In the Shadows

 

Fairness.  You expected it in the courts.  With judges.  I expected it with the daily newspapers.

Today it as reported on the Workday Minnesota website that last September when the Twin Cities labor community rallied outside a Wayzata’s office for Wayzata Investment Partners, the Minneapolis Star Tribune did not cover that story.  The rally concerned the attempt of Wayzata Investment Partners, the private equity investment firm, to impose dramatic concessions in workers’ wages and benefits on Cascade Pacific Pulp, a longtime union paper mill in Halsey, Oregon. The rally was in the wake of the Republican National Convention and was an attempt to get visiting protesters in town to support steelworkers from Oregon.  It was not a local story but the “anarchist” website, self-described, had directed their supporters to stick around for an extra day or two to attend the rally.

 

David Brauer of MinnPost has since reported in the last month that Wayzata Investment Partners was the largest creditor of Avista Capital Partners as revealed in documents filed in the bankruptcy procedure of the Minneapolis Star Tribune.  Avista Capital Partners had purchased the Star Tribune in December 2006. 

 

It might be fair to conclude that the Minneapolis Star Tribune will not be fairly covering the story of their own bankruptcy. 

For anyone cheering for the paper to survive, this news does call the question how Avista can declare one business bankrupt yet continue to operate businesses that operate oil rigs and manufacture wound care products.  In the world of investments, it no longer was the doctrine of survival of the fittest and the hunger that goes with the quest, but simply one of money for money’s sake, when the end justifies the means.  

 

Most of the news today was about the ground hog seeing its shadow, without mention what was lurking in the shadows. 

 

Fairness.  I expected it with the daily newspapers.  

Survival of the Fittest

I once heard a story of a super salesman who tried to get an older relative to buy a pair of gently used shoes at the Salvation Army. 

 

This week the world of the media has woken to the human condition.  Real life suffering did not seem so far away.  The next administration was going to be about, even if the candidates would not publicly admit it, survival in a pair of gently used shoes. 

 

I sense an undertone of gasoline rationing, in a world with limited supply of foreign oil, as one candidate’s solution.  No one was asking specifics.  Talk was cheap anyway, except when you were paying for those commercials.  Where I live, you saw little sponsorship on televsion except by the candidates.  And this more than anything reflected a sick society. 

 

The real price of freedom:  “Human nature doesn’t change, with the changing of latitude or longitude, with parliamentary majorities, and not even with the passing of time,” said Tarcisio Bertone this week.  In a collapsing economy everything was at risk.  Health, education, defense.  In a collapsing economic system called capitalism, where there has been a true revolution going on, basic human rights involving speech, religion, and the press were at risk.  The War on Terror had not ended.  It also never began on September 11, 2001.  The struggle of the human condition has been ongoing before 1776.  America never held the patent to human rights.  Freedom was not defined by Americans in the 20^th Century.  It was an ongoing struggle.  America was just the place where you could find a pair of gently used shoes. 

 

It is said that political films, like political books, are most eagerly welcomed in societies that repress free speech.  It is said that religion flourishes in a society when religious freedom is supressed.  The human spirit is spurred on in its quest.   

 

 

This morning it seems to me that an end of an era is at hand.  Dew points were falling, the leaves were changing, and fear was in the air.  Things that had always been cheap and available, gas, credit, would be regulated like drugs and alcohol.  Banks would be nationalized.  The vibrations of it all.  On democracy and freedom.  I suspect even gasoline, if you listen to what Obama is never asked.  The way of life that I have known is changing.  There will be political consequences to governments around the world.  In some places there will be revolutions.  Intimacy between neighbors has long been lost in this society.  Commuting long distances had isolated us all. 

 

Evil men will jump in at some point.  I had not figured out the appropriate defensive measures if there were any.  Dwight Eisenhower had once said when it came to the War Department, Department of Defense, it all was dependent on a thriving econmy of hard working citizens.    

 

This week in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, Lawrence Brandt, the bishop of the Roman Catholic diocese of Greensburg which has about 180,000 parishioners in four counties east of Pittsburgh, announced the consolidation of 28 parishes or sharing of clergy and the clsosing of 14 of its 100 parishes that will take effect Oct. 30th, in an effort to deal with a priest shortage.  Brandt said 20 percent of the diocese’s priests were being used to serve just 2.5 percent of its population, in his decsion that grew out of a three-year study.  “I know that people are mentally and emotionally attached to their parishes and churches in a way they identify with no other building or entity,” Brandt said in a statement. “It is understandable that they feel a part of themselves has been lost forever.”

 

When Catholics quit praying, they argued and quit becoming priests. 

 

In Minneapolis–St. Paul, we had two papers that were both on the verge of collapse, running out of money and opportunity.   When you ran out of money, the choices were limited.  No one was discussing the affect on the community with the loss of real freedom when it was gone.  When American quit praying in this suburban world, they argued, really quit caring, and went about individual lives.  In a sense, the community was broken.  No one cared about a newspaper owner far away.     

But I was going to be harder to find a gently used pair of shoes.  And the distances between us were a long way to walk.  Whether it was newspaper closings, church closings, or the loss of jobs, it was all about the survival of the fittest.    -

The Russians Are Coming

What exactly did you believe in? 

Globalization and the news:  Thomas Friedman with the New York Times thought globalization was a good thing.  Of course he moved away from a Minneapolis suburb and has made a living around the globe ever since.  He got on the world stage in New York and lost his local connection. 

Yesterday I responded to a call from the St. Paul newspaper, agreeing to a subscription.  It was against everything I believed to respond to a telephone solicitation.  Yet it might save one local paper.  I thought my ideals were worth bending until the caller told me she was in Nevada.  It was a stock company.  I then told her no.  Maybe the day would return when local ownership returned.  I was beginning to disagree with Thoms Friedman.   

Foreign buyers.  The acquisition of steel maker by a Russian company so that they now own 10% of all United States steel manufacturers.  The sellers of this recent business did not care, especially in a falling U S market.  The Russians had the money now due to oil.  So what exactly did you believe in after the Cold War?  Was this a good thing?  Should I ask a Vietnam War vet or a Hmong refugee. 

What exactly did you believe in?  Last year there was the acquisition of the Wall Street Journal by an Australian, Robert Murdoch.    Free markets. Human rights.  The United States Constitution guarenteed a free press. 

The cost of education, health care, oil.  The survival of a local press.  Was it all to be determined just by a free market?    What exactly did you believe in? 

 

 

The War on Terroir

There was a day when no one ever was allowed to do business in farm towns without the approval of the local banker.  How the world had changed. I worked in a state bordering the one I grew up in, for six years.  I was a big city guy spending a lot of time dealing with farmers.  It was the 1980s.  I dealt with one local banker.  And he wanted to promote the other local businesses.  He liked the idea of supporting the local merchant, local ownership, because if the people in the town did not, who would?  Who cared if prices were cheaper in the big city 140 miles away?  Because no one else was gonna help you. 

 

His philosophy came out of the same satisfaction that people still had here when the local kid made good.  It was now almost 20 years later and we live in a world when people no longer bowled.  When stock companies owned you, it was all about money.  And saving it. That was what had happened in the world of newspaper.  Business was held hostage each quarter to the shareholders.    

 

Look at the present day world.  There was growing trouble handling debt.  Individually. Communally. There were growing deficits.  Ford lost $8 billion this past quarter.  GM had lost $15 billion.  AIG announced losses of $5.36 billion this week.  Handling debt.  Stock companies with no local ownership.  The world was different. 

 

People in Minnesota were different from those in Texas.  We were formed by the winters, the land, the lakes.   We were a lot like wine.  It was in the terroir.   Taste was determined by the amount of sunshine. Geographic origin.   The soil.  Terroir was some mysterious blending of earth, climate and culture.   It was the same mystery, in the same sense, how one person was blended to become a personality.  Only we had all become like McDonald’s friendly arches.  The franchise was now owned by people scattered about, far way.  To them, we were all the same and our city was no different from any other place. 

   

The newspaper had passed through the hands of 3 owners in this decade. 

And it was this change in the community why no one cared that the newspapers were folding.  It was not just in Minneapolis.  It was the St. Paul Pioneer Press too.  We had all somehow lost a distinct taste.  At least in the view of the owners of these papers. 

 

I never liked that South Dakota banker.  But he saw clearly how the environment was all about money.  And what he had to do to make sure some of it stayed in South Dakota.  Wanting more of it.  For the local people who banked with him.  I had once been caught up in this world.  And I now was caught up in this one.   

Relevance

Writing was all about relevance.  It seems of late that newspapers and bookstores were at risk.  The irony was that these two industries were based upon relevance.   There was an unease about being a writer and trying to make a living at it.  I majored in English literature.  I so far have not made a living at it.  As a follower of Darwin’s Theory, we were all in a struggle to survive.  But in the end, we will all be goners.    

The real world required patience.  The e-world demanded instant gratification.  I wondered what the state of the written word would be in ten years.  

Reading and writing was all about relevance.  I heard it said on C-span a few years ago on Book TV that women bought 85% of all books.  There were something like 120,000 books published a year.  Woman.  Books.  Relevance.  Truth.  The news.  When you got down to it, life was mostly about truth in relationships.  To wake up to the truth. In the news.  In relationships.     

A newspaper carried forth an institutional voice.  There was an identity to a newspaper.  A newspaper did have political views.  It was all about ideas.  What was it about the new generation that no longer found relevance in holding the printed news?  Was there a missing gratification?  Were we all moving away from any concept of suffering in the world.  

I wondered what the state of the political world would be in ten years, as a consequence of the state of the written word.  Without newspapers.   There was an unease afterall in being a writer, without a place to write.  Think of the foundation of the traditional community.  Family.  Schools, Churches. 

Will sports teams be the next on the endangered species list of things that bring us together?  And what will the elections of the 2020s be like?    

CONTRACTIONS, PAIN

Contractions:  Something we’ve had here all along.  Was it back in 2001 as far as the Minnesota Twins, the Montreal Expos?  Contraction was back in the news in another way.  Only this time it involved the newspaper. The Star Trib.  Yet no one was offering them $150 million just to pack up and call it a career. 

 

 It was in the Phillipines that I discovered the weak made me feel stronger.  More worthy.  I counted my blessings better.  Surrounded by greatness, by the celebrated in education, in business, in sports in my life, I felt humble.  But when you fell short, you failed to recognize a lot about yourself.  You felt challenged.  It was a lot like the Yankee series that just ended.  The Twins seemed to have proved this point the past 3 days.  Surrounded by greatness, they failed to remember the fundamental things about themselves and the game. 

 

Inferiority complexes.  Ego strength.  Girls.  Bad self-image?  Sleeping around.  Moral relativism.  Was it all based upon the human feeling that I was a sinner?

 

The things you teach.  You set up schools.  You pass on a tradition.  These days, there was a lot of relativism in public eduction, and has been over the past generation.  Read Alan Bloom’s Closing of the American Mind. 

 

The things you teach.  You set up schools.  The feast of Ignatius Loyola was in less than 7 days.  He worked on spiritual exercises to try to teach people to really pray.  Then he found an answer on how by establishing a curricula in schools.  His answer was in school.  There were now something like 28 Jesuit institutions of higher learning.  The trend now was to set up middle schools.  For those who could not reach the university level.  For those who never quite learned how to pray with their lives. 

 

There was a sense of panic within these days.  About the world.      

 

Today’s reading at Mass began, “The disciples approached Jesus and said, ‘Why do you speak to the crowd in parables?’” 

 

Stories.  It was about the stories.  Why did I buy the Star Trib?  To read stories.  To try and understand.  To be aware of the world and my place in it.  Something we’ve had here all along.  It was why people hugged at funerals, clinging to who and what was left.