One of the latest, persistent, and pernicious Internet memes is that Amy Klobuchar can no longer be considered a vice presidential candidate because she was the prosecutor who failed to investigate or charge Chauvin for those first three. The fourth incident is, of course, Chauvin’s cold blooded and very public murder of George Floyd just a few days ago.

The theory that Kloubchar should have prosecuted Chauvin is deeply and, even, absurdly flawed, however. As noted, the first incident was not of interest in this regard. The second incident happened in a different county than the one in which then prosecutor Amy Klobuchar worked. For her to have prosecuted someone in a different county would have been extraordinary. (And no, Chauvin was not working at the time as a cop in Klobuchar’s county, Hennepin.) The third incident occurred when Klobuchar was a United States Senator, not the Hennpin County prosecutor.

When I pointed out these difficulties with the theory on a friend’s very long Facebook comment thread on this topic, my comments were deleted. In another instance on Facebook, a person, faced with the truth, stated that there are many, many police incidents that are not known to anyone because they are kept secret, and that is where we see the evidence against Kloubchar. (Added: More recently, I’m now getting threats of violence because I’m perceived as supporting Klobuchar for VP. Which as I’ve made clear, I’m not. But seriously? Threatening my family because you are illiterate? But I digress…)

Let us pause for a moment of silence, during which time you can click on this link to the Conspiracy Handbook.

Are we back? Ok.

ADDED: Because there is already some conspiratorial pushback on this post, I want to be very clear. The people complaining about Klobuchar vis-a-vis Chauvin cite three incidents.

1) 2006, as one of six Minneapolis third precinct cops who responded to a stabbing. The suspect fled, then got out of his vechile wielding a shotgun. He was shot by several of the cops in pursuit. The cops were cleared in that shooting.

2) Soon after, there was a complaint against him in Lino Lakes That case involved a law suit, which is not the purview of the district attorney, and it was dismissed. Lino Lakes is in Anoka County, Klobuchar was CA in Hennepin County.

… Klobuchar was elected to the Senate in 2006 and started to serve in January 2007 …

3) In 2008 … well, who really cares what happened vis-a-vis Chauvin and Klobuchar in 2008, she was in the Senate.

Sources: CNN, NBC, Wikipedia.

ALSO ADDED: It turns out that Chauvin and George Floyd knew each other They both worked as bouncers or security over a 17 year period at the same club. This is not the point of this post, but it seems important to note, though I’m not sure yet why it is important. I’ll quickly add that the neighborhood where this all happened, where I lived for several years, is pretty tight. Lots of people know lots of other people, and it is part of the culture of that part of town to be friendly and to know your neighbors, attend common events, etc. So this may mean nothing. Or it could mean a lot, we’ll see.

This attack on Klobuchar appears to be systematic, wide spread, and very successful. I am not sure if I can say yet if it is her political rivals within the Democratic Party, the Republicans, or some outside influence like the Putin/Trump gang. It feels like rivals from within the party, though, because their method is usually to make up things that may be totally unbelievable, then repeat them a few times, then duck and cover. I don’t know why that is their method, but it is.

Some people have gotten really mad at me for “defending” Klobuchar. It does not matter to them that I am not actually defending Klobuchar, and that I’m not even supporting her to be Biden’s Vice Presidential running mate (see below). What I am defending is the truth, and I’m questioning what looks to me like an inappropriate political hit job.

But let us talk about Klobuchar as a VP or Presidential candidate for just a second. Well, not really “let us talk,” more like “I’m going to talk for a second, you can listen if you want.”

Klobuchar was a successful prosecutor during a period in our recent history when we (the people, in majority, not necessarily you or me) demanded tough prosecutors. This was the latter part of the era in which we, Americans the ultimate Asshats, incarcerated more people, and generally people of color, than anyone had been incarcerating across the world. Prosecutors were doing the jobs we hired them to do. Now, some of those prosecutors are in other lines of work. It may well be possible that people like Amy Klobuchar and Kamala Harris can never really run for President or be a Vice President for this reason. So be it.

That does not happen to be why I’m not a supporter of Klobuchar for president, though. My consideration of this issue doesn’t even get that far. We actually have significant policy differences, but I regard that as less important than some might because policy is set by Congress in those particular areas. I mostly don’t want Klobuchar in the presidential race because I want her as Senator. “As senator?!!?” you might think. “But, but, but…” you might think. But hear me out.

I am something of a student of Minnesota politics these days. If you are as well, I’m sure you’ll agree with me on this, because I’m mainly referring to basic facts. Minnesotans tend to send more Republicans than you might think to Congress. Minnesota is one of only two places that went against the Blue Wave two years ago in our Congressional delegation, net. In the past, we sent the man regarded as the Worst Senator in Washington DC, Norm Coleman to the Senate. Twice. And the first time it was because we got mad at the Wellstone family for articulating progressive Democratic values at a funeral. That is the reason Norm Coleman was Senator for two terms.

I’ve spent a lot more time than ,many of my Twin Cities associates and friends communicating with Rural Minnesotans. I’ve had this conversation:

“You can’t possibly tell you would vote for Trump.”

“I voted for him last time, I’ll vote for him again.”

“But he’s bad for farmers, and the environment, and everything you have here in this county is farming and environmental tourism.”

“Oh, no, that’s just his game. He’s on our side, believe me. He’s great.”

“Do you usually vote for Republicans?”

“Oh, yes, all the time, they are on my side.”

“So, Klobuchar, what about…”

“Amy’s great! I love Amy!”

So, there you go. Keep Senator Klobuchar in the Senate, maybe we get to keep sending two Democrats to Washington. Same with Al Franken, by the way. The Klobucahr-Franken team was effective at keeping Minnesota blue in the Senate. These days, even with a strong Trump Backlash, we are on tenuous ground here.

But, Isaac Orr, a paid opinion piece writer for the Center of the American Experiment, formerly with the Heartland Institute, most famous for his pro-fracking writing, and friend of the Wisconsin mining industry, decided to write an opinion piece for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which the “Strib” blindly passed on to its readers (shame on them). Orr made the entirely false claim that it is a good thing we were not using too much renewable energy during last week’s cold snap. In fact, it was fossil fuels that failed some customers, not renewables.

From Desmogblog, “SourceWatch describes the Center for the American Experiment (CAE) as a “right-wing pressure group” that seeks to influence legislation in Minnesota. CAE is also a member of the State Policy Network, a network of conservative think tanks funded by the Koch brothers and fighting for limited government and regularly opposing climate change legislation in the US.”

So, I wrote a Letter to the Editor and the Strib also passed that on to their readers!

To the Editor:

Isaac Orr, a policy fellow for the pro-fossil-fuel Center of the American Experiment, suggests that we slow our statewide efforts to replace fossil fuels with alternatives such as wind and solar (“Cold snap shows reliable energy sources are critical,” Feb. 1). He notes that a large number of Minnesotans needed to curtail their use of natural gas, a fossil fuel, so that we wouldn’t run out in the middle of the cold crisis.

Pro tip for Mr. Orr: Next time he writes a hit piece against clean energy, he might consider leaving that sort of thing out.

Orr catalogs the types of energy that were used over the cold snap to provide electricity to homes. Most of that electricity was, of course, not used for heating, but never mind that. His point seemed to be that since we use a lot of coal and natural gas, and have not yet installed very much in the way of clean fuel infrastructure, we should therefore not install very much clean fuel infrastructure. This sort of is-ought argument is not helpful or, really, meaningful.

We are moving toward the use of clean energy slowly — probably too slowly — but also carefully. At this time, it is clear that future solar and wind will be much cheaper than present-day coal and methane. When we make our own energy, 100 percent of the contribution of that industry to the statewide or national economy is realized. When we buy methane, coal and oil from other states or countries, Minnesota (or America) loses out.

There have been no instances of which I’m aware in which deploying wind or solar power in Minnesota has caused an energy company to tell customers to stop using fuel. As we deploy more and more clean energy, the energy suppliers, under appropriate regulation, will produce that energy in a way that is reliable, clean and reasonably priced. We know this is possible, is being done increasingly across the world and, for the sake of our children’s future, is necessary.

There is an irony in Orr’s commentary: Most climate experts agree that the likelihood of a polar air mass excursion of the type we experienced in the last week of January is increased by changes in global jet stream patterns that are now undeniably linked to warming caused by the human use of fossil fuels. We have ignored this problem for too long. We need to act now.

Greg Laden, Plymouth
Feb 1 2019

For more information about climate change, I recommend these books:

The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy by Michael Mann, with a new chapter on Trump.

Dire Predictions: The Visual Guide to the Findings of the IPCC, also by Michael Mann. this is an excllent graphics-rich summary of the IPCC results on climate change. Excellent for use in the middle school or high school classroom.

Caring for Creation: The Evangelical’s Guide to Climate Change and a Healthy Environment by Paul Douglas, the country’s most famous meteorologist who does not work for the Today’s show, looking at climate change from the point of view of an Evangelical Republican.

28 Climate Change Elevator Pitches: Short Explanations on the Scientific Basis of Man-made Climate Change by Rob Honeycutt.

Climate Change: What Everyone Needs to Know® by Joe Romm.

The orignial hit piece ALL THE STUFF IN THIS IS WRONG:

Bitter cold shows reliable energy sources are critical

This week’s bitter cold had the potential to be deadly. But thanks to reliable forms of energy like coal, natural gas and nuclear power, it wasn’t.

Lawmakers considering doubling Minnesota’s renewable energy mandate to 50 percent by 2030 should use this week’s weather as a moment to reconsider their plans to lean so heavily on wind and solar.

On Wednesday, when the morning temperature in the Twin Cities was negative 24 degrees, wind energy provided just 4 percent of the electricity and utilized just 24 percent of its installed capacity in a region monitored by the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator (MISO), a not-for-profit organization that ensures reliable, least-cost delivery of electricity across all or parts of 15 U.S. states, including Minnesota.

Meanwhile, coal-fired power plants provided 45 percent of MISO’s power and nuclear provided 13 percent — most of this from Minnesota’s Prairie Island and Monticello nuclear plants (which we should keep open, by the way). Natural gas provided 26 percent of our electricity use at that time, and the remainder was imported from Canada and other U.S. states.

Natural gas also heated the homes of approximately 66 percent of Minnesotans this week, by far the most for any home heating fuel, but there wasn’t enough gas to combat the frigid temperatures.

Because of the extreme cold, Xcel Energy urged its natural gas customers in Becker, Big Lake, Chisago City, Lindstrom, Princeton and Isanti to reduce the settings on their thermostats, first down to 60 degrees, then to 63, through Thursday morning to conserve enough natural gas to prevent a widespread shortage as temperatures remained 14 below zero. Some Xcel customers in the Princeton area lost gas service, and Xcel reserved rooms for them in nearby hotels.

Enacting a 50 percent renewable energy mandate will not replace coal-fired power plants with wind and solar. It will replace coal-fired power plants with wind, solar and natural gas — enough natural gas power plants to potentially generate up to 100 percent of our electricity needs in the very possible eventuality that wind or solar are generating zero electricity at a given moment. Or, on a day like Wednesday, 96 percent of electricity might have to be generated by natural gas, with wind contributing 4 percent.

This week’s urgent notice from Xcel to conserve natural gas shows there is real danger in putting all of our eggs into the renewables-plus-natural gas basket. At minimum, pursuing a grid powered entirely by solar, wind and natural gas would require more natural gas pipeline capacity, which is likely to be opposed by the factions that are currently challenging the replacement of the Line 3 pipeline.

Lest I be accused of unfairness, it’s true that any number of unforeseen circumstances could prevent a coal, nuclear or natural gas plant from being able to run during a cold snap like this. But the key word is “unforeseen.” The intermittency of wind and solar is a feature, not a bug, which is why Minnesota lawmakers should reconsider the wisdom of enacting a mandate requiring 50 percent of our electricity to come from intermittent renewable sources.

If Minnesota lawmakers are sincere in their belief that we must reduce carbon dioxide emissions as soon as possible, they must lift Minnesota’s ban on new nuclear power plants, which has been in place since 1994.

Not only would nuclear power plants be essentially guaranteed to run in minus-24-degree weather, but a forthcoming study by American Experiment has found that new nuclear power plants could not only achieve a lower emissions rate by 2030, but also save Minnesota $30.2 billion through 2050.

Minnesota can show true leadership, and provide reliable, affordable and safe electricity by legalizing new nuclear power, not by doubling Minnesota’s reliance on intermittent renewable power (and natural gas).

Isaac Orr is a policy fellow at Center of the American Experiment.

Meanwhile, I call on Legislators in Minnesota to pass a law stating that we can not add any more fossil fuel sources into our energy mix, in utilities within or overlapping with the state of Minnesota. We need that bill passed during the next legislative session, to stop this plant and similar ideas in the fiture.

The building of this particular natural gas plant is not inevitable. It still has to be approved on the Wisconsin side of the border. From NPR:

If Wisconsin regulators approve the plan, the new power plant would produce at least 525 megawatts of electricity. Minnesota Power and its ratepayers would be on the hook for half the $700 million cost.

Minnesota Power covers roughly a third of the state, mostly in the northeastern quadrant of Minnesota, from Little Falls in the south to International Falls in the north and over to Duluth and up to Canada. Its customers include large taconite mines and power plants.

PUC regulators heard final arguments in the case earlier this month. Commissioners also decided Monday that the plan did not need to undergo additional environmental analysis, a decision that paved the way for its approval vote.

Methane is not a bridge fuel. It is a fossil fuel, and a greenhouse gas.

The study has shown that the economy in Minnesota can decarbonize by 80% (from 2005 levels) by 2050. All the decarbonization pathways involve deeper energy efficiency of existing electric demands (particularly in the industrial sector), heavy electrification of transportation, transitioningheating of space and water from natural gas and resistive heating to heat pumps, building new zero-emission generation technologies, and retiring fossil-fuel generation.

The electrification of other sectors provides the electricity sector with new demands, which have different load profiles to existing demands and have greater flexibility potential. These new loads provide increasing sales for the electricity sector to invest against. Further, the greater flexibility allows the electricity grid to incorporate more variable resources, which are low-cost and nearzero emissions. Further, the electrification provides net cost savings for consumers because the reduction in spending on other energy supplies (natural gas for heating and gasoline for transportation) outweighs the additional spending in the electricity sector for the electrified loads.

You can get the PDF here.

Similarly, the law that applies, and the actual application of the law if any, is complicated when it comes to non-natives committing crime on native lands, which are separate nations, within the United States. I am very far from an expert on this. What I know about it comes from conversations with my friend Shawn Otto, who wrote a novel set in this boundary space between native and non-native lands (Sins of Our Fathers: A Novel, excellent story, go read it).

PZ Myers commented on something related in a recent blog post in which he notes a recent study suggesting that nearly half of non-Native Americans do not believe that Native people exist.

Recently, a host on a wildly popular podcast, who is Indian (as in from the Indian subcontinent, in Asia) took to referring to himself and his compatriots as “real Indians,” a reference to the idea that Columbus got it wrong when he referred to the indigenous people he ran into in the Caribbean as “Indians,” thinking he was in Asia while at the same time not having a very clear concept of what “Asia” might actually be.

I found that reference deeply offensive and I’m neither Asian-Indian or American Indian. Its just that Native Americans have enough trouble being taken seriously that I’m pretty sure they don’t need some over privileged Hollywood type from California suggesting that Native Americans are in some way non-real.

I grew up in Upstate New York, and later moved to the Boston area. That was, in a sense, going backwards in historical time in relation to Indians. From my own studies of regional history and archaeological work in the time period, I knew that a very large percentage of the Native cultures near Boston, and anywhere near Boston, were wiped out way early in the Colonial Period, while Native groups played a more persistent role in US history in New York and nearby areas of Canada. Putting this another way, we are not even quite sure of the full range of tribes that existed or what they called themselves, along the Massachusetts coast, while the New York area Haudenosaunee and some Algonquin groups are well known in history, and very much present both on and off reservations.

I remember moving to Milwaukee for a year, and discovering that Wisconsin had what was referred to as the “Indian Problem” by some people. It sounds a little more obnoxious than it actually was. The problem was disagreement over fishing rights and regulations in commonly held territories, and it was a problem that involved claims by Indian groups vs. claims by the state. I heard the term “Indian Problem” later, and read it in older documents, when I moved to Minnesota. The process of taking land from Indians, and otherwise pushing them out, moving them aside, or starving them off, was very recent in Minnesota. There are living people who’s grandparents had artifacts from the Dakota War(aka “Sioux Upraising” or “Little Crow’s War”). Some of those artifacts may have been body parts from Native Americans executed after the uprising was put down. In historic documents, the “Indian Problem” seems sometimes to refer to the constant threat of Indian attack in areas near Minneapolis or Saint Paul, well within the current boundaries of the Twin Cities metro area, early in the 20th century. These attacks are memorialized in stories and newspaper accounts, way post-date the Dakota War, and I’m 100% sure they never ever happened. They were used as a publicity stunt to make the idea of traveling out to the Twin Cities to stay in a hotel and take in the fresh air more exciting for New Yorkers and others out east.

The study mentioned above is described here. The study shows that Native American erasure from common or popular understanding in the United States is partly due to the way Native people and issues are treated by the media. Also, Natives are largely underrepresented, or absent, in educational programs, or where they appear, it is as historical figures or factors as though they existed in the past, but not necessarily now.

I actually don’t see this as a huge problem in Minnesota, and I assume it is more of a bi-coastal and possibly Southern thing. Native American presence in Minnesota is pretty out front, and I think it would be very difficult to find that more than a tiny percentage of Minnesotans think Native Americans don’t exist. Of the several individuals running for Governor or Lt. Governor in Minnesota this year, at least one is a Native American. This does not mean that the attitude about Native people is good. It probably isn’t on average. Native American reservations are often discussed in the same light as really bad urban neighborhoods, as places to avoid. At best, Native Americans are interesting or quaint.

(I note that the above mentioned Shawn Otto write the script for a brand new planetarium show in our local natural history museum, in which a kid bonks his head and ends up in an oz-like world where he learns about the history of the universe. The role is played by a young Native boy. That was helpful.)

A few years ago there was an effort by the state, I think through the Department of Education, to have more reference to Native peoples in schools. The way they did this was, in my view, not smart. Although the standard itself was somewhat better defined, they essentially required that every core course taught in the schools incorporate something about Native Americans. That’s it. Simple. This, of course, required that, say, the physical science teacher, or the math teacher, be sufficiently expert in Native American studies of some sort, to come up with something, and sufficiently enlightened to not end up doing something harmful, misleading, or hateful. There are a lot of ways to get a key bit of subject matter into a curriculum. Telling each teacher to come up with ten minutes on that topic no matter what they are teaching has never been done before, for any topic. Why this topic? Clearly, the mandate was not being taken seriously.

From the Women’s Media Center coverage of the above mentioned report:

When exposed to narratives about Native people that included factual information about present-day Native life, more accurate history, positive examples of resilience, and information about systemic oppression, respondents from all demographics showed more support for pro-Native policy and social justice issues. Information that was shared with respondents included simple statements such as “The government signed over 500 treaties with Native Americans, all of which were broken by the federal government. From 1870 to 1970, the federal government forcibly removed Native American children from their homes to attend boarding schools.” On key issues such as the Indian Child Welfare Act, racist mascots, and tribal sovereignty, 16-24 percent more people supported the position of tribes after being exposed to these new messages.

That large a shift in public support can easily be the difference in an election outcome, a bill’s passage, or the actions of large corporations, such as sports teams. Positive and accurate portrayal of Natives in the mainstream media has the potential to significantly advance Native rights in this country. Alongside the report, Reclaiming Native Truth released a guide for allies on how to improve coverage of Native Americans. The guide includes examples of positive messaging and questions for media makers to ask themselves, such as “Am I inadvertently contributing to a false or negative narrative by not taking into account or including contemporary Native peoples in my work?”

“The research really challenges the media to do their job better. The media has a deep ethical responsibility to not fall into these standardized tropes,” said Echo Hawk. “We can do a lot in terms of empowering Native voices and telling Native stories, but we can’t do it on our own. We need non-Natives as allies who are also talking about us and championing accurate representation.”

Photo above: Minnesotans learning about Native Americans at the Mille Lacs Indian Museum, in Minnesota.

One day Ollie came up to the cabin after a couple of weeks down in the cities, and his mail box, out on the county road, was full of junk mail and a few good pieces of mail. Ollie had noticed over recent months that more and more mail was coming to the cabin address, and on more than one occasion he found several days worth either soaked because a bad rain had blown into the box, or found the mail knocked out by the wind and strewn around in the ditch by his drive. So, he decided, about mid August, on a plan to do something good and healthy for himself and deal with the mail box problem at the same time. Every evening, after dinner, Ollie would walk up the drive, out to the county road, and check on the mail.

Now, you have to understand a few pertinent facts.

First, Ollie and Helen’s cabin was pretty far north in Minnesota, up past Leech Lake. So, mid August was also considered the beginning of fall. But, in their retirement, Ollie and Helen had decided to spend more time up north, and were planning on staying through September, maybe even on to November, when the first snow would likely fall, and they’d close up the cabin for the season, pouring blue winterizing solution into the drains, pulling down the shades, but leaving the cabin door unlocked in case anyone needed to get out of the weather if the were lost in the woods or something. The cabin was way off the beaten track on a small lake with only one other cabin, a good mile and a quarter walk from the county road. That took Ollie about a half hour, which wasn’t bad considering his hip replacement surgery and all.

Another thing you need to know is this: Three years earlier, the power had gone out in the cabin, and Ollie realized they didn’t have a flashlight up there, so next time he was at the Ace Hardware in the nearest larger town he picked up one flashlight and two D cell batteries to put in it. Funny thing, though, happened next. Ollie got home with his flashlight and batteries. He opened the packages they were in, avoiding swearing at the molded plastic anti-theft wrappings that always cut up his knuckles. He put the two D-cells into the flashlight, and opened the drawer by the sink where they kept miscellaneous stuff. Helen and Ollie called it the junk drawer, but it contained mostly non-junk that they rarely even looked at but would occasionally need. A couple of screwdrivers. An open package of sticky-back velcro they had used only part of. A tangle of bungie cords. There was their daughter’s old cell phone she left with them. “Keep it charged and in the car.” “We don’t have an account with that company.” “I know, dad. But you can dial 911 on any cell phone and it works.” “I’m sure it doesn’t, Alice (her name was Alice) but you can put it in the junk drawer.” That sort of thing. Anyway, when Ollie opened the junk drawer, there was a flashlight already sitting right there that he did not remember ever seeing before! “Look we already had a flashlight,” he said to Helen. “I could have told you that if you had asked me,” she told him. “That was the one in the cabin when we bought it, remember?” Ollie didn’t even try to remember. That was some 22 or 23 years ago. Did they even have flashlights back then? Anyway, he put the new flashlight with the new batteries in the junk drawer next to the old flashlight, which by the way did not have any batteries in it.

Anyhow, that was some three years ago. Maybe four.

So over the rest of the sumer and fall, Ollie walked almost every day, or at least four or five days a week, let’s say, up the long driveway to the mailbox, and now and then found something in it and brought it back to the house. There was a stretch of five or six days in November, and yes, they had stayed till November, that Ollie didn’t go up to the box because he was feeling a bit under the weather and his hip replacement was bothering him. But after that, one evening, and it was at least a half hour later than it usually was because of what Helen had made for dinner, a roast that took her longer than she’d expected, that Ollie decided to go and check the mail.

But Ollie had a thought. He had noticed that the days were getting shorter and shorter, as they do. Right now, the sun was out yet, but he figured that by the time he got up to the mailbox, it would be pretty near dark, and certainly, by the time he got back, it would be full on dark. What, with it being cloudy that evening, it would be even darker. So, Ollie had the thought of bringing the flashlight with him.

So, he opened the junk drawer, saw the two flashlights. He picked up the one he had bought three years earlier, and he could tell it had the batteries in it because it was heavy. Then, he went out the door and up the road to the mailbox. And, sure enough, it got darker and darker as he headed for the mailbox. By the time he got there, it was pretty much full on night. But he could just see well enough yet to make out the mailbox, pull down the flap, and feel around inside. Nothing there. But, that wasn’t the point of his walk, his walk was for his health. He’d been told to walk more, for his hip and his heart.

So, Ollie turned back down the road and took his flashlight out of his pocket, and flipped the switch even has he took his first few steps.

But the flashlight did not go on. “Dagnabbit,” he said to himself. “Darn thing should work, it’s new. New batteries too. What the hay?”

Ollie had a terrible time getting his way back to the cabin in the dark. He would walk in the general direction he thought he should do, but eventually run into a soft area of ground he knew to be the shoulder of the drive. So, then, he’s adjust his course, and keep going. Every now and then he’d run face-long into a branch that hung low over the drive, and he’d almost swear. Eventually, though, he got down to where he could see lights from the cabin. After that, as long as he walked carefully to avoid tripping on anything, he had no problem getting back.

“That took a while, everything OK?”

“Ya, no problem here, just took a while.”

“OK, then.”

That night, Ollie put the flashlight that did not work on the counter near the junk drawer, with the intention of dealing with that problem the next day, when he was feeling less fussed about it.

Then the next day came, and again, Ollie was planning to head up to get the mail and take his walk a bit late, and the sun was going down even sooner, so he decided to take the flashlight again. So, he went over to the counter, and opened the drawer and took out the old flashlight, the one that was in the cabin when they bought it and had been in the drawer, never used, for nearly a quarter of a century. He took that flashlight out, unscrewed the back, then he unscrewed the back of the new flashlight. He slid the batteries out of the new flashlight, and into the old flashlight, and screwed everything back together again.

Ollie then headed up to the mailbox. But this time it was even later and the sun was going down a few minutes sooner. So, he was about a tenth of a mile from the mailbox when he decided to turn the quarter-century old flashlight with the three year old batteries on for the first time.

To his great surprise, the flashlight did not work. He could not fathom why. He shook it, he tapped it on the side with the palm of his hand, he stared through the dark into the front of the flashlight while he shook it again, he flipped the switch on and off a few more times. The quarter century old flashlight with the three year old batteries simply would not work, even though Ollie felt very strongly that it should.

“Dangit,” Ollie thought, as he turned back towards the cabin. “I’ll check the mail tomorrow.”

Ollie started back towards the cabin like he had the night before, heading roughly in what he estimated to be the correct direction, and making course corrections as he went along. Then, out of the blue, he stepped on something funny, and it mad a loud noise and scampered off. Some sort of small animal and he had run into each other. Something the size of a small dog. That put Ollie off a bit, but after listening for a half a minute and only hearing the rustling of leaves on the road ahead of him, he continued forward. It had not occurred to him that it was a quiet night with no wind, and there should be no leaves rustling. And anyway, there had never been anything dangerous on his driveway before, why should there be now.

And he was having that very thought just as he ran headlong into the very annoyed bipedal black bear mother whose cub he had just stepped on.

They didn’t find Ollie’s body until well into the next summer, when the mostly but not entirely eaten and decomposed corpse got a scent strong enough to waft up to the driveway. The bear had dragged Ollie a good 200 yards into the woods, down a shallow ravine that paralleled the drive. The bear, some coyotes, and a lone wolf passing through the area each got a bit of Ollie over the weeks before a two foot snowfall sealed up the landscape for the winter. But the bear family did hibernate nearby, so they sampled the by now very tenderized remains in early May the following year.

The coroner was unable to ascertain the exact cause of death, but the sheriff deputy that had followed the scent did find the old flashlight. He returned the flashlight to Helen, and Helen put it in the junk drawer, where it resided even after the old batteries finally burst and leaked out, next to the old cell phone, until Helen herself passed a dozen years later and their daughter came up and emptied the cabin out so they could sell it. The new flashlight, though, the one without the batteries in it, she left in that drawer, figuring the new owners could make use of it.

Added: Mystery Cave is part of an extensive karstic cave system in Southern Minnesota. The original discoverer of the system found it by poking through some ice with a crowbar, and the crowbar fell into the cave and took a long time to hit the bottom. Eventually, he got himself some rope, rigged himself up, and lowered himself a few tens of feet or so into the start of the cave. That is when he pulled out his flashlight to have a look around. Guess what happened then?

As far as I know it is an up north thing, not a city thing. In fact, just the opposite. I used to live in South Minneapolis in a neighborhood where everyone had literally gotten together in a series of meetings and decided that they would always smile at each other and say “hello” when out walking. There were hand-outs for those who had not attended the meetings. They also decided to walk around all the time. This produced a somewhat odd, almost uncomfortable, effect, at first. But in the long run, once people settled into it, it worked out pretty well. It made for a neighborhood that seemed friendly. It seemed like if you needed something – if there was some kind of an emergency – people would be ready and willing to help out.

But up north everyone has this scowl. No smiles, no “hello.” Go north in Minnesota, at least one and a half hours out of the Twin Cities, and stop in at a gas station. Or go to some place to eat. Maybe a bait shop. A hardware store. Anything like that. People will be scowling. All of them.

There will be two kinds of scowlers. One is like this: the scowler sees you coming and stares, and scowls. The other is like this: the scowler avoids looking at anyone, but scowls to themselves. I’ll give you a minute to figure out why there are two kinds scowling, and this is the hint: it depends on who is doing the scowling.

I have a theory about why all the scowling. At the root of it, it is either a kind of guilt or a kind of belligerence that would be better if it was guilt but there is not enough spine to turn a bad attitude into a constructive emotion. And, likely, it is all subconscious.

The reason: many of the Caucasians who live full time up north either come down from earlier settlers, of the late 19th century through around 1950 or so, or they have adopted the culture previously established by those folks even if they can’t trace back to some grandparent or distant great uncle. These original settlers were involved in one or more activities of note that ultimately led to the scowl.

Some of them were involved in displacing or controlling Native Americans in the area. But not many, because that started out long ago and most of them were fly-by-night, Federal officials who came in, harassed the natives, then left.

Some of them were involved in the clear-cutting of all the forest in Minnesota. In fact, many of the ancestors of the deeper-rooted denizens of northern Minnesota come down from loggers. With the exception of a very small number of acres, the entire pine forest was cleared out by lumber contractors over a remarkably short period of time.

Some of them were involved in mining. There were probably a lot more people in lumber during its peak than mining during its peak, but mining was important from the late 19th century right up to the present, while logging came and went as fast as they could clear the entire state of its valuable trees. It will be centuries before all the minerals are extracted from northern Minnesota, because it is harder to do and takes more time.

There are some farmers up north, but farming is harder and less common than elsewhere in the state. (Latter day farmers were involved in the second phase of tree cutting, I mention here for completeness.) There are plenty of people involved in the tourist industry or the cabin industry (the latter being larger) who were not linked to mining or logging in their ancestry. But many of them, as noted, have adopted the local culture, including the logging/mining culture scowl.

Here’s the thing. If you live in a place and an age, like Minnesota right now, where people love the wilderness, revel in it, claim it as theirs, claim it as a good thing, and all that, but your ancestors were responsible for destroying it multiple times over, you might feel a little bad. It has been a long time since the clear cutting. The last big logging operation in Minnesota happened before World War I. There was a lot of restoration of forest after that, after Americans (thought not initially Minnesotans) discovered the idea of conserving forests (an idea that had been invented and deployed centuries earlier by their ancestors, but apparently forgotten). But the culture and reverence for those who tame nature is still very strong here. If, in a group, anyone can credibly claim a direct blood connection to an old logger or miner, they are given extra sway. You see it happen all the time at the local historic sites dedicated to either type of endeavor.

The logging was no small thing. The loggers wanted the white pine. Contracted crews were required to supply 16 foot logs of pine as the bulk of their product, at least 60% white pine and up to 40% red pine. Why the difference? Not any really good reason as far as the wood was concerned. People will tell you they like one or the other better for some reason, but the main reason the logging companies wanted either white or red pine was because it was one of the pines that was not that knotty (because the virgin red and white pines were very tall trees with no lower branches). The reason they wanted white over red is that white pine floated better, and was thus more easily transported down the rivers to the handful of lumber mills. There were other differences as well, but those were the main factors.

Anyway, the loggers cleared the state of its forests, cutting down almost every white pine that was not deformed. There were some white pines they missed by accident, and there was some white pine that conservationists saved. But those attempts at saving the white pine involved violent confrontations. Loggers and logging companies truly believed that they had the god given right to strip the landscape of all of its trees, starting with white and red pine. If you put all the acres of standing white pine that were not logged into one place, it would take up the land covered by an average size park.

After virtually all the white and red pine were cut down, the state caught on fire, and hundreds of people died. This is because the top, branchy parts of the trees were left on the ground, along with the stumps and whatever non-pines got wiped out during this process. That material, the slash, would easily catch on fire and entire towns full of people burned up with the slash. In some cases, a third of the people in a given town were permently displaced by fires that burned every single home to the ground, and a third of those “displaced” were actually burned to death. It happened again and again, always caused by the logging practices which were known to be dangerous, and every time it happened, people were surprised.

If you were part of of the group that was responsible for burning down these towns and burning these people to death, you might not look at other humans with a normal face. You might have some kind of scowl or some other look going.

Several thousand men spread out across a vast wilderness and utterly destroyed it in the most irresponsible way possible. One of the “great moments” of logging in Minnesota was the year the loggers cut the most trees ever cut in one year by any group of people, but because of the rainfall patterns that year, could get very few of them to market. Putting this a different way, a double-digit percentage of the state’s standing white and red pine trees were cut down all at once and then left to rot. If you are part of the group that did that, or their descendants, you might not want to look people straight in the eye with a normal face. You might have to perpetually scowl.

The mining is similar, but different. The early mining in Minnesota was underground, shaft mining. I’m pretty sure the miners were pretty hard workers who produced a necessary product that, because of the constraints of the method they used to acquire it, was less damaging to the landscape. But eventually the mining industry discovered that a different kind of ore – one that was much less pure but much cheaper to process — could be mined right off the surface over a large area of the northeastern part of the state. So, they proceeded to strip mine the wilderness just denuded of its forest. They don’t call it strip mining, for some reason, but that is what it is. It is still going on to varying degrees. In this case, the Minnesota scowl may arise from something other than personal guilt of killing hundreds of millions of stately organisms (and a couple thousand people) with reckless abandon, ignoring time honored sustainable methods developed centuries earlier in Europe (where these logger same from). Rather, it might include a large part of chagrin. The embarrassment of having the proverbial wool pulled over your eyes, again and again, by the mining companies, must be tough to take. Scowlworthy.

So, what about the two kinds of scowls? The eye-contact stare-scowl vs. the quiet brooding self-scowl?

The former is the one you get from people who actually live in the north. They either grew up here, or, as is the case with many, moved here from “The Cities” and then fell in line with the local culture.

The others are the visitors, the tourists, the cabin people, those passing through, me and my family, whatever. We all just scowl because if you smile and say hello the locals probably say “hey” back, but then they just stare harder and, if you are really unlucky, say something you don’t want to hear. Like, tell you a story about some guy who drove around in an open Jeep Wrangler for a week with a five dollar bill taped to the rear view mirror to prove that everyone up north is not a criminal, like down in “The Cities,” or some similar yahooish yarn.

So we just keep our heads down and scowl protectively.

This sort of mining can not be done without destroying the landscape.

It is quite possible that Minnesota’s boundary waters are not saving, and we should just mine out the copper.

Or, not.

Look:

Want to see for yourself what’s at stake if the proposed PolyMet open pit copper-nickel mine is permitted in Northern Minnesota? Watch this new documentary, “Journey to Protect Minnesota’s Waters: Revealing the Contested PolyMet Mine Site,” shot on the proposed PolyMet mine location on Minnesota’s Partridge River in the Lake Superior Basin.

Featured in this 14-minute video filmed by Robin Heil are interviews with Fond du Lac elder, Ricky W. DeFoe, WaterLegacy advocacy director Paula Maccabee and forester Matt Tyler; and original music by Twin Cities guitarist Timothy ”Brother Timothy” Frantzich and Powwow Singer Algin Garyt Goodsky as well as the breathtaking scenery of the Partridge River in the Lake Superior watershed.

For more information on how you protect the Lake Superior and Boundary Waters watersheds from toxic mining pollution that would lead to an environmental catastrophe, visit http://waterlegacy.org

Rebecca had run to seek the endorsement from the Minnesota DFL (that’s what we call Democrats in Minnesota). The state convention, at which endorsements are determined by a large collection of dedicated delegates and alternates, was held in Rochester. (Note: candidates can still run in the August primary, but it is often considered bad form to ignore the endorsement process.) I was there as a delegate. I’d never been to a state convention before, though I’ve been to plenty of state Senate District and Congressional District ones. The state convention was similar but ten times bigger, twice as loud, three times as long, and doubly exhausting.

Rebecca lost the endorsement process with a gut-punching and unexpected low number of votes on the first ballot, followed by a long period of chaos, followed by the exuberant endorsement of candidate Erin Murphy. Congratulations to Erin, who has doubled down on this process with her choice of picking a second Erin, Erin Maye Quade, as her running mate. That was a stunningly excellent choice.

But back to the Otto campaign. I was truly expecting the numbers to be different in this endorsement process. I was not personally privy to the detailed data on this campaign, but I had seen the top-line analyses. I expected Murphy, not Otto, to be in distant third. Clearly the numbers were wrong!

I don’t fault the people in the Otto campaign for getting that wrong. Well, yes, they did get it wrong, but this is not uncommon. I myself have had the job of counting delegates. I’ve gotten it at least as wrong. I know others who have as well. Campaigns often, perhaps to some extent, in most races, end up with incorrect delegate counts. (I note that as far as I know, the Murphy campaign had the numbers close to correct.) I have some ideas as to how this happens, and it might be helpful to work out some theory on this. But that is for later. For now, there is this one element of getting surprised by a low delegate count on the first ballot that I’d prefer to dwell on for just one moment:

It feels really, really, bad.

I don’t feel it is my place to relate how things were in the war room after the end of the process. That is private. But I was struck by one thing I’ll leak out. The people in the room, all of whom I have great love and respect for, exhibited the full range of expected emotional states from quietly stunned to liquefied-in-place, except for Rebecca Otto herself. Rebecca was the strength in the room. That was not unexpected, but I think it is something that should be said. I know she felt just as bad. I know her just enough to have sensed that. But she was not the quivering bowl of jelly I would have been.

I helped Rebecca in her campaign for two reasons. One is simply that she and her husband, Shawn, are my friends. But I’ve had a lot of friends run for office for whom I offered only perfunctory help. In the case of Rebecca Otto, there was another reason. I knew that Rebecca was blindingly smart, and a deeply good and honest person, and ever thoughtful. I know that for each area of policy, Rebecca would assemble her best assets and then ask them to assemble their best assets. These teams would then develop details and try ideas, in order to ultimately advance well developed proposals that could be brought to fruition in the State House to change the fundamental nature of economy, society, and culture in Minnesota, all in good ways. I was at the tail end of at least one of those assemblies, and contributed a bit to the policy development. There was a fact Rebecca often repeated in her stump speeches that I had worked on. I was proud to hear it mentioned again and again.

The other candidates are great people, great democrats, any one would be great as a governor, but I was supporting Rebecca Otto because I knew her approach and her results would be uniquely and powerfully transforming. People around the country were going to look at Minnesota, and go, “Wow, what the heck was that??? Why can’t we do that? Who did that? Let’s do that!” And the answer would be Rebecca Otto and the team she leads.

In the end, we are all Democrats. Just as importantly, those other guys? They are all Republicans. So, we have work to do. I like Erin Murphy. I will support her and her campaign, as the endorsed candidate. I’ll support all the endorsed candidates. I’ve been working on the campaign of our local Minnesota House, where my friend Ginny Klevorn hopes to unseat Representative Sarah Anderson, who is is a less religious but just as tea-happy mini-me version of Michel Bachmann, and leader of the evil Republican redistricting ploy in our state.

But I’ll be standing by for future versions of a Rebecca Otto campaign, should that happen, and I hope it does, somehow, sometime, somewhere.

A few notes about the other events at the convention.

The first one is a major piece of news that is still unfolding even as I write this.

Lori Swanson is the Minnesota Attorney General. Swanson has been the perennial heir apparent for that job forever. What I mean by that: everybody always assumed she’d be endorsed, then win. She has a great reputation and everybody likes her, etc. etc.

But this year, Matt Pelikan ran against Swanson for AG. Everybody seemed to like Matt, but everybody also said this about that race: we need Lori, she’s been great, Matt is great, but he has no experience, maybe he can run for something else someday.

Meanwhile, Swanson made a nuisance of herself at the very beginning of the pre-election season, last summer, telling everyone she might or might not run for Governor. This moved several good people into the position of running for the AG seat, but promising to pull out if Lori gives the governor’s race a pass. She pulled that trick (do I sound annoyed? sorry!) for way too long, using the fact that she was a state AG but also, not really an actual candidate, to exploit her moves along with other state AGs against Trump for positive Democratic Party cred.

At the convention, two things happened, then the boat tipped over.

First, Matt Pelikan, who is one very impressive young man, gave a speech that in my view was in the top three given at the convention, maybe the best one. He had the crowd on their feet. He also landed about eight good punches on the Swanson campaign, including noting Swanson’s NRA endorsement over the years, and her stand on various other issues that have become highly questionable even though everybody loves Lori and assumes she’s the automatic candidate.

Then, the Swanson campaign totally messed up their own presentation. Each campaign gets a certain number of minutes, then they have to get off the stage. Most campaigns have a short video, a person or two talk in favor of the candidate, then the candidate gives a rousing speech. Swanson had a mediocre video. Then, some dozen or so people lined up to each speak on her behalf. They were mostly unpracticed and poor speakers (including at least one who is an experienced politician who simply had not woken up that morning, it seemed). Each one spoke for 3-5 minutes. But they were supposed to speak for one minute! SO, half way through that awkward and embarrassing event, the whole lot of them got thrown off the stage, and Swanson never got to speak.

When the delegates voted, Pelekan had denied Swanson the endorsement. A very large number of delegates had probably figured, “OK, Lori is the obvious candidate, but Imma cast this one vote for Pelikan because he is so impressive.” The outcome of that vote was so astonishing, they had to bring in a special sweeper device to remove everyone’s jaws from the floor.

Before the second vote, Swanson dropped out. Ear shattering collective gasp.

My first thought? She’ll run in the primary for the AG slot!

My second thought, seconds later? No, wait! She’s running for governor!

And, low and behold, seconds ago as I write this, the news has leaked out: Swanson is running for Governor with Congressman Nolan as her Lt Gov.

In a less dramatic and less complicated event, former Republican and Bush ethics lawyer Richard Painter ran against Senator Tina Smith for the endorsement. Smith got the endorsement, but Painter got a surprisingly large number of votes.

And, finally, another sad thing. I’ve always supported Jon Tolefson in his political career, and I wanted him to be endorsed for auditor. He had a lot of support, including the endorsement of the Environmental Caucus. In something of a surprise, Julie Blaha took the majority of votes on the first round, and Jon stepped away, allowing Julie to be endorsed by acclamation. That was sad for me, but more sad for Jon’s Mother, who was sitting with me in my unit delegation at the event.

That’s all I have for now, but later, there are some people I want to thank. First, some dust has to settle and and I have to go through some photos and videos I may post.

OK, everybody, get to work!

ADDED: Keith Ellison, US Congressmember and Democratic Party co-head, considering running for Minnesota AG? This makes no sense! The world is spinning in the wrong direction!

This graph says it all:

One thing this means is that the Democrats, in putting up candidates in Minnesota, are not trying to win back Republicans or Trump voters. They are simply trying to win back their own.

Many months ago I coined the term “snowflake” to refer to liberals, progressives, or Democrats, who felt that since their own personal point of view is not perfectly represented in the mind of each and every other liberal or progressive or Democrat, that they should therefore complain incessantly, stay home from the polls, and sit there in a funk hoping someone like Trump wins the election in order to show the rest of them how bad they are being.

Unfortunately, the snowflake moniker has been co-opted, without my permission, by others! But, here, I revise it for the special purpose of talking about this graph.

Roughly six percent of Minnesotans are snowflakes.

This year, dammit, show up.

Also, in the coming convention, if you are a DFL delegate, vote for Otto because you don’t need a medium size male with a lumberjack shirt and a booming voice to win in this state.