The bus ride to St. Paul really isn’t all that bad, and while mildly confusing, the campus itself is fairly compact and winningly verdant, so what seemed like a potential odyssey on the outset became a rather pleasant jaunt. In the basement of this lab of Meat Science there is a veritable maze of hallways, walk-in-refrigerators and laboratories where actual mad science is being practiced, beakers and all. Once you’ve navigated the labyrinth you might meet Jodi Nelson, the Senior Lab Services Coordinator for the Dairy Salesroom. A genial woman with an office oddly stuffed full of gourmet rootbeer, test tubes, and various other snack foods, Nelson occasionally raises her voice to get confirmation from a coworker across the room on the historical accuracy of the facts she’s giving me.

By consensus, it was divined that the Dairy Salesroom was opened some time between 1958 and 1960 and serves as a way to sell off the projects of students in the dubiously named “Ice Cream Class” and “Cheesemaking Class.” For a CLA student, it’s rather difficult for me to imagine my final grade for a term hinging on my professor’s taste in vanilla, but I suspended a bit of disbelief and soldiered on.

Apparently, the department is awash with student-produced dairy product, and thus can afford to sell high-quality goods for discount prices, with the aforementioned kicker of only being open for two hours on a Wednesday every week. This, of course, leads to a line.

All sorts of people begin to queue up at roughly 2:45 outside the salesroom: older professionals, neighborhood residents, students and staff. Those in the line chat amongst themselves about favorite flavors and stories of how they discovered this little gem and when the doors finally open at 3 p.m. the line gently but firmly presses inward. The Salesoom itself is about the size of triple-dorm room, with a small table of free samples. The Housemade Chili Cheese M’s were delectably salty, something akin to what Fritos would be like if mom made ‘em. The “Brick” cheese was pleasantly sour and creamy, with a perfect soft, pop-able texture. The New World Bleu spread (one of the top sellers, according to Nelson) was a classic of the genre, tangy without being overwhelming while deliciously pungent.

I selected a few small chunks of cheese from behind the counter (assisted by Nelson herself) from a large variety of types and sizes, eventually settling on Feta, Colby Jack and Gruyere. The Dairy Salesroom will often sell small chunks of cheese, the size that can be finished in one sitting, for $1-2 with the knowledge than many students just drop by for a snack. Against a far wall lie two long refrigerator cases full of a multitude of ice cream flavors. My bewildered companion and I finally settled on “Black Raspberry Xplosion” and “Cookies and Coffee” and approached a couple of student-staffed cashiers to pay surprisingly little.

On our way out we stopped to talk to Kathryn Macziewski, a Retail Merchandise major and Kelly Rinehart, a Food Sciences major, about their ice cream selections. Rinehart’s “White House” (vanilla with Bordeaux Cherries) merited an “8.3 on a scale of 1 to 10,” whilst Macziewski’s Chocolate Peanut-Butter Truffle earned a more succinct “awesome, very good.”

My Cookies and Coffee ice cream promised Oreo chunks that were never realized but was otherwise delightfully rich. What it lacked in coffee flavor was made up for a pleasantly mellow cookie-chocolate mixture. My friend’s Black Raspberry Xplosion fared slightly poorer, earning a 6 out of 10 from her despite its charmingly authentic fruit flavor. The cheeses were all excellent, with the Colby Jack being the standout. The feta, while not made with the traditional goat’s milk, was still musty and delicious. The Gruyere was a study in subtlety, with a dry, nutty flavor that stood nicely next to the powerful tangy Jack.

So perhaps campus foodies who frequently find they’re eating themselves out of rent money have found a new savior in the Dairy Salesroom, a tucked away little secret in the sleepy eastern campus. If they’re smart, they’ll keep the word to themselves, because an opportunity this good will have campus lining up down the block.

So why is U of M Biology, Science, and Environment major and local/organic food activist David Rittenhouse dissatisfied?

The answer is that it’s all PR spin. Rittenhouse says the university supports a few sustainability programs, and then “cleverly words” PR copy to make it appear far more representative of the school as a whole. “If we want to see change, we’ll first have to expose all the lies, and then offer solutions for how to change that. You have to offer solutions and show examples.”

Rittenhouse has been working hard to offer those solutions. He said that he and several friends realized that there weren’t any sustainable or local food options on campus for the average student, and decided to try to solve the problem.

They knew that students at other colleges had been successful in organizing small organic/local food operations. At Northland College in Ashland, Wisconsin, students had managed to open a local/organic mobile cart outside their student union, selling soup at reasonable and competitive prices. Rittenhouse and his fellow activists determined that it would be nearly impossible to open a stand in Coffman, and almost as challenging to have a cart outside. “There’s too much red tape to try to sell anything here,” Rittenhouse said.

The University has a contract with Aramark Food Services that stipulates that 90 percent of food distributed on campus must come from Aramark, with other major food corporations such as Starbucks and Panda Express occupying the other 10 percent. Rittenhouse and his friends realized that simply opening a small soup stand would require changing the entire process by which food is distributed on campus. They haven’t given up, and are hoping to lobby the right people to change the contract with Aramark when it comes up for renewal, or to switch to a more sustainable vendor altogether. Still, these institutional barriers to students who want alternatives to corporate food on campus call into question the University’s commitment to sustainable alternatives.

There is one place on campus that sells local, organic food: the Campus Club, located atop Coffman Union. While the Campus Club’s web site purports to offer a “common, informal gathering place for broad community interaction,” the $189 annual dues for student, faculty or staff membership that is required to eat there places is squarely in the realm of a rich, fancy boutique restaurant that “real folks” can’t afford to eat at. Ironically, some of the produce served here originates at the university’s student-run organic farm. In an almost perfect microcosm of the university’s underlying attitude toward sustainability, the product of the hard work and organizing of forward thinking students is ultimately appropriated to nourish the elite alumni and administrators that place so many barriers in the way of sustainable progress. The farm is locked into this relationship, because there simply are no other places to sell their product on campus.

Rittenhouse is involved with the student-run organic farm, called Cornercopia. Located on the St. Paul campus, it was started to provide students interested in sustainable agriculture with hands-on farming opportunities. There is even a semester-long course for students to learn about planning, financing, and operating an organic farm. UDS purchased 450 pounds of produce from Cornercopia in 2009. According to a Minnesota Daily article published April 22, Cornercopia coordinator Courtney Tchida is in open conversation with UDS executive chef Gil Junge and UDS director Karen DeVet about expanding sustainable options on campus.

Still, that 450 pounds is less then 1 percent of the local produce that UDS purchases, meaning there is the potential to increase production at the farm to meet existing demand. Rittenhouse believes there is enough interest among the student body to increase the scale of the farm, but there simply isn’t enough support from the University. “We’re struggling to stay afloat. Most of our funding comes from grants, comes from outside sources. Individuals are very supportive, but it seems like the institution as a whole makes it extremely difficult to get new environmental initiatives going.”

So if there is already demand for product and student interest, why hasn’t the organic farm been properly funded and scaled up to provide organic, local, healthy food for all students?

The answer, according to Rittenhouse, is all around him when he thrusts his shovel into the dirt at Cornercopia. The organic farm sits on a meager 1.25 acres, surrounded on all sides by soybeans genetically modified for the easy application of industrial pesticide Roundup, found in studies to cause genetic damage, increase crop susceptibility to disease, and to damage bacteria necessary for soil health. It is produced by Monsanto, an agribusiness giant also responsible for the development of Agent Orange, the poisonous defoliant used during the Vietnam war that has resulted in 400,000 deaths and 500,000 children born with birth defects, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. “I even doubt the credibility of our organic farm, because of the drift from the fields all around us,” says Rittenhouse.

Still, this barely scratches the surface of the University’s close involvement with Big Agriculture. To really see what the University’s priorities are, we need look no further then its relationship with another major agricultural giant: Cargill. According to a U of M press release, in September 1999, Cargill donated $10 million to “expand the university’s work in the field of microbial and plant genomics.” The result was the creation of the Microbial and Plant Genomics institute, funded partially by public money, and the construction of the Cargill Building for Microbial and Plant Genomics. Located less then two blocks from the Cornercopia organic farm, it is the U.S.’s first university building exclusively dedicated to plant genomics, according to the web site of construction company Shaw Lundquist Inc.

Cargill is the largest privately held corporation in the United States, and ,as such, has much lower requirements for transparency in its operations then publicly traded corporations. A full analysis of Cargill’s shady dealings is beyond the scope of this article, but the company has had been implicated in scandals as varied as knowingly contaminating groundwater near its production plants, price fixing, Amazon Rainforest deforestation, selling mercury-tainted grains, and child labor in periphery nations.

Described in a Star Tribune article as a “looming, silent giant,” Cargill also controls a staggering portion of the food supply of the United States. As a mid-level supplier involved in processing and distributing agricultural supplies and commodities, Cargill has unparalleled power to influence agricultural markets, right down to the price consumers pay for a hot dog. Its $120 million in annual revenues makes it larger economically then two-thirds of the world’s countries. According to a Financial Times article, every egg used in a McDonald’s restaurant passes through a Cargill plant.

The University’s involvement with companies like Monsanto and Cargill exposes its important role in the industrial agricultural complex. These corporations’ mode of operation is to monopolize control of the food supply, choking out alternatives while making astronomical profits at the expense of the health of people and the environment. What better way to increase that profit margin then to offload in-house research to publicly funded universities? The sheer hypocrisy of the PR narrative that the University of Minnesota is an institution dedicated to a sustainable, green future is impossible to ignore.

Every day, individuals like David Rittenhouse, small groups, and even departments and institutes at the U of M are doing real research, taking real action, and making real strides toward the goal of a more sustainable future. In contrast, institutionally, as a whole, the University has yet to make any deep changes to the way it operates. It co-opts, for marketing purposes, the work of forward-thinking activists, researchers, and other community members, while still maintaining close involvement and ties with the companies that embody the very problems that these dedicated people are trying to overcome: the destruction of the environment, the centralization of power and control in our food supply, the production of potentially unhealthy and unsafe foods to bolster corporate profits, and the application and release of pesticides into our environment.

Ultimately, as long as the University continues to accept money from and name buildings after corporations like Cargill, the university’s sustainability PR line must be seen for what it actually is: window-dressing to obscure the university’s role in the destructive and soulless economic structure of Big Ag.

Needless to say, I wasn’t comfortable talking about my abuse. My depression started there and continued throughout much of college until I finally decided to get help this past fall. With therapy and medicine, I am much better than I was and I am beginning to feel like I am recovering. When I talked to my parents about my experience, they were extremely supportive and allowed me to deal with my problems in my own way. I really can’t say much more about my experience than that I am blessed. I’ll be able to graduate Phi Beta Kappa this spring with both a Bachelor of Arts and a Bachelor of Science with majors in mathematics, computer science, and political science. I worked damn hard for what I earned, but I also know that there are many people who have gone through what I went through and simply weren’t as blessed as I was.

I met my friend Kevin on a Facebook group about sexual assault. I was just perusing the group randomly and then I noticed that he posted a suicide note on the forum. He’s also a survivor and didn’t receive the support I did. He didn’t have a supportive family; he wasn’t able to receive legal or medical help that suited him as a male survivor. My friend Kevin struggles daily with major depression, which has hindered him for much of his life. I’ve tried to help him find resources, but, living in a rural part of Canada, there aren’t many resources for him. I want to change that and after much research and talking to experts like Alankaar Sharma, a PhD candidate in the School of Social Work, I’ve found that I really have no clue what to do.

To some extent the problem is intractable, all statistics on sexual abuse and assault are based on self-report and the problem with statistics based on self-report is that a lot of people don’t speak about what they went through. They feel ashamed about what happened to them or the experience simply causes them to shut down so they can’t speak about it. Survivors range across a wide variety of ages, genders, sexual orientations, races, and classes and so do perpetrators. While it is certainly true that the poor and women are more likely to report their cases to the government, I at least know that I wasn’t counted in any statistics until I had a physical last month and when I was asked if I went through abuse, I said yes for the first time. I’ve spoken with many people about writing this article and I keep getting the response that I’m brave; I don’t feel brave. I feel I shouldn’t be ashamed anymore.

I was asked to write an opinion for this article and I really don’t think I can. Discussions about sexual assault and abuse tend to get caught up in a lot of other discussions about sexual minorities, women’s rights, and other debates. I can’t deny that there are important intersections in our society where oppression turns into sexual violence. But, there are people who don’t fit nicely into the compartments we currently have; I don’t and my friend doesn’t. However, I am comforted by a faith that things can get better and the way I see that happening is helping more people to get treatment. If speaking openly about this can help at least one person seek help, then I’m comfortable with putting my name on this article. I can’t say that I speak for everyone who has gone through sexual assault or abuse and I can’t say that I have any real advice on how to prevent it or even cope with it. But, I want to return a favor, hopefully there’s someone else out there reading this and they can feel a little more comfortable about talking about their situation and seeking help. Thank you, Mr. Carey.

I am so sick of hearing this stuff. There are enough women claiming alienation of their gender out there that no one woman should be void female companionship. In fact, I estimate there could be a medium-sized US city populated solely by women who despise other women.

As a former teenager, I understand this apprehension toward other females. Women can be mean and catty. It’s usually because we’re threatened by each other’s looks or intelligence that we automatically display hostility.

I too am guilty of this behavior. Constantly I size myself up against other females I know. “Is she prettier than me? She might have a better face, but I have a better body. I’m definitely smarter than her…I think.” But during these frenzies of self-destructive rumination, I eventually realize that these thoughts are just a biological impulse.

As a student of Anthropology, I believe there are biological explanations for every aspect of humanity, and this includes female-generated misogyny. It is my academic opinion that everything comes down to food and sex—even if you are a chick. And because I’m only a lowly undergraduate, I can at best fathom two clumsy hypotheses:

Our misogyny originates from a perceived threat to our social standing, and therefore access to resources; women attempt to degrade other women who have the potential to occupy the same social space and the resources this social space holds.

We’re weary of mate poaching or infringement of access to potential mates, so by playing off stereotypical criticisms of women, we try to make ourselves the most attractive candidate.
While the first has its merits, I have a strong hunch my second theory is correct. How often have you or a girl you know claimed to not be the “average girl,” but rather that you/she are much more evolved, cooler, manlier… We probably say that we like beer or poker and that really we’re just dudes with boobs—dudes with boobs that want to be some other dude’s girlfriend.
While our self-inflicted misogyny2 might seem biologically logical, famed anthropologist Richard Dawkins would point out that while there might be a scientific explanation for a particular behavior, there are no excuses for bad behavior. Humans are creatures with agency and well-developed frontal lobes.

Furthermore, while we might be genetically predisposed to hate each other, for each gene there is something called a “Range of Reaction.” An example of a Range of Reaction would be, say a person had a certain gene3 which causes him or her to processes carbohydrates very slowly and as a result this person gains weight quickly if they were to consume what would be considered an average amount of carbohydrates. But maybe this person is super into the Atkins diet and exercises obsessively, drinks lots of water and therefore isn’t overweight at all. This person realized they had choice and made that choice; yeah it was probably hard, their life probably still sucks because they never get to eat a bagel or piece of cake, but at the same time they’re not fat.

So females of the world, there is a choice. We could act rude or standoffish, spreading rumors and pretending to like things we really don’t because we’re scared and desperate for male attention, or we would change it up.4 But this crazy dynamic, the horrific animosity we have for each other, doesn’t have to happen.

-

1 Bitch, Cunt, Whore, Slut.

2 Ultimately, by creating an environment of hate we only end up hurting ourselves.

3 Actually, it’s a combination of multiple genes.

4 For the record, men are definitely catty and desperate too, and act just as pitiful—but male B.S. also doesn’t affect me as much, therefore my investment is proportionate.

he drove through cornfields and small towns
and lava fields: landscapes washing by without ever solidifying.
he flipped to the next page in his worn-out atlas
pretended he had a dog named charlie in the passenger seat
to talk to.

he didn’t have much.
just his beater car
and three years worth of lottery tickets.

they made him feel good,
like he was stockpiling luck
like this way
it would never run out.

Saturdays I clean the apartment and Sundays I get in a quick 18 at the club. Sometimes I head out to my ranch for a weekend of fix-it-up projects and good quality porch time. Or else I try to keep my Netflix queue moving, maybe practice a little piano or jujitsu or play a slow chess game against myself. Or I throw the frisbee for Gibbous, or just grab the leash and some plastic bags and the two of us go and mark new territory. I swear he can still pick up smells from Earth. I have a lot of time so I try to keep busy but I still watch too much.

So I sit here on the moon and watch. I watch Americans (did you know the United States has its own moon?) buy groceries, sit in traffic, cheat at cards. I can see anything. I am nothing more than a man, a man on the moon. I see not the future and hoard no great technology from the rest. I am not a lunarnaut. I possess only normal powers, of observation and otherwise. Having grown up in the U.S.’s coldest cities I do not mind the uncomfortable temperatures of the moon, and feel quite at home with the slow pace and antiglamourous moon lifestyle.

My friend Jim used to come up here with me and we played hacky sack on nice days. (What they told you about gravity and atmosphere on the moon? —All lies.) We would get stoned and laugh at all the stupid things going on at every moment throughout the U.S. It was fucking great.

I should have brought more moonshine (we call every liquor moonshine here), and cigarettes too. Jim never comes up with re-supplies anymore. Not since five or so moon-years back in time and space have I talked to or touched anyone and I wonder if I will or could ever again. Everybody turned on me and I turned away from everybody. I became stuck here, you see.

For dinner I catch a few walleye on a pink jig, filet them, toss in a carrot or some green beans and throw the whole thing in the microwave. (Just kidding—I don’t own a microwave!) Cedar plank—that is the only way to go. Nothing like fresh walleye. Eating is still the thing I enjoy most up here.

When I first arrived here I couldn’t believe all the space! Loneliness gets to me now and then. You wouldn’t believe the strange dreams you have here. Like when you’re traveling, you dream more actively. Well that effect is magnified strongly while in this most foreign bed. Plus without having all the stimuli around that I used to take in every day on earth, the bombardment of messages and sights from which your dreams draw, and with only faded and few memories of my life before and a deteriorated personality, all I have is the suggestive powers of what surrounds me—stardust, unclaimed debris, unmediated rays of light and sensation come from the universe at my doorstep—to be incorporated into my dreamscape.

The dreams I have here stretch out to new frontiers, take me never back to earth but always farther out to unknown planets and belts of stars of obscene beauty and vast horror. That, or I dream in and of the lives of those I see day-to-day still back on earth—and these are my nightmares. Without any real human interaction to distract me and from all the images I store from my watching, I’ve amassed so much information. There’s so much I’ve seen, so much in my head, but it is all chaotic, malicious and senseless but stubbornly unforgettable. Maybe everything I perceive and say is useless, but for sure it’s better here on the moon.

For a while all I could do was watch, first thing in the morning, then as much as I could all day. Justification gymnastics—

I have constructed the would-be world’s most impressive zip-line. Come you, and traverse tryolean style in the Mons Hadley Delta Lunar National Park for a totally safe and affordable experience of traveling far too fast in a vehicle smaller than you. I also play and deal blackjack, host high-stakes poker rings, and will certainly press free drinks on anyone I see who visits.

Here I get to be like a cowboy and now it’s not an act. Campfires, cans a’ beans, that big sky. And today’s and tomorrow’s long paths—stretches of land where the law hardly means justice and either way it’s a three day’s ride away—lay untrod and will not welcome you and yet call you onward each proceeding day like it’s holy duty—like if you retraced these steps it would be giving up the only chase after something equal to your want. It became impossible to reach—this imaginary place where a true life was lived hard—once I settled on the moon, but I would not have gotten this close if I hadn’t come. I feel dirty, and left out; detached live-action and squigglevision animated at once.

Sometimes I like to just lie back and look up and watch trains. Or follow a deer through the woods for hours, watch a noisy band play, or see the moment a convict is sentenced to years of the same isolation I’ve found, but with a meanness and formality of a sick people I long ago left. When it rains on Earth I cannot see you. It’s the thing I miss the most, the rain. It makes me so sentimental for new life.

I orbit around you there on the ground
‘n If you look up my way, when I come
following your day, I’ll give a ye a wink
and tip t’ye me drink, for I’m far over head,
better off’n dead, and be by the same way directly.
Oh it’s so far better on the moon but…

Some sidereal outpost of vast pleasures with a home never withdrawing acceptance of me into their scene—it’s lightdays out into something beyond this and I’m headed there. Moonrot (like bedsores and living in dungeons, addiction cycles or channel-surfing) sets in on your body and it’s hell on earth.

Good luck.
THE MOON.

This book is the second link in the hopefully-short chain of cash-ins on David Foster Wallace’s suicide. The first, This is Water, was a despicable little book reprinting the transcript of a brief graduation address Wallace made (available for free online), filling a small book by printing the speech one sentence per page. Lipsky’s book isn’t as useless and infuriating as This is Water, but it’s close.

Any devoted Wallace fan knows that his interviews are fantastic—he displays a humanity and a refusal to talk the same self-aggrandizing literary bullshit as everyone else. But these transcripts are taken from the time in Wallace’s life where he gave more interviews than he ever would again, and most of Wallace’s remarks will be familiar to serious devotees—the only audience that would be interested in this book.

There are a few things Wallace discusses here that he doesn’t anywhere else, which makes this book a worthwhile read for serious obsessers: he talks about his career and its trajectory in some detail, he deals with his depression and suicide attempts (though he isn’t entirely truthful about either), he describes the process of writing and revising Infinite Jest, and he gives his opinion about music and movies. Now imagine all of that narrated by a smarmy jackass and you’ll get an idea of how truly irritating this book is.

That’s Jacob Alexander’s operating method. Alexander, the owner of Karnak Gallery, the creator of the Virtual Warrior Ink modeling and artist agency and a mixed media artist, is perhaps best known in the Twin Cities for his VWInk Girls, a cadre of models he takes to nightclubs, galleries, even houseboats on Lake Minnetonka, and paints their nude skin to make abstract, erotic living statuettes. But his art goes far beyond the sexual. Instead, Alexander loves to challenge the constructs and codified meanings of the world that everyone else takes for granted. At its core, Alexander’s art does away with modernistic definitions, instead symbolizing ancient, primeval, incredibly romanticized views of the world. By making his audience turn around and view art on his own terms, Alexander breaks the signals and codes we use to define our surroundings, instead forcing us to view the world through his inspirational, uplifting, slightly megalomaniacal visions.

Alexander opened the Karnak April 1, after several months of negotiating for the space. In the span of a couple of weeks, he’s formed a den of small-time artists in all sorts of forms, ranging from photography to paintings to mixed media art (3-D), all coalescing together under a theme of no theme. To Alexander, it’s more important that art exist, free of the definitions he finds constricting. Moreover, he wants art to be open to everyone, regardless of background. He applies this to his mixed media especially, keeping blind people in mind.

“When I design my mixed media pieces, I always think, ‘Can I make art for people who don’t have eyes?’” Alexander says. “Everything is very colorful in dimension, but everything parallels…for even someone without their sight.”

His inclusive nature is infectious, as he’s collaborated with many different artists, models, photographers, musicians and filmmakers.

Karnak Gallery hosts parties on weekends where people can look at the art, dance to the DJ’s beats, or watch Alexander paint one of the Ink Girls. Last weekend’s party included a chair massage and three dollar drinks. His work as well as his parties has been videotaped for the last five months by the Blue Bridge Media Group for an upcoming documentary, “AntiCoast,” which, while covering the Minneapolis art scene, primarily focuses on Alexander’s efforts in making Minneapolis an art hub similar to New York or Los Angeles. Karnak plans to show the trailer on April 29. That’s just the beginning of where Alexander wants to be, however.

Alexander’s charismatic character has attracted all sorts of people who help out with multiple jobs. His models help put makeup on each other and watch the door. The documentary crew helps with the guest list while catching all of the drama, meltdowns, personas and action behind the scenes of the business and pleasure of Karnak Gallery. It’s all a part of his overarching dream to connect these people in a variety of ways, helping them to come together and create more artistic opportunities outside of the boundaries of conventionally taught art or lauded contemporary pieces the same as he connects the artists in his gallery with each other, the way he connects art, music, lighting, dancing and emotion at the Karnak parties, even the way he connects the mediums within his own artwork.

In the meantime, Alexander, Virtual Warrior Ink and Karnak have a busy year ahead of them. Aside from the weekend parties and the upcoming trailer premier of “AntiCoast,” the next big project for Alexander, titled the “Xander Collection,” is scheduled to take place in August. Described as “cutting away the excess,” the runway show will feature local fashion designers with VW models painted in such a way to represent their ancient heritages, in effect reinforcing Alexander’s search for the primeval core of the art he loves. It’s the core of things that Alexander believes will bring out the art and the positivity in us all.

“I like to go backwards and basically remind people that humanity…will come through,” Alexander says. “I have a lot of faith.”

Visit www.virtualwarriorink.com for more information on upcoming events at the Karnak Gallery.

New bike trails, more public gardens, higher emission standards, cleaner air, lakes and drinking water. These are just a few of the aspects Minneapolis Greenprint looks at, evaluates and fixes. Minneapolis Greenprint is a project run by the city of Minneapolis to improve and evaluate environmental conditions in the city and to continue to promote green energy. On April 5, Greenprint released its 2010 environmental report at city hall, which outlines through stats and graphs how the city has improved and tried to improve the city in a green fashion over 2009 and the last five years.

“Our environmental efforts go beyond the borders of this city,” says Greenprint project coordinator June Mathiowetz. Mathiowetz says the project started five years ago when the mayor and city council wanted to develop a community environment project to measure certain aspects of the quality of outdoors in Minneapolis.

The effort, funded by taxpayers, has required a large staff to track dozens of environmental standards in the city.

From where the city was five years ago to now, Greenprint has made big changes and advancements in certain aspects of the city. Minneapolis is the only city in the country to now accept electronics free of charge for curbside pickup, which promotes cleaner ways to dispose of some hazardous materials. According to the report, 800 tons of electronics were picked up in 2009.

The city dealt with heavy rainfall complaints where if flooding occurred, causing septic systems to possibly back up, water could become polluted. Through the project the city has done extensive work to make sure when there are heavy rainfalls the impact is minimal. They have also rapidly expanded the number of rain gardens in the city.

To promote cleaner air and reduce carbon emissions the city began the Northstar commuter rail, which was actually a direct impact of findings by Greenprint. The city increased its number of hybrid vehicles by 9 percent. The big improvement the city has seen is through their promotion of bicycling. According to the report since 2000 the total miles of bikeways in the city has increased by 34 percent. Now Minneapolis has been rated the number one city for the percentage of people who ride their bikes to work.

The number of bicyclists in Minneapolis is 20 times higher than the national average. University of Minnesota student and cyclist Nicole Muenchow says she is not surprised by the findings because the city does a great job in adding bike lanes and promoting less driving. “I’ve noticed that more and more people are biking to school, work or wherever. Now all types of residents seem to be out on their bikes and not just in fair weather.”

Greenprint has also been working with the U of M for its research. They don’t have the funding or staff to do most of the background research for many areas, so the researchers at the university provide the city with much of that information. They also work with them on the development of local food and compost projects.

Council Member Diane Hofstede was impressed by the findings. “This is a remarkable report. We have made incredible strides,” Hofstede says. “Now people can see how dedicated we are to alternative methods of transportation and energy.”

The report did find some failures. The Emerald Ash Borer is causing a losing battle against the city’s tree population and around the state. The city has to cut down trees faster than they can plant them, and it is hard to replace the canopy of one mature tree when multiple little ones need to be planted to replace its impact. There have also been issues with getting residents motivated and able to purchase solar energy for their homes. There was also a dip in regional transit ridership, possibly due to new higher costs.

Greenprint has bold visions for their future. They plan on increasing bikeways from 123 miles to 178 by 2015. They are working hard to retain the 148 green businesses in Minneapolis and vastly increase that number. They want to continue to promote local farmers while protecting the land they are using. They plan on encouraging homeowners to plant their own gardens, trees, and reduce carbon emissions inside their homes.

“We have to give the people the information they need to make an impact,” Mathiowetz says.
The environmental report is now available to pick up in city hall, and much of the information is placed online as well.

While currently one of the restaurants affected by the fire, Heidi’s, plans to reopen in the near future, no one knows whether it will be in the same location, or some far flung suburb where their insurance settlement will afford them a snazzier location and clientele.

The situation is reminiscent of the time when a tornado ripped down Park Avenue in the early 80s, destroying mansion after mansion and forcing hundreds of white people to flee to the suburbs. At this time, the suburbs included the furthest reaches of what is now South Minneapolis, and so the white people only had to go so far to settle in what is now Linden Hills and the surrounding area. And so Heidi’s was set up for success, surrounded by gourmet-food-hungry white people whose old gigantic homes had recently been destroyed and were now replaced with even bigger homes paid for by insurance money.

But then came the fire; we didn’t light it, but we tried to fight it. The destruction was massive; four separate businesses were brought to their knees by this fiery force. While currently none of the affected businesses have publicly announced their plans to abandon this neighborhood for the promise of the good life in the suburbs, slowly but surely these once-local businesses will move their way out of their once-posh, toeing the line between urban and suburban neighborhood.

Already, the future is clear. Heidi’s and Blackbird will make their way further south, into the nearest reaches of Edina, and settle back into their swanky new digs and continue to flourish. Patina and its local goods store will cut its losses and move on with their three other metro locations, and possibly open a fourth in the Galleria near Southdale. This location would be perfect to reach its bourgeois clientele that live near the city, but not too close.

But what will take over this now-vacant space? My best guess is two mini-marts, both supplied with Halal meats, a botanica, and a Super America. Half of the residents of the neighborhood will be scared off by the very idea of Halal meats, with another quarter of the residents annoyed by all the “illegals” frequenting the botanica. The Super America will be put in only to add insult to injury; it will be easier for the youth of the neighborhood to buy their American Spirits and fill up their mom’s Volvos.

Soon there will be for-sale signs on every house in the neighborhood, and they will quickly fall into disrepair, seeing as the families who once lived in those homes will choose to cut their losses and move right in to their new suburban digs before their old homes have even sold. Houses will be broken into for their copper pipes, and accidental home explosions from accidentally cutting the gas lines while scrapping will become rampant. But the residents who used to run this neighborhood will have forgotten about this place by now, this place that was once their home has now become unrecognizable to them. They will vaguely recall their first homes in such a grandiose neighborhood while sipping their wine at Heidi’s new location on 50th Street and France Avenue.

by Zach McCormic

So, like most of you, I was shocked, appalled, angry, scared, disgusted, aroused and hungry when I heard the news via Twitter update that the block that contained the Malt Shop, Patina, Blackbird and Heidi’s had effectively burned to the ground on Feb. 18th. As a longtime Southwest Minneapolis resident (I grew up less than 6 blocks away), the news hit me pretty hard. Bryant and 50th, the stricken intersection, was quickly becoming the tastiest spot in all of Southwest, with the twin upstart cafés Blackbird and Heidi’s cranking out award winning cuisine, and neighborhood favorite The Malt Shop serving as an excellent cheap greasy-spoon alternative with serious ice-cream slinging skills to back up the salt. I remember countless times taking bike rides with my friends around the neighborhood and finishing it all up with what could very well be god’s own recipe for Hot Fudge Banana shake.

Stewart Woodman, owner of Heidi’s, was quickly becoming a jewel of the Minneapolis foodie scene. With a nomination for the James Beard Award under his belt for his work at the celebrated Levain, Woodman’s homey little café named after his wife was a racking up awards like nobody’s business. The Blackbird Café next door had the distinction of being one of Mayor R.T. Rybak’s favorite places in town to eat, and even Patina next door had an amusing array of nick-knacks and gifts for the garden party set.

Neighborhood residents can take some solace in the fact that The Malt Shop, in an adjoining building, was only lightly damaged by the fire and therefore will probably keep on serving shakes as the city crumbles around it. For the rest of the block, through the wonderful machinations of property insurance, the losses will likely be at least partially reinstated. Patina, a chain, still stands strong, with several other locations for you to purchase your ornate bird-feeders at. For Heidi’s and Blackbird things aren’t so rosy though. As a restaurant, they don’t really have Internet sales to fall back on or really any other way of making money while they wait for their space to be reopened. They live or die on the money they make in the kitchen. But fear not, southwest residents and friends: there is good news coming for prized cafes.

As often happens when tragedy strikes a beloved business, the charity and goodwill of the entire neighborhood is shining down on our stricken chefs. Donations have poured in from concerned citizens along with gifts of flowers and very thoughtful cards bought from another Patina location. A mysterious benefactor donated a hefty sum, cryptically signing the sizeable check with the words “your favorite crowd-surfer,”just days after the crisis, a fleet of Toyota Priuses converged on the intersection of 50th and Bryant, and a silent vigil was held. A neighborhood task force is being mobilized to take decisive action to aid the area’s businesses, as soon as they finish voting on a committee leader. So fear not Southwest foodie and let it echo from Washburn High, from the bottom of Minnehaha creek to the top of the Watertower, loud enough to hear in Edina: 50th and Bryant will live again!

For the past 132 years we Minnesotans have not been able to make it through March without a snowfall, but it appears that we’ve finally done it. Not only did winter arrive late this year, but it quit our normally frigid doorsteps early as well. Our winter clothing barely had time at the front of our closets.

Yet, the ice is gone. The birds are back. The squirrels in my backyard, looking more plump than usual, are disturbing my sleep with their racket. The number of bikers and joggers is swelling. Track shorts, sleeveless tees, and athletic camis are taking over campus. No one can resist the weather—there couldn’t be a more beautiful early spring. But this is a college campus, and melting snow produces much more than just peppy animals and joggers.

Dinkytown’s streets are full no matter the season, and the early arrival of spring weather brought with it memories of last fall’s antics. Vodka bottles, Bud Light cans, grimy busted beer bottles and McDonald’s wrappers started popping up all over curbs and front yards as the melting snow revealed November, October and September of 2009, bit by bit. No stretch of sidewalk went trashless. The happy sight of this debris serves as a reminder that it is once again warm enough to leave all windows and doors open when having a party, and to blare music with the bass pumping loudly across town to mingle with dolled-up girls’ shouts and screams of “Jessica, wait, I lost my shoe!” (I think it would be safe to anticipate an early influx in noise violations.) And the lingering heat of the day means that you won’t need your winter jacket for the 6 a.m. walk of shame on Saturday mornings.

Who needs a jacket now anyway! For most of us, gone are the days of Uggs, sweats, and layers of scarves; bring on the T-shirts and bermuda shorts! This sudden spring, however, has provoked an awkward transition into the new season’s clothing: people can’t decide if it’s still a bit chilly or not. There are people at the extremes, either still bundling up in their puffy jackets—complete with hat and gloves!—or overestimating the heat of the sun and wearing their summer clothes all day, and then there are those who are stuck in transition.

Previously accustomed to dressing for Old Man Winter, students are now experimenting with Lady Spring, but are afraid to go all the way. Let’s label these seasonal swingers “biseasonals.” Biseasonals are easy to spot. Most of the students bumbling around campus are a part of this crowd: sporting a spring dress under a Columbia jacket, or pairing a flowy skirt with furry boots. A typical thing one might say to a biseasonal would be “may I offer you a light spring coat instead of that thick wool jacket to go with those booty shorts?”

My fellow students, it’s time to embrace the fashion woes of the biseasonal trend. There are paths to biseasonal success. The first echoes the ‘I’ll-probably-leave-with-someone-soon’ look. The sight of literal debris reminds us of the fashion debris that half-dressed girls have attempted to clothe themselves with. That’s right, the balmy weather means the smallish patches of clothing came out of their closet hibernation. While this bare-skin look may have success for a night on the town, it’s probably considered less acceptable in the classroom. The runways have opted to overlay their revealing outfits with sheer materials. The finished look: provocative yet elegant.

The second look is more along the lines of ‘I-look-good-but-I’m-not-flaunting-it-for-you.’ The key to embracing this biseasonal look: if you’re going to wear those furry boots with your flowy skirt, at least add neutral tones and tights to the ensemble. The tights will hold the winter-spring mixture together, while the neutral tones will offset those bright spring colors everyone is sporting. And if you’re watching the runways, you’ll notice the spring fashions add both glitters and feathers to their ensembles. Exchange your furry boots for gold sandals and your Columbia jacket for a feathery coat; not only does it look glitzy, but the feathers add a playful levity that fits right in with the weather outside.

It’s not often we students have a chance to enjoy biseasonality. With tips from the runway, this biseasonal period can be enjoyable without stepping too far out of our comfort zones. Before we know it, summer will be here, school will be done, and the only thing you’ll need will be your swimsuit.

“The idea is to bring about awareness and give students a public face of Islam, rather than the negative portrayal they often see in the media,” Mohammed Hanif, the vice president of Al-Madinah says. Blame can reside with the mainstream media for a distinct lack of nuance in its coverage of Muslims or a variety of other parties, but the fact of the matter is that most Americans just don’t see much of the human face of Islam, which is something that Hanif and the Al-Madinah Cultural Center are actively working to change. According to Hanif, the event was a smashing success.

Islam Awareness Week featured a variety of events, mostly lectures and panel discussions based around key facets of Islam as well as current events in the Islamic world. Monday featured a lecture on the influential teachings of the Prophet Muhammed as well as a documentary film on the rise of Islam. Lectures on Islam’s contribution to the scientific community and medical ethics in Islam took place on Tuesday. Wednesday saw what Hanif claims to be the one most successful event of the week: an activity on the lawns of Coffman that allowed non-muslim women the chance to wear a hijab (traditional headscarf) for a day. “The hijab and niqab [facial veil] are the most obvious sign that a person is a Muslim,” says Hanif, “Muslim men are able to blend in easier in America since they don’t have to wear it, this activity let non-Muslim women experience the immediate identification that comes with wearing the hijab.”

Hanif cites Thursday’s lecture and discussion on Women in Islam as another popular event. “Our women in Islam event had our best turnout, it’s always a big topic for students,” he says. The often misunderstood and complex issue of women’s role in what, to an outsider, might appear to be an oppressive religion is exactly the kind of gray area Islam Cultural Awareness week seeks to shed light on. Thursday’s other event, a lecture titled “Does Islam Guarantee Human Rights?” also took a loaded topic head on. The week wrapped up with entertainment from local artists and members of Al-Madinah.

Hanif hopes that if U of M students took only one thing away from the week, it would be a better understanding of what Islam actually is, rather than the image American media has created for it. He encourages curious people to “go to the texts” and read the Qur’an for themselves rather than have a third party interpret it for them. Without bandying about clichés like “global citizen,” campaigns like Islam Cultural Awareness Week enrich the U of M, shedding insight and allowing students to have a personal connection with a culture most of us don’t fully understand.

Mund: Can you tell her to stop?

Cue: Sure, but it’s not a guarantee.

Mund: We got young kids right next door fer chrissakes.

Cue: Can you take your hand away from your face when you talk to me?

Mund: Sure.

Cue: That’s better.

But the sun stayed up all day. And if it were darker outside I might have felt less guilty. And the sun stayed up for more than a day (same shadows, same length) and I ate very slowly to crush all the germs.

Mund: Please hug me.

Cue: Finish chewing first.

When I was ten I wasted a whole ten-dollar bill on a jet-ski arcade game. I was expecting forty quarters back, and I pushed the coin return for five minutes looking at my brothers’ disappointed faces while they pointed to a machine that read “tokens.” And I knew what my dad was doing to that lady from the church. I played Wave Race Extreme dispassionately for twenty minutes to teach my brothers something about reconciliation.

Mund: I’m going to kill your mom.

Cue: I know.

Google Voice does more than just voice mail transcription; it will give you one number to ring all or a select number of your phones, free SMS and can record and store your calls online. It all sounds terribly convenient and there may be many users of Google Voice who utilize all these functions. Apple was considered innovative with their “visual voicemail”—which iPhone owners could use to see the name or number of the person leaving a voicemail and selectively listen or playback sections of the voicemail. With Google voice integration (available on any phone) users can opt to receive e-mails or text messages with a transcription of the voicemail along with a link for audio playback. The use of Google voice’s service disables the iPhone’s native visual voicemail functions but provides its own App providing a similar function.

Google’s transcription software is fairly accurate and places guesses for words it has a difficult time understanding (this is denoted by underlined and faded text in their online service). So exactly how useful is Google’s transcription services?

Very useful. For your health at least. I don’t mean that you no longer have to raise your personal radiation piece to your brain to access your voice mail either. I mean previously innane voicemails of old roommates announcing they will be visiting soon turn into hilarity-ensuing texts:

“Hey bruise, Joe calling. Yeah, I just left Somalia up to the cities. Then dot Canadian Jeff at Starbucks. I wasn’t here, so ah I don’t know if you’re not. But if you cool to hang out. Lemme in the city. Talk to you later. Bye.”

Aside from the dotting Canadian Jeff at Starbucks, myself knowing the context of this voicemail, this transcription was useful for me. With a glance at my phone during a concert I could decipher that a) my old roommate was now a crack addict and therefore did not have to leave the show to return his call. Google Voice saves the day.

Here are some other excerpts from my personal voice mail, to give you an idea of how valuable this service is.

“Hello areas. Well, I stopped a the top of the still, but man I got that I’d right after that. I know where you are. Where are you? Give me a call back. Okay bye.”

This transcription was useful because I know I have to call this person back. And they may or may not know where I am.

“I think 2741.”

Cool, I was thinking the same.

“Hey dude, this at church. Hey babe, but I think I’m gonna go out in the remains see if you know on. But give me a jingle. Bye”

I didn’t return this call because I thought it was rude to make a call during church. And to call me babe. And the vague reference to bodily remains.

“Hey Eric. Tatem. Haiti and I are gonna go get some breakfast. Yeah. Anyway, let me give me a call back.”

No action required on my part thanks to Google Voice: this person will call themself back. Unfortunately by this point the transcription software has learned my name and now leaves out otherwise great name changes like “areas” and “bruise” and once, Mark? Fortunately, it has yet to learn my friends names: Tatem and Haiti.

Adspecs, an invention of a Professor Joshua Silver at Oxford University, utilizes a clear oil to fill the eyeglasses lenses, thus making the prescription adjustable for any individual. Silver hopes to distribute a billion pairs of his glasses around the world by 2020 to combat the millions of individuals with debilitating eyesight problems.

Because Adspecs are not meant for the eager consumer who demands the latest style from his or her eyewear they don’t appear in the most attractive forms. They could be considered ‘timeless’ in that Harry-Potter-wore-them-for-seven-years sort of way. As of now, the technology used limits the lenses to being round and cost about $19 a pair to be manufactured.

Several other groups are working on distributing similar glasses throughout the world for a similar price. U-specs and Focusspec eyewear are designed using the Alvarez lens system in their glasses: two lenses of varying thickness that are capable of sliding past one another to change the prescription. Manufacturers using this system can produce about four pairs of glasses for the cost of every single pair of Adspecs.

Despite the discrepancy in cost, the groups maintain there is little competitiveness in the industry. With enough glasses being made at once by either group, the unit cost would go down drastically. Yet everyone maintains their system is the best: Adspecs because of their optical range and quality; Alvarez for simplicity and durability.

Politics and science aside, both groups want the same thing. To make an indiscriminate, tax-deductible donation and help provide eyesight for the world visit www.vdw.ox.ac.uk.

As of March 23, the GAMC was slated for the ax, due to repeated Pawlenty vetoes on bipartisan- supported Democratic renegotiations of the reform bill. Minnesota Health Care Programs include GAMC, MinnesotaCare, and Medical Assistance that provide aid to those who do not qualify for federal assistance. Minnesota Department of Human Services announced the same day that those who were on the GAMC program would still have health care coverage—they would be shifted to another MHCP. Before that date, a mandatory switchover to Transitional MinnesotaCare was in the works for most of those on GAMC. However, MinnesotaCare would have had to expand such that this mandate would only raise costs for patients and providers, and eventually deplete the standing Health Care Access Fund on which it is sustained.

MinnesotaCare carries a monthly premium, mandatory copays and a host of services available under most insurance plans, most notably alcohol and drug treatment, doctor and clinic visits, dental care, immunizations, surgery and prescription drugs. GAMC offers most of the same critical services without mandatory copays or monthly premiums—and so picks up those chronically poor and mentally ill Minnesotans who can’t afford copays and premiums but may need health care even more than MinnesotaCare members. Proponents of GAMC argue it is critical for these downtrodden that GAMC persists in some form.

Erin Murphy, a registered nurse-turned-State Representative and the champion for the continuation of GAMC, was tearful and outspoken on the floor of the Minnesota House. On March 25, Brian Lambert of MinnPost quoted Murphy, who said, “the people who live in the shadows of our society deserve care…and we have made that promise to them…[w]e have said that you still matter to us, and even though we don’t have a lot of money, we are going to make sure that you get the care that you need.” Due to the successful lobbying and bill tweaking of Murphy and her cohorts, Pawlenty was browbeaten into signing a modified GAMC continuation plan on March 26.

Maureen, who didn’t give her last name, is covered by GAMC. She caught wind of the impending closure of the program and raced to get a host of medical tests performed before the understood termination date of April 1, cognizant of the fact that she would be unable to afford the copays and premium of MinnesotaCare. The communications trickling out of the bureaucracy are apparently insufficient; she was unaware that GAMC had been extended.

Budget cuts being what they are, the GAMC is still due for extermination on June 1. It appears, however, that the Transitional MinnesotaCare got the ax that was originally intended for GAMC; a MDHS bulletin on April 1 instructed care providers not to approve Transitional MinnesotaCare beyond that date. GAMC benefits and eligibility criteria remain essentially the same except that a GAMC qualifier is no longer needed for eligibility. Said qualifiers include receipt of General Assistance, payment under Group Residential Housing, obtainment of disability income, homelessness and other institutionalized proofs of poverty. The MDHS states as of this issue’s press that GAMC benefits and acceptance will continue through May 31, at which point an as-yet unrevealed care coordination system will take effect.
If the destitute are to receive medical care, it must be provided with a reasonable understanding of their poverty level. Paul Farmer, a medical anthropologist—and a vocal advocate for an end to the structural violence that continually crushes the poor—writes in Pathologies of Power that “[i]n the name of ‘cost-effectiveness,’ we cut back health benefits to the poor, who are more likely to be sick than the nonpoor.” Erin Murphy witnessed enough structural injustice in her days as an RN that she asserted the necessary humanity on the House floor throughout March and shifted the tides of reform toward more compassionate shores. Murphy, her cohorts, and the rest of us Minnesotans now have the opportunity to affect how humane the outcome of the new care coordination system will be. Given this chance, we can determine whether this system will be adequate for those who may need medical care more than us, and whether it will help to mediate that structural violence that creates and sustains poverty.

The miniature-scale replication of the big bang had caused many ill-informed people of apocalyptic bents to predict that the miniature black holes that should be created by the crashing protons would grow and envelop the solar system. Obviously this has not happened. The predicted miniature black holes, which consume themselves more or less instantly, are, theoretically, created by the entry of light through the ozone layer regardless of human creations.

The Large Hadron Collider has been in the works for roughly 25 years. It uses about three and a half times as many electron volts as its now-obsolete competitor, Fermilab, operating near Chicago. As if this unprecedented and semi-incomprehensible quantity of energy (a tera-electron volt is a million million electron volts) weren’t already adequately over-the-top, by 2013 the facility hopes to up this number to 14.

Still, no matter how fast it can throw things into other things, physics isn’t totally sexy yet. Data will be compiled and analyzed for months, and scientific discoveries, regardless of how they’re sensationalized, will proceed slowly from long laborious analysis.

It may also shock readers to know that anybody who would build a thoroughly magnetized, hyper-sensitive 27 kilometer underground racetrack would ever let the word “practical” enter their stream-of-consciousness. Never fear; it does little more than that. The discoveries scientists are hoping to make at CERN pertain to completing the Standard Model of particle physics. That is to say, even if you could understand what these people are doing (apologies to our readers who are physics professors) you would probably have trouble figuring out how it will be useful. Yet the theoretical importance of actually completing this body of research is hard to understate and will justify years of accumulated theory if validated. Analysis regarding the validity of string theory, which hopes to reconcile modern quantum theory and Einstein’s general theory- the two grand and incompatible frameworks for contemporary physics- should proceed. The big gun is the Higgs boson, a particle thought to imbue all other particles with mass. If it exists, it will complete the Standard Model of particle physics. If it doesn’t, then the more serious discussion of eleven dimensions and parallel universes will begin. In spite of the gratification of completing the standard model of particle physics, science is always more fun when it leads to more questions. So now that we’re $10 billion into CERN, the best thing for the amateur science-reader to do is hope things keep getting weirder.

Well, no. You see, my fellow Generation Y-ers, our precious Internet has created something of a catch-22. On one side, it allows people all over the world to experience things like the UK’s dubstep movement or a great unsigned band from Australia called The Middle East. Few would argue that the ‘net hasn’t expanded the common man’s access to music in seemingly unthinkable ways. Less obviously, though, the last decade has seen something of a race to the bottom on the Internet as far as music is concerned. While the infinite frontiers online allow you and I to peruse music blogs to our every caprice, it has a very different effect on many aspiring musicians.

Growing up in a super-charged environment of breaking Brooklyn buzz bands getting famous on bedroom-recorded demos, there’s a certain pressure that starts to build on anyone who would like to someday make music. Each new band paves their way to indie-stardom through a novel derivation on what has been done, a tangent on a tangent. And the obsessive, incessantly bitchy community of cravenly anonymous online commenters feeds the perception that authenticity is reserved for those who break new ground, shutting out those who might create something beautifully familiar. This leaves us with droves of 19-year-olds who craft songs with the sardonic jibes of the blogging masses pinging around their heads. Which in turn leads us down rabbit holes like chillwave and no-fi (and god forbid, glo-fi). While I don’t dismiss any of these “genres” categorically, they are representative of the larger problem the independent music world faces. The world of hyper-critical commenters that comprise forums, message boards and blog audiences have created the perception that glory is reserved for those who can out-shock, out-weird or out-hip the last batch of musicians.

Certainly, reinterpretations of old classics are still being made. Look no further than Girls’ excellent Album from last year for proof. And, defying all odds, a smaller group of people is even making music that can truly be called “new.” Spend ten minutes trying to find musical precedents for Joanna Newsom’s Ys and get back to me (my goodness, there’s a column waiting to happen). But the trend toward novelty of any kind is one that will ultimately hurt to the quality of music. Let’s remember, making music should be about pleasure and fulfillment, not some intellectual divining of progress and uniqueness. It’s striking how different a record like Van Morrison’s Astral Weeks sounds from anything coming out now. Today’s musicians would be well advised to heed Van’s words: “In silence easy, to be born again.”

Being the second building ever constructed on campus, the building comes with many forms of what the city now determines to be code deficiencies.

The building was first used as a center for the Student Christian Association before hosting a YMCA chapter, Child Welfare and Music Education departments.

After being vacated, the building was placed into a lay-away state in 1997. The building was closed for multiple State Building Code deficiecies, a failing roof system, physical inassecibility, lack of elevator, proximity to the roadway and lead and asbestos-containing materials throughout the building.

The University explored several reuses of the building during its lay-away status, including offers for use outside of the University.

Among these potential uses for the building were: a new Center for Disability Services, renovated classroom or seminar space, a University departmental or student organization office space, rental housing, scholars housing, a unique food service center (restaurant, coffee or snack shop), utility infrastructure or a storage building.

Neccessary restoration work is estimated to cost around $2.9 million. Because of the high expense of rebuilding for accessibility it is more financially feasible for the University to demolish the building.
President Bruininks recommended for the approval of the deconstruction and demolition of the Music Education Building last July 2009.

An Environmental Assessment Worksheet is required to be completed before deconstruction of the building. The worksheet notes certain materials will attempted to be preserved during deconstruction.
Salvageable materials identified in the Environmental Assessment Worksheet, such as the building’s exterior stone carvings, will be protected and stored either for reuse in a future University facility or used in an education or interpreteive setting. The latter of these potential uses will be completed with oversight by the Minnesota Historic Preservation Office.

Outside of indentified salvageable materials (of presumed historical value), all other materials will be salvaged or disposed at the legal responsibiltiy of the selected General Contractor, PCL Construction.
The deconstruction project remains in the environmental assessment stage so no scheduled date or time frame for demolition has been authorized.

Once the building is demolished, however, the University plans to extend East River Parkway vehicular, pedestrian and bike roads and trails to connect with Main Street SE just West of where Music Education now stands. It is hoped that better landscape features will be compatible with these new connections and increase pedestrian and bike traffic through the area.

This 1963 concept album by batshit musical genius Charles Mingus is widely recognized as one of the greatest compositions of all time. Written as a six-part jazz ballet, “The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady” is an incredibly emotional, beautiful experiment in orchestrated chaos. Mingus called this his masterpiece, and I wouldn’t argue with him (partly because I completely agree, and partly because arguing with Charles Mingus never ended well).

Deltron 3030
“Deltron 3030”

Deltron 3030 is/was a rap supergroup consisting of Del tha Funkee Homosapien, Dan the Automator and DJ Kid Koala, who released this space-opera concept album in 2000. It’s about the future, android and cyber warlords, has guest appearances up the wazoo from Damon Albarn to Prince Paul to Sean Lennon, and contains the line “Fuck dyin’, I hijack a mech” in the opening track. Need I say more?

Genesis
“The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway”

Before Peter Gabriel got busy playing Magnetic Fields covers, writing songs for Pixar soundtracks, and even before “Sledgehammer,” he was playing ringleader in the highly influential prog-group Genesis, who released the double concept album “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” in 1974. It’s about a Puerto Rican kid named Rael living in New York City who goes underground and explores cool shit like red corridors filled with carpetcrawlers, caverns of blinding light, and colonies of slippermen in order to find his brother, John, and in doing so, find himself, man… The lyrics are reminiscent of one of those early text adventure video games, and the instrumentation basically exemplifies the term progressive, making “Lamb” one of those records that still sound great even in these days of auto-tune and Gaga ladies and fully forgiving Genesis for ever releasing “I Can’t Dance.”

Titus Andronicus
“The Monitor”

New Jersey lo-fi punk band Titus Andronicus released this concept album in March to near universal acclaim. It’s based on the Civil War, as evidenced by song titles such as “A More Perfect Union” and “Four Score and Seven” and lyrics about how much being a soldier, having to shit yourself and watching people die all suck. It seems obvious and lame to compare this band and record to Bruce Springsteen, but it’s really more than appropriate with references to New Jersey, rambling piano solos, and lines like “Tramps like us, baby we were born to die” running rampant. “The Monitor” is a lofty project but not to a fault, because the band accomplishes everything they set out to do in its hour-and-five-minute run time. It plays out like a drunken, hopeless, sloppy “Born To Run” that’s not actually sloppy. And it fucking rocks.

Some of us might laugh at the web site, but I think we all belong on it. Twilight is like puberty. You wake up one day and realize the school you’re at feels completely different, and you don’t understand your body, and all the boys are starting to notice you. All of them except your lab partner Edward. He’ll barely even look at you, but he’s the only boy you want to look at. You’re sure he’s perfect, you imagine he sparkles in the sunlight, and you think if he went out for track he’d definitely be the fastest one on the team, but he’s not really into sports. You’re not really sure what he’s into, but you’re desperate to know more. He’s perfect, you think. One time you accidentally touch his hand during your lab and that night you write about it in your diary.

And then all of a sudden he’s talking to you and soon he asks if you want to go out with him and you say yes and now you’re dating. He’s so protective of you. It makes you feel safe knowing he’d fight a man for you. Probably he’d even kill a man for you. At the school dance, during one of the slow songs, he looks at you with his golden eyes and says, “Isabella Swan, I promise to love you every moment, forever.” You wipe away the tears and think “so this is what love feels like”. You can’t believe you found it so young.

Two weeks later it’s your birthday and you get a paper cut and Edward dumps you. It hurts so bad you’re afraid you’ll never feel again. The Edward-shaped hole in your chest is the only thing you have left of him. You waste your days lying in bed staring at the ceiling, sometimes rolling over to cry into your pillow. You’ve accepted the fact that you will likely never be happy again. Your dad tries to comfort you but he absolutely wouldn’t understand what you’re going through. The pain feels like it lasts for months but in a few days you meet a new boy. Jacob has a bunch of older brothers and lives in abject poverty and fixes motorcycles and he’s actually pretty cute when he cuts his hair. You know Jacob would kill a man for you.

But Edward wants you back before you get too serious with Jacob. He says he hates it when you hang out with Jacob, he says he can smell Jacob on you. Jacob takes offense and reminds you of how Edward dumped you on your birthday. It’s hard, but you have to tell Jacob that you like both of them, but you like like Edward. You stay friends with Jacob, but Edward demands to know whenever you’ve been with him. Edward is so jealous it seems like he’ll only talk about Jacob. And Jacob is just as jealous of Edward. Both of these men will kill for you, you know it. You just don’t want them to kill each other.

Then one day you’re walking in the woods with Edward and you see Jacob down the path. First they exchange glares, then words, then Jacob takes off his shirt and they start punching and you’re begging them to stop but the punches turn into grabs and holds and finally they’re on the ground, muscles flexed, locked into place. You stop your whiny hysterics and the woods are silent except for their quiet, low growls. You notice the sidelong glances they give each other while they jostle around in their embrace. Edward’s shirt is wet with Jacob’s sweat. You’re pretty sure this isn’t about you anymore.

Making sense of health care reform over the past two years has not been easy. We spend more on healthcare than any other country and yet our life expectancy lags behind Chile, Cuba and the United Arab Emirates. Health insurers can deny coverage to a patient right when they need it most, in fact, because they need it most. Thankfully the Patient Protection and Affordable Healthcare Act was designed to make the system a little more user friendly. Pre-existing conditions won’t be a problem for anyone after 2014, and subsidized premiums (along with insurance exchanges) will allow millions of Americans to buy into private insurance plans for the first time. These reforms are badly needed and are a big step toward the rest of the industrialized world.

Young people are among the most uninsured demographics in America, with 49 percent of 19 to 24 year olds lacking coverage. Young people were also some of Barack Obama’s biggest supporters in the last election, preferring the Democrats by a record 38 percent. But how the new bill addresses this large group is not particularly consistent. One provision that has gotten a lot of attention is the extension of parental plan eligibility to 26, which is a big deal for many in the middle class. Unfortunately, this doesn’t mean the family rate will stay the same. Young adults will no longer be counted as children on the plan, but rather as adult individuals, meaning that premiums could be quite a bit higher. And because of the insurance mandate, young people couldnít simply opt out of health coverage and hedge their bets on good health. Paradoxically, this is partly because young people are so healthy and young people buying into coverage helps pay for others who need expensive treatment. So in a way, we’re expected to pay for our parents’ coverage.

But the bill offers some solutions. For a start, Medicaid will be expanded to everyone up to 133 percent of the poverty line (which is now around $11,000), and subsidies will be available up to 400 percent (mostly in the form of tax credits). And then there’s the much-advertised employer mandate provision: your boss has to offer health coverage if he or she employs more than 50 people, and there’s tax credits available for employers with less than 25 (covering up to 50 percent of employers’ costs). Young people will also be able to buy into “catastrophic” coverage with low premiums and high deductibles, basically paying for what you use. So if you’re generally healthy, your costs will be low, and if you get really sick, you’re covered. But if you’re not healthy, need expensive medications or can’t afford the out-of-pocket costs, catastrophic coverage won’t help much.

For those unlucky people, new high-risk insurance pools are in the works that will offer reduced rate coverage to anyone with a pre-existing condition who has gone without insurance for at least six months. Rates will hover around average premiums for healthy individuals, and the pools will be operated by the federal government, states or nonprofits. Currently 35 states operate such pools (including Minnesota, which has one of the most extensive), but with no rules on premium charges, the plans cost as much as twice the average individual rate. This is likely to change by June, in anticipation of the 2014 deadline, when private insurers will no longer be able to charge higher premiums because of pre-existing conditions. And while there are some doubts as to the financial viability of the program (most states run it at a loss and Washington is only promising about $5 billion), it has the potential to insure millions, including many young people.

OK, so there are some holes. The bill will by no means cover everyone. In Massachusetts, where similar reforms were implemented in 2006 (including a mandate and a relatively generous subsidy program), tens of thousands remain uninsured. Of course, things would be so much easier and more efficient if we could have a single-payer plan (of course, of course). But in the real world we have to put up with things like procedural filibusters, blue dogs and cornhusker kickbacks. Overall, the bill will help many people get coverage. Around 16 million will now be eligible for Medicaid and millions more for subsidies and other programs. For many young people, the bill could mean one less headache or one more trip to the doctor.

Do these tiny wannabe nations have a legitimate claim to sovereignty?

The tenuous relationship between individual and national identity has been brought into the realm of international law by the emergence of micronations. It is not just the political and moral philosophers in the relatively innocuous space of academia who need to tackle issues of an individual’s relationship to their nation, but lawyers and lawmakers of the world. What precedent is there to hinder individuals who claim state sovereignty over their own land, other than common sense, of course?

Common sense, however, has notoriously little to say regarding legal and moral authority. It shouldn’t come as a surprise then, that legal ambiguity and official shunning reigns supreme in relation to the many micronations’ legal status.

This is not without some level of justification, as most micronations are harmless vehicles for fantasy and entertainment, as their creators take on the rank and persona of kings, with all the accoutrements of a clichéd ruling party, i.e. fancy uniforms, medals, and a national anthem. Some even go so far as to write a fictional national history. These often function mostly as internet-based entities that are comprised of a small-scale social group of friends and advocates.

However, this is not always the case. Other micronations actually inhabit a physical location on the Earth, which they claim authority over and which they are, in some cases, willing to defend with shows of force.

Though the concept of a micronation is not necessarily an entirely modern phenomenon, and does not have the significant history of the Utopian-egalitarian commune, the boom of ‘revolutionary’ activity that led to the development of some of the most prominent micronations has come in the last fifty years. Two major micronations that are still in existence today were founded in the tide of revolutionary thought that spread through the 1960’s and 70’s, produced in the time of student riots and the civil rights movement.

The Principality of Hutt River was created when a group of farmers seceded from the Australian government in 1970 due to quota laws that would have only allowed the former citizens to sell one-tenth of their wheat production. The formation of The Principality of Sealand, in 1967, was the end result of a group of people attempting to find a place to broadcast pirate radio. Both of these micronations were founded on relatively legitimate concerns, actually inhabit land of some sort or other, and though neither of them have been officially recognized as independent nations, have managed to maintain an odd sort of autonomy, which gives them an intriguing status.

Exploiting this status the most effectively throughout its history, The Principality of Sealand is especially interesting. The principality was founded by a man named Roy Bates and his family, and is entirely situated on an old World War II seafort that stands about six miles out from the British coastline. In place of a fictionalized history, Sealand has survived military encounters, a successful takeover followed by a quick retaliation, and diplomatic relations. In many ways, The Principality of Sealand’s history is a microcosm of the violent, turbulent origin stories that are at the basis of most nation’s battles for independence. However, it is difficult to discern whether this microcosm is truly akin to the actual struggles of a large-scale developing nation, or is simply the delusional game-playing of a handful of eccentric people who are poking holes in the fabric of international law.

In 1968, after the British Navy became aware of the repurposing of their old seafort, they sent warships out to the newly claimed sovereign state of Sealand. Roy Bates, construing the actions of the navy as an unwelcome intrusion on his territorial space, fired warning shots. Since Bates was still considered a British subject, and firing shots at one’s own Navy is not looked upon kindly, he was accused of various crimes and was summoned to a British court.

The judgment that the British court passed on Bates typifies the ambiguous legal space that most micronations exist in to this day. The court declared that its jurisdiction did not extend outside British national territory and, thus, could not persecute Bates. Without giving credence to the claims of Sealand’s sovereignty, the British government conceded that it was not part of the motherland. In the vacancy of any clear jurisdiction, the official history of Sealand states that this is a de facto claim to sovereignty.

In 1978 the Principality of Sealand was invaded, while Bates was away in England, and taken over. The invaders, led by the German Alexander Achenbach, held Bates’s son hostage. In response, Bates enlisted armed assistance and retook the fort with the use of a helicopter. The invaders were held as prisoners of war until Germany was forced to send a diplomat to Sealand to negotiate their release. Once again, the official historians of Sealand use this to their advantage and declare that this diplomatic relation with Germany is a de facto claim to sovereignty.

The potential that is found in the micronationality movement is often hindered by their paradoxical and fetishistic nature. Micronations, at their best, not only provide an extreme option for the separation of an individual or small group from a national agenda that is growing more incomprehensible or alienating to them, but also play upon the possibility that is part and parcel of the commune movement toward a more personally run community that has laws and goals more closely related with its population. At their worst, most micronations are mired in their claims to old pseudo-feudalist notions of regal lineage and the novelty and entertainment value that implies. They often seem to mimic sovereignty in all the wrong ways – as though the claim to right over a territory must imply a miniature display of absolute power. I am thinking here of the Republic of Molossia, which is competently run, I’m sure, by President Kevin Baugh who governs over the vast national territories comprising mainly his house, backyard and garden somewhere in California.

It seems certain that the micronation movement will only exist as a fringe element in the larger global society. The risk inherent in separating oneself from the resources, protection and critical services of a large, established nation are daunting. The challenges of economically supporting a micronation, with such a minimal amount of land, are usually insurmountable. This is why most micronations are not comprised of the revolutionary temper that is part of the Sealand or Hutt River efforts. It seems as though the movement has lost the fire and ingenuity that it had in past decades, and these days, with the internet providing endless digital realms, most micronationalists are willing to let themselves fantasize about their imagined nations while still remaining American or British during their day jobs.

Blue hairs beware.

“Home” rides along on a toe-tapping country two-beat while Deschanel delivers a vocal performance dripping so thick with charm that it’s almost impossible not to fall in love with her. There’s hardly any singing from Ward on Volume Two, and it seems a shame to place such a fantastic voice in the background, but of course the real star of the show is Deschanel, who is more than happy to croon and warble her way adorably through the record. She and Him aren’t venturing into particularly profound territory here, and some of the songs sound suspiciously Prius-commercial-ready, but one couldn’t ask for a better summer record: lazy, warm and charming enough for a garden party.

Roger Greenberg is introduced as he comes to LA to house-sit while his brother’s family goes on vacation. This is how Roger and Florence meet and begin an awkward, temperamental affair. Yet from the moment Roger is introduced, he becomes the film’s focus; it loses interest in Florence except insofar as Roger is interested in her. This is the film’s tragedy. Roger Greenberg is 40 years old, selfish, washed up, neurotic and irredeemably mean, in particular to Florence, who he abuses as blatantly as her past flings, but with more regularity. In the competition for Baumbach’s attention, Roger Greenberg, as the film’s title indicates, unambiguously wins. Ben Stiller’s performance, reaching squirm-inducing heights of awkwardness and awfulness, is commendable, and the film is consistently entertaining. Yet Greenberg is never made adequately sympathetic. This is problematic because the film seems to trace his attempt to redeem himself, implying some sort of achievement on the part of Roger Greenberg at the end that isn’t believable and is, by this point, even unwanted. His worst characteristics stubbornly remain throughout the film, which watches him alienate his few remaining friends. Florence becomes static as Greenberg moves into the spotlight, which is a shame. She is the real protagonist in this story, but in the film, as in her life, she is relegated to second place.

“From Vices to Verses: A New Era of Hip Hop and Action” is a three-day conference organized by the University of Minnesota student group Voices Merging, along with the Cypher Coalition, Substance, and numerous supporters from the Twin Cities, that is bringing some of the most influential and innovative voices in hip hop culture, including hip hop activist Rosa Clemente, journalist Bakari Kitwana, and spoken-verse poet Marc Bamuthi Joseph. The conference’s completely free weekend is filled with workshops, panels and performances. On April 10, a concert will be given at the Cabooze Club featuring Twin Cities artists like Toki Wright, Maria Isa, PosNoSys, Ill Chemistry, the Tru Ruts Crew with hip-hop legends Dead Prez headlining.

The goal of “From Vices to Verses” is demonstrating how hip hop pedagogy can be used to educate, empower and transform communities. This year’s conference will focus on three major issues in hip hop culture today: feminism and women’s roles in hip hop, hip hop as an agency of unity that is capable of crossing generational, national and cultural boundaries, and hip hop’s transformative and healing powers amongst individuals and communities. Anna Pirsch, co-chair of the Voices Merging student group, is very excited about the conference, saying “it is important because it is the first of its kind in the Twin Cities. It is a true collaboration of over 25 different partnering organizations.”

In Bakari Kitwana’s book The Hip Hop Generation, he says that he wants “the discussion of hip-hop [to go] beyond the music and cultural movement to consider the sociopolitical forces that birthed the generation itself. It [is his] hope that within that more enlightened climate we could find ways to empower our generation and effect positive social change.” This is the goal of the conference, to thoughtfully engage members in the local and global hip hop communities to work toward a stronger future and rejecting stereotypes, while inspiring new modes of social change.

For Pirsch, “the conference will remind us of the change we are capable of making, and it gives us a tangible way to do so.” This event will not only affect the Twin Cities, the Twin Cities’ hip hop community, or the global hip hop community, but it has the potential to transcend all communities—no matter the age, location, academic level, race, or sex—and establish a framework for social activism and sense of community. “From Vices to Verses” will bring an important dialogue to the local community; it is not just calling for change, it is starting the change, going from vices to verses.

Register at http://vicestoverses.com.

The location of the U, close to many neighborhoods in the Twin Cities, is an often-appealing fact of the campus. The bus lines that run throughout and near campus make the U accessible to many, which is appearing to be both a blessing and a curse. When viewing the maps of campus crime the U of M makes available online, crime seems to be fairly even among the campus neighborhoods: Dinkytown, Stadium Village, Marcy-Holmes, and Como. Yet, all these neighborhoods sit along easily accessible bus lines that can potentially carry unwelcomed visitors.  These unwelcome visitors figured out that many college properties are old and neglected, often with poorly locked doors and easily opened windows, thus creating easy opportunities for a quick and simple robbery.

The correlation between crime and location cannot be ignored, especially when compared to statistics from other Twin Cities schools. The differences between the amount of crime that occurs at the U and at Macalaster College, a liberal arts school in St. Paul, are significant. The most recent accumulation of crime statistics available for Hamline is from 2003-2006, and these crimes were recorded from both on and nearby campus. In the total span of those years, Macalaster was only hit by 4 sexual offenses, 22 robberies, and 18 motor vehicle thefts. To give one an idea in the amount of difference in crime on the campuses, in December 2006 alone, the U was hit by 14 robberies, which is over half of what Macalaster suffered between 2003 and 2006.

This past week was Campus Safety Week, and an effort is being made to focus on these concerns. The U of M defends itself on its web site by saying they “have many resources in place to make the campus safe,” such as university police, security cameras, security escorts, security monitors and a safe ride home for students from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. on weekend nights. While this is true, and the U is lucky to have such services, is it enough? For instance, campus escorts are not trained in any sort of physical defense program by the U upon hiring. It is not a requirement to be hired that they must be sufficient in self-defense. When accompanied by an escort who has not studied any sort of defense, is not looking to go into a crime or protection field, and is not much bigger than oneself, is their presence enough to make one feel safe? Secondly, while the campus ride is an extremely convenient feature for early birds, bar close is at 2 a.m., the same time the vans stop running. This may leave many people to wander the streets, with potentially catastrophic results if they’ve been previously partying.

Campus Safety Week is emphasizing issues by creating events Monday through Friday that allow students, parents, faculty, etc. to discuss recent issues and concerns with members of the UMPD force over coffee and donuts. Students are concerned enough, and perpetuating the coffee and donut appetite of a ‘lazy cop’ was perhaps not the wisest choice of the U.

Justin Yarrington, the Assistant Program Director of the Campus Security Monitor Program, says that while he couldn’t directly explain the rise in severe crime, in the last three years crimes have gone down around the U’s campus. Yarrington said that the 150 student campus escorts are aware of the recent events, and this has caused them to take more pride in their jobs as they are aware of the significance and importance that accompanies their work. The campus escorts have a non-physical intervention policy, and most nights receive anywhere from 15-30 calls. Yarrington said he did notice an increase in calls about a week after the Super block shooting, but the distribution between calls from male and females stayed the same (with females more likely to call).

Students have had different reactions to the recent crime on campus. Many worry, others fall into the mindset that danger won’t happen to them. Juniors Teresa Logemann and Tracy Merth are two who fall into this mindset. Logemann says she realizes others are more worried than her. She feels prepared and safe, because she is careful and has taken a self defense class. Both agree that they are “cognizant of dangerous situations and avoid them” by doing such things as walking in groups at night, etc. The two agree that this is a “big city and stuff happens” and if you took precautions, you are doing all you can. Several events on campus made them temporarily nervous, but then they forgot about them. Both have used escorts, and appreciate the U’s e-mails and texts about crime. The two feel that as long as they make smart decisions they should be fine.

No matter how one feels, it is hard to ignore the recent violent crime on campus. UMPD and other organizations are doing all they can do, but it is important for students to protect themselves and others.