Xcel Arena, Deoderent, Protestors & the RNC

 

Politics to me was a lot like deoderent.  Trying to make me smell not so much better but just not bad.  Recently I tried using the expensive one.  It still smelled like a deoderent to me.  And I still did not smell much different. 

 

That was campaign 2008 for me.  More expensive than ever.  But not really hiding the smells. 

 

Delegates, journalists, lobbyists and prominent political leaders have begun arriving in the Twin Cities for the Republican National Convention.  At 1:30 am I saw a helicopter making sweeps just north of I-94 along Lexington to Western Avenue.  I think it is safe to say that security forces are approaching this job like they are in Iraq.

 

After a legal challenge, the Jumbotron is to arrive Sunday afternoon in the small park across the street from the Cathedral of St. Paul, just above the Xcel Center.  The satelite bathrooms with the patented name of Biffs are set up.   And I can report I saw a worker actually using a disinfectant to make sure thos Biffs are clean.  At least for now, at 1 pm they are very clean.

 

MinnPost, an on-line Twin Cities newspaper, reports that Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist John Camp (also known as John Sanford, the best-selling novelist) this week will report on the street scene outside the convention hall, along with Christina Capecchi.  I am here to say there will be no real street scene anwhere close to the Xcel Arena to report on. 

 

The St. Paul Pioneer Press was reporting at 12:45 pm that a response team was testing a flash-bang grenade in the State Office Building parking ramp on the grounds of the Capital around noon today.  The Minneapolis paper reported that a state trooper accidentally dropped the device in the parking lot.  

 

I just came back from walking to Assumption for 11 am mass.  This is as close as anyone without credentials can get to the Xcel.  Coming out of church, there were 4 black helicopters circling the Xcel.   Repeatedly.  About 150 feet above the building.    All week long they have been about 300 feet or less overhead. 

 

From walking downtown, I saw security set up for cars trying to get into the Cathedral parking lot.  Besides a rent a cop, there had a real cop with communication in his ear closer to the archbishop’s residence.  All of the $50 million St. Paul got must be going to security. 

 

The best security fence I ever have seen have been built to protect the customers of Mickey’s Diner next to what I still call the St. Paul Companies.  I headed down to the Farmers Market in Lowertown.  There were no women downtown today, except at mass.  There might have been 100 people as Assumption instead of the normal crowd of 900 to 1,000, with the access restricted to pedestrians.

 

I saw two guys with shaved heads, one earring, who looked as if they played in the NFL in plain clothes, looking like they were students.  In case the anarchists ever arrive downtown.  Every building had there own private security outside on the sidewalk in special issue vests. Every parking lot has a sign posted as FULL.  

 

FOX News ended up erecting an aluminum building in the parking lot across from the Xcel.  The cement barriers around the Xcel are visible from across from the Cathedral.  No protester is gonna get close to the building. 

  

I now am staying away from all of this.  I had never smelled tear gas but suspect it had more of an affect than deoderent.   

Omnipresent Photographic Memories, Without Any Film

Bridge collapse.  The recession. The view from the Phillipines.  Food.  Brands.  Brands, until they were gone. Wine.  Survival & slavery.  Economic justice. 

We were all connected.  I walk by the Governor’s Mansion about three times per week.  It was the nicest neighborhood in St. Paul.  It no longer has an ethnic flavor, if it ever did.  The James J. Hill Mansion is a mile and a half down the street.  The history of America involved ethnic communities in which people of the same place of origin formed community here.   Those ethnic communities found places of worship to come together.  People of the same race, color, and creed.  And even though they shared a history of another land, time eroded much of an interest in their common history.  I thought of that yesterday passing a number of Somali people in Highland Park.  Though the Somali have a strong presence here, this week was the first time I have seen them strolling along Grand Avenue during the evenings this summer. 

The story of erosion of interest in the past was the same in my life.  I was an Irish Catholic and attended parochial schools for the duration.  Yet I never once heard much about the history of Ireland, or the ethnic history, any ethnic history, that had helped form the United States.  In a sense, the plurality was denied in a day and age when there was more real diversity than in the suburban world of post World War II that seemed to bloom in the 1970s.  Post World War II saw a spotlight shined on issues of discrimination against those in the community who had descended from slavery.  They too lived in the same ethnic community.  And until fairly recently, they never left the part of the city that they might claim as their home.  But the real trend in America was that people who share race, color, and creed had moved to the suburbs, and the real ensuing conflict was building community from a scattered base.   

Yes, I was an Irish Catholic and had attended parochial schools.  This morning there was a priest on the altar from the Phillipines appealing for help.  He talked about his island where on average 14 typhoons hit each year.   Maybe you have to visit a place like the Phillipines, which I have done, to be hit by how much privilege is all around American life.  Because of that trip, his words hit me more deeply.  He had three points to his plea for money.  His second point was how his small island of the Phillipines currently provided 20 priests to 3 western Canadian provinces.  His last point was about how on his island there were no parochial schools and whatever quantity of religious education was taught all came from the priest. 

We were all connected.  Until your city experienced a bridge collapse over a major river in the heart of a downtown.  This was a bridge on an interstate highway serving traffic from Duluth to Texas.  The river once again divided.   August 1^st.  The anniversary was coming soon of the collapse.  (So too were the lawsuits over negligence, for that matter.)  The prudent person would have taken action. 

I was by that collapsed bridge last night, buying wine in my favorite liquor store.  I went there to buy a good bottle of wine.  And a bottle of Singleton.  It was a single malt scotch.  But it no longer was sold here.  There were different brands of single malt scotch but none of these had my loyalty.  There were so many other brand names, but I did not feel that they were worthy of my choice. But to have a choice of so many labels at this store was the ultimate in privilege that no other store in town offered in wine, in scotch.

Choice.  It was a buzz word of an American generation.  In most places of the world, there was not a choice.  In that trip I mentioned, I had heard the view from the Phillipines.  I talked to a bar girl there about her life.  The popular explanation offered by all bar girls was “I have no choice.”  What she really meant was she had no opportunity.  The jobs were few.   Her family needed money.  Or they would starve.  Half the people there lived in real poverty.  And they did not really need 14 typhoons a year dismantling the shacks that they called home.     

The recession here was now real, affecting basic needs of housing, of food.  I had been in the Jaycees a few years back. I think back to their creed.  It began, “Faith in God gives meaning and purpose to human life. “  The creed further stated, “Economic justice can best be won by free men through free enterprise.” Most Jaycees were young enough not to give much though to words.  I never really wondered what exactly “economic justice meant.”  Does it mean that the poor deserve what they get?  How did justice relate to opportunity?  Did they believe in scholarships for the brightest kid out there in the community?  The ideology came from the United States Chamber of Commerce and was best identified with the Republican Party.  I don’t know how much thought Republicans gave to issue of privilege, standards of care, and what the reasonable person would have done.  I was neither Republican, nor Democrat.  But my view on politics was a lot like my view toward both religion and philanthropy, or to that bottle of Singleton for that matter.  In politics, in religion, in scotch, it all started with trust.  I trusted the taste of Singleton.  So what now and who really was worthy of my support? Because nothing was worse in the world of philanthropy, to give the wealth which I could have spent on myself to someone and see them waste it.  And the trouble with both political parties was that neither seemed quite worthy.  But I had to choose if I wanted to drink something.  I wanted something worthy. 

That bridge collapse.  The anniversary was coming soon.  So too were the Republicans.  They soon were coming to my city, down the street in fact, to nominate a presidential candidate.  To be truly privilege was to be a delegate, representing a state and all that dogma they believed in. 

Wealth for the most part used to be a slow developing process.  Similar to love, and until you lost it, most of us never knew what we had always had.  Yeah, the Republicans were coming.   And that recession was here.