TRAVELING AROUND DOWNTOWN MINNEAPOLIS recently, I spotted this photographer atop a pedestrian bridge over Interstate 35. What, I wondered, was he photographing?
I was too focused on photographing the photographer to notice what he may have been shooting. I simply found it an unusual spot for someone to set up a tripod and now I’m wishing I had looked where his camera was aiming. Who is he? Why is he shooting here? And what?
Thoughts.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Portraits #21-23: Randy
Randy relaxes at a family gathering in 2012.
Thirty-three years ago today, I married this man. Randy.
We have been through a lot together. Good times and challenging ones. Laughter and sorrow. Days that have tested our strength and days we want to remember always for their joyfulness. This is life.
I am immeasurably blessed to journey through my days with Randy beside me. He makes me laugh, even when I don’t feel like laughing. Occasionally he’ll clip a fitting cartoon and post it on the refrigerator. And when I notice it, I smile, because he thought of me.
Each spring he pulls a jackknife from his pocket and snips an armful of lilacs to set on our dining room table. That bouquet holds more meaning than a dozen roses.
Modeling a vintage straw cowboy hat, like those we wore as children, in a North Mankato antique shop several years ago.
He is light-hearted to my serious nature, calm to my storm, even-keeled to my sometimes emotional reactions. A balance. Not always perfect, because we are human, but a difference in personalities that works for us.
He works hard. Grease rims his fingernails from his job as an automotive machinist. His work is always in demand. He is good at what he does. Really good. I tell him he works too hard. Last summer he cut back on the overtime and no longer works Saturdays. I am thankful. He deserves more than one day a week off from work.
Randy obliges my request to pose with a sculpture in a Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin, park we toured while vacationing.
Because of him, I’ve learned to appreciate vintage cars and, because of me, he’s learned to appreciate poetry. He is my greatest cheerleader, encouraging me in my writing and photography and even recently telling me he had an idea for a poem. “Roadkill,” he said. And then we laughed.
To laugh with this man, to worship and pray with this man, to remember all the Sunday afternoons Randy sprawled on the living room floor reading comics to our children or playing Monopoly with them reminds me all over again of why I love him.
He is quiet and caring and strong and loyal. A man of faith. And I love him. Always.
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This is part of a series, Minnesota Faces, featured every Friday on Minnesota Prairie Roots.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
The downtown Minneapolis skyline on Mother’s Day, later afternoon. The combination of grey skies and photographing this scene while traveling at Interstate speeds give this unedited image a painterly quality.
I AM NOT A VENTURING into the big city kind of girl. You’re not surprised, are you?
Approaching downtown Minneapolis from the north.
A concrete divider separates lanes on a particularly busy and curvy stretch of Interstate near downtown Minneapolis.
There are way too many curves in this section of Interstate 35 approaching downtown Minneapolis from the north.
If not for the traffic congestion, I would likely hold a different attitude toward cities. But the high speed at which vehicles travel in close proximity across spans of lanes unsettles me. Too much closeness. Too little space. Too much concrete. Too much of everything overwhelms me.
Edging out of the Twin Cities metro with only 24 miles home to Faribault.
I am always relieved when we exit the worst of the traffic craziness and land spreads out on each side, free, unencumbered by visual barriers of tall buildings, houses crammed together and sound buffering walls.
Crossing the Interstate 35W bridge.
As much as I wish my husband and I could avoid the Twin Cities metro, we cannot. We must drive through it and around it to visit loved ones or to pick up/drop off family at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Sometimes I wish the airport had expanded into cornfields farther south, nearer our home. But then we would deal with the roar of airliners. And that I would not like.
A personalized Mother’s Day message on a billboard momentarily distracts me.
Likewise, construction of the new Minnesota Vikings stadium draws my photographic attention.
Interstate 35 south of downtown Minneapolis.
So I try to make the best of these necessary journeys through the Twin Cities metro. I use my camera to distract me while the husband focuses on the road. And, surprise, I am beginning to feel more comfortable. Well, not too comfortable.
The downtown Minneapolis skyline on a grey Sunday afternoon.
I am not yet ready to venture into the heart of the city.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Right next to Papa Murphy’s Pizza on Rice Street, the family-owned and operated The Puppy Place offers all things canine, including puppies for sale.
WAITING IN THE BACK SEAT of a Chevy in a Little Canada parking lot for my daughter and her husband to pick up a Papa Murphy’s pizza, I photographed several scenes. Even in idle moments, I can find subjects worthy of photography.
I then swung my camera to the left and photographed this kitschy signage at Flameburger, “known for its flame broiled burgers and great breakfast platters.”
Viewing my surroundings through a Canon DLSR has heightened my awareness, caused me to notice places and details I might otherwise overlook in the visual chaos of today’s world.
Then I turned to the right to photograph these roadside messages posted to draw customers into Brady’s a “local bar with great service and a wonderful fun filled atmosphere.” Lots going on in this bar apparently.
There’s something to be said for details which comprise the whole. They matter. Color. Font. Messages. A clean window or one filmed with dirt. A loud voice or one tinted with smallness. Ears that listen rather than simply hear. Voices that speak with clarity of conviction or guarded voices that speak only what is expected.
I choose to write and photograph in detail. It is part of my voice. I hold a deep appreciation for that which is often overlooked.
A wild violet in my lawn. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo.
Today I challenge you to notice the details and to value them. Look into your backyard, into your neighborhood, into your community. See the delicate violets tucked between blades of grass in your lawn. See the closed window coverings on your neighbor’s house and determine to offer encouragement. Focus on what your community offers rather than what it doesn’t.
Notice the details.
Take the focus off yourself. If you ask someone how they are, mean it. If they answer “fine,” determine whether that is truly the truth. Often it isn’t. Search their eyes, observe their body language, listen to the intonations in their response. Care. Notice the details.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
The name Reeb holds special significance in a memorial at a Minnesota college.
JAMES REEB. You may not recognize his name. Or you may remember an actor portraying the Rev. Reeb in a scene in the movie, Selma. Or heard/read his name in a recent news story.
The memorial honoring the Rev. James Reeb was dedicated in March, on the 50th anniversary of his death.
Today, just outside the entrance to Rolvaag Library on the hilltop campus of St. Olaf College in the southern Minnesota community of Northfield, Reeb is honored with a memorial for his efforts in the Civil Rights Movement.
Words play across a screen in a video next to the memorial.
His involvement cost him his life.
A portrait of Reeb printed on the memorial.
On March 9, 1965, Reeb and two friends were attacked after dining at a Selma restaurant run by local black citizens. The Massachusetts clergyman, an outspoken advocate for civil rights, desegregation and more, died two days later from his injuries.
Reeb, shown to the left in this photo, was among those who marched to the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965. This image is in a video at the St. Olaf memorial.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who’d called upon clergy to join a voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, delivered Reeb’s eulogy.
Reeb’s death served as a catalyst for passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, according to information published on the memorial to this 1950 St. Olaf graduate.
Visitors to the recent “Selma to Montgomery: Marching Along the Voting Rights Trail” exhibit at St. Olaf College let their voices be heard.
To view this recently-installed memorial, to read that Reeb possessed “a healing personality, but his convictions are like iron” is to understand that one voice can make a difference. Reeb considered taking a stand for justice more important than remaining in the safety of his home. He left his family in Massachusetts to join the march from Selma to Montgomery. While walking to a planning meeting for that march, Reeb was brutally attacked.
The “Selma to Montgomery” exhibit at the Flaten Art Museum, St. Olaf, recently closed.
In Reeb’s eulogy, King noted that, “His death says to us that we must work passionately, unrelentingly, to make the American dream a reality, so he did not die in vain.”
Those are words we would do well to remember today, 50 years after Reeb’s death and the march from Selma to Montgomery.
FYI: Click here to read my post about the recently-closed Selma to Montgomery: Marching Along the Voting Rights Trail exhibit at St. Olaf College.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
This Moland Lutheran Church Cemetery in rural Steele County Minnesota lies next to farm fields. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo used for illustration purposes only.
HAVE YOU NOTICED in recent years, like I have, the trend to personalize obituaries?
No longer are obits just a listing of factual information. Rather, they now often offer personal insights from loving family members. This is exactly what I was not taught in journalism school. I learned right away that nothing is more important than writing an obituary. That long ago lesson involved not a bit of commentary. Just straight facts. Birth, education, occupation, marriage, death, survivors. And, above all, spell the name correctly.
Times have changes. Most newspapers now charge for printing obituaries. Thus, if you’re paying for all those words about your loved one, you may as well write what you wish.
I find myself reading obits more often than I once did. Yes, I sadly now know a lot more people who are dying. But I’m also interested in reading the stories of those individuals whom I’ve never known.
For example, recently The Gaylord Hub, where I worked as a reporter and photographer at my first newspaper job fresh out of college and, yes, wrote my first published obits, printed three death notices that grabbed my attention. All of them were obituaries for retired or semi-retired farmers, men who devoted their lives to working the land in this rural southern Minnesota county.
I learned that Dennis Grams, 70, “enjoyed everything about farming—the equipment, animals, crops and weather. If you had a question about farming, he was the man to go to. He had a way of explaining everything so that you could understand and would not stop explaining until he was sure you understood.” Seems to me Dennis was not just a farmer, but a teacher, too. And a patient one at that.
And then there’s Kenneth Quast, 81, who lived his entire life on the farm his father purchased in the 1920s. Kenneth worked that land and milked cows. His obit states: “He enjoyed farming, it was his life.” Oh, to do what you love. Your entire life.
Finally, Elmer Otto, 93, just couldn’t stay away from his Kelso Township farm. “…even after retiring he still had to go out and make sure things were running smoothly.” Elmer clearly loved his life’s work, just like Dennis and Kenneth.
How about you? Can you say that about your life—that you did what you loved? What would you want included in your obituary?
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Heading here:
Waiting here (for an hour):
For this:
For these loved ones:
Who brought me (and my husband) this gift of Belgium chocolates:
I hope your Mother’s Day was as great as mine with my eldest daughter, Amber, and her husband, Marc, safely back home from Europe and phone conversations with my other daughter, Miranda, my son, Caleb, and my mom, Arlene. There’s nothing more I wanted for Mother’s Day than to be with, or speak with, those I love. I am blessed.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Portrait #20: Arlene
My mom counts jars of horseradish with my sister-in-law after a family gathering to process horseradish. Minnesota Prairie Roots file photo 2013.
We sometimes call her Ma Cat. With fondness. It’s a fitting pet name for a woman who sing-songed The Three Little Kittens Have Lost Their Mittens while rocking wee ones in a cranberry-hued Naugahyde rocker in an aged woodframe farmhouse on the southwestern Minnesota prairie.
The only photo I have of my mom holding me. My dad is holding my brother Doug.
Mom devoted her life to raising her three sons and three daughters, born between 1955 and 1967. I am second oldest and the oldest girl.
I love my mom and I understand that her life was not always easy. She lost her own mother within months of my birth. Life as a young wife and mother on the farm, without a bathroom, no phone, a Maytag wringer washer to wash filthy barn clothes and little money, had to be challenging.
We were poor. But I didn’t know that, which is an absolute testament to my mom. She kept us fed with garden produce, baked goods and beef from our own cattle. She, somehow, managed to keep us clothed. We never got birthday gifts. We never knew to expect them. Instead, each birthday Mom baked a special animal-shaped cake for the birthday celebrant, the cake design chosen from a booklet she pulled out only on birthdays.
Mom instilled in all of us a deep faith in God. We attended church and Sunday School every week. We prayed. And, even more important, Mom has always lived out her faith in kindness and compassion shown to others. She once advised me, “Don’t talk about anyone else’s kids because you never know what your own kids will do.” In other words, do not gossip and keep your mouth shut if you have nothing good to say. And when others tell you something in confidence, keep it to yourself. I’ve tried to follow that advice throughout my life.
The past year has been a difficult one for my mom. In early 2014, physical problems forced her into a nursing home. Eventually, she grew strong enough to move into assisted living. But then, on a Sunday morning in August, she fell and suffered severe injuries that landed her in an ICU Trauma Unit. Eventually, Mom recovered and is now back in her apartment. But she knew she could never return to her home and the decision was made to sell her house.
Through it all, Mom has not complained. That is so typical of her, to adopt a positive attitude and make the best of whatever happens in her life. Because of that, and more, people love her. Her positivity shines as does her faithfulness.
She is a survivor of open heart surgery and breast cancer and a multitude of other medical emergencies and surgeries that should have killed her. But she always fought to survive and medical teams often marveled at her rallying. Sometimes I think of her as the cat with nine lives.
But mostly, I consider every day we have her to be a blessing.
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This is part of a series, Minnesota Faces, featured every Friday on Minnesota Prairie Roots.
To all of you mothers, Happy Mother’s Day.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
I DON’T KNOW IF ANY GREEN is more vibrant than that of spring, especially here in rural Minnesota.
A rural scene photographed from Rice County Road 15 between Faribault and Morristown, Minnesota.
Green in the landscape after months of grey and white and black dances a visual delight. It’s as if our eyes cannot get enough of lush green grass and the tight buds of leaves unfurling in flashes of green that sway to the rhythm of the wind.
Farmers, such as this one near Wanamingo, are working the land and planting.
Soon seeds sown into black earth will erupt in rows of corn and soybeans like a precision marching band overtaking fields.
A dryer and bin on a rural Rice County, Minnesota, farm await the 2015 harvest about a half a year away.
The beat of the seasons begins. Planting into growing into harvest. A familiar rhythm in this land I love.
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
FLASHBACK TO JULY 24, 2010, between 11 p.m. and midnight. We—my husband, Mom and 16-year-old son—are hunkered down in a car along a Redwood County road in rural southwestern Minnesota north of Walnut Grove. We’ve just left an outdoor pageant showcasing excerpts from the stories of Laura Ingalls Wilder.
Now we are on the prairie, in the middle of a storm. Rain rushes in torrential sheets, forcing my husband to pull over and stop. Winds rock the car with ferocity and flatten roadside grass. Flashes of lightning slice through the blackness, revealing swaying trees.
I am terrified, fearful that the wind—which I later learn raged at 70 mph—will toss our car into the ditch, perhaps into water that buffets a section of this roadway. The darkness is so black that I have no idea where we are.
I press my head into the back of the front driver’s seat, praying. I am clutching my son’s sweaty hand.
For 45 minutes we endure the storm. When we arrive at my Mom’s house in my hometown, I am so relieved I could kiss the ground.
I respect storms.
This photo of the Tracy, Minnesota, tornado by Eric Lantz illustrates the cover of Scott Thoma’s book about that tornado. Book cover image courtesy of Scott Thoma.
On June 13, 1968, Minnesota’s first F5 tornado, the most powerful with wind speeds in excess of 300 mph, ravaged the community of Tracy, the next town west of Walnut Grove and some 30 or so miles from the farm where I then lived. That tornado killed nine and left a lasting imprint upon my impressionable young mind.
A residential street, once covered in branches and debris, had to be plowed to allow vehicles to pass. Photo by The Tracy Headlight Herald and courtesy of Scott Thoma, Tracy native and author of Out of the Blue, a book about the 1968 Tracy tornado.
Decades later a tornado would strike my childhood farm, taking down a silo and tossing silage wagons like toys.
I respect storms.
On March 29, 1998, multiple devastating tornadoes wreaked destruction upon Comfrey in southwestern Minnesota and St. Peter, some 40 miles west of where I now live. A young boy died.
I respect storms.
In July 2011, high winds partially ripped the roof off St. John’s Lutheran Church in Vesta, the church I attended while growing up. That same day, a tornado struck nearby Belview.
I respect storms.
Visitors to the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul can experience the May 6, 1965 tornado outbreak in a replica basement of a 1960s rambler. Through a multi-media presentation, visitors can experience those tornadoes in this exhibit titled “Get to the basement.” Those are words I heard as a child and still repeat today whenever tornado warning sirens blare in Faribault.
Today marks 50 years since the biggest tornado outbreak in Twin Cities history. Six twisters—four rated as high as F4 with winds of 166-200 mph—touched down in multiple communities, killing 13 and injuring 683. Interestingly enough, I don’t remember that 1965 tragic tornado event. We may not have had a television yet then. And, at age nine, I likely did not concern myself with something that happened seemingly so far away in “the Cities.” I should have.
I respect storms. Do you?
© Copyright 2015 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
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