"Rabbit: An Original Rabbit Tragedy" at Bedlam Theatre East

Photo: Bedlam Theatre

I've never liked theater. I'm turned off by the pretension and the all-too-common tropes (chanting in unison). And I hate audience participation. Please, please, please just let's keep that alienation between the audience and performer intact.

I still kind of feel those things. But I've seen so many revelatory performances at the Bedlam Theatre that now when I complain about theater, I'm aware that my words don't ring exactly true anymore. I do like theater. Just not the vast majority of it. But that's not different than art forms I really care about: music or stories. I still don't like much art (unless you're willing to count comic books).

I saw the show "Rabbit: An Original Rabbit Tragedy" at the Bedlam's new St. Paul space last night. It was written by longtime Bedlam cohorts Jon Mac Cole and Savannah Reich, who also directed it along with Christopher Allen.

The stage is minimal, an arch painted with the image of a bird and propped up by two ladders. The Greek choir shift between roles mostly by changing the ears they wear to represent the different animals. The set and costumes looked nice and didn't get in the way of what I liked best: the story.

It's set in an imaginary world of animals that's both gritty, as in being born in a junk yard, and fantastical, as in rabbits starting bands and reading novels. The main rabbit, Jonathan, is an oddball from the start. He doesn't get along with his brothers and sisters and is out of step with those things that most rabbits seem to know naturally. Eventually, he picks up some magic tricks by spying on a badger, which helps him woo a female rabbit. They shack up in an abandoned car. But one day he gets picked up by a bird, and carried somewhere far away.

The rest of the story is about his struggle to get home and his constant failure. Unknown to Jonathan, one of his daughters that is born while he's away is an oddball too. Her favorite thing in the world is a fantasy novel, she idolizes the author and dreams of working for him. She hates her home, and when her band breaks up, she sets off to meet the author at a sci-fi and fantasy convention. Of course, she and Jonathan meet. But they never find out they're related. Despite the fuzzy ears worn by the actors, the ending, as I think is probably fitting in a tragedy, leaves any shreds of hopefulness on the ground. And I loved it.

Voter fraud investigation leaves out lots of cases in Minnesota

A new investigation by News21, an in-depth reporting project, says that Minnesota has only had 10 alleged election fraud cases since 2000. 

It got big play at a variety of national and regional media venues. The Philly Inquirer's headline read: Investigation: election day fraud 'virtually nonexistent'

But they miss tons of cases in the state that I found with a quick Google search.  

On their website, News21 says they sent out more than 2,000 public record requests to officials across the country. They say reporters then tried to fill in blanks left by uncooperative officials with court documents and media reports. 

News21 came up with 10 cases in Minnesota since 2000. Most of those 10 are footnoted by stories in smaller papers or cite the Republican National Lawyers Association.

Here are some of the results I found:

MPR requested voter fraud conviction data for every county in the state in late 2011: "The data, collected by the Minnesota Supreme Court, shows that 144 people have been convicted of voter fraud since 2009." 

And on the page marked 7 in this document is a breakdown of just Ramsey County, 114 convicted or pleaded guilty in cases that arose between 2006-2011 (just in Ramsey County!). 

I don't expect them to have discovered every incident of voter fraud ever (and they don't either, according to their website). But these are easy pickings. 

Maybe it's a mistake, maybe it's a stray algorithm, or maybe Minnesota officials were just very difficult to get information from. I don't know. So, I wrote an email to News21 asking why more cases weren't documented. I didn't receive a response. I'll update this post if I do. 

Does the fact that the investigation leaves out at least 134 voter fraud cases that the state Supreme Court compiled undermine their thesis, which is that Voter ID laws are a solution in search of a problem? Not necessarily, because a brief glance at these cases show that most of them wouldn't be impacted by voter ID laws anyway. But it makes you question their research. 

Sing another song: Nona and the Anonymous Choir play Leonard Cohen

I got off work a little after 9 p.m. It was supposed to be nine, but a nationwide swine flu outbreak had me waking up county fair managers across the state to ask about precautions they're taking. Turns out that it's not a good idea to pet a sick-looking pig.

Still, I got to the show well before it was supposed to start. I'd been excited since I first heard about it. Leonard Cohen was one of the first non-punk musicians I got really into growing up. Each of his albums holds a different place in my life, for when I discovered it, or when I gave it another chance and found I liked it.

And Nona, of Dark Dark Dark, is one of the most talented musicians around. I still have a couple copies of a CDR I traded them when I was running a short-lived distro in the mid- to late-2000s. They've developed a seriousness that I can now hear in their early stuff, quirky songs about winter in Minnesota performed in matching marching band uniforms. Their brand of minor-keyed yearning is a perfect fit for Leonard Cohen.

The show was at the new Icehouse on Nicollet Avenue. As we rode past the old Vietnamese restaurants and Asian groceries from the Greenway, it's almost like you could literally see Uptown sprawling towards us. It wouldn't surprise me to see all those businesses disappear sometime soon, especially if the city succeeds in its quest to tear down the monstrous K-Mart that blocks off Nicollet Avenue (which I hope they do). When those places are replaced with the next trendy eatery catering only to Uptown folks, it will be a shame, and a loss for the city's culture.

The venue was dark and expensive. There were about 14 women on stage, lined up in front of four microphones. Nona played piano and sang, and it seemed like each song was introduced by piano and voice before the choir joined in. Their voices were pretty, and the orchestration was restrained. Sometimes the chorus rose up behind Nona, only to fall quiet just when you expected it to break into the good sort of cacophony.

Many of the songs are that stark acoustic guitar and two angelic backup singers that characterizes early Leonard Cohen. I would love to hear some of the more crazed "Songs of Love and Hate" tunes done like this. But it was good. With fall coming, it was nice to wear a sweater outside the house. And the music seemed set to the season.

I bought my mom a copy of the tape. I hope she has a cassette player.

Here's the link to the cassette tape and download.

Dan Penn at Treehouse Records

I saw Dan Penn, legendary songwriter of classics like "Dark End of the Street," perform at an in-store at Treehouse Records on Saturday. He played with Bobby Emmons. It was amazing.

Penn grew up in rural Alabama on a "one-mule farm." 

Penn told Rick Mason at the Star Tribune last year: 


"I was a farm boy," he said, "but at night I'd listen to R&B. I listened to my little green radio. I had my own little room. After everybody'd go to sleep, I'd listen to WLAC in Nashville. That was my education."

Here's a rough recording of Penn's performance of "Dark End of the Street." It was recorded on an iPhone in my pocket.

On Tom Rukavina's retirement

I covered the State Capitol for the American Consolidated Newspaper chain in northeast Minnesota for two years. It was fascinating to cover the region, with its unique history and culture.

Rep. Tom Rukavina represented that political culture. His announcement that he's retiring from the State House of Representatives after 26 years had me thinking about his unique political roots. I did a story about his own history when he was running for Minnesota governor in 2010.

Here are some interesting snippets from the pre-published draft.

[SNIP]

Rukavina can trace his Iron Range pedigree back to his grandparents on both sides.  His grandfather on his father's side worked in the mines and his maternal grandfather homesteaded near Orr.  

"I was raised right on the north-side of Virginia, right on the last street in town, right on the edge of one of the mine pits," Rukavina says. "I played in the mine pits as a little kid and I worked in that same mine pit as a college student -- and my father worked in that mine."

His aunt lived next door and his grandmother lived across town. It was, Rukavina says, "a beautiful life" that he wants to preserve as an option for future generations through his candidacy.

[SNIP]

In his youth, it was the still the Iron Range where people of Croatian-descent worked in the mines next to Italians and lived next door to Finns, sometimes in houses owned by mining companies.

"There weren't very many places in other parts of the state where you had all of these different nationalities living next door to each other," Rukavina says. "Up there, it was mostly different ethnic groups living right amongst each other."  

Mines, and challenges to their authority, are central to the Iron Range character, he says.

"Our economy and our culture totally revolves around mining. I'm not ashamed of that, nor are most Iron Range people," he says. "We've produced for this country over a hundred years, we've won a couple of World Wars and we basically built this nation. I'm really proud of that."

It was as a part of this tight-knit community that Rukavina learned the personal approach he'd take into politics, where he's well-liked on both sides of aisle for his sharp wit.

"Where I come from people kind of say what's on their mind, don't pull any punches," he says of Iron Rangers. "They're very nice people, they're honest people, they're honest with you about their feelings."

[SNIP]

Raised in a union family
His father was an organizer for the United Steelworkers of America. His aunts, uncles and mother were also involved in unions.

"I learned early about strikes and standing up for what you believe in, and I've been involved in a number of them myself," he says. "I think it has a lot to do with the whole mentality of the Iron Range even to this day."

Sometimes just a few of the mines went on strike, but once in a while all the unions struck and the Iron Range shut down. It wasn't without hardship.

"I can remember my dad crying when I was a little kid. When I was five years old, I could overhear my dad telling my mother there wasn't going to be a Christmas," Rukavina says. "My ears were always open and my nose was always somewhere it shouldn't have been, even when I was a little kid. But I can remember thinking, 'What the hell is this union about that we're not going to have Santa Claus?'"

Rukavina's a well-known advocate for working people at the Capitol, against both private intrusion through labor violations and public intrusion through opposition to smoking ban and other "police state" measures.

In his calendar, Rukavina carries a letter his father wrote to a newspaper in 1963 challenging the chairman of U.S. Steel to a debate about the mining companies' control of the Iron Range.

"I've been around labor unions all my life and I have labor beliefs," he says. "I've been around relatives that have been involved in their union and never had a problem with speaking up in defense of their fellow workers, so that's why I speak up for the underdog."

The Farmer-Labor wing of DFL
Rukavina's been a milkman, a garbageman and miner. But he's also spent almost a quarter century in the state House of Representatives.

[SNIP]

"I've had a good life, I'm proud of my children, I'm proud of my legislative career," Rukavina says. "I don't need to be doing this for anything other than the fact that I think that I can really contribute to the well-being of a lot of people in this state who are either being left to the side or totally ignored."