In Minnesota the trains run on time. Usually. Or there’s a good excuse. This goes for passenger trains, which are few and singularly urban. Freight trains are anybody’s guess, as they run on their own private timetables, day and night.
Minnesota has a reputation for cold winter. It’s true. It’s not true winter lasts ten months. They say if not for the legend it’s so winter here our population would rival Mexico City because it’s so nice to live here when it isn’t winter — I’m not sure true that is because you can’t prove a negative. It is nice to live here though almost all year long.
I live in Minneapolis, the state’s largest city of barely a half million souls. Next door is Saint Paul, the capital city, the other twin of the Twin Cities, with a slightly smaller population. The Twin Cities are surrounded by a seven county radius of suburbs with about a million more people combined, forming a sprawling, prosperous metropolitan community embedded within a region of small, medium, large and very tiny towns, cities and villages among the farmlands, forests, bluffs, prairies, lakes and rivers of the verdant landscape of this land in the middle of the continent.
Why should you or anybody care? Being obscure and modest is Minnesota stock and trade. We’re almost Swiss or Dutch in that way. Our culture is heavily salted with European immigration from the 19th and 20th Centuries peppered with migrants from colorful origins since the second world war, so our people are a mix and a blend of that society devised by our forbears of the eastern states and colonies since the 1600s. Not but two hundred years ago mostly occupied by Ojibwe and Dakota natives, the place now known as Minnesota — a loose approximation of Ojibwe for Water Reflects the Sky — was secured by the federal government in Washington and attracted waves of moneyed entrepreneurs from the eastern states as well as pioneers and settlers looking to prosper in an undeveloped territory. What exists today is a highly functioning American example of America.
Nowhere is perfect. I can think of at least one city that calls itself Eden (Prairie) but look closely and it falls short of a garden of paradise. I already mentioned Minnesota’s greatest flaw, the subfrozen winter. Any whiner can come up with lists and litanies of pet peeves against Minnesota, all legitimate in the whiner’s eyes. Who refutes there’s too much crime — does anyone anywhere complain there isn’t enough crime, especially in the cities? The debate goes on: are there ever enough civil liberties? Atonement for trespasses of the past tries to address future trespasses before they happen so as not to stick ourselves with unforeseen consequences. Such is the mess of secular democracy.
Minnesota is a pretty good place to come from, and a good place to be. There’s barely enough interesting history, and most of it archaeological and paleontological. As I said, western cultural settlement didn’t spread until the middle 1800s, so what passes for state history comprises barely a few generations of enterprise, migration, production and socialization to evolve into the prosperous aggregation of commerce, philosophy, tradition, labor, agriculture, science, art, environmental stewardship and common courtesy embedded in the interdependent institutions that frame daily life in this place where architectural monuments that emulate styles of the ancient past are buildings only a hundred years old. Our civilization is young, though fast aging.
You could say we’re mature. As one measure of prosperity, Minnesota is home base of fifteen Fortune 500 companies. Medtronic started here. Hearing aid technology emerged here. Multinational companies locate here. We’re global. Not bad for someplace only known a hundred years ago for forestry, flour milling, mining and rustic recreation. And that’s just big business. Small business drives local economies. Entrepreneurs can make a go of their mercantile visions. The region is known for its educated workforce. The standard of living is high and unemployment rate is low. Poverty is on a steady decline. All in all an optimist could look at Minnesota and see a place where humanity realistically achieves opportunities to aspire to its most ideal goals.
As Walter Brennan used to say on that 1960s Western TV show, no brag just fact.
Minnesota is an important concept — or meme, as they say — because our governor is now running for Vice President of the United States. His character and likeness reflect our state to the world, and the world needs to know where he is coming from.
His name is Tim. Easy to pronounce. Walz, as in four walls. Call him Tim Balls-to-the Walz.
Born and raised in Nebraska — which, if you know America and very little about Minnesota, is even more the middle of nowhere — he comes from the so-called heartland of rural America celebrated as being the root homesteads of normal, everyday Americans. After graduating state college he took a stint teaching English in a middle school in China at a city upriver north of Hong Kong, then ended up in Minnesota with his newlywed wife (both educators) where he taught social studies and geography and coached defense for a high school football team which won a state championship. He served 24 years in the Army National Guard, retiring as a master sergeant to run for congress in Minnesota’s First Congressional District, a rural, predominately country-town district, which he won as a moderate liberal and got re-elected five times before being elected state governor. He is in his second term.
In his first term as governor Walz served through the covid-19 coronavirus pandemic. He issued a declaration of peacetime public emergency five days after the first confirmed covid death in the state. The emergency lasted sixteen months. As the infection rate and the death toll rose, Governor Walz imposed strict shutdowns to commerce, education, public gatherings and social life, all to as he said “flatten the curve” of the rampaging disease. Every day he and his public health and economic staff addressed the state on TV offering statistics, hope and encouragement — full-faced leadership — to define to the people the facts of the situation and every citizen’s duty to make the effort to stop the disease for the common good, in the spirit of We’re All in this Together. By and large the strategy worked. Test kits were shipped to homes upon request. When vaccines were approved they were shipped to vaccination centers and then to pharmacies. Gradually the infection rate declined, restrictions were eased and the governor relinquished emergency powers.
Critics and resisters to the governor’s lockdowns call his actions anti-democratic and dictatorial. What I saw was pragmatic and decisive situation management focused on a greater good and broadest well being of the citizens. Governor Tim Balls-to-the Walz acted with the best interests of everyday people in mind. He expressed genuine compassion for the sacrifices he asked us to make and mustered as much relief and compensation as a state could make to mitigate such a dire, unforeseen situation. Under Governor Walz the children got meals.
All was not rosy that lost pandemic year. That spring George Floyd got killed in a slow death by a police officer on a street in Minneapolis, caught on video, and the social reaction erupted with outrage. You might be familiar with this episode of Minnesota history. Thousands of demonstrators and protesters assembled in the streets and commercial corridors connecting the place where Floyd died and the 3rd precinct police station where the lead cop who killed Floyd was based. My house is somewhere between those two locations, so traffic in the neighborhood bustled, vehicular and pedestrians, people going to the demonstrations. Governor Walz reminded the demonstrators and protesters of their duty to remain peaceful. And not forget to wear face masks and keep safe social distance.
After nightfall the day after Floyd died the protesters obeying the curfew left the neighborhood and a new bunch took their parking spaces and headed to the commercial corridors to stoke more protests. Some carried jugs of milk to splash in their faces as an antidote to the tear gas they expected that night. Some deployed commercial grade fireworks for ammunition. Looting broke out, then arson, and eventually the 3rd precinct police station was at siege of a mob determined to break in and burn the place down. The cops stood up to the mob. A fight to the death looked imminent. The cops in riot gear resisted the taunts and threats, hardly in a position of sympathy for their treatment of George Floyd just one day ago. There was no question who would have won in a bloody clash between the police and the mob. The cops could have mopped them up like rags. Instead the authorities sacrificed the precinct building plus blocks of retail and office industrial to destruction in the prevention of loss of life. The police evacuated and surrendered the precinct. It was ransacked and torched. Helicopters broadcast live video from overhead.
At the formal request of the mayor of Minneapolis the governor called out the Army National Guard to station troops in the city to reinforce law enforcement and firefighters to establish order and enforce curfews. The rampage of riots ended. After a scary night left ashes from the nearby arsons on the neighborhood lawns a grim stability settled over the city as the citizen soldiers in beige cammies stood guard and kept peace in a community dazed against itself.
Critics say Governor Walz hesitated and slow-walked deploying the National Guard to prevent the riots from burning Minneapolis. Some say with his emergency powers from covid he could have acted faster, even though there are protocols in place to legitimately deploy citizen soldier troops, known of course to Walz being a 24 year veteran. He called up the troops as soon as he could justify the threat.
If Governor Balls-to-the Walz made a mistake in not ordering the National Guard before the chaos broke loose his mistake was to place faith and trust in the citizens exercising their constitutional rights to peaceably assemble to express their outrage over the murder of a black man by a white police officer over an arrest for passing a phony $20 bill. Walz recognized the public’s need too vent and to grieve and he believed in the right to peaceful protest. Since his younger days teaching in China he has been engaged with their democracy movement and inspired by the courage of the demonstrators at Tiananmen Square. In Minneapolis after George Floyd he put his faith in the better angels of Minnesota. He expected us to police ourselves. And by daylight, according to published itinerary, you saw masked protesters marching up East Lake St spaced paces apart, chanting maybe — you couldn’t read their lips — blocking traffic, such as any cars could get through the roadblocks and detours created by the city to accommodate the peaceful protests. After sundown the masks came off and all pretense of a peaceful vigil for the fallen George Floyd disappeared in lawless disrespect.
Maybe Walz could have predicted the riots and called out the Guard a a precaution. Walz knew that was a bad idea, expressing the wrong message of a state distrusting its people. It’s a shame Walz was proven wrong. Too bad the peaceful angels didn’t prevail. The Guard arrived to provide checkpoints to backstop a metropolitan coalition of law enforcement scrambling to catch bold and reckless criminals taking advantage of cops calling in sick for the rest of their careers at the Minneapolis police department.
Ultimately only two people died during the riots. Both were adult men. One was shot by a proprietor defending himself in his shop against an aggressive intruder. The other was found charred in a burned out retail store where he was apparently overcome by his own arson before he could escape.
The property damage exceeded half a billion dollars. Damage to the economy sabotaged efforts to get ahead of the curve of coming out of the pandemic. Even so, by the end of June, 2021 the governor gave up the emergency powers. The curve of covid infection in Minnesota had flattened enough to justify reopening a restless society, and for all the frustrations of that lost sixteen months Minnesotans emerged from the pandemic with feisty resilience. In Minneapolis, National Guard long gone, rubble shoveled away (except for the charred remains of the 3rd police precinct left as a scarred urban monument to bad behavior), the city did not implode but actually resurrected itself as a vibrant urban community, defying doomsayers who predicted it would spiral into a hellhole. It should be noted that rioters refrained from damaging residential blocks, not that it excuses the devastation of commercial properties though it shows a decent amount of clemency among mass deviants on a binge of destruction.
Two years later Governor Walz got re-elected by a wider margin than the first time. It means at the ballot box a majority of voters approved the governance of the policies of the administration of Tim Balls-to-the Walz. Also elected that election a majority from Walz’s party in each house of the state legislature, which enabled liberal legislation favoring consumers, families, students, health care and sundry progressive objectives, signed by Governor Walz. Nothing radical, mind you. Good sense legislation enabling greater good. Functioning government. It’s difficult to picture Walz radical. He is the face of practicality and consensus.
The face of Minnesota.
Easily mocked, Walz embodies an everyman of the middle of Middle America. A futurist mind in a throwback body. He speaks plain, concise eloquence in a throaty husky voice and talks fast in rapid cadence, not in a flamboyant or deceitful tone but as somebody respectful of the listener’s time and attention. Like a well-written owner’s manual He has a high school teacher’s method of explaining. He talks with his voice, his face and his hands. He can be funny and dead pan serious. Not a fancy dresser, he can be mocked for black and red plaid Paul Bunyan wool shirts, he owns a blaze orange deer vest and knows how to step into a pair of waders. He cleans up well, though, in a suit and tie when appropriate. He wore his army uniform proudly in his day but never showed off when he was on duty. Incidentally, Walz is white, as is about 74% of the state, and male, which is, you know, about half.
He’s the governor of a state that guarantees free lunch to every kid in public school. Not to mention free menstrual supplies in every public school. And guarantees freedom for all women’s rights over their bodies and reproductive health. Where personal freedom and rights balance with government’s capability to act on behalf of the public good. As an educator alone, much less a soldier and public servant, Tim Balls-to-the Walz recognizes a duty to invest in actions that benefit humanity like early nutrition programs to nurture healthy kids and environmental regulations to safeguard the habitat of all citizens.
He genuinely practices politics with joy. He really thinks public service is enjoyable. I’ve never heard him speak about his religion but he strikes me as a John Wesley kind of guy, doing good as much as he can, often as he can, many ways as he can, good for the sake of good. He led the state through the lost year of the covid pandemic with aplomb and forthright optimism, and when it was done he kept reopening the doors of society to make the most of opportunities to bridge people. Unlike other politicians who are in it to piss you off, Tim Walz is in the profession to make you happy.
When you drive across the state line on the interstate highway there’s a big sign: MINNESOTA WELCOMES YOU.
There’s an implicit promise to treat you right. All of you. Singular and plural.
There is a great deal of diversity here, and not only in its mixed cultural and racial exponents this past century or so. The natural landscape itself is an array of different topographies, geographies and biologies. It’s called the land of ten thousand lakes, but with classic modesty it numbers more than fifteen thousand. That includes the cliffside coast of western Lake Superior, the biggest freshwater body of water in the world. There’s the Boundary Waters wilderness on the forest border with Canada with its chains of endless waterways in the pristine woods. Further south the timber lands cede to inhabitants amid the woods and lakes, and farms where the woods yield to the prairie landscape, farms and flatlands of row crops and waves of tall wild grassland. Where lakes are more scarce there are chains of rivers and streams, The Red River on the border with North Dakota flows north to the Arctic Ocean. The main artery the rivers and streams of Minnesota flow into is the Mississippi River, whose source fittingly begins in a lake in the north woods and following gravity inches ever slowly downhill, south through the body of America to the Gulf of Mexico. The land formations within the state offer towering lookouts and exposed petroglyphs. There are 644 state parks in Minnesota, a national park along the northern border with Canada and a national monument at the sacred pipestone quarry near the prairie to the sky, not far from South Dakota and Iowa.
There are no mountains in Minnesota, just high hills. No deserts either, unless that’s what a winter snowscape looks like. No ocean beaches or ports of call, just some sandy lake shore, and Duluth harbor on Lake Superior suffices to link Minnesota to the Atlantic by way of the Saint Lawrence Seaway. To borrow again from Nebraska, maybe it isn’t for everybody.
It’s a good place to come from though. Judy Garland. F Scott Fitzgerald. Prince. Louise Erdrich. Suni Lee. Bob Dylan. Amy Klobuchar. Sinclair Lewis. Gordon Parks. Paul Wellstone. August Wilson. Hubert Humphrey. Roy Wilkins. Those are just a few who come to mind. Now along with Tim Walz.
Kamala Harris showed a lot of moxie choosing Walz to join her ticket to succeed Joe Biden and her in the White House. It has been, as Dylan himself sang it, a Simple Twist of Fate that has coursed this upcoming election for the American president through Minnesota as Harris takes charge of her campaign to earn the heart and soul of the United States. Her deference to Minnesota bespeakes wisdom in seeing character within and above the crowd of crats — bureaucrats, technocrats, aristocrats and democrats — to find a vice president to help manage the office of the toughest job on earth. Tim Walz is a great choice.
There’s joy in hope. Take heart. Electing Kamala Harris president is a wise, healthy choice for America. The alternative is like a self-induced stroke to the brain.
BK
Buffalo Kelly 