Posted on 12/24/2008 5:49:55 AM PST by rhema
Our building trembles, sometimes, but perceptibly. It is unmistakably a tremble, and I can't imagine what brings it about because the heavy machinery is across the river, where the paper is printed. I've worked in newspapers that house the presses, and when those babies start rolling, you have to grab a strap and hold on because the place feels like a submarine that just got the dive command.
Probably, old buildings like ours occasionally settle themselves even more comfortably on their haunches and it is nothing to get worked up over.
It only comes to attention, the trembling down at this end of Cedar Street, because up at the other end of Cedar, the pastors at Central Presbyterian and the Church of St. Louis are worried about what might happen to their buildings when they start construction on the Central Corridor light-rail line and, after, when the light-rail trains, which are not light at all, rumble past. We might worry about that, too, but not much can get knocked off the walls around here, even though, when you stop to think about the state of the newspaper business, it wouldn't hurt us any to have a statue or two or a grotto where we might pray to the great printer in the sky.
Minnesota Public Radio, also on Cedar, is even more worked up than the Rev. Paul Morrissey at St. Louis and the Rev. David Colby at Central Presbyterian. Those are only churches. At MPR, they have themselves convinced they are doing the real work of the people and the prospect of a train interrupting a whispery-voiced interview with a Bulgarian poet or throwing some folk singer's guitar out of tune has them threatening to move or sue or do something that could foul up the whole project.
MPR is getting windmilled, a term brought about by the Kennedy family, as in JFK. "Windmilled" is a more up-to-date term for what used to be called NIMBY, or "not in my back yard." When the Kennedy clan learned of plans by a private company to install windmills in the ocean off Cape Cod, they went bananas with concern that they, the Kennedy clan, might see the yonder blades of the windmills when they were down at the beach having a clambake. And considering that a few of the younger Kennedys, particularly Bobby Kennedy Jr., have been strong advocates of wind power, I guess we learned that they are strong advocates only if somebody else has to actually see or hear the windmills.
The argument could easily be made that public transportation and all it connotes has had no better friend in the media than MPR. Why, the prospect of us politely shuffling aboard a train while carrying our cloth MPR bag to hold the vegetables we purchase at various small local markets has been right up their editorial alley.
Except now, when they might actually have to be the train's neighbor. That's when they fire off letters and unleash the lawyers and plead for a public understanding that their studios, more than any other studios, apparently, are too delicate and fine-tuned to withstand the bells and whistles and rumbling of the great rolling collective.
(The train will go past our building, too, but none of us can really make an argument that it would disrupt the creative process because we are often yelling at each other, anyway.)
Metropolitan Council President Peter Bell said Monday that "Cedar Street remains the route."
Where it leaves a fellow like me is in limbo, a term you would learn at St. Louis or Central Presbyterian but not at MPR. Light rail is a boondoggle that is being shoved down our pocketbooks and we all know it and we can't do anything to stop it. If I thought MPR had a chance to stop it, I'd have to contribute to one of the 20 or 30 fund drives they hold each year, but they can't stop it and they know it and all they can do is bluster.
Bluster is good practice for trembling. Maybe, for the ultimate in windmilling, MPR will leave the sustainable urban core for the sprawl of a suburban industrial park and the kind of transportation in a snowstorm that only a gas-guzzling SUV can reliably provide.
Minnesota Public Radio, also on Cedar, is even more worked up than the Rev. Paul Morrissey at St. Louis and the Rev. David Colby at Central Presbyterian. Those are only churches. At MPR, they have themselves convinced they are doing the real work of the people and the prospect of a train interrupting a whispery-voiced interview with a Bulgarian poet or throwing some folk singer's guitar out of tune has them threatening to move or sue or do something that could foul up the whole project.
I like the “windmilled” term.
Good ole Joe, a constant champion against LRT and MPR. Love his articles!
LOL. Nailed it.
Joe Soucheray - the last unabashed conservative in Twin Cities’ newspapering.
Typical Minnesotan — spend billions on light rail and then have taxpayers subsidize it because it loses money. But, it makes the Met Council feel good because they’ve helped someone get a ride (while taking taxpayers for another one).
Almost the last. Katherine Kersten and James Lileks are reliably conservative voices in the din of otherwise-liberal Twin Cities journalism.
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Didn’t the Strib let Katherine Kersten go?
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