Category Archives: Minnesota

On The Cavanaugh Quest (Thomas Gifford)

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Over the years I have returned to this story of love and death, incest and suicide, murder, listening to the voice of a jaded and burned out Paul Cavanaugh as he tries to unravel a pretty seedy story of human shame and revenge. Cavanaugh doesn’t think anyone can sink as low as he is, on the verge of a mid-life crisis, but he soon finds out that looks can be deceiving, and that everyone is lying to him, except maybe his father. Of course, this novel is about facades, and nobody is really who they appear to be. Cavanaugh falls in love, but he’s a failed Lothario who’s affection go unrequited by one of the most interesting characters you will ever meet in a crime novel who-dun-it, Kim Roderick, who is straight out of an Poe short-story. Cavanaugh is an unlikely investigator, but not an unlikeable one, who isn’t afraid to share his shortcomings, whatever they might be. He’s a bit of a moral relativist, but even he is shocked by the crime that has been committed, especially in the end when all is revealed. Some of the book is a nostalgic, but cynical, look at Minneapolis, Minnesota in the early seventies set against the Ford pardon of Nixon. Minneapolis looks good, but it’s really rotten to the core, a moral metaphor for the ethics of the local rich and famous, upstanding citizens who are a little less than upstanding. The story evokes an end-of-summer atmosphere of sweltering heat, thunderstorms, and North Shore memories that will make any Minnesota yearn for just one more weekend up-north, at the cabin. Cavanaugh yearns to feel young again, but the decay and moral collapse around him only heightens his sense of lost youth and passing time. Though he does solve the puzzle, it’s not because he is Poirot, but because he just sticks with it until the end, as would most people. Readers will be able to relate to a “normal” guy who is not a “gifted” super-sleuth. Gifford hides the solution to the puzzle in plain sight—he’s the real genius in this novel. It unfolds slowly and methodically, and you won’t feel cheated or bamboozled at the end because the solution was more than obvious from about chapter two on. The prose flows fluidly, and although Gifford might be a bit verbose, he does it to pad the readers thoughts with lots of red-herring almost as well as Agatha Christie herself. If you are looking for something different, this might be your ticket. I highly recommend it.

On The Cavanaugh Quest (Thomas Gifford)

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Over the years I have returned to this story of love and death, incest and suicide, murder, listening to the voice of a jaded and burned out Paul Cavanaugh as he tries to unravel a pretty seedy story of human shame and revenge. Cavanaugh doesn’t think anyone can sink as low as he is, on the verge of a mid-life crisis, but he soon finds out that looks can be deceiving, and that everyone is lying to him, except maybe his father. Of course, this novel is about facades, and nobody is really who they appear to be. Cavanaugh falls in love, but he’s a failed Lothario who’s affection go unrequited by one of the most interesting characters you will ever meet in a crime novel who-dun-it, Kim Roderick, who is straight out of an Poe short-story. Cavanaugh is an unlikely investigator, but not an unlikeable one, who isn’t afraid to share his shortcomings, whatever they might be. He’s a bit of a moral relativist, but even he is shocked by the crime that has been committed, especially in the end when all is revealed. Some of the book is a nostalgic, but cynical, look at Minneapolis, Minnesota in the early seventies set against the Ford pardon of Nixon. Minneapolis looks good, but it’s really rotten to the core, a moral metaphor for the ethics of the local rich and famous, upstanding citizens who are a little less than upstanding. The story evokes an end-of-summer atmosphere of sweltering heat, thunderstorms, and North Shore memories that will make any Minnesota yearn for just one more weekend up-north, at the cabin. Cavanaugh yearns to feel young again, but the decay and moral collapse around him only heightens his sense of lost youth and passing time. Though he does solve the puzzle, it’s not because he is Poirot, but because he just sticks with it until the end, as would most people. Readers will be able to relate to a “normal” guy who is not a “gifted” super-sleuth. Gifford hides the solution to the puzzle in plain sight—he’s the real genius in this novel. It unfolds slowly and methodically, and you won’t feel cheated or bamboozled at the end because the solution was more than obvious from about chapter two on. The prose flows fluidly, and although Gifford might be a bit verbose, he does it to pad the readers thoughts with lots of red-herring almost as well as Agatha Christie herself. If you are looking for something different, this might be your ticket. I highly recommend it.

On Minnesota nice

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Those of us from the North Star state will often joke about a thing we call “Minnesota nice.” You walk into a store, ask for something, a very nice person gets it for you, they smile, take your money, put it in a bag and send you on your way. It all seems so obsequious, so fake, so phony, that you really have no idea what the person in the store is really thinking–or do you? Is Minnesota nice, as many people not from Minnesota would have you think, just a bunch of passive aggressive baloney? I, for one, think not. Somebody drops an armload of books, and six people stop to help them pick up the mess. You spill your change at the grocery store and the same thing happens. You get a flat tire, and a highway patrol stops with lights flashing to make sure you not only don’t get run over while changing your flat, s/he may even lend a hand. A young lady had forgotten her wallet the other day and couldn’t pay for her coffee, so I did. Perhaps none of this is out of the ordinary and just reflects a kind side of human nature that just wants to help out, and you might encounter this anywhere in the world. Yet, I would venture to say that this helpful side to human nature is taken up a notch when you are in Minnesota where people are polite, helpful, and kind to a different degree than you might it in other places. When lost and disoriented in a strange grocery store, I’ve had managers take me straight to the thing I’m looking for, and they do it with smile on their faces and song in their hearts. The ethos of living in a place like Minnesota, where hardship in winter is real, where the number of hearty souls never really goes up, is a little different. There is a sense of community in Minnesota that I have not really experienced elsewhere. I think that “Minnesota nice” stems from a difficult common experience that leads to a great sense of community and social identity. I saw this in church, at school, out in public, everywhere. You may think I’m idealizing this all out of proportion because I live in exile in Texas, but I’m not comparing Texas, which has its own ethos, to Minnesota. Once you’ve experience life at minus 30 degrees below zero, you have a different perspective about what makes your ornery and cranky, you have different perspective on hardship, suffering and difficulties. If you can help someone out and do it with a smile on your face, why not? Certainly, all places have cranky, egotistical people, and Minnesota is no exception, but if you visit Minnesota, and you encounter kind, smiling people, who are willing to help you solve a problem or get out of jam, think about it. Why are they helping? Minnesota nice is not phony, although you might suspect it is. Why should someone do anything for no other reason than to help you? Perhaps our own cynicism regarding philanthropy says more about the sad state of our social relations than it does about the person offering to help. Self-interest should not be the only thing that drives our interactions with others. Last night at the grocery store the guy in front of me needed three cents so he wouldn’t have to carry off a ton of change, so I gave it to him. He was so startled and surprised, he didn’t know what to say. The clerk was flabbergasted. I was just trying to be nice.

On Minnesota nice

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Those of us from the North Star state will often joke about a thing we call “Minnesota nice.” You walk into a store, ask for something, a very nice person gets it for you, they smile, take your money, put it in a bag and send you on your way. It all seems so obsequious, so fake, so phony, that you really have no idea what the person in the store is really thinking–or do you? Is Minnesota nice, as many people not from Minnesota would have you think, just a bunch of passive aggressive baloney? I, for one, think not. Somebody drops an armload of books, and six people stop to help them pick up the mess. You spill your change at the grocery store and the same thing happens. You get a flat tire, and a highway patrol stops with lights flashing to make sure you not only don’t get run over while changing your flat, s/he may even lend a hand. A young lady had forgotten her wallet the other day and couldn’t pay for her coffee, so I did. Perhaps none of this is out of the ordinary and just reflects a kind side of human nature that just wants to help out, and you might encounter this anywhere in the world. Yet, I would venture to say that this helpful side to human nature is taken up a notch when you are in Minnesota where people are polite, helpful, and kind to a different degree than you might it in other places. When lost and disoriented in a strange grocery store, I’ve had managers take me straight to the thing I’m looking for, and they do it with smile on their faces and song in their hearts. The ethos of living in a place like Minnesota, where hardship in winter is real, where the number of hearty souls never really goes up, is a little different. There is a sense of community in Minnesota that I have not really experienced elsewhere. I think that “Minnesota nice” stems from a difficult common experience that leads to a great sense of community and social identity. I saw this in church, at school, out in public, everywhere. You may think I’m idealizing this all out of proportion because I live in exile in Texas, but I’m not comparing Texas, which has its own ethos, to Minnesota. Once you’ve experience life at minus 30 degrees below zero, you have a different perspective about what makes your ornery and cranky, you have different perspective on hardship, suffering and difficulties. If you can help someone out and do it with a smile on your face, why not? Certainly, all places have cranky, egotistical people, and Minnesota is no exception, but if you visit Minnesota, and you encounter kind, smiling people, who are willing to help you solve a problem or get out of jam, think about it. Why are they helping? Minnesota nice is not phony, although you might suspect it is. Why should someone do anything for no other reason than to help you? Perhaps our own cynicism regarding philanthropy says more about the sad state of our social relations than it does about the person offering to help. Self-interest should not be the only thing that drives our interactions with others. Last night at the grocery store the guy in front of me needed three cents so he wouldn’t have to carry off a ton of change, so I gave it to him. He was so startled and surprised, he didn’t know what to say. The clerk was flabbergasted. I was just trying to be nice.

On ice hockey

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If I had anything rational to say about this sport, I would say it, but I’m not going to do that. Ice hockey is a visceral experience that is enjoyed in some other part of the brain that has nothing to do with reason, logic, or higher patterns of thought. Use a stick to put the puck in a net, and knock down anyone who tries to stop you. Oh, and to make it interesting, we’re going to do this while skating a highly polished piece of ice and add eleven more guys (or girls) to the fray, just to make it interesting. I loved to play this game as a child with flashing blades of steel strapped to my feet, flying across the ice with murder in my heart and a rock hard puck at my feet. What’s even better, we arm all of the players with a nice long stick so they can move the puck, but they also have something with which they might hit the other players. This arrangement sounds perfect to me–perfect for mayhem, that is. Fist fights are common when someone breaks the rules, hits too hard, or plays a little dirty, all of which is expected at some point in almost every game. I never played in organized games or high school–I was the wrong shape and size: I was tall and skinny, which means my center of gravity was relatively high, which is bad for skating where you want your center of gravity as low as possible. I broke two watches playing pick up games in the park, and then I stopped wearing my watch when I played hockey. I played with my skinny friends while in college, and we had a good time knocking each other down. It is common for hockey players to have lost teeth, to have broken several bones, to have bad knees (ankles, shoulders, necks, etc.,), and to have an early onset of arthritis in most of their joints. The hitting and checking is fun, but it does wear on both your body and your soul because at some point most players do ask themselves, what am I doing? I’ve gotten bloody noses, bruised everything, almost a concussion (or maybe a real one, who knows), a twisted knee, and a plethora of other injuries from this sport. Yes, it’s fast, yes, it’s exciting, and I won’t deny it is fun to watch because except for few time outs to clean up the ice, the action is non-stop. Hockey is a bit of organized violence where you can let yourself get into it without feeling like a complete Neanderthal. This game speaks to aggression and violence in an open acknowledgement of our most base urges and desires. In fact, I would suggest that some people would be totally repulsed by this spectacle, but that they might not be able to stop watching either. Hockey is not for the weak of heart or those with a refined sense of peace or passiveness. Hockey is a brawl that lasts for an hour while twelve men fight over a little black, rubber disk, which is absurd, but for many people it is a cathartic release of their most primitive, dark emotions which have no other place to go. Some people will earnestly deny that they might have violent tendencies, but my experience within the human race, being one, for example, is that there is a hockey player inside of us all. Whether we ever choose to let him/her skate out on the ice of society is another matter entirely. Some might choose to mow the lawn, wash their car, go for a run, play basketball, walk the dog, looking for ways to appease their inner hockey player, but I’m wondering if that is enough. We are all just a bit aggressive (drive during rush hour and see what I mean), so we all need to address that part of our character even though that part of our nature is irrational, dark, base, and frightening. Are we brave enough to examine that dark side of our personalities that will sometimes escape, turning us into aggressive, mean, reactionary, and violent people? So I go to a hockey game and let others hit and pound on each other, and, strangely, I find this rather satisfying—flashing blades, slashing sticks, violent checking, slap shots, spinning pucks—a juxtaposition of chaos and order.

On ice hockey

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If I had anything rational to say about this sport, I would say it, but I’m not going to do that. Ice hockey is a visceral experience that is enjoyed in some other part of the brain that has nothing to do with reason, logic, or higher patterns of thought. Use a stick to put the puck in a net, and knock down anyone who tries to stop you. Oh, and to make it interesting, we’re going to do this while skating a highly polished piece of ice and add eleven more guys (or girls) to the fray, just to make it interesting. I loved to play this game as a child with flashing blades of steel strapped to my feet, flying across the ice with murder in my heart and a rock hard puck at my feet. What’s even better, we arm all of the players with a nice long stick so they can move the puck, but they also have something with which they might hit the other players. This arrangement sounds perfect to me–perfect for mayhem, that is. Fist fights are common when someone breaks the rules, hits too hard, or plays a little dirty, all of which is expected at some point in almost every game. I never played in organized games or high school–I was the wrong shape and size: I was tall and skinny, which means my center of gravity was relatively high, which is bad for skating where you want your center of gravity as low as possible. I broke two watches playing pick up games in the park, and then I stopped wearing my watch when I played hockey. I played with my skinny friends while in college, and we had a good time knocking each other down. It is common for hockey players to have lost teeth, to have broken several bones, to have bad knees (ankles, shoulders, necks, etc.,), and to have an early onset of arthritis in most of their joints. The hitting and checking is fun, but it does wear on both your body and your soul because at some point most players do ask themselves, what am I doing? I’ve gotten bloody noses, bruised everything, almost a concussion (or maybe a real one, who knows), a twisted knee, and a plethora of other injuries from this sport. Yes, it’s fast, yes, it’s exciting, and I won’t deny it is fun to watch because except for few time outs to clean up the ice, the action is non-stop. Hockey is a bit of organized violence where you can let yourself get into it without feeling like a complete Neanderthal. This game speaks to aggression and violence in an open acknowledgement of our most base urges and desires. In fact, I would suggest that some people would be totally repulsed by this spectacle, but that they might not be able to stop watching either. Hockey is not for the weak of heart or those with a refined sense of peace or passiveness. Hockey is a brawl that lasts for an hour while twelve men fight over a little black, rubber disk, which is absurd, but for many people it is a cathartic release of their most primitive, dark emotions which have no other place to go. Some people will earnestly deny that they might have violent tendencies, but my experience within the human race, being one, for example, is that there is a hockey player inside of us all. Whether we ever choose to let him/her skate out on the ice of society is another matter entirely. Some might choose to mow the lawn, wash their car, go for a run, play basketball, walk the dog, looking for ways to appease their inner hockey player, but I’m wondering if that is enough. We are all just a bit aggressive (drive during rush hour and see what I mean), so we all need to address that part of our character even though that part of our nature is irrational, dark, base, and frightening. Are we brave enough to examine that dark side of our personalities that will sometimes escape, turning us into aggressive, mean, reactionary, and violent people? So I go to a hockey game and let others hit and pound on each other, and, strangely, I find this rather satisfying—flashing blades, slashing sticks, violent checking, slap shots, spinning pucks—a juxtaposition of chaos and order.

On twenty-nine degrees below zero

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In northern Minnesota (yes, a redundancy) the temperature dropped to minus 29 degrees Fahrenheit this morning. This is not bragging, it’s just weather. There have been far colder places in the USA, including the far reaches of Alaska where it is often lots colder. Yet, there is a certain something in the cold weather experience which tests a person’s metal. Do you have what it takes to keep on trying on a morning when your car probably won’t start, your water pipes may be in danger of freezing, the dog has to be kept inside, ice crystals float like little diamonds in the air, the snow crunches under your feet, and you are bundled up like the Michelin Man. Exposed skin will freeze in less than five minutes at that temperature, so you better know how your cold weather gear works and pay attention. Even the slightest problem, flat tire, no gas, flat battery, turns into a dangerous crisis at that temperature. God forbid your furnace or electricity go out at this temperature. Twenty-nine degrees below zero is nothing to fool with and it’s a temperature that puts a huge stress on everything–buildings, heating, plumbing, electricity, travel, cars, trucks, people, children. If you have to be outside for any time at all, you must know what you are up against, or it could be fatal. Waiting outside for anything for any amount of time can chill you to the bone and puts a huge stress on fingers, toes, ears, noses, and feet. Usually people can keep their core warm with a good jacket or parka, but we always skimp on the footwear and the gloves. And let’s not even talk about taking your gloves off for moment to do something barehanded at this temperature, which is extremely problematic. If the wind is blowing at all, you have a big problem if you are forced to walk any distance at all. At twenty-nine degrees below zero your breath freezes almost instantly, and the cold air will make your teeth hurt as your breathe. I’ve had a car battery die at minus twenty-four, which is almost just as bad. My super-cold weather gear consisted of long-johns, wool socks, various layers of cotton and wool t-shirts, thermal wear, down-filled gloves, packs (insulated boots), and a down-filled hat with ear-flaps. None of this clothing will win any fashion awards, but it will keep you from freezing to death when regular clothing just cannot do the job. Because that’s what we’re talking about–dying. When it’s a hundred degrees in the shade, you pour yourself another glass of water, stay out of the sun, relax, take it easy, but at twenty-nine degrees below zero you have to face a few challenges if you have to go outside, go to work, to school. And just because it’s cold does not mean that emergency services don’t have to be functioning–police, fire, city, ambulances, garbage, snow removal. Curiously, we know that crime tends to dip a bit when the temperature gets this low, so criminals don’t like to go out either when it’s twenty-nine degrees below zero. If you don’t like icy conditions, stay in Texas or Arizona or Florida or California because this is an either you like it or you hate it. And there’s no sense in torturing yourself with cold weather if you can help it. Cold weather does not make you more honest, or a better person, or more moral, or more ethical, but what it will do for you is clear: you are certainly a more careful person when it comes to your daily routine because anyone who has ever suffered frostbite, certainly does not want to do it again. Bundle up out there–cold nose, warm heart.