Minnesotans have long enjoyed the opportunity winter affords for outdoor recreation, especially of the ice variety. We have put together items relating to these icy entertainments, from Ice Follies to hockey to community skating. The display is on view in the Minnesota Historical Society Library when the Library is open, until mid-March. Come take a look, and perhaps get inspired to head out to the pond!
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. We commemorate this milestone with a look at some of the Minnesotans who have contributed their talents to NASA over the years, along with some of the space-related objects in the Society’s collection. The space program endures as another legacy of Minnesota’s Greatest Generation.
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Currently on display in our Library Lobby are selected objects collected by the Society and whenever possible labels include a quote from the artists–revealing in their own words their thoughts about the materials, the finished pieces, and the passions that inspire them. This exhibit will be up until early December.
For millennia artists have been bringing the joy of art to everyday life through the application of their creative force to our material culture. Minnesota has a rich fine craft heritage and Minnesotans have long found pleasure in the use of functional & beautiful objects that provide sensory experiences which add vigor to everyday life.
For nearly 30 years the Minnesota Historical Society has proactively compiled a fine collection of well-documented objects made by Minnesota artists to illustrate the role of crafts in the life of Minnesotans and the work of specific individuals. The Society chose to document the work of contemporary Minnesota craftspeople and to focus the collecting on examples by established artists that exhibit a mastery of the medium and combine function with beauty in a manifestation of the craftsman work ethic. Over 200 pieces represent the diverse influences and inspirations of Minnesota’s 20th – 21st century period.
While most mediums are well represented in the Society’s fine craft collections, the Minnesota and Wisconsin region is best known nationally for the work of its significant and influential ceramics community. Evidence of that powerhouse role includes the existence of the Northern Clay Center and Fired Up Studios, a forthcoming collections gallery in the new wing of the Weisman Art Museum to highlight ceramics, and the Minnesota Potters of the Upper St. Croix River Annual Pottery Studio Tour & Sale that draws guest artists and pottery collectors from across the globe.
Marcia Anderson, Senior Curator
Like the First Minnesota’s charge at Gettysburg, or the Dillinger gang’s escapades in St. Paul, every good Minnesotan knows the story of the Northfield Raid. On September 7, 1876, Frank and Jesse James, along with Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger, attempted to rob the First National Bank of Northfield, Minnesota. When clerk Joseph Lee Haywood refused to open the vault, the James-Younger gang shot him dead. Northfield citizens heard the shot, grabbed their own guns, and ambushed the gang in the street. Gang members Clell Miller and William Stiles were killed, as was Northfield resident Nicholas Gustavson. The James brothers got away, but the Youngers were captured near Madelia, Minnesota, after several days of pursuit. Sentenced to life in the Stillwater State Prison, Cole and Jim were paroled in 1901 (Bob died in prison in 1889).
Among the most revered objects in the Minnesota Historical Society’s collection is this linen duster. It was recovered outside of the Northfield bank just after the raid, and is known to have been worn by one of the James-Younger gang members (purportedly, Cole Younger himself). Dusters were common in the horse-and-buggy era (and even in the days of open automobiles). Just as its name implies, a lightweight duster keeps dust and dirt off of one’s clothes while traveling. For the robbers, though, their dusters served a darker purpose. The long, loose garments concealed their guns. As soon as the gang members walked into the bank, they shed their outerwear and revealed their weapons. This duster was left behind as the gang fled from the ambush.
The duster came to the Society in 1890 as a donation from George N. Baxter, the prosecuting attorney for Rice County in 1876. Baxter apparently held onto this piece of evidence after the Youngers’ trial, and saw to it that it was preserved for future generations. While the Youngers’ prison sentences may have been cut short, the duster’s survival seems far more permanent.
Matt Anderson, Objects Curator
If you have been paying attention to our civic fathers lately you would have heard the news that a Nineteenth Century technology is going to lead us into the bright Green future. Sometime before I die, light rail (formerly known as Street Cars or the Trolley) is on track to whisk us to Minnesota Twins games and high speed rail is promising to take us to see the Chicago Cubs. Because of the significant role railroads played in the development and identity of this state and region, a train book must be on our list. The best work, I believe, is…
Prosser, Richard S. Rails to the North Star. Minneapolis: Dillon Press, 1966.
Prosser’s book is a comprehensive and chronological description of the developments of Minnesota’s transportation landscape. As a reference tool it is indispensable and the maps alone make it worth your shelf space. There are over fifty pages listing railroad companies that built in Minnesota and six pages of companies that incorporated but never built a mile of track.
From Prosser’s last chapter, titled “20/20 Hindsight:”
One hundred years have elapsed since the birth of the original parent of Minnesota railroads, a ten mile stretch of track between St. Paul and St. Anthony over which wheels first turned on June 28, 1862. Growth of Minnesota Population, land cultivation, industry, and trade are all due in some measure to one or another offspring of that pioneer which, whether remembered by the name of William Crooks or St. Paul and Pacific, will be embossed forever in the annals of history. Today, Minnesotans can well be proud of the rails which lead to the North Star, with principal trains second to none - the rails which symbolize wealth and commerce.
The University of Minnesota Press reprinted the book in 2007 with a new forward by noted rail historian, Professor Don Hofsommer, and an uninspired new subtitle, “A Minnesota Railroad Atlas.” Sorry for that little snipe but as long as I am at it, I liked the original cover a lot better than the reprint’s image. Still, kudos to the U of M Press for keeping this available (the colored maps in the book must have given the publisher pause) because for thirty years I have been wishing people “good luck” in finding and affording the original volume of this much sought after work.
This blog has at least one faithful reader. He comments on every entry but insists on privately leaving his criticism off the blog. So in order to protect his anonymity let’s refer to him pseudonymously as TO’S. TO’S noticed that the list was favoring the wordy over the graphic and suggested that the next ten selections have pictures in them. I at least agree that there needs to be more illustrated books on our list of the 150 greatest Minnesota books. So here are two books that no Minnesota library – hell, let’s say no Minnesotan - should be without:
John Szarkowski. The Face of Minnesota. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1958.
Bill Holm (essays) and Bob Firth (photography). Landscape of Ghosts. Stillwater, Minnesota: Voyageur Press, 1993.
The unusually accomplished artist/curator/critic Szarkowski began his professional career at the Walker Art Center after his service in World War II. As Minnesota approached its Centennial he was approached to commemorate the anniversary with this photo project. The result was a wondrous success capturing this place – these people - in a moment in time that words alone could never describe. If your heart doesn’t first swell with pride and then break from nostalgia while perusing this book then I’d say, “You’re not from around here are ya?” Szarkowski’s text is surprisingly interesting and, because the images are so compelling, too often over looked. He does an excellent job of summarizing mid-century understanding of the history and geography and geology of the state. He integrates text from postcards to government reports, one of which, a 1956 “Report of the Governor’s Committee on Higher Education” [see page 186] is as timely now as ever. His photos, shown here, are from Red Lake, pre-yuppified Grand Marais, Bloomington, and the Brown County Fair.
TO’S wisely suggested another book of photographs done 35 years after Szarkowski. Since I wholly agree, and could not say it nearly as well, here is his nomination in his words:
Take a look at Bill Holm and Bob Firth’s LANDSCAPE OF GHOSTS (Voyageur Press, 1993) for my candidate for best MN photo book: fine balance of text and image (not “illustrating” but echoing each other); real depth in Holm’s writing, with the expected humor and attitude and erudition; delicious color plus a slightly quirky sense of composition and subject matter in Firth’s photos that sets them apart from the scenery porn that’s common to photo books; crisp design and right size, good in the hand and on the lap; and a bonus in the poems that Holm sprinkles thru the text, a little anthology of MN prairie writers (Bly and Bly, Philip Dacey, Phoebe Hansen, Mark Vinz) and oh yeah, Walt Whitman and Robinson Jeffers and Willie Yeats to boot. If someone asked me what rural MN or the Midwestern prairie is all about, I’d send him a copy of this. How can you not love a book that starts, “Here is a book full of pictures of stuff nobody wants to look at and of essays on subjects no one wants to read about”?
I prefer the peopled landscape of Szarkowski but this is not a competition so all I will add is that it is especially gratifying to see some themes and images that overlap in both books and encourage you to look at both works side by side.
The 2008 election cycle was remarkable, distinguished by the historic victory of Barack Obama and significant gains for the Democratic Party in general. As Minnesotans know, one bit of election business remains undecided six months later. Republican Norm Coleman and Democrat Al Franken continue their contest for Minnesota’s vacant U.S. Senate seat.
As usual, the St. Paul Saints baseball team turned a big news story into a winning promotion. At its May 23 game against the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Canaries, the team gave away “Re” Count bobbleheads to the first 2,500 fans. The dolls, dressed like the number-loving Count von Count character of Sesame Street fame, feature a rotating head with two faces. Depending on your political proclivities, you can set the “Re” Count to display either Norm Coleman’s or Al Franken’s mug.
While the Society collected Franken and Coleman materials during last year’s campaign, the “Re” Count is something special. It speaks to the unusually prolonged nature of the Senate race, and to the good humor with which Minnesotans have taken it. And it’s one… one clever idea, too, ha ha ha!
Matt Anderson, Objects Curator
With all of the excitement surrounding Minnesota’s sesquicentennial this year, I’ve been thinking about those formative days in 1858 when we emerged from our territorial adolescence into full-grown statehood. Creating a new state is no simple matter. Given the innumerable legislative tasks involved, we shouldn’t be surprised that one or two slipped through the cracks. What might be surprising though, is that Minnesota’s oversights included the failure to adopt an official state flag – for 35 years!
It was not until plans were made for the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 that the lack of a flag became a real problem. As a part of that grand fair, marking the 400th anniversary of Columbus’s voyage to the Americas (the fair itself was a bit behind schedule), each of the then 44 states were invited to mount an exhibit at the fairgrounds in Chicago.
As the Minnesota display was prepared, the state legislature determined that the occasion called for an official state flag.
The legislature appointed a flag commission and the commission in turn sponsored a design contest open to all Minnesotans. Amelia Hyde Center of Minneapolis submitted the winning entry. Center’s design called for a double-sided flag blue on one face, and white on the other. The Minnesota state seal (which the state had remembered to adopt in 1861) was the focal point. Center placed three dates in the seal: 1819 (the founding of Fort Snelling), 1858 (statehood), and 1893 (the flag’s design). Sisters Pauline and Thomane Fjelde, immigrants to Minnesota from Norway and respected needleworkers, were contracted to produce the actual prototype flag. The Fjelde sisters did such a fine job of it that the Minnesota flag earned a gold medal for embroidery at the Chicago exposition.
Center’s design survives largely intact in our current state flag. The double-sided scheme was dropped in favor of two blue sides in 1957, not for aesthetic reasons, but because a single-colored flag was easier to mass-produce. The Fjeldes’ original silk flag became the property of the Minnesota National Guard. It made public appearances in parades as late as 1919, and then went into storage. The flag underwent conservation treatments in the 1930s, and again in the 1980s, before the Guard transferred it to the Minnesota Historical Society in 1993. Some things are indeed worth the wait.
Matt Anderson, Objects Curator
Welcome to the first week of summer. I’m among those who believe there is absolutely no reason to live in Minnesota unless you enjoy and take advantage of our impressive parcels of wilderness. Last week, playing the role of Bourgeois [as in the wise old respected leader, not as in a member of a fussy upper class] to a small group of middle-aged voyageurs, I hosted a meeting to plan our summer trip into the Quetico-Superior wilderness. This is simply what Minnesotans do unless they’ve inherited the family cabin up north. To enhance the experience of wilderness, and to remind us of it when we are not there, we are lucky to have books. The three best…
Florence Page Jaques. Canoe Country. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1938.
Sigurd F. Olson. Listening Point. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1958.
Calvin Rutstrum. Way of the Wilderness: A Complete Camping Manual… Minneapolis: Burgess Publishing Company, 1952.
Sigurd F. Olson is the Dean of outdoor writing. He began selling his stories to hunting and fishing magazines in the 1920s. By the mid-1950s he was writing books that would spark a cult-like following of people who believe that the wilderness experience is a spiritual one, of which I’m a card-carrying member. As is the case with many of the authors on this list, it is hard to choose just one of Olson’s books. I would love to hear your opinion. I chose his second book, Listening Point, because it is the name of Olson’s getaway, which became a Mecca for environmentalists. Curiously, this is the signed first edition of the “Minnesota Statehood Centennial Edition” as it was “prepared in tribute to the State.” Here is a sample from Sig’s first book, The Singing Wilderness:
There have been countless campfires, each one different, but some so blended into their backgrounds that it is hard for them to emerge. But I have found that when I catch even a glimmer of their almost forgotten light in the eyes of some friend who has shared them with me, they begin to flame once more. Those old fires have strange and wonderful powers. Even their memories make life the adventure it was meant to be.
Olson’s books were illustrated by Frances Lee Jaques, which greatly added to their charm. Jaques was at his best, however, when illustrating the writings of his wife Florence Page Jaques. The two collaborated on several books including Canoe Country, and the U of M Press has kept this title along with Snowshoe Country and Geese Fly High in print. Going into the woods is one thing; knowing how to get in and out safely is quite another. Calvin Rutstrum, from Marine on St. Croix, was the go-to guy for this information and once again [thanks Todd] the U of M Press is keeping his books in print for us. I choose this edition of Way… because it is so uniquely bound in a Duluth Pack-like cover. It is impressive how much harder camping was a half a century ago. I’m proposing a new movement - retro camping. Let’s go into the wilderness without equipment or technology invented after WWII. - wood not kevlar. Wool not polypropylene. Canvas not Gortex. Rutstrum can be our guide.
Patrick Coleman, Acquisitions Librarian
I am fairly certain that the only father/son combo making the list of Minnesota’s 150 best books will be the Lindberghs. As evidence of their relationship (and so I can sneak in another great book) I offer their joint biography by CAL Sr.’s political right hand man, Lynn Haines. His wife Dora Haines finished the book upon his death.
Years ago my own father, knowing that I revered the elder Lindbergh for his political leadership and courage, invited me to a breakfast meeting with Charles Lindbergh Jr. Unfortunately for Lindbergh, it was 1974 and he suddenly became ill and never made it back to Minnesota from his home in Hawaii. Fortunately for me, the meeting never happened. I was an arrogant young pup and wanted to grill him on unsavory aspects of his biography and accuse him of abandoning his father’s principals. I’m much better now, thanks.
Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr. Why is Your Country at War and What Happens to You After the War and Related Subjects. Washington, D. C.: National Capital Press, 1917.
Charles A. Lindbergh, Jr. The Spirit of St. Louis. New York: Scribner’s, 1953.
Lindbergh had already written a book, We, about his solo flight across the Atlantic, but he was unsatisfied with that first effort. He spent years working on a fuller and more readable account and earned a well-deserved Pulitzer for Spirit. Less known to readers of this blog, I suppose, will be the work of his father, a United States Congressman from the Sixth District. He was a progressive and an initial opponent of U.S. entry into World War I. Among other arguments in this work CAL believed that the war was a struggle for commercial hegemony and wrote that if we conscript young men to fight and die in a war then the profits made from that war by the “Money Trust” should also be conscripted. Naïve, perhaps, as Roosevelt showed us in WWII, but the idea of shared responsibility and sacrifice is one we could use a little more of today. So, Jenna and Barbara, if you are looking for a Father’s Day gift, don’t overlook this volume. This book, often referred to as the “poison book of Lindbergh,” was so controversial that a mob broke into the print shop in Washington and destroyed the plates (making this a very rare title). It also made some Minnesotans so angry that the author was burned in effigy and even shot at during his Nonpartisan League-backed campaign for Governor in 1918. In 1934 the text of the book was brought back under the revised title of Your Country at War and What Happens to You After A War, with a dust jacket blurb by Father Coughlin calling CAL a “prophet before his time.” The best book on the elder Lindbergh is the 1973 Lindbergh of Minnesota: A Political Biography by Bruce Larson.
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