Corpus:
Where exploring the interior of the battle scared tree
in the park near Franklin Avenue
injects life after the lightning strike.

Where highways do not
lead to my city’s heart.
They pump madness
molasses
leaving soupy trails
of purple and red through the drain pipes
and stick
with the road searing sunlight.

These river flats are not just scenery,
but a landscape where homes used to be
denied
the fertile soil from the Spring
floods to feed the gardens for the Bohemian families
flattened via eminent domain circa
May 24th, 1923.

And every steaming automobile and crane
rolls over our front yard—
the buried tricycle
once a sandbox now a barge landing.
What arteries and veins could carry the nourishment
of a stomach
when each pathway slices
a little more of the heart?

Palimpsest:
How many lie here
[There rest in the sleep of the ages 46
soldiers of the grand army of the Republic]
tangled within the roots of the octopus trees
just feet from the wading pool in
Beltrami
[Maple Hill
Cemetery]

Park?

The children
make their way to the baseball diamond
dusted in red. How many hearts lie over here?
beneath the sun-quenched concrete
inches from the busy blacktop side streets.
If I could dig my toes into the top soil
and sink down into the warm loam
would I find smooth white shutters
with faces behind coffin text and
window panes I cannot open?
How long will they remain
in these caskets without markers?

I hope I’m not in the way

Sink! Sink!
Your sacred skin is hidden now
And banished to below.
Let the land layer away
with the tombs of history.

And above these steppes brings you nowhere.
Climb with me.
The view from here
is perfect.

No Exit
No Exit
No Exit
Do not try to cross here
The entrance ramp
No Exit.

Change does not occur in your living room
with popcorn
and a united vision of dialectic
dishonesty from 		t  a  l  k  i
			 		  n
				              g  h  e  a  d  s.

Change does not occur on your privatized
lawns of No Trespassing! signs
or the concrete barricades
on your city streets.

Change does not occur behind
the barbwire fence of your
nine-to-five.

Change is not a word
but an interest.

You don’t remember the wars that lead to the wars to end all suffering—

You don’t remember the American War of Independence—you weren’t there.
“                                    ” Barbary Wars				M
“                                    ” War of 1812				A
“                                    ” Trail of Tears				N
“                                    ” Mexican-American War			I
“                                    ” American Civil War			F
“                                    ” Spanish-American War			E
“                                    ” Philippine-American War			S
“                                    ” Banana Wars				T
“                                    ” The Boxer Rebellion
“                                    ” World War I				D
“                                    ” World War II				E
“                                    ” Cold War [CIA Proxy Wars]		S
“                                    ” Korean War				T
“                                    ” Vietnam War				I
“                                    ” Gulf War					N
“                                    ” War on Terror				Y
			    [Afghanistan, Iraq, Philippines]

You don’t remember the printing press
fresh with the aroma of ink and ideas
offering Thomas Paine’s Common Sense
	or the images he must have witnessed:

		“Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness;
			the former promotes our happiness POSITVELY
		by uniting affections,
				           the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices.  			The one encourages intercourse, the other creates
			distinctions. The first is a patron,
		the last a punisher.”

You don’t remember World War I.
You weren’t there, standing on the streets of America
reading the headlines						          ___ to the Netherlands
			about mortar rounds bombarding civilians, |___
bridges conquered							   |
and the people, who world leaders must have thought were rats          |
scurrying from the trenches,                      ______________________|
with new machine guns and bombs         |				  |
to tear away flesh                     _____      |				  |
                                          ___|            |__|				  |
from the Somme ______|	    	      |_______			  |
						        |______		  |
							         | ___straight through Bavaria

in the name of Franz Ferdinand.

				    Or the expanded power of the federal government
to levy new taxes and suckle on the sweat of labor
for more wars
		more wars
			      more wars.

			Society +
				 - Government

You don’t remember because you weren’t told to remember.

You weren’t there.  You didn’t see your grandparents struggle to feed themselves with their families when the boom of the 1920’s found the bust of the 1930’s.  You weren’t there.

		You weren’t there, grinding away your teeth,
		as you ate from the Dust Bowl.

You don’t remember those horrific days
					      when Truman vaporized the Japanese—
survivors sifting through the rubble seeing their parents shadows etched on the road
below their ashen entrails.

[April 16, 1953] President Dwight D. Eisenhower:
This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers,
		the genius of its scientists,
					      the hopes of its children.
The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this:
						 a modern brick school
in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.
	   We pay for a single fighter with a half million bushels of wheat.
	   We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed
	   more than 8,000 people.
This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road the world has been taking.

	       This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense.
Under the cloud of threatening war,
				          it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

You weren’t there when Kennedy’s brains went missing
after he was shot in the head.

You
        weren’t
	          there.

You weren’t aware
when Ronald Regan lied about his administration’s weapons deal with Iran.
You weren’t told to remember
          Ronald Regan selling weapons to Iran.

You weren’t told that the 1% doctrine is criminal
	when Dick Cheney
	levied his opinions
	on preemptive warfare.

You won’t say anything.
	When the Pentagon approves “harsh interrogation techniques”
	saying the President, George W. Bush,
	has wartime authority to trump
	international bans on torture.

You won’t say anything
			   about that fuzzy logic

because you weren’t told to—
				or how.

                      And
do not contend to know the answers, you! who sits there suffocating
on your seat cushion. How can you possibly know?
		Shut
	up
and be still. That film over your eyes is not a glaze as some say. That is just the moisture from your tear ducts moistening your eyes
as they pierce
the light
	 from behind the prisms
of your television set.
This is the new mushroom cloud of love
 & hope.

Shut up! and listen to me.

		Do 		Not		Fear
	  	  G E N E R A L I Z A T I O N S
	          	acting out of necessity

Thank you for the roundup on that story out of Ohio. With the elections only months away, Diebold has its hands full. There’s much more to cover, unfortunately, we have to act within the constraints of cable news. The world is turning and news is churning. This just in,

              Twenty-Four hours is never enough
              to explain a day
              when there’s shopping to do
              in a Banana Republic

Vice President Dick Cheney: If you look back at our strategies that we used in the 20th century, specifically, say vis-a-vis the Soviet Union during the Cold War, we had a policy of containment, alliances, NATO in particular very successful at containing the Soviet Union, a policy of deterrence we could hold at risk, those things that they valued with our ballistic missiles and we were able to forestall a conflict throughout that whole period of time; enormously successful policy.

Such matters
         are out
of my control.  Say for instance
the missiles the US sold to Saudi Arabia
during the Soviet conflict in Afghanistan, 1979.  Or US support of the Mujahideen
								     resistance.

		They have you fear
		the ideas of others
		over their own
		intentions.

With his term up, President George W. Bush takes some time to reflect on his place in history. Some say the polls offer insights. Approval ratings at a record-low 19%, “Well I look at a lot of presidents. Abraham Lincoln, for example. I suspect Abraham Lincoln’s approval rating wouldn’t have been very good during the Civil War. Six hundred thousand people died. And yet, Abraham Lincoln never lost sight of the moral truth that all men are created equal under God.”

Shut
	up
and be still.

After hearing the news of the United States strike in Afghanistan, young Peter gathered in front of his computer screen looking to understand what the word means, Mujahideen. According the dictionary it means Fighters (esp. guerillas) who seek to propagate or defend Islam; an organization or group of such fighters.

Shut
	up.  Just shut up and let
me talk.  The circumstances are different.  That was
then, 				this is now.  You can
not equate the United States foreign policy to Dr. Seuss and his character the Cat in the Hat.

Why shouldn't I?
Here is an autonomous cat
                                                                                                      entering the territory of a
                                                                       family.
He creates a dire mess,
says he'll fix it and then proceeds to
                            cover the house in stains
made of stains made of

Shut up! and stay
that way.  They
hate us.  They hate
freedom.  Can't you see
that?  Forget about the United States
and their past
allegiance to the very same Mujahideen that the United States trained
					    with the CIA.
That was the Cold War,
			                       against the Soviets.

These people are blood-thirsty terrorists who want to kill us.

		Blood begets
		blood in accordance
		with the almighty dollar;
		blood for iron and steel
		blood for profit
		pumping through
		Red State
		Blue

The fireworks crash, scattering between the city skyline and the river. It is the Fourth of July, 2007. There’s much excitement—the poetry spills in from the Mississippi river as it negotiates its way beyond the Army Corps of Engineers’ marvel of locks and cement waterfalls. This is the moment when Yes Press births from the ether, sparking three sentences that grace the first pressing, one from each friend: “The firework scares / the herons from / their young. It even / disrupts your heart / from here. Imagine / being in its midst / in a dirigible.”

Yes Press, an artistic postcard letterpress company, is the brainchild of Zachary Carlsen, Brian Aldrich and Eireann Lorsung. It resides not too far from where the fireworks first sent the muse. The place is Brian’s apartment, a classic Minneapolis brownstone that sits near the river. Brian recalls how Zachary and Eireann came to his door saying, “We’re going to do this now” altogether disregarding the size of his quaint apartment, which already doubles as his work and living space.

The three friends each bring their own creative force to the project. Zachary has experience in printing, bookmaking and poetry. He also works with Gendun Editions, another local letterpress company. Brian, an artist, designer and printmaker also offers fine letterpress materials through his other creative endeavor, Boiled Art Editions. Eireann is a poet, designer and dressmaker who is a year removed from Milkweed Editions’ release of her first book of poetry, Music For Landing Planes By.

In a digital age, the process of editing, designing and pressing continues on its path as a dying romance—not to say that the desire to own and press is in itself dying—but that the disconnect between generations leaves many workable presses lying on the streets waiting to be picked up or sent to the dump. Others may sit for years collecting dust in garages or basements, their owners unable to find the means to accessing suitable owners. According to Brian, one of the biggest difficulties is the communication between buyer and seller. Many of the individuals that are in possession are of an older generation, who may not necessarily know where to go, or just how valuable their equipment really is. “Some people may give them away for nothing, while others would give their life to own one.”

Yes Press operates on a 6″ x 9″ Chandler and Price Pilot Press, acquired from the University of Minnesota’s Art Department after they moved to the new art building and phased out letterpress. According to Brian, the type of press is a platen press. “This means the whole image is pressed against the paper at one time.” Because of its overall size, (20” x 26” x 30”) it utilizes very little space, taking up just over a third of the desk that it operates on.

Their craft focuses on the limitless nature of language and its ability to take on so many forms. Zachary’s passion derives primarily from his early years attending the University of Minnesota, where he became “infected” with the process of using typeface to bring his poems and stories to life, having done full-length books as well as literary fine press books. He considers the process of pressing a “synthesis of art and language.” Rather than typing it up and designing it on a computer, the process is more intimate. Each card begins with a conversation about the text, which has been up to this point an original work of poetry. The selection process happens two ways. Each poem is either submitted or solicited. After a poem is selected, the three begin discussing design and how an “image might compliment the language,” without being too literal. Once settled on an idea, they set the type and Brian creates the image from either wood or polymer, which is an involved and time consuming process. From here, each page is hand fed into the press, set to dry and sent out to their new owners.

Not to be outdone by the fireworks, the first pressing released with a bang—literally. On August 1st, 2007, the same day as their first release, the 35-W bridge collapsed only a block away.

For more information, please visit yes-press.com.

“I know.”

“And you are fine with this?”

He looks around the room again, seeing the sun-stained portrait he found in a local market years ago. The edges frayed from years of misuse. It reminds him of sitting in the military doctors’ office back home when he was a child. When his mother used to take him to the clinic for a check up, he would find himself among the local children huddled by the few sparse toys donated by the military men who were stationed near the village. He remembers how the picture faced south, much like this one, following the path of the sun as it arced across the sky with the mortar rounds from the Soviet Army streaming towards the battlefields that used to be a farming village that cultivated opium—a village that for a long time sustained his now long deceased friend and relatives—how the picture’s life discolored as though the paint that once sustained it ran dry with each passing afternoon. “I won’t have it any other way.”

“The next time we meet, we will be dead.”

“Or, as good as.”

“It won’t be long.”

…

The transport aircraft lands at Leeward Airfield, stationed west of Camp Delta. Here, the UEC’s are taken from the aircraft and put in transport vehicles destined for the ferry ride to the detention facilities. Nestled between mountains to the north and the vast expanse of ocean to the south, Camp Delta houses thousands of UEC’s, or Unlawful Enemy Combatants.

Upon landing, four HMMWVs, or High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles surround the aircraft—each mounted with a .50 Cal machine gun, along with a single two and a half ton truck as well as a HMMWV able to transport 38 total passengers. Accompanying these vehicles are an equally, if not more destructive force consisting of 9 soldiers on board the cargo vehicle as well as a Dismounted Security Force consisting of 17 soldiers onboard the truck.

The UEC’s, all clothed in orange fatigues, do not know they are surrounded. Their heads look like the night terrors of a child paralyzed between dreaming and waking. The monstrosity consisting of blacked-out goggles over the eyes, giant mufflers for the ears. Mouths are muffled and covered with what look like surgical masks, followed by a hood. Their hands are gloved and shackled, following a chain that extends down from the torso to the feet, which are also shackled. They cannot speak. They do not know what is going on around them. They do not know where they are. Once off of the aircraft, the UECs are processed and put into the caravan.

“This allotment comes from the mountainous regions of Afghanistan.”

“What’s their story?”

“There is no story.”

“Right.” The corporal receives the necessary documents and begins boarding the passengers on buses for the route to the ferry, where they will be shipped to Camp Delta.

…

The poppies are in full bloom, their buds shooting out row after row of lush reds that seem to grow on straight to the silhouetted mountains off to the distance. The boy sits just outside, viewing the splendor of his family’s harvest. In this climate, it is difficult to cultivate anything else. Hunger is not an option for his father, and moving is out of the equation. He can remember his father arguing with his neighbors, Where will we work? The country is torn to shreds from year after year of war! We cannot leave!
The Mujahideen runs this part of the country, using it as an access point north, where the majority of the battlefields are located. The Soviet Army has been making progress as of recent date in the Badakhshan region, and it is up to the growers to keep a cash flow coming in to support the war-torn region—one of the few areas in the north where it is possible to grow—while at the same time keeping food in the bellies of their families.

From time to time, large planes can be seen flying overhead dropping leaflets of cartoon images depicting the Soviet hammer and sickle tearing apart the country along with food packets and water. It comes from the Americans, who are here trying to stop the advancement of the Soviets, and their support of the Marxist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan.

“You should not be out here. You know it is too dangerous if you are not working. Go back inside to your brothers and keep them together.”

“Yes father.”

The boy’s father proceeds out to the fields to check on the crop yield. This year’s crop does not grow nearly as well as in years past. From time to time, shells can be seen flying into neighboring fields in an attempt to sabotage the resistance movement and any amount of funding that may come from the fields. This plan, however, has its downfalls. While it keeps localized farmers and their families in a state of poverty—the heroin trade is still in full force across the globe—the price of the crops will only go up as the fields continue to be destroyed.

As he gazes over to the northern horizon, the father can see the tear of the sparse clouds in the distance. They coagulate and disperse in threads revealing the thrush of propellers from a Tupolev Tu-95 bomber making its way directly towards him. He does not know that it is a Tupolev Tu-95, a Soviet aircraft, as it passes over the mountains, so he continues on with his work.

The sun today beats with an intensity that seems out of this world, he thinks as he reaches between plants checking for insects and weeds that might damage his crop. The intensity of the heat is coupled now with slight drone of sounds off to the distance, like the snap of drumbeats from the army. It’s not until he looks up that he sees in a strange cadence the clap and thunder of his field exploding with a storm of bombs falling from above. The bomber heads directly overhead, reflecting the sun into the Father’s eyes just before impact. He can see the rays of light reflect off the frame before the final cloud of shrapnel and earth pours over him, destroying the fields and his home.

To Be Continued

On one such easy stroll, Mr. Scheldrup arrives at the pharmacy, unlocks the door, flips the sign on the door to “open,” and checks to make sure the sign is telling the truth—that the pharmacy really is open. Readying himself and the store he waits for his first customers of the day. Some people arrive early to pick up their medicine, while others wait until after work. One man who needs his medicine neither early, nor after work, walks in. As he walks in, he says, “Hey there Melchior, I need a bottle of my medicine”.

Melchior, with a smile, nods and hands the man a clear glass bottle of liquid imprinted with the name and location of his pharmacy on it—just before the man finshes speaking.

“I reckon I don’t even need to tell you what medicine I want any more,” the man says, smiling.

“Yah, maybe not,” Scheldrup says in his Norwegian accent.

They’ve had the same conversation every time he comes in for about a year now. The man pays and then walks out of the store, popping the cork as he goes. Before he has even made it down the block he is already drinking from the bottle. Quickly, he feels the effects of the medicine, a wonderful mixture of alcohol and opium, true medicine. He stumbles on his way. The bottle slips from his hand into a pile of dirt and trash near a house in an alley by East 14th Street. The owner of the house sweeps the bottle into his trash pit and buries all the trash. Out of sight, out of mind. Slowly the years begin to pile on top of the bottle. Melchior moves in and out of his home and in and out of days.

20 years earlier, the streetcars arrive and with them Minneapolis begins rippling out from its center at St. Anthony Falls. Human development rolls over the landscape in waves as the times change. The mostly middle-class housing of Melchior’s day is slowly converted into duplexes, apartments and boardinghouses as more city workers can now live further from the city center.

The bottle is buried a little deeper.

A few decades pass. Melcior dies in the early 1920’s and the pharmacy follows suit a few years later. The house just off East 14th Street, where the bottle rests, waiting, is demolished in 1927.

A little diner called the Band Box goes up in 1939 where the pharmacy fell. Charles Schulz is born out of a ripple of apartments only a few blocks away. New businesses constitute the next wave out from the falls and in 1951 a dry cleaner’s goes up where the houses used to be. You can see the waves in the form of rises and falls along the terrain; places where the land rolled over, covering the past with pavement and stuccoed buildings; places where land was scraped away by demolition and laid bare older eras; places where young apartments stand next to old houses. And the bottle is covered by layers of change, again further from the light of day.

In 1967, Interstates 94 and 35 slice through the city and Elliot Park becomes bound by trenches on two sides; the south and the east. Her face is pocked and marked by decrepit buildings—signs of her youthful growth. The dry cleaner’s closes and the building is demolished. Other local businesses begin to fold as well. The bottle rests darker and deeper as Elliot Park becomes a bit of an urban backwater for a while…

There is a man who lives in Elliot Park. He lives at 622 16th St. A fine house, now divided into several apartments. His name is Kent Bakken. One day he gets out of bed, has his breakfast of coffee and cigarettes and heads off to work. Well sort of. Today, August 11th 2007, Kent strolls easily a few blocks away to an empty lot behind e.p. atelier between S.10th St. and E. 14th Street. There are several square holes cut into the earth there. Windows looking in; windows looking back. They are exactly a meter long and a meter wide and have perfectly straight walls going down to their varying depths. Interspersed throughout the empty lot and adjacent patches of grass, they are barely noticeable.

Kent checks the working area, making sure that when he said the dig would start at 8 o’clock every morning he wasn’t lying. This is the Elliot Park Neighborhood Archaeology Project. A few local archaeologists and interested people from the community make up the planning group and for the past four years they have put together a dig that takes place towards the end of the summer. There will be a dig next summer as well. The project is part of a revival of sorts that has been taking place in Elliot Park just within the past decade. Old buildings have been renovated and small businesses have been opening. As the warehouse district downtown is being renovated into new homes, the wave rolls out and the same thing happens in Elliot Park.

On this day people slowly trickle in. Anyone from archaeology students to the middle aged women who have found objects, such as American Indian artifacts or artifacts from the early days of the Twin Cities in their gardens are there. A years worth of planning goes into these five days of digging, which ultimately relies on how many people show up to get their hands dirty. Today is Saturday and a good number of people have shown up. Some have been there every day of the dig for each of the four years. For others, this is there first day.

A local waiter shovels some wet gravel and mud out of one hole. The gardeners follow around a young archaeologist volunteering his Saturday to do what he does all week. A young boy around the age of 15 looks as though he is having the time of his life. A college student looks tired.

The coffee bought from e.p atelier, a relatively new business to the area, puts more than a few satisfied looks on people’s faces. A few of the cups blow away in the wind, perhaps fodder for future archaeologists.

In one of the holes, you can practically see in the layers of earth, the waves of change where they fell across Elliot Park. Eras are exposed with every inch of earth removed. Although the dry cleaner is gone, the sudden bubbling of soap in the bottom of one hole reminds us that it was once there. The families that lived in the houses that stood there before the dry cleaner may be gone, but they left us some reminders. In a square hole dug today, a piece of glass lets its presence be known as the old bottle meets new rays of light, new rays of time. Kent takes the whole bottle, which is a rare find, to examine and clean. He realizes it is a medicinal bottle and looks up the pharmacy and address molded on the bottle. The bottle is in his hand as he searches through old directories and maps. There he finds the name on the bottle—the name Melchior Scheldrup. Address: 622 16th St. And for a second, two men meet across a century and the grave…

Elliot Park is a smaller neighborhood in East Minneapolis near the Metrodome. The people, places, and history in this story are real. Much of the information comes thanks to the archaeology done there and information provided by Kent Bakken. The Elliot Park Neighborhood Archaeology Project has recently won the 2007 Community Effort Award from the Preservation Alliance of Minnesota and the neighborhood is a model of growth and restoration with many new businesses and residences sprouting up. If you would like to participate in any digs there are a number of volunteer archaeology projects in Minneapolis. Information can be found about the Elliot Park dig on their website: http://www.tc.umn.edu/~bakk0029/epna/ or at e.p. atelier or in the latest issue of The Minnesota Archaeologist which contains information about the dig and is written by Kent Bakken. There are also volunteer archaeology opportunities at the Mill City Museum in the summer time. Information is available on their website http://www.millcitymuseum.org/ or at the museum. A Google search is all you really need to do. So if you want to get involved, get off your ass and do it.

What’s the point? Shouldn’t it belong to the community whose land it’s occupying? Shouldn’t it belong to the artists, freaks, explorers, modern-day Nathaniel Wests? When the signs and symbols of antiquated industry have become as useless as a gleaming white dome on the Athens skyline, (left to rub against the claustrophobic skyscrapers and garish billboards) shouldn’t it become free territory?

It should. It can.

You may not know it, but there are places near this very campus whose usefulness has come and gone, leaving an empty shell or, if you are so inclined, a foreign landscape ripe for exploring. It’s not for the faint of heart; it requires a presence of mind, strength of will, and common sense that not everyone possesses. What I am trying to say is that if you want to go get trashed in an abandoned factory, do us all a favor and fuck off.

Besides, it’s not exactly party territory. The first thing you notice is the fetor and rot of rat feces; the slow decay of organic material housed within a giant metal prison. The movement of said animals mixes with the strange vocalizations of pigeons to create a strange, foreboding ambiance. Upon entering the structure proper, broken glass crunches underfoot and rotting tools hint at a not so distant bustle that could ostensibly re-emerge at any time.

Strange light plays off of the water that has completely filled the subterranean levels of the structure. It briefly breaks the suffocating dark that characterizes the lower levels and hints at something hidden beneath. The whole atmosphere is threatening, as if every movement could be an authority figure, dangerous creature, or something far worse. Whatever your fear, real or imagined, it could be there without your knowledge.

The menace of the lower levels, though, ultimately gives way to the wonders above. Precarious scaffolding and man-sized holes in the floor continue to threaten, but the visuals are undeniably pleasing; sprawling graffiti tags and stunningly rendered window paintings abound—and the view is simply breathtaking. From the sort of bleak veranda on top of the structure, it’s possible to see all over the city; to speculate as to where your house is or to eavesdrop on the neighbors quietly going about their business. The sense of solitude is unimaginable. It feels as if the whole world is spinning out of control while you are standing completely still. It is the most pure form of escape and solitude that you could possibly experience.

It may be hard to conceive of those two feelings, peaceful solitude and fear, coexisting in the same structure, but it’s the nature of the season. Think of it as trick or treating for adults: there is a definite risk of injury, capture, or general harm, but there’s always something enticing to be had. We just seek something slightly more elusive than the king size candy bars that the rich people hand out.

These structures may be abandoned, rotting, and instilled with an intense feeling of solitude, but don’t let that stop you. Contained within are worlds of wonder and terror unimaginable in a concrete world that stitches us so tightly into a routine, an endless loop that churns unto eternity. In a world so convinced of its endlessness, the abandoned relics of our past may just be the reminder of our own impermanence that we so desperately need. In other words, trash begets trash and I’m feeling wasted.

The bells don’t ring out from Turtle Community School any longer. Home for-sale signs seem to be the latest lawn ornament. Discarded red plastic party cups blow through the allies.

The Como neighborhood acts as the sponge for University of Minnesota students who want to live close to campus but not exactly on it. People who rent out-number the home-owning residents almost 2-to-1, according to the 2000 U.S. Census.

It is roughly bordered by highway 280, I-35 W, Hennepin Avenue and the U of M. The Eastern industrial zoned border and adjoining concrete thoroughfares align Como to the U of M, creating an isolated niche for a conveniently placed housing district.

Over half of the people living in the area are people between 20-to-34-years-old. In 2000, 64% of the 2,342 occupied housing units were rentals according to the census.

Drunken melodies echo off of siding. Aluminum beer cans go ting-clang on the cement. Occasionally at 2:30 a.m., an aggressive voice is heard pleading for neighborhood silence.

Not all respect is lost though.

The Southeast Como Improvement Association has been working for 25 years to keep the community strong. It’s comprised of individuals living in or owning a business in the Como borders. SECIA’s neighborhood revitalization program works to maintain the success of this Minneapolis neighborhood.

Como has designated routes for bicyclists, 10 community gardens and Van Cleve Park. The park offers a playground, sport fields, tennis courts and a children’s wading pool. It also provides space for community events like SECIA’s annual Como Cookout. The city bus route three runs frequently for easy travel to either downtown. A business district lives on Como Avenue. A mosque and multiple churches are also within its borders.

The Van Cleve Development broke ground last month. The affordable housing project will be built to meet sustainable green-design standards. It is located on the 3.5 acres adjacent to the landmark Bunge Midway grain elevator.

The Minneapolis School Board is considering ideas for what the Turtle School building’s future will be. Ways to reuse the building, instead of demolishing it, are on the top of the list.

The 2010 census data will provide a better understanding of the transition the Como area endures, adapts to and grows from.