Election eve & night 2012: Looking ahead, it’s good to look back

As we await official 2012 election results, my mind has been wandering over the past two days.  I’m a self-proclaimed political junkie who drifts between extreme optimism and horrid cynicism.  No doubt, Election 2012 is going to bring mixed results, messages and on-going political turmoil and gridlock.  There is no true light at the end of this god-forsaken tunnel.

But it is our tunnel. It is our hole and for all of us to dig out.  Not one by one, not by leaving some behind, but collectively. Together.

My guess is we won’t even know the end result of this presidential election for at least 10 to 14 days, as Ohio’s provisional ballots are contested and counted.  It’s really the last thing this country needs, another presidential election in which the winner is disputed, in which Barack Obama or Mitt Romney face both a fractured Congress and nation.

In Minnesota, we’ve seen both sides of all this madness in the proposed amendments.  While Facebook friends may grow disgruntled by the recent onslaught of new cover and profile photos and public policy debate, this is good stuff.  Social media has lifted these critical issues out of the back rooms and into our homes.  And that should be applauded.

All I truly know is that no matter what transpires after today and tonight, these discussions should not end and will not.  And this state and its people will continue to address the issues of gay and lesbian rights, as well as designing fair and just ways to vote.

Many of you may seem overloaded and desiring a reprieve.  I’m saying it’s only just begun.

Remembering the ’98 Ventura win…and the issues

In November 1998, Jesse Ventura might not really have shocked the world by winning Minnesota’s gubernatorial election, but it was quite a stunner in Minnesota and beyond.  Time magazine captured this November surprise. Who would have predicted it?

I did. The problem was there was no one to hear me; nowhere was my grand prediction documented.  There was no Facebook. Ventura won with 37% of the Minnesota vote.  Republican Norm Coleman followed with 34%, while early ’98 favorite and DFL-endorsed Hubert H. “Skip” Humphrey slipped to just 28%.

At the time just after the September primaries which elevated both Coleman and Humphrey past party challengers, Ventura – officially the Reform Party candidate but really an independent – had garnered just more than 10% in a Minneapolis Star Tribune poll.  But by October 20, Ventura had jumped to 21%. And after a series of very effective debates against his stuffy, predictable and cautious challengers, Jesse “the Body” was gaining steam.

In the week before the election, I joined a quiet meeting in Gaylord at the Sibley County Courthouse basement, but one news flash stuck out: Sibley County’s U of M Extension agent reported that nearly all of the area homemakers she surveyed were planning to vote for Ventura.  In this rural and conservative county, there was spiked anger at politics-as-usual.  Ventura’s slogan and libertarian style fit: “Don’t vote for politics as usual.”

McLeod and Sibley County voters were among those to lead the Ventura revolution. Consider this odd list of counties which saw a majority (or near-majority) of voters swing Ventura’s way in ‘98:

1.        Isanti                     52.9%

2.        McLeod                52.8%

3.        Chisago                52.8%

4.        Wright                  51.4%

5.        Sherburne            51.2%

6.        Anoka                   50.7%

7.        Sibley                    49.7%

8.        Kanabec               49.6%

Ventura’s strange brand of ’98 politics included support for gay rights and gays in the military, for medicinal marijuana, for opening a debate on the legalization of prostitution, support for public schools but against teachers’ unions, and for an overall limited/libertarian style of government. And despite his U.S. Navy Seal tenure and patriotic wave, as governor he vetoed a bill to require recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance in schools.

It was Ventura’s style that captured disenfranchised voters’ attention in ’98.  It’s his past issues – particularly on gay rights – that have resurfaced again in 2012.  He and wife Terry were featured in a September TV commercial for Minnesotans United For All Families, pledging to “Vote NO” on the upcoming marriage amendment.

"I certainly hope that people don't amend our constitution to stop gay marriage because, number one, the constitution is there to protect people — not oppress them", Ventura said.  “Government should not be telling people who to fall in love with.”

And this is our new state representative?

Despite McLeod County’s 1998 vote for a very socially liberal Ventura, it’s bright red. It’s a yellow dog Republican district.  Consider some of these positions by Rep. Glenn Gruenhagen (R-Glencoe), who is poised to win today against the very bright and capable (but young) DFL challenger, Logan Campa.

At an April “Pro Marriage Amendment Forum” in Waconia, co-sponsored by “reformed” homosexual Kevin Petersen, Gruenhagen labeled all gays and lesbians as “unhealthy sexual perverts.”  A sitting Minnesota state representative speaking these words?  This one-term legislator’s long, rambling letters to the editor in Glencoe newspapers may be legendary in McLeod County, but most Sibley County residents are just getting to know him.  As a Sibley County resident, the redistricting moved our citizenry into one shared by much of McLeod County, one which left Gruenhagen as the sitting “incumbent.” 

My final glimpse of Gruenhagen’s strange demeanor and words came at an October debate in Glencoe, and from his odd opening to his final, bizarre words tying pornography to domestic abuse, his political views continue to range from embarrassing to unsettling.  He is oddly placed as a state rep, most interested and out-spoken on health care and climate change.  But he’ll likely be a winner again tonight.

Looking ahead

At times it seems as if we’ve moved so far beyond that odd, yet historic election of 1998.  But as a nation, we’ve become more polarized.  And within of Minnesota, the marriage and voter ID amendments have added to this discourse.  Add to that the influence of money in state and national politics has grown beyond distasteful; but there are few signs of slowing it all down.

Tired of it all? Well, get ready for a tumultuous four years.

Finally, the most important speech any of us will likely hear this election season is yet to come – the concession speech of either Obama or Romney.  Like Al Gore of 2000 and John McCain of 2008, it is that special, often once-in-a-lifetime chance for a prominent national voice to bring all of us together. 

Or to at least try.  And whether that speech comes in the early hours of November 7 or after yet another prolonged election challenge and counting of provisional ballots in Ohio, we’ve gotta keep trying.

Election 2012: The most important of my lifetime

Election 2012 is heating up on several fronts, from Minnesota’s “Marriage Amendment” to the Great Debates. At age 55, I’ve witnessed and analyzed far too many of these shows, but I’m willing to claim that this is the most important of my lifetime.

Four key ingredients are making this so:

1. Minnesota’s “Marriage Amendment” is the civil rights issue of a generation.
2. President Barack Obama vs. Republican challenger Mitt Romney.
3. A second state constitutional amendment question: Voter ID.
4. Glenn Gruenhagen (but he’s going to take up an entire second blog by himself) 

If I haven’t bored you yet, you likely qualify as a bona fide politico wonk (or maybe a family member).  But those of you who truly know and understand me know that progressive politics runs deep in my veins, and community journalism never leaves the soul.  Put the two together and you know one has to blog a little about this November 6 election and the meaning to all this madness.

Minnesota’s “Marriage Amendment”

A facebook friend of mine recently posted this on her page: “I am dead serious when I say, if you are voting YES for the marriage amendment, delete me as a friend. Now.”

I would never go that far, but I’m close. There is so much wrong with this hurtful and discriminatory amendment that one should be able to think outside the box or the Bible’s Old Testament ways to muster up a NO vote.  I can understand if one’s traditional religious views are so deeply rooted in one’s core value system that it becomes difficult to separate from one’s political position.  But this amendment proposal is also bad politics and public policy.

Never has there been such a generational split on a key public policy issue.  Younger voters will overwhelmingly cast NO votes on this “Marriage Amendment,” while votes will shift toward YES as demographics turn older. A generation from now, as GLBT rights become even more commonplace and widely accepted in our society, this issue will appear similar to the women’s suffrage movement which produced the 19^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1920 allowing women to vote or the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s for African-Americans.

Love comes in many shapes and sizes. And good parenting doesn’t necessarily mean only a man and a woman.  To deny those who love each other the right to marriage or to even suggest that children will better flourish in a traditional husband-wife household simply seems wrong and discriminatory in today’s society.  Supporters on both sides of the aisle may twist figures to suit their cause; but common sense must prevail on this one.  Good, loving relationships make for good parents.  Good parenting is good parenting.

It’s the Bible and religion which makes this issue different. And that is a difficult argument to counter and argue against for many conservative Christians.  But not all are, and when a public policy issue like this enters the political arena, it also becomes an issue of freedom – both of individual rights and religious freedom. Or even the freedom to not be religious. And I simply find it the height of hypocrisy for a Republican party, which prides itself on advocating limited government, supporting amendments which suppress personal freedoms.

Finally, don’t clutter the Minnesota Constitution.  We should never impose a majority vote to constitutional frameworks. 

Obama vs. Romney

President Obama and GOP challenger Mitt Romney seem like polar opposites.  They’re not, and the reality remains that little will change no matter who wins the presidency, unless congressional gridlock loosens up. 

But despite Romney’s damaging “47%” comments, this race appears close.  It’s amazing to me.  And it speaks broadly of a U.S. electorate which has grown more intolerable toward others.  This era of “personal responsibility” sounds good and makes for easy sound bites, but the real world it ain’t.

America has always taken care of its neediest citizens.  And it should.  It seems easy to criticize this nation’s welfare system; yet, the majority of “welfare” programs are dedicated to our elderly, especially those in nursing homes.  It is easy to point fingers at illegal immigrants; but this finger-pointing too often profiles and labels legal immigrants, as well, and doesn’t point a firm enough finger at businesses who want and need cheap labor or an American citizenry that won’t work such jobs.

I, too, have been disappointed in Obama’s first term on several fronts.  But it’s hard to dispute he inherited a horrible mess from the George W. Bush administration: Two wars without proper dedicated funding and an historic economic downturn prompted by the housing crash and Wall Street greed. And the Obama administration has little to nothing to do with a world economy which has also slowed dramatically.

It seems a simple choice to me.  And that’s what makes me uneasy.  For a Romney presidency, especially on  taxation and foreign policy, scares me.

The Voter ID Amendment

This effort has been all about politics.  Rampant voter fraud is an urban myth brought on by the most recent close election calls, both going the Democrats’ ways (Mark Dayton over Tom Emmers for Minnesota governor and Al Franken over Norm Coleman for U.S. Senate).

Voter fraud is rare and inconsequential in determining electoral winners.  But limiting fair access to Minnesota’s polling places appears unconstitutional on the surface and just darn stupid.  It will make it more difficult for the elderly who no longer hold picture IDs and those of college age, who often hold multiple residences.  It could easily disenfranchise these voters, make it more difficult for them to register and, thus, marginalize their voting experience.  Both groups, not coincidentally, are more apt to vote Democratic.

And this change would cost Minnesota cities and counties a hunk of change to implement.

Again, a Republican party that promotes limited government wants to impose a government-certified picture ID? Nuts.  While many citizens see this as a simple issue (as in, “Everyone citizen should have a picture ID. What’s the big deal?”), it isn’t.  It’s making an issue out of a non-issue.  And very, very political.  There are many key issues this political season.  Voter ID shouldn’t have been one of them.

Mom, surrounded by five of our six children: Clockwise, from  bottom  left -- Ambryn, Bill, Mikell, Matt, Andy.  Ben was at work in Mankato.

Karen Alma Melius

On Saturday, August 25, 2012, we buried my mother, Karen Alma Melius.  Mom had died a week earlier, August 19, at the Winthrop Good Samaritan Center.  She was 86.

Most of those years were good ones for Mom.  But not the last weeks.  Certainly not the last days.  I was ready for Mom to go.  That’s no way to live, no way to die.  That’s what I would tell family, friends, co-workers.

But I don’t think Mom saw it that way.  She wanted to keep living. I could tell. Her smile each day told me.  She told me.  Mom wasn’t ready to die.  I asked her.

“No. I’ve got more people to talk to,” she told me during her last week.  And she smiled, again. 

Mom  didn’t talk much in her final weeks.  She was unable to get out of bed.  She didn’t eat much, if anything.  But she still liked ice cream.  She always did, whether it was a Buster Bar at the Dairy Queen, or a sundae cone out of the grocery store freezer.  Those were among her treats.  And they were always better if she had one with her kids or her grandkids or her great-grandkids.

That was Mom’s life, that and Lyle’s Café.  Her younger sister, Marge Saxton Lindstrand, owned this Winthrop landmark for almost 50 years.  Mom  worked there the entire time, baking thousands of pies, quietly accepting the fact that a 94-year-old Pie Lady, Mina Peterson, got the first and biggest headlines in the mid-‘80s. 

Mom  loved Mina and worked side-by-side with this legend for decades.  But Mom’s pies were better and more numerous.  I remember a postcard from  a New York traveler who made a regular passage through Minnesota because he had found the best sour cream  raisin pie he’d ever tasted. From  New York, through Winthrop, Minnesota, en route to California!

I remember generations of families from  the Marshall area who would make Lyle’s Café their midway stop on the way to the Twin Cities.  That Hwy. 19 traffic, to and from  the Cities, helped make the legend of the Pie Lady and Lyle’s Café grow.  This little, 75-seat café on the corner of Winthrop’s stoplight was a proud fixture of this community for decades.  And it was a simple place where generations of Winthrop people loved to work.

“We had one of the best working together relationships any two people could possibly have,” remembered Gloria Kuehn, a fellow Lyle’s pie baker. “She was also a very, very dear friend and I have many wonderful memories of the times we spent together.”

Gloria was one of the lucky ones who learned some of Mom’s pie-baking tricks of the trade.  Mom  had no recipes, much to the chagrin of her family.  She just baked the pies by memory.  She swore her only real secret was using home-rendered lard for her crusts.  But there was so much more to that.  I would watch amazed as she took hours slow-cooking her raisins for the sour cream  raisin pie, puffing them  up just so.  And the meticulous way she lathered up her meringues, then spun them  just right for a look no one else could make. 

It all seemed so simple.  But few people could match her talents.  Gloria was one of the lucky ones Mom  taught.  Chris Smith, a fellow co-owner of  Lyle’s during the late ‘80s and ‘90s with me, was another.  Maybe that’s why it was those two who finally brought my tears during Mom’s funeral.  These were the pie bakers.  And Mom  was truly the Pie Lady.

As Chris and Kelly Smith walked up to Peace Lutheran Church, I cried for the first time over Mom’s death.  We had spent little time together through the past years, as the Smiths left the restaurant business as Kelly went into high school administration.  But as they approached, it was easy to recall how special those times had been.  How much simpler and different the world was, even just 20-25 years earlier.

An even earlier generation of Winthropites can share their stories, as well, of a Lyle’s Café that was the gathering place of Winthrop High School students after game days and nights.  Lyle’s Café was a vintage piece of Americana, but it was Winthrop’s place.

But that sense of community is forever altered when one finally says goodbye to his parents.  My dad, Louis “Pud” Melius, died April 14, 2009, at the age of 93.  Their home for all of my 55 years was at 410 North Hennepin Street in Winthrop.  I was both lucky and cursed to have lived just a block and a half away for the past 30 years. 

That’s close enough to have once looked out our picture window during a heavy snowfall and seeing my mother towing our toboggan with two loads of our laundry back to her place.  She had snuck in our house while I was shoveling snow in back, then whisked away knowing I’d be upset with her.  I was, at the time, and raced outside to catch her. 

“Just bored and trying to help you out,” Mom  said then.  I slowly learned to let her help. It’s what she wanted to do, help her kids.  It’s now part of Mom  and Dad’s legacy.  Despite limited means, they helped out whenever they could.  They rarely gave advice from  their parental chairs, but they would listen and provide support as each knew best.

But most of all, Mom  and Dad remained proud of their family and proud of their community.  Mom  gave her all to Lyle’s Café and her family.  Dad’s employment days at the old Midland station were proud ones, but his “retirement” and work at the Winthrop golf course were his golden times.  And both loved plopping down lawn chairs along the third-base line to watch the local town team  baseball games.

My parents’ journey together was a simple one.  So was their message.  “Be kind to others, be fair, and love your family.”

So I am  and I do.

Restorative justice: It's lacking in today's system

by Dana Melius 

Beyond the raw emotions and hints of class warfare during the recent Amy Senser criminal vehicular trial, the simple words of basic restorative justice finally surfaced Monday following her 41-month sentencing in Hennepin County court.

Senser apologized.  And the parents of Anousone Phanthavong forgave her in the death of their son, the 38-year-old chef at Minneapolis True Tai restaurant.

“It also marked the first time she said she was sorry, something Phanthavong’s family said contributed to their closure as much as a prison sentence,” wrote Minneapolis Star Tribune reporter Abby Simons in its July 9 edition.

Closure.  Too often in today’s criminal justice system there is too little.  Instead, victims and the court system seek punitive sentencing, then realize a prison sentence alone brings little peace and closure.  Victims deserve and should demand more.  And in some cases – many cases – justice would be better served.

It’s called restorative justice, and after more than a decade of advancement in Minnesota, we are losing ground on this front.  In this emotionally charged world since 9/11, the cry for personal responsibility, the ugly expansion of political posturing and revenge, there is little time and money for restoring justice.  Instead, we put people away and place a huge burden on criminals and taxpayers alike.  Worse, we offer too little restorative justice for victims. 

And that – restoring justice for victims – should be the court’s and, more so, society’s primary purpose.

Restorative justice done right is a powerful and effective tool.  And for the criminal justice system to better serve both victims and offenders, it must more effectively restore justice not just enforce punitive sentences.  Importantly and uniquely, each incident and its slate of involved parties vary in emotions and needs.  But today’s court system and its glut of cases have neither the time nor money to efficiently handle both.

However, getting this right is so critical for the healing process and for a more compassionate society.  Those of us objectively watching the Amy Senser trial unfold understand that could have been any of us. In a moment, lives change. Be it inattentive driving or filling gas on a freeway ramp, tragedies unfold. And criminal vehicular homicide sentencing has been getting much tougher in recent years, with the wave of cell phone texting accidents, on-going DWI citations, and we’ll see it again in the recent St. Paul Harding high school tragedy, in which a 16-year-old was run down in a park by an unlicensed driver.

But does a 41-month sentence for Senser allow closure for the victim’s family?  Or does a tearful, sincere apology best open the door for forgiveness and final closure?

Only the family of the victim truly knows and understands that.  And the difficulty in restorative justice is both understanding that and measuring its effectiveness. 

For our family, it was an easy call.  In December of 1997, son Benjamin returned to his Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop High School roots to watch a T-Bird boys basketball game. Leaving a couple minutes early, he was jumped by at least two Glencoe-Silver Lake High School students and knocked unconscious in a dark, back gymnasium  parking lot.  Investigators believe a single blow to the head knocked him out, but another 50 or more kicks to his head and body forced a difficult and anxious ambulance run to the very community hospital of the offenders – Glencoe.

I was the second person to come across Ben in the parking lot, just after a fellow GFWer raced inside to report the attack.  I watched as his face swelled and his eyes rolled back in his head.  It was as frightening a period ever in raising our six children.  And my initial feelings were of extreme anger.  Ben was a random victim.  The parking lot was nearly pitch dark, with no proper lighting.  The ambulance response seemed slow.  And as my wife Kim and I drove to Glencoe, I hoped to spot the offenders, somehow, somewhere.

We later found out that a group of young McLeod County men drove to the basketball game in search of a young Winthrop man suspected of assaulting one of their friends earlier in the week.  When he wasn’t found, they decked the first person out of the gym – Ben.  Two other GFW students were assaulted on the south side of the gym but neither sustained serious injuries.  Ben’s were.

Twenty-one young men – five adults and 16 juveniles – were later faced with felony assault or intent to riot charges. 

Ben was hurting but open and honest from  the start regarding his feelings in the matter.  Mob mentality among high school boys could escalate over the simplest of incidents, he said.  And successful felony convictions in this case could greatly hamper these young men’s educational and job paths.  When approached by the Sibley County Attorney’s Office and Court Services department about a restorative justice, “circle-sentencing” approach, Ben and our family agreed.

Although it was a lengthy, somewhat disjointed first attempt at averting the traditional criminal justice system, it was powerful for the Melius family.  All 21 alleged offenders – with parents – attended the circle.  Ben was allowed to speak and offered his forgiveness and understanding.  Several of the young men charged – as well as their parents – gave tearful apologies.  And as Ben left early prior to an agreed upon “sentence” by both victims and offenders, he shook the hands of all 21 young men.

It offered proper and powerful closure to Ben and our family.  Not surprisingly, others in the community disagreed and felt the offenders got off easy. But we knew it might have saved some of the offenders from the dark clouds of a felony conviction.  And while it did not spare our family from an unexpected criticism from many in the Winthrop community who didn’t see the justice and wanted greater punishment, we believed it was restorative justice at work.

And today, we continue to believe in it.  One of those 21 offenders eventually became close friends with my daughter, Ambryn, as they were among Gustavus Adolphus College students who traveled to India in 2001.  And I sat on the steps of the Minnesota State Capitol over a year later with this wonderful young man, protesting American bombings in Afghanistan and the war in Iraq.

Restorative justice is not easy work.  And it doesn’t fit sentencing guidelines, which have taken over the criminal justice system.  It’s why Amy Senser received at least the minimum of 41 months in prison for her responsibility in the death of Thai chef   Anousone Phanthavong.  Ms. Senser finally backed away from her lawyers at Monday’s sentencing and gave what was described as a “sincere apology.” 

And in the end, it just might be this apology and acceptance of responsibility that brings restorative justice and closure to the Phanthavong family.

Buddy reflections

March 10, 2012

"After another Sat. nite of work at the K, a beer at the B & L with good friend Ward, and a drive home to Winthrop alone with Matt Nathanson music, it finally hit me that Buddy's big noggin will no longer be watching for me through the front picture window, nor will he scramble his 95-pound bod to greet me at the door. He was so smart, so spoiled, so loving. I will miss him dearly." -- My facebook post on the evening we put Buddy down. 

(Daughter Ambryn with Buddy)

April 18, 2012 -- For over a month, our house has been way too quiet.  Buddy, our 14-year-old black lab, no longer sits at our heels.  But today, I placed his cremated remains in a better place, a beautiful oak case, replacing the gaudy, flowered tin box provided by the crematorium.

Over those 14 years, he was an interesting and integral part of the Melius family. My wife, Kim, never wanted the little pup, whom son Matt, scooped from a box at Winthrop's Town & Country Days in June of 1998 from a local resident, Jim Edlund.  But Buddy's eyes were as big and bright as Matt's, and most of us were happy to finally have a family pet that we wouldn't have to flush down the toilet.

Not Kim.  Yet, she gave in. Buddy treaded water in her eyes for quite some time, chewing his way through our dining room table and chairs...and running when he wasn't supposed to...and shedding hair like crazy...and growing to his 95-pound frame.  He was big, spoiled and often in the way, tripping up Kim at inopportune times.

But in that way only a family pet can bring, Buddy became a fixture in the Melius home.  He loved to play outside in the winter, snatching our beanies or gloves and running off, waiting until the last moment as we neared, then running off with them again.  He and I would wrestle in the living room, once getting head-butted so hard he nearly knocked me out. 

And he was smart.  Early on, fellow Winthropite Darv Grack spotted me with Buddy and asked if he could purchase the mut, which surprised me and would have made for a quick sale had Kim been the first to hear it.

"I can tell your dog's smart," Darv said. "He'd make a great hunting dog."  I'm no hunter, so it was news to me.  But I said we'd hang on to Buddy and turned him into the largest house dog in town.

But this past Thanksgiving holiday, we could tell he was really slowing down and struggling with movement.  Over Christmas, all of our six kids saw the change and wondered how I would do if Buddy was to go.  I had grown extremely close to him but joked about how he was my best friend.  I'd never bought into the "man's best friend." 'Til now.

On Friday, March 9, Buddy had difficulty walking.  Daughter Mikell had to help him outside, and then back inside again while Kim and I were at work.  Finally, he blopped down on the dining room floor, only managing to raise his head before settling back down.  We called the vet, asking for recommendations, telling her that Buddy didn't appear to be in pain, just frustrated by his inability to move.  She said keep him warm and call her again in the morning.

That night, I slept by Buddy, holding him at times and crying a lot.  We managed to get him on to an old sleeping bag to keep him warm.  We had still hoped he might come around, but through the night he deteriorated. By morning, we knew. We tried to reach Mikell, who had left that night to visit a friend, but had no luck.  So my wife and I wrapped him in the sleeping bag, struggled a bit to get him into the back seat of the car, and drove the 17 miles to our Fairfax vet.

Dr. Diane Hansgen of the Fairfax Veterinary Clinic said Buddy likely had a massive stroke and asked if we were ready to put him down.  Suddenly, we knew he would soon be leaving us.  We thought we'd have Buddy for yet another summer, with Mikell and son #4 Andy both expected to be at home, Andy for maybe one last time.  It's a sadness I imagine only the loss of a family pet can bring.  It was a first-time experience for us all.

The clinic staff offered a stretcher to help bring Buddy in, but this time I needed to carry him and did, slipping into the backseat of the Neon and managing to place my arms under his body.  Buddy's black eyes were open but his body useless.  But he was warm.  And this time, he was relaxed as I placed him on the vet's table.  In the past, he'd flop down on the floor before his rabies shots, and I would have one dickens of a time lifting him up.

Dr. Hansgen asked if Kim and I were ready, and we were, and soon, Buddy was dead, still warm, but gone.  Kim and I had a few minutes with Buddy, both crying hard and saying goodbye.  I then helped Dr. Hansgen prepare him and placed him into a freezer, as Kim and I decided to have him cremated.  Never in my wildest imagination, looking back, did I think we'd cremate him.  But it was an easy decision.  It was Buddy, my best friend.

Kim cried for two days straight. We had known she was warming up to Buddy the last few years, but this took us all by surprise.  My wife has been a dedicated hospice social worker over the years and knows death and grief.  So she grieved.  Deeply. 

Buddy had been a fixture in our home.  Mikell, our sixth and last child, had never known our home without him.  Buddy's loss, I think, hit Kim so hard because it's another sign how time moves on.  And while marriage is tough and life can be difficult, family memories can be wonderful.  And those of Buddy are. 

Sen. Gary DeCramer

Sad to hear about the death of former state Sen. Gary DeCramer, 67, a DFLer formerly from Ghent. He mentored me during my unsuccessful state senate run in 1986. (Don't hold that against him!) Henn. Co. Att. Mike Freeman says this about DeCramer: "You liked to be around Gary because he made you feel decent and good...He was a gentle, thoughtful person." What politicians should be.

 

Was gonna run for State Rep. that year but former Sen. Roger Moe talked me into being the sacrificial lamb against popular state Sen. Earl Renneke (IR-LeSueur). Fun, costly on several fronts, and thought I'd run two years later. Never did. But Moe and DeCramer were great.

 

DeCramer was an old-school, rural Minnesota advocate.  He was able to cross political aisles and do what was best for sustaining small-town principles and policies.  And he continued that work and dedication long after his service in the State Senate.  Seeing that he died of a heart attack while visiting the U of M-Morris with his teenage daughter saddened me on several fronts.  Minnesota loses a great man, a great rural spokesman; his daughter moves on to her collegiate days without her father; and those days of civil bipartisanship have longed past us by.

Reflections on a 6th GFW graduate

Guest Opinion

Reflections on a 6th GFW graduate

Winthrop News of Winthrop, Minnesota Original Publication Date: June 9, 2010

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Our last of six children - Mikell Aynn - has graduated from  the Gibbon-Fairfax-Winthrop school system. It hasn't always been a smooth journey, to say the least. Often, it's been a wild ride. But I know one thing for sure - it's a ride of privilege and pride. Parenting is hard work.

GFW has been a good system; Winthrop has been a good town. Not perfect, kind of like our family. So, in that sense, it's been a good fit. It has also helped immensely that GFW has not been the Melius family's only educational community, that Winthrop has not been our lone place of being.

It's sometimes hard to picture that when first son, Benjamin, was born in 1979, GFW was still eight years from existence, that it still wasn't to be through the births of Ambryn in 1981, of William in 1984, and of Matthew in 1985. Not until Andrew's huge presence in 1989 was the acronym GFW in our communities' vocabulary. With Mikey's birth in 1992, my wife of 31 years, Kim, had developed a habit of penciling out key dates, and No. 6's graduation wasn't going to surface until what seemed a distant land - the year of 2010.

Now, we're here. Today, GFW makes the news as one of this nation's first IPad schools, set to launch in 2010-2011. It will be an interesting transition, one which will test old-school thinking with new-wave technology and learning styles. We will all need to be patient and trusting.

I was privileged enough to serve on the GFW school board for almost four years beginning in 2000. You try to do the right thing, realize that you think differently than others, cross your fingers, and hope to leave the district better off than when you started. In today's small schools much is beyond your control, your role pretty much that of a rubber stamp. It can be a good thing, when your CEO is pretty sharp, as in the case of Supt. Steve Malone. Trust your people to make good decisions. Educators are there, pretty much, for the same reason. To help kids.

That's getting tougher than ever. We're suffering now from a lack of focus and attention and financing in support of education at all levels. And the future - with citizen backlash at the once sacred philosophy of education as our public policy priority - is not one of a positive note. Rather, it's sounding more like the squeak of Ambryn's first attempt at the clarinet. One's hope is tempered by some very ugly sounds.

We can not cut our way out of this mess. Minnesota's governor-who-wants-to-be-President and his "no-new-taxes" policies have again created a disparity of wealth in our state's schools. The Eden Prairies and Wayzatas of the land are putting more money into their football facilities than most schools can afford for keeping up the basics. We've moved so far away from the traditional, constitutionally created public school system - from Wendell Anderson's Minnesota Miracle of the '70s and '80s - that it will be difficult, likely impossible, to ever return.

Personal responsibility doesn't mean each child, each family, each community is to battle on its own. It's kind of like life, complex in its make-up, simplistic in its vision. We are all to leave this world a better place than we found it. To do that, we have to play nice and fair and do it in the best intergenerational manner possible. And as my son, Andy, puts it through his on-going love of special education, fair doesn't necessarily mean everyone getting or even deserving the same things, the same attention, the same funding. It means doing what's right and needed for each individual, each situation.

Frankly, the GFW community has fared pretty well through it all. From the first-year, slamming dunks of Scott Springer and the Metrodome memories of our Minnesota state championship football team in 1989, to the more recent state tournament runs in boys' basketball and girls' volleyball, high school sports have helped bond three towns and beyond. The McLeod West communities of Brownton and Stewart have now shared their talents, as well, with grace and trust. As a parent, I can't imagine the heartache and worries of closing a school and moving a child into a new district for that special senior year of high school. But Sunday, there was valedictorian Kayla Schuette of Brownton, at the podium of GFW's high school gymnasium in Winthrop, bringing this proud dad and community member to tears with her wisdom and praise.

It helps when you have school leaders like GFW High School Principal Jeff Bertrang, as fine a person as you'll likely ever meet. And when a teacher like "Mr. K" - Bob Kaukola --gives kudos to your sixth and final graduate, it warms your heart. Our teachers, for the most part, are our communities' finest and most talented and need to hear more praise.

One also must smile when "Marvelous" Mavis Renner, who's been forever first at Winthrop Community Schools and now GFW, reminds my daughter she still owes 35 cents for lunch, and then boldly stamps "the last Melius lunch receipt!"

Still, for me, I will most remember the music. From the early elementary school concerts in Gibbon to watching GFW students perform the musicals "Grease" and "Beauty and the Beast" - which son Andy was blessed to be a part of  -- these were highlights. Right up to the most recent GFW Variety Show, with Mason Bleick's rousing rendition of "Unchain My Heart" to the incredible classical performance by foreign exchange student and gifted pianist Mayuko Chashiro, our students have touched us with song.

Long ago, our "community" grew well beyond Winthrop. As our 2010 graduates realize, it's grown well beyond GFW. For some, it's truly a global community. My oldest daughter, Ambryn - who's closing in on 30 and a 1999 GFW graduate - has already been to India...twice. When the terrorists hit the Twin Towers in New York on 9/11/2001, Ambryn was with fellow Gustavus Adolphus College study-abroad students on her first India visit, and the weeks to follow were excruciating. My former Navy son, Matt, spent almost two years on the islands of Diego Garcia, in the middle of the Indian Ocean. When the Indonesian Tsunami hit on December 26, 2004, the Melius family had to wait for hours to see if the island and its peoples would survive the monster waves. They did.

We have always challenged our children to look beyond the headlines, to dig deeper, and to understand that while life is simple, its issues and answers can be complex. In short, it's not even remotely close to black and white. And it certainly isn't fair and just. And I must say our children have handled it all with much dignity and understanding. For that, I am proud. While the doubters and cynics can squash a good thought, the kids have remained steadfast in their hearts and solid in their support. What more can a parent ask?

My personal journey has mirrored that roller-coaster existence. I've been able to sit at the table with the likes of the late Sen. Paul Wellstone and former First Lady Hilary Clinton in attempts to shape public policy. I've served as president of the Minnesota Coalition for the Homeless and executive director of such non-profits as Overcoming Poverty Together and the Minnesota Alliance for Progressive Action, an organization founded by Wellstone. And there was my joy of small-business ownership and success at The Winthrop News and Lyle's Cafe. Community journalism never leaves one's soul.

And I've also watched with admiration the work of my social work wife, whose two-decade dedication to hospice work is an inspiration for anyone concerned with the needs of the elderly and dying. It's tough, necessary, and rewarding work.

Success, however, can be measured in many different ways. I'll always recall the criticism of a fellow resident, who claimed I suffered from the worst of small-town evils - I couldn't fix my own car and struggled to balance my checkbook. Indeed, I've been guilty of both.

But through it all, despite working in Mankato or St. Paul or Willmar or being able to travel to Sweden to chaperone a church youth singing group or head to Seattle or Washington, D.C. to pursue dreams and push issues, Winthrop has been home. It strikes you when a local resident gets emotional dropping a Star Tribune subscription because she no longer can afford it, and then says "a Melius has been delivering newspapers to our home since 1965." That's both an "ouch" and a "wow" moment.

And that's what small-town life is. It can be boring and ugly and vicious as sin, but it can bring such measured and true love and spirit and hope that one can turn towards the heavens with a smile and a wink and a promise that tomorrow will shine brighter.

That's what every GFW graduate eyes, I believe. A better tomorrow. And when your own is part of the Class of 2010, one can not only hope and pray, but also get back to work.

Capitol thoughts -- 2012

Sitting in the Capitol rotunda Tuesday morning (1/31/2012) for another rally, a wave of deep emotions and memories hit. Over the past decade, we have taken so many steps back and lost so many key battles, much of it fueled by money in politics. But I wonder how much farther right we might have turned had the progressive community not worked so hard during that time. So, 2012 seems like a great time to enter the fray once more.