marty, that's exactly the wrong approach when the public should be encouraged to take buses and light rail.

He proposes dropping the fare to increase ridership and stimulate demand for new routes and greater frequency.

The Met Council is being timid when it should be visionary, says Marty.

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Bill Lindeke of Twin City Sidewalks is now contributing to Twin Cities Streets for People, which compiles links to stories about "people-centered mobility" and welcomes reader contributions about local placemaking, biking, walking and urban living. Let's hope he brings the site more of his visual approach to city appreciation.

Here's a link to a story in the Park Bugle that profiles two St. Anthony Park bike commuters. Advice from one:

Start slowly. Don’t assume that you can start out commuting both ways, five days a week, blizzard or shine. Don’t tell yourself when you start that you’re going to do the whole thing at full speed every single day. Try taking the bus to work (with your bike on the front rack), then riding home. Do practice commutes so you know how long it takes and whether you’ll need a change of clothes or a shower when you get there. Don’t expect a quick and easy transition. After a lifetime of getting in a car every morning, it was hard for me to make this change, so go easy on yourself and work up to your goal gradually. A slow start is better than a quick burnout. But most of all, enjoy it! There is so much to see when you’re riding your bicycle.

I've been planning to add profiles as a regular feature here  to show the diversity of riders and to demystify commuting a bit.

In fact, if you're a cycling commuter willing to submit to a Q&A about your ride, you can download this questionnaire  and send it to me. Look for the first profile in a day or so.

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Speaking of Twin City Sidewalks, Bill posted an empty sign awhile back and quizzed readers about its location. This one will be easy to ID for at least one blogger I know, but for others, its stainless steel blankness raises the question — who will step in to fill this void?

The Book of Forgetting.

I left behind the book I was reading in Colorado. It was a big book, a desultory one. It did not seem to matter if I picked it up again a month later when I was scheduled to return.

After all, Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, about a book dealer who tries to recover his lost memory by rediscovering the pulpy literature of his youth, was subtitled: The Book of Forgetting.

I remember when the book came out, deciding not to buy it. Though I was intrigued by its inclusion of colored illustrations from vintage books and magazines and have enjoyed Eco's essays, I also remembered about eight inches of his novels residing on a shelf, unread.

But on an impulse, I picked up the paperback edition in Grand Junction from a three for the price of two sale table last fall, and began reading it in March.

Last week, I noticed a copy of the hardcover edition next to The Name of the Rose. Today, I walked up some stairs lined with more shelves, and there on one step, was another copy.

I now own three copies of the book I once decided not to buy. It was that first decision, not subsequent ones, that I recalled each time I saw the book thereafter.

Owning three copies of The Book of Forgetting gives me a pleasure I will not bother to explain.

Holiday Weekend Snips and Snipes.

Posting may be lighter and less fluent from here in the coming weeks, More like this...

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I noted the blog of Johnny Northside shortly after it launched. He's a grad student who bought a bargain/abandoned/abused property in North Minneapolis and has been very active in trying to help turn the neighborhood around. Naturally, I thought of him when I read this Star Tribune story about evictions at a problem building and figured he'd have a somewhat different point of view. He did.

Liberals (it's the system) and conservatives (it's criminals) alike could use a more nuanced and granular view of issues involved in Northside living. Johnny delivers, with stories like this.

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Mississippifarian metaphorically looks down an aisle of Wal-Mart, and doesn't see the same benign effect of cheap consumer goods that Steven "Freakanomics" Leavitt claims helps moderate the growing income gap between rich and poor.

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I keep hoping to see a Minneapolis cop riding one of those neeto-keeno T3 personal mobility vehicles that the Strib announced with a rewritten product datasheet. Jalopnik has the more appropriate
story, I think.

We've seen the T3 Motion before, and the law enforcement version may look cool in this video, but we assure you it's impossible to not look like a dork on one. So if you live in Minneapolis and are a police officer, prepare to look like a dork. Sure you'll be able to drive up to 25 MPH and run all day on just 11 cents of juice, tower over crowds, and get into tight spots a cruiser never could, but even bike cops will laugh at you. Plus it costs the city $10,000 so you're even going to out-nerd the Segway drivers.

If you want to be cool, fast and intimidating, bag the chariot and keep the horses.

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Charles R. Black Jr., the senior adviser to Republican John McCain whose work for foreign dictators has led Democrats to call for his ouster, is not the only lobbyist in the family volunteering on the senator from Arizona's presidential campaign.

His wife, Judy Black, is a national co-chair of the fundraising group "Women for McCain," and she has a vibrant lobbying practice that includes a foreign client and several companies with business before the Senate Commerce Committee, where McCain is a senior member.

— Washington Post

Judy Bergman Black was a high school classmate of mine. She and Charlie came to our 40th reunion last year. We didn't get a chance to talk, as they only attended the dinner and hung at the back while I announced a newly discovered set of class prophecies that had projected 40 years in the future.

Black, who was named Biggest Brown-noser by the Class of 1967, was "predicted" to hold the same honor in 2007. In some quarters, I guess that could also be interpreted as Most Likely to Succeed.

And, no, I wasn't forecast as Most Likely to be an Asshole.

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And the New York Times soothes my fevered brain.

When older people can no longer remember names at a cocktail party, they tend to think that their brainpower is declining. But a growing number of studies suggest that this assumption is often wrong.

Instead, the research finds, the aging brain is simply taking in more data and trying to sift through a clutter of information, often to its long-term benefit.

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Finally, here's a workout video for candidates who need to disavow knowledge of inconvenient associations with lobbyists and their clients.

 

Ordering Italian.

At dinner last night a long-lost friend asked what we were reading. My domestic partner had a really good, well-rounded answer: The Omnivore's Dilemma, The End of Poverty and Death's Jest Book.

What about you?

I knew he meant on paper. I'm reading a zine, I said.

A what?

For Bill Brown's sake, I should've given a better explanation than I did.

So my first theory is that you can tell what a society really values by the stuff that it keeps cheap. It's the stuff that's important enough that anyone can afford it. Cappuccinos in Italy, for instance, or vodka in Russia, or double cheeseburgers in the U.S. Cheap stuff is what a society doesn't consider luxuries but staples. Baguettes in Paris. Pizza slices in Naples. Bagels in Montreal. The inverse of my theory alsop applies: if you can't affort the price of a cup of coffee in a Parisian cafe, for instance, then maybe cafe culture is not as important to the Parisians as people claim it is. Sergio is silent. "But everything in Paris is overpriced," he finally says.

My second theory — okay, it's actually an observation — has to do with the Metro. I ask Sergio if he's ever noticed the litttle warning signs stuck to the doors of the Paris subway. The signs warn in different languages not to lean against the door.

I've noticed that the Italian version is always followed by an exclamation point. The French and German versions aren't. Neither is the English version. I wonder if this is some kind of cultural stereotyping, as if the only way to get an Italian to pay attetnion is to yell at them, or make a crazy hand gesture. The indicative is okay for everyone else, but the imperative is reserved for Italians. I ask Sergio if he thinks this is offensive. He shrugs.

"No, it's true."

— Bill Brown, Dream Whip No. 14

Sometimes You Make a Difference.

I've taken a break from reading stuff about taxes, economic development and who's tried on tribal costumes, but even my fun reading draws me back to politics.

'Zines may seem to be the polar opposite of white papers on education and transportation policy, but they can also offer a potent reminder of why any of this politics stuff matters.

A few days ago, I read Call for Reservations, an account of working as a housekeeper at a Super 8 Motel in Stillwater, Minnesota, that was used in part by the county for transitional housing. Elizabeth Belz is an artist who has lived Nickled and Dimed for real, and she exposes aspects of motel life you'd probably rather not know.

Now, I'm halfway through On Subbing, an expanded collection of Dave Roche's 'zines documenting four years as a Substitute Special Needs Educational Assistant.

Roche was a punk rocker who, as one reviewer put it, spent a brief time in the "thrift store clerk industry" before signing on as a classroom aide in the Portland, Oregon, schools. He worked as a sub, which meant he had brief assignments in a wide variety of schools.

What makes his stories so compelling is that he worked with the kids who are on the absolute fringes of the system — the behavior problem kids, kids with retardation or severe physical disabilities, homeless kids, very few of whom would fit the definition of students.

It's a harrowing and heartbreaking picture, as Roche describes the barriers some of his charges face. Two boys are abandoned by their mother in a homeless shelter. When some of his medically fragile kids go home, it's to a hospital. Changing a diaper or keeping a boy calm might be all he gets accomplished in a day.

Mostly, he retains his empathy and his humor. After one frustrating day he reminds himself, "I'm getting paid to play with Duplos." Though not paid very much.

He's inspired by a one-on-one assignment with an "awesome and super cheerful" boy who's paralyzed from the neck down, and considers the school's offer to take the open position to be his regular aide. But it's only for half days, and though he tries to work it out, the school can't give him hours for the rest of the day. He leaves feeling guilty, but heeding the holes in his shoes and his empty stomach. He can't live on the part-time work.

 

Unlike the kind of poignant Hallmark snapshots political candidates haul out for Message: We Care, 'zines like Belz's and Roche's preserve raw emotions and offer gritty realities.

It's easy enough for progressives to stand for some sort of idealized social services without appreciating how damned difficult the work is and how little apparent effect some of it might have. For conservatives who see social services as a waste of money, I'd ask them to read Roche and then ask for their solutions. It's difficult to see how vouchers and privatizing education would lead to any better outcomes for these kids.

A commenter on the publisher's site put it pretty well.

There are no To Sir With Love/Dangerous Minds moments when he realizes that he can truly make a difference in the lives of these needy children. Sometimes Dave makes a difference. Sometimes he gets kicked in the balls.

With each new class, it could go either way. Which is not to say that the book isn’t inspiring. I fully admit to tearing up when I read Dave’s account of asking all his friends to shoplift supplies for a severely underfunded school. When his lightfingered crowd comes through and provides the school with necessities like markers, paper, and Spanish/English dictionaries, Dave leaves the goods in the staff room with a note saying only, “Here are some gifts from the punks.”

I found both these books in the Studio Shop at Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Big Brain comics, right down the street, is a superb source for more of this subversive but also affirming work.

Buffalo Bill, Celebrity Developer.

He was so full of himself that he identified the state’s interests with his own, and important state officers came to accept this identification.

Who could that be?

Arnold Schwarzenegger's relationship with California and Donald Trump's with New York are good guesses, but it's not them. General Motors CEO Charlie Wilson had his eye on what was good for America, not Michigan.

Acquitted stock manipulator turned Alabama evangelist Richard Scrushy and  Bill Cooper, before he lit out for the tax-free territories, aren't nearly grandiose enough. And providing links means they aren't  household-word enough, anyway.

Kevin Costner in South Dakota? He's a pale imitation of the original imitation — Buffalo Bill Cody.

Cody was America's first celebrity and probably the best advertised name in the world at the time his Wild West Show took to feeding Americans a comforting myth about its conquest of the west. He was a double impostor who aspired to turn his iconic image as an heroic frontiersman into status as a capitalist of   consequence.

Robert E. Bonner's book, William F. Cody's Wyoming Empire: The Buffalo Bill Nobody Knows, deals with Cody's concerted but ineffectual quest to develop his own corner of Wyoming. His enterprises were doomed by his lack of real business skill or follow-through, exacerbated by his rock star travel schedule and his choice of the arid Big Horn Basin as the place he would will his empire into being.

In later years, Cody's grip grew even weaker as the government bureaus he sought to exploit moved from political patronage to professional management, and real businessmen backed by serious capital rode in with the rails.

Some disclosure is in order. Professor Bonner is a friend who grew up in a prosaic town downstream from Cody, Wyoming. We are both sons of the canal, which means we take a greater-than-average interest in water and land development in unpromising places.

We also share an inbred suspicion of Music Men and flim flammers, but with an appreciation for their ability to make something out of nothing — an acutely valuable skill in many parts of the west.

Cody was not a con artist so much as a show business artist, with emphasis on the show, not the business. Anyone who has attended a  certain type of CEO or celebrity will recognize the manic leader Bonner portrays — conjuring  facts out of thin air, demanding the impossible, believing to imagine something is to accomplish it, and causing the very disorganization and dysfunction of which he complains.

Cody's canals, which make up much of Bonner's history, did not hold water — a fitting metaphor for most of his entrepreneurial dreams. He also poured money from the Wild West Show into land sales, roads and town building; livery and public transit; outfitting and explorer clubs; hot springs, gold, timber, oil and coal exploitation; newspapering; hotels; and ranching. He even promoted a military college that never broke ground except in his mind and a promotional brochure.

For Buffalo Bill, posturing, inflated claims and appeals to the imagination were the way to do business. But Cody the coal man's "well-advertised claim that the coal was first class could not make it burn hot."

Edward Bernays is credited with inventing modern public relations, but Cody deserves recognition as the pioneer who elevated press agentry from simply promoting his entertainments to personal myth making — and then to advancing his commercial interests. He was a brand name in buckskin.

Though his show made him rich enough to put him with East Coast aristocrats, Cody sought to earn their company on a higher footing. In this respect, he prefigured today's calculating and self-inflating celebrities, particularly Schwarzenegger the body builder and Trump the bankrupt developer.

In an interview with American Heritage, Bonner sees another parallel.

He kept his face before the public, and by that time he had built such a triumphal myth around himself that there was probably little room for people in general to attach any idea of these failures to his familiar form on horseback. He had made a place for himself in a comfortable version of American history. Nobody wanted to have their visions of him complicated by facts that might have pointed elsewhere. Our modern-day experience of Ronald Reagan might be somewhat similar.

Unlike actor Reagan or figurehead oilman/developer/baseball exec/rancher George W. Bush, Cody was a genuine sharpshooter before he became a sharpster. Perhaps his only lasting lasting impact on the Wyoming economy is his invention of tourist outfitting, which still provides a good living for the like of men never seen east of the Dakotas.

Bonner is a fine writer, but his subject is probably too narrow for readers without a stake in the west or an interest in western history. He purposely avoids the well-documented Wild West side of Cody to tell a less celebrated tale of attempts to settle public lands.

It ends with corporate interests and eastern capital opening much of the west and sweeping aside, if need be, the rugged individualists who are enshrined in western mythology — whether they were dry dirt farmers or the most famous man in the world.

British Press Helped Hitler. Who Benefits from a Cautious Press Today?

Chamberlain was particularly incensed by allegations that he was becoming authoritarian. Once, trembling and pale with fury, he summoned [James Margach, The Sunday Times correspondent] and a few other top political reporters to Downing Street to complain about some such attack. "I tell you that I'm not dictatorial, I'm not intolerant, I'm not overpowering!" the prime minister shouted as he repeatedly pounded the table. "You're all wrong, wrong, wrong, I tell you! I'm the most relaxed and understanding of people! None of you, I insist, must ever say I'm dictatorial again!"
– Lynne Olson, Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England

Olson's book has a revealing chapter on how the British media totally bent over to ignore Hitler, in support of Neville Chamberlain's policy of appeasement. The behavior of the British press in the late 1930's sounds familiar to me — although I imagine today's neo-cons howling for war would see a different parallel.

A few points from the book:

• The minds of the British people "had not been prepared either by the Government or by the press  to accept the idea that any imminent danger existed"

• People were starved for information about the growing interational crisis, but were told nothing by the press about the nation's "deplorable state of rearmament or the divisions within the government" over Chamberlain's policy

• The government didn't directly censor the press, but it did limit which officials could speak to the press and fought to contain any leaks, while cultivating key correspondents with flattering insider — but off the record — chats with the prime minister

• It didn't need censorship, because it could rely on the press to censor itself. Many of the more prominent journalists considered themselves "honorary members of the a power establishment and ex-officio members of the political system" who went along with the government line

• Press ownership was strongly aligned with party loyalties; this was reinforced by the old boy social and personal networks of the elite; they had little sympathy for the role of newspapers as a government watchdog

• Even the anti-appeasement owners were concerned that bad news from the continent would be bad for  business.

Publishers don't really print stories to sell newspapers. They print newspapers to sell advertising. That was too true in England pre-WWII and it's becoming more apparent in the U.S. today.

The Bookman Goeth.

As a writer, bookseller, marketer and book lover, I've crossed paths with Brian Baxter numerous times over the years — dating back to the early 1970s when I worked in a B. Dalton with the woman who'd marry him. Brian was a breeze of bookish glee then and nothing has dimmed his impact — especially with he's in a roomful of books.

This article captures the high points of his career and the video conveys some of his charm. Nothing is likely to replace him.

Sadly, there are fewer stores and many fewer booksellers of the Baxter sort. It's positively painful for me to enter a chain bookstore today knowing my request for help will be met with a blank look followed by a fruitless trek to a computer screen.

Selling anything but best sellers today has largely become a matter of who has the best on-line algorithms.

If I sound like an old fart lamenting the loss of the good old days, so be it. But once upon a time, going to a book store was as fun for me as going to a great neighborhood bar.

Now one of the community's great bartenders is retiring and I'm buying books from a vending machine.

More Cheery Reading From the Holiday Bookshelf.

In Catching the Big Fish: Meditation, Consciousness, and Creativity, filmmaker David Lynch calls depression and anger the Suffocating Rubber Clown Suit of Negativity:

It's suffocating, and that rubber stinks. But once you start meditating and diving within, the clown suit starts to dissolve. You finally realize how putrid was the stink when it starts to go. Then, when it dissolves, you have freedom.

Anger and depression and sorrow are beautiful things in a story, but they're like poison to the filmmaker or artist. They're like a vice grip on creativity.

No, I'm not inhaling acrid latex, but I think the rest of this suit could use dry cleaning.

Where is Hope When the World is Flattened?

Cormac McCarthy's The Road was probably not the ideal pre-holiday read, but I wolfed it down in one sitting.

The novel describes a journey through a blasted nuclear winterscape that is geographically, politically and culturally nonspecific. Few details suggest the country through which a father and son walk on their way to the sea because few familiar details remain. It may be the land formerly known as America, but how, why or where scarcely matter.

The world is flattened.

All creatures save humans appear to be extinct. Not even flies put in an appearance to make life more miserable for the few remaining.

Books, electronics, beauty and gold are irrelevant here. Even music, stories and religion have been cast off. Canned foods are the dwindling sacrament of survival, shoes the precious vestment. Luck, wary ruthlessness and low-rent, MacGyver-like scavenging skills may be all that still separate the living from the dead.

All shelter is temporary unless you can defend it, and because neither blood nor clan ties hold up well in the face of hunger, it's best to keep moving or become a source of protein.

One truck makes a brief sputtering appearance; the rest are useless carcasses of a previous age. A shopping cart is valuable, but only as long as you can find something worth carrying.

Worth carrying means it is something you can eat, use to keep warm or use to kill.

So why did I wrap the book and put it under the tree for my son?

Because one other thing matters in the tale more than bullets, road maps, cunning and canned peaches.

Love.