Happy Thanksgiving from "Up North"

Thanksgiving is considered a winter holiday in Minnesota—especially in those years where winter is already in full force by Halloween. This year has been fairly normal, weather-wise; no significant snow yet, but it was a brisk 10 degrees this morning with a stiff breeze. All of which makes it all the more amusing to hear the answers I get to a brief exercise in holiday friendliness at the office.

During a morning greeting to colleagues  this morning, I asked an ordinary question: "Is your family traveling anywhere for Thanksgiving?"And surprisingly often, considering that Minneapolis is already the northern-most significant city in the continental US, you get the following answer:

"We're heading Up North."

If the football game on television is lousy, this is how they
spend the lazy hours after Thanksgiving dinner "up north."  

In our land, Up North as as a destination is a proper noun. It's evidence of our heritage as a rural, wilderness culture that quaint little Minneapolis—where you may well see black bears and wolves, and even the occasional moose within the metro area on occasion—is too southern, too metropolitan for most people when they have time off. "Up North" is where so many of us prefer to spend spare weekends and holidays. This is especially ironic to witness in the heart of the cold seasons, when rational people would do everything in their power to head south to warmth if they had the chance. Here, though, if they can't escape to "Up North," citizens at the very least will head outdoors on bitter winter weekends to get in a little snow-shoeing or cross-country skiing, or snow-mobiling (peppermint schnapps or hot buttered rum in thermos jugs is mandatory), or to drill two-foot deep holes in solid lake ice in order to fish (photo, above).

This is what Thanksgiving looks like in the boyhood land of the
Geezers, located in subtropical southern Minnesota

It's quite nuts, and I, for one, am not partaking. My family will be heading south, thank you very much.  A whopping 60 miles to the south, to the place where all the namesake Geezers of these pages were raised. And while in this tropical southern paradise, we'll spend the night after Christmas shivering around bonfires on the streets of our tiny town, watching local damsels parade on floats in thin tights, accompanied by sheriff deputies and civic officials in convertibles and on hay wagons,  while breathing clouds of chilled vapor into the night air while awaiting the ceremonial lighting of the town's Christmas light pageantry.

Nope. None of that Up North stuff for me.

Happy Thanksgiving y'all, from, and to, Geezers everywhere.

A Headline Says it All

This morning in my local newspaper, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, a headline spoke volumes to me:

"Fewer State Kids are Uninsured."

Minnesota's transition to life under the Affordable Care Act has been smoother than many, albeit by no means easy. We have a good share of bugs in the on-line enrollment system. But unlike many states, we opted for a state-managed system early on, modeling it somewhat along the lines of Massachusett's long-standing system. Hence, we've avoided the debacle of the federal system, and are well on our way to a workable process.

There have been a good many complaints, of course, not the least of which is that costs to individuals very widely, depending on where you live within the state and on the nature of the insurance you currently held. I know of a few people whom will likely have to unwillingly change from private insurance to the pool system. And some folks who live in outstate regions pay considerably more than similar folks in metro areas, since the size of the pool is notably smaller in smaller communities. It's not an ideal rollout of the healthcare system, at all. But these people seem to be outweighed by the people who seem more or less pleased by the rates and the quality of policy that will be seeing in the new system. I have friends who had been privately insuring who tell me that their transition to the new pool will be quite beneficial. But the real advantage is in headlines like this one:

"Fewer State Kids Are Uninsured"

Minnesota is not a large state in terms of population, and it's true that even now, some 68,000 kids remain without health insurance. But it's a demonstrable fact 16,000 kids more kids have health insurance today who didn't have it a year ago, before the Affordable Care Act went into effect. Projections say that we'll cut into this by similar margins over the next three years.

I by no means suggest that Obamacare is perfect, or even that it's a  good system. It's far from good.  With legitimate bi-partisan collaboration, we'd sure have winded up with something far, far better. But at a time when prevailing practice and legislation seemed heartlessly unwilling to bring any kind of regulation or control to health care costs, surely this has to be better than the alternative headlines we were headed to.

Even the reasonable critics of Obamacare must see some virtue to a reversal of  annual headlines reading "More Kids Uninsured."

Spring in New Zealand

No time for elaborate commentary, but here are today's shots from our vacation on the northeast coast of New Zealand. 

Old Dogs, Old Tricks

—this piece was written quite some time ago, but I've held it back from publication, afraid, I think, that some of the Geezers would be unable to handle the sentimentality—Mercurious

I spent the weekend in Washington DC with four old friends I've known since I was 12, 13 years old. We went to junior high and high school together, stood up for one another at our weddings to high school sweethearts, watched our children grow up, progressed in careers together, and one day in the future we'll be considering how and when to support one another after heart attacks or at funerals.

This particular DC gathering represented a large segment of the group with whom I have played a ceremonial Christmas-time game of Monopoly since 1972. For 37 years, I've grown older with these guys over Monopoly played on the very same board. In 1972 we were shaggy headed, bearded, and some of us stridently liberal. These were Monopoly games of a peculiar intensity. At times, the negotiating of real estate between rolls of the dice has been measured in hours. (I'm not kidding about this.) In recent years, though, we've sometimes flown in to a host city from far-flung regions to join the game, since we're somewhat scattered to the globe now.

Today, there is considerably less hair on some of us, but the beards or mustaches persist on several, and these days we argue health care reform rather than US involvement in Vietnam. A bit more honest conservatism has crept in, although a short while back Obama snared even the single acknowledged Republican among us. 

Over the course of these three recent days in DC, I was struck by the fact that each one of us had changed, and yet we're still largely the same fellows we were as boys of 16. We have surely mellowed and refined somewhat. It's as though time, like a steady wind, has carved us into unique shapes that still bear the imprint of the original. Dr. Golf is still by far the classiest among us, the Meistro is still the somewhat eccentric dreamer and musical whiz, the Professor retains the common-sense bombast for which he was once justly famous.  The Mathematician is family-guy personified, as well as sports expert without peer. If my pals were asked, I'd imagine they still see in me some of the same edgy cynic I always was.

It did please me, though, to realize that we had all been improved favorably by time—in character, if not in waistline. We have all enjoyed success in career and especially in family. It is an unusual group of  well educated and highly opinionated men, but as a group I saw that in middle age we have grown more tolerant and less arrogant than we were in the old days. At least that's what I felt about my friends; I'd like to think I've moved a little bit that way, too. I will admit, though, that a couple of times this weekend, sheer sentiment led me to think that I'm not quite worthy of friends this fine.

What I have always loved about this group of guys is the quality of the conversation. In the old days, we would gather together each summer in the week before going back to college, holing up at a northern Minnesota fishing resort to drink copious amounts of beer and argue politics and religion until dawn each and every day. Today, we drink Manhattans and Scotch and fine tequila and bourbon,  but the quality of the conversation is, if anything, better than ever. On the metro subway back out of downtown at 2:00 am early Sunday morning, the debate among five middle-aged gentlemen wearing ties and coats, was over whether Huckleberry Finn and the musical Finnegan's Rainbow were indeed racist in the time they were created, or were instead meant as social commentaries even as they were written. I daresay such a conversation rarely happens on that subway at 2:00 am.

This is now, and always has been, a very competitive group of gentlemen. Over the weekend, we played several rounds of games on playing boards that are yellowed and faded with age, with pieces made of old-time wood, not modern plastic. While I came out on the short end of two games of Risk, the outcome was different in the game that truly matters.

I kicked ass in Monopoly.

Saturday in the Countryside

I'm a country boy who is now perfectly at home in the city, but one drawback of the city is that it encourages you to dwell mostly in your head. By the end of last week, I was checking my 401K balances twice a day, and was fuming about lies being spoken by political candidates. Then I suddenly awoke and realized that I had been deluded into believing that the stock market was a real thing rather than a useful fiction created by greedy people, that politics is meaningful, and I knew it was time to hit the country.

Minnesota is a fabulous place, because you are never more than a few minutes from genuine, unspoiled countryside. State Parks, National Forests and Parks, State Wildlife preserves abound in these parts —there are more than 200 in Minnesota. I live in the heart of Minneapolis, but six miles from my house is Fort Snelling State Park, where there are 20 miles of trails meandering along the Minnesota River Valley flood plain. Even in the middle of the city, you can sometimes see whitetail deer, coyotes, fox, and wild turkey.

This weekend, it was William O'Brien State Park that was my destination. O'Brien is located about 30 miles northwest of Minneapolis, on the river bluffs of the St. Croix river that forms the border of Minnesota and Wisconsin. This part of Minnesota is unique, in that it is one of the few areas of the Midwest that were not scoured by glaciers during the last ice age. As a result, it is filled with limestone bluffs of prehistoric vintage. Driving through this part of Minnesota, you are reminded of the segments of France where neanderthals created the famous cave paintings—that's how old the landscape is.

It's a little-known secret that appreciating natural landscapes is best done on cloudy, even rainy days. While sunny autumn days have more brilliant colors, the muted pallet of a rainy autumn day is artistic in a way that defies description. You see more on a misty day, where subtlety reigns.

It has been a late fall here in Minnesota, and as a result the autumn colors, even at this late date, are a mixture of many shades of green along with the yellows and reds and oranges of traditional fall. The forests here are a mixture of conifers and hardwoods, but the predominant species are birch, oak, maple and ash, which means that reds, yellows and oranges are the predominant colors. The most vibrant color now, though, comes from the grape ivy creeping up the sides of trees, and the sumac that fills the transition zones between the hardwood forests and the open prairies that cover the tops of the hills.

The woods were pretty much deserted; campgrounds were empty, and I passed only two other hikers all day long. It was ideal, because solitude is what most restores my spirit. It not really much of a hike, at least the way I would have defined it 10 or 20 years ago, because the tails are wide and smooth and well groomed, and not all that demanding. Still, when I tallied up the distances between checkpoints on the map at the end of the day, I found that I had put in a good 6 miles of strong up and down walking, punctuated by lengthy stretches spend sitting and meditating.

That night, soothing pleasantly tired legs in front of the fireplace as I ate homemade chili, I realized that the day's prescription had pretty much cured my current ailment.

For the moment, anyway, I didn't give a damn about the stock market, or about mayoral politics.

So Happy Together...

Around Christmas time, it's common for our now grown kids to hover around the house in the evenings. I'm one of those fellows who retires for the evening very early, and it's common for me to head for the bedroom when my son, his girlfriend, their dog, my college-aged daughter and one or two of her friends, and my wife to all be watching a video movie together in the family room while I head off for bed.

I do this with some deliberateness, as there is nothing so happy-making for me as the sensation of laying quietly in bed and listening to the happy chatter of this family of mine off in a nearby room. It gives me the sensation of having created something of value that now nurtures me. And it provides with a sense of connectedness that is not all that common for me.

I am by nature a pretty introverted person, a quality that probably arose in me originally out of a need to protect myself from people who could be angry and cruel. It's rather ingrained in me, and to this day I never feel quite so free as when I'm entirely alone and don't have to worry about other people needing me or being critical in some way. 

But that protective measure, though it may prevent some measure of unhappiness, also compromises my happiness, because it's quite clear that being connected to other people is crucial to the human experience of happiness. Though I often very much want to be alone, I would be quite miserable if I ever truly got my wish. 

But what a delightful thing to lay in bed with a satisfied fatigue, knowing that the shelter I've provided offers a place for my family to enjoy themselves and their friends together. The happiness I know as I fall asleep is the happiness of connectedness. 

Hard to be a Saint in the City

The world of serious vice in downtown Minneapolis contains itself, with great self-discipline, to five blocks of Hennepin Avenue from about Second street on the north side, to Seventh on the south.  During the working day, this little neighborhood neatly represents a niche between much different worlds.

A block to the west are most of the night-time music clubs, which draw in hundreds of young adults from the suburbs, looking to escape their ticky-tack world for something real. (One of our suburbs is actually called "Eden Prairie;" no wonder they're eager to eat from the tree of knowledge.)  These well-to-do child tourists might drink at the clubs, but for more serious criminal activity late at night, they'll move a over to Hennepin, if they dare.

A single block to the east from Hennepin is the ever so genteel Nicollet mall, which overwhelmingly caters to the busy folks wearing suits and business skirts. It is the world of Macy's and Nieman Marcus. The folks who shop here will do almost anything to avoid Hennepin, just steps away. Some business men, though, do slink over here later at night.

Hennepin, though, belongs to the fringe citizens of downtown, not the business and department store crowds. Though fairly civilized in the daytime, it's here that most of the gritty downtown action occurs later on at night. It's for this reason that the downtown police precinct office is located just a block away, because if there is a shooting or a major drug deal or a hooker related stabbing, it will most likely be near Hennepin sometime after 2:00 am.

It also is the major thoroughfare for the metro bus lines during the day.On days when I work late and catch a southbound bus at 6:00 or later, Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis is well along its transformation from a center for commerce to a center for the vices. You are starting to get a hint at what the avenue will look like later in the evening.

The indigenous Hennepin folks do wander about the rest of downtown during the workday, but you think of them differently when you pass them while walking at lunch. Then, you might see an occasional homeless person. Or, a fetchingly attractive young woman in jeans and carefully done hair, who you might guess is an exotic dancer. Not often, but occasionally, you might see a "lady of the evening" making her daylight errands. Unlike the exotic dancers, many of whom look like slightly needy college girls who stayed up too late the night before, the hard-core working girls wear their high heels and lots of makeup and a much harder facial expression all day long, even when running errands to Target. You will also see down-on-their-luck people, crack heads and schizophrenics pan-handling with cardboard signs printed with misspelled pleas for help in sharpie markers stolen from Target. One fellow is at least honest: "Need money for a beer," his sign says.

At six o'clock the tide begins to turn, though, as the workers head for home in the outer neighborhoods or the suburbs, and the street folks head back for Hennepin proper to reclaim their positions. By 7:00, the downtown bars have propped their doors open and the sidewalk smoking lounges are beginning to fill. The strip clubs are beginning to blare music, and sidewalk hawkers are beginning to loosen up and talk to the beat cops beginning to stroll. A few folks are beginning to enter the bars after work.

Though gritty, it is not a particularly dangerous world—at least not yet. In fact, this world has its own strange charm, for the neon signs remind you of old time Las Vegas or Atlantic City, and the tone is pretty much one of tolerance for all human frailties. Custodians sometimes hose off the streets before the night crowds assembled, and the wet concrete reflects the neon light in expressionistic murals. The late office workers at the bus stops mingle easily with drug pushers and hookers, because we all recognize one one another and no one is afraid. In the early evening, the streets still belong to both worlds, and I rather imagine the street people are quite happy to be seen as they truly are: hookers and pushers and strippers and cripples and hustlers and drunks.

At the bus stop one night, a hooker sauntered up to a beat cop leaning up against brick wall of Augie's nightclub . "Hey, Bobby," she said to the cop, clearly an long-time acquaintance. "Are the Republicans back in town, or what?" she said. "Look at all the fuckin' bankers still downtown at 7:00 on a Monday night."

She was talking about the rest of us, waiting for the bus to take us out of downtown. To the downtowners, we're all "bankers."