NOT FEELING MINNESOTA

Last week, I traveled to Minnesota for my first summer vacation in ten years. My wife, Ellen, doesn’t like hot weather and I thought it would be cooler there than in New Jersey. It was, though not markedly.

Minnesota has many nice woods, streams and lakes. I had last been there in early June 2002 to deliver an environmental law lecture in Duluth, a unique and scenic small city on a steep slope at the western edge of Lake Superior.

After that conference, I drove three hours north to the Boundary Waters, a million-plus-acre wilderness area along Minnesota’s Canadian border. During a solo canoe trip in that virtually unbuilt-upon, vast patch of forest and chain of lakes, a storm blew in. I carelessly capsized my vessel and immersed fully in 50-degree water. All of my cotton clothes were soaked. After I righted the canoe, I removed my wet garments.

I spent the next ten hours paddling in rain and windy, low-fifties air, wearing only boxer shorts and seeing only two other canoes. Without the sun or any landmarks to orient myself, I was lost in a vast maze of lakes which, aside from their different sizes and shapes, looked very much the same, surrounded by trees atop ten-foot rocky outcrops. I stayed as close to shore as I reasonably could.

At twilight, I emerged from a narrow passage and saw a choppy, circular, mile-wide lake. As the gloomy light was fading, I knew I had to paddle directly across the lake’s center; staying near the shore would have taken too long. Though I swim well enough, I knew that if the canoe had capsized, I wouldn’t have survived; the water was too cold. I paused. Peace and gratefulness for the 44 years I had already lived descended upon me. Then a song came into my head:

Don’t rock the boat, baby. Don’t tip the boat over.

I didn’t. Kneeling low in the canoe, I paddled carefully for thirty minutes and made it across. In the lakes that followed, I resumed, as I had been for ten hours, looking for some visual cue to lead me back to where I had started the day. There was no one around to ask for directions. As I carried no phone, I lacked GPS.

Providentially, just after night fell, I heard a motorboat. I would soon learn that these were forbidden—except for emergencies—in that region.

A kind, gentle man named Tim, who managed the camp that provided my canoe, shined a beacon across the dark water and called out my name. We approached each other. When we met, he told me that he, and others, had been searching for me for the past three hours. If they hadn’t found me, I’m not sure how I would have done, nearly naked and very hungry in night-time temperatures. As they transported me back to the camp in a motorboat that towed my by-then-empty watercraft, Tim told me that several Boundary Waters canoeists die each summer in situations like mine: wet, cold and lost. He called cotton “the preferred fabric of corpses.”

As many of you likely have, I’ve had multiple brushes with death. I’ve been living on God-given house money for a very long time. Aside from the very high Covid survival stats, knowing I could have been gone five decades ago is a second reason the overhyped virus never scared me.

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Walking through Duluth’s hillside neighborhoods in August 2024, I saw the above-displayed congressional primary election campaign sign on several lawns. I suppose Harry Welty was trying to portray himself as a reasonable, “Follow the Science” candidate. But if Harry knew even a little science, had objectively observed his quotidian realm and had applied basic logic, he would’ve known that masks never worked, nor could they have. Masks were political theater. Why, in 2024, did Welty or any voter think that mask wearing was, or had ever been, a good idea?

Two days later, Welty lost. Badly and deservedly. Pols who are still selling any part of the Coronamania narrative should be tossed into the compost bin of history.

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Judging by the masks they still wear, it seems that many Minnesotans, especially twenty-somethings, won’t let go of the Covid lunacy. Masking is their way of convincing themselves that all of the “public health” measures used to counter this ostensibly terrible virus were worthwhile. As time has passed, mask-wearing has morphed from virtue-signaling into an ex post facto effort to convince other people that they faced a terrible, universally perilous microbe; wearers see their masks as memorial armbands. The benighted maskers seem unaware that non-maskers view them as maladjusted drama addicts, not as influencers.

I couldn’t help but notice that many persisting maskers were tattooed, with short, often pink, green or blue spray-painted hair. People who consider themselves free-thinking intellectuals were exhibiting foolish conformism. Forty-one percent of those under 30 have at least one tattoo, as do 46% of those ages 30 to 49. Is something still edgy when nearly half of the population does, or wears, it?

Most Minnesota maskers were distinctly overweight. Perhaps their long winters engender torpor, depression, overeating and excessive drinking. In 2019, 30% of Minnesotans were obese. Now, one-third of Minnesotans are. Covid isolation expanded many waistlines. While many maskers still act as if Covid is tres lethal, they disregard the much greater likelihood that their impulsive eating and drinking will lessen their mobility and shorten their lives via diabetes, heart disease and cancer.

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In Minneapolis and St. Paul, political correctness is pervasive: murals, lawn placards, bus and light rail signs, billboards, storefronts and interiors and even restaurant menus deliver a relentless onslaught of “progressive” buzzwords and themes.

Various restaurants at which we dined imposed extra charges of 3% to cover “costs of complying with government mandates,” 3.5% “to pay for medical insurance,” 5% “to pay a living wage,” or 18% to fund “equitable wage share.” All of these were at low-key eateries; the first three places stressed that these surcharges supplemented tips; the place that added 18% processed orders at their counter. These surcharges stealthily raise prices and are another form of sociopolitical indoctrination.

There are plenty of jobs far more arduous than chopping vegetables and bringing food and utensils to tables. I’ve done much such dirty, sweaty stuff. If food workers don’t make livable wages, who paid for their elaborate arrays of tattoos?

Most waitstaff and hotel desk clerks spoke or adorned themselves as if they were members of the opposite sex. It felt like year ‘round Halloween.

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It’s little wonder that Minnesotans elected someone like Tim Walz governor. While Walz prohibited more than ten people to attend a given funeral, thousands were allowed to attend George Floyd tributes and protests. Even after November 2020, Walz barred people from hosting home visitors and meeting others in parks. He also set up a snitch phone line so people could report neighbors who did things like host backyard barbecues. Many Minnesotans called in, Stasi-style. Because that’s what freedom-loving “liberals” do.

Walz authorized police to issue citations to those caught violating stay-at-home orders and threatened to impose $1,000 fines and to imprison violators for 90 days. He mandated masks for most indoor spaces and some outdoor spaces. He also mandated Covid vaccines for state workers, even though nearly all workers were too young to be at risk and even after the shots had been shown not to stop viral spread.

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Northern states’ “progressives” stereotype and mock southern states’ residents as ignorant and overweight. But based on what I saw, Minnesota has plenty of obese, low-information voters. In an unbiased culture, people would mock Twin Cities residents at least as much as they mock Mississippians and hillbillies. By stridently supporting the Covid overreaction, tens of millions of Americans who think of themselves as smart have shown themselves to be the opposite of smart.

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In all three cities, we relied heavily on public transit. It was extensive, inexpensive and punctual.

Duluth bus riders were calm and polite. As they disembarked, each one called out “Thank you” to the driver. Just like in New Jersey. Not.

In contrast, many Minneapolis and St. Paul bus and light rail riders disrespected their fellow travelers. Some shouted angrily for minutes at a time. Others played loud music. Still others smoked herb on board. A few were unconscious. One sprawled across the double seat right in front of me, with a needle in his hand. Others defecated and urinated on station platforms or sidewalks or went shirtless or pants-less on trains.

Maybe Twin Cities police have been told to tolerate this wide range of misbehavior, another example of the Ferguson Effect. Or maybe many Minnesotans think that historical oppression justifies allowing present-day people to do whatever they want, despite the prominently posted code of conduct and laws. These were often repeated by recorded voices that also reminded riders that everything they did was being monitored by camera. No one seemed to be watching these images.

On the bright side, Minnesota summer days are long and colorful. Many public places and yards had native plants and flowers to provide bee and bird habitat. Though I saw very few bees or butterflies there; another sign of a Bugpocalypse far more serious than any viral “Pandemic.”

There were also plenty of stylish, old houses and public buildings. And bikes and scooters to rent. Plus small lakes in high-density neighborhoods in which to kayak and swim. Mid-August 2024 Minneapolis lake water was twenty degrees warmer than the Boundary Waters had been in early June 2002.

Though Minnesotans would smugly attribute this differential to climate change.