Minnesota Prairie Roots

Based on a letter to the editor that I read today in The Faribault Daily News, I fear that one of my greatest childhood fears may be coming to fruition.

Val of Faribault wrote: “I thought I was seeing things, but I am sure I saw something in the sky last Saturday that looked like an orange flame. This was about 9 p.m., and I was driving south on Willow. After a few minutes it disappeared behind the clouds, and it never reappeared. Did anyone else see this, or am I slowly losing it?”

Could this, I wonder, be a UFO with green aliens aboard, sent from Mars to scoop up unsuspecting earthlings?

That image of UFOs run amok in the night skies remains vividly imprinted upon my memory. I recall riding in the backseat of the car after a visit to my grandpa’s house in Redwood Falls, looking out the window at the pitch black sky, wondering exactly what I might see.

This came at the height of the UFO craze and talk of aliens and little green men.

Val saw none of this. But I still have to wonder if…

And my fear seems somewhat justified, since I live along Willow Street.

Judy Ostrowski applies henna art at Depot Park in Kenyon.

My earliest knowledge of tattoos traces back to Easter, when my siblings and I stamped our arms with the temporary tattoos found in egg dying kits. My mom warned us not to tattoo ourselves before Easter morning church services. But we didn’t always listen.

My earliest contact with gypsies came one childhood Halloween, when I chose a gypsy face mask at the Ben Franklin store for my costume. Dressed in a peasant blouse and a colorful old skirt and with the alluring plastic face of a gypsy woman, I felt transformed.

All those past experiences flitted through my thoughts when I saw Judy Ostrowski of Minneapolis in her traveling (in my mind) tent at the Kenyon Rose Fest. She looked quite exotic in her vibrant dress and wrap-around golden head wear. Rather like a gypsy, I concluded.

So I stopped at her Mehndi Moon tent to see what wares this gypsy woman had brought to town. Judy was peddling Judy O’s hats. “Everyone in Minnesota needs a hat,” she tells me.

And she had come with jewelry.

And tattoos. Judy is a henna tattoo and body art artist.

So while my husband stood in line for turtle donuts, mini-donuts drizzled with caramel and chocolate and sprinkled with nuts, I circled the gypsy woman’s tent, photographing her as reddish-brown dye flowed from a small bottle onto the forearm of a young woman.

Her art, Judy tells me, is intuitive.

I should have asked more questions of this artist who had come to a small southeastern Minnesota town with her tent and talents. But turtle donuts beckoned.

Some of Judy's work, created intuitively.

Judy O's hats, in my opinion, speak to the gypsy spirit.

To learn more about henna tattoos, read “Mehndi: The Art of Henna,” by my writer/friend Lisa M. Bolt Simons of Faribault and published in the fall issue of Midwest Mix Magazine. Lisa actually got henna tattoos.

You can download this free-distribution southern Minnesota arts magazine from the website.

I had the privilege of writing two stories for the debut issue this summer and several more pieces for the fall issue. Those include two book reviews, a feature on the release of my favorite Betsy-Tacy books (the high school ones) as Harper Perennial Modern Classics and a brief piece on a northern Minnesota-based writing opportunity.

You’ll find plenty of other interesting stories and photos in Midwest Mix Magazine that focus on the arts in southern Minnesota.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

The Swamp Kings, a metro-based country and blues band, performed at the Blue Collar BBQ and Arts Fest.

Ten days ago I took in the first-ever Blue Collar BBQ & Arts Fest in downtown Faribault.

With a variety of art, delicious food, good music and perfect weather, this made for one terrific way to spend a Saturday afternoon in August.

You can read about my experience in a blog just posted at www.midwestmixmagazine.com.

And to pique your interest, here are some photos from the BBQ & Arts Fest.

Shirley Smith of Ostrander brought her hand-painted glassware to the Faribault arts fest.

Artist Laura J. Grote of Faribault set up her easel and worked on engraving a hummingbird.

Employees of Monte's Steakhouse in Faribault grilled kabobs and sweet corn for fest-goers.

"Organically Mexican" art was available from Northern Southern Trading Company of St. Paul.

Jeff Pridie of Faribault painted with BBQ sauce, an event offered at the kids' booth, mixing food and art.

Barb Bruns of Morristown showcased her oil paintings.

Dianne Lockerby of Faribault sold her unique pottery.

Artist Whitney Reuvers of Faribault is in to recycling. She painted this cityscape acrylic on cardboard.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Gary Schmidt's 1899 former Vesta elevator.

Nicollet Farmers Exchange Company

The fall issue of Minnesota Moments has just published and it’s an edition you’ll love, especially if you have rural roots.

I pulled together a feature package on country grain elevators that includes several of my stories and lots of photos. Sharon Harris, a literary contact from Menahga, tracked down elevator poems, two of which were published. I think you’ll enjoy the poetry of Charmaine Pappas Donovan and Anthony Swann.

One of my stories comes from my hometown of Vesta, where Gary and Barb Schmidt own two elevators that were moved onto their country acreages. Gary’s enthusiasm made this an especially fun assignment.

Another article focuses on a Montana man, Bruce Selyem, who photographs grain elevators around the country. That inspired me to photograph numerous Minnesota elevators. A sampling of those images accompanies this piece.

Yet, I have many more worthy photos that never made publication due to space limitations. So I’ll share some of those here, including several favorites from Cleveland, which is just east of St. Peter. While shooting images of a trio of grain bins there, a cop car came cruising around the corner aimed straight for me. I was a bit annoyed because I was attempting to photograph a fading rainbow behind the bins and had minimal time to get my picture.

Well, the young officer pulled up to me in his squad, rolled down the window and said, “You saw it too.” He was, of course, referring to the rainbow. But just to make sure he didn’t think I was a troublemaker, I explained my photo project to him. He continued on his way and I’m pretty sure I made his Fourth of July just a bit more exciting.

In addition to the country grain elevator stories, the issue includes a travel feature I wrote on Minnesota’s Machinery Museum in Hanley Falls, which lies between Marshall and Granite Falls. I’ve always wanted to tour the museum and finally made time on a “trip back home” to do that. The museum closes at the end of September and then reopens in May. If you’ve never been there, it’s worth the drive. Plan several hours for your tour.

The September/October issue also includes more articles I’ve written and a selection of other interesting stories by several writers. Check out the website at www.minnesotamoments.com if you’re unfamiliar with the publication. And if you’re already a subscriber, expect your copy in the mail soon.

I hope you enjoy reading the country-themed stories as much as I enjoyed writing them.

I like this photo because the grain bins mimic the doors on this building at the Nicollet Farmers Exchange Co.

Colorful advertising contrasts with the original brick building at the Nicollet Farmers Exchange Co.

I took this artsy shot at Minnesota Valley Grain in Le Center.

Heavy, dark skies prevailed, matching the color of the People's Elevator in Cleveland, which is now for sale.

And then the sun broke through the clouds, creating beautiful lighting for this photo taken July 4 at the People's Elevator, Cleveland.

One of my favorite images came from inside Gary Schmidt's 1899 elevator, where this chalkboard hangs, recording grain storage.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

The family matriarch oversees the making of pupusas from her chair.

She perched on a chair, back rim rod straight, eyes fixed on the griddle before her.

I watched, considering how I could, unnoticed, photograph this lovely old woman with lines etched deep in her skin by weather and smiles and age.

Just the way she held herself, like a queen presiding over royalty, intrigued me. Her entire demeanor spoke to wisdom and respect and knowledge earned perhaps by years of struggle.

None of this I knew with certainty. All of this I speculated solely from observation.

She sat, some five feet from a food tent during International Market Day at Central Park in Faribault. Under the tent, members of her extended family tended to frying pupusas and to customers who were waiting to buy the beef and cheese-filled flat bread.

I waited too, seeking the opportune moment to snap images. After awhile, I decided simply to walk near the woman, aim my lens and push the shutter button. I snapped two profiles before she noticed the whirr of my camera and turned toward me. I lowered my camera, bent low and asked if she was in charge.

She gazed up at me with a puzzled look, then spoke in Spanish. Just like that, a boy, about 12 years old, stood beside us. I repeated my question. He translated. She spoke. He translated back: “Just watching.”

I chuckled, not quite believing this matriarch.

“Is she your grandma?” I asked the boy.

“No, that’s my grandma, and my mom,” he said, pointing toward the tent. “She’s my great grandma.” Four generations together. The boy told me she was 86.

I hung around, standing in line for a pupusas and hoping to capture more images of this elder who had so captivated me.

She did not disappoint. Although I missed getting a picture, I saw this regal woman rise up from her chair, reach across the hot griddle and pat the top of a pupusas. Just like that. And she wasn’t in charge?

A bit later I was rewarded again. From across the tent, I observed a man embrace her. I quickly took a picture, with no time to properly compose the frame.

If love has a face, then I saw it, in that moment, in the smile and eyes of that beautiful old woman.

From a mere five feet away, the old woman quietly observes as family members fry flat bread.

Beef and cheese-filled pupusas fry on a griddle.

A man, probably a family member, embraces the old woman in a touching moment outside the food tent.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

When it comes to blogging, I never have a shortage of ideas. My computer is filled with files of photos and my notebooks with pages of notes. Just the other day I compiled a list of blog topics because I simply did not want to forget something. The list numbers nearly two dozen items.

I know some of you who have seen me out and about may be wondering, “Why hasn’t she written about (here’s where you fill in the blank)?” I promise. Your blog is coming.

Here’s my current list of blog topics, in no particular order:

Kenyon horse pull

Minneapolis henna artist

Bike parking at the Kenyon swimming pool

Pequot Lakes

Hackensack Library

Bemidji art

Bemidji candy shop

Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox

Loons

Itasca State Park

Courthouses

The Mississippi River

Twiehoffs’ in Faribault

Munsinger Gardens in St. Cloud

The Blob

Lake Harriet

The Rose Garden

Homemade pizza

Tim Swanson’s 1959 Chevy

Treasure City in Royalton

The Turkish Scarf Project

Aztec dancers

Paintings

Some of these topics date back to a month ago, when my family vacationed in northern Minnesota. Others are places I’ve been just in the past week.

Sharing my photos and the stories I’ve gathered now ranks as my favorite type of writing. I enjoy it almost too much, if that’s possible.

If you haven’t visited the Midwest Mix Magazine website, check that out too. I have a few blogs there and at least one more to be posted soon on the Blue Collar BBQ and Arts Fest in Faribault.

In the meantime, I promise to keep blogging and, hopefully, entertaining and informing you through my writing and photography.

I’m also working on stories for the holiday issues of Minnesota Moments magazine and Midwest Mix Magazine. So…, I best get busy writing, after I hang out the laundry.

Authentic architecture is integral in the Concordia Spanish Language Village.

A colorful mosaic graces a building.

Nearly 40 years ago, I longed to spend part of my summer at a German language camp in northern Minnesota.

It was, I figured, as close as I would get to Germany without leaving the state, unless you counted visiting New Ulm. I’d been to that predominantly German community several times.

But I needed more. With a natural ability to quickly learn a foreign language and with a passion for German, I hoped to immerse myself in the culture. And that could happen at the Concordia German Language Village near Bemidji.

However, as much as I wished to become a German camper and as much as my high school German teacher desired the same for me, it wasn’t going to happen. Sending me to summer camp didn’t fit family finances.

Sunset on Turtle River Lake.

So I never went to camp. That was until this summer.

And it wasn’t exactly German camp. It was El Lago del Bosque, Concordia’s Spanish Language Village, also on Turtle River Lake north of Bemidji.

No, I don’t speak Spanish. But my daughter, Miranda, is majoring in Spanish and worked the past two summers in the El Lago del Bosque kitchen. Several weeks ago my husband, son and I traveled north to see her.

As we drove down the 2 ½-mile tree-lined winding road toward the Spanish village, I couldn’t help but ponder my adolescent wish of so many decades ago.

But that was in the past and I had other concerns now. How exactly would I communicate in a totally Spanish-speaking environment? Not to worry. We got by for the brief time we were at the Sunday evening asado argentina (outdoor Argentine barbeque) with Miranda as our interpreter.

Besides I was way too busy admiring the brick courtyard, complete with fountain and gorgeous flowers, and the Spanish architecture and paintings to even think about language barriers. This camp was unlike any I’d ever seen. I would have sworn, at least from exterior appearances, that I was at some swanky resort.

From what my daughter has told me, the food classifies more as cuisine than camp food with everything, even the bread, made from scratch. I could like this kind of camp.

Miranda returns home this weekend from her three-month stint at El Lago del Bosque. We’ll be picking her up at her sister’s place in Minneapolis and eating a meal together. I asked where and what she wanted to eat.

Anything, she said, except rice or beans.

Tabletop artwork at Concordia.

Art representing San Miguel de Allende.

Table art representing Santiago.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

A Faribault firefighter seeks donations while standing in the turning lane of N.W. Fourth Street. This photo was taken from the passenger side front window of our car as we neared the intersection with Second Ave N.W.

I don’t mean to be disrespectful to our local firefighters, but I saw something this morning that truly astounded me.

There, standing in the turning lanes at one of Faribault’s busiest intersections, were several firefighters seeking donations for The Muscular Dystrophy Association’s national “Fill the Boot” campaign. The drive benefits research and local services for the Twin Cities chapter of the MDA.

It’s a worthy cause and I applaud the charitable efforts.

But walking where they were, putting themselves in danger and creating a distraction for motorists seemed more than a bit unwise on the part of the firemen extending their boots for a donation.

What about safety first?

My husband rolled down the driver's side window as we passed this vehicle and firefighter, who was seeking donations in the turning lane of N.W. Fourth Street.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling

All the sweetness of summer beckons in this peaches-and-cream hued rose along the Boulevard of Roses.

Stop and smell the roses.

Bend close and breathe in the sweet perfume of a rose.

How many times have you heard that phrase?

Kenyon's Boulevard of Roses cuts through Minnesota Highway 60.

Well, if you’re traveling through Kenyon in southwestern Goodhue County, then you really ought to heed those words, literally.

Most roses have passed their peak bloom.

BUT DON’T TARRY. Time truly is passing as rose petals there fade and fall upon the Boulevard of Roses that slices through the heart of this small town. Some 80 rosebushes, by my estimate, grow in the narrow strip of grass between traffic lanes along Minnesota Highway 60, also known as Gunderson Boulevard.

Many times while driving through Kenyon, I’ve admired the four-block-long stretch of roses. But not once, not even once, did I stop to smell the roses. That is, until Sunday afternoon, during Kenyon’s annual Rose Fest.

Festival events had mostly concluded by the time my husband, Randy, and I arrived in town. We stopped at Kenyon Veterans Memorial Park (see my previous post), took in the horse pull at Depot Park, shared an order of scrumptious turtle donuts (mini donuts dripping with caramel and chocolate and sprinkled with nuts) before I suggested that we view the roses.

“Is it safe to walk in the boulevard?” I asked as we exited our car on a side street and vehicles zoomed by on Highway 60.

“There’s not that much traffic,” Randy insisted.

OK, then.

So we crossed the eastbound traffic lane and stepped into the flower zone. Rosebush by rosebush I worked my way down the grassy pathway, pausing to photograph the choicest of the blooms. Most had already passed their peak.

Yet, much beauty awaited us in the arching curves of the petals, in the dreamy colors of peaches-and-cream and buttercup yellow, of bushes weighed heavy by dozens of roses.

And then the scent, the heavenly perfume of roses, breathed in, slowly, deeply. Almost intoxicating, this sweetness consuming my being as I dipped my nostrils close, touching the petals. I couldn’t get enough of this heady stuff, each rose with a distinguishing scent, as unique as their colors.

But just like that, I was snapped out of my reverie by a passing semi truck that sucked at the roses and left me questioning the wisdom of standing so near the traffic lanes.

However, the distraction proved temporary as I resumed smelling the roses, inhaling their sweetness, with each deep breath.

A semi truck passes dangerously close to the rosebushes.

Rosebushes stretch for four blocks along Gunderson Boulevard.

© Copyright 2009 by Audrey Kletscher Helbling

A table setting that speaks to summer breezes at a southeastern Minnesota lake cabin.

A bouquet of home-grown gladiolus Debbie created for the serving area.

At the risk of sounding, oh, so Minnesotan, I’m going to write about the weather, a perennial topic here in the north land.

Except for the lack of rain early on, hasn’t this just been the most perfect summer? Few, if any, mosquitoes, primarily humidity-free, cool days and good sleeping weather make this a summer to remember.

It’s been ideal for picnics and potlucks and campfires, for gatherings with family and friends.

Just last week my bible study group met at a Cedar Lake cabin near Faribault for a potluck and farewell honoring our friends Mark and Sonia.

Debbie and John, who co-own the cabin with family, invited us. And the instant I saw the summery table Debbie had set for us on the porch, I thought of Seals and Crofts’ hit song from the early 1970s, Summer Breeze:

“See the smile a-waitin’ in the kitchen, food cookin’ and the plates for two.
See the arms that reach out to hold me, in the evening when the day is through.
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind.
Summer breeze, makes me feel fine, blowing through the jasmine in my mind.”

Now I’m uncertain as to the entire meaning of the lyrics, but Summer Breeze always has been one of my favorite oldies.

I didn’t share my thoughts with Debbie as she finished final meal preparations, but I gushed over her decorating style. Debbie, who has worked as a floral designer and interior decorator, possesses a flair for pulling everything together. I mean, she made paper plates and plastic cups look like fine china in the summery table she set for eight, nine with her husband, John, the grill master.

Debbie created a beautiful table setting using her favorite color, green, mixing and matching with pinks and yellows in paper products and flowers.

© Copyright 2009 Audrey Kletscher Helbling