Skyway or the Highway

I loved the skyways when I worked in downtown Minneapolis - until I had to walk through them after normal business hours. *shudder* Two well-known urban designers think they're a blight on the city.

When two of the world's top urban designers drop in for a visit and come away with the impression that your city — in this case Minneapolis — is a relic of the 1970s, ill-equipped to thrive and compete in a new century, and that its only hope is to tear down its skyways, well, that gets your attention.

"I feel sorry for Minneapolis," said Jan Gehl, the celebrated Danish architect whose work around the world has linked the rising importance of good public spaces to a city's success.

Thirty years ago, Minneapolis was thought to be a leader among winter cities. But taking people off the streets and putting them upstairs, "under glass," hasn't worked in Minneapolis or anywhere else, Gehl said, to the point that Minneapolis is no longer "up to the beat of the world-class cities of the 21st century."

Gil Penalosa, a noted public parks developer in both Latin America and Canada, said that the skyways lend a defensive, pessimistic air to the downtown core when, in reality, they are needed for only a few weeks of the year. "They suck the public life out of the city," he said.

Given the fat chance that Minneapolis will remove its eight miles of skyways, both men agreed that finding a solution poses one of the toughest design challenges faced by any city in the world: creating vitality at street level when most foot traffic has been shifted to the second story.

The biggest problem, both said, is that people in Minneapolis don't realize that great cities — even cold cities — are now defined by the vitality of their street life. "People here don't see a crisis," said Gehl. "They don't yet see themselves as behind the times."

Lit from Within

Wow: if you are or ever have been a denizen of the Twin Cities, you must check out View from the Tundra, a new-ish photoblog about the cities, for stunning stuff like this:

(Via the Deets.)

RNC Logo

As City Pages said, "Worst. Logo. Ever." Say it with me, everyone: "Wide stance."

Surely this is a comment on how the party will give it to the country elephant-style if they're put back in power in 2008.

The Bad Plus Two

The semi-Minneapolitan jazz trio the Bad Plus played the Guthrie the other night. I know it was a big show. TBP recently used their Do The math blog for a great post on the irony and legitimacy of playing covers. As a serious jazz trio known for playing tunes by Nirvana, Blondie, the Pixies, and David Bowie (among others), they have some interesting things to say about authenticity and pleasure in music - and make me want to listen to their fantastic take of Vangelis' "Chariots of Fire" theme for about a week straight.

Elsewhere, Dave King, TBP's killer drummer, comments on irony, cover songs, musical styles, and about a million other topics in a great interview in All About Jazz - well worth reading if you're into the Minneapolis music scene or eclectic music in general.

(Cross-posted to Blowing & Drifting.)

We Lurve Pawlenty

Wha?

In the wake of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s approval rating has climbed to its highest level recorded during his tenure in office, a new poll shows.

This is ridiculous. His administrative style contributed to the infrastructure problems that have been highlighted by the collapse. His no-taxes policy hamstrings the state government's ability to move forward. He has been steathily unrolling many of the state-funded programs which make (made?) Minnesota a great state. And on top of that, he's clearly positioning himself for Bigger and Better Things just as soon as possible.

Ridiculous.

Doing the Collapse

"Am I dead? I must be dead," in Sunday's Strib, is the best thing I've yet read on the bridge collapse. Literally spine-tingling.

Surreality

At our house, we watch the Today Show pretty much every morning. It is beyond weird to wake up and have Matt Lauer not 3 miles from your house, interviewing your mayor because a major disaster has just happened in your city. My sister takes I-35 W every day to get from her job in downtown Minneapolis to her home in St. Paul. Yesterday she decided at the last minute to run an errand on the way home which took her on an alternate route. I don't like close calls that are that close.

So far, everyone I know is safe and accounted for. Hope all you Snackers out there are the same.

Bridges of Hennepin County

It seems weird not to have posted on the biggest news in the Twin Cities since KG was traded to Boston, but holy crap is it depressing to even think about yesterday's bridge collapse. So far as I know, none of your friendly hosts here at After School Snack have been directly affected by the disaster, though it looks like a friend-of-a-friend of the blog might be among the missing.

Small Town Livin'

Northfield may look quiet, collegiate, and even pastoral, but dizzamn, peeps, we have it going on now! Possible heroin use in the high school and a rising crime wave downtown; a police chief who announced the heroin problem and is now on leave to deal with unrelated (wink wink) health issues; that same chief hinting that he's been investigating his boss, the city administrator, for corruption; townies using the Carleton Arb to grow pot and shoot up; the mayor's hardware store being evicted from its downtown building... Some of these topics are covered in an article in today's Strib. Others will be discussed at the Taste of Northfield tonight, from 5 - 9 in Bridge Square. Good food will be on hand; you have to bring your own smack.

Bad Plus

If you're still looking for something to do tonight, and you're in the greater Twin Cities metroplex, think about coming down to Northfield to see one of the best jazz trios around, the Bad Plus.

I'm a big fan, and having seen them play once in Minneapolis can vouch for the fact that they are a powerful - and loud - live act. The jazz-trio format might be misleading: they're well-known for delivering vigorous covers of rock and pop songs (most famously, Nirvana's "Smells like Teen Spirit," but also Blondie, Rush, David Bowie, Bjork...). And their original jazz compositions are excellent, building on all the jazz heroes and developing a truly unique sound. Plus, the players all have Minnesota connections, and even recorded parts of their new album, PROG, in Cannon Falls, just a few miles east of Northfield.

Tickets are $18 and can be had at the door of the Carleton College Concert Hall right up to 8 p.m. tonight. (Check this map for the concert hall's location, near First and Winona.)

Getting Things Done

Sitting here at my desk, albeit in the offices of a remarkably humane employer, I'm impressed by Best Buy's experiment with clock- and place-free work routines, or ROWE, for "results-only work environment." In short, it doesn't matter if you're in your cubicle, in your car, at your house, or in the woods so long as you get done what you need to get done.

It's remarkable, and judging by this (admittedly boosterish) BusinessWeek article, pretty successful. ROWE has even led one curmudgeonly manager to conclude, "For years I had been focused on the wrong currency. I was always looking to see if people were here. I should have been looking at what they were getting done."

Listiness

One of the great things about the Internet is finding great sites that you've never seen before, and then having the pleasure of reading all the previous posts. Case in point, the blog "A Play A Day," written by Brendon Etter, a member of the staff down here at Carleton. He's done writing a play a day, and on to great lists like this one:

Important Reasons Why You Must Stop Having Sex Right Now1. Scientists have linked sex with children. You must stop linking sex with children, pervert.
2. A customer just walked in the front door of the bakery.
3. You can only remain underwater for a few seconds at a time.
4. The director said "cut."
5. Just like epilepsy and paranoid schizophrenia, it may lead to frighteningly uncontrolled muscle spasms and vocalizations.
6. Because chances are good your cellmate is not truly your soulmate.
7. He only paid for a twenty-minute session.
8. Need to reframe the shot and make sure the flash is on.
9. Ran out of batteries.
10. Must get in line for holy communion.
11. Your "girlfriend" popped.
12. May cause an outbreak of painful childbirth in men and women everywhere.
13. Excessive blistering.
14. While the third time's the charm, the three hundred and thirty-third is somewhat less so.
15. If you stop now, you may still be a semi-virgin.
16. Because that's not what the zoo needs volunteers for.

Or this one:

Evidence That My Computer Is Having An Affair
1. Sometimes it carries out millions of my calculations every second like it would really rather be somewhere else carrying out millions of more exciting calculations every second.
2. It remembered my birthday, but only after I put the date into its calendar application like fifty times.
3. Frequently complains to me that it wants to abort functions... our living, breathing, unexecuted functions!
4. Mysterious processor log entries documenting data uploads and downloads that I know aren't mine.
5. Newly apathetic performance on programs that we used to love to operate together.
6. It swears it's just the cooling fan kicking in, but I can tell that it's sighing.
7. My hard drive feels like it's being read in a cold, perfunctory, almost-automated fashion.
8. After returning home unexpectedly early from a business trip, I found it, somehow, had already been turned on.
9. Screen saver seems like it's over-compensating.
10. I'm finding new bookmarks in my browser linking to articles about the benefits of being in an "open source" programming relationship.
11. When I select "shut down", it happens immediately, but, sometimes, when I select "restart", it pauses as if weighing its options.
12. Seems like it wants nothing to do with my flash drive any more.

CT on the Radio

A month or so ago, I was interviewed by a Minnesota Public Radio reporter for a story about Capella University, a former employe of mine (and the other two After School Snack bloggers, as it happens). I had volunteered my perspective on Capella's addiction to student loans when MPR sought information from its listeners after the recent student-loan scandal erupted. A scrap of my interview survived in the final story, which is, as they say, "fair and balanced."

Unlike my eyeballs, which seem to have relocated to one o'clock on the dial.

Wudu Me a Favor?

Minneapolis Community & Technical College, right on Hennepin Avenue in downtown Minneapolis, is in some ways the epitome of modern higher ed. It's a ridiculously diverse school, in both conventional ways (race. age, even class) and plenty of unconventional ones (nation of origin, number of first-generation college students). Along with Metro State University and, of course, the U itself, these are the schools that are integrating new Minnesotans from Somalia, Laos, Tibet, Bosnia, and every other corner of our world.

Which leads to some interesting situations, such as the one described in this Minnesota Monitor article (and dissected in the comments): MCTC just installed special basins so that its many Muslim students can perform the ritual ablution called wudu, which must be done before each daily prayer and involves washing hands, feet, and face. The feet part is the tricky one, given that the average lavatory sink isn't exactly ideal for scrubbing your toes - either in terms of height or hygiene. So MCTC installed some special foot-washing basins, at least officially as a safety measure: the schools doesn't want students slipping on wet floors and cracking their skulls open.

The installation of the basins has, predictably, brought down a storm of protest for the Xians who crave special treatment by the gubmint for their own sky-spirit worship but detest even the barest attempts to be fair toward other sky-spirit worshippers. Ah, America.

ICEd Out

When did the Land of 10,000 Lakes become the testing ground for federal anti-immigrant
sweeps? First, we had those horrible actions in Worthington last December (part of a national day o' raids). Last week, we had a big raid in Willmar (followed up this weekend with a vigil in St. Paul):

Agents from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, or ICE, have arrested an unknown number of people in Willmar, Minn., today and Tuesday. A spokesman for the federal agency confirmed the arrests, but declined to give details.

“We are conducting an enforcement operation in Willmar,” said Tim Counts, ICE spokesman in Minnesota. He said his agency is targeting specific individuals suspected of criminal activities or backgrounds.

Other sources have indicated that the arrests may be related to ID theft or use of other documents. Counts declined to confirm, insisting that the arrests “are not random.”

I want to know where these raids are being planned and coordinated. Do they get thought up in Washington? Chicago? Minneapolis? And have they ever caught significant numbers of the "felons" whom they say they're after? And who doesn't think "ICE" sounds like the secret police in a crummy sci-fi novel?

Dogsledding

This story in the Washington Post about dogsledding* in Ely, Minnesota, is the best thing I've read on the web all week. Even on a day when the air is leaning toward spring, it makes me long for winter.

(* Why do they call it dogsledding? Shouldn't that term be reserved for the sport of riding down hills on dogs?)

Michael Savage = Big Jerk

Monday, the Minnesota Monitor's Abdi Aynte, a Somali-American journalist, broke the story about the six imams who are going to sue U.S. Airways for discrimination after they were kicked off a flight last fall for doing crazy imamish stuff like praying.

Being a good journalistic outlet, the Monitor sent the story around as a press release. In response Michael Savage, the notorious and idiotic right-wing radio host, offered this comment: "You and they should be deported for taking advantage of this great nation."

This is so horribly dumb (not to mention borderline racist) that I can hardly comment. "Taking advantage"? They didn't slip some roofies into the nation's beer, for crissakes - they were unfairly prevented from flying based on paranoia about funny-looking guys who don't keep their prayin' to the churches.

Aynte wrote a good response, though:

It’s offensive and reprehensible because Savage seems to suggest that I -- along with the six imams whose story I have covered accurately and professionally from the beginning -- don’t belong in this country. It’s a protectionist attitude at its worst, coupled with deep-rooted resentment against immigrants and people of color.

I left my native Somalia because of a protracted conflict and to escape physical and emotional injury. To have a radio personality with so many listeners inflict a similar injury, in the land where I sought refuge, is frightening.

Since coming to this country barely six years ago, I have done all the right things. I secured a job to support myself and my family back home, all the while attending school to study what I’ve always dreamed of doing: telling people’s stories.

But I never imagined that becoming a journalist would prompt an influential person like Michael Savage to unleash such hate, bigotry and prejudice against me. Those are not the great American values I’ve seen over the past six years. And Savage’s remarks won’t deter me from pursuing my dream.

Icebox of the Nation

It may be a beautiful spring day here in Minnesota, but dammit we're not going to let those mountain monkeys in Colorado steal our the title of the "Icebox of the Nation" away from International Falls (or Embarrass, or Tower) and give it to some dump named Fraser. From the Minnesota Monitor:

I applaud the Fraserians for their sense of civic pride, but Icebox of the Nation? Please. Fraser wouldn't even get the honorable mention for Icebox of Minnesota. That honor goes to Tower, where it once hit 60 below zero in 1996. Heck, Embarrass hit minus 57 that year. Indeed, both cities have been colder than International Falls at its coldest -- but in good Minnesota fashion, they were too polite to say anything about it. Fraser's paltry minus 53 is pathetic by comparison.

But it's not just that Fraser would be considered a balmy getaway by Minnesotans. It's also what Fraser doesn't have. Has Fraser produced a Hall-of-Fame football player who also was a world champion wrestler? Of course not. Who has? International Falls, which gave us Bronko Nagurski. Has Fraser produced one of America's most infamous TV evangelists? Certainly not. But Tammy Faye LaValley Bakker Messner grew up in International Falls. Finally, did Fraser serve as the inspiration for the home of any beloved cartoon characters? Please. What city has? Why, International Falls, which inspired Frostbite Falls, home of Rocket J. Squirrell and Bullwinkle J. Moose.

Bad, Bad Press

The Washington Post gave my employer some bad, bad press this morning, running an article on the difficulties of tracking terror suspects and supporters which included this paragraph:

Zenab Armend Pisheh, a student at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., said a member of the cell asked her to wire more than $5,000 so the defendants could go to Pakistan in 2003 to attend an al-Qaeda training camp. "He said it had to be a woman because sisters don't get caught -- brothers get caught if they send money," Pisheh said in a statement to British investigators.

Trouble is, that person has never been a Carleton student. The Post says they'll fix the text soon. Perhaps a call to the Registrar or to public relations could have straightened it out. I'll bet one dollar (Canadian) that they meant Carleton University in Ottawa. You know how they are up there - always wiring their devalued cash around the world.

Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?

Add the Mall of America's landlords to the list of pigs at the state trough. They're working to

sway legislators to approve $234 million in new public subsidies so the mall can more than double its size. The total public cost would exceed $300 million, including public financing already committed from the city of Bloomington. As part of that package, under legislation expected to be introduced this week, the state is being asked to spend $181 million on an 8,000-space parking garage. Mall executives are touting the plan as a great deal for the state, which they say stands to make at least four times its investment in taxes generated by the expansion.

Thankfully, the legislators in St. Paul aren't falling into line - yet. They're worried about whether the mall's expansion makes sense (a giant Bass Pro shop? a skating rink?). Plus and all, we have some other things to spend money on, like insuring every child in the state, or improving K-12 education. You want long-term investment that pays off later, make sure kids aren't sick and that they can read and add.