Episode Transcript
Speaker 0 00:00:00 <inaudible>
Speaker 1 00:02:50 You are listening to right on radio on KPI 90.3 FM and streaming live on the web at <inaudible> dot org. I'm Elizabeth and I'm Josh Webber. Tonight. Dave FedEx speaks with Patrick cabelo Hansel. The author of quitting time. A new collection of poetry Honzel is a widely published poet and has authored a novella that was serialized in 33 issues of the alley news. He has been nominated for a pushcart prize and received awards from the loft literary center and the Minnesota state arts board. He retired Lutheran pastor Hanzel lives in Minneapolis, and I'm Annie Harvey in the second part of the show. We'll talk with Jim Walsh, uh, author of fear and loving in South Minneapolis, uh, veteran twin cities, journalist, and rock and tour summons the life of the twin cities after reporting and recording its stories for more than 30 years cannot wait to talk to Jim all of this and more so stay tuned to right on radio. <inaudible> Dave, take it away.
Speaker 2 00:04:07 Thank you. And hello, Patrick is a pattern. What Patrick is what I like Patrick. It is walking to the right on radio. It's a pleasure to have here. We have quite the show. I'm excited about the gym while she interviewed myself, but let's start out with some really great poetry. Um, before we hear from, uh, our reading from quitting time, your collection of poetry, uh, Patrick, let's talk about, uh, your connection to poetry, how it became a part of your life. And first of all, by the way, I'm going to give you a big compliment on that COVID hair of yours. I mean, that's really important.
Speaker 2 00:04:46 My wife, my wife is my Barbara and she's sitting right next to me. So she could take credit for that. Well, I'm sorry, I cut my, sorry about that. Tell us how you got introduced to poetry and, um, when it became a part of your life, uh, you know, I always was interested in town stories and I made up stories even as a young kid. Um, I think I had poetry kind of beaten out of me in high school. They just taught it in a way that was just, it was so boring and no connection to life. Um, and then college, I started reading more and then to be honest, I went through a lot of changes between my senior and junior and senior year in college. And, um, a lot of things happened that were hard and I just, I was in a poetry class and it just seemed like that's the form to start to write about that.
Speaker 2 00:05:36 And then I also started to just read all kinds of different folks. So that's what got me going. Awesome. That's great. Thank you for that, Patrick. And how about kicking us off with a reading now and set us up? Okay. So the book is sure. The book is called, uh, quitting time and it's about my father, Walter Hansel. He was born in 1912 in foreign Northeastern, North Dakota, two, um, immigrants that, um, were from Germany and what is now Ukraine. So he grew up only speaking, only German. And so this poem is called mother tongue. I'm just going to read part of it's kind of a long poem, but it's, um, it's about when he went to, um, when he went to kindergarten for the first time, he was the oldest of seven children, um, from a poor farm.
Speaker 2 00:06:23 So on page 10 of your looking, um, so mother tongue 1917 was a bad year to go to kindergarten in Langdon, North Dakota speaking, only chairman. Our father told us the teacher threatened with the back of the hand each yeah, or nine that slipped from little lips. Imagine that five-year-old uncertain in his farm pants and the best shoes of the family playing in the dirt, outside the school house, carving the alphabet with a stick, making his sagas out of dust. What do you say when you are five years old in the son of grandson of the enemy? Luton Morgan is what his bright blue eyes are shiny, but his lips tremble at the fear of the Lord incarnate in an American Fraulein whose brother is being shot at over the ocean and over dirt that no holds that holds no man's claim. This child has no ways to distinguish guests from guests or past from past. He is an unwelcome guest in the land and country of his birth. Watch him as history, slow March, trumps the ground, how he tries to wrap his synopses and the cinders of his mouth around the new tongue in the dirt. It was born out of watch his tongue, watch his hand.
Speaker 3 00:07:45 Thank you. That's Patrick Hansel reading from <inaudible> poetry. Patrick, I have to begin by saying how much personally I connected with your poems. I was moved by them and very much taken by them. I, um, I come from Germans from Russia, um, then the hard life in the North Dakota Prairie. Um, my mother lived in a sod house till she was 10. I could go on and on a lot of us have these kinds of stories and, uh, your poetry really spoke to me. I want to begin with what struck me about many things is the novel, like feeling of this collection. Each poem felt like a chapter in a story. And I, and I have to say I haven't encountered something like that in quite some time, at least among contemporary poets. I'm really loved that. Um, I felt like I was reading a novel. I wanted to turn the page for the next chapter. That kind of experience. So kudos to you. I mean, you you've really, uh, created something narratively compelling. Um, was this your intent?
Speaker 2 00:08:44 Well, when I started off, I was just trying to write poems about my father. And to be honest, I couldn't really do that for a while after he died, you know, it just took awhile. And then I started and then I started also, um, we searching things in his life historically, like he had a really challenging black life with the depression. Um, the clan was actually in North Dakota and didn't have a lot of African-Americans or Jews. So they burned, crosses in front of Catholic homes and they burned one near his home, then the depression and so on. I mean, it was, it was a really rough, rough kind of time. And I started imagining, well, what is, what is it like for him through that? I didn't start out with a novel idea, but then it just, it just came, became that as I learned a little bits of history and then went from there.
Speaker 3 00:09:31 Well, you're you describe life on the farm as if you were right there at that time. It's really amazing. So you grew up on a farm, is that right?
Speaker 2 00:09:41 No. I grew up in an Austin, Minnesota. Um, my dad was a barber, but I worked on farms as a kid. Of course. Yeah. And he talked about the farm and we would, we went to visit his brother, still lived on the family farm there. So I'd actually were there just a few years ago.
Speaker 3 00:09:58 Yeah. Yeah. You really captured that beautifully captured war beautifully too. Um, and I don't know if you've experienced it. Uh, certainly didn't experience that the world Wars is as you described them, but, uh, uh, ladies and gentlemen out there in radio land, this is poetry about world, about love, about farm life, about, um, all kinds of things. Father-son relationships. Um, now I lost my train of thought. Oh, um, Oh, the KKK thing. Yeah. That there was, you mentioned it and I was going to raise it later, but since you did mention it, um, that's news to me, I knew there was a KKK, the clan in the upper Midwest. Um, I have not heard stories about it, uh, on the windswept prayers of the Dakotas. Uh, can you tell us a little more, a little bit more about that phenomenon?
Speaker 2 00:10:47 Yeah, well, um, um, and there's not a lot written about it, but what I understand, um, from researching just the KKK in that period of time, this has been in the 1910s is that the KKK was against immigrants and particularly against immigrants that were Catholic and were from, uh, darker skin. Um, and also, um, a lot of the Catholics were known as drinkers. They approved, they opposed prohibition, which was moving towards being enacted during that time period. And so I think those two things got completed. Um, um, my father went, um, he was, uh, a young boy actually drove, uh, uh, farm cart with horses with his father. And I think his uncle bringing, you know, liquor from a still that someone else had. So he was well aware of what was going on there. Um, and I don't know if that was part of it or if it was just, you know, the KKK always look for the other, you know, let's find someone to blame on and hate. And so, you know, no blacks or Jews there, it was, they went after the immigrants.
Speaker 3 00:11:49 Yeah. I want to come back to your relationship with your father. It's a very poignant one. And, uh, um, you, you say you could not be getting ready in each poems until he had died and in sometime I'd pass, is that right? Yes. Yeah. Um, what was your, we get a sense for what your relationship with your father was like, but, but tell us, tell us a little bit about that.
Speaker 2 00:12:14 So, um, you know, we were close when I was younger. I was a second son, so, um, and I had a traumatic brain injury when I was 10 weeks old. I fell off a table and my dad had left me. He was changing my diaper and I think there were, well, he felt really guilty about that, um, to say the least
Speaker 3 00:12:34 With apologies, can I stop you there? That was striking moment in the, uh, poems and the selection of poems. Uh, I had to read it twice. Um, and then come to come to realize it was, you was another revelation. Um, a very powerful moment in the, in the story I must say.
Speaker 2 00:12:53 Yeah. Yeah. And I imagine him, you know, as a young father, um, and a Barb we're working, we didn't make a lot of money to, he left me for just a few seconds. Cause my older brother who was two, was fussing at his nap, I guess. And I rolled off the table, which 10 week old shouldn't be able to do it, but somehow it happened and, um, had surgery three times with the Mayo clinic and, and survived. And so I think that kind of told my place in the family, but then by the time I got to be a teenager, we were butting heads like nobody's business. I mean, it was really not a good relationship.
Speaker 3 00:13:30 Yeah, yeah. Was that about your father?
Speaker 2 00:13:32 I mean, he was at Barbara and I had wanted to grow up. I think it was, you know, so this is late sixties, early seventies. So, um, it's about the war. It's about, uh, civil rights. It's about, um, you know, smoking marijuana. It's about all that stuff. Um, but also I think my father was going through some transition there too.
Speaker 3 00:13:53 Um, yeah. Um, there's a line I thought of when you were speaking, uh, from the poem evacuating on page 34, hate is the first sin obligated by fear. I love that long and that line among other lines and I'll probably raise some more for our listeners, but tell us what you mean by hate is the first sin obligated by fear.
Speaker 2 00:14:17 Well, that was written the content text. He was already in the army when the war, when the us got in the war, he was stationed in the far out loop Aleutian islands, which was actually closer to, uh, Japan than Hawaii was. And so, um, and they had to evacuate. And, um, one thing I really appreciated about my father was that he, he never talked about, uh, the enemy in, um, derogative terms. You know, he didn't say like, there's a lot of people I grew up with talking dirty chaps and the crowds and all that. He, he would never allow that kind of talk and talk about it, even though I'm sure he had seen people killed and he had shot and we had shut down at least one plane because he was anti aircraft. Um, but he just, he didn't, you know, that fear that it, to me, it connected his being evacuated there with a whole fear in the country. Then that locked up all the people of Japanese American descent on the West coast that, you know, when, when you're afraid and that's true today too, when you're afraid, you find, then you find somebody to hate, that's a way to take away that fear and give you a false sense of power. It really doesn't help, but that's how, that's how it works too often, I think.
Speaker 3 00:15:31 Yeah. And you write very, uh, poignantly, I guess it would say in terms of, uh, the war, uh, to have first and second generation immigrant Germans going over to Germany to in effect, fight against, you know, likely family members or some sort of second or third cousins. Um, and then as you know, uh, many Germans here in America, especially in the first world war, I believe you can correct me on this where I've, I guess we'll just use the term persecuted in some way, shape or form many were jailed. Um, because they were German much like the Japanese Japanese in world war two when they were, uh, incarcerated in fact. But, um, to what degree was that a part of your family lore? That whole otherness of being German and the early generations,
Speaker 2 00:16:27 You know, and I didn't really get that, um, like many men in his generation. He didn't talk about the war a lot. You know, we, we heard bits and pieces as he got older. I think he, he, particularly as his sons then face Vietnam, he, he, he got a different take on that, but, um, I grew up kind of being ashamed of that, um, side of my family. My mother's almost pure Irish and that was lifted up more than the German. It was interesting because he was in the occupation and, Um, and I never heard him speak German, but my, my older brother married a woman who, whose mother was German. And when they came to visit, he started speaking them through the entrance.
Speaker 3 00:17:14 Oh, wow. Say Patrick, you're cutting out on us a little bit. You're cutting out on us a little bit. I wonder if you could turn off your video as much as I like looking at that marvelous chair, turn off your video, made a little, put all the power into the audio. I don't know no idea what I'm talking about, but it might work. Um, that helps sometimes, uh, we're talking about old times and, uh, turning stories about the past. There's another line. Um, and the poem on the street car where you write, or was it all a romantic dream I've inherited of you? This is when you're talking about, um, memories or stories. Um, and that got me thinking about memory and writing about things we may have experienced or may have heard about as a poet. Patrick, how important is it for you to get these stories, right? Or is it more important to get these stories told in a way that, you know, makes a point establishes a mood and that sort of thing?
Speaker 2 00:18:13 Well, uh, I'm not the only one who does this, but I would distinguish between truth. Truth was a small T and truth was a big T I, I don't know the details of what it was like for him on that street car. I know that coming back from the war, having been in small towns, he ended up at Barbara college in Minneapolis, which was down by Hennepin and, and Washington. Well, at that point in the city's history, all the liquor was concentrated there, all the flop houses off. And he didn't like that. And he couldn't wait to get out of that. So he, and he would talk about that, not detail, but I just put him on the street car. I said, okay, what would he see? What would he feel? So I'm making that up. But I think I'm doing it in the sense of what really happened.
Speaker 3 00:18:57 Yeah. I like that small T capital teacher's idea. I hear you're probably right. That holds true for many poets. Um, Patrick, I'm gonna remind our listeners who we are speaking with, and then I'll ask you to give us another reading and be come out of that. Okay. We are talking to Patrick cabelo Hansel and his about his collection of poetry quitting time. And you are listening to right on radio. I'm the coolest radio station in town. I'm sure KFH
Speaker 2 00:19:25 I met and become a member if you're not. Okay.
Speaker 3 00:19:29 Thank you. We're good friends now become a member if you're not that's right. Thanks Patrick. Uh, so give us another reading please, and set us up what you're going to read.
Speaker 2 00:19:42 So this is the section, um, from the war and it's called falling. And if you remember, he was threatened to be hit as a five-year-old if he spoke German. And he'd the situation here is he's, uh, he's the staff Sergeant of a unit, an aircraft unit. And this is an experience that he related to just to me and not to my other brothers falling a man hung from his parachute, like a seed softly, worldly, gigging down, shouting don't shoot. I surrender in the tongue of the enemy, your first tongue. He had no way to reach his weapon, but the men under you did. And in a minute, though, your voice was raised and your rank commanded obedience. It was the County fair in Shreveport, in Pembina and new ALM and new prey step right up, everyone wins a prize, the lights flashing the girls of giggles and bullets and a ribbon for the man who hits the nose. Then silence the head of the boy on his chest, his body limp and its harness gravity doing its work. The son of German cousins, perhaps the grandson of your grandfather's friend, spoiled blood or his uniform father. Why did you tell me this story and not my brothers? Your memories are like your hands, big catalyst open his boots. Newly shined pulled him down to the earth. He finally met as a shroud and nothing. A home. Your men did not speak. They held their rifles across their chest as if bearing sick children.
Speaker 3 00:21:20 Thank you for that, Patrick. Uh, where did that poem come from for you? Did that come from a story or did you just want to give us a sense for the war itself?
Speaker 2 00:21:33 Well, I remember once my dad talking and, um, he almost broke down, he wasn't a man who did that a lot when I was growing up. But he talked about how sometimes in war, you, you do things you don't want to do. And then he told me this story and how, even though he was a Sergeant, he felt powerless because his men disobeyed his orders not to shoot and shot him, shot this guy that was surrendering. Um, because only he understood that he was surrendering because the guy was speaking in German. And so, and, and then at the same time, I started talking with my brother who heard another story about, uh, the, uh, when they're in dilutions, they had to go. That was the only part of the U S that was captured during the war. But Japan, a couple of far islands, they had to go stab the bodies of the Japanese soldiers on the beach because, um, live soldiers, living soldiers would hide among the dead. And so I began to think, well, why those had been terrible memories for him? Why did he, and I understand why he wouldn't share that, you know? Um, and then the irony of he's threatened to be hit when he's five years old for speaking German. And then his German comes in handy for his country when he goes to war. Okay.
Speaker 3 00:22:47 Yeah. Wow. Uh, beautiful lines in that poem, a man hung from his parachute, like a seed softly, really gigging down. I've made a lot of notes of lines that I'd loved in this book, a bird stolen from sleep crickets, hock, the air, the words that arise from the Thein Brown, uh, Patrick, to those, uh, some for some poets, these sort of phrases and ideas just sort of come to them. Does that happen for you or do you find yourself laboring over trying to find the right word for the right place?
Speaker 2 00:23:20 I think it's a little of both. Some of those natural words. I spent a lot of time outdoors, even though I've lived in the city much of my life. Um, some of those just kind of come out. Um, and, and, uh, and the best poems in this book, I think it's almost, it's not like I was in a trance, but I was in a place where I was there and creating it there. Um, and it just can't, but then every single one of them is, you know, revised and written, you know, sometimes dozens of times, um, and also with the help of other poets. So,
Speaker 3 00:23:53 Oh, so you look, Patrick, um, you get up every day and, um, get the notebook out. Uh, do you work as a group with other points? That's, that's, uh, I haven't heard that yet in terms of poetry.
Speaker 2 00:24:07 Yeah. I don't work writing poems, but we sent poems to each other and then get feedback on them. So I'm in a group that meets by zoom once a month and then two other toilets where we just send them by email and then get back to each other.
Speaker 3 00:24:19 Well, that's cool. You know, before we run out of time and believe it or not, it's going to happen very quickly if we can segue or move away from talking about this poetry, production and a little bit about your serialized novella. Um, how did that happen? I'm really curious about that.
Speaker 2 00:24:37 Yeah. Well, the alley news is, is the monthly paper for the Phillips neighborhood. And then I had, uh, my wife and I served as pastors there for 15 years and I wanted to write something set in the neighborhood. And it's about two young immigrants on kale and Lewis who faced challenges. And I integrated some of the, the, uh, happenings, like there was a big immigration rate in the neighborhood and they get caught up on that and escape, but then it also, it, during those months that it was cereal flies, I would ask people that read the paper, where do you want them to go? Like what places in the neighborhoods? So they went to the school, they went into the heart of the beast. They went to, um, you know, um, Maria's cafe. They went to the park and so forth, and then the storage has kind of evolved out of that.
Speaker 3 00:25:26 Okay, great. Say I got a two minute warning and, um, tell us how, tell us how you and your father left each other in terms of your relationship. That's a big, big question to land.
Speaker 2 00:25:42 Yeah. Um, well, thank God. Uh, after I went to college, I got smarter, not because of college, but I realized how angry I was. And, um, I think he did too. And we reconciled early on. And so we had a very close relationship for about 22 years. Spent a lot of time talking. Yeah, I miss, um, every election, cause I lived out in the East coast for 20 some years. We'd call each other in celebrator, lone elections. And I miss doing that with him.
Speaker 3 00:26:12 That's great. Uh, very quickly. What are you working on next?
Speaker 2 00:26:17 Uh, I'm working on a novel and my third, uh, book of poetry, which is, uh, uh, I don't have a title for yet, but it has a lot to do again. My first book had electric with immigration, has lots to do with immigration and, uh, little land and people's struggles.
Speaker 3 00:26:33 Awesome. Well, Patrick, let us know about both of those books when they're ready to go, but we've been talking with Patrick Cabello Hansel about his poetry collection quitting time. Patrick.
Speaker 4 00:26:44 Thank you very kindly. It's been a pleasure. Thank you. And best of luck to you. Thank you. You too. And now this
Speaker 1 00:26:55 <inaudible>. Can you hear me? Yes, that's big. And you see him somewhere on this. Great. Hello. Um, we're talking to Jim Walsh, author of fear and loving in South Minneapolis. Uh, why don't you start with the reading and then I know you shared with me, um, on the phone that you have something special you'd like to talk about. So why don't you just go right into that and whatever time we have left, we'll ask some questions. Does that work for you?
Speaker 4 00:27:44 Absolutely. I just, you know, my dad died on Friday and, uh, you know, given that right on radio is just, you know, the one-stop for all things, groovy, literary, um, you know, he, he loved books and he loved talking about books and our house was just filled with books growing up and, you know, his, his house was filled with books. He loved writers and, uh, he and my mom are, are, you know, the two biggest book lovers, uh, I've ever known. And they both have had, you know, they, they read, you know, spirituality fiction philosophy, and, uh, yeah, I'm here. I'm, I'm, you know, I'm thrilled to be on right on radio because, uh, you know, I catch it all the time still over these years and it's such a, um, it's such a necessary thing. And, uh, I always find it really calming in some way to hear writers, talking about writing and reading their work so grateful to be here.
Speaker 4 00:28:59 And, um, I wanted to, I wanted to pay all mush. My dad, uh, in my new book, it's a collection fear in loving and South Minneapolis. Um, this is called thanks for the scourge dad. And, uh, I wrote this in 2008 and it originally was published as my column in the Southwest journal, my brothers and sisters, and I grew up in a big house on 51st and Cole fats. When the neighborhood was crawling with baby booned Catholic family, my dad had his own upstairs office that was filled with stats and shelves books, a tiny TV and a door that was always wide open. All six of his kids walked through that door, countless times, collapsing on his college to find guidance, warmth, wisdom laughs, and a few bucks off the bat. My dad turns 80 and mate he's had some health problems in the past few years, but he's still up and running around and kicking.
Speaker 4 00:30:04 He grew up in this neighborhood behind the Boulevard theater and a block from an association church in grade school. And everywhere I go these days, I see signposts from his and our youth. It seems like we're getting ready to say goodbye, but I'm not quite ready for that. So today I want to talk about a lesson. My father passed on to me maybe by mistake, maybe the most on when I was eight or nine, my daughter's age, my dad, I would come into the bedroom. I shared with my brother and lie down on my bed face down on the pillow, exhausted. After a hard day's work as an employment counselor outside the window, the stars winked and promised UFO sightings, a potentiality that enthralls us both to this day. As soon as he got comfortable, my dad still in his work shirt and tie with gently demand, gimme a scourge for most of the world.
Speaker 4 00:31:02 The most common shirt term is back scratch, but somewhere along the line, dad morphed it into skirts. When he asked we'd set to it, always more pleasure than chore under over the shirt and never longer than five or 10 minutes as we grew up, the older kids would pay the younger kids a quarter for a skirt as we played boggle or Scrabble or watch sitcoms sports, the news or Leo, Buscaglia the hugging guru of the day, who said too often, we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around Diane Ackerman in her amazing. A natural history of the census said that quote, touch might be as essential as sunlight, which is likely not news to the sow. Thousands of sad sacks, this bird sad sacks.
Speaker 4 00:32:02 That is to be sure there are all sorts of studies out there about how touch helps and heals. That connects us to another life form gets us in touch with each other and our own inner packed dog and sues. The Savage beast is why we go to massage therapists have pets and crave the warmth of another body. Personally. I'm convinced that keeping each other back scratches all those years is what has kept my family close over the years, passing it on. As we have the spouses lovers and other animals, as we go beyond the touch part, the skirts would always lead to a story. A talk dad would tell me about his work. I would tell him what I did at school. He would make up a story I would make up a story is part of what set me on a path of seeking and storytelling, which brought me into two bookstores last Sunday, doing what my dad has spent his life doing browsing.
Speaker 4 00:32:59 I picked up five new books, including NIS <inaudible> Henry and June Cormac. McCarthy's the road. Jonathan Safran four is extremely loud and incredibly close. And rabbi rabbi Irwin, Kula as a yearnings embracing the sacred messiness of life, which States early on Jewish wisdom teaches that our yearnings generate life desire animates. As the prophet Amos says, seek me and live Jewish wisdom, urges us to go for it, to seek answers to our deepest questions, to search for spiritual and personal fulfillment while knowing we will never finally get there all, but the discoveries we'll make along the way. We are meant to live, to search with intention when we can uncover our deepest longings for intimacy, pleasure, creativity and self-understanding life yields, illumination and happiness far from being a burden. Our desires themselves become a path to blessing. I can draw a straight line from bolts of wisdom like that to my boyhood bedroom. And as I make my way now as a man and father part of my studies will always be linked to the action of my hand, gliding over my father's back is oil and sweat pooling under my fingernails and knowing even then how special it was.
Speaker 1 00:34:28 Thank you, Jim. Thank you for sharing about your dad and your authentic self with us. Um, it's always nice. And we here at KFA. I send out our condolences and our best energy to you in your time of grief. Um, thanks very much. You bet. You bet. And thanks for coming. Thanks for coming tonight. Um,
Speaker 4 00:34:52 Be here. We've been, we've been Irish waken it all week, so it's uh, we're happy. Happy to be here and uh, yeah. Good to be here.
Speaker 1 00:35:01 Yeah. Yeah. Why don't you, uh, now we'll get to the book here, which that essay was, uh, from the book fear and loving in South Minneapolis. Why don't you tell us some about this, the overall, uh, essay ness of it?
Speaker 4 00:35:17 Yeah, it's the collection is my second collection for the university of Minnesota press. Um, I put one out a few years ago called barns in manic depressive mix-tapes, um, which is, which is mostly all music. And, um, and then, uh, this year, uh, came around and I had a bunch of other very much life essay is like the one we just heard, um, and interviews and journalism that, uh, I felt would be good in a collection too. And luckily you have impressed the greed and, uh, they live, um, fear and loving and South Minneapolis is, I mean, it's, it spans like 30 years and, uh, you know, it captures a lot of stuff that is, um, that is gone now. I mean, w w w when I think about it, I keep saying, you know, it's a history book in some way, because, um, two of the places that I wrote regularly for the Southwest journal in city pages are gone. Um, and, uh, you know, th the, the shrinking of, um, news holes in, in community newspapers like that in news deserts is a real problem. And it's interesting for me to look at, you know, 30 years of my, uh, of my work, where I had, you know, editors who encouraged me to write personally and, uh, and trust in my voice. And that's what, that's the truth of alternative journalism and, and independent journalism. Um, and yeah, I'm, I'm very lucky to have, uh, to have compiled a lot of my stuff.
Speaker 1 00:37:04 You have a written for everything from, as you mentioned, the late great city pages to rolling stone. And I'm wondering how you decide, uh, well, one thing is I'm wondering is how you decide whether or not to put twin cities content into, uh, some of the larger places that you've been published. Uh, but I'm also just wondering how you, not just twin cities, but how you choose the content. Is your content different, or you just write the same thing that you would always write if you're writing for a larger, more, a magazine that has a wider, uh, media leadership.
Speaker 4 00:37:43 Hey, I, I get, I, I think I understand the question th th the, um, I have, I mean, when I, when I've written for rolling stone, and that's just a few times, um, you know, th that's been record in library views, um, the essays that I've written mostly have been born of my love for growing up in Minneapolis and documenting so much of, uh, the music scene a and life. Um, I mean, some of my favorite things that I've ever written have been, you know, about Lake Harriet and, but a mock of sky and the Rose gardens and, uh, you know, the falls and just the nature and the state parks of, of Minnesota. Um, I have a real, um, propensity as a scribe to, you know, represent this area. And, uh, and, um, I think that's just natural and organic. I think all writers do that.
Speaker 4 00:38:51 Um, they write about what's close to their heart and soil and soul, and, uh, there's, there's, you know, and I, I think that, you know, I think it, it occurs to me that, you know, I came up on punk rock and, um, that was very formative in seeing how all of those punk rock scenes of those late seventies, early eighties, how different they were from each other, be it Athens, Georgia, or Minneapolis St. Paul or Chicago, or New York, or Los Angeles, how different they all were as, as movements, you know, that, you know, REM didn't sound like black flag or, or, you know, the wallets say. And, um, and that struck me, um, that regionalism really struck me. And it, and from there, I, I came to love writers who came from places, you know, uh, be it Flannery O'Connor, or, you know, uh, studs Terkel, or, um, you know, uh, John Irving and all of these writers who, um, made you feel like now, not only they were connected to, you know, their home place, but brought you along with it.
Speaker 4 00:40:17 And I think that's the job on a very basic level. You're, you're, you're imparting information and, you know, over the last pandemic year, I've, I've learned so much about this state and the history of it, and I'm writing about it right now. And, um, it's, it's, it's fascinating and disturbing and, um, and it makes you want to write, it makes you want to, I think, as, as I go with this profession, I think I, I know more and more that, um, you really have to, it has to burn in you, a story has to burn in you to want to write it. And I'm lucky because I have one of those right now that, um, that I'm writing and it burns. So it's, um, you know, it's, and it's about Minnesota. So I want to learn about that, and there's no better way than, than writing, um, to learn something and put it down and kind of know it then, uh, the, the collection is, is, you know, it's like 300 pages or something, and there's all sorts of interviews and wacky stories about my family and, um, music and love and life.
Speaker 1 00:41:39 I love your writing about a place, especially you just, it's clear that you love Lake Harriet and the Rose garden and the peace garden. Uh, you make it very, very real. Um, I was wondering if you have one of those essays handy about Lake Harriet or the Rose garden, especially he wrote some really wonderful essays about the Rose garden. Do you have anything you can find quickly?
Speaker 4 00:42:07 Yes. Why this one right here? Liz, how about stop and smell the Rose garden? Um, okay. This is from 2010. Uh, that was the year I think Obama visited, but that's not what this is about. Stop and smell the Rose gardens. One summer. I found myself sitting on one of my favorite benches of the Rose gardens by Lake area full on rapture mode was the order of the day as I savored the feast of natural beauty and sounds two young women entered the Gates. One enthusiastically tried to show her unimpressed companion, the breathtaking grace of the blooming buds, but the blank blank faced Slack jawed girl, didn't get it. And they left the grounds as fast as they'd come in. I felt for the woman who was so clearly on a mission to testify to some soul mate or another about all that useless beauty, because a similar thing happens every day in the world.
Speaker 4 00:43:10 You can lead a loved one to a head spinning kaleidoscope roses, but you can't make them take a whiff, which is good news. Since that will keep the numbers down at what Lindale resident, Lisa bro characterizes as the most beautiful spot in the city. That much was certainly true. Tuesday evening is a glorious sunset into the Placid Lake and broken her son's max and Austin traipse with a family friend and miss amidst, the lushest pine trees, screaming, white and purple lilacs and other funding. Flora. It's my favorite place in the whole city. He says, bro, standing under the ten-year old crab Apple tree, the family planted planted for her late husband, Alan yets. I always come when the blossoms come out like this, it's like a treasure that happens once a year. I can't take in enough of the color and there are always people here, but you can have solitude.
Speaker 4 00:44:07 And I never feel like we can't find a place to call your own in this the best spring ever. The early orgy of sunshine has provided a chance to both get away and get in touch with yourself in nature like few minutes, Minnesota seasons, before it had in the past two weeks, I have been accompanied to the Rose gardens in her sister chill-out space, the peace by friends, musical instruments, a tape recorder, a radio for the ball game books, note pads, and when my own wrapped attention to birdwatchers moving at the speed of slot squirrels, play in chicken, fowl, stung, or shippers resting and freeing their worried minds. A group of Japanese tourists lingering over the lilacs and cooing over the roses. Chirping teenager girls at this at a Somali wedding, a couple of hippie punk kids setting up hammocks in the pirates Langwood semi games, badminton, soccer, golf, catch kids, dancing, running, flipping musicians, playing quietly listeners, thanking musicians, strangers interact with a gaggle of party girls who swear.
Speaker 4 00:45:22 They saw gnomes tripping through the Pines. One day last week, the stranger who walked by digital did a double take between me and the sunset and said, it doesn't get much better than this, which is what I've been thinking so far. The only comparison to the Rose gardens ne officially Lindale park off King's highway between 41st and 42nd streets. The only place I can come up with is Northern California, which melds a similar burst of water woods and majestic colors and author and journalist Jay wall Jasper the late great Lee J wall Jasper who died this year, who visits the Rose garden several times a week, discovered a Kendrick touched on last year. I had the good fortune to have to go to Rome and write a story about public spaces, urban planning, and the soul of the city said wall Jasper is family. Lolling on a food and drink strewn picnic blanket across the way.
Speaker 4 00:46:22 Of course, Rome is nothing like Minneapolis. But when I got home, I started thinking about what the Minneapolis version is of the Piazza, which is the great Roman institution where everyone hangs out. And I did. I decided that clearly the Rose gardens is Minneapolis is Piazza on a beautiful spring day. It's where everyone wants to be. Not everybody, thankfully, not everybody. The Rose gardens for me is an urban retreat from this fast life said musician writer and student Pete Christensen, who tries to get to his favorite meditative spot. At least once a day. It's a place where I can go to escape from the trappings of the mind and just be present with the beauty of the surroundings and the glimmer of the Lake through the trees.
Speaker 1 00:47:10 Thank you. That is beautiful. Just beautiful as is the Rose garden. Um, I'm curious thinking ablate. Great. We just lost the city pages so very recently and, um, we're getting less and less print media and more and more online. And I'm wondering number one, how you feel about that, but also, um, how do you adjust your writing at all for online? Are you just letting yourself write as if you were writing for print online?
Speaker 4 00:47:42 Um, I love books and I love newspapers. Um, and I will always write for both, um, both online and print. Um, I, I mean, I don't see the, the difference other than, um, you know, aesthetically and tactically. Uh, so yeah, no, I, I, um, I like it all. I mean, I read everything online and I read magazine newspapers and books, but the worry is, uh, with so many newspapers going under, um, it's, you know, you know, literally the community of thought is hurt that way. You know, it's diminished. And I, I said this one city pages went down and I said it when the Southwest journalists went down and I'm just haunted and I remain haunted by where all those stories went, you know, that we were reading every week and every other week, lots of stories, lots of working journalists. And where are those now?
Speaker 4 00:49:01 And, you know, Sohan journal picks up the Slack and others for sure. Um, community newspapers and online MinnPost is great, but there's something to an identity that a paper develops over years, you know, which city pages did for 40 years. And, uh, you know, the Southwest journal, which, which started out as Skyway news, they were very local, you know, very much a part of the community. And, uh, they had very distinct identities. So where does that go? That's just kind of a haunting thing for me. And, um, and I do, I think we kind of lived through a glory days of news newspapers in this town without even really knowing it. Uh, we knew that, you know, when the reader went down and, and, um, et cetera, you know, it, it, uh, it signal a change then, but you know, this is it, this, the pandemic has really laid bare everything. And, uh, you know, we're down to basics, you know, um, I wouldn't feel comfortable writing a lot of the stuff that I wrote saved for the Southwest journal, uh, all those years. So personally. And so of, um, because I, the world is so different than, than it's changed so much in the last, you know, four years, five, six years, and now this year. So, interesting thing about it all.
Speaker 1 00:50:44 Um, we're starting to run out of time here. It's I can't believe because, uh, we just started, um, yeah. Um, I guess the last thing really, um, you seem to be in touch with Eastern philosophy to some extent in some of your writing. And I'm wondering if you would share some of your thoughts about that.
Speaker 4 00:51:10 Yeah. I mean, I, um, you know, I just read a, a great quote from my dad and my dad said, he goes back to the quote a hundred months, a hundred different versions of God. And, um, that comes from the East, you know, for sure, uh, specifically Japan, which is, you know, which has not motto religious at all. And it incorporates all sorts of, uh, religion, but yeah, um, I've done a lot of study about, you know, Buddhism and when it hit here in the 1860s and, um, uh, th in America and I have ascribed to a lot of that presence and both rom Dass be here now and be a Joseph Campbell. I mean, we could, we could go through all the kind of modern days, saints, follow your bliss, you know, and, and, you know, um, or, you know, or J Krishna Merde to quote another one of my father's favorites. Um, those were all, all those, they were all from the East and they, um, they, you know, they believe that we are God and we are, we are the creators of our lives. And, um, there's a lot to that. And, and, uh, I do, I do, I do enjoy writing about that and, uh, and chewing on it. Um, and, uh, then stepping away from it and, you know, go run around the Lake or something and screaming that a void.
Speaker 1 00:52:59 Well, jeez, it is time to wrap it up here. Um, I'll just say, what's next,
Speaker 4 00:53:08 You're writing. What's next? Well, I spent the last few days writing my father's eulogy and I'm going to deliver that tomorrow morning. Yeah. And, uh, after that, I'm going to get back to working on, I have a big writing project I'm working on that. I'm kind of keeping to myself and, uh, I'm continuing to freelance too. So, and I'm, uh, working on a new record as a songwriter and, uh, just going to keep plugging along, uh, being a dad and, uh, trying to get, uh, the family dog to behave. And so we can go back to the dog parks in the spring is not having it right now, Liz not happening. Oh, no. Well,
Speaker 1 00:53:53 And you know what they say, just keep your behind in the chair and keep writing. We've been talking with Jim, we've been talking with Jim Walsh, author of fear and loving in South Minneapolis and many other things. I loved mixed tapes where we interviewed you for that. Didn't we? The mixed tapes. And, um,
Speaker 4 00:54:13 I don't think so. I don't think I've been on right on radio for a couple of decades. It feels like, well, I'm happy to be here. Yeah.
Speaker 1 00:54:20 It's good to have you here. So we're going to let you go. And once again, very, very sorry to know about your dad and, uh, we will send you some good cafe energy to, um, to help with the healing process. Um, so thank you.
Speaker 4 00:54:37 Thank you very much. Bye.
Speaker 1 00:54:40 Thank you very much. And we will see you again soon. I hope
Speaker 4 00:54:45 Take care. Thank you, Liz and cafe. I love you guys.
