We had the good fortune to spend a week in Phoenix over Christmas. This meant that we enjoyed a significant “weather dividend.” That’s a term that a friend and I use for the benefit that one gains from not being in the Upper Midwest during the winter. For us, it’s the temperature difference between Minnesota and a warmer place. (In summer the situation reverses, and the Upper Midwest earns the dividend, at least compared to most places.)

While we were in Phoenix, the weather dividend was pretty significant: highs there were in the 60s, lows in the 40s. Temperatures in Minneapolis were about sixty degrees lower! Lows for December 23 were around minus 12, highs around zero. If you were in Minnesota at this time, you were faced with a big weather deficit (presuming you like your weather warm).

Please don’t take this to mean that I don’t enjoy the winter or want to spend the whole season somewhere else. I enjoy winter sports like skiing, skating, and sledding, and I enjoy the beauty of a snow-covered landscape. In order to have those things, you need to have the temperature below freezing most of the time; you need to also accept that snow and slush and ice come with the package. However, I do enjoy a respite from winter and a change of scenery, and Arizona is a nice place for that. Thus we were “snowbirds” for a week–one of those southward-traveling migrants in search of milder weather.

We were staying with my wife’s grandparents in Sun City West, about an hour northwest of Phoenix. The city is one of those retirement “lifestyle communities” built by the developer Del Webb. It’s the kind of place with strict rules: at least one person in the household has to be 55 or older; no one can be under 21. You can’t have cars in the driveway; indeed, the driveways are immaculate, many of them made of a specially surfaced concrete with a shine and colored designs that make them seem clean enough to eat off of.

A large percentage of the Sun City folk are transplanted Midwesterners. Seeing the people there, you might think you were in Mason City, Iowa or Marshfield, Wisconsin. It’s not unusual for houses to bear signs indicating the names and hometown of the residents. We saw one such sign in the shape of Iowa.

We made only one trip from Sun City West during our visit, and that was to see the home of another Upper Midwestern snowbird, the architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Wright was born in Spring Green, Wisconsin, a town in southwestern Wisconsin, not far from Madison. He had a home in Spring Green that he called Taliesin, and after becoming enamored of Arizona, he built a winter home and workplace in Scottsdale, next to Phoenix. He called it Taliesin West.

Taliesin West is well worth a visit for those who are interested in architecture. It’s a good example of Wright’s principle of “organic” architecture–buildings that blend in with the surrounding natural environment and use local building materials. The low, horizontal lines of Taliesin West’s buildings match the flatness of the valley floors, but the look is different from Wright’s Prairie Style homes. An occasional angled peak in the roof mimics the surrounding mountains. The rooms have a cave-like feel, as if they were cut from the desert rock, but are nevertheless light thanks to features such as canvas-covered roofs or well-placed windows.

I came away from the visit with a renewed sense of Wright’s genius. As Phoenix booms, it would do well to follow the example of Wright’s organic architecture more than it is now. It seems strange that this American master is not more celebrated by your average American, including your average American homeowner, developer, or contractor.

Note:

My prayers go out to all those suffering from the recent earthquake and tsunamis in South and Southeast Asia. My sympathy is all the more heightened because of an incidental connection to the disaster. My sister is living in South Korea this year, and she planned to fly to Phuket, Thailand, on Monday, December 27. The earthquake and tsunamis hit only the day before, Sunday the 26th, and her trip was canceled. She later found out that the hotel she was to have stayed in was completely destroyed. If the crust of the earth had moved only hours later, her fate may have been very different.

I spent the first five years of my life in St. Louis Park, an older, inner-ring suburb immediately west of Minneapolis. We lived in a small neighborhood only a few blocks from the intersection of Excelsior Boulevard and France Avenue. France Avenue marks the border between Minneapolis and St. Louis Park, and the Minneapolis lakes and the Uptown area were only a mile or so east of our house.

When my parents had moved to St. Louis Park in 1964, they were part of the mid-twentieth century exodus from the city. My dad’s job at Groveland Elementary School in Minnetonka was even farther out, so when I was five years old they moved to a new house in Plymouth, on the western edge of the metropolitan area. My dad wanted a shorter commute to Groveland, where he taught sixth grade.

My parents’ house in Plymouth, where they still live today, is only about fifteen miles from the Mississippi River and the center of Minneapolis. When I was growing up, that seemed like a long ways from the city, although it does not seem so to me now. As a result, my childhood was suburban to a degree that it would not have been had we stayed where we were in St. Louis Park.

I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to grow up in St. Louis Park, right next to Minneapolis. Would I have ventured into the city and discovered wonderful things? Would I have been a different person, maybe a more savvy urbanite? Well, I would have lacked what I enjoyed in Plymouth, so I won’t dwell on that.

Growing up in the outer suburbs provided rewards that would not have been available to me had we stayed closer to the city. There were always new houses going up in our area, and we made them our playgrounds. We played in them at every stage of their construction, from the pouring of the foundation to the building of the wooden frame and completion of the finished product. As I got older, I took bike rides out west on County Road 6 or Highway 24. Baker Park and Lake Independence were not far away. I have good memories of golfing at Baker Park in the summer and cross-country skiing in the winter. The gently rolling land of western Hennepin County, which is still made up mainly of hobby and horse farms, is quite beautiful. That beauty shows through even in winter, with the dry vegetation in shades of brown and red, vivid against the white snow, and the bare trees starkly black and gray. And, of course, there were the friends I made.

As I got older, I became more conscious of how suburban my childhood was, how different from a city or small town. I enjoyed suburbia then and thought it special in its own way–not perfect or idyllic, but an expression of its time and place.

Weather Note

Early Tuesday morning (December 14) the low temperature fell to 7 degrees Fahrenheit in the Twin Cities, the lowest temperature since March; temperatures in the northern part of the state were well below zero. For a couple of days the low temperature for the nation (Alaska excluded) shifted from mountain towns in the Rockies to the Upper Midwest, where it will often reside this winter.

Just 24 hours after the cold snap, the low temperature was 28 degrees, much warmer than the day before and an example of our highly changeable regional weather. The cold weather, even if brief, made 30 degrees feel balmy, which is one reason I appreciate it.

Although it is getting quite cold again this weekend, the weather news has been mostly about relatively warm conditions for the region. It has been one of the warmest autumns ever. Though the grass has finally turned from green to a dormant brown, we still have no snow.

So what makes me such an authority on the Upper Midwest? I don’t claim any great authority beyond having lived in the region for about thirty years and being part of a family with longstanding ties here. So that readers may better understand my perspective, I’d like to use a few columns to discuss my own background and my experience in the region. Read the rest of this entry »

During our first visits to Northfield this summer I noticed an interesting sight in the windows of local houses: green Paul Wellstone campaign signs dating not from this fall’s election, but from elections two years ago and earlier. Like Wellstone himself, the signs are straightforward, enduring, and often emphatic. On a green background with white borders and lettering they read simply “Wellstone” or, more characteristically, “Wellstone!”

The signs are poignant, of course, because Paul Wellstone, the former Democratic United States senator from Minnesota, died in a plane crash on October 25, 2002. During his twelve years as a senator, Wellstone was a fiery and charismatic champion of progressive causes. At the time of the crash–which also claimed his wife, Sheila; his daughter, Marcia; and several staff members–he was running for a third term against former Democrat and mayor of St. Paul, Norm Coleman. His untimely death came just 10 days before the election, and Democrats hastily arranged for former Senator Walter Mondale to run in his place. Mondale lost to Coleman, and Republicans gained a valuable Senate seat.

This September St. Paul-based filmmakers Lu Lippold, Dan Luke, and Laurie Stern released Wellstone!, a feature-length documentary on the politician’s life and political career. The film has already been shown in a number of venues here in Minnesota and across the country. Local viewers can see it again at the Riverview Theater in Minneapolis, December 11 and 12, at 3 p.m.

I was fortunate enough to see the documentary here at Carleton College in Northfield, Wellstone’s hometown, on the second anniversary of Wellstone’s death. Several dozen people gathered in a Carleton lecture hall to see the movie and hear director Lu Lippold respond to questions. Many people shared their memories of the senator as well.

Wellstone first arrived at Carleton in 1969 at age 25. The film recounts how he and his wife Sheila, both from Virginia, came to Minnesota reluctantly, apprehensive about the winters. However, Wellstone quickly gained a following among his Carleton students. Just as quickly, he became controversial, leading students and community members in political movements and protests locally and across the state on issues such as labor conditions and rural power lines. It was in this context–leftist professor as rabble-rouser and inspiring leader of students–that I first heard of Wellstone in the mid-1980s from friends attending Carleton.

Only a few years later, in 1990, Wellstone gained the political limelight when he defeated the incumbent Republican U.S. Senator, Rudy Boschwitz. Wellstone had seemingly come out of nowhere to defeat an experienced and respected opponent. Both men had Jewish immigrant parents, but the similarities ended there. One was a short, idealistic professor and the other a tall, pragmatic businessman. The footage of Wellstone’s campaign–the commercials, the famous green campaign bus, and the two candidates debating on local public television–provides some of the most memorable images of Wellstone’s career.

The film goes on to closely follow Wellstone’s crucial votes and positions while in the Senate. He opposed the first Gulf War in 1991, and his speech on the subject seems eerily prescient when considered in the context of today’s problems in Iraq. He was the only senator up for reelection to oppose the welfare reform act and the 2002 vote authorizing the threat of war in Iraq. Wellstone had a progressive vision on energy policy that was ahead of its time–emphasizing conservation and renewables–and he was instrumental in preventing drilling for oil in the Alaskan National Wildlife Refuge. Clips of his speeches illustrate his significant power as an orator and give the film its most electrifying moments. The man’s conviction, charisma, and humor come through, and we are reminded of the enormity of our loss.

While deftly tracing Wellstone’s life, the film gives a clear sense of his fundamental kindness and his commitment to family through interviews with those who knew him. His devotion to Sheila stands out especially, including his support for her work on domestic violence issues. Wellstone! avoids hagiography, however, noting the politician’s failings and missteps. His senatorial career started out poorly, for example, as he attempted to make every cause a priority. Wellstone could admit mistakes as well, as when he later regretted his 1996 vote in favor of the Defense of Marriage Act, which denies federal recognition of same-sex marriages.

The film also treats the famous Wellstone memorial service, held just days before the 2002 election at the University of Minnesota’s Williams Arena and attended by politicians from both sides of the aisle. I watched it on C-SPAN while living in California and still remember it vividly. All went well until Wellstone staffer Rick Kahn took things over the top, forgetting the diverse composition of the audience. In a message and tone better suited for a partisan rally, and compromising his own dignity, Kahn began a series of shouted requests with the phrase, “I am begging you?!” He finally called on all present “to win this election for Paul Wellstone!” As Al Franken notes in the film, those who want to criticize Kahn should remember that he had just lost a close friend and colleague of many years, and composure is difficult to maintain at such a time.

Wellstone! is a fine treatment of a man who became a progressive icon in American politics. Wellstone fought for the poor, for minorities, for the disadvantaged, for people who do not have lobbyists in Washington. He saw himself as their candidate, and he never overlooked their causes. The documentary offers to those who remember him a chance to revisit those memories; to others it provides a chance to learn who he was. To me, Wellstone’s legacy is best summed up in this Wellstone quote from the film: “Politics is not about money and power games but the improvement of people’s lives.”

See the film’s web site for more information on its making, dates of future screenings, and options for purchasing a DVD version.