According to City Council Member Gary Schiff, “To open a microbrewery, the City of Minneapolis also makes you open a restaurant. That’s some pretty heavy overhead … the costs of running a restaurant means there is little money left to cover the costs of packaging and distribution, so locally-brewed beer never gets in stores.”

The Brew Beer Here Law has just passed the Minnesota House, and is working its way through the process. You can use this site to keep track of the bill (hat tip: Underground Brewing for that site).

According to a press release from Gary Schiff’s office:

A handful of local startup breweries are poised to open with the help of the new legislation, including Fulton Beer, Harriet Brewing, 612Brew, Longfellow Brewing, and Steel Toe Brewing.

“This is a great opportunity to build community,” said Jason Sowards, who hopes to open Harriet Brewing this year on Minnehaha Avenue. “Residents can come fill a growler and can come to the source of where their microbrew is being made. I get to meet the people who love my beer, and help boost the local economy. It cuts out the middleman and helps a local startup company at the same time.”

Craft brewing is a growing $7 billion dollar industry in the United States, with sales up 10% in 2009 according to the Brewers Association, the trade organization for the craft industry. “Changing our regulations can help Minneapolis capture our share of a growing industry, and help build a movement of Minneapolis-made products,” said Schiff.

I’ve tried writing it down as a recipe, so my own daughter can take over the tradition, but she tells me it never comes out right for her.  While I consider that it might be just an excuse so that she doesn’t have to make it, since she is an excellent and adventurous cook, it’s possible that it’s simple truth. Later today I’m going to be in my kitchen, showing my son and his teenage daughter all the steps and explaining the do’s and don’ts, in hopes that some day they can take over, and I can relax.  Heck, I might even consider Stove Top.

The biggest problem with writing down my stuffing recipe is that the answer to every question about ingredients is “It depends.”  So rather than writing a recipe, I’m going to attempt to guide you through all the different ways it depends and how to make your own choices.

Start with the bread.  How much?  What kind?  How dry?  What size?  It all depends.  How big a turkey?  Will you cook the stuffing inside the bird or separately?  How many do you want to feed, and do you want leftovers?  I’ve found about 1-1/2 pounds of bread is fine for a 12–13 pound turkey, whether inside or out.  Add more for bigger, more mouths to feed, leftovers.  What kind varies, but always the more whole grain and less white, the better the stuffing.  You can buy it right off the shelf, or save up for months with the heel ends and other bread scraps nobody in the family wants.   In our family, one son loves raisin bread but hates the heels, so saves them up for his contribution to stuffing.  It’s delicious! We also notice that the number of buns in a bag never matches the number of brats in the package, and the leftovers are stale before the next brat roast. For whatever tag ends, dry for a day, then re-bag and freeze.  When you pull the bag out to thaw, open it briefly and knock out the frost that has accumulated inside the bag.  Otherwise you have a nasty soggy mess. Even our dog won’t touch it.

All this bread has to be torn into bits.  Not cut, torn.  Anything between the size of the store croutons for prepared stuffing and the salad croutons served in a restaurant will do, but the smaller they are, the more flavors mix and spread evenly.  A very large mixing bowl or 10-quart roasting pan usually holds the smaller batches, but you’ll find out as you go.  I often spill over into two mixing containers, and then it’s a challenge making the ingredients distribute evenly.  While moist bread makes a better start and is easier to handle, if dry is what you have, just remember to add more moisture later. This will wind up being a moist dressing.

Speaking of moisture, that’s the second item that requires advanced prep.  Of course you could just open a can of chicken broth, or more if needed.  But I like to take a couple of roasted chicken carcasses, including skin, bones, and remaining meat, and boil them in a pot full of water for about an hour.  The broth will be dark and you’ll need a colander to separate the broth from the bits.  The broth can stand in the ‘fridge overnight to separate fat and gel, since that’s what your broth will be once cold.  It can also be poured in leftover containers and frozen well ahead of time.  You might just skip that whole bit if you’re doing the stuffing in the bird, since that will provide plenty of moisture.  Nowadays, however, worries about salmonella, or the desire to use pan drippings to make gravy, generally lead to the decision to cook the stuffing outside the bird.  The moisture doesn’t actually get added until just before the stuffing goes into the oven, and after all other ingredients are added.  How much to add then depends on what it still takes for a dressing that’s moist and sticky, almost like a bread pudding, before cooking.

The third thing taking advanced prep are the cranberries.  I have fallen in love with Craisins, the orange flavored variety.  Orange peel has long been one of my secret ingredients, and this accents it.  A few hours ahead of time, even overnight, the Craisins need to be rehydrated.  I use the smaller 6-oz. pack for a 12-pound turkey. You can use orange juice, chicken broth, or, in a pinch, just water.  If you haven’t used raisin bread, add some raisins to the same bowl to soak.  If you have dried orange peel, sprinkle that on top.  It all goes into the stuffing later.  The fruit adds a special holiday touch to the turkey.  If you like, you can also add blueberries, cherries, and apple pieces.  My mother-in-law informed me that she always adds apples to stuffing for ducks and geese, as it helps abate the strong gamy flavor that many people don’t care for.

I usually add one large onion, chopped and sautéed in a stick of butter.  Again, amounts are approximate for stuffing a 12-lb. bird. Sometimes the onion is cooked just until it goes translucent, sometimes browned in the frying pan.  While that’s cooking, I throw sage, celery seed, dill weed, and a bit of garlic in to flavor the butter.  (Don’t burn the garlic!)  How much again depends.  After I mix everything together, I rely on a sample taste to tell me what’s enough.  It starts with about 2 T sage, 1 tsp. each of the others, and sage should wind up being the strongest flavor.  That’s the only flavoring I will add at the tail end of everything.  Otherwise I find that adding seasonings to the butter spreads the flavor evenly throughout the stuffing, eliminating pockets of overwhelming flavor and large segments of “blah”. When the onions are done, this gets poured out of the pan over the bread, and I use still-dry bread crumbs to mop the pan and soak up the last of the butter and spices.

Half a stalk of celery gets washed, chopped, and added straight to the bread crumbs while onions are cooking.  You can use the heart if you prefer it, but it really doesn’t matter.  I have learned to, in order to save the rest for celery sticks that don’t get nasty in a few days, towel-dry the cut sticks and wrap (seal) in aluminum foil, not plastic.

I have through the years learned what I don’t like to add.  Wild rice sounds good, but it upsets the flavor balance for me, and I haven’t figured a way around it, don’t care to try.  Giblets can be okay in stuffing, but personally, I love to munch on heart and gizzard myself, having no competition for them in the family.  And liver is only fit for the dog, who has learned to love when I prepare stuffing.  Slivered almonds are another thing that sounds better than the end result, and I haven’t checked on pecans to see if they fare better.  Walnuts gave my ex canker sores, so I didn’t ever try those either.  Some years I have added blueberries and cherries, but their flavor tends to get lost in the mix, so I seldom bother anymore.

Now that all the “dry” ingredients are prepared, they get thoroughly mixed together.  It always takes a much bigger pan/roaster/bowl than I planned on, but I figure what spills on the counter is fair game for nibbling, and if questioned about it, can be justified as taste testing.  This is when you check sage levels, since so far you’re not risking your health over uncooked proteins. Uh, you have been scrupulously cleaning counters and cutting boards to avoid contamination, right?

This is now time for those final decisions:  If cooked in the bird, your stuffing is pretty much done, ready for, well, stuffing.  My mother-in-law would disagree, because she insisted the last part was unskippable: adding eggs.  Whip up 2-3 eggs and mix them into the stuffing, and your end product holds its shape rather than falling all over your plate after serving.  If for any reason you can’t commit to cooking your stuffing immediately after adding the eggs, leave them out of it.  For example, if you prepare ahead, transport to another site for cooking, leave them out completely or wait until you arrive to whip and add them.  And if you chronically undercook your bird, leaving the stuffing at best luke warm, no eggs.  Better yet, no turkey!  Cook that bird!

After adding the eggs, or deciding not to, check for over-all moisture.  If it cooks in the bird, there will be plenty of liquid soaked into the stuffing by the time the bird cooks.  The butter and moisture in the fruits and veggies will be plenty.  If you cook it separately, then add enough broth to make your uncooked stuffing moist and sticky.  You will know this because by this time you have likely given up on managing the concoction with even the sturdiest spoon and have dug in with your (clean) hands to mix evenly and distribute.  As a bonus for this practice, once the mixing pan/roaster/bowl is emptied out and before you cover your stuffing for cooking, you get to lick those hands clean.  Well, unless you’re paranoid about salmonella in the eggs you used, of course.  But, hey, nummy!

Cooking temperature is 325F, with or without bird.  Slow but dependable.  Turkey gets tender; stuffing doesn’t dry out and burn if properly covered.  Stuffing alone takes around an hour.  In the bird, add time to the total for the extra weight.  Better, use a good thermometer.  If stuffing goes in a pan, cover with aluminum foil to keep in the moisture.  If you cook it in a small bird, I recommend the paper bag method: use a standard 9×13 cake pan, set stuffed turkey inside, carefully insert all inside a paper grocery bag (clean, of course), roll the opening closed, poke your thermometer through bag into the bird, and go.  The skin browns nicely this way, without letting too much moisture escape.  After cooking, the bag gets ripped off and discarded, preferably not where the dog can get into it.

Since I always make more stuffing than fits in the bird, I bunch the rest around the bird in the same pan to soak up the drippings.  This is the absolute best tasting stuffing in the world!  And no, I don’t do gravy.  Ever.

This year we took making stuffing to a new level, and I’m not just talking about teaching the next generations.  We made a super-sized batch, increased the egg proportions further yet, and cooked the stuffing in muffin pans, two different sizes.  Smaller muffins got paper liners, but there weren’t any I could find for the large muffin pan, so we made do with nonstick spray.  The smaller ones got about 25 minutes, larger 30 to cook.  The point was to avoid not just the hassle of cooking on the day, but the mess of extra dishes and leftovers to bring home, since Thanksgiving is always hosted by my daughter.  We’ll just take a bunch of each size out of the freezer, thaw on the trip down, and have them heated in the microwave before serving.  If you are wondering, we started with over 4 lbs. of bread, 3 large onions, etc., etc., and topped it off with 8 eggs.  I’ve already sampled one–okay, I ate the whole thing–and it worked like a charm.

Question: “How many feminists does it take to screw in a light bulb?”

Answer: “That’s not funny!”

Sometimes when I’m writing on my blog, I’m speaking to every reader. Sometimes I’m speaking to a subset of readers. Sometimes I’m speaking to just one or two people, and sometimes I’m talking to myself. This is not unusual. All writers do this.

Sometimes what I’m writing is really written for one person, but I can make it interesting, in a subtle way that is not always palpable, to many other readers. So when I posted Monica’s joke (which is not really her joke but rather one on which she is carrying out a feminist analysis as part of her academic studies) on my blog, I was writing for a select audience, and that audience appreciated it.

A few other people decided that I was ruining The Internet and entered into a campaign to discredit me and take my voice away. It worked.

For about five seconds. Because most people got the meaning of the joke and the post about the joke, even though it was not meant for them.

And a small part of the more thoughtful, positive, and non-stupid audience subsequently organized to form a blog and a blog community known as Quiche Moraine, and last night we had our launch party (months after the actual start of the blog) and eventually we had a conversation about how that joke…Monica’s joke…had really started it all. What I want to do now is tell you a bit about the party, but really, this is not about the party. It is about the people who were at the party and what I think about them and how they relate to me. So hold on to your seats; this could get pretty scandalous.

Sometimes you know two or three or four people who are important to you for various reasons, but they don’t know each other. Last night a handful of people whom I’ve known for anywhere from many months to many years and who are very important to me met each other for the first time. Sometimes one has anxiety when that sort of thing happens. I didn’t. And it went fine.

John Funk was there, whom I only barely know, but I know his blog and some of his photojournalism work. He is actually one of the few people who have ever been allowed in the Blog Cave…well, actually, he snuck past the guards with his press pass. Last night, it was interesting to get to know him better, and to see how he interacted with Ben, because they both are into similar things such as cameras.

Ben was there, and photography did come up quite a few times. But oddly he didn’t take any pictures. There are some people who are photographers and some people who take pictures all the time. Ben is a photographer. He’s also a geek, so there was quite a bit of conversation about the new iPhone stuff. I think Ben may have been jealous of John’s iPhone.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. I should really talk about dinner first. To do this, I have to go back in time a few years to the very year that Azia, the restaurant where some of us stopped before the party, opened. Azia was then a new restaurant, opened in a location that had previously spawned many failures, but as I recall, everyone who knew anyone or anything believed correctly that the owners of Azia had the necessary magic touch, and that Azia would be a success.

There was a person who had become a friend in the academic context, but with whom I had never gotten together outside of that context, who wanted to meet with me to talk about important things going on in her life. I’m referring to Analiese Miller, whom many of you know via the blogosphere. So this one afternoon on a weekday, Ana and I got together at Azia to talk about important stuff and have our first drinks and food together. And that, by and large, has been the nature of our face-to-face relationship ever since: Talk about important stuff, eat, and drink. Sometimes we skip the food. But occasionally there must be cookies.

The reason I mention this at all is because back at that first meal, we ordered and shared a special seafood dinner kind of thing that you get for two or more people. We gorged ourselves on that, and we took home piles of extra scallops and shrimp and squid. Ana has not forgotten that meal, and she mentions it now and then, so I know it made a very positive impression on her, and here I speak of the seafood dinner, not the conversation.

So last night, when Ben and Stephanie and I got to Azia and were expecting Ana, but she was running late, I suggested that we order that dish as well as some organic wine if they had any on the wine list. This way Ana would be taken care of when she arrived, and we would not have to mess around. I am so incredibly thoughtful that I can’t even believe it sometimes.

It turns out that Azia no longer serves this dish, but that did not matter. Our waiter, who was excellent, simply arranged for the dish to be made and for a proper organic wine (I should mention that Ana prefers organic wine) to be uncorked. The dish was significantly larger than I remembered it, several feet in diameter (or so it seemed) and teeming with what looked like the day’s catch from a medium-sized trawler (but with no turtles). We were about halfway through when Ana arrived, and I know she appreciated the fact that we had arranged the dinner in her honor, even if we had already eaten most of it.

This was not the first time Ben and Ana had met because, it turns out, they went to the same grade school and knew each other there. Strange? Maybe, but I think Ben might be a member of the Conicidenti. (People to whom coincidences happen more often than…can be explained by probability theory. By coincidence of course.)

I also have hysterically funny internal thoughts about Ben and Ana in grade school. In my imagination they are identical to how they look now but very small and somewhat bewildered as little children usually are. This makes me laugh.

Anyway, this was the first time Stephanie and Ana had met, even though they have worked together quite a bit on Quiche Moraine, and I think this was a very comfortable first meeting because of that.

Near the end of dinner, Amanda came by. Remarkably, this was the first time Amanda has met Ana, and that was to me a fairly momentous occasion. You have to understand that at the time Amanda and I first met, there were three or four people in my life who had actually “been there for me” as the saying goes (and I for them as well) over the previous somewhat tumultuous year. If I came into Amanda’s life as not-too-damaged goods, it was because of Ana and a few other people being thoughtful of me, sometimes just amusing me, always listening to me, and occasionally telling me what to do.

And it was appropriate that we all met at Azia, because this is where Amanda and I had our first date.

It was actually part two of our first date. We had originally met in a professional setting, and I think we found each other interesting. We worked together (but in a group) for a couple of weeks, and at the end of that time, we both felt that we had unfinished business, things to talk about. So we had a brief conversation about that, and I suggested we meet in a day or two and talk. Since the weather that year was being spectacularly good (as has happened now and then in the Twin Cities), I suggested a walk around the lake. That would be Lake Calhoun.

So we met at the lake and walked around it a couple of times and talked. Mostly we talked about Amanda’s future. One of the things we talked about was her graduate prospects, and that conversation played a large role in Amanda’s decision to get a master’s degree, a degree that she is finishing even as I write this. So it is interesting to recollect that conversation between two people who did not know what was going to happen between them, and to realize that not only did that plan come to fruition, but that I ended up being part of it.

Nothing was mentioned at the time of Amanda having my child. But who knows, perhaps it was on our minds somewhere….

Anyway, at the end of the first walk around the lake, we felt we needed more, so we took another walk around the lake. At the end of that, we felt we needed even more, so we went to Azia for a beer. I will now confess something to all of you. At this point on that sunny afternoon, I was well along the route of being, as we say in primatology, “interested” in Amanda. So when we stopped at my car before going to her car to drive over to Azia, I grabbed something that I had stashed in the glove compartment, just in case, because one never knows, and put it in my pocket. One must always be prepared.

So we sat down at a table in Azia, and the waitress came over to take our order. I suggested the bow tie pasta with chicken to share. (At some later time, Amanda would discover Azia’s green curry and that would become her favorite.) I asked Amanda a question or two about her preferences and ordered her beer for her. We sat and talked and things were going quite well. After the food was done and the plates taken away and the beer mostly gone, I felt pretty good about how we were relating and finally had the confidence to show her what I had taken from the glove compartment and secreted in my pocket, knowing, hoping, that she would be…”interested.”

“Look at this,” I said as I opened my hand and showed her the object that rested on my palm.

“Oh, what is that?” was her reply, a bit of nervousness in her voice, possibly because no one had ever showed her something like this before, in a crowded restaurant on a first date.

“It’s a wildebeest tooth,” was my reply.

“Really? Like a ‘gnu’? Cool!”

“Not only that,” I said, now swaggering a bit, I admit. “It’s about two million years old!”

“Really!” Amanda’s eyes sprang wide open.

“It’s a fossil. I was bringing it into the lab to check for ancient phytoliths that might tell us about the evolution of diet. It’s from my excavation in Africa.”

Never has that line worked so well. She was hooked, I was hooked, and the trusty old fossil was put away never to be used again.¹

Well, that was the story of our first date, but let’s get back to last night’s party. When we finally got over to the Black Forest, we were a bit late, as is the tradition. Monica was there, as were Brian and John Funk. We managed to get a set of adjoined tables.

The conversation wafted and waned and wandered. Every now and then the people at the table would fall silent, as four or five individuals pulled out their devices and Tweeted. Every now and then some question would arise and two or three people would pull out their devices and Google it. I’ve never quite seen that happen before. It is, indeed, a whole new world.

Lizzie came to the party.

There are a lot of crazy people in this world, and I have no problem with that. But some people’s neurosis seems to be to make life hard for other people (on purpose), or their particular craziness just has that side effect. I can characterize my own life over the last several years (well, actually, since as far back as I can remember) in terms of which crazy people were annoying me, when they were doing it, and in what manner. And every now and then one of the crazy people goes away (or I go away), and my heart lightens and I gain happiness.

(The above statement is not meant to imply that I am not one of the crazy people.)

So Lizzie was at the party, and last night I realized something about her regarding craziness. If you pay any attention to my blogging, you’ll know that I write about Lizzie now and then. In fact, sometimes Lizzie is my main audience, although I don’t think she knows that. Lizzie met Ben, Ana, John and Brian for the first time last night, and she’s met Stephanie and Mike only once or twice each. Of course she knows Amanda.

So, why do I mention crazy people and Lizzie in the same set of thoughts? Lizzie and I get together now and then, and I ask her what is going on in her life, and I love to listen to her describe what’s up. She asks me about my life, and I tell her stuff. We do not do this by phone or email, only in person. Our lives have very few overlaps (though the ones that exist are clearly the work of the Coincidenti, like the link that goes back 15 years connecting Amanda to Lizzie).

The point is we have no complexities in our relationship. We just care about each other. And we have a common interest in rodents. But what is interesting to me, as I’ve come to realize, is that I’m pretty sure that Lizzie and I have exactly the same perspective on what is crazy and what is not, and I’m absolutely certain that she is not even a little crazy. She and Amanda share that. They are both perfectly normal with the most harmless and innocuous neuroses imaginable. This is probably related to the fact that they are both very quiet in groups. So when Lizzie came in (long after Amanda had gone home and as people were starting to file out), I sat aside with her and we caught each other up, and Lizzie gave me the gift she always gives me: a sense of calm and comfort. A sane sense of calm and comfort.

Stephanie was, of course, the other focal point (besides myself and Mike, as we are the Three Blogoteers that make up the core of Quiche Moraine) of the evening. But Stephanie is never a focal point by herself when she is with Ben (they are a couple). The two of them have at least fifty running conversations that are so spread out and complex that I have seen the two of them discover new things about each other three or four times in a given evening as their umbilical banter turns on and off with the broader conversation waxing and waning. Which is often quite entertaining.

I’ve spoken of Ana and Lizzie, both of whom I’ve known many years and with whom I share many (different kinds of) politics, intimacies, proclivities, dislikes, likes and the odd friend or two. (Well, they’re not all that odd….) But in many ways, I feel just as close to Stephanie and, to some extent, her partner Ben, even though I’ve known them for just about a year (or so). Stephanie knows some of my darkest secrets, and I hers (my only regret being that they are not more scandalous, but that is the writer in me talking), and I think we have come to trust, and increasingly to make use of, each other’s reasoning and thought process. I think we get along so well because she is a very scary person and I’m not scared by much. It also helps that we have slightly overlapping but largely complementary knowledge bases but with very similar sensibilities and, for lack of a better term, world views. That makes for interesting conversation, and this conversation plays out in the blogosphere in ways that I think many readers cannot imagine. When I write with Stephanie as my audience, as when I wrote with Monica as my audience (see beginning of essay, above), I usually get into a lot of trouble.

Mike came late and had to leave a bit early, and I kind of saw him in a new light last night. Although I’ve run into him a couple of times over the last month, those were in contexts that were very impersonal and artificial and may as well have not happened with respect to our friendship or work together on the blog. So I can somewhat artificially but still truthfully say that I’ve not really seen Mike since his blogging about the gubernatorial candidates had developed to the extent that is has. When Mike came in and sat down, I imagined him as a 1940s-style, very well-connected reporter who we may presume spent the day in private conversations with powerful people, digging up the scoop. I think that Mike’s essays are going to keep opening doors for him because they are well done and insightful, respectful and important, and (BTW) very well edited by Stephanie (and sometimes me). People are going to look back on his Quiche Moraine posts of this year (and probably next) as a way of grounding some of the conversations that are going to happen as we pick our next Governor next year.

Which brings me to Jim. Jim, a former student, worked for the Ashwin Madia campaign last year (as a staffer, not a mere volunteer as I did). From the moment I met Jim a couple of years ago, I liked him. He is a very serious, dedicated, totally-in-the-blood, grassroots, Democratic Party activist. This is what he does, essentially, for a living. He thinks and breathes politics. Over the next couple of years, I predict that Jim will become one of those people that politicians feel lucky to get to run their campaigns. By the way, Jim will have a series of guest posts on his role in the Madia campaign, coming up soon, on Quiche Moraine.

As usual, the evening ended with a whimper. Amanda had already left, as had Mike and Monica. We wandered out into the street, and John darted off in one direction and Stephanie and Ben in another. I made a quick plan with Lizzie to make contact later in the week for some business we have, and she rode off into the night on her bike. Ana and I walked to her car and promised to meet next week so she could take the next steps in writing regular posts for Quiche Moraine.

When I picked up my car in the parking lot at Azia, where I had carelessly left it when we walked down to the Black Forest, I thought about my old neighborhood, the new buildings that had been built here, the restaurants that were once new but have now become established. I thought about the centrality of the corner of Nicollet and 26th as a point of geography in my own experience. I have told you, over several essays, only a portion of the things that happened to me within a few hundred meters of where I stood unlocking my car. Some of it I can’t tell you because it is rather too painful to discuss. Some of it I have to tell you, because I can’t keep those moments to myself.

Stay tuned.

1. All kidding aside, it is absolutely true that I never showed my fossil to anyone other than Amanda.

I had finished eating and finally had my hands free to take some notes, but I couldn’t keep up with Matt Entenza’s torrent of ideas for what he sees in Minnesota’s future.  In particular, his ideas on what he would like to do for an economy that needs boosting.

Now, one of the means that the Republicans in this state have been touting in order to “grow the economy” is to cut services and cut taxes so that big bidness will flock here and give us middle class jobs.  I understand the appeal; I really do.  I look at the pay stubs I get and how much the State of Minnesota takes from me every two weeks and I wonder to myself what I would do with that money if I kept it.  And such expenditure would likely be to add fuel to my tank.  The amount that I pay every two weeks would fill up my tank twice at the current price per gallon, and I can appreciate that.

The thing is, it is gasoline.  Gasoline is distilled from crude oil.  Crude oil is an expensive source of energy because there is a finite amount available, and also because of the carbon load that burning it adds to the atmosphere.  As a nation we burn a lot, and we import an incredible amount.  There is no question that our economy is driven in large part by a quest for energy. As an armchair economist, it doesn’t take long for me to realize that there is a need in our society. We are driven to push and grow in order to survive. It is high time to get our butts in gear to find better and more sustainable sources of the energy to propel the economy.

Matt Entenza sees a future for Minnesota as a “Silicon Valley of the New Green Economy.”  We stand on the brink of competition (healthy) with other regions of the country for leadership in developing sources of energy that take advantage of renewable resources.  Matt is fortunate to have a partner in developing these ideas, and his partner is his wife, Lois Quam.

You may have heard of her.  She is an amazing individual, having started out in a small town in Minnesota and worked her way to Fortune‘s list of the 50 Most Powerful Women in American Business.  Now she is starting up a new company with ties between Norway and Minnesota.  Tysvar is the town in Norway from which her ancestors came, and she still has family there.  Tysvar, Norway is in the process of building the world’s largest offshore wind farm, and Quam points out that the Norwegian carbon tax has spurred development of a successful New Green Energy industry in that country. It may be just a coincidence, but Norway is also riding out the recession very well with a jobless rate of 2.6 percent.

And Lois’ vision in creating Tysvar, the company, includes developing solutions for health care as well:

At Tysvar we believe new businesses and organizations are required to make NGE changes happen at scale, therefore, we work as a strategic advisor and incubator of ideas, organizations and people to facilitate and encourage the birth of those new concerns.

In the NGE, we foster ideas and innovation, building on our collective experience to create socially relevant jobs, while designing better ways for governments, companies, unions, and civil society to work together.  At Tysvar we view this work as both important and fun.

At Tysvar, we work with businesses and institutions committed to finding creative and sustainable ways to address our challenges, and our best results come when we collaborate with others for a common solution.  We work best in teams and we value our relationships.

At Tysvar we are also committed to establishing universal health care reform in America. Universal health care is the answer for dependable, affordable health care for all Americans, it is necessary to help rebuild the American economy, and restore American competitiveness around the world.

Business and government have always worked in partnership, and in the current environment, it largely seems as though the partnership has worked to give competitive advantage to large businesses through a peculiar tax structure.  What I see in Matt and Lois is the desire for government to work with smaller, entrepreneurial businesses to benefit society as a whole with better access to health care and jobs while finding ways to de-couple from dependence on oil.

I had mentioned in Part 1 that Matt, despite his height, is not a stellar athlete. At least he wasn’t when he was in high school.  His expression of competition was in debate, and this is how he met Lois.  At a speech contest in Pipestone while they were high school students, Lois won both the competition and Matt’s heart.  She was dating someone else at the time, but something in Matt inspired Lois and they began dating in college.

While Lois was studying as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Matt studied law and taught legal concepts to secondary school students in England.  They returned to Minnesota, and he graduated from the University of Minnesota Law School.  The complete bio is at Matt’s campaign website, and I encourage you to read it there.

As we sat and I sipped my ginger beer while Matt talked about the future of Minnesota, about his kids and his attachment to both his Mac-Groveland neighborhood and rural Minnesota, I began to share his vision.  Then I realized that I had already shared this vision, but he was able to articulate how to put it into motion.  Government and business, I realized, can actually work together to develop careers that go beyond “jobs.”  Government and business can also work to restore the luster of rural communities.

The industries of sun, biofuels and wind energy are by necessity rural industries.  Family farms can supplement their incomes and stay on their land by adding wind generators.  Solar energy, strong in the summer, can supplement wind.  Biofuels can move far beyond corn ethanol to take advantage of natural processes of creating energy.  In order to achieve such changes, however, Minnesota must turn back to education.

A government that cuts education cuts its future.  Minnesota’s reputation as a state that provides high-quality education is falling.  The universities and colleges are doing their best to maintain their rankings, but costs are rising and so is tuition.  Local schools are fighting a No Child Left Behind policy’s crazy policies which guarantee their failures by insisting on continual improvement while facing funding cuts (and NCLB is self-justifying by laying the blame on schools by withholding funding from those schools which most need support).

Entenza wants to restore the vision of such previous governors as Elmer R. Anderson and Orville Freeman, who partnered with the Legislature to create the Minnesota Miracle.  The funding program worked then, and a new commitment to education will work for the future.

I talked with Matt for an hour, and we looked at our watches and realized that we both needed to get home. We shook hands and walked out the door onto Grand Avenue.  He offered to walk me to my car, which I pointed out was ten feet away and he turned and walked home.  I got into my car, and opened my notebook to realize that I had written very little down of what we had talked about.  I half-seriously considered catching up to him and asking if we would talk again so I could take some notes.

Quiche Moraine needs a budget so I can take a stenographer with me on these little dinners with politicians.

The original plan was for us to meet at Coffee News, which is the sort of neighborhood coffee shop (with real food) that Starbucks and Caribou would like to pretend to be but instead have been madly rushing to replace.  I pulled into a parking space near the coffee shop (meters don’t charge in St. Paul past 4:30 in the afternoon).  I saw Matt enter the shop, so I followed with my notepad and pens, excited that this time I had the appointment written down for the correct date.

Matt saw me walk in and said, “Hi, Mike!”

I was impressed because we had only really spoken once before, and that was at Tim Mahoney and Susan Bishop’s wedding last year.  We’d had a good conversation about energy strategies and the Minnesota 2020 project, which was just getting going.  Since Matt has been in political circles of power in Minnesota for several years, I was flattered that he recognized me.

Before we had a chance to sit down, he suggested that we head down the street to Shish, a Middle Eastern cafe on Grand that Matt likes.  This was an introduction to “Matt the Neighbor.”  He lives only a few blocks from Snelling and Grand, and this was his hood.  He called out to Leo, the restaurant owner, and I told Leo that I would be doing a story based in Shish for Quiche Moraine.  Leo gave me his address and asked me to e-mail the link to the story when it is published.

Matt recommended the steak kebab, and I took him up on it. Tenderly cooked with Mediterranean spices and set on a bed of saffron rice, it was the best kebab I had eaten in a very, very long time. I highly enjoyed myself.  The meal and the food were important but more important was the company.  Matt proved to be very good company indeed.  He “got” that this is not a standard journalist’s interview, this Quiche Moraine thing I do.  It’s a conversation, and the hallmark of a good conversation between two people is generating a level of interest that goes both ways.  So he asked me as many questions about me as I did of him.

And these are the things we learned about each other.

We both graduated high school in 1979 from small towns in Minnesota.  We have both lived in California, and after living in other places, we both returned to Minnesota.  I learned that he has spent a good deal of time in Hallock, and we share mutual friends in Kristin Eggerling and Paul Blomquist.  Matt even bought his most recent car at C & M Ford in Hallock, a dealership that Kristin and Paul own. I also learned that we are both less than stellar athletes.  Despite his height, Matt is only an average basketball player and preferred debating when he was in high school.  More on that later.

Matt is only slightly younger than I am, but in our conversation I realized that if he wins the governor’s race in 2010, I will be older than both the President of the United States and the governor of Minnesota.  This is a new phase for me, as I have always thought of political leaders as being my seniors.

He has read the posts I wrote about Steve and Sophie Kelley and explained to me that if Steve Kelley is on the ticket for the DFL in 2010, he will be right out there working for him and supporting Kelley all the way.  I sense a genuine mutual respect and friendship between the two of them.  Steve had said the same thing about Matt when I ate pizza with Steve.

So, as governor, what does he think of the ways that the Minnesota economy can best recover?  Energy, education and investment.  We looked at the states that use low taxes as their main business attractor, including South Dakota, and compared them to Minnesota.  Minnesota has historically used private/public investment partnerships to build our economy. We have historically funded innovation and education.  We have historically maintained better roads and highways than our neighboring states, facilitating transportation for commerce.

In the last eight years, we have entrusted Minnesota’s growth and innovation to a governor whose priority is to lower taxes no matter what the effect on education, innovation and commerce.  The concept is that if Minnesota changes its perception from being a “high-tax state” to being a “low-tax state,” then all of the major corporations that have been avoiding relocation to Minnesota will swoop in with jobs and careers.  Matt and I discussed how well this is working for Sioux Falls, SD.  In 1998, the Sioux Falls Chamber of Commerce started airing commercials on Twin Cities radio promoting the property tax savings that businesses enjoy by relocating.  We both noted that the Twin Cities still provide more jobs and a better standard of living than does Sioux Falls.

I don’t mean to knock Sioux Falls, mind, and neither does Matt. It’s a nice place with a great convention center and some powerful banking operations.  I did note the last time I was in Sioux Falls, though, that the streets needed repair….

Entenza has a vision of energy innovation and Minnesota leadership.  Anything that is done to increase accessibility to carbon-based fuels, including ethanol production, is gong to by necessity be a bridge to a future of energy being produced by fewer and fewer carbon-based methods.

On the day I met with Matt, the northern suburb of Shoreview, where I work, was under assault by the power of the sun in the form of wind.  I thought during a smoke break of all the energy pushing me and making my cigarette difficult to light.  I thought of southern Minnesota with its many wind farms along I-90, and since southern Minnesota was the region he grew up, I asked Matt about it.

Matt thinks that with strategic investment, Minnesota has the potential to take leadership in developing a new green economy.  We can grow to be the equivalent of the “Silicon Valley of green energy,” in his words.  He asked me to make note of Dan Juhl, from Woodstock.  Consider the idea of the family farm.  Many people who have migrated from the rural areas to the urban areas tell me that they wish they could live in rural Minnesota, but with the changing economic face of agriculture, can’t see how a family can compete with corporate farms.  Moving back to a small town or to a farm is difficult economically, because the jobs and small businesses that support agricultural regions just aren’t as likely to support a modern lifestyle as they once were.  Juhl Wind, Inc. is just one example of an idea Entenza supports to rebuild Minnesota’s economy.

We met in the wake of the end of a legislative session cut short by the current governor’s unwillingness to negotiate a budget deal.  The DFL managed to pass a budget, and one that met many of Pawlenty’s requests, but the red pen of the veto and unallotment of previously budgeted services cut short a great opportunity to get moving on the new economy.

Matt is not alone in his drive to improve Minnesota.  He is married to Lois Quam, an innovator in her own right.  In the second installment of this post (June 8), I’ll tell you how they met and go into more detail about the leadership and innovation Matt Entenza intends to bring to the head of government in Minnesota.

Shish, at 1668 Grand Avenue, is a Middle Eastern deli in St. Paul.  Menu prices very reasonable and delicious.  Be sure to try the ginger beer.

“What would you like, sir?”

“A BLT on Italian.”

“Would you like bacon on that, sir?”

“Yes. This is a BLT.”

“What kind of cheese?”

“No cheese. Just a BLT.”

“Toasted?” (Read: “Cooked?”)

“Ah…yes, actually, that would be good.”

Wait for a minute while the BLT is “toasting” in the preternatural Subway oven.

“Lettuce?”

“Yes. B-L-T.”

“Anything else on it?”

“Ah, yes. This is a BLT, so tomato would be good. BLT.”

“Anything else on it?”

“No, just mayo. That’s all.”

“Okay, anything else?”

“BLT.”

Before I met my wife, I’d never been to a Subway. I was always afraid of them. The whole process seemed too complicated. So the first time we went, I asked her to order for me. She asked me what kind of sandwich I wanted, and I said, “BLT,” and the conversation went pretty much like the one above but with three people instead of two people.

After that first experience it took some convincing to get me back into a Subway. For the first few times, I ordered the same exact sandwich until I got the hang of it. Eventually, I started to branch out. Now I can pretty much handle anything they can throw at me.

It is not that I’m a slow learner. Rather, I’m somewhat traumatized by subway sandwiches. This is because of Mike’s Submarine Sandwiches at the corner of Washington and Central in my home town. Mike’s was in an old, red brick building sticking out at the end of a triangular junction between these two major streets, sitting right at the border between “downtown” and “uptown.” For quite some time, I went to school and/or worked “downtown” and I lived “uptown.” I made $56 a week, and my rent was $16.50 a week. A Mike’s sub with everything on it was $1.89. That was for the Italian with Everything. I could buy a Mike’s sub and make it last all day and do this for a few days in a row, but that would not be enough over the long term (a week). I would always be hungry, and I was always skinny. I had no transport and the buses were irregular, so I ended up walking between five and ten miles a day. I occasionally passed out from the lack of energy. (Well, two or three times.)

I don’t know whether any of my younger, studenty-type friends are as hungry today as I was then, but this is why I am always happy to buy someone dinner. This is why, when I’m in South Africa and eat out, I’ll often buy an extra meal as take out and give it to the guy who was there when I pitched up, the guy who is always there volunteering to watch the car. “Go home and share this with your daughter,” was what I said to the last such guy, who had told me when I pulled in that his daughter was home ill and starving. Lamb and potato chips and some kind of vegetables. She would like that.

When I think of a sub sandwich, and my memory lets me taste it in my mouth, I do not think of Subway’s sandwiches, even though the last uncountable number of sub sandwiches I’ve eaten were from Subway. Rather, I think of Mike’s Italian with Everything, because that is the last subway sandwich I ate when I was truly hungry, truly starving, decades ago. I’ve been that hungry since, lots of times, in Africa living with the Lese and Efe in the Ituri Forest. I have visceral, three-dimensional, palpable memories of some food items from those times as well, none of which were sub sandwiches.

These Mike’s Italians with Everything rest in some alternative universe ready to lay themselves down on my taste buds and in my limbic system any time I think of hunger, or very long walks to Delmar to meet my girlfriend, or of counting my change five or six times to make sure that when they want to take the money from me after they make the sandwich I have enough. The lettuce was shredded a certain way, and the bread had a certain taste and texture. The stuff Mike poured out of a thin-necked bottle onto the sandwich, after the lettuce and tomato was laid down but before the meat, had a certain juiciness. Standing there, with my stomach eating itself, the change sweaty in my hands, watching the submarine sandwich getting wrapped up, knowing I’d open it right away there in the shop and eat one-fourth of it, then carefully rewrap what was left and head home. Always home. Never anywhere else. If I went anywhere else I might have to share and couldn’t do that just now. That is how you make memories stick forever.

Somewhere in a neighborhood near you is a Mike’s or something like a Mike’s, where the typical customer is counting her or his change to make sure there is enough when they ask for the money. Do you know someone who might need a sandwich? Your change may be something someone else can count on.

When I lived in Dallas, I had a friend who had been to Naples to study architecture.  He told me that the first time he went to a pizza restaurant in Naples, he was surprised that pizza in Naples is so much different than it is in Texas.  He described to me a pizza made with a light sprinkling of cheese, olive oil and a pair of eggs.  Instead of placing the pizza in a convection oven, the chef placed it on a hearth to bake.  He told me that while he was hesitant to try it, the pie turned out to be delicious.  When I saw “Pizza Con Uovo,” on the menu at Pizza Nea, I just had to try it.

When last I wrote about this fine meal with Steve and Sophie Kelley, I left off when the food arrived.  In keeping with the Quiche Moraine spirit of using restaurants as the backdrop for good conversation, I would like to share some of what I learned during that meal about Steve and Sophie.

Steve reads science fiction, which I accept as a positive sign that he is truly interested in melding science and culture.  I asked about his favorite writers, and the first name that he mentioned is Minneapolis resident Lois McMaster Bujold. Sophie is more interested in mystery novels. She talked about P.D. James and specifically the book The Children of Men. I would classify that as science fiction too, but such boundaries are not fixed.

While we ate, I made the faux pas of asking Steve a question just as he was about to take a bite to eat.  When I realized that he was about to answer, I told him it was okay to wait until he had finished chewing and Sophie slyly reminded him to not talk with his mouth full.  In the meantime, I talked to Sophie about her own background and history.  As I mentioned before, Sophie has a background in banking and finance.  She worked her way from bank teller to CEO of local banks and is currently seeking a new opportunity in that field.

I first met Steve and Sophie at their headquarters in the spring of 2006, while we were all getting ready for the caucuses.  I had been watching his career and was impressed by the ways that he had used technology to improve public policy (more about that later).  We were sitting and talking in a group, and one of the first things that struck me about him was that he wanted to talk to those of us who were volunteering as much as to his hired staff.  I found this to be refreshing because in other campaigns, the candidate was “shielded” by his staff from the hoi polloi who were the “boots on the ground.”  Steve talked to me, asked about my concerns and won my loyalty.

He didn’t win the nomination in 2006, but he delivered a knockout speech at the convention. I asked him whether he had any regrets over the outcome in that race and in the race for attorney general (which ended up with the party’s endorsement of current Attorney General Lori Swanson).  He told me that he has no regrets, because he doesn’t think that way.  He learned some lessons on how to approach this race, and we need to watch what he does differently.  It is unfortunate that already he has been labeled as a “perennial” candidate after only one concerted effort at the governor’s race.  He referred to Blois Olson’s governor’s race handicapping article at MinnPost.  In my opinion, with the state DFL convention still more than a year away, it’s far too early to begin ranking the potential candidates.

At this point we should be looking both at what is at stake in 2010, and at what the candidates have done to show they can effectively lead this state out of the doldrums caused by a governor who has made a “No New Taxes” pledge the unmoving focal point of his administration.

Minnesota needs to be able to respond quickly to the emerging needs of our state’s deteriorating infrastructure.  Education and science are important tools for knowing how to approach the problems. So, what has Steve Kelley done to demonstrate leadership in using science and technology?

As a legislator and state senator, he recognized early on that emergency services and their support staff need to have the means to communicate across agencies quickly and effectively in order to respond to disasters.  Steve told me about the project to secure frequencies for emergency radio channels.  New York police and fire department officials had publicly stated that after the attacks on the World Trade Center, rescue efforts were hampered by the lack of cross-departmental radio communications. Changes to this infrastructure were recommended in the 9/11 Commission report. Many states and municipalities today have not improved their first responder communication systems.

It took several years to cut through the red tape, but a local system was firmly in place in time to assist the numerous rescue, fire and police departments in Minneapolis, Hennepin County and the State of Minnesota to coordinate emergency response when the 35W bridge collapsed in 2007.

The other major piece of legislation that Kelley was able to work through and see made into law is the one he is most proud of creating.  This is the medical “Adverse Event Reporting System.”  Patient protection is enhanced by monitoring these issues, and the legislation has enabled sites such as this one at the Minnesota Department of Health. What Kelley found most notable is that other states and even the federal government are now using Minnesota’s program as a model for developing their own reporting and procedures.

For Minnesota’s future, Kelley has promoted innovative programs to creatively reward and support schools and teachers.  He thinks that QComp’s incentive programs measure the wrong types of progress.  Both he and Sophie deplore the idea that because of the increased reliance on standardized testing, teachers are finding that they have less room for creative learning that builds on “learning how to learn.”

At this point in the conversation, Sophie looked at her watch. It was getting late and she had to leave for another meeting.  So Steve and I chatted a bit more about plans and politics, each of us saying just enough, and not too much, about our own thoughts about the future.

With two trips to Pizza Nea under my belt, I can give the restaurant a “thumbs up.”  I’d do the same for Steve and Sophie Kelley, but that would give the appearance of a bias….

Pizza Nea is at 306 E. Hennepin Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Neapolitan cuisine and a cozy atmosphere.

In the email, she had asked for my time. She wanted to talk to me about a strategy for finishing her degree in anthropology, and she wanted to know whether there was some research that she could do with me. At the end of the email, she said, “Can we please meet at the Hard Times? I’d be more comfortable.”

To this day, even though Lizzie has been my student, then my colleague, and now is my friend as well (and still my colleague), and even though it has been many years since this particular email (how time flies!), I have never asked her exactly why she wanted to meet in the local anarchist coffee shop rather than in my office. But I don’t think I’ve needed to ask her that; I have a sense that I know why.

So I arrived at the coffee shop not entirely sure why I was there or what I was going to do or even exactly whom I was meeting. I had a vague idea of who Lizzie was, but it would be all too easy to get it wrong and mistake her for someone else or someone else for her. She was small, had red hair, and would be wearing black, as most of my students seemed to. Among the young women in the coffee shop, this ruled out…almost no one. So I went to the counter and ordered something, figuring that whatever needed to happen would happen. When my coffee was ready, I paid and picked it up and turned around and there she was. Maybe.

“Lizzie?”

“Yes. Hi.”

“Okay, then, let’s talk.”

And we walked over to one of the tables by the front window and sat down. Almost immediately a young man came over and sat down on a nearby chair and said “Oh, Professor Laden. Hey, I was in your class two years ago. Your human evolution class. I’m sure you don’t remember me, but I just wanted to tell you how great it was.”

I got the sense that Lizzie knew this young man.

“Well, I’m glad you liked it.”

I also got the impression that this young man was a regular in the Hard Times. He was probably one of the local anarchists.

“Yeah, it was great. I couldn’t’ believe the things you were saying. You totally changed the way I think about…everything…,” and as he said this, a young woman came over and sat down next to him, joining our little group.

I realized as this conversation developed that the reason these two kids had come by to talk was because Lizzie was there. Lizzie was with me, so they could come over too. I’d been in this very coffee shop countless times previously, and most of the young anarchist crowd were polite but avoided me unless they specifically knew me. No particular reason for that…other than that I was probably known to most of them as someone who taught at the U, and who may have been a bit intimidating (those of you who’ve met me know that I’m a big, scary guy with a mean face that most people avoid getting anywhere near). With Lizzie sitting with me, unharmed and clearly not intimidated, it was safe to explore, say hi, ask a few questions.

“Your lectures were totally awesome. They made me rethink everything. Everything. In fact, that is why I dropped out of college. Now, I mainly hang out here.”

Oh, great, I thought. I converted a perfectly normal young man into an anarchist. I wondered whether there was a particular lecture that did it…

“Me too!” Suddenly the girl was animated and involved in the conversation. “Some professor I had in some class three years ago. He was totally awesome. He made me realize that I did not belong in school and that I just needed to do my own thing.” Then she looked at me, rather closely. “But it wasn’t this one. It was some other professor.”

“Hmm, I wonder who?” I said, glad that I was not the only one who was busy ruining the entire system of education.

Now, the boy was looking at the girl with a quizzical look, and the girl was looking at me. “He had long hair and a mustache,” she said, remembering her wayback.

A moment of silence. Then the boy said to the girl, “Imagine him with long hair,” and his thumb pointed to me.

Lizzie chimed in, “And a mustache. A big mustache like a pirate.”

And the girl’s eyes widened and her mouth made a big “O”….

“It’s you!” she shouted. “You’re the one. You changed your hair, but it’s you!”

Oh, brother. Turns out I was ruining the entire system of education pretty much single-handedly.

Over the next few minutes, the two visitors wandered off and Lizzie and I were able to get down to business.

…Now, that scene you have in your mind, of Lizzie and me sitting across from each other at a tiny table in a dark and smoky coffee shop on the West Bank in Minneapolis …let it get all wavy and foggy and slowly fade away. Then it fades back in, but it is different. It’s still Lizzie and Greg, but now they are sitting next to each other at a bar, in a different but still darkish location, and the barkeep has just put a plate of Königsberger Klops in front of Greg and a plate of Wiener Schnitzel in front of Lizzie….

Greg had just been saying to Lizzie, “You know, the downside of knowing a blogger is that whatever happens…,” eyeing the Weiner Schnitzel, “…just might get blogged. Like this Wiener Schnitzel. I’ll probably have to blog that.” And verily, the Wiener Schnitzel was huge and impressive. Totally bloggable. “Plus, for some reason, I tend to write a blog post every time you and I have dinner together.”

“I did notice that,” replied Lizzie, with a measure of snark but not taking her eyes off of the Wiener Schnitzel–I assume calculating which parts to eat and which parts to load onto her bike for the ride home.

We were sitting in the Black Forest Inn in South Minneapolis, on Eat Street. The Black Forest is across the street from Azia and is also the location of a party PZ Myers and I threw a few months back for our readers, so some of you know this place. This establishment has been extant for a very long time and has a rich and interesting history.

To our right, as we sat at the old traditional bar, sipping the custom-made beer and munching on very authentic German food, was the famous Richard Avedon photograph. It seems that some years back, Avedon was a student at a nearby art college and came here regularly to hang out at the bar. At some point later on, he gave the owners of the Black Forest this photograph…a huge, almost life-size blow up of six or seven women, all Daughters of the American Revolution. They were sitting and standing around like they were about to get their portrait taken, or had just gotten their portrait taken, and they looked like a bunch of pretty tough broads. Most people who see this photograph, hanging behind huge sheets of Plexiglas off to one side of the rectangular, centrally placed bar, think it is a group of Germanic royalty. The women are wearing formal dresses with crown-like tiaras, and they all look very Germanic and stern. And their photograph is hanging in the Black Forest, which is otherwise adorned with myriad specimens of Germanic art and kitsch. But no, they are not Germanic royalty, just old-fashioned, upper-crust blue bloods from somewhere in the U.S.

Some time after the photograph was hung, a gentleman who at that time frequented the Black Forest and still frequents the neighborhood pulled a .357 magnum pistol out of his pistol-hiding place and put one bullet into the forehead of one of the ladies and another bullet into another lady’s chest. Bam. Bam. He double tapped the Avedon. The owners got really mad at that dude, and he is no longer allowed in the restaurant. I hear tell Avedon was not too happy about this either. The bullet holes are still quite visible, no repairs having been effected.

Anyway, Lizzie and I had gotten together for dinner very late on this Wednesday evening for a number of reasons. We needed to talk about some science and some personal stuff. We never got to all of the personal stuff because there was so much of it, with things happening in her family and my family and among mutual friends.

One of the things I wanted to touch on was this: We have a mutual friend who had gotten himself into trouble some years back and was now paying the price with an imminent stint in prison. I’ve given the details elsewhere. A few days before this dinner, I had gotten an email from him, and I didn’t think he’d mind if I shared it with Lizzie. For some reason I didn’t want to just forward it to her. That that didn’t seem right or respectful. So I had a printout which I let Lizzie read at the bar, before the dinner had been delivered by the barkeep.

What is relevant to the present discussion about this long letter with many things in it was this one part, which I shall paraphrase: “When I started to take your class, way back when, I was involved in these illegal things I was doing. But in your lectures, you showed me the value of science and scientific thinking. This totally changed my mind about everything, and I walked away from the life of an anarchist and decided that I needed to become a scientist.”

So. Anarchy 2; Science 1.

______________

There is another feature of that night’s dinner that I’ve decided to relate in a different forum. Here.

We needed to talk, to spend some time alone and in a fairly quiet, undisturbed location so we could discuss a mutual friend who had gotten into some very serious trouble. We needed to find out where we each were on the issue, about our respective mutual states; we needed to compare notes and remember details covering several years of time; we needed to talk about what had to happen next. And given our schedules, we needed to eat. Which is fortunate, because it was time for me to write another restaurant review.

It was Lizzie’s birthday. Well, two days before, but close enough. We’re close enough friends, Lizzie and me, but we don’t travel or live in the same social circuit. I’d never be at her birthday party. (Though actually she came to mine…which was only the second birthday party I’d ever had in my life, now that I think about it. But that’s another story.) Anyway, I said, “I want to take you someplace nice because it is your birthday,” and we went to one of my favorite places, Azia.

We’d been there before, and there is a reason this fact is rather strange when I contemplate it. A few years ago, Amanda and I went to dinner with Lizzie and the very same mutual friend I mention above. That fact was not on my mind when I proposed Azia (not consciously, anyway). What was on my mind was the char. We’ll get to that. That dinner, or more exactly our memory of it, would become part of this night’s conversation, because we both struggled to remember exactly why we four got together for dinner that night to begin with and where in the course of our various relationships we all were. Were we all friends like we are now? Or were we just getting to know our mutual friend? Was it a get acquainted dinner or a good-bye dinner? Eventually we figured out that it was a good-bye dinner. Which when I look back at it is rather sad. I’ll get to that too.

Azia is a fusion Asian joint once described as “Sacred Asian art meets James Bond Chic,” owned by Thom Pham. Thom opened this Eat Street restaurant a few years back on the local Corner of Restaurant Death. A sequence of restaurants had previously opened and closed at the corner of Nicollet and 26th, across from the Black Forest. Despite the poor luck earlier establishments had suffered, Azia ended up having great success.

We showed up early in the evening, and the place was pretty empty. I thought about telling the maître d’ that we’d like a quiet corner, that we didn’t want to be disturbed, that we were here to talk privately and eat a simple dinner. But since she was already steering us towards the ideal quiet corner, I kept my mouth shut and accepted the out-of-the-way booth. That made what happened next a little funny.

I should say that the service at Azia is usually super-excellent and sometimes not, but when it is not, it is never, ever bad. It is just sometimes a little quirky. This is a big place in a nomadic market, so while there is always a core group of servers, there is a certain amount of variation around the edges. Tonight’s server was a woman I had not seen before, who clearly knew the menu and demonstrated her experience quite nicely with the char. I’ll get to that in a moment.

But her style was not what we were looking for. From the moment we were seated, Lizzie and I engaged in our vitally important conversation. We had a mutual friend who had suddenly found himself in very very deep trouble with the law, and we had just heard about it. I knew he and Lizzie knew each other, but I did not know how well. I did not know if this was going to be a rough blow, a bewildering moment, or a case of serious annoyance for her. And I don’t think Lizzie could have known that for me either. So we needed to assess our states of mind and heart in relation to this important matter. And while we engaged in this opening round of discussion, I’m pretty sure the waitress came by four or five times to see whether we needed anything.

“Okay, we’d better make one decision, don’t you think? Do you want wine? What kind, how much? Okay, may I suggest the Faustino Rioja?”

Now we were ready. Our waitress came back and we ordered the wine. She checked both of our IDs and it was brought to us. I was grinning about having my ID checked when she walked away, and so was Lizzie.

“I think it was my sweater.”

We both laughed at the prospect that my simple black Woolrich sweater (purchased, by the way, in 1988, so the sweater itself was almost old enough to have a cocktail) would make me look decades younger, and then we returned to our conversation.

By this time we had firmly established the details and found much agreement about the basics of all the relationships. Both of us thought well of our friend, and we were very saddened by the current situation. He was going to go to prison for a long time, there was no way around that. And while we knew that it could have been worse, we still wanted it to be better than it was.

But that was not enough. We had to do more than order the wine because we were now on visit nine from our server. Now, you have to understand that we did not find this annoying. She was not being annoying. She was just being very, very helpful, and perhaps a bit lonely, because we were the only table seated at her station. Also, since I’m one of his oldest customers, Thom sometimes gives the secret hand signal to his staff to be extra nice. I think this night Thom may have had a fly buzzing around his head and accidentally gave the secret hand signal five or six times. So we made an important decision.

Pot stickers. Lizzie said pot stickers, and I asked her whether the details mattered, and she said no. So when our server came by, I ordered them pork and sautéed. These are the best pot stickers in town bar none, by the way.

Which reminds me. For one year, not long after Azia opened, I lived three or four blocks to the north of Azia, and almost every week, Julia and I would have lunch here. That was just after I had broken up with my sig-oth, who also lived a few blocks away but to the south. She (I’ll call her Georgia) had said to me “Hey, if you ever go eat at Azia or anywhere else in the neighborhood, let me know so we can avoid the embarrassment of running into each other. Especially if you’re with a girl or something.”

So the first time we were heading over to Azia, Julia (then about 9 years old) and I, I mentioned this to Julia and said, “Here, take my cell phone and call Georgia and tell her we’re eating at Azia. Don’t worry, she won’t answer the phone; just leave a message. We have this prearranged.”

So Julia speed dials Georgia and blurts out, and I was not expecting this, “We are going to Azia. You must not go there. Repeat. We are going to Azia,” like she was calling in an airstrike. So ever since then, whenever I went to Azia with a girl (Julia) I gave her the phone and she made the call.

Anyhow, I mention this only because of the pot stickers. Julia and I had pot stickers for lunch every week, and if we were hungry, we’d split an order of the Bow Tie Pasta, which can be ordered with any of several different “proteins” (as we seem to refer to animal tissue or tofu these days), which is perfect for two people to share.

To continue: Lizzie and I now moved on in our conversation to the more philosophical issues of why our friend would have done what he did. I wanted to know Lizzie’s personal feeling about this sort of thing. Our friend was going to prison for over political activities that would clearly be labeled by any court in the land, or any FBI agent, as terroristic. I hate that word, terroristic. But many people would take such an individual and write them off entirely because anybody who engages in any violent activities that can be labeled as terroristic equals Osama bin Laden, and there are no exceptions. I myself believe that life is more complex than that, and people are more complex than that. So does Lizzie. It turns out that we both feel that our mutual friend should very much not have done what he did, but that did not make us not care about him as a person, or love him less as our friend.

But that was not enough. It would never be enough to merely order pot stickers. Things were getting dicey. Visit fourteen was imminent, and I felt we had to do something about it. Now again, I say we were not annoyed. Our waitress was just trying to do a good job. We understand these things. Lizzie herself has been a server, and in fact for much of the time I’ve known her, she’s had at least a part time job in a restaurant. I’ve done that kind of work too, but not nearly as much and a very long time ago. Suffice it to say that we were far more amused, even endeared, than annoyed. But we had to act, so we did.

We consulted the menu, or should I say Lizzie consulted the menu (I have it in my head pretty much), and she was interested in the char the server had mentioned. So I urged us on in that direction. Lizzie also liked the looks of the Hot and Spicy Lemongrass Grilled with Field Vegetables. She wanted it with Tofu. She likes Tofu. This is a person I love and admire and think very highly of. So I overlooked the Tofu thing and agreed that this would be good. It turns out that Thom makes tofu taste good somehow. Who knew it was even possible?

With the pot stickers delivered and consumed, we made our order on the next pass of the server. Just then Lizzie excused herself to visit the ladies’. By the way, when you eat at Azia, the men’s is on the left, ladies’ on the right. It is hard to tell, so now you know and won’t be confused.

While Lizzie was gone, the server came by and folded her napkin for her.

The next step in our conversation was remembering details. For reasons I will not elaborate on here, I needed to have a pretty good picture of what everyone was doing, where, and when over the last six or seven years. It was helpful to speak with Lizzie about this. I became pretty certain that I knew each of them before they knew each other and learned how they initially became acquainted. I was very interested to hear that Lizzie had had dinner with our friend and his parents. In reconstructing events, I remembered that I was supposed to have dinner with him and his parents one day, and they called it off a the last minute. This was the same parental trip, so I guess I was jilted in favor of Lizzie Well, I can’t say that I blame them. I’d rather have dinner with Lizzie than myself too.

So the char came, and this is a big deal. The server is required to fillet the fish right there at the table. There are servers as Azia who do this in seconds, and it is brilliant to watch. Our server did not do it quickly, but she did it very skillfully. Everybody takes off the head and tail first.

“Do you want the head?”

“Of course. Best part, really.”

So she does not put the head in the discard pile. Other servers slice the top half off the fish clean off, then take out the bones, then fold the top half back on. Instead, our server opened the fish like the hood of a car and pulled the bone out. Interesting, and well done. Then the fish gets chopped sagittally into chunks.

At this point, most servers are done. They check whether you want anything else, and move off. Not our server! No. She placed some char on Lizzie’s plate. Then joined that with the excellent Wok fried veggies that come with the char, and applied the absolutely incredible to die for glaze. Then she opened the bamboo box that the Lemongrass was in and served some of that to Lizzie, opened the bottom of the bamboo steamer and gave her some rice. Then she gave me some rice, some lemongrass, some wok veggies, and my piece of char, thus reversing the order and making the mirror image of the two plates, on each side of the table, work perfectly. For the next several minutes, we ate and ate and ate. Lizzie quite literally dived into her food, she was clearly starving. That was fun to watch for a while, then I ate the eyeballs out of the fish head and started into my plate.

The rest of the meal, the rest of the conversation, was more mundane. We talked about other matters, we heaped more food on our plates, we got the check, we were introduced to a second server who had just come on duty, just in case we needed him, and as always, Thom came by to see if all was well. And we said, of course it was.

One of the nicer meals I’ve had. It turns out that the char and the lemongrass is a perfect combination. One of the saddest evenings I’ve had. It is not pleasant to contemplate a decade in prison for a person you care for. But all my time with Lizzie is good. I’m lucky to have her as a friend, and I bothered to tell her so that night.

Azia is on Eat Street in South Minneapolis. It is also the home of the Caterpillar Lounge and the Anemoni Sushi and Oyster Bar. Here is the web site.

I was up visiting my dad last week in Hallock, Minnesota. The county seat of Kittson County is in the far northwestern corner of the state. With a population of 1200 people, it is not a big town. It is, at that, still the biggest town in the county. I grew up in Hallock, but my parents’ roots are in a far smaller town. Orleans is 10 miles north and, during its heyday, peaked at some fifty people.

How to get into and out of Lancaster

Fifty people is not a large enough group around which to build a full social circle. My parents had friends and family in both Humboldt to the west and Lancaster to the east. While I was growing up, my grandparents lived in Lancaster. Lancaster had, at that time, 462 people according to the sign outside of town. With a K-12 school, a few churches, a grocery store, dentist and some grain elevators, it was almost a self-contained town.

Dad still has friends in Lancaster, even though he’s lived in Hallock for nearly fifty years.  His best friend is Richard, and they got to know each other when Dad worked part time for my uncle after Dad retired from the U.S. Customs.  Richard works for my uncle, too.

Last Monday, when the kids and I arrived in Hallock for their spring break vacation, Dad suggested that we go to Lancaster to eat.  Dad doesn’t have much of an appetite these days, so this was kind of a surprise but a welcome one.  There are two restaurants in Lancaster.  The End of the Line is on U.S. Highway 59 on the north end of town.  Dean’s Diner is the other one, right on Main Street.

Susan built the café in the 1970′s.  It’s a steel building, rectangular and architecturally unremarkable.  When I was in high school, my social circle was a small group of kids from Kennedy, Hallock, Humboldt and Lancaster.  We gathered at the different restaurants in our respective hometowns.  Kennedy and Humboldt didn’t really have “hangout” places, so we were either at the Mileage Café in Hallock or Susan’s Café in Lancaster.

For some reason, Susan didn’t seem to like me very much.  I have no clue as to why.  I was as agreeable as a kid as I am now as an adult.  Whenever we would go into her restaurant, she would smile at my friends and then give me a disapproving glance.  It didn’t seem to matter how nice I was.  It might have had something to do with some mischief my cousin had created, or perhaps my older brother.  I had certainly never skipped out on a meal without paying for it.

Susan’s Café had a jukebox.  One Sunday we were in the café, and a guy from Lancaster I barely knew put in a quarter and picked out “Walk This Way” by Aerosmith.  It was a song that I didn’t really care for when it was new, and only later did I learn to appreciate it.  I asked who the guy was, and they told me his name is Dean.  I said, “Hi,” and he just kind of looked at me and gave me a disapproving glance.  Sometimes I just can’t win with people.  So we left and drove around Lancaster, talking on the CB radio with truckers.  (Seventies, remember?)

I saw Dean here and there over the years.  I never really said, “Hi,” to him again, and he never really said, “Hi,” to me.  I just knew him as the guy who liked Aerosmith but not me.

He took over the restaurant in 2006.  Several people had tried to make it work since Susan sold it to enjoy her retirement, but nobody could replicate the cooking and the magic until Dean took over.  Now it’s a going concern again, and it is Dad’s regular restaurant.

Monday night we sat down at a table; Dad, the kids, Richard and me.  We ordered dinner, or “supper” as they call it in the rural areas of Minnesota.  Ella ordered a California burger, Bing a bacon cheeseburger, Dad a hamburger, Richard a cheeseburger with fries and me a patty melt and a bowl of chicken wild rice soup. Dean’s Diner has a full small-town restaurant menu, but we all wanted fried comfort food.

If  I may digress: Earlier that day the kids and I had stopped to eat at a Culver’s Restaurant in Grand Forks.  I had ordered a sourdough bread patty melt, but it was the single blandest-tasting piece of meat I had ever had in my life.  I couldn’t taste the meat, couldn’t taste the “sour” in the sourdough, couldn’t taste the cheese and could barely taste the fries.  The only things at Culver’s that had any flavor were the ketchup and the salt.

At Dean’s Diner, the patty melt had flavor.  The meat tasted like fresh ground steak.  The “Swiss” cheese tasted like white American cheddar and the onions tasted like onions.  I didn’t need to add ketchup or salt in order to enjoy my meal.  The soup was rich and tasty, too.

As we were eating, a family walked in.  Six girls and their mother.  The mother looked somewhat familiar. She is a person from my distant past.  I wasn’t sure who she was, so I asked Richard.  He told me it was Kelli Hewitt.  When she was younger, and she is the same age as I am, she was Kelli Porter.  Kelli had married my friend Jimmy Hewitt.  I kind of knew Kelli, but never very well.  I decided to go talk to her.

I had to remind her who I was, but after I did, she remembered me.  I found out that Jimmy had just returned from the War in Iraq the prior Thursday, and that their daughter Ashlee is headed back from Nashville to welcome him home.  Kelli and I didn’t have much to talk about, so Katrice (click the link to find out who Katrice is) and I talked about music for a few minutes.

I went back and sat down, and enjoyed my meal.  Dean came out from behind the counter and looked my way, but he didn’t say anything. Not even, “Hi.”

If you find yourself in Lancaster, Minnesota, stop in at Dean’s Diner.  Don’t tell Dean I sent you.  Just enjoy the meal.

Dean’s Diner is at 123 Central Avenue S. in Lancaster, Minnesota.  Daily specials until the food runs out. Map to Dean’s Diner.