Monthly Archives: August 2013

Three weeks ago, our neighbor brought Gwyn a tiny monarch caterpillar crawling on a milkweed leaf.  We made a home for the little guy with an ice cream bucket and mosquito net, and watched in amazement as the leaf got gnawed and caterpillar poop appeared.  In no time flat our very hungry caterpillar was huge with gorgeous yellow and black stripes.  Then, overnight, it was gone.  A stunning emerald chrysalis hung from the net. This whole transformation feels tender and critical given the fact that the monarch population was decimated this year by heat in Mexico—that is, by global warming.  We’re careful with our little fellow.  And it’s got me thinking about change.  Why is change so hard?  Of course, the caterpillar’s transformation is a natural process, just like Gwyn’s growing up and my growing old, but real change, the kind that can stop global warming or sober us up…

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What does it mean to be a Minnesotan writer?  In this age of placelessness—sitting in a Starbucks or Motel 6 or airport lounge or on a Facebook page, you could be anywhere—even our literature is without landscape or regional identity.  Especially literature from the Midwest, which, when compared with New York City writing or the work of Southern writers seems bland in its vernacular and hard to locate. “There is nothing worse than the writer who doesn’t use the gifts of the region, but wallows in them,” wrote Flannery O’Connor, the ultimate advocate for regional voices.  “An idiom characterizes a society, and when you ignore the idiom, you are very likely ignoring the whole social fabric that could make a meaningful character.”  What is Minnesota’s idiom, our social fabric?  Many years ago I read an essay by David Mura in The View from the Loft; it struck me so much,…

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