Vol. 11 No. 2 Twin Cities Fall 1989
Clinton st quarterly, kfai and heart of the beast theater PRESENT FEATURING: the rockin’ pine cones rhea valentine daughters of invention TICKETS: available at tatters & platters, odegard books of minneapolis and northern lights music $8 in advance / $10 at the door ILLUSTRATION: C h a r le y m u r p h y DESIGN: g a l l w a l l in g a Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989
Co-publishers Julie Ristau, Lenny Dee Editorial Board Lenny Dee, Diane Hellekson, David Morris, Julie Ristau, Karen Starr, Charlie Sugnet, Jay Walljasper Pacific Northwest Editor David Milholland Precious Metal Detector Lucinda Anderson Art Direction Lenny Dee Cover Design Connie Baker Designers Connie Baker, Jezac, Kim Klein, Jay Miller, Eric Walljasper Contributing Artists Shannon Brady, Patricia Canelake, Linda Gammell, GreetOMatic, Fred Harding, John Kleber, Constance Lowe, Rod Massey, Stuart Mead, Ann Morgan, Charlie Murphy Cover Photographer Gus Gustafson Proofreader Ann Laughlin Account Representative Barbara Nelson Typesetting Jezac Typesetting Tertulia Referee Karen Lehman Spiritual Advisor Camille Gage Windy City Beat Lynda J. Barry Thanks to thee Brian Ahlberg, Betty Benjamin, William Casper, Jennifer Gage, Jim Hare, B.J. & Paul Loeb, Judi Ray, Ellen Ruffin, Carol Salmon, Linda Schinitz, COMPAS, Mary Walstrom ON THE COVER Portrait of David Rathman by his fiancee, Mary Kramer. Dave Rathman is a Minneapolis printmaker, book artist, and painter. He is a 1989 Jerome Foundation Fellowship recipient. This is an untitled oil painting courtesy of Steve Andersen. Subscriptions $10 a year. 212 3rd Ave. N., Suite 300 Minneapolis, MN 55401 The Twin Cities edition is published by the Clinton St. Quarterly, 212 3rd Avenue N., Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55401—(612) 338-0782. Unless otherwise noted, all contents copyright ©1989 Clinton St. Quarterly. We encourage your comments, articles and art. All material should be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope. 6 Huxley’s Satellite Dish— Brian Fawcett The Global Village forever changes the backwoods. Teddy’s Waltz— Reva Rasmussen A tune we all will dance to. A Poverty Program You Can Bank On— David Osborn A community development bank turns around an inner city neighborhood. 15 Shorebank North? Lansing Shepard A local group tries for socially responsible lending. What the Hell! Let’s Go ToFrance— Lynda Barry The Left Bank will never be the same. 16 All the PR That’s Fit To Print—Walter Karp Our local dailies declined to comment on this article. Find out why. 18 / Used To Think Like That— Musicmaster A screed for all of us on life’s daily insanities. Swimming—Robin Raygor The trip you always knew was better imagined than taken. Brain Damaged Blues— Billy Golfus Trials and tribulations on the road to recovery. Clinton St. Gallery: Intimate Nature— Linda Gammell and ^ 1 Fred Harding W Photographs by two Twin Cities photographers. n I 34 D n Current Trends in Architecture— Jim Blashfield and Steve Winkenwerder Food for thought on American architecture. P E R S U A S IV E L A N G U A G E The evening of last summer’s Supreme Court decision on abortion found the television airwaves filled with invectives from the so-called “right to life” movement. “Murder,” “baby killing” and “genocide” were shouted over and over to counter the well thought out arguments of the choice spokeswomen. No matter what the merits, it is hard to win your case while being labeled the lowest scum on the earth. Yet it seems the anti-abortion movement is even more wide open for attacks on their own morality. If they were so concerned with life why don’t we see them protesting nuclear weapons and military expenditures— very real instruments of murder, babykilling and genocide. In fact many among the anti-abortion welcome nuclear armeggedon as a fulfillment of religious prophecies. If they cared for children we’d see them support child care, Head Start, guaranteed maternity leave and a host of other support services for children. In fact the anti-abortion movement as a whole is little concerned with life and more fixated on enforcing a return to the Victorian codes of conduct. Witness the following choice quotes from anti-abortion leaders: “Women have babies and men provide the support. If you don’t like the way we’re made you’ve got to take it up with God.” “Technical advances permit women to avoid conception or con tinuation of pregnancy. Women pay dearly for this nonfreedom. First, they become slaves of their erotic sensuality, they are manipulated more easily by the male of the species, they truly become sexual things (toys), and their denaturalization now transforms them into nothing more than large semen containers.” “Planned Parenthood is killing millions of pagan babies Whom our missionaries could otherwise convert.” There are deep and dangerous currents in the “Pro-life” movement and it needs to be called on it. No longer can we let the right control the language of our political discourse. This use of language as a tool to cloud political debate has been an historic weapon of the right. Joe McCarthy invoked the sinister image of “card-carrying communists” to great effect in the 50’s. In 1988 George Bush updated that phrase to brand Michael Dukakis a cardcarrying member of the ACLU and hence a man far out of the mainstream of American values. If Dukakis stood for anything he would have branded the religious fanatics swarming about Bush as the ones truly out of the mainstream. Unlike Dukakis we have to understand that these people are going for blood and we must fiercely defend ourselves. No longer should Victorian throwbacks and undemocratic religious zealots be dignified with the phrase “right to life.” Today Jesse Helms and Republican chairman Lee Atwater are leading a campaign to eliminate government funding of the arts. They are once again cornering the terminology by accusing their opponents of being pornographers. Jesse Helms is a major figure in the anti-abortion movement. On top of that he is the major congressional supporter of the brutal Latin American death squads. As tough as it is, we must think of images that encompass the truly despicable character of a Jesse Helms or a Lee Atwater. To rid ourselves of villains such as these we need to realize that they count on our unwillingness to leave the comfort of our privatized lives to engage in the political process. It’s up to us to prove them wrong. This issue is dedicated to the memory of I.F. Stone and Abbie Hoffman. Without their inspiration, wisdom and humor there never would have been a Clinton St. Quarterly. -Lenny Dee Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 I 3
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A n afterthought y o u ' d neverfo rg e t Luscious cakes a n d tortes, tight (ate-dinner fare, a n d a fu l l espresso menu, beer a n d wine. Open u n td 11pm Weekdays 12am Friday & Saturday 8 5 0 Grand Avenue at Victoria Crossing 2 2 4 -4 9 8 3 BRIGHT • CHEERFUL • BED & BREAKFAST • IN CHINATOWN/NORTH BEACH • BASQUE CUISINE • ROOMS FROM $30 • 1208 STOCKTON ST. • SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA 94133 • (415)989-3960 • OBRERO HOTEL & RESTAURANT IN THE BASQUE TRADITION AM y Collection 2276 Como Ave. D I D E I A T S t Paul 646-5651 D I D E L U I 1082 Grand Ave. at U Lexington 222-0321 W l l U l Sept. 9 th -Oc t. 14th Bruce Charlesworth Photographs Oct. 21st-Hov. 25th Jim Kielkopf / Paintings Dec. 2nd-Jan. 6th Arne Nyen/Paintings THOMAS BARRY FINE ARTS THE f\E/\PETS' TALE A Performance in the House of the Dead - Featuring - The Grand Feast of the Skeletons and Their Re-enactment of the Great Voyage of Christopher Columbus In Honor of the Life of the World IN T H E HEART OF T H E BEAST PUPPET -+MASE THEATRE 1 5 0 0 E . L A K E ST. M । £ A P o L I S ■SEPT. 2 9 —- N O V . 12 C L u 7 2 I —2 5 ?j F 0 R RL SE FS V A T I O M S ClintonSt. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 5
TheHuxley Satellite Dish Huxley is a small town on the coast of British Columbia, Sixty miles from Vancouver. About two thousand people live in Huxley, most of them making their living by cutting down the forests, throwing the logs into the upper reaches of a river and then collecting them at the river's mouth. Other people from Huxley string the logs together and tow them a little farther up the coast to a pulp and paper mill where the logs are skinned, ground up, and made into grocery bags or items hook it into the local cable network so equally interesting and crucial to the everyone in town could use it at no safety and well-being of Western charge. Now, the people of Huxley, Civilization. B.C. live in Detroit. In Huxley they don’t care much That’s Detroit, Michigan we’re where things come from and where talking about. Hub of the American they go. The town itself was named auto industry. Home of the Detroit after Thomas Henry Huxley, the Tigers baseball club. Murder capital English biologist, a disciple and of the entire world. sometime bulldog of Charles Darwin, Calling Detroit the murder capibut no one in Huxley knows that. If tal may sound like an exaggeration. you were to tell them, they wouldn’t There are some cities in the southern be any more interested than if the hemisphere where more people get town had been named after Thomas murdered, but that’s different. Down Henry’s grandson Aldous, who wrote there people murder one another over a book entitled Brave New World. ideas, and all too frequently the govAldous Huxley took a lot of currently ernment gets into the act along with popular recreational drugs decades them because they don’t like political before anyone else did, and he made ideas. Nobody gets murdered in some remarkably silly claims about Detroit because they have ideas— their powers. No one in Huxley knows least of all political ones. People in who either man was. They’re both Detroit kill each other without giving a dead, aren’t they? Like all that history damn about politics. Just gimme that stuff. What’s so damned important hot dog, gimme that wallet, gimme about what’s dead and gone, they’ll that woman. The spades in Detroit say. may hate the honkys and vice-versa, Rough-and-tumble outdoor peobut when people get murdered it ’s ple, the Huxleyites. They drink beer, supposed to be personal and not polismoke cigarettes without filter-tips, t ic a l , r ig h t? T h a t ’s the North drive four-wheel drive vehicles and American way. laugh a lot. A few of them live in those nice houses you can find in any suburb in North America, but most live in shacks and mobile trailers. On W ou may be wondering how v alternate weekends they drive into ■ hooking a satellite dish into a the mountains to ski or fish or they ■ community cable system can drive down to the city, where they land a small town in British Columbia shop in the big malls. Later on maybe in the middle of Detroit, Michigan. they take their kids to the movies. Or You probably suspect that I’ve made at least they used to do those kinds of up the town of Huxley and its satellite things. dish to illustrate some silly idea I have Last year they changed. A few about how horrible the modern world enterprising locals bought a TV. satelis, and why you shouldn’t watch telelite receiving dish and found a way to vision. That being the case, you’re either battening the hatches against an attack on your television viewing habits, or settling in to enjoy some interesting bullshit. Sorry to disappoint you. This is as real as the eveBy Brian Fawcett Design by Kim Klein Art by John Kleber Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 6
Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 7
ning news. The only difference is that the definition here is going to be sharper. r or a few months after the dish ■ was hooked in, nothing much ■ seemed to change in Huxley. One thing that was noticeable was that the bar at the hotel experienced a sharp dip in business, particularly around dinner time. In the old days, people' got off work and came down for a few beers before dinner. After the dish, only a few single men came in after work, and most of them left after one or two. Not many of them came back later, either. The local stores had a slightly different problem. Merchants complained to one another that what had previously been their best hours were now the deadest, and that they were now busiest at lunch hour—their stores were filled with workers booking off for extended lunches to do their shopping. It was hard to get parttime help at lunch hour, because the high school kids weren’t available, and none of the women seemed interested in working. The reason for this was simple enough. Detroit is three time zones ahead of Huxley. What happens in Detroit at 8:00 p.m. happens in Huxley’s future. Carson and the late movies go on at 8:30. And in the Global Village, three hours is a practical eternity, an entire prime time. A future. And who wouldn’t want to live in the future if they could? The people of Huxley made their choice without second thoughts. iving in the future gave Doris LKlegg a very specific leg up in an important family argument. From the time Doris and hseer e—the town didn’t look any differhusband Herb moved out to Huxley, her sister-in-law Sue in Vancouver had let her know, and not very subtly, that she thought they’d moved to the middle of nowhere. Each time Doris and Herb visited her in Vancouver, Sue took pleasure in relating the details of her sophisticated city life, with its fine restaurants, its aerobics parlours, the better class of people, even the better selection of television programming available, things like the special sports and movie networks, or PBS and the local cable stations that provided extensive coverage of city events. One night after a few too many drinks, she actually phoned them up to tell them they didn’t even have a lifestyle. But with the satellite dish hooked up, Doris knew what went on in the world three hours before her sister-inlaw did. She knew the plots of the soap operas and of DallasandDynasty before her sister-in-law did. Hell, when the Network ran a special movie about Mussolini, Doris knew what happened to him before Sue even started to watch. Doris racked up some hefty telephone bills demonstrating her new-found lifestyle superiority, but that was a cheap price to pay for living in the future. ■ immy and Janet Wilson got marf l ried three months before the H satellite dish. They were both local kids, fresh out of high school, and they got married because Jimmy got a full-time job in the booming yard loading logs onto Japanese freighters. Getting that job was a big confidence boost for Jimmy. He’d always been a skinny, shy kid. He’d be the first to admit he wasn’t any genius, and right after that he’d tell you he didn’t have the kind of personality that would get him a job as a host on one of those game shows he liked to watch. He felt lucky to have his job, and even luckier to have been able to marry a good-looking lady like Janet. Janet’s parents gave them the down payment on a house for a wedding present. The house was a new one, too, but it was in a subdivision nobody seemed to want to live in— maybe because it was next to the Indian reservation. Jimmy and Janet liked the house just fine. Jimmy’s parents bought them a 26-inch RCA colour television for a wedding present. Jimmy bought a waterbed, a dresser, and a couch from one of those cham discount stores in Vancouver, and he scrounged a kitchen table and some chairs from a trailer someone had just up and walked away from. They were making do for the rest of the things they needed. Times were getting tough in the logging industry and a lot of folks were moving back east where the jobs were more plentiful, so household goods came pretty cheap. Jimmy and Janet weren’t in a hurry to do anything or get anywhere. They liked life in Huxley. They had everything a young couple needed. He had a secure job, they had a good house and a top-rated television, and when the satellite dish started operating, it gave both of them a sense of the finer things in life, as tineas anything they’d get in Vancouver or anywhere else. Jimmy came home right after work each day and he and Janet watched the prime time programs with supper, sitting on the couch. They were in bed by 9:30 at the latest, after Carson and maybe a little hankypanky. Janet wasn’t pregnant yet, but she was already putting on quite a few pounds. From the in s id e the changes weren’t easy to ent, unless you were driving down the deserted main street after 9:00 p.m. But since few people in Huxley were out at that late hour, nobody thought much about it. Other changes were similar. Huxleyites went into the city just about as often as they did before, but few of them did much except shop. Vancouver just didn’t seem quite as exciting as it used to. It wasn’t a very big city, and now it had a kind of foreign feel to it. Even fewer Huxleyites went skiing and fishing. There was more baseball in the summer, and the winter after the dish started up the high school gym got taken over by people wanting to play recreational basketball. A motion was made at City Council the following spring to fund the construction of some outdoor halfcourt basketball facilities. The motion received swift assent: it would give local kids something to expend their energies on. Over at the high school, the principal was mildly disturbed by the formation of two tightly organized and competitive social groups among the students. He d idn’t care for the change in student dress patterns, either. The kids had taken to wearing leather jackets, denims and sneakers no matter what weather conditions prevailed. The two groups wore what they called “ colours,” jackets with crudely drawn pen markings, often with obscene slogans. He also noted the appearance of tattoos on both male and female adolescents. That one he reported to the School Board. More disturbing to him was that the two gangs appeared to be aligned racially. About thirty percent of his students were native Indian, mostly coming from the reservation that adjoined the town. He’d always maintained that as Indians go, the Huxley band was a pretty progressive lot, and he’d been an enthusiastic supporter a few years back when the band leaders petitioned the Government to extend the television cable system into the i ‘ j | reservation. He wrote a letter saying that the Indian band had as much right as anybody to enjoy the fruits of modern technology and its cultural amenities. Up until recently, there’d been very little racial tension between the white and native kids in the school or anywhere else in town. If you worked hard and could hold your liquor, people would think you were okay even if your skin was green with purple polka dots. Now Indian and white kids weren’t even talking to one another. Another thing that disturbed the principal was the lack of interest in the kayaking club, long a fixture at the school. The principal was an avid kayaking enthusiast, and his main reason for moving to Huxley, years before, had been the abundance of first-rate kayaking streams in the area. Over the years he’d taught hundreds of youngsters the skills of the sport. For the first time, not a single student had signed up for the club, nor could he coax or cajole anyone to apply. t People stopping in town noticed kids who were standing around a 7-11 store just outside the reservation. “ I’d like to talk with a few of you for a moment,” he said, clambering out of the truck and popping his I.D. card at them. A heavy-set youth, obviously the leader, ignored him, and walked over to the cameraman who’d gotten out with Chuck and had trained his camera on the group. The leader placed his hand over the lens, smearing its surface with his fingers. “Say what, man?” “Could you please remove your hand from in front of the camera?” Chuck asked, politely. “ I’d like to film your entire group.” The leader’s hand s tiffened around the lens in a crudely threatening gesture. “ I’m the dude does the talkin’, man,” he said. “You wanna talk to the Chieftains, you talk to the Man.” “ Fine with me,” Chuck squeaked, thinking that maybe he should try to sound more like one of those MTV hosts the kids watched. “ Hey! You’re the action here. You’re the news.” The leader stepped back, and Now Indian and white kids weren't even talking to one another. the changes. The easiest things to spot were the unusual numbers of people wearing Detroit Tiger baseball caps ; Magnum P.l. fans , they guessed. But then they saw the paraphernalia of the Lions, Pistons and Red Wings. That caught the eye of an investigative reporter by the name of Chuck Cambridge. Chuck worked for a Vancouver television station and he stopped into Huxley on the way back from a fishing trip upcountry. He thought it curious enough for a novelty story, and a week later he returned to Huxley with cameras and a crew. huck decided to talk to the Ckids first. He figured they’d be more open; he knew that they’d been raised on television, and that they’d be more spontaneous with cameras around. But he couldn’t find any young kids on the streets. They were inside, he discovered later, watching Mickey Mouse club reruns or the cartoon channel. The older kids were around, but they weren’t interested when they discovered he wasn’t with MTV, the rock video network, and that he wasn’t offering money or prizes. He did record one conversation with a group of denim-clad native CKlegg. She was more accommodating. She knew that her sister-in-law would probably see the interview, even if no one in Huxley would. Doris tried to be philosophical, but it was hard to hide the pride she felt about living in Huxley, in the future. She said a few words about what it was like knowing things before people in Vancouver did, and she talked about how wonderful all the new technologies were. Chuck was bewildered. “ You hitched his thumbs in his belt loops while Chuck’s cameraman rearranged his equipment and focused in. “ Hey man. Which station you working for?” the leader demanded. Chuck identified his station. “ Never heard of it. You from Detroit or Dearborn?” “Vancouver.” “ Vancouve r? ” the leade r sneered, raising both hands to the sides of his head and snapping his beaded Adidas headband in a gesture of contempt. “Vancouver’s noplace. Chieftains don’t talk to cameras from Vancouver. Get out of my face, y’hear?” huck interviewed Doris know,” he told her just a little sternly, Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 3
puters, so we’ ll be up to date on that sector as well. We’re looking to be front and centre on the future.” The kids had taken to wearing leather jackets, denims and sneakers no matter what weather conditions prevailed. “ that things really happen at the same time everywhere. You’re just on a time advance. Detroit’s time zone is three hours ahead, that’s all.” Doris gazed back at him, calmly superior. “Of course. That’s why we get all the important programs three hours before you get them. It doesn’t matter when things happen, anyway. It’s when people find out about them that counts. And we know about everything three hours before you do.” He left Doris’s place shaking his head. A small part of him was wondering if maybe she didn’t have something. After all, the national news did come from Toronto, and it was broadcast three hours late in the west. oris suggested that he Ddrop over to Jimmy Mart in ’s place. Jimmy, they said, watched ing out on the couch indifferently. more television than anyone in Huxley since he’d been laidChuck moved in on Janet. “ How o ff in the booming yards three months back. Jimmy was watching Detroit Today when Chuck arrived, but he invited the crew in anyway. “This'll be over in ten minutes, so you guys can set up while I finish watching this,” he said, waving Chuck and the crew inside. “There’s an hour of reruns between five and six. I can talk to you while those are on. It’s actually ten to five in Detroit,” he added. “ Here too.” “The little woman’s asleep,” Jimmy explained to no one in particular. “She can’t watch as much as I do. Oh, she gets up to catch the cooking programs and a few of the early soaps, but she sleeps most afternoons, and she goes to bed before the late movies start.” “ How much television do you watch on an average day?” Chuck asked, signalling that he wanted the camera rolling. Jimmy relaxed into the couch and pulled his feet up onto the plastic milk crate that served as both footstool and coffee table. “Oh, I don’t know. About twelve hours most days. But I can go up to fourteen or fifteen on a good day. Janet only watches seven or eight. Sometimes nine if I push her.” Janet appeared, bleary eyed. She sat down heavily beside Jimmy and stared at the television set. “What’s going on?” she asked. “ Nothing much,” Jimmy answered, w ithou t looking at her. “These guys came up from Vancouver to do a story on the dish. Someone told them we watch quite a bit, so they came over here.” “ Oh,” she said. “Anything interesting on?” She reached across Jimmy and changed the channel. “M.A.S.H. is supposed to be on channel 42 at five. Anything interesting later tonight?” “The usual,” Jimmy said, stretchdo you feel about the satellite dish, Janet?” he asked. “ Has it improved your life here?” Janet gazed up into the eye of the camera lens like a fish contemplating a baited hook. “Oh, sure,” she said, brightly. “ It’s a lot better. There wasn’t really anything to watch before the dish. Just five or six channels, that’s all. Really primitive.” “ Doesn’t all the programming about Detroit bother you? I mean, this is British Columbia. Detroit is a long way away.” Janet’s expression grew serious. “ I don’t know. I don’t mind it. I mean, Detroit’s real enough.” Jimmy interrupted. “ Life is the same everywhere now. The prime time lineup is just about the same wherever you go. Since we’ve had the dish we get more choice, that’s all.” “ How many channels do you get?”Chuck asked. “Gee,” Jimmy said, momentarily nonp lussed . “ I ’ ve never rea lly counted. Some of them are clearer than others. But there’s enough so there’s always something interesting to watch. You just keep flipping until you find what you need. There’s no need to count channels.” “ I understand that you lost your job a few months ago,” Chuck asked, feeling sly and investigative. “ How does that make you feel? Are you worried about the future?” Jimmy shrugged. “Yeah, that’s right. I did lose my job. But look. I don’t worry much. The dish helps. It fills up the time. And something will turn up. Janet’s thinking of getting pregnant, you know, and I’d just as soon be around for that anyway. Something will turn up,” he said, this time a little more blandly. “Maybe something in the auto industry. You may not know about it, but things are looking up these days in the industry.” huck Cambridge did sev Ceral more interviews before he left Huxley. The owner of the Huxley Motor Hotel rsuamidour had it that he’d been, ah, enthat he’d considered putting his entire business on Detroit time. He’d decided against it because the tourists would have found it confusing. And tourists had become an increasingly important part of his trade now that the bar wasn’t doing the local business it once did. “ People here just don’t go out like they used to,” he said, looking a little wistful. “They drink at home now, in front of the television. And goddamned if I can blame them, with all the programs we’ve got to choose from. I guess there’s a part of me that wishes the dish had never been installed. If things don’t change it ’s going to put me into the poor-house.” The high school principal trotted out the predictable authoritarian concerns about the collapse of school discipline, but he didn’t seem to object to the dish even when Chuck prodded him to say something hostile. “This is modern life, I guess,” the principal said. “When things change, a few good things are lost. That’s progress. As an educator I can’t object. It’s my job to teach Huxley’s children how to live in the real world, not in the past, however comfortable I may find it.” He went on to mention the school’s new communication program, and when Chuck said he wasn’t sure what that was, the principal told him that he’d voluntarily cancelled the schoo l’s library acqu is ition budget and had put the funds into educational video. “The students are much more comfortable with video materials,” he said. “And it makes the teaching loads easier as well. The School Board is getting us three microcomust about everybody in Huxley Jwas positive about the dish, except for some old English duffer who said that it was destroying the town and everyone in it. Chuck was a thorough investigator; he filmed the duffer’s side of it too, even though the old boy wasn’t too specific about why the dish was so destructive. Whatever it was he had to say got edited out of the four-minute story on Huxley that was run late in the Vancouver station’s news hour a few days later. A few people in Huxley tuned in to watch it, but Vancouver’s news hour fell into the middle of prime time. Dallas was on, and for most Huxleyites who remembered Chuck’s visit, the choice was an easy one to make. bout three weeks later Asomeone tied a couple of sticks of dynamite to the base of the dish, and right in the mi dle of Miami Vice, the explosion scattered the dish and half the cablevision office across the main street of Huxley. The local police investigated, and before too long, they traced the dynamite back to the owner of the Huxley Motor Hotel. Who knows why he did it. Maybe it was the interview with Chuck Cambridge tha t got him thinking. The corporal of the Huxley RCMP charged him with the crime, but the case never did get to trial. The night after the charges were laid, a group of the locals entered the hotel bar around 10:00 p.m., and after drinking for an hour or so, they wrecked the place. What happened after that isn’t clear. The owner simply disappeared. There were rumours, predictable ones. One of them was that when the owner left the premises around one in the morning, somebody put a knife between his ribs and then dumped the weighted body into the river. Another couraged to leave town, and pronto. His car disappeared with him, so that was the story the local police accepted, and a warrant for his arrest was put on the electronic wire. It was Huxley’s first All Points Bulletin, which made the corporal feel quite proud of himself but didn't result in an arrest. The Vancouver television crews showed up again, but this time no one in Huxley was talking, at least not about the owner of the hotel. The leader of the Chieftains did say that his people didn’t have anything to do with it but that he thought that the bastard had got what was coming to him. “Go talk to the honkys,” he said. “The hotel’s on their turf.” It took six weeks to replace the dish and the damaged cable system. The community really came together to get it fixed, and they paid the cost out of their own pockets to keep the Feds from coming in and busting them for having a dish illegally hooked into a community system. They had a benefit dance to raise funds, and even some of the Chieftains put aside their hostility toward the white community and danced up a storm. The new dish was hooked back into the Detroit network, and in a few days, life was back to normal. Brian Fawcett is a writer living in Victoria BC. This essay is fromCambodia: A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow(Grove Press, New York, $16.95). John Kleber is a Twin Cities painter and illustrator. Kim Klein is a Twin Cities art director. In the old days, people got off work and came down for a few beers before dinner. Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 9
Teddy’s Waltz Leon rose slowly into wakefulness, rising gradually from a shallowpool. Always, he waitedfor her call, always, he listenedfor her movements. This night he lay quietly, unsure o f how long he had slept. He wondered i f she would call out his name tonight. I t had been days since she had used his name. A l l week she had talked to h im in the thirdperson. This evening she had been eating her potatoes when she looked at him and said, “Where's that man who 'shere all the time?" By Reva Rasmussen • Design by Kim Klein •Art by Patricia Canelake “ What do you mean? What man?” “That man who takes care of me.” “Me? I’m the one who takes care of you. I’m right here.” “ No, that man. He cooks for me and gets me up in the morning. He’s here all the time.” “That’s me.” She looked at him, confused. “ He does a good job.” Her eyes shifted from his to her plate. He sighed. It was an odd disease. She dropped her spoon noisily. / f n r t ’s Teddy’s birthday,” she • • I said. “ It’s Teddy’s birthday now.” He looked down at J L his roast beef, pushed it aside, got up from the table and went into his bedroom. He pulled his violin case out from under the bed and took out the polished warm wood and bow. He brought it into the dining room and tucked it under his chin. “ Is this what you want, Christina?” She looked at him expectantly. He bowed it. The pitch was good. At the first sound she smiled. He struck out in a waltz tempo. It was a simple waltz with a distinct beat. It was a waltz to teach a child to dance. He had written it for their son’s tenth birthday. The boy had scarlet fever and they were frightened that they 10 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989
her skin. He touched her shoulder. his forties and had seemed surprised “Sweetheart, I have to turn you that Leon was concerned about his so I can change you. Don’t be scared.” inability to perform. The doctor was He pulled the covers down to her feet. reticent when Leon tried to talk about The moon cast his shadow across her it. sleeping form. He looked at her Christina’s response had surspare, bird frame. When they had prised him. “ It’s okay,” she had said. waltzed together she had been like a “ During all these years of marriage feather blown across the surface of a sometimes what I wanted most was would lose their only child. husband.” “ I’m going to dance at my son’s She looked at him with disdain. wedding!” Christina said each mor“An old man like you? Shit! My husning after Teddy survived another band’s young and handsome!” night. “ Play Teddy’s waltz, Leon!” Unable to convince her of his Forty years later, he swayed and identity, he had finally complied with Christina shuffled her swollen feet her wishes. In the following weeks he while he bowed his violin. No matter considered returning to their bed, but how confused Christina became, she she continued to be noisy and reststill responded when he played his less at night. He remained in the exviolin. He played the child’s waltz tra bedroom and roused himself tonight stepping in rhythm around every few hours to check on her. the dining room table, watching her Now, he went into her bedroom eyes follow him until he came to her knowing the way without turning on wheelchair. Then, she reached out to the lights. As he entered her room he him, grabbed the corner on his was surprised at how bright it was, pocket, and pulled him side to side in then realized a full moon was shining tempo. through the large bay window. He In bed now, he was grateful for cast a long shadow which moved the evening. She had complimented ahead of him across the carpet. The him and they had danced Teddy’s shadow of his outstretched hand waltz. He looked at the clock and saw reached her before he touched her that four hours had passed since he warm, fragile hand with his own. had last checked her. Lately, she had “Christina. It’s time to go to the been more restless and this was a bathroom.” She didn’t respond. He lengthy period for her to be quiet. He stroked her hand gently. It was unusrolled onto his right side and rose ual for her to sleep so deeply; she alfrom the bed. ways woke at the slightest sound. He hoped she would not be frightened by him shaking her. He tried to let her A year ago he had started wake up on her own since the time sleeping in the extra bedshe had left scratches and bruises on room after being woken by his arms after he had roused her to her one night. “Get out of my change wet sheets. He reached under bed!” she told him in a voice that reher covers to touch the protective mained strong and authoritative in blue pad beneath her. Wet. Was it dementia. “You ought to be ashamed sweat? He pulled his hand out and of yourself, climbing in bed with a sniffed his fingers. No, it was urine. married woman!” Should he let her sleep a little longer “ I’m the one you’re married to !” before he turned her to put a dry pad he rem inded her. “ f ’ m y o u ’ re under her? Better not risk damaging still lake, touching lightly. She was just to be held and touched.” small, but solid and strong and responsive to his lead. Once, she whispered to him as they danced, onight, he lay next to her, one “ I’m making love to you in front of all hand touching her soft, white these people.” hair, the other arm thrown across her. “ Let me hold you H again. I don’t mind taking care of you. e looked at her now and Stay with me, Christina.” thought about how he had The moon shown on their wedwatched her mind slowly ding picture on the dresser. Christina seep away. She lay without sat in front of him and looked boldly T moving, not even her breath ruffleadt the camera, smiling extravagantly. her feathers. He ran his hand under She clutched his left hand with hers her chin and down her neck and felt and he remembered feeling the metal for her pulse. He couldn’t find it but of the rings push against each other. her heart was weak and he often had He stood behind her young and trouble finding the beat. Her skin was handsome. warm and he lifted a wisp of hair from Next to their wedding picture her face and tucked it behind her ear. was the portrait taken for their golden Then he leaned forward with his anniversary. Again, she sat in front of cheek brushing the tip of her nose him but she gazed at the camera with and waited patiently to feel her a flat expression and a straight breath move against his skin. He mouth. He stood behind her holding though he felt something but he her frail left hand gently. He leaned wasn’t sure. slightly over her chair as though he The smell of urine caught his could protect her fragile mind with attention. “You’re wet. Don’t be worhis presence. ried, I’ll change the bed.” He moved Leon looked from one picture to her right arm across her breast and the other searching for the years. pu tt ing one hand on her r igh t “ How did we get so old?” he asked shoulder and the other on her hip the photographs. His brother and his wife had recently celebrated their Leon lookedfrom one sixty-second anniversary. Fifty years was not enough. picture to the other There was a third picture of Teddy in his Marine uniform. Teddy, searchingfor the years who they nursed through scarlet fever died overseas with strangers rolled her onto her side. He quickly before he had a chance to marry. “ He folded the blue pad towards her hips was a brave man,” the telegram from and then, steadying her with one Korea said. He looked at his son’s hand, used a wet cloth and a dry cloth picture and thought, I never expected across her bottom. Then he placed a to outlive you both. Fathers and husfresh blue pad under her and rolled bands are supposed to go first. How her onto it. much longer for me? The county nurse had counseled He closed his eyes and cried, him to put Christina into a nursing rubbing his face against her shoulder home. He had refused, not daring to so the soft cotton gown would soak admit to either the nurse or himself up his tears. He lay with her, holding how tired he was. her close, feeling her warmth creep “ I promised to take care of her til away and when he opened his eyes death do us part. She would have again, the moonlight was gone from done the same for me.” So the nurse the room and the dawnlight had crept taught him how to take care of Chrisin. He rose on one elbow to look at tina’s skin and how to move her from her. bed to wheelchair. He was a consciShe was paler. He lifted her hand entious student and applied himself and looked at her small fingers. They to the lessons with the same attenwere slightly blue. tion he had applied to his work as an She’s gone. He looked for her engineer. Caring for Christina was pulse once more, found none and the most demanding work he’d ever touched her lips with his fingertips. done, but for many years he had left “My wife,” he whispered to her, “ I held her alone in the evening while he you once more and now you are at worked late; now he tried to make up peace.” for it. He rose from the bed and dialed He patted her hand. He moved to the paramedics. “ My wife died in her the other side of the bed, washed besleep last night. I just found her. She’s tween her legs, lifted her left hip, been sick a long time.” He gave his pulled out the wet pad and straightaddress and phone number and hung ened out the dry one. Then he lifted up. the covers up over her knees, lay He walked across the room to down next to her and pulled the the bay window and opened it. He covers up over both of them. He breathed in the fresh and gentle morturned on his side and looked at her ning air which carried a light scent of placid face. Her skin was pale, rose petals. Then he went into his almost translucent in the moonlight. room and came back with his violin. Her nose, always prominent, and her “We must have one more waltz tohigh cheekbones had become even gether.” He played Teddy’s waltz, not more pronounced in old age. It seems stepping in time to it this morning, that as we get older we become more but standing in place. He played it and more exposed, he thought. through twice before the doorbell “ Christina,” he whispered, “ I rang. He gazed at Christina once need a little more time with you. It’s more before he put his violin down been so long since I could lay next to and left the room. you and hold you.” He lay on his side with his hand holding her hand and closed his eyes. How long had it been Reva Rasmussen has been a registered since they had made love? Eleven nurse for 9 years, and works as a cliniyears? He had been seventy when he cian in Alzheimer’s Disease research. had started taking the pills to lower She is a contributing editor to Minnesota Nursing Accent and is pursuing an M.A. his blood pressure. He knew right in English with an Emphasis on Creative away when he couldn’t keep his erecand Professional Writing. tions that it was because of the pills but the doctor had said, “ Look, that’s Patricia Canelake is a Duluth artist and a frequent side effect with blood teacher. This year she received a McKnight Foundation Fellowship and pressure medications. You’re seventy was part of a show at MCAD. and you don’t want a stroke, do you?” His doctor was a young man in Kim Klein is a Twin Cities Art Director. Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 11
d n POVERTY PROGRAM YOU CAN BANK ON Shorebankboosts a once troubledneighborhood Qu llou iz l l e h f t r a By David Osborne Art by Rod Massey Picture a black urban community of 80,000 in which crime, drug abuse, and unemployment have reached such levels that landlords are deserting their buildings rather than trying to sell them. Now picture the same neighborhood 15 years later, with $160 million in new investments, 350 large apartment buildings rehabilitated, and property values rising five to seven percent a year. Hundreds of businesses have started, and thousands of people have received adult education, job training, and job placement. The community is stable, crime is down, and the crack epidemic hasn’t taken root. Yet none of this has been accomplished through gentrification. The community is still 99 percent black. Rents are still fairly low. People on welfare can still afford to move in. Now imagine that all this is the ing. Government normally spends its result of an anti-poverty program that money in response to political clout. cost only $10-12 million. If this were a Shorebank seeks out those who can government program, we would have thrive in the marketplace, then gives implemented it in a thousand other them support. communities and declared victory in Shorebank’s one big weakness the war on poverty. But it isn’t, so we is that although it pays for itself, it is have virtually ignored it. not profitable enough to convince The “ program” is the Shorebank other entrepreneurs with capital to Corporation, in Chicago’s South imitate its success. After 15 years, it Shore neighborhood. Shorebank is a is clear that the Shorebank model will holding company that includes a not spread unless the public sector is bank, a real estate development corwilling to invest. poration, a small venture capital firm, Shorebank was the brainchild of and something called The NeighborRon Grzywinski, a graying 53-year-old hood Institu te , which does low- who looks and talks more like a income housing development, remescholar than an entrepreneur. In the dial education, vocational training, late 1960s Grzywinski owned a small Shorebankseeksout thosewhocanthrive inthe marketplace, thengivesthemsupport. and the like. Within a small circle of bank in Hyde Park, home of the Unianti-poverty activists, Shorebank is versity of Chicago. Adlai Stevenson legendary. In Washington it is almost III was state treasurer. Searching for unknown. Yet it is the perfect model a way to help the ghettos, Stevenson for the 1990s: inexpensive, market- decided to deposit state funds only in oriented, and entrepreneurial. banks that agreed to create units speBecause it is subsidized by philcializing in minority business lendanthropists, Shorebank does someing. Grzywinski asked Milton Davis, thing the private sector normally canformer Chicago chairman of the Connot do: it makes investments whose gress on Racial Equality (CORE), to returns are often slim to nonexistent. run his minority business program. Because it is a business that will go “We were getting tired of sitting in under if it makes too many bad and getting thrown out by the Chiinvestments, it does something govcago police, and we were discussing ernment normally cannot do: it inwhat else we could do,” Davis rememvests only in people who have the bers. “ But I must confess it had never savvy and commitment to succeed, occurred to me that a bank might be a whether by starting a business, vehicle.” acquiring a skill and a job, or buying Davis hired Jim Fletcher, a black and renovating an apartment buildassistant director in the federal Com12 Clinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 Design by Jay M iller
munity Action Program—who, like Davis, had no experience in banking. Grzywinski hired Mary Houghton, a white 27-year-old graduate of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Together, the four of them made the program work. Chicago is often considered the most segregated city in America. Local residents joke that the definition of integration is the period between the arrival of the first black family and the departure of the last white family. When neighborhoods go from white to black, banks and other in s t itu t ion s norma lly quit investing, hastening the slide into decay. Watching th is happen all around Hyde Park, Grzywinski and company began talking about how to reverse the process, how to bring capital back into black communities. Gradually the idea of using a bank as the stable, profit-making base for other development efforts emerged. When South Shore Bank came on the market, Grzywinski had raised only $800,000. But the opportunity was too good to resist. Only a few miles south of Hyde Park, the South Shore neighborhood was not yet too far gone to help. As a white community, it had been middle and uppermiddle class, w ith single-fam ily homes of all sizes and gracious, red brick apartment buildings from the 1920s. It was bordered by Lake Michigan on the west and a park on the north and was only 15 minutes from downtown Chicago. Despite a 98 percent racial turnover in the preceding decade, the neighborhood was still perhaps two-thirds middle and working class, only one-third underclass. For all its amenities, however, South Shore was headed rapidly downhill. “There were no loans being made,” says James Lowell, community affairs manager for the Federal Reserve Board. “The bank wanted to pull out; it did not want to deal with black people, period. The neighborhood was going to lose its park, because the city felt it was just going to be a crime hazard. The shoreline was becoming a disaster area. A lot of those old, beautiful buildings were just crumbling. An awful lot of units had been walked away from.” In 1973 Grzywinski and his colleagues bought the bank, putting down their $800,000 and borrowing the rest—more than $2.4 million. They launched a variety of aggressive lending programs: single-family mortgages, small-business loans, consumer loans. This lending program worked. Though at that time not one other bank or savings and loan would lend to anyone in the neighborhood —bankers had reflexively begun redlining as soon as the neighborhood went black—Shorebank had no problem with foreclosures. By 1980 other institutions had entered the market in South Shore. Most of Shorebank’s other efforts failed, however. Between 1974 and 1980 Grzywinski and his colleagues loaned $6.7 million and provided heavy technical support to small businesses. Outside of loans to McDonald’s franchises, the results were dismal. Most of the businesses went under, and by 1980, 71st Street, the main shopping strip, looked worse than it had in 1973. With small interest. Even so, it took an intensive nationwide effort to attract them, since the bank ’s ne ighborhood wasn’t exactly filled w ith eager depos ito rs . Today development deposits account for almost half of the bank’s $150 million deposit base. Gradually it became clear that the key to stabilizing the neighborhood wasn’t so much reviving its commercial areas as rehabilitating the apartment buildings that housed 70 percent of its people. When buildings are abandoned in a neighborhood like South Shore—as they were in rising numbers throughout the ’70s —the empty hulks become targets for arson, hangouts for drug dealers, and homes for junkies. Crime grows, law-abiding residents flee, and more bu ild ings are abandoned. Once things get that bad, no amount of loans or rehab projects will stop the "Real estate here doesn't makesensefor investors. It'sgotta befor hands-on people.” stores—not to mention threatening teenagers loitering on the sidewalks —71st Street merchants could not compete with the shopping malls. The most dramatic failure came when a black merchant located catercorner from the bank—who was one of Shorebank’s first and most promising borrowers—tied up two Small Business Administration employees who had come to foreclose on him and burned down his building, with them inside. Throughout the ’70s the bank limped along, its profits in the bottom 25 percent of all banks; federal examiners pressured its managers to tighten up their loan portfolios. As high interest rates buffeted the Rustbelt economy, two black-owned banks on the edge of the neighborhood failed. South Shore Bank survived primarily through the invention of what is called “ development deposits” : large deposits made by institutions and wealthy individuals who shared the bank’s social goals. Some depositors accept below-market rates to subsidize Shorebank’s work, but generally these deposits offer market rates of process. And because most residents worked outside of South Shore, bringing jobs in was less important to them than saving the existing housing. At the time, financial institutions refused to offer mortgages on apartment buildings in Chicago’s poor, black neighborhoods. They had tr ie d and — as G rzyw insk i was warned by the chairman of one local savings and loan—they had failed. But-Shorebank’s managers decided to try anyway. They put in charge a young man who had started with the only made loans in South Shore, and only to people who agreed to rehab their buildings. He then worked with them c lose ly, even sponsoring monthly meetings where the growing stable of landlords could swap trade secrets. For the most part, they were people who had never before been landlords. “ Real estate here doesn’t make sense for investors. It’s gotta be for hands-on people,” Bringley says. “ It’s generally people with blue-collar mentalities, who don’t mind spending their nights and weekends. It’s not a coat-and-tie business—the dirtier you come in the better....You go in and buy a bad building, you got drug dealers, you gotta get these people out.” As the new landlords filled up one building with paying tenants, they bought another, then another. Today South Shore has a core of about 50 housing entrepreneurs,- some of whom own as many as ten buildings. They have learned the trade; some have taught themselves Spanish to communicate with their low-cost crews. By investing in the neighborhood’s primary resource, its housing stock, they have kicked off a development process that has its own momentum; each renovated ,apartment building adds to the value of the last, and makes the next one easier. Driving Sduth Shore’s tree-lined streets, one sees elegant courtyard buildings that would fit well into the tonier north side neighborhoods. The brick is freshly sandblasted; the grounds are immaculate; wroughtiron fences and gates lend the old buildings an air of grace. There are still pockets of decay, but the better blocks bring to mind a white, well-todo community in the 1940s, not a black, inner-city neighborhood in the 1980s. As important as Bringley’s entrepreneurs have been to South Shore, there are some areas they would not touch. One area, known as Parkside, had been designated the site of an urban renewal project that was never carried through. With seizure by eminent domain seemingly, a certainty, landlords had quit maintaining their buildings. By the mid-’70s, nearly half of the large apartment buildings in the area were tax delinquent, most well on their way to abandonment. After taking a close look, Bringley concluded that no rational person would buy and rehab a building there. He recommended a large, government-subsidized rehab project as the only way to stem the area’s decline. City Lands Corporation, Shorebank’s real es ta te deve lopmen t f irm , brought in First National Bank of Chicago and another real estate development firm as partners, and together they structured a package that used heavy public subsidies and syndicaByinvestinginthe neighborhood'shousingstock, theyhavekickedoff adevelopment process. bank as a teller supervisor, Jim Bringley. Bringley is a nuts-and-bolts, bluecollar, get-it-done type. Slowly, carefully, he began lending to people who wanted to buy apartment buildings. He started with three- and six-flat buildings and gradually moved up. He tion to limited partners, who invested as a tax shelter. They bought 25 buildings, tore down five for parking lots, and ended up with 446 units of moderate- and low-income housing— the largest such rehab project in state history. With deep federal subClinton St. Quarterly—Fall, 1989 13
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