One Year at the Loft: Executive Director Britt Udesen tackles some lofty issues

Article and photos by Susan Schaefer

Last year, as The Loft Literary Center turned 40, so did Minnesota native, Britt Udesen. Together, they shared a birthday and a merger of sorts as Udesen stepped into the very big shoes of her popular predecessor, Jocelyn Hale, as executive director of the nationally recognized literary center.

This is a year where much new blood has been infused into major Twin Cities’ cultural establishments, as with Sarah Rasmussen’s ascendency as artistic director at the Jungle Theater (see my Mill City Times’ profile from March 6, 2016) to Joseph Haj replacing Joe Dowling at the venerable Guthrie Theater. Taking over the top spot in any organization can be daunting, but particularly when the organization and the individual have enjoyed high profile status.

Loft executive director, Britt Udesen, flooded in sunlight

From her sundrenched corner office, a keffiyeh style scarf twined high around her neck, vintage black-rimmed banker’s eyewear propped on her youthful face, Udesen, who looks every bit the role of a cultural non-profit executive, shared reflections on her first year at the Loft’s helm.

“Taking over after Jocey was one of the more daunting parts of the job,” she admits. “She was an exemplary ED and a force in the community. One of the kindest things she did for me, and for the Loft, was to plan out her departure with both the staff and the board.”

Udesen, who was actively recruited for the job from the Cabin literary center in Boise, Idaho, was the Loft’s hands down winner in a wide-ranging search. Known for having encouraged collaborative programs with other artistic organizations during her two-and-a-half-year tenure at the Cabin, I suggest introducing her to Rasmussen, who embraces collaboration and actively seeks more diversity and inclusion in her dramatic work at the Jungle. She nods to the idea.

Speaking of inclusion and diversity, I’m curious as to how Udesen is going to tackle this thorny issue – diversification– that has dogged the Loft’s historic rarified base. Back in 1993, then-Loft program director Carolyn Holbrook quit, stating there were too many roadblocks to making the Loft more diverse. More recently Holbrook has acknowledged that the Loft has tried doing things better for diverse populations. In fact, she has returned to serve as a mentor.

Indeed, the Loft, with a budget of over $2 million, has a storied history forged over many years, dating back to the humble Dinkytown Book Loft over Marly Rusoff’s bookstore in the 1970s. It has hosted such luminaries as Robert Bly, Patricia Hampl and Garrison Keillor, among many others, enjoying a great reputation with world-class publishers and authors alike. Yet, this very provenance still causes some ‘elitist’ perception problems in an increasingly diverse literary scene. Udesen faces the challenge of serving the Loft’s core mission while opening its doors to the vibrant wider communities that have long since made the Twin Cities their home.

Udesen alludes to new programming that will address this critical gap, particularly by diversifying the teaching core. She echoes Holbrook who once stated that all organizations “have a culture and it takes time to change that culture.”

It’s not only the books that are dog-eared at the Loft!

Key to changing any culture begins internally. A first step, she states, is “that we need to break down perceived barriers between departments.” Her four-legged office companion, Lou Lou, resonates with this task, ever so slightly acknowledging the work ahead with a wag of a tail. (Support from all quarters, especially hindquarters, is always helpful!)

A resident of the Bancroft neighborhood, Udesen is re-embracing the Twin Cities she once called home. She grew up in a St. Paul suburb, and partly in Duluth, a place that obviously reaches deep into her core identity.

“Even when we lived in the Twin Cities, my dad, a Duluth native, made sure I was raised with a deep love of the North Shore and the north woods,” she notes. “Every possible weekend was spent outside, under pine trees. That has stuck with me and was certainly one of the things that drew me back to the area. There are few places I know where you can access incredible arts programming, great food, and a canoe trip or a ski trail within the same few miles.”

Having graduated from Macalester, she and her dog, cat and journalist husband Matt (mentioned in that order) have more than passing familiarity with the Cities – Matt, too, attended a few years at Eden Prairie High. But, they’ve spent many years in Idaho, and as in all transitions, they are still finding their way around.

“We've been pretty busy starting new work and finding a home, so neither of us have been able to ride our bikes, make art, or go fishing as much as we would like.” It’s no secret – Udesen is an avid fisher woman!

Yet, she says she is settling in nicely – hitting her stride at work and at play. Last February, she participated in the Art Shanty program with poet Julie Strand, “and loved it. Where else can you spend the month of February on a lake, with artists?” she beams.

With the critical first year under her belt I ask what other changes we might expect from the Loft.

“The Loft is at a very exciting moment in its history. We're headed into middle age as an organization and it's time for us to look at what we do well, what we could refresh, and how we can open the doors open even wider to invite in more readers and writers.”

She acknowledges that she and staff are “very excited about the challenges ahead and hope people will notice a difference,” emphasizing that their first priority is “putting literature at the center of conversations around big ideas, while of course, continuing to offer the amazing readings, classes, events, and programs that we've always done, but reimagining how these programs might feature new voices.” 

Udesen, herself at middle age, nevertheless possesses that youthful vigor that we are seeing infused into leadership roles at many of the Twin Cities’ established cultural organizations. Such gusto is needed, and promises to invigorate a cultural landscape that otherwise could become a bit tired and musty.

Look for Udesen with trusty companion, Lou Lou, on their daily morning walks along Washington Avenue and say hello.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

Mississippi National River and Recreation Area – Our Local Treasure

Story and Photos By Susan Schaefer

A rainbow frames the author’s bird’s eye of the Central Mississippi Riverfront adjacent to the University of Minnesota

National Parks Turn 100 and Mississippi Central Riverfront is Part of the Celebration  

My real estate sits in a national park! No, I’m not isolated in some inaccessible Montana or Colorado back county requiring a four-wheeler or snowshoes.

My personal strip of riverfront is an official section of the Mississippi National River and Recreation Area, affectionately known as MNRRA (pronounced minnra), established in 1988. It’s the only national park dedicated exclusively to the Mississippi River, protecting a 72-mile, 54,000-acre corridor from the Minnesota cities of Dayton and Ramsey to just downstream at Hastings. Best of all, it includes the Central Riverfront with its abundance of nationally significant natural, historical, recreational, cultural, scenic, scientific, and economic resources.

Just last week, August 25, 2016, marked the National Park Service’s BIG 100th birthday, so I wanted to offer a pictorial tour to celebrate our national treasure located smack dab here in the Mill City area.

Every day from my perch 23 stories above the river, I marvel at this riparian splendor set in an urban location rich with history and magic. The river and riverfront evoke reverent reflection as I witness the ever-changing climate and seasons. Life here is a perpetual blessing.

And when observing from my Eagle’s Roost isn’t enough, just outside the door of my aptly named Riverview Tower, it’s easy to walk or ride for miles in either direction with this ancient rolling wonder as a watery companion.

Fog enveloping the river produces a primordial atmosphere

Ancient, Long and Rich: This Once was the Ordovician Sea!

Old Man River is fittingly named. The Mississippi River has spent at least 12,000 years carving out its trajectory. But those numbers pale in compassion to its greater geologic provenance – 450 million years ago our slice of the riverside was a part of expansive beaches of an Ordovician sea from the Paleozoic Era that covered the mid-west. Under great magnification, the sandstone cliffs that line the riverbanks along our stretch reveal lithified remains – fossils of wondrous primeval creatures and microscopic grains that have been washed clean and made perfectly round from millions of years of tidal action.

Not only ancient, our mesmerizing waterway is one of the world’s major river systems in size, habitat diversity and biological productivity. Ranking as the third longest river in North America, it flows approximately 2,350 miles from its source at Lake Itasca through the center of the continental United States to the Gulf of Mexico.

Compared to other world rivers, the Mississippi-Missouri River combination ranks fourth in length at 3,710 miles, following the 4,160 mile-long Nile, the Amazon at 4,000 miles, and the 3,964 mile-long Yangtze River.

This Park is entirely free and easily accessible

Please, come along with me for mini-tour of a short stretch of our National Park.

Running adjacent to the softball fields at the northern end of the University of Minnesota’s West Bank, just across from the Mondale Law School, 20th Avenue South joins S.1st in a steep and winding decline towards the river depositing you at the juncture of West River Road and Bohemian Flats with its bustling River Boat and canoe launch area.

The reconstructed arches of the I35 Bridge gleam on a crisp winter’s day

Heading north and up a slight incline you’ll pass under Bridge #9, then the 10th Avenue and the I35W Bridges, which sit atop of one of the now idle river lock and dams. If you veer slightly off the main path, a short trek down a little used winding footpath takes you directly under the infamous I35 Bridge, which collapsed in 2007, to the riverbank.

The “I35W Bridge Remembrance Garden” features 13 pillars in memory of each person who died in the 2007 bridge collapse and a wall inscribed: "Our lives are not only defined by what happens, but by how we act in the face of it, not only by what life brings us, but by what we bring to life. Selfless actions and compassion create enduring community out of tragic events"

A short distance from the new bridge is the memorial dedicated to the victims of the 2007 collapse of the I35W Bridge that shook Minnesota and the world. A glistening granite wall is etched with the names of the 171 survivors. The wall backs 13 towering I-beams each inscribed with the name of one of the deceased that stretch 81 feet – a symbolic tribute to the date 8/1.

The 53-meter long Guthrie Theater cantilevered bridge is a unique architectural feature providing stunning views of the Mill City, St. Anthony Falls and St. Anthony Main on the opposite bank

Continuing along the trail you’ll soon pass the architecturally unique Guthrie Theater, which is free and open to the public providing stunning views the surrounding area, not to mention excellent performances from three world-class stages.

Magical views from inside the Guthrie are all part of our urban river park

Once you’ve viewed the river from the Guthrie, it’s worthwhile to take a short jaunt below grade at the Stone Arch Bridge where another magical scene awaits you.

Beneath the curving Stone Arch Bridge lies a grotto-kingdom of former industrial ruins

For the end of this tour you’re invited to come back above to stroll across the Stone Arch Bridge.

Naturally, St. Anthony Falls is the huge attraction, but for those who seek a less known view, keep to the north side of the bridge just past the falls and look down for a storybook ending to this tour.

Looking down to the banks at northeastern edge of the Stone Arch Bridge is a scene reminiscent of a Japanese woodcut

I hope you’ve enjoyed our little tour. The wonders continue in every direction, but by now you’ve earned a respite, so check out the numerous cafés, restaurants and bars that truly set this National Park apart. If you like, please share it with your friends. We love visitors!

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

A Tale of Two Cities: Meet Lyra Baroque Orchestra’s Internationally Acclaimed Artistic Director, Jacques Ogg

Interview and photos by Susan Schaefer

Jacques Ogg artistic director of Lyra Baroque Orchestra lunches at the Birchwood Cafe

Europe’s sophistication in Minnesota

Ask most classical performers where to find the most “sophisticated audiences” and likely Europe will be the reply.

"Not so,” answers Jacques Ogg, artistic director of the Twin Cities’ Lyra Baroque Orchestra. He finds Lyra’s Minnesota audiences “robust in quality.”

The quest for such quality of appreciation is not mythical. Just this past Sunday a StarTribune front-page story cites the Minnesota Orchestra’s music director Osma Vänskä’s desire to prove their chops in front of “the sophisticated audiences of Europe.”

Luckily, the less well-known Lyra Baroque Orchestra has been providing continental classiness for Minnesotan audiences for 15 of its past 30 years under the astute leadership of Jacques Ogg, the celebrated Dutch Baroque maestro, who hails from Maastricht, the Netherlands.

Ogg not only lends his own virtuoso reputation, but regularly brings acclaimed European and global guest artists to elevate each performance.

Renowned worldwide as a soloist, conductor and ensemble performer, for years he was a member of one of the world’s leading period-instrument ensembles, the Orchestra of the 18th Century directed by the late Frans Brüggen, and has performed in Baroque orchestras in numerous other countries.

Fono Forum, Germany's largest music magazine, named Ogg’s CD of Bach's Goldberg Variations one of the finest recordings of this work, and his discography is equally impressive, including over 60 recordings with labels such as Philips, Sony, EMI, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, and Glossa.

A Renaissance on the River

Highly sought after as an instructor, Ogg is a life long harpsichord professor at the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague, one of the world’s foremost institutes for early music with students from all corners of the globe. His fame as a pedagogue takes him annually to such locations as Korea, Brazil, Spain and Argentina, to work with students who avidly seek his teaching talents.

Ogg and Destrubé introduce Baroque Instrumental Program at Ultan Hall, UMN

And now many of these students will converge upon Minneapolis annually in August to attend the international Baroque Instrumental Program, an intensive summer music course co-directed by Ogg and his longtime colleague, Canadian violinist Marc Destrubé, that attracts the best and brightest national and international students and professionals for Master’s Workshops.

Ferguson Hall, University of Minnesota School of Music

Thanks to longtime Lyra Baroque Orchestra collaborators, Immanuel Davis and Tami Morse, the program is now transplanted to the University of Minnesota’s Music School in Ferguson Hall on the West Bank. For decades this intensive program was hosted in Vancouver, Canada, but a recent change in administration sparked a relocation yielding a positive impact for the Twin Cities metro region and the university.

Early Music Cosmic Alignment

Bringing the Baroque Instrumental Program to the Twin Cities in August leverages another Early Music phenomenon – the Twin Cities Early Music Festival started by local harpsichordist Donald Livingston three years ago.

Says Ogg, “These two programs greatly benefit and enhance each other. The Twin Cities Early Music Festival is an admirable enterprise bringing together groups from near and far to present a series of concerts that compete with other international festivals. And the faculty of the Baroque Instrumental Program and many of the professional students will play concerts during the three-week extravaganza.”

Baroque Instrumental Program students perform Antonie Dornel at Ultan Hall, UMN

Baroque (approx. 1600 to 1750) composers, musicians and philosophers believed in celestial harmony and a cosmic relationship between music, mathematics and science and began writing and performing a style of music designed to serve their societies – to entertain and to elevate the senses.

Ogg’s sensibilities and talents for defining the general character of a piece, and in phrasing, articulation and ornamentation are legendary for bringing out “the emotion, the multi-faceted life of the wonderful repertoire” of this inventive age of musical development – a period know for the likes of J. S. Bach, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, and George Phillip Telemann to name a few. Lyra musicians use actual instruments (or replicas) and techniques known through scholarly documentation.

Lyra rehearses at the Baroque Room, St. Paul

“My goal is create interesting programs that touch the soul of the listener,” Ogg explains.

The exquisite acoustics and intimacy of Hamline University’s Sundin Hall, where Lyra regularly performs, combine perfectly facilitating the celestial harmonies to touch the listeners’ souls.

Childhood twist of fate

Ogg’s Maastricht childhood was not traditional due to his family’s Protestant roots. The city sits in the predominately Catholic province of Limburg which limited choices his for basic school. By happy accident his school rented rooms from a music school and so his early love of music developed due to a twist of fate.

As early as age six he stayed after school to learn from what he calls “not an exceptional but a thorough early musical education called solfège – to read and sing from notes – a French/Belgian system not learned in the north of Holland.”

From these humble roots, the young Ogg was introduced to an incomparable way of reading 17th and 18th century music that has contributed to his special talents in the field – his ability to read notations as they were written, thus making his interpretations closer to the way the music was intended.  

A second twist of fate is that his harpsichord teacher, Anneke Uittenbosch, “came from Amsterdam every week to teach in Maastricht. She was tall, lovely, elegant and I was simply awed!”

It was Anneke who was responsible for his introduction to this authentic way of reading and practicing. Jacques explains that she played according to methods that were not the standard for teaching at that time. “When you can do this,” he attests, “your playing gets more lively and telling.”

Later, Ogg moved on to the Amsterdam Conservatory from which he graduated in 1974. There another master of “playing according to the original sources” tutored him, Gustav Leonhardt. After three years with Anneke and four with Gustav, Ogg passed his exams for playing and teaching harpsichord, and thereafter, his career soared, teaching in the Dutch cities of Groningen and Hilversum, until 1977 when the director of the Royal Conservatory in The Hague called and the rest, as they say, is history.

Ladies and Gentlemen – Meet the Baroque Boys

During the past weeks, as the Baroque Instrumental Program students filled Ferguson Hall with the celestial sounds of harpsichord, flute, violins and viola de gamba, a troupe of internationally acclaimed classical virtuosos dressed more like the Beach Boys than classical maestros haunted the hallways.

The Baroque Boys: Marc Destrubé, Jacques Ogg, Jaap ter Linden, Wilbert Hazelzet

These faculty members – Marc Destrubé, violinist, Wilbert Hazelzet, flutist, and Jaap ter Linden on viola de gamba – are also prominent recurring guest stars of Lyra Baroque Orchestra and Ogg’s lifelong friends and colleagues.

Ogg met Hazelzet “when studying in Amsterdam. I worked and lived in a small museum – the wine museum!! It was a beautiful 17th century building two blocks from the Dam Square, with one 'noble room' where the wine merchants would meet once a month, and which was occasionally rented out for special classy events,” he adds with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Well, a lady celebrating her 60th birthday asked me to give a concert with a small ensemble, and she was especially fond of the flute. The week before I had heard a concert around the corner in the Waalse Kerkwhere Wilbert Hazelzet played. I found out where he lived and invited him for that 'gig'. Now we can look back on nearly 47 years of collaboration, concerts from Argentina to Seoul and innumerable places between, and about twenty CD's!”

He soon came to know Destrubé and ter Linden through the vibrant Dutch Baroque scene.

Where to find local performances throughout August

On Friday, August 19^that 8 pm, Sundin Hall, Hamline University, Lyra presents “Bach & His Heroes”, an intriguing program of music by the master, J.S. Bach, and by those whose music he admired. For the rest of the lively and reasonably priced performances through August 28^th, please check the Twin Cities Early Music Festival website.

Venture out and discover that European musical refinement resides in right in our own backyard.

Postscript: Maastricht to Minneapolis: Meeting the Maestro through Merrell

Jacques Ogg and reporter, Susan Schaefer enjoy time at the Birchwood Cafe

It was as unlikely a meeting as one could imagine.

During Easter 2008 I was living in Maastricht, the Netherlands and hosting my family for our Easter supper. It wasn’t any meal. My beloved Dutch husband, Martijn, was dying and I was desperately trying to keep myself together as I prepared for what I knew would be his last Easter. I so wanted him and his family to have a flawless experience, yet with the strain of this occasion I somehow had forgotten some vital ingredients necessitating a trip to our local supermarket, the Albert Hein.

It seemed everyone had the same idea. The Easter shopping lines seemed miles long. During those final days of Martijn’s life, I worked hard not to cry in public. Best not to make eye contact with anyone, so I stood in the long queue gazing at the floor when I noticed a pair of my favorite shoes on the feet of the person in line in front of me.

Striving to keep up my humor, in very poor Dutch I asked this person where he had purchased his shoes, and in perfect English he said, “Schuler Shoes!”

I shot back: “Miracle Mile?” And soon we were chatting and smiling about this astounding coincidence. Jacques Ogg, the man in Merrells, was the Artistic Director of Minnesota’s Lyra Baroque Orchestra!

Over the coming weeks this brilliant Baroque harpsichord master became a most generous friend, hosting my husband and I for dinner and a private concert at his magical home, surrounded by his vast fruit bearing gardens in a small village just outside Maastricht. The world knew Ogg as maestro; I know him as friend.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

A Man for All Seasons, especially Winter: A Conversation with Minnesota Novelist Peter Geye

Interview and Photos by Susan Schaefer

Author Peter Geye upstairs at the Loft Literary Center      

Outside the skies are frothed licorice and ice as mid-morning menaces like midnight. There’s powerful weather brewing.

A perfect time to hold a wide-ranging conversation with my teacher, mentor and friend, author Peter Geye [say ‘guy’], who elevates weather to character status in his latest novel, Wintering, published by New York powerhouse Alfred A. Knopf.

While the summer storm rages we hole up in the Loft Literary Center’s Open Book space, sipping java and reminiscing about our 12-week Loft Master Mondays fiction writing course in the place we first met, then nudging our conversation to what sets the Twin Cities area apart as a world-class writer’s mecca, to the release of his current book, his busy book promotion schedule, and the rigors of being a stay-at-home dad and professional novelist.

Wintering, review copy

His new novel, Wintering, released in early June, is a holy whisper. Perfect summer (or anytime) reading set in the achingly majestic borderlands of Northern Minnesota, Geye's writing is a paean to the complexity and ultimate triumph of the human spirit that is often as much at odds with itself as it is against the forces of nature. Delving deeply into the human psyche, this book mines universal themes in a unique tale of love, loss and revenge traversing decades and points of view, set in a landscape of ancient and menacing wilderness.

Calling Wintering a ‘sister book’ to his award-winning previous two novels, Safe from the Sea and The Lighthouse Road, brightens Geye’s mood. “I like that term,” he approves. (His previous works were not published under the Knopf imprint so the prestigious New York publishing house prefers not to consider ‘the set’ a trilogy.)

Geye mulls the question about why Minnesota lends itself to such a robust literary tradition - why we produce so many outstanding writers.

“There is so much support here,” he motions to our surroundings. “Take the Loft, for instance. There isn’t any institution like this anywhere else in the country. There are lesser versions, but nothing like this in terms of scope and support.”

“And there are the grants. There’s the McKnight Artist Fellowships administered by the Loft.  A Minnesota writer can apply for and win a $25,000 grant. Then, there’s the Minnesota’s Legacy Fund, which is unique. Established as a result of building the Twins’ (baseball team) Stadium, it offers exceptional funding for the arts in Minnesota, and I’ve benefited greatly from these.”

Geye continues, “Minnesota is filled with world class amenities from wild places and water to an astounding array of arts and cultural organizations. When you have this as an artist, you stay,” he emphasizes.

“People go to places like California for the weather. They are here for one hundred plus colleges and universities, a fantastic metropolitan area, theater, culture and so on. And so we end up with an unbelievably rich community of writers,” he concludes.

Speaking of wild places, what about his relationship with the Boundary Waters and North Shore areas that he writes about with such passion, knowledge and authority? 

“I’m a professional visitor,” he laughs. “I didn’t grow up with the cabin and a Northwood’s lifestyle, rather I discovered this area of the world through occasional canoe trips with my dad.”

Assuredly, he has staked that region as his fictional epicenter. Wintering takes the reader through each blade and grove, each cascade and ravine, until we’re literally hovering above, paddling along, or hiking through this mysterious and threatening terrain.

What entrances the reader is the luxury of Wintering’s every line. Geye’s sentences are carved like fine wooden artifacts, meticulously sanded and polished until each is an object worthy of a spotlight on a shelf.

His Knopf editor, Gary Fisketjon, who has redlined the likes of Donna Tartt, Annie Dillard, Raymond Carver, Tobias Wolff and Jay McInerney, has waxed lyrical about how Geye builds his work “line by line,” and such writing is ecstasy for serious readers. Charlie’s goal was to pillage the wilderness and get rich from the wreckage. This sparse sentence packs Wintering’s villain, Charlie Aas’ lifetime of malfeasance. The book is a cavalcade of such images.

I am typically not a reader of wilderness books or thrillers, nor particularly a fan of Midwestern history. Hailing from the East Coast, I gravitate towards works that blow grit in my eye or existential angst in my chest. But beginning with Geye’s Far from the Sea, I became a convert, opening to tortured frozen landscapes replete with themes of revenge and nature’s conquest. I’ve learned that the crust of ice on melted snow often yields to a deep and soft interior.

Peter Geye leans into Open Book’s iconic staircase 

Just as Geye’s exterior, now all scruffily bearded and slightly unkempt, masks a highly approachable, warm and gracious inner reservoir. Editors, students and fellow writers alike testify to his generosity of spirit, and my personal experience echoes the chorus.

Many might not take Geye for the (soon-to-be-single) primary caregiver father, but he is and will continue to be after his upcoming, amicable divorce. His daily school year routine rotates around his three young ones and he basks in this role of ushering them safely off to school, feeding and getting through homework, story and bedtime.

“I have written literally thousands of words with one or two kids between my legs,” he grins.

Regarding the tough tangle between full-time fatherhood and creating literature, Geye sees writing as his “chance to have life outside my family.”

“When you spend 15 hours a day with kids, no matter how much you love them,” writing books, inventing characters, and having these characters then invent you, is a monumental release.

Geye admits that the regular transition from inhabiting his fictional world back to his real one isn’t always easy. Like an actual family, he experiences a true sense of grief once his books are complete and his characters, his creations, no longer accompany his days and nights. “It’s a resounding sense of loss” as he returns to his real world.

Geye inscribes review copy

Writing in longhand, Geye acknowledges that his writing process doesn’t flow. It’s hard work and he embraces it. He’s a yeoman. Part of his process includes taking those written sheets around with him, reading and rereading, later word processing the longhand, (typically the same night), crafting, editing and re-crafting.

This intense labor shows. As Knopf’s Fisketjon attests – Geye’s work evolves “line by line” with the rare result of producing a literary tour de force “that knocked him sideways” when he first read it.

The character of Berit is Wintering’s touchstone, a rock really, one who may acutely strike women readers by her usual and compelling nature. How did a guy like him channel this iconic female character who is charged with guiding the reader through the unfolding layers of far past, past and present?

“I knew I wanted a narrator who could help navigate the reader through more than one story. It takes more than one story to tell our lives. I tried a few points of view and then wrote 50 pages. It was Berit who I ended up wanting in this role.” He says he became reliant on her in a way he’s “never experienced from a character before. She became my companion. I felt camaraderie. She ended up telling me the story.”

Geye’s character Berit became his companion – his fictional comrade

And so, Geye has unlocked the major feat of great fictional writing, which is when the characters share their story from their point of view with the writer. It is then that a writer surrenders to his/her characters, being freed to create the all-encompassing fictional world – a world where none of life’s daily problems or passions interferes with the reading experience. It is a triumph few achieve.

In this time of dramatic distraction that skill in this book is worth a trip to, or click on, the bookstore, a quiet spot, and a reading journey out of time and mind. Wintering delivers this magic with the punch of summer storm.

Please note: Geye will be teaching the Loft’s Master Mondays course again this fall, as well as an unprecedented one-year novel writing course beginning in January. Check the Loft’s website for more information.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org. 

Minnesota’s Tom Fisher: Making the World Better by Design

Interview and Photos by Susan Schaefer

Tom Fisher, Director, University of Minnesota’s Metropolitan Design Center

What is essential is invisible to the eye, says the fox.
     - Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

We tend to think of design in terms of the visible world around us: the buildings we occupy and the products we use. But the ‘invisible’ systems that we depend on in our daily lives – the infrastructure buried beneath our feet or in our walls, the educational and health systems that we all experience as we age or become ill, and the economic and political systems that affect us in myriad ways over time – remain just as much designed as anything that we inhabit or use.
     - Thomas Fisher, Designing Our Way to a Better World, University of Minnesota Press

If it’s up to Tom Fisher, Director of the University of Minnesota’s Metropolitan Design Center, design professionals will help guide “the design of what we cannot see” in 21st century projects.

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Most known for designing visible objects like buildings, landscape, typeface or clothing, Fisher is out to prove that design professionals are well suited to helping solve invisible ones – large, complex problems, particularly in the areas of education, public infrastructure, public health, politics and economics, and he’s got a brand new book, Designing Our Way to a Better World, University of Minnesota Press, to help us see why.

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Fisher inscribes his latest book, Designing Our Way to a Better World

As we sit is his subterranean yet sun-filled offices in the iconic Rapson Hall on the University’s East Bank, Fisher glows like a schoolboy as he discusses his life, work, new book and recent projects. If anyone is capable of linking the design process to life’s processes, Fisher is uniquely qualified and Minnesota is lucky to have him. As the saying goes, “He could have chosen anywhere.”

As a young university architecture student in Cornell University, Cleveland-born Fisher had a remarkable summer encounter: In one of those ‘life changing’ moments he came face-to-face with the intellectual giant, Lewis Mumford, architectural critic for The New Yorker, noted for his study of cities and urban architecture amongst other scholarly pursuits. 

Young Fisher, in awe of his intellectual prowess, boldly asked: “How do I get to be like you?”

That query was met with Mr. Mumford’s serious and sagacious advice, “Go study how the mind works.” Thus began Fisher’s trajectory from architectural education to what can best be called “the study of big ideas” in an exceptional graduate program offered through Case Western Reserve.

Earning a Master’s Degree in Intellectual History can be an intriguing cocktail party conversation starter, or not. But Fisher’s passion for ideas and ideals is alarmingly pure, rendering him approachable on lofty, mind bending topics. And, his enthusiasm is disarming – tangy and cool as vodka and ginger over ice on a hot day. Lewis Mumford would be proud. Fisher wants to know, and doggedly pursues, “How we should live.”

…

I first met Fisher in 1995, shortly after he’d come on board as Dean of the University’s College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. As the Director of Communications for local architects, Cuningham Group, I was tasked to help introduce to our region the newly appointed head of urban planning, the late, great Victor Caliandro, highlighting his illustrious expertise as a riverfront designer.

In response, I created a public affairs program, The Minneapolis Riverfront: Vision and Implementation, to draw attention to him and the then-abandoned central Minneapolis Riverfront.

Rather than taking the customary marketing communications tactic, I suggested an innovative public affairs approach to establishing the firm as a leader. We convened multiple key players who had been long engaged about how best to develop the then dormant riverfront, our now vital riparian treasure.

Tom Fisher was first on my list of local stakeholders. He joined our effort and lent his considerable brainpower to the project that included local, national and international architects, to reimagine the riverfront. We have remained friends and colleagues ever since.

…

Not many ordinary Minnesotans understand the heft and impact of the University’s Metropolitan Design Center, soon to be renamed the Minnesota Design Center. Nor is the story of how the School of Architecture morphed into the College of Design much known outside the field. Yet, Fisher’s and the University’s leadership add essential gravitas to Minnesota’s role in this critical and cutting-edge field.

Q: Please talk about the evolution of the University’s College of Design, why you stayed on to shepherd the transition, and what it means to our region.

A: When the College of Architecture and Landscape Architecture, where I was the dean, merged with the Department of Design, Housing, and Apparel to become the College of Design in 2006, I stayed on as the dean because it represented where I thought the design community needed to go.

By having all of the design disciplines in one college, we have been able to develop new interdisciplinary programs, like product design or human factors. This new college has also positioned us well to participate in the growing interest in design thinking, which is the topic of my recent book. The redesign of the systems that are not working well – our educational system, our political system, our economy, our infrastructure, etc. – may be one of the most important tasks before us and it is something to which our Center and our College has to contribute.

Fisher demonstrates visualizing design

Q: Back when I convened the Minneapolis Riverfront: Vision and Implementation program, William Morrish was the Director of the Design Center for American Urban Landscape. Was that a precursor of the Metropolitan Design Center? How and when did the Metropolitan Design Center begin?

A: Yes, the Metropolitan Design Center, which is in the process of changing its name to the Minnesota Design Center to reflect its statewide mission, is the same entity that Bill Morrish and Catherine Brown led over 20 years ago as its first directors. We changed the name because the Design Center for American Urban Landscape seemed too long and too hard for many people to remember. I am the fourth director of the center.

Q: Who supports the Center and what benefit does it bring to our region?

A: The center is supported by a generous endowment by the Dayton Hudson (now Target) Foundation and we have had on-going support from the McKnight Foundation.

In terms of the Center’s importance, we are living in a period of unprecedented urbanization, with record numbers of people moving into cities, and a period in which we face profound economic, environmental, technological, and social changes. The Center provides a platform and a place where a diverse group of people can work on projects related to these issues, helping communities and organizations recognize and respond constructively to the opportunities that we face in Minnesota as well as nationally.

Q: My work as a public relations and public affairs professional puts me in almost daily contact with members of the ‘design community,’ from graphics to architecture to urban to product design and more. My respect for designers is immense and sincere, yet I perceive that their (modern) training and education, and view held by society, often locks these elegant problem solvers into insular boxes. They have been essentially handicapped or ‘siloed’ by internal and external points of view. Your latest book and your very ethos seem to push back hard on this insularity, advocating for ‘design thinking’ by designers as a 21^st century opportunity to break out of these boxes. Please elaborate and explain specifically how the work you’re doing and education you’re providing at the Metropolitan Design Center can/will change this equation, allowing those bright designers a more impactful role in society.

A: The design community is undergoing a transition from strictly defining itself in terms of outcomes – architects produce buildings, industrial designers products, etc. – to more broadly defining itself in terms of the knowledge, processes and methods used to do such work, which has applications far beyond its traditional outcomes.

We do this in our work at the Center. For example, we are working with Allina Health to teach design thinking skills to the leadership of the CDC (Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, GA) so that that organization can respond more creatively and flexibly to global health challenges. We are also working with four countries (Hennepin, Ramsey, Anoka, and Dakota) to reimagine the adult foster care housing system to give residents greater choice.

In all of these cases, we co-create with the groups we work with and build their capacity to do this work without us. I would love to see design thinking skills taught as part of every student’s education, since we all have the capacity to be more creative than we are often allowed to be.

Q: What are the pros and cons about working in a university environment?

A: The pros of working here are the great students we have to work with and the faculty and practitioners who bring a lot of knowledge and passion to the work they do.  The cons are mainly on the HR side: our work requires a degree of flexibility and speed of work that doesn’t fit well with the HR policies and procedures of universities, geared to the hiring of long-term faculty and staff.

Q: Important to our readership is the Central Mississippi Riverfront. What do you see as working, what missing in the current overall Central Mississippi Riverfront development?

A: The planning for the central Mississippi has done a lot of good work, with some of the nation’s top landscape-architecture talent working on it, creating a public realm that will be accessible to and enjoyed by everyone. What’s missing is a mechanism to enable a diverse population to live near and next to these open spaces. While we know that affordable housing can greatly reduce other social costs, we lack the means to provide it and so we have extraordinary open spaces along the river that the less affluent have to travel far to see. 

Q: What else should our readers to know about yourself or your work?

A:  I have always wanted my work to speak for itself and not have it be about me. I am married, have two grown daughters, both of whom are married and living in the area, and have a grandson and a grand daughter on the way. And I follow the advice of the Stoics: focusing on what I can control and where I can make a contribution, without spending any time on what I can’t control or can’t contribute.

Fisher with a co-creator at Towerside: MSP Innovation District’s ribbon cutting

Speaking of making a contribution, as we conclude our interview, Fisher enjoins me to hop the light rail to attend the ribbon cutting of another precedent-setting project on which he’s been involved, Towerside. Called an MSP Innovation District, Towerside is 370 acres extending from the University’s campus in Minneapolis east into St. Paul, the only duly designated innovation district in the Twin Cities with the intent to mix entrepreneurs, residents, researchers, developers and businesses with a new, restorative, healthy and arts-inspired community. Truly, design thinking made visible.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

Susan Schaefer reviews Wintering by local author Peter Geye

Review by Susan Schaefer

Local author Peter Geye's novel Wintering is a holy whisper. Perfect summer reading, his latest novel is set in the achingly majestic borderlands of Northern Minnesota like his previous two highly acclaimed works, Safe from the Sea and Lighthouse Road.

Geye's writing is a paean to the complexity and ultimate triumph of the human spirit which is often as much at odds with itself as it is against the forces of nature. 

Delving deeply into the human psyche, Geye mines universal themes in this unique tale of love, loss and revenge in a modern landscape of ancient wildness. Each sentence is a finely honed work of art; such masterful command of language transports the reader with transformative effect. Wintering, available later this week, will temper your summer reading.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

Editor's Note: Watch for Susan's interview with Peter Geye this summer.

This River, This Place: Musing above the Mississippi with Pillsbury A Mill’s quintessential artist, Aldo Moroni

Story and Photos by Susan Schaefer

Artist Aldo Moroni 

Minneapolis, MN, May 31, 2016 – If he were inclined, from this perch overlooking St. Anthony Falls “could Minneapolis’ artist Aldo Moroni literally look across the river to the Mill City side and peer into the windows of some of the well-heeled private collectors who own one or more of his sculpted towers, wall sconces or commissioned works?”

Ever respectful of his collectors’ privacy, he only acknowledges that this could be the case. He counts celebrities and CEO’s among his numerous collectors.

Just under a year ago, Moroni scored a primo spot on the St. Anthony Main side of the river in Pillsbury A Mill building, becoming a prototypical tenant this newly opened artist collective development. Ensconced in the cozy, light-filled two-bedroom unit he shares with his two sons, Moroni is one of A Mill’s most prominent, and perhaps prolific, working artist inhabitants.

Iconic Moroni towers perched on sill

The long awaited A-Mill Artist Lofts, designed for artists committed to a life in the arts, features a number of shared work and studio spaces for special projects or daily work for use. In Moroni’s case, he makes yeoman’s use of the ceramic studio, equipped with state of the art kilns.

Moroni in ceramic studio with kiln

On an overcast Saturday morning, as we share a stellar view, strong coffee and engaging conversation, Moroni readily rattles off facts about art theory, religious movements, and more. His curiosity and knowledge about topics that inhabit and inform art – history, religion, sociology, urbanism, geography, music, light, color – are vast, and his authentic interest is infectious.

The Chicagoan arrived in the Twin Cities to attend MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design) in the early 1970s. His emergence on the formal art scene reads like a fable. Young Moroni was whisked from the halls of college to the halls of the renowned Walker Art Center in one fell swoop. None other than then-Walker Director, the late, great Martin Friedman, who saw the subtext Moroni already was providing in his work, navigated that magic carpet ride.

World in Progress

Known for recreating civilizations in small-scale sizes, he wanted his viewers to question how we live in cities; to engage in conversations about where and how our civilizations emerge; to explore the consequences and rewards of urban existence.

Moroni invited viewers to become Gulliver in the land of the Lilliputians. His work termed early earth or action art, followed on the heels of Dadaism. Timing was in his favor.

Over his 40 plus years, his handiworks have shifted from massive to miniature and back. Audiences could peer down on occasionally vast landscapes, like his infamous Babylon project, a performance art piece of creative destruction, or more recently behold his tame replica of ‘old’ Dinkytown.

Many of his miniatures evoke Hieronymus Bosh-like narratives, filled with catawampus buildings and impossible configurations just recognizable enough to engage viewers in studies of urban design gone slightly awry. Others, with more authentic scale and form, like his new study of Georgetown where his daughter has been living as a student, simply evoke a whimsical sense the urban realm.

Artist with large-scale tower wall installation ready to be delivered to client

However, it would be incorrect to mistake his ‘interpretations’ as fairy tale. Moroni may take liberty with narrative, much like novelists he admires such as James Michener, Ken Follett and Dan Brown, but the underpinning of his work is solid scholarship mixed with his heartfelt desire to evoke critical questions about urban life. Moroni bristles with that Bauhaus analytical idealism that maintains: “Art asks, design offers solutions, and architects and engineers implement.”

Moroni believes that: Art asks, design offers solutions, architects and engineers implement.

Such a cerebral stance combined with sharp sculptural prowess accounts for Moroni’s exulted status as a Minnesota arts trifecta honoree: He’s earned the McKnight, Jerome and Bush Fellowships, and going for the grand slam, the prestigious National Endowment for the Arts, Arts Midwest Award. This is no small feat.

His vision and scope is epitomized in his opus, This River, This Place, a 6,000-pound epic stoneware wall sculpture commissioned by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The work is a topographical map of the bank’s service area, the entire Ninth Federal Reserve District.

Exemplifying Moroni’s quest for historical detail and meaning, This River, This Place can be read on multiple levels – as a geographical map of the six district states and as cultural and historical microcosms. “Major geographical features such as Lake Superior, Isle Royale, the Rocky Mountains, Lake Oahe, the national forests of northwestern Wisconsin and Upper Peninsula, the Mississippi and Missouri rivers can be easily identified by the naked eye from any vantage point in the Federal Reserve Bank's lobby.”

Yet, on closer observation viewed with binoculars, telescope or a zoom lens, Moroni’s “various cultural icons and historical images of the Great Plains states. Paul Bunyon's statue in Bemidji, MN, a herd of buffalo (including a sacred white buffalo) in North Dakota, motorcyclists gathered in Sturgis, S.D., the State Capitol at Bismarck (tallest building in North Dakota), the Wounded Knee Monument in South Dakota, an overflowing Red River in Grand Forks—and much, much more,” have been incorporated in his archetypal style.

Originally commissioned in 1996, the 33.5’ x 12.5’ piece, composed of 270 brick-shaped tiles, made of Minnesota white stoneware, fired and glazed, and covering 396 square feet of reinforced wall space took Moroni four months of research and six months to execute working with a team of seven artists.

Such collaboration is also a hallmark of Moroni’s ethic. Known as an activist, he embraces numerous life long relationships, mentors and guides others in their art and projects, and serves indefatigably in the service of social justice, environmentalism and inclusion. Moroni is a wildly beloved and respected local legend.

In fact, this coming Monday, June 6, 2016, from 6 – 9PM at the Solar Arts Building in Northeast, he will be one of the prominent panelist selected to discuss, “Creative Sustainability: What’s it Mean for the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District and Northeast Minneapolis,” alongside City Council members, Kevin Reich and Jacob Frey, Myron Orfield from the University of Minnesota, Kelley Lindquist of Artspace, among others. Moroni’s platform regards exploring expanding the boundaries of the Northeast Minneapolis Arts District and creating a citywide arts center.

Moroni creates from a place of passion so deep and true that he captivates those lucky enough to enter his sphere with his fascination for how, why and where civilizations rise and fall and what role arts plays in this thrust of history. A three-dimensional mythmaker, Moroni’s worlds bring thoughtful examination about urban progress and sustainability.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

It’s May – Mill City Farmers Market Time! A photo essay tour

Story and Photos by Susan Schaefer

It's May! It's May!
The lusty month of May!
That lovely month when everyone goes
Blissfully astray.    (From Camelot by Lerner/Lowe)

If your castle happens to be in proximity to Minneapolis’ Central Riverfront, say a stone’s throw from the Mill City Museum, your a’straying on the first weekend of May just may be to, tra lah, Mill City Farmers Market where most of your pleasures, Milords and Ladies, can be blissfully, tastefully, deliciously met.

On this opening morning you may even run into modern Vikings playing “Kubb” in Gold Medal Park. Yup, Kubb - a Swedish lawn game possibly dating back to days of Viking conquest played between two teams attempting to knock over the opposition’s kubbs and finally the king to win the game. Sort of full body chess. All of this is true. I asked Minnesota Kubb director, Eric Goplin, who was, well, almost as lusty about the game as Lerner and Lowe were about It’s May!

 Minnesota Kubb Director Eric Goplin

 Kubbers kubbing

From the jousting kubbers of the 800s heading north you would enter the realm of the 1800s, strolling past the Guthrie Theater’s front door where the harbinger of spring himself, the charming, top-hatted ambassador of not just the theater but of the entire neighborhood, Mr. Herb Stead, welcomes you. Mr. Stead is as treasured an icon as any of Mill City’s other estimable landmarks.

With a tip of his white-gloved hand to his high hat, his smile as wide as the river, “Ambassador” Mr. Stead beckons you on to the market!

Once in Mill City Farmers Market land, I’ve learned to reconnoiter from inside out, zigging first beneath the protective metal shed adjacent to Mill City Museum heading directly to Lynne Reeck and Kate Wall’s Singing Hills Goat Dairy stand, choosing one of their ever changing tangy goat cheese offerings fresh from the farm to the table. Today? Hard goat cheese.

Big smile from Singing Hills

Typically, I then zag over to Martha’s Joy, producer of home style pickle products, to have a short talk with David, husband of the late Martha Jean Harkness Jackson, who carries on his wife’s legacy of bringing zesty locally grown, home canned veggies to many fans. Today’s selection – spicy beets, after all, there is a bit of a nip in the air.

Martha’s Joy, David

Another zig across the walkway brings me the wizard of aroma, Denise Olsen, whose Olsen Naturals soaps, lip balms and essential oils raise my spirits all year long. I find her thoughtful blend of patchouli and sandalwood body spray a warming dose during Minnesota’s long winters. And if you’re going up to the cabin, don’t forget her insect repellent, good for your health, bad for those biting, stinging critters!

Stocking up on Olsen Naturals

Surfacing from the cool dark overhang, I find Salty Tart one of my market mainstays. Perpetually long lines tell the tale of high quality sumptuousness. Carrying on with May’s lustiness theme, I chose their jalapeño cheddar loaf and a flaky asparagus tart. By now my bulging trusty canvas bag smells like a sorcerer's workspace!

Salty Tart grabs one’s heart

It’s always a tough choice about which riverside snack to choose to make market day a culinary interactive affair. Today I go blissfully astray – taking Rashmi and Sarala’s Gorkha Palace’s veggie momos and Brenda and Tim’s Spoonriver crepes! Like I said, it’s been a long Minnesota winter.

Serving up love and momos from Gorkha Palace

Tough choice at Spoonriver: sweet or savory?

One of the greatest advantages of shopping at Mill City Farmers Market is that your balcony for fine alfresco dining is a scenic overview of the Stone Arch Bridge, the falls, and St. Anthony Main just across the Mississippi. I don’t know of many other Farmer’s Markets that can beat this amenity.

Alfresco dining along the Mississippi

Just as you dab your mouth daintily and prepare to return home, you realize you’re never really finished on first Market Day. As a writer, the literary ladies of Millweed Editions gently remind you to feed your mind, too! Great gorging – no calories!

Feed your head, says Milkweed!

And oh heck, since Red Table’s tent is almost blowing away in a sudden gust of wind from the river, it’s only fitting to help by providing a bit more human ballast, and gosh, while you’re helping out why not bring a spicy salami home for that Mother’s Day brunch?

          Holding the big top at Red Table Meat Co!

There’s always time to begin veganism next week, right? And then we can explore so much more!

So remember:

It’s here, it’s here,
That shocking time of year
Those dreary vows that everyone takes,
Everyone breaks.
Everyone makes divine mistakes
The lusty month of May!

When Mill City Farmers Market blooms with so many vendors it will be hard not to break one teeny vow or two! Hope to see you at the market!

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

Reflection: A Princely Act

Story and photomontage by Susan Schaefer

Minneapolis, MN, April 22, 2016 – To create something entirely new, never seen, touched or heard before – something that resonates deeply with the beholder – is a hallmark of genius. The creator often treads precarious ground – misunderstood or unrecognized in his or her own time or homeland.

Prince Rogers Nelson (6/7/58 – 4/21/16), known inimitably as Prince, one-word name recognition rarely achieved by any creator, transcended such pitfalls.

Prince attained unprecedented adoration and reputation during an all too brief lifetime that ended suddenly and shockingly this past Thursday in his beloved, native Minneapolis. He lived and died wildly understood, highly recognized and greatly prized.

Creative genius has been scientifically linked to certain mental disorders that plague yet inspire the creator. The history of innovation is littered with the untimely demise of such great ones whose vast psychic capacities also incapacitate. Many, like Robin Williams, have taken their own lives. Though we do not yet know the cause of Prince’s untimely death, his life depicts an innovator filled with hope and promise.

His recent Twin Cities’ forays to enjoy an evening of music out at one of his favorite local nightclubs, The Dakota, or his music-shopping trip just last week to the famed record store, the Electric Fetus, belie any indication that Prince harbored depression or suicidal thoughts. Close confidants indicate quite the opposite – they speak of his newly ignited solo tour, his renewed energy, and outlook. What is known is that the pain from his hip replacement and ankle trouble hounded his characteristic physical style over the past few years.

Eccentricity and abundance, not depression or depravity, defined Prince’s life and work. Though he certainly endured his share of hardships, rejoicing emerges as the main underpinning of his creative, compositional and performance platform. Unquestionably he sparked controversy with his blended and blatant sexuality, yet his sheer originality branded him.

Outpourings from global luminaries sing his praises from Mick Jagger, “His talent was limitless,” to Oprah Winfrey, “The doves are really crying now,” to President Barack Obama, “[Prince was] one of the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, … a virtuoso instrumentalist, a brilliant bandleader, and an electrifying performer…Today the world lost a creative icon.”

Prince rewrote life’s rules rather than be constrained by them. He broke free of the bonds of socio-economics, race and gender, as well as those of the tightly controlled entertainment world. His lyrics, compositions, and instrumentality defied genre; his groundbreaking, risk-taking break with the recording industry’s star making prison unshackled him to not only explore new musical worlds but to plant his gender-blended glyph in the stratosphere.

I had no idea of Prince’s global recognition until 1994, when on a solo trip to Hungary, I ventured out late one night in gloomy, rainy Budapest to one of their famed underground all-night clubs to hear Ando Drum, a Gypsy Hungarian band perform a double bill with Anita Livs, a Sámi folk music band from Sweden.

There, wildly dancing with enthusiastic international strangers Prince-style into the wee hours, I met a tall, lanky Dutchman who essentially freaked out when he discovered I was from “Princeville,” meaning Minneapolis. My ‘fame’ quickly spread throughout the club; by sheer virtue of being from Prince’s hometown, I had won celebrity status.

It wasn’t long thereafter, unbidden, the Dutchman paid a surprise transcontinental call to my then-Lake Minnetonka home on a pilgrimage to Paisley Park, where he was welcomed, toured the compound, and returned the Netherlands a changed man. Such was the power of the Purple Reign.

Literary genius, author Virginia Woolf, wrote, “The beauty of the world …has two edges, one of laughter, one of anguish, cutting the heart asunder.” Prince provided the joy; his death the anguish. Alongside Prince-proud Minnesotans, fans worldwide now share a heart torn asunder.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

Marcy Holmes’ Creative Genius: Composer, Performer, Activist Craig Harris

By Susan Schaefer

A far cry from Vienna, London, New York or Paris, in the Marcy Holmes neighborhood on the East Bank of the Mississippi, a group of “Left Bank” artist types doggedly persist amongst the University of Minnesota student party houses. There, in a Robin’s egg blue house filled to the brim with objects and artifacts of prodigious artistic output lives Craig Harris, Interference Arts Artistic Director, a creative genius worthy notoriety in any of these great global cultural centers.

Harris, along with his wife, multimedia textile artist, costumer and photographic illustrator, Candy Kuehn, build community with their creativity. Frequent collaborators, Harris and Kuehn have raised two daughters in Marcy Holmes where they are heralded as partisans. However, their artistic reputations extend deeply into the greater Twin Cities creative communities. 

An artist of Harris’ caliber often chooses to focus on his solo artistic career, but that is antithetical to his staunch community activist mantle. Part of what fuels Harris’ right brain creative virtuosity are his astounding left brain logic and strategic abilities, which he has plied generously to support numerous local, national and international cultural institutions.

As Executive Director of Ballet of the Dolls, and as initiator of the Ritz Theater renovation, Harris is credited for pioneering the transformation of the surrounding Northeast Sheridan neighborhood into a cultural mini-mecca. His work as interim director of Seward Neighborhood’s Playwright Center, and more recently for such regional arts organizations as Open Eye Figure Theater, Marcy Arts Partnership and Caponi Art Park, garners high praise.

At the forefront of several creative waves, including computer music development and the electronic arts evolution, Harris also has contributed to such international organizations as the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology, and The International Computer Music Association.

An earnestly contemplative façade and self-effacing manner belie Harris’ boundless talent and yeoman’s energy.

His theatrical mastery composing music, writing scripts, and building environments in what he terms multimedia dramatic realms was visible two weekends ago at the world premiere of Elijah in the Wadi, his latest creative project, in part made possible through The Right Here Showcase staged at The Illusion Theater on Hennepin Avenue.

Harris, a native of Rochester, New York, spoke to me about aspects of his life and work.

Why do you live and work in Marcy Holmes specifically?

When we moved here from San Francisco with our two little girls we were seeking a family friendly place where we would know our neighbors, and be able to have our kids in a vibrant public school where the community was fully engaged. With two artist parents who mainly work out of the house, we also needed to find an affordable house that would be large enough to have two studios as well as satisfy normal family living requirements. We wanted to be located in an urban setting where we could easily partake in the active artistic environment in Minneapolis. Marcy Holmes met all of these qualities so completely that it was a natural fit for us – great neighborhood, a good sized home for the family and studios, Marcy Open School for the kids, close to the river, close to downtown, easy access to public transportation and highways.
 
With so much experience with regional art here, what are your reflections on the Twin Cities art community?

The Twin Cities art community is quite vital for a variety of reasons, all of which really need to be in place for the ecosystem to function well. First, there is long history of recognition in the philanthropic community of the value of local cultural and artistic expression.

Then there is a diversity of artistic engagement within and across traditional boundaries – performing arts (theater, music, dance), visual arts, etc., and a diversity of participation – individual artists; small and large groups of artists; small, medium and large organizations providing a level of activity that provides both vitality and opportunity.

Of course, the cost of living here makes it more viable to create a life as an artist than is realistic in most urban settings; and we are blessed with a public interested in exploring and engaging in artistic expression.

I’d like to know more about your latest effort. Elijah feels like a highly personal piece of theater – is it?

My primary focus in all of my work is the exploration of personal engagement in society: who are we as individuals with deep personal needs for expression, growth and active participation; and how do we effectively integrate the individual and personal with the needs of society at large. How do we navigate the sometimes challenging terrain of balancing our personal and society realms of existence?

It seems fitting that your show debuted so close to the Jewish Holiday of Passover (that begins this coming Friday at sundown) where the Prophet Elijah plays a prominent role. What are the most critical themes you tackle in Elijah and why? Specifically, what do you hope is the audience’s takeaway?

I describe the Prophet Elijah as being a witness and an activist. He is a witness to some very large-scale transformations in the civilization of his time, and he also is witness to some very personal exchanges among individuals who manifest the full gamut of human beauty and conflict on both personal and societal levels. 

In the Bible, Elijah is called to be an activist – to carry the mantle to try to make change for the public benefit – and yet he has significant challenges in being able to actually make a difference.

This is the nexus of my message – even when he doesn’t seem to be able to make the needed change, he still tries. He doesn’t give up, and he is even at times able to find joy in the journey. I want the audience to see themselves in Elijah – to witness, to be actively engaged, and to find joy in the journey even amidst life’s challenges.

Please discuss the multimedia elements of this and how vital they are to the stage presentation.

My work is envisioned, written and realized in a multimedia dramatic realm, much like how I believe we actually experience the world as individuals, with complex visual, sonic and experiential input; linear and non-linear narrative elements, and symbolic characteristics. We take in all of this complex information, process it internally, and then translate it into what turns out to be a highly personal world view that affects how we engage with the world.

To be effective in communicating, I need to engage with people who are highly experienced and effective in their own realm of work (visual projection, costumes, sonic expression) and diverse enough in their backgrounds to be able to collaborate well with others – to see the total picture with sufficient clarity to be able to integrate elements into a cohesive whole.

Do you Have hopes for national and international exposure for Elijah?

I created Elijah in the Wadi to be a touring show that could be produced fully – with all visual projections, lighting and multi-channel sound environment – and also be produced easily in smaller scale versions that could incorporate the single actor with music or a less expansive visual panorama.

My hope is that we can find widespread exposure both nationally and internationally for this show. I would love to take this show to the Middle East. I have other multimedia dramatic works that I also would like to tour, and I have been working towards that goal. Elijah in the Wadi may be the entry point for the touring that could make it possible for me to take other work on the road as well. It’s definitely the goal.

Twin Citians interested in seeing Harris’ productions can check in at his website listed above to learn when Elijah or other productions will be produced again locally and to follow his work.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

Living Legend: Still smokin’ after 60 years - Everett’s Jack Pflepsen

By Susan Schaefer

As we say goodbye to one Minneapolis landmark this week, historic Nye’s Polonaise Room, we can celebrate the longevity of another less well-known establishment from the same era. Just downriver a local culinary treasure continues to smoke up a storm.

Featuring two on-location smokehouses, loyal customers have sought the scent and comfort offered by Everett’s Foods for more than 60 years. For a delicious travel back in time take a short ride south along West River Road, make a tight right at 38th Street, and head a few blocks west to Cedar Avenue to find a grocery store and butcher counter where time stands still.

Behind that counter a living legend continues to carve and slice. Jack Pflepsen, owner and butcher, purchased Everett’s from its founder in 1956 and has shown up to engineer his signature homemade sausages, smoked ribs and other fresh cuts of meats ever since since. Now approaching his 87th birthday, Pflepsen looms large behind his gleaming display case. Tall, fit and youthful, Pflepsen’s face belies his years.

“I bought the store from founder Mr. Byrd, who established it in 1932, when I was just 26,” Pflepsen proudly offers. Customers and employees alike are quick to add that he’s worked steadily and reliably almost every day ever since.

“I had four daughters to put through school,” he boyishly beams, explaining his original motivation. One of these four daughters, Nancy Klatke, now Everett's manager, has worked side-by-side with her dad for more than 30 years. He sums it all up with a sincere, “This place has been good to me.”

Certainly, the store and its selections have been good to its customers. The Growler has ranked Everett’s as one of ten prime butchers in Minnesota, and City Pages dubbed it Best Meat Shop, claiming it’s the kind of meat that inspired Americans to turn backyard barbecues “into main events” for culinary competition between neighbors.

The main event at Everett’s may well be the man behind the raves, whose modesty masks a mastery associated with a bygone era when owners and customers forged lifetime relationships based on quality, integrity and respect.

In these days of exponential change, when there is much cause to wax nostalgic over the loss of landmarks and legends, stop by Everett’s to say hello to a living legend, and ask Jack what’s smokin’ – he’s sure to give you a good tip.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

The Paradox of Leadership: The Trials and Triumphs of Minneapolis Police Chief Janeé Harteau

By Susan Schaefer

An unexpected soft spring snowstorm yielded to a maelstrom of public and media criticism for Minneapolis Police Chief Janée Harteau last week. In a press conference and video release, she stated that disruptive actions would not be tolerated in anticipation of Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman’s upcoming decision about police culpability in the shooting death of Jamar Clark. Her hard line announcement sparked an angry response.

The tone of Chief Harteau’s pronouncement felt paradoxical in light of our interview the day before focusing on two topics: National and international attention regarding the positive impact of women’s leadership in policing and defense; and her heralded role in improving the culture and accountability within the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD).

International gender equality movements in policing and defense are on the rise following the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 – Women, Peace and Security (UNSCR 1325) that calls for gender equality in “representation and full involvement in all efforts for the maintenance and promotion of peace and security.”

“Over the last 40 years, studies have shown that female officers are less authoritarian in their approach to policing, less reliant on physical force and are more effective communicators. Most importantly, female officers are better at defusing potentially violent confrontations before those encounters turn deadly.” (Washington Post)

For some, her recent actions turned this assessment on its ear.

The apparent disconnect between Chief Harteau’s missive on zero tolerance for violence and her highly acclaimed mission to transition the MPD into a model of 21st century policing seems ironic.

In 2013 President Barak Obama personally acknowledged her work, inviting her to introduce him when he commended the MPD for its success in reducing gun violence.

Chief Harteau’s strategic policing platform, MPD 2.0: A New Policing Model, is a substantive internal management program with an overarching goal of creating an internal departmental culture of accountability, commitment, integrity and transparency. Its six pillars – Building Trust & Legitimacy, Policy & Oversight, Technology & Social Media, Community Policing & Crime Reduction, Training & Education, and Officer Wellness & Safety – align well with President Obama’s own initiative for 21st Century Policing. The MPD is one of the nation’s six cities chosen for the National “Trust & Justice” Initiative by the U.S. Attorney General.

Locally, too, she won high marks for her efforts. This past February Harteau was unanimously reappointed by City Council to a second term. While she has strong detractors, particularly in light of her handling of the Clark incident, the Star Tribune reported that at her reappointment hearing, “Harteau’s supporters outnumbered opponents 2-to-1…. Mayor Betsy Hodges said Harteau deserves credit for a proactive approach to policing befitting a ‘21st-century police chief’ and said the chief was working toward greater transparency and accountability.”

These efforts represent a Chief credited for working alongside multiple internal and external stakeholders for the past years, creating new outreach initiatives such as a Community Engagement Coordinator position, Community Engagement Team, and Youth Leadership Advisory Council.

More visibly, she is recognized for changing the face of MPD’s top leadership – promoting and recognizing overall diversity along with qualifications.

“My role is to create an effective team,” Harteau states, “and part of doing so has been to ensure that our force and our leadership better reflect the communities we serve.” The new top leadership roster does just that.

Her own appointment in December 2012 as 52nd Minneapolis Police Chief marked a number of precedents in diversity: Harteau was the first female, openly gay (with a teenaged daughter, later marrying her long time partner), and mixed race (French-Canadian/Native American) police chief in Minneapolis. She rose through the ranks on merit, beginning as a beat cop in 1987, with stints as Precinct Inspector, Deputy Chief of the Patrol Bureau, and Assistant Chief along the way.

“However, once you reach the top the real work begins,” she knowingly remarks.

As if to prove that point, in 2013, just after assuming her new post, she reached out to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for an independent assessment and assistance to enhance the MPD’s daily operations and performance.

This was a bold stroke.

Having submitted to federal oversight and scrutiny voluntarily, before the spate of high profile negative police-community relations’ incidents occurred, she began in earnest the tough job of building public trust.

The rating from DOJ ranked the Department “ahead of the curve in many areas,” but recommended changes in many others. At her reappointment hearings this past February she asked for and was granted time to continue the improvements. 

“The public does not see the tremendous good outcomes of police work. The Department answers over a half million calls a year,” she emphasizes. That is the equivalent of almost 1400 calls a day – many life and death situations. Granted, organizational leadership does not garner headlines. Controversy does.

 “The public doesn’t see the officers who, on their own time, provide a ride home for someone who is stranded. They don’t hear about the ones who buy shoes and gloves for the homeless from their own funds; when Department members don Santa hats and pass out gifts at the holidays, we don’t make the news. No one reported about the officer who adopted an abandoned child. These events define our life, our work, but they aren’t newsworthy. We need to tell these stories.”

“We are only as good as the tools on our belt, and by that I don’t mean the weapons we carry,” she continues. “I don’t want to have to arrest. I want to promote public safety before the crime. And that’s what I’ve set out to do.”

If her intention was to derail potential uproar if Hennepin County’s verdict upsets the activists, she missed the mark. City Council Member Cam Gordon acknowledged that while she may have had good intentions, her delivery failed.

“One of the best paradoxes of leadership is a leader's need to be both stubborn and open-minded,” says Simon Sinek, leadership expert and TED Talk darling. “A leader must insist on sticking to the vision and stay on course to the destination. But he [sic] must be open-minded during the process.”

With MPD 2.0, Chief Harteau has created a solid foundation for “a new policing model.” Our city will win if she strikes this leadership balance, finding a path that disarms her critics with wise choices.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

Spring Fever? Tour Fairchild Gardens

Article and photos by Susan Schaefer

If you’ve ever wondered how your roast or corned beef met that zesty horseradish topping, you can thank a mid-Western gentleman scholar named David Fairchild, a botanist, bureaucrat and adventurer from Kansas, whose notable career began under the influence of his father, president of Kansas State College of Agriculture. Young Fairchild went on to Iowa State and Rutgers Universities before joining the U.S. Department of Agriculture in Washington, D.C. in the early 1890s. While working for the USDA, Fairchild introduced more than twenty thousand exotic plants into the United States, among them the first flowering cherries of Washington, D.C., soybeans, mangos, alfalfa, nectarines, dates, bamboos, and yes, horseradish.

Here in Minnesota where the Mill City moniker reflects our deep agricultural roots we recognize Fairchild for his targeted support of applied botanical science to provide American farmers with “economic plants” for market development. Much of our state benefits still.

But another reason for winter weary Minnesotans to appreciate Fairchild is the chance to escape to the Fairchild Tropical Botanical Gardens located in the lush, hidden neighborhood of Coral Gables, Florida, just south of Miami, part of his legacy. Here it is possible to wander 83 acres of mesmerizingly landscaped paths past some 11 lakes, stone walls laden with blossomed vines, sunken gardens, tropical mini-forests, and museums and exhibition buildings replete with an innovative butterfly house aflutter with bewitching varieties. 

As member of the Center for Plant Conservation, a consortium of botanic gardens involved in preservation of endangered U.S. flora, FTBG’s plant collecting efforts have intensified to identify and save endangered plants including tropical fruit, Florida and native plants, and orchids. The annual orchid extravaganza, which typically coincides with our spring break, is worthy of a day trip.

While the Central Mississippi riverfront slowly greens, and we seek out gardening tips at Como Conservatory, the MN Landscape Arboretum, and the now open Macy’s Annual Flower Show, I recommend a visit to FTBG to partake of the colorful chaos of flora and fauna in their native setting. Here’s a small taste to whet your wanderlust.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

US Politics Razzmatazz: Impressions from Across the Pond – An Interview with Robert Francis

Minnesota is heralded for our Garrison Keillor “above average” populace. We have the highest rate of voter participation in the country. In 2008, according to George Mason University, 78% of eligible Minnesotans voted in the presidential election. Some Minnesota districts turn out more than 90%!

A while back CNN looked at why this might be: Our state boasts same day voter registration; has a highly engaged civic culture that segues with Robert Putman’s (Bowling Alone in America) theories about volunteerism contributing to a strong democracy – 38% of Minnesotans volunteer; education and awareness are high; we do not require voter ID; and we boast a vibrant political scene.

Yet, it is doubtful that even our exceptional citizenry understands all of the nuances of our electoral process. Ask an average citizen to define the difference between a democracy and a republic, many will likely falter. What about between direct and representational democracy? How the Electoral College works? Why some states have caucus systems and some primaries?

The United States is a Republic (many mouth these words in our patriotic Pledge of Allegiance but never stop to consider what that means).  A republic is similar to a representative democracy but with a written constitution that delineates basic rights, protecting the minority from being unrepresented or overridden by the majority. (Diffen)

With our current presidential primaries taking the global stage for a variety of reasons, not the least of which has to do with pure theatrical value, I wondered how some of my European colleagues view “the show.” Having lived in Europe for almost 10 years, earning my advanced degree in European Public Affairs from Maastricht University (Netherlands) and teaching there, consulting for a number of international NGOs, and lecturing in the European Parliament, I have a few executive level European experts to turn to.

I chose fellow Maastricht University classmate, Robert Francis, now a Director for the respected global consultancy Grayling Brussels (Twitter @TheEULobby). Francis has worked in the European Parliament, and as a UK national now living and working in the European Union’s main capitol city of Brussels, is able to offer a multi-layered, informed European perspective. 

The focus on individuals seems to be uniquely American - sure, Europeans know who head their parties, but there is also a bunch of Ministers, wannabe Ministers, and apparatchiks who do the rounds of interviews.
–Robert Francis, Director, Grayling Brussels

                                                                 ***

What are your overall impressions about how the United States conducts presidential elections?

To most Europeans, the US elections are a bit of a mystery. True, we know the main players and we see the razzmatazz, and we all have opinions about who we want to win - but when it comes to how many delegates each candidate needs, the "primaries", "super Tuesday" - these are all alien terms to us. My personal impression is that the campaigns are beginning earlier and the hype is like never before - Obama still has eight months to govern yet he has been a lame duck for the last six months. This does not seem to be very healthy for democracy, and not a good thing for the country. It has also stalled a number of initiatives, such as the EU-US trade agreement.

Please comment on our strict two-party system.

Two party systems are not particularly alien to Brits, who have grown up on a staple of Conservative-Labour politics since World War II, albeit with the coalition blip after the 2010 election. Yet far from ushering in a bright new future of coalition governments, the fallout from this has further strengthened the two party system, one party government.

On the European continent, coalition governing is the norm, and governments fall all the time as a result, even in stable prosperous countries such as the Netherlands. Belgium went 535 days without a government - a world record, yet life continued as normal (some even said it improved, since the caretaker government could only do what it had to, and didn't have a mandate to issue new proposals).

In Belgium there is a plethora of parties, with the French and Flemish communities having their own version of each party, which means forming a government involves solving a hugely complex equation. In comparison, perhaps the US model is actually very simple (though unworkable in a country like Belgium).

I don't think a two party system is particularly healthy, but there doesn't seem to be a solution in the US as anyone seen to be too left will be unelectable. It is noteworthy that if the Democrats were British, they would be right of centre, and even more right of centre if they were on the continent. Bernie Sanders seems to be shaking things up but he is the outsider candidate, and to European ears, most of what he says is not incredibly revolutionary.

What specifically do you observe in the current campaign, (from both parties)?

Trump has dominated the airwaves, even in Europe. Bluster, anti-immigration rhetoric, "telling it like it is" - the UK has our own version of this, known as the UK Independence Party, but they are nowhere near power. Trump, on the other hand, could be President. A scary prospect. France of course has the National Front, a party in the ascendancy and in Marine Le Pen a strong Presidential candidate. It is very tempting for Europeans to patronise the US, but they have their own populist, anti-immigrant, and protectionist parties in their backyard.

The Democrats have been in Trump's shadow, but most Europeans favour the softer, more sympathetic, less patriotic approach (Europeans generally don't put as much emphasis on the need to be patriotic - a few world wars put paid to that). Yet there is general ignorance even about the Democrats. Most Europeans don't know that Hillary supports the death penalty and would be horrified to know she does, but they would still favour her over Trump. Anyone but Trump, basically.

Can you contrast election politics with those of your individual Western European countries? The EU?

In the States it really is all show, but the UK is catching up with its own TV debates between Prime Minister candidates (even though you don't vote for an individual you vote for a party  - so it's all a bit of a sham).

Most elections are won on the local level, particularly in the UK, which operates a constituency, first past the post, system. If your local MEP kept the local hospital open, you won't mind voting for him/her even if you dislike their party. Hence, foreign issues, including EU concerns, take a backseat. There were mass protests around the Iraq War, but Blair still won a large majority afterwards.

Trump keeps saying he wants to "smash ISIS", but I don't know whether Americans will vote for him on that basis. Employment is probably a more important factor, as it would be in Europe.

As mentioned above, you would never start campaigning so far out from an election in Europe - most elections in the UK are called a few months in advance. There is longer preparation for EU elections, but the latter are often perceived as being of less importance, and news coverage is often rare.

The focus on individuals seems to be uniquely American - sure, Europeans know who head their parties, but there is also a bunch of Ministers, wannabe Ministers, and apparatchiks who do the rounds of interviews. In the US, the perception seems to be that it will be Trump v Hillary - who else will be in their team? Who knows? We don't.

Any additional comments?

The UK seems to be moving to an Americanization of politics, with the TV debates as an example. The UK is a lot more like the US in this respect, and Europeans are generally suspicious of the razzmatazz in the US - it is hard to imagine Merkel working the crowd like Hillary does, she is just not that sort of person. Europeans would take substance over style any day, and Merkel proves that.

When you hear Trump supporters saying they support him "because he is a successful businessman" - that is a very un-European approach. In fact, most Europeans would shy away from such a figure, so his appeal is also a mystery. Nigel Farage, the leader of UKIP, is also a businessman, but he likes to keep that quiet, and instead tries to be "one of us", literally having a pint in the local pub with "local people". Hard to imagine Trump portraying himself like that.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

Sarah Rasmussen joins The Jungle: Making the classics accessible

Blessed with as robust an arts community as any of the great world cultural centers, the Twin Cities regional theaters have recently witnessed a remarkable grand slam in leadership bringing in an exciting new generation of artistic directors.

Most notable, perhaps, is Joseph Haj replacing Joe Dowling at the venerable Guthrie Theater, our Starship on the banks of the Mississippi. Across the river, Randy Reyes has taken the reins from founding director Rick Shiomi at St. Paul’s Mu Performing Arts, preserving its esteemed reputation while branching out in his own fashion. Moving through a staged leadership transition alongside her renowned father, Lou Bellamy, daughter Sarah now co-directs Penumbra Theater Company.

Photo by Susan Schaefer.  Sarah Rasmussen at home in her new domain. 

If this triple crown of changes weren’t significant enough, another Sarah has returned to our city taking the helm of The Jungle Theater from its legendary founder and theatrical force, Bain Boehlke, rendering our thespian fortunes a grand slam indeed.

Sarah Rasmussen, who most recently served as Associate Professor and Head of the MFA Directing Program at the University of Texas at Austin, is no stranger to the Twin Cities. She is an alum of St. Olaf College in Northfield, with ties to the Playwright Center, Mixed Blood Theatre and Ten Thousand Things. Rasmussen hails from nearby Sisseton, S.D., situated in the Lake Taverse Indian Reservation, on the northern fringe of the Coteau des Prairies, a place that proclaims itself rich in Native American and immigrant history. 

Perhaps this heritage is one of the influences that mark Rasmussen’s self-proclaimed goals for great inclusivity and diversity in her upcoming tenure. If her brilliant debut staging of Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona featuring an all female cast is any indication she delivers on her promise.

Appearing entirely at home in her new domain, Rasmussen welcomes me with a spot of Earl Grey tea and a seat on the cozy baroque couches that define the Jungle’s décor. Diffuse early morning light illuminates her animated discourse on why she chose this as her inaugural piece.

“I feel particularly fortunate to present ‘Two Gents’ with an all female cast at the same time Guerilla Girls have made the Twin Cities their focal point to introduce the ongoing disparity in gender representation in the arts,” she explains.

“If female directors don’t have experience,
 they can’t get hired, and if they can’t get
 hired, they can’t get experience.”

It is no secret that there is an astounding gender parity gap in theater. Movements such as Melody Brooks’ 50/50 in 2020: Parity for Women Theatre Artists, point to the stark reality.

“It truly seems ironic that such a gap exists in our field, a creative field, which you imagine is populated with progressive people,” she muses. Rasmussen is sincerely diplomatic in her assessment of why this seismic gap exists in her field. “To understand the problem you can take a simple view and say that men have been in charge.”

But now there are new realities that can govern how theater adapts to the changing demographics of both audience and participants. Rasmussen references Maureen Dowd’s New York Times articleabout Hollywood female executives and filmmakers where sexism is so rampant that a federal lawsuit is in the works. The article highlights what Girls’ creator Lena Dunham calls a dark loop, and Rasmussen states the quote almost verbatim: “If female directors don’t have experience, they can’t get hired, and if they can’t get hired, they can’t get experience.”

It’s time for the paradigm to change and Rasmussen believes the way to change is for women and people of color to speak up and speak out, and she is very optimistic that overall inclusivity is on a fast track, at least here. She was recently part of an MPR panel discussion with her new crop of Twin Cities’ artistic leaders – Haj, Reyes and Bellamy – who share almost precisely the same vision of inclusivity.

Rasmussen and her administration have made welcome changes that provide more access to wider audiences. The Jungle is offering new pricing for onstage seating, younger audiences, and neighborhood residents, as well more interactive experiences with pre- and post show discussions and informative talks.

Her philosophy is that masterworks have to be in conversation with audiences and the times. “I believe that classics can be both arty and intellectual, she concedes. “I’m a populist at heart. I think audiences want to be invited in. The Jungle will continue to tackle meaningful theater while being entirely mindful of audiences.”

If her inaugural production indicates the future, our community can expect high art classics rendered accessible to the populace.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

Never on the Sidelines: An Interview with State Representative Phyllis Kahn

Above: St. Catherine student, Alexandra Kerlin, interviews Rep. Phyllis Kahn

The phrase, “All politics is local,” is commonly associated with the legendary Massachusetts Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill who entered the political fray back in 1935. The phrase implies that a politician’s success is directly tied to her ability to understand and influence the issues of her constituents, sometimes mundane and everyday, rather than focusing on more universal concerns.

However there are times when this principle is out of whack with reality – for example when large issues that impact society as a whole intersect the lives of those living in a defined geographic area.

Such seems to be the track record of Minnesota State Representative Phyllis Kahn, who for the past 21 years has represented District 60B, which covers a large swath of both the west and east sides of the Central Riverfront including St. Anthony Main and the entire University of Minnesota campus.

While dutifully serving the needs of this lush riverfront district by obtaining funding for parks, trails, historic preservation, and the expansion of community and urban forests, Kahn has also fought indefatigably for such universal issues as health, environment, and women’s rights, setting precedents that expand to lives of citizens beyond our modest borders.

Entering politics in 1972 when women were mostly relegated to the roles of wife and mother Kahn had already experienced gender bias head on.

“Oh yes, there are more than a few incidents of pure gender discrimination in my journey. Early on, while applying for grad school a male interviewer told me there was no hope for me – that I should just go home and be a housewife. Later, after I’d proved him wrong, I still had to use the name of a male colleague in order to apply for a prestigious grant in my field of science.”

Kahn won that grant earning her doctorate in the male dominated field of biophysics from Yale University and a Master of Public Health from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. And, yes, Phyllis Kahn was a wife and mother of two!

This past Monday I sat with Kahn and St. Catherine student, Alexandra Kerlin, at Wilde Roast Café in St. Anthony Main to learn more about her long career in public service and her views on science, technology, public health and women’s rights.

Opportunely, Kerlin questioned Kahn on a more personal note about how someone her age, specifically a young woman, could make a difference in society, and Kahn presented an equally personal three-pronged response.

“First of all,” she advised, “never be afraid to be involved. Don’t be relegated to the back of the room and always encourage other women. We need to support each other.” 

But, Kahn added, for women to raise the bar they must also create strong coalitions across the board.

“I learned early in my legislative career how to form strong alliances with my fellow legislators, male and female, Democrat and Republican. One piece of legislation of which I’m very proud was forged with Republican Keith Downey. Together we hammered out a law to revamp the State’s antiquated computer systems, thereby facilitating more open, transparent and accessible communications for elected officials, staffers and citizens alike. This kind of lawmaking can only happen when you forge solid working relationships across the aisle and the gender divide.”

Finally, Kahn strongly advocates that ordinary citizens become involved in the political process. “That is one certain way to make a difference.”

The more people participate – the more democratic is our society. The most obvious way to do that this week is for all Minnesotans to find their caucus locations and get involved. You can do this by finding your local site. The Secretary of State’s office has prepared a handy caucus finder and there is an online caucus tip sheet prepared by a former Capitol staffer.

Kahn, who is running for another term, understands the value and the impact of full throttle involvement. Attending Minnesota’s legendary caucus process allows every citizen to hear and be heard.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

Profile of Architect Damaris Hollingsworth: Hothouse transplant

Photo credit: Susan Schaefer

The soaring atrium at the heart of architectural firm DLR Group’s downtown Minneapolis office is the perfect setting for the firm’s newest addition – architect and client leader, Damaris Hollingsworth, AIA, LEED AP, who exudes the energy and warmth of her native Brazil. But in spite of her tropical background, Hollingsworth is no shrinking violet.

She proudly tells how she has made a demanding journey as a black girl growing up in the inner city of Sao Paulo, with limited educational opportunities, through the rigors and ranks to become an accomplished architect in the United States. In a field predominantly populated with white male leaders, this is no small feat.

Anyone familiar with the architecture field understands its exacting academics and strict industry licensing requirements, with countless professional exams required to advance. And there’s the infamous tempered (itals mine) glass ceiling. More than many professions, architecture has been a traditionally boys game. Nevertheless, Hollingsworth has her sharp eye firmly on the prize of earning leadership status.

As co-chair for the AIA (American Institute of Architects) MN Women in Architecture Committee, she has plenty of opportunity not only to discuss the gender leadership gap, but also to lead the charge to close it. “In my profession women and men enter at about the same rate – men at 52% and women at 48%,” she explains. “But as the path toward leadership and the C-suite progresses, the rate for women drops drastically.” Many of the biases entail “lots of after hour’s events and old boy style networking.” Yet, even with an active and engaged two-year-old, she is not going to let those obstacles stand in the way to her path to the top.

After nearly ten years at a previous firm, she is pleased with the flexibility and opportunities presented by DLR. Her direct supervisor is a female senior associate and she notes that many female managers surround her. But Hollingsworth believes in co-equity. “I know this isn’t an either or game,” she states. “For women to rise in the ranks of any field, men have to support them. For people of color to thrive, white people have to support them. I believe in making allies.”

She has made quite a few already. Not only is she co-chairing the Women in Architecture Committee, she is an active member of its Diversity Task Force, and co-author of that group’s 2015 Diversity Task Force Report. Most recently, she has been asked to join the Strategic Resource Team for AIA MN, and she is competing to be named one of the top 40 under 40 in Building Design + Construction’sprestigious industry magazine. Damaris Hollingsworth is a tour de force.

What is most striking is the pure joy she exudes for her work. She loves the gamut of what it takes to be a great architect – not wanting to be narrow cast as a project manager or designer, she revels in the field’s entire lifecycle. “Master architects did it all – listened to the clients, responded to their needs, designed the right solutions, and oversaw the process. This is what I love to do.” And she’s thrilled to ply her trade in Downtown Minneapolis.

Having joined DLR’s Nicollet Mall location in January, Hollingsworth is exploring the downtown via what she calls, the veins of city – the skyway.  “I come from a vibrant metropolis where everyone walks and takes public transportation everywhere. At first, I wondered, ‘Where is everyone?’ and then I discovered the thriving skyway society. I love it. Everyone walking with purpose and determination!” She’s eager to see the cityscape come alive as well, once warm weather brings people to the streets. “I want to take the trains, explore the library, all that this city has to offer.”

Be sure to watch for this vibrant young professional as she lights up our downtown with the pure power of her personality.

Susan Schaefer can be reached at susan@millcitymedia.org.

Mill City Valentine: A Greeting

By Susan Schaefer, Reporter

I’m delighted to join Mill City Times as a veteran contributor to the Minneapolis Riverfront. Coming onboard this week is a fitting valentine.

Twenty years ago today, on February 14, 1996, I scored triple hearts when I married my heartthrob, the Dutch philosopher and gentleman, Martijn Hermse, on Valentine’s Day in the then-Whitney Hotel in what is now known as Mill City, the heart of the Central Riverfront.

                                     Our iconic honeymoon shot shows us gazing lovingly at St. Anthony Falls                      from our penthouse balcony of the Whitney Hotel.

The Minneapolis Riverfront has been central to my life, love and work. Twenty years ago marks another anniversary, when as an independent consultant I developed the concept for The Minneapolis Riverfront: Vision and Implementation project and book for my architectural client, Cuningham Group, whose office is still located on St. Anthony Main’s East Bank. This public affairs and urban planning project won local, regional, national and international acclaim with many local leaders heralding it as the inspiration for what has become today’s successful riverfront revitalization. Our work brought welcome attention to the then neglected central riverfront.

For this project, I toured multiple Dutch riverfront developments considered by the Urban Land Institute as some of the most successful in the world. While consulting with Dutch officials and architects on behalf of our project, I met my husband. Not only were we wed on the Minneapolis Riverfront, we later moved blocks from it to the Seward Neighborhood, where Martijn served on the Seward Coop’s Board of Directors while I served on the Neighborhood’s Executive Board. Everyday we walked, ran, biked or drove the river’s riparian paths in a state of constant enchantment.

Seven years ago, while on an educational sabbatical in my husband’s hometown of Maastricht, living alongside another mythical river, the Meuse, Martijn died from cancer. Gradually, I made my way back to my adopted city and the river that flows in my veins.

Now I live directly atop historic Bohemian Flats with an enthralling view of the Mississippi and the Minneapolis Riverfront I cherish. On favorable days you’ll find me loping north, past the Whitney, glancing lovingly at the balcony where our gaze on river reflected our united dreams.

So, I am very pleased to join Kim and David in their united dream to provide comprehensive coverage to the central riverfront as a reporter and photographer for Mill City Times. I have city reporting in my blood as a long time journalist and former publisher and editor of center city Philadelphia’s South Street Star newspaper. I plan to bring thoughtful, original writing, commentary and images to our readers. If you want to know more about me please click here.

I welcome emails: susan@millcitymedia.org.  Thank you. And remember, be well, be wise and laugh a lot.