The Wake

Every Tuesday night, a mighty bellow emanates from the University Baptist Church near campus. The collective sound of multiple people singing together rings out throughout the space. Participants of all ages gather here once a week to participate in the storied tradition of shape note singing.

Shape note singing is also known as “sacred harp singing” because the music is made using nothing but the human voice, the sacred instrument you are born with. A powerful, boisterous sound emerges when a number of people begin to belt out tunes, one that is at the same time raw and immaculate. The effect is almost startling and the sound is nothing if not awe-inspiring.

The term “shape note singing” refers to the notation used in the standard hymn book The Sacred Harp, published in 1844 and still utilized …

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The University Railroad Club found its home in the basement of 1701 University in 2003. Room 4 is the club’s headquarters where members hold meetings, discuss field trip plans, and, most importantly, build extensive model railroad systems. Room 4 is less of an office and more of a recycled kitchen-turned-railroad museum.

Davidson Ward, a University of Minnesota junior and the Railroad Club president, welcomed me at the door despite my late arrival at what I had thought would be an official meeting, with all of the chairs pointing in the same direction and a speaker running through the agenda for the two-hour meeting. Instead, I found a small group of university students, alumni and faculty that share a common central focus: trains.

Ward, an architecture …

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There’s a red elevator inside Elmer L. Andersen Library, tucked behind a door that only library staff can enter. It leads 83 feet below the ground, almost level with the riverbank. On the other side of the elevator door lies the university’s collection of rare, important documents spanning from last year’s Board of Regents minutes to books hundreds of years old. Nestled in two caverns, the archives are a hidden gem of the university’s and the world’s history.

“Most often, people’s first response is, ‘We’ve stepped into Indiana Jones,’” says Rob Strnad, facilities manager of Andersen Library.

Strnad is only slightly exaggerating. With colossal shelves that look 50 feet high, the Andersen Library caverns house eight archives under one roof…er, …

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Harvard Market East on Washington Avenue is unarguably a campus fixture. As the only convenience/grocery store in the Super Block area, it’s a destination for students seeking everything from cigarettes to light bulbs. But the store will be closing its doors for good this year, only a year after its sister business, the original Harvard Market, closed after 100 years of operation.

Brad Mateer, owner of Harvard Market East and the old Harvard Market, says that in contrast to the previous closing, which was motivated by rising costs and diminishing income, Harvard Market East is not closing for financial reasons. He adds, “This has been one of our best years ever!”

Mateer says Harvard Market will remain open until May, when Opus Contractors, …

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Oscar the Grouch lived every day in his garbage can, surrounded by filth, bird feces, cookie crumbs, Elmo and hypodermic needles (Snuffleupagus loved his smack!). But what if he and all of Sesame Street were covered with 245.7 million tons of trash, which is what the EPA estimated Americans generated in 2005?

Environmental studies, policy and management senior Alison Luedtke knows what life would be like, sort of. From Oct. 19 to Nov. 2, Luedtke carried around all the garbage she consumed as part of a project to see how much trash people actually go through.

The idea for the project came from the National Public Radio program Marketplace, where host Tess Vigeland carried around her trash last year as part of an MPR …

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“This isn’t flag football.”

The bewildered young man took in the scene that played out in front of Carlson. College students clad
in red and blue with flag belts on their waists dodged through the night. There was no ball, nor any goal lines in sight. No player had time to answer, and he was left to walk away in confusion. He had unwittingly stepped into a match of the game called Bucket Wars.

It started out in a study lounge in Middlebrook Hall, fall semester of 2007. Jeff Shockley wasn’t feeling the study vibe, so instead he began thinking about Capture the Flag. What if it could be played across East and West Bank? Jeff and his distracted study buddy Josh Kiley began dreaming about a BIG game of Capture the Flag.

The study session gone …

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Fire burns. Chocolate tastes delicious. Cancer kills.

We figure these things out pretty early in life. They’re so obvious that we don’t even think about them. And in the divisive days before a major election, goals that everyone can agree on, like fighting cancer, are easily sidelined.

But for the members of Colleges Against Cancer (CAC), a student group affiliated with the American Cancer Society, the struggle against cancer will still be important long after we know whether the senator from Illinois or from Arizona will be our next president.

“Everyone has some connection to cancer,” says CAC representative Kirsten Lesak-Greenberg. Whether it’s being diagnosed with some form of cancer themselves or seeing a friend or family member go through treatment, Lesak-Greenberg says, everyone she talks to has a personal story. “It can affect you even …

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Peacemakers (2003)— As forensic science is becoming a tool in crimefighting in the 1800s, a federal marshal, an ex-Pinkerton agent and a local mortician team up to fight crime in Silver City, Colorado.

Annabelle (2005)— Mortician Henry Spencer falls in love with Annabelle, a corpse in his morgue. Despite the obvious complications, Annabelle is able to teach him that love is not as he thought.

Beverly Hills Bodysnatchers (1989)—Using borrowed money from the mafia, a doctor and a mortician begin a campaign to reanimate corpses. When they can’t pay it back, the mob boss sends a few “babysitters” to keep an eye on them: his nephews. The young men are soon caught up in the mess, and problems arise when a few shady characters are brought back from the dead.

Birds Die …

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“[We have funerals] not because it matters to the dead, but because it matters to the living.” – Thomas Lynch

When Levi Hendricks tells people he wants to be a mortician, he usually gets one of two reactions. Younger people generally find his choice of career morbid. Older people often launch off on a description of a wonderful funeral director who helped them, or someone they know, through a difficult time.

The mortuary science junior attributes the difference in reaction to the extent of the person’s experience with death. Younger people only see the dark side of the career — embalming, cremation, collection of dead bodies from the morgue—because they have often not experienced death personally. Older people understand the integral role of the funeral director in the family’s grieving process.

“My business isn’t death,” Hendricks says. “My …

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Fall is a beautiful time of year. School has started, the leaves are changing colors, and the weather has cooled off just enough to break out your favorite sweater. It is the perfect time of year for a bicycle ride! Too often, we fall into the groove of riding our bikes only as a means of getting to and from the places we need to go. However, it’s nice to get out there on a bike and cycle just for the pleasure of cycling! We have compiled a section of trails that will allow you to do just that. We have taken into consideration a number of characteristics that will allow anyone to choose the ride that best suits their needs. Happy trails!

The Theodore Wirth Parkway

North of downtown Minneapolis on Glenwood Avenue, the Theodore Wirth …

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I won’t trouble you with reductive binaries (good, bad, rich, poor) regarding the contentious nature of our current economic situation. As far as I can tell, with my head buried in books and hands juggling student loan, scholarship and study abroad applications, the so-called crisis is turning out to be whatever we make it.

In the course of the last two weeks, I have been interviewing concerned students and professors and reading through our quintessentially American disparate literature on the subject, only to realize that a metaphor from quantum physics is the best I could come up with to characterize the matter. Quantum mechanics asserts that matter propagates like a wave and interacts like a particle. This creates the Heisenberg “uncertainty” principle, which amounts to the fact that scientists can tell you where a …

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October 14 marks the unveiling of a new exhibit at Andersen Library that documents the Somali immigrant experience in the Twin Cities. “As I See It: Documentary Images By Students at Ubah Medical Academy” brings together the world-class research of the Immigration History Research Center (IRHC) and the communities that the organization hopes to preserve in its archive collections.
Various Twin Cities organizations, the Ubah Medical Academy and the Immigration History Research Center’s Children’s Literature Research collections coordinated the exhibit, inspired by photos and text by Abdi Roble and Doug Rutledge.

Abdi Roble, himself a member of the Somali Diaspora, initiated the Somali Documentary Project in 2003 to allow him to document his own history and the history of his people. Roble’s work involved more than photography, according to Haven Hawley, acting director and program director of …

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For those who can’t seem to function when the Twins lose and subsequently use their bedroom as a personal jail cell to ponder the reasons for the loss, ESPN’s new virtual “Play-by-Play” may just be the new remedy.

The new visual aid, which has been in the works for a full year, combines virtual athletes—for example, Madden NFL players—with real live anchors to demonstrate scenarios for upcoming games and replay past sequences. The idea is to help audience members understand team-specific strategies
and plays.

What if Tavaris Jackson from the Minnesota Vikings escaped that tackle at the 25-yard line? Virtual “Play-by-Play” could simulate an exact replica of the play, demonstrating what could have happened if Jackson completed the pass to Adrian Peterson.

Debuting during ESPN’s “NFL Countdown,” the new improvement will serve as an aid to a …

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As this was being written, the Dow Jones dropped 679 points and plunged below 9,000, making this
the sixth straight day of triple digit loses. At this time last year, it was at an all-time high at 14,164.53, a decline of 39%. What does this mean for Joe Six-Pack? You could ask Sarah Palin and hear a folksy story about how Alaskans just want to drill baby, drill.

Or, you could join the Stock Traders Club here at the U. Formed in 2006, the organization brings resources to students so they can learn how to yell “buy” or “sell” very loudly and throw pieces of paper around. They do this by bringing in industry professionals to discuss stock-related topics.

“We’re creating an environment so people can learn how to start trading,” club president Ross Leder
says. “In addition, we …

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