The parks cleanup as seen from Phalen Park AND District Council gets award

This morning was the annual Saint Paul Parks cleanup. People gathered at various parks around the city, received bags and instructions and proceeded to remove a lot of things which should not have been where they were. They all merit commendation.

One such gathering point was the Phalen Park picnic pavilion where a few dozen gathered. I do not know how many places had miniature programs before the public disembarked, Phalen Park did.

For those of you from St. Anthony Park or Mac-Groveland who may not be familiar with Phalen Park, the pavilion sits directly south of the statue defaced last year.

Mayor Coleman the Second was there to present the Payne/’Phalen District Council with an award for its work in organizing the community after last year’s vandalism to the statue. The mayor mentioned that he had been in China and discussed the statue with the maker and commended the neighborhood for its good work. Director Kerry Stone accepted the award along with President Ryan Kapaun, Sheldon Schwartz, Al Oertwig, and other directors, staff, and volunteers from the organization. The ceremony was short, to the point, and dignified [considering that all present were dressed as if they were going to a cleanup].

When mayors come to events, they seldom are early and leave as quickly as they can, probably often because there were other places they have had to be immediately before and after the given appearance. However, this time the mayor was there at least half an hour early, talking with people who came by, even this writer. [We agreed that remaining ambulatory was a good thing.]

Anyhow, congratulations to the Payne Phalen Council [for the record, I am a director but was not involved in this project] and thanks to all the volunteers who showed up at all the locations to help keep our city’s parks clean.

[Cf. Scarred statue, 08/10/08]

Neumeister receives Finnegan Award

It has been 25 years since I first met Rich Neumeister.  We are not bosom buddies, barely acquaintances actually, but over the last quarter century I have read about him and watched him constantly reminding various public officials, elected and otherwise of data privacy regulations, where they apply and where they ought to apply.

 

I am sure that there are a lot of politicians and quite a few more bureaucrats who shudder whenever the see the profile of a tall skinny man [especially if they can glimpse part of a handlebar mustache] approaching in corridors of government for fear that the profile will be revealed to be that of Mr. Neumeister.

 

Thanks to the DPP’s City Hall Scoop,  we learn that all of his work has earned him the John R. Finnegan Freedom of Information  Award which will be awarded on March 16^th.

 

I don’t know much about the history of the award or who other winners may have been, but it seems to be a well deserved honor for Rich Neumeister.  The City Hall Scoop article notes that he had to beat out all of the reporters for Minnesota radio, television, and newspapers to receive the honor.

 

Capitol City Musings wishes to note its congratulations also.  They seem especially apt when one notes the story yesterday in which it is noted that Mayor Coleman the Second in his capacity as a vice-president of the Minnesota League of Cities has been supporting a bill introduced by Senator Mee Moua which would allow cities to keep preliminary budget proposals and drafts private until a mayor actually submits them to a city council.

 

And yesterday’s article notes ironically concerns raised by Rich Neumeister as well as comments from Don Gemberling who served for a long time as the state’s director of information policy.

Pat Flahaven is retiring

It has been reported before but Doug Grow reminds us that Pat Flahaven is retiring as secretary to the Minnesota Senate.  He has done the job for 36 years and is certainly entitled to retire, but it will indeed mark a transition in the operations of our state. 

I wish him well. 

I first saw Pat Flahaven from the visitors’ gallery of the Minnesota Senate in 1971.  The first few days of that session were good theater and just the kind of thing that would interest a young person interested in public affairs.  Secretary to the Senate is a position which is generally invisible to the general public but very visible when one is in the chamber or the gallery and the young, clean-shaved man who seemed to be an up-and-comer headed for greater and higher things, looked very comfortable in the position.  In 1971, Pat Flahaven had just been chosen for the position, on a 34-33 vote.  He only held it for a few days before the Minnesota Supreme Court on a straight party-line vote removed the DFL majority. 

Two years later, after 114 years of statehood, the GOP finally relinquished control of the Senate, the DFL winning too many seats for even the most partisan of courts to take away and Pat Flahaven moved back to the post he has held since. 

I have not spoken to the man in many years and never knew him well, but have to note that comments made from many from both parties as he approaches this retirement are all favorable. 

And it is going to take two people to replace him.  Especially in this time of economic downturn in both public and private sectors, that is in itself an especially good commentary. 

Let George do it

George Johnson was to be honored Wednesday night at District 2 Community Council’s December Board meeting/ Holiday Party. I was unable to be there, but assume that it all went well. I do know that our city council voted that day to honor him and I am assuming that Councilmember Bostrom was on hand at D2’s festivities to relay that commendation.

I first met George Johnson during the summer of 1988. District cleanups were new then, having been city funded in 1987 for the first time and still being funded as one-time-only events. I was the president of Payne/Phalen District Five Planning Council then and the late Paul Gilliland, who held the similar position for District 2 suggested to me that perhaps we hold a joint cleanup at the now-gone Phalen Shopping Center. In the course of planning the joint cleanup he introduced me to a hydrologist named George Johnson who was the chairperson of his board’s committee which was planning the cleanup and who had the idea of working with Ramsey County and combing the joint cleanup with a hazardous waste cleanup. I immediately sensed by what seemed to be his true-believer approach to the matter.

That cleanup went well, too well really. The cleanup drew traffic lined up on Johnson Parkway back onto Seventh Street almost to White Bear Avenue. The Police Department had to do significant reassignments to handle the thing. Fortunately, both districts managed to get enough volunteers to work the event. For some of the volunteers finishing up did not come until dusk. I don’t remember the exact numbers of how many came or how much was collected, but I doubt if the numbers have ever been really topped. And I remember George Johnson, moving about confidently and unflustered as crisis after crisis [or what we thought were crises at the time] came about.

[There were others whose deep involvement in this effort merit commendation, including Mr. Gilliland and District Five’s counterpart to Mr. Johnson, Roger Hallman, but this is a post about George Johnson.]

That was twenty years ago. Cleanups have gone on since and District Councils have started to think of them as entitlements and city staff to think of them as a comparably inexpensive technique for removal of junk. George Johnson has been organizing his district’s cleanup every year and sometimes even advising and/or helping out at others. Several years ago when District Five was undergoing a staff change and temporary shorthandedness, he helped us do ours.

George’s cleanup work was specifically cited in the City Council action Wednesday. But a full accounting of his contributions should include mention of his other contributions. I don’t know them all, but I feel that I should mention some of what I know.

He has served on the Board of Directors for District 2 for [as far as I aware] the entire time since shortly before that 1988 cleanup, serving as its president for a few months in 1990. [Full disclosure statement: I was a D2 employee at that time so he was my supervisor then.] He also has served for many years on the Saint Paul Planning Commission, including a spell [2004-2006?] as its Chairperson. He succeeded his wife on that commission.

And somehow as he has done all this he has raised a couple of sons and maintained a house and kept employment and all the other things that other people do.

The City Council praises several people each year this way. There are many people who deserve such commendation and they get some of them. There is a certain “hit-or-miss” factor involved in this, but this commendation seems well in order and I wish to add my own praise also.

Jimmy Lee

I think I met Jimmy Lee once. It would not have been a personal meeting but I think he was introduced at a community meeting in the Summit-University area in the early 1970s. I do know that I was aware that he was involved in athletics and the teaching and officiating of sports and that he was the first black man to officiate at the levels he did, at least here in Minnesota. When the city decided to rename Oxford Recreation Center after him, it was easy to understand their thinking.

The overruns and continuing ongoing problems connected with building the new recreation center do not do anybody’s memory well, but it looks like the project is almost finished, even if there are fewer houses in the neighborhood to provide clients. And the reviews have been good.

I would hope in time that people forget about the costs and snafus and just enjoy and use the facility and appreciate people like the man for whom it was named and others like him who have gone on to another arena.

An article about Mr. Lee inspired this post and can be found here.

Congratulations to Wm Mitchell immigration clinic

In a Minnpost article published today, Brian Voerding notes the 25th anniversary of William Mitchell’s immigration clinic.

I had not even been aware that there was such a clinic. But it does seem like that it is indeed very necessary considering how our country, in an effort to enforce its existing bigotries, has screwed up immigration and immigration law.

I am sometimes cool on lawyers. Their role in complicating our lives seems self-evident. But, and largely because of that, it takes lawyers and law students sometimes if we want to uncomplicate things.

So, let’s congratulate William Mitchell law school and its immigration clinic for twenty-five years of service.

Treasure Hunt One Over – Winner Announced, Clues Explained

Congratulations to D.N. Berg [no neighborhood listed] who, at 1:00 p.m. today, February 7, successfully finished Treasure Hunt One by writing, “It is the High Bridge taken from Shepard Rd.”

To be more precise, it was taken from the old Shepard Road, mainly because it is easier to stop and take a picture from there than it is from the new Shepard Road.

Anybody who knows D.N. Berg should make sure to echo our congratulations.

Now that the site of the Treasure has been identified it is in order to explain the clues.

Clue One read:

Go long, fellow.
Whether you are tall or a shorty
Work hard.
Call it forty.

“Go long, fellow” is a reference to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, two of whose most famous works were “The Village Blacksmith” and “The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere.” Revere was a silversmith. Blacksmiths and silversmiths can be hard working people and Smith Avenue is, of course, the street which runs on the High Bridge.

“Call it forty” refers to Xcel Energy whose plant was next to where the picture was taken from, “XL” being the Roman numeral for forty.

Clue Two read:

It’s no joke
Think of a Hardy Oak
And if you’re old and not rich
You might fill some small sibs' niche.

“Hardy Oak” refers to Gabriel Oak, the protagonist of Thomas Hardy’s Far from the Madding Crowd, who at the book’s beginning is a shepherd.

“If you’re old and not rich/ You might fill some small sibs’ niche” refers to the Little Sisters of the Poor whose residence for the aged sits up on the bluff nearby below the bridge above the point where the picture was taken from.

Treasure Hunt Two should be posted next week.

Veterans Day Observations

Eighty-nine years ago the “War to End All Wars” came to an end with an armistice on November 11. Anniversaries came to be known as “Armistice Day.”

After another World War, Congress decided that if wars were to become this common that there just weren’t enough dates to have holidays for each and changed the name to “Veterans’ Day” so it could commemorate the fighting men and women of all the wars our country gets itself into.

The War to End All Wars did not do the job.

During most of our wars, including our present aggression in Iraq, the government has begged us to “support our troops” and, as a rule, the American public has done a fairly good job.

But as Paul Wellstone noted, we do not do nearly as good a job of supporting our veterans as we do supporting our troops.

Viet Nam may be the best example of our negligence there.

I remember picking up a young man in about 1970 at the airport who wanted to get home to Mendota Heights or Eagan. [I don’t remember exactly where. It was off Highway 55 someplace.] The man told me he had just returned from Viet Nam. We did not discuss the matter much, but he made it clear that he was glad to be back. I remember being dragged out of bed early one morning when I was about five to go to an airport to see my cousin return from some strange place called “Korea” and I did wonder why he had to take a taxicab home from the airport.

What I really remember was what happened when we got to the house. When we arrived there was a middle-aged man mowing the front lawn. As I was removing the luggage from the trunk, the older man said to the younger man something to the effect of “Oh, you’re back” and returned to mowing while the soldier picked up his gear and went on up to the house.

I have always assumed that the older man was the returning soldier’s father, but never knew for certain. But it seems that if he were something else – uncle, neighbor, cousin, whomever -- that he still must have known where the man had been and could have given a better greeting. Usually when I have taken somebody with luggage home or to visit their kinfolk, whoever is waiting has offered to help with toting the gear.

Even to a war opponent like I was, it seemed strange. After all, the Viet Nam military was made up of conscripted men and men who enlisted to avoid conscription. In all wars, it seems to be the old who decide that young must fight.

Friday Hash

Four [or five, depending on who is counting] brief and disjointed observations on a Friday morning.

Al Oertwig got twenty votes for school board. I know where one of those came from. It seemed like a minimal tribute to a man whose over two decades of public service came to an end in such a way.

I haven’t seen Dick Radman in quite a while and never knew him well, but I always knew to appreciate who he was and what he had done. He and I haven’t always been on the same side, but one has to concede that our city’s and state’s working people are a lot better off because of people like him. I commend Don Boxmeyer’s article today to everybody’s attention.

When I read commentary that this year’s election meant that Maplewood is going more “liberal” I found myself wondering whether ideology played any part at all in the dysfunctional suburb’s election, or if it was just that the electorate wanted to rejection some of personalities involved.

Then I got to wondering if that same concept might have played a role locally. While I hate to think that people rejected David Haas or Debbie Montgomery because they did not like either’s personality. Brief meditation makes me think otherwise, but maybe somebody else has an idea.

Nick Coleman, jr. wrote in yesterday’s Mpls. Star[-Journal and] Tribune about the regional Taco Bell affiliate’s poor treatment of a veteran employee. You can read it and make your own judgments, but remember that this is an organization whose human rights record is already dubious and make your own choices of where you get your fast food.

Have you ever wondered what must possess a man to name his son after himself.?

There are great examples of men who have named sons after themselves and had the sons grow up to be a great reflection. Martin Luther King, Sammy Davis, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Hubert Humphrey are good examples that come to mind. But then you have to consider some of the others, John Wayne Gacy, John Hinckley, George Bush, Hubert Humphrey, jr. and others. It is risky. I wonder why they take these chances.

Revealing the Sign

There was a time when people decried the displacement of local merchants by large chain store supermarkets.

Times have changed.

I just returned from a sign unveiling for a new Cub Store on Clarence south of Maryland. It wasn’t groundbreaking. Probably fifty others were out in the wind for the festivities. Nobody brought any shovels. Borings are already being done. There were some speeches and the bigwigs removed the cover from the sign.

The required officials were there, from the developer [Oppidan], Cub Foods and from the local officialdom. Councilmember Bostrom served as sort of an emcee and Mayor Colemsm the Second spoke.

The Cub exec spoke of this as their fourth Saint Paul Store. I am wondering where the third one is to be.

After the speeches most of the crowd managed to make it up to the Parkside Lounge for sandwiches and drumsticks. The Parksdide will soon be disappearing to make room for the new store..

As these events go, the event was not especially notable, but it does indicate that there will soon be another place for Saint Paul people to get their vittles.

Kudos should probably be given to North East Neighborhoods Development Company, Councilmember Bostrom, and city PED for getting the project this far. Mr. Bostrom certainly made sure that Mr. Chuck Repke of NENDC got his recognition.

Congrats, A L Brown AND Tutu the Second Time

It was nice to see an op-ed piece from A. L. Brown in today’s DPP. He also addressed the St. Thomas–Archbishop Tutu matter in a little different way than I had here. The paper identified him as a KSTP talk show host, but did not say when his show is on. Wonder why?

Maybe because the Hubbards just seem to use him as fill-in [and never for Soucheray]. They used to give him Sunday afternoons which has to be the worst spot available [which had once been made available to somebody else they would consider to be strangely radiclib, Nick Coleman – not the real Nick Coleman, but his son who shuttles his very ordinary predictable pablum between newspapers like Elizabeth Taylor was shuttling between husbands forty years ago] , but they made other programming choices and forced him out of that.

KSTP used to have more diverse minds on its air. Remember Barbara Carlson [who by herself sometimes coujld be a year’s quota of diversity in just a few hours of the morning]? Dick Pomerantz? Michael Jackson [no, not that one – the white guy from South Africa who actually challenged apartheid amid all his show-biz sycophancy but was dumped for the Missouri Mouth]? The Mayor of Brooklyn Park, James Janos? Or Turi Rider? Are your ears still ringing from that last one?

Back to Mr. Brown’s comments. I did not go into things like why Ann Coulter was allowed to speak there. It is indeed strange when somebody who seems so void of fact or world perspective is allowed and a Nobel Prize winning bishop is not, but that’s their business. I was focusing forward. If Tutu is not allowed, disinvited even, who will be tolerated? I suggested that the students and constituency of the Merriam Park-based semi-Catholic university [named after a man noted for his intellect] can accept banning the good bishop that they ought to be ready to mobilize to see to it that nobody else similarly opinionated [whether of similar opinions or contrary] be permitted an audience there either. It would leave a lesser university, but it would be consistent.

And I do wonder if Archbishop Tutu were a Catholic bishop if the action would have been the same.

Congratulations, Saints

I neglected to do it at the time, but I do wish to extend congratulations to the Saints for another good season. [For those of you who may not have known it – and if there were a lot of you reading this, there likely woudl be a lot of you given the stinginess of local media ink and air budgets – the local team won the American Association Northern division and went the maximum five games in the AA championships.]

I miss the old stadium on the other side of Snelling Avenue where earlier Saints played in an earlier American Association [and which later hosted the Norsemen in professional slow-pitch, Vikings practices, a bunch of amateur games, and some concerts] but the new Midway Stadium is still a great place for a game, especially if it is not raining. It would have been nice if they had put a cover over the fan seating area, but you can’t have everything.

I know that the Mpls team plays in a higher-ranked league and plays a longer schedule with more hoopla from various media, but wouldn’t it be nice if the DPP and other media could give them a little more coverage? And it would also be nice if the Saints could land a radio deal with a station which could be heard in Saint Paul.

But thanks to all for a good 2007.

And congratulations to the Fort Worth Cats for their second consecutive championship. I imagine that they probably have some of the same handicaps we have here, being based in a major city with a larger city nearby and a MLB team a few miles away.