History, Twin Cities

Rock Island Swing Bridge

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Rock Island Swing BridgeYesterday I went for a 20-mile bike ride. I think that’s a little too much distraction. My goal was to make it down to the new Rock Island Swing Bridge in Inver Grove Heights that’s been converted to a pier. The ride down was great. The ride back? Not so much.

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the trail I cataloged for a National Park Service trail guide back in 2000 has been extended almost all the way to the Rock Island Swing Bridge. There are plans for more amenities at the bridge, including a 55-acre park that should make it even more of an attraction.

So what is it? It’s a 670-foot pier that extends halfway out into the Mississippi River. Originally built in 1894, the double-decker bridge carried trains and vehicles across the river. Trains went on top and vehicles on the bottom. Supposedly John Dillinger used the bridge as an escape route when evading the FBI. It was closed to trains in 1980 and traffic in 1999.

Rock Island Swing BridgeIn 2001 the Coast Guard ordered its removal as a potential disruption to river traffic. A section of the eastern half of the bridge collapsed in 2008 and demolition was imminent. In 2009, a month before the scheduled removal of the western half of the bridge, the governor and legislature offered a reprieve, likely thanks to a bridge tour the National Park Service hosted in 2008 to gauge public interest. Nearly 700 people showed up and waited in long lines all day to get a chance to walk on the old bridge.

The bridge (at least the western half) was finally saved thanks to a federal grant, state aid disaster funds, county and city funds, the Minnesota Historical Society and a local fund drive, totaling $2.3 million. Construction was delayed by flooding and then a fire, but last week the pier opened to the public.

Rock Island Swing BridgeSo is it worth it? That’s the question another Rock Island Swing Bridge visitor posed when I was there. I looked around for my answer. This is it. Where else can you find these views of the Mississippi River? I’m not aware of any other pier like it in the Twin Cities area, and maybe not on the rest of the Mississippi. It gives Inver Grove Heights public access to the river (most river front property is either private clubs or industrial land) and a major destination.

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Adoption

366 Days

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I looked at the dates last time and it was kind of a punch in the gut. 11 months from hello to goodbye. I looked at the dates again today and it was just as bad.

On June 9, 2010 we first heard about our new daughter. She was 10. She had a complicated story and we were going to be her new family to help carry her through.

On June 10, 2011 she flew out of the state and officially out of our lives. We haven’t talked to her in nearly a month (that’s her choice, but I don’t blame her), but today was the day she actually moved on and legally is no longer our responsibility. I just called the insurance guy to have her removed from our policy. You don’t get more official than that.

While she’s legally no longer our responsibility, I’ll always feel a moral obligation (though there’s little I can do to fulfill that). While she’s officially out of our lives, she’ll always be in our hearts. While she’s physically out of our house, we’ll continue to come across things that were hers. None of that is easy.

The journey our lives have taken in the past year is kind of insane. I don’t recommend it. Though I’m not sure how I could recommend avoiding it. The past few months have been a struggle to move on. There’s been a constant search for distraction. In some ways I want to stop thinking about it completely. In other ways I can’t stop.

I bought a Wii a couple weeks ago (this time I managed to keep it for more than 24 hours) simply for the distraction and stress relief. I don’t really care that it’s being replaced or that it’s not the coolest gaming system. I just wanted to shoot people. That doesn’t sound very healthy now that I’m writing it out, but it made sense in my head.

I’ve started exercising more, riding my bike in the neighborhood and in the basement. It’s stress relief and distraction. Abby actually started exercising as well, so it’s not just me feeling the need.

I started re-reading Graham Green’s The Power and the Glory. If you’ve never read it, it’s a somewhat depressing tale of a Catholic priest fleeing persecution in Mexico, but far from a martyr he’s known as the whiskey priest. It’s a tale of doubt and despair and questioning faith (yet still holding on in the end). I first read it during my freshman year of college along with Shusako Endo’s Silence, another story of martyrdom among doubt and despair.

That makes it sound as though I’m swimming in doubt and despair myself. I’m not, not really, but it’s not far off. Part of me wants to read Silence again as well, but part of me wants to steer clear. We’ve also watched our way through the entire series of How I Met Your Mother (again) as well as working our way through Big Bang Theory. As much as reading about despair resonates, watching something funny is also desperately, desperately needed.

It’s a weird place to be. I pray desperately (there’s that word again) for where she is and where she’s going, because that’s the only thing I can do. I try not to look back because there’s nothing in that. I try to surround myself with friends because I can and because no one should be alone. I try to get the words out because otherwise they just rattle around in my head.

It was only 366 days from getting a phone call to receiving an e-mail.

Vacation

Camping Again

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Memorial Day CampingMemorial Day Camping

Over Memorial Day weekend we went camping. The last time Abby and I went camping was nine years ago. Kids and dogs will do that to you.

A group from our church goes camping together every Memorial Day weekend, so it was a great way to get back into it and introduce the kids to the experience of camping (and introduce us to the experience of camping with kids). Not only did we have friends to distract the children but we were only an hour away from home if anything (weather, bugs, children…) made the trip unbearable enough to pack it in.

We planned on staying Saturday through Monday but left on Sunday night, more to preserve sanity than from actually losing it. Milo didn’t go to sleep until 11 on Saturday night and was up by 5, so he was running on fumes. We opted to end on a high note.

The weekend was a blast. We didn’t do much of anything, but we had fun doing it. With everything that’s been going on we needed a vacation. Which is a bit sad, because we can’t do something like that without thinking about what could have been.

We were also able to introduce Lexi and Milo to smores. Milo loved them. Lexi just wanted to eat uncooked marshmallows. Throwing stuff into the river was a prime attraction. Milo enjoyed trying to jump over tent stakes. Lexi loved playing with the big boys (there were half a dozen teenage guys on the trip; the closest in age to Lexi was 10). Lexi was mad on the way home because she wanted to go camping for four days, not two. Back at home on Sunday night when we put Milo to bed he asked if he could sleep in a tent again.

Lexi also declared that rule #3 of camping is you get up really early so you can sing and dance in the sun: ‘La la la!’

I guess we’ll have to go camping again to hear the first two rules.

Adoption

Saying Goodbye

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On June 9, 2010 we first heard about our new daughter. She was 10. She had a complicated story and we were going to be her new family to help carry her through.

On May 9, 2011 we sat across a coffee table and said goodbye. She’s leaving our family. Her complicated story gets even worse and we all struggle with dashed hopes and broken dreams.

This has been my life the past few months as our latest journey into adoption has come apart all around us. It’s a little bizarre when life unravels and you’re not sure how to answer the ‘how are you?’ question, let alone blog about it.

When an adoption doesn’t work out it’s called a disruption (such a lovely technical term for a heart-wrenching circumstance). I’m not going to get into the details of our disruption. It’s a matter of privacy and when you’re dealing with an older child who can Google herself that’s just a bit weird. This entire situation sucks for her, and she deserves way better than that kind of indignity.

This whole mess is still being worked out. We don’t know what’s next. We don’t have much, if any, control of the situation and we don’t know all the details. It’s a feeling of powerlessness. Like being lost in a fog.

What we do know is that everything has changed. We do know that our family of five has become something else. We’re not quite a family of five anymore, but I hesitate to say we’re a family of four again. I don’t think you can go back so easily.

While she’s no longer in our house and soon to no longer be our legal charge, she is still in our hearts. I can be clear about that. She will always be our daughter. It’s not for a lack of love or a lack of trying or something else. The choices this process forced upon us are brutal, and I don’t really expect anyone to understand them. I wouldn’t have understood them a few months ago. It just sucks.

I’ve heard a lot of platitudes and I’ve offered a lot of nervous laughter and I’ve given fake smiles and I haven’t been able to maintain eye contact. Sometimes I’d rather not talk about it. And sometimes I need to get it off my chest (hence this post).

I don’t know where we go from here. We’ve asked for a lot of help and we’re trying to find our way.

My hope and prayer is that more than us, she’ll find her way.

Music

Why I Love The Current

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It’s pledge drive time again at Minnesota Public Radio, which means my default station, 89.3 FM The Current, is full of pleas for cash. But that’s OK because The Current is the best music station ever. When people say radio is dead, they don’t listen to The Current.

I’m not a big fan of pledge drives. I can’t listen when the news side of MPR does their pledge drive. But I can endure it for The Current, mainly because they make it fun. It also helps that I’m a founding and sustaining member, so no guilt.

While listening to their pledge spiel today I started thinking about all the great bands and music I’ve discovered thanks to The Current. Here’s a quick list of music I discovered thanks to The Current (in no particular order):

Arthur Yoria, Arcade Fire, The Postal Service, Ted Leo & the Pharmacists, Death Cab for Cutie, Rilo Kiley, The Magnetic Fields, Pretty Girls Make Graves, Cloud Cult, Sondre Lerche, Mark Mallman, Kaiser Chiefs, The Heavy, Hot Hot Heat, The Raconteurs, Nada Surf, Rainer Maria, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, The Gossip, Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin, Cold War Kids, M.I.A., The Fratellis, Regina Spektor, Bloc Party, The Big Pink, Art Brut, MGMT, Metric, Mumford & Sons, Avett Brothers, Gogol Bordello, Jonsi, Lady Sovereign, Ladyhawke, Lily Allen, The Decemberists, The Rural Alberta Advantage, The Thermals, The New Pornographers, Trampled by Turtles, Apples in Stereo, Ida Maria, Haley Bonar, Mates of State, Rancid, Tilly & the Wall, Tullycraft, Blonde Redhead.

Every band in this list has at least one song in my iTunes that I’ve listened to more than a dozen times (at the bare minimum). In most cases I bought something by this band because I heard it on The Current and liked it. In several cases The Current gave it to me for free (and then I often went on to buy more of it). Some of these are obscure hipster bands, but others are well known bands that I certainly heard about before hearing them on The Current, but I didn’t listen to their music until after hearing them on The Current.

Radio is not dead. Go check out The Current. You can listen online.

Books, Society

Clean Water for Elirose

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Clean Water for EliroseI’ve talked about clean water a lot, so it should be no surprise that I’m loving Clean Water for Elirose. It’s a children’s book explaining to kids what it’s like to not have clean water that comes out of the tap. It’s written by a fellow Twin Citizen, Ariah Fine, and the book itself supports clean water.

Right now a Kickstarter campaign is wrapping up that has so far raised nearly $4,000 of a $3,500 goal to enable cheaper publishing of the book so it can help more folks. Ariah is not only raising money himself for clean water, but he’s enabling other people to raise money. If you want to support the project, $3 gets you a copy of the book. If that’s not a good enough deal, you can donate $100 and get 50 copies. Perfect for your own water-generating fundraiser.

It’s a great little project and you can even read the book online. Check it out and support it. They’ve already hit the goal, but more help is even better.

God, Church & Stuff

Good Friday

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Today is Good Friday. It’s the dark day of death before the resurrection at dawn on the third day. There’s little good about it, as much as we make a case for its necessity. We can make the argument that it’s good, but it’s still a day of death most brutal. It’d the day they crucified my Lord.

O God, be merciful to me.

It’s gray and dreary today. Windy and cold, spitting rain, threatening darkness. Everyone is asleep in the afternoon. Napping. What else can you do? As days off go, Good Friday isn’t one to celebrate with loud acclaim. It’s one to be mourned.

Father, don’t stop prayin’. For this old world is almost done.

Good Friday is about waiting. Waiting for Sunday to come. Waiting for hope to break through. Waiting for light to shine. Always waiting. Humanity is plunged into the dark night of the soul, with nothing to do but wait. I grow so tired of the waiting. I want to plunge forward with reckless abandon, but it’s not in my power to do. I can only wait.

We nailed him on to a tree, but he never said a mumblin’ word. Not a word, not a word, not a word.

Good Friday is a paradox. Thankfully it escaped the Hallmark treatment. The Easter bunny and the eggs have left it alone, for what could you even do with it? This year it coincides with Earth Day, fitting to some and awful to others, but there it is.

And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on, I’ll sing on; And when from death I’m free, I’ll sing on and joyful be.

It’s a day of quiet contemplation, a day to ponder these things that I’ve done. We are scattered and lost and in such desperate need of that Sunday morning. When will it come? When will it come? Christmas has the child-like expectation, but for Easter it’s something more. Something deeper. Something urgent.

Like a wayward child I’ve wandered… I have wandered in the darkness, and my path was lone and drear. But my Father did not leave me, he was watching ever near. Lord I’m coming home, Lord I’m coming home.

It’s supposed to be 60 degrees again on Easter—a return of Spring.

History

Mulling Over the Civil War, 150 Years Later

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150 years ago the United States of America went to war with itself. An interesting article over at CNN explored four reasons why we’re still fighting that war.

It’s full of interesting ideas and rationales. I found two of them worth talking about here:

1) Power of the Federal Government

H.W. Crocker III, author of The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Civil War, says Southern secessionists were patriots reaffirming the Founding Fathers’ belief that the Colonies were free and independent states.

They were also reaffirming the Founding Fathers’ belief that black men only counted as two-thirds of a person and could be sold like cattle. But you know, details.

But I’ll give Crocker some credit, he does pose a fair question:

“If the Southern states pulled out of the union today after, say, the election of Barack Obama, or some other big political issue like abortion, how many of us would think the appropriate reaction from the federal government would be to blockade Southern ports and send armies into Virginia?”

Ouch. There’s a question for the pro-life crowd. If Roe vs. Wade is overturned and California says “We’re out,” is the appropriate response to go to war?

An over-simplified question for a way more complex issue. Of course Abraham Lincoln said yes and did go to war over a moral issue. Which brings me to the second interesting idea.

2) Christianity Poisons Politics

At the time of the Civil War the political center disappeared in the wake of the Second Great Awakening, according to David Goldfield, author of America Aflame, a new book that examines evangelical Christianity’s impact on the war.

Goldfield says evangelical Christianity “poisoned the political process” because the American system of government depends on compromise and moderation, and evangelical religion abhors both because “how do you compromise with sin.”

“By transforming political issues into moral causes, you raise the stakes of the conflict and you tend to demonize your opponents,” Goldfield says.

So Christianity is to blame for the Civil War? Ouch. I’m over-simplifying (again), but it’s an interesting idea.

Some might say that’s good. Eradicating slavery is a battle worth fighting and in the case of the Civil War that’s meant literally. It’s interesting to make comparisons and talk about whether that’s worth doing today, but that’s probably one of the few times in history when you can invade to enforce a moral issue. Who would the pro-life crowd propose we invade in order to stop abortion? Or perhaps less inflammatory, who could we invade today to stop human trafficking? There’s no country that legalizes and supports slavery today like the South did 150 years ago.

I don’t have any answers here, I’m just mulling ideas.

Family

I Stand on the Shoulders of Giants

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If you haven’t been able to tell, we’re going through some stuff right now. I can’t really talk about it here for a number of reasons. But I found myself commenting that I’ve been blogging for 10 years (12, actually) and I’m not sure if my blog will survive this. Aside from being too busy to blog, I’m finding myself unable to blog about other things. Everything else in life seems mundane right now. I don’t have the emotional energy to invest in anything else, so why fake it?

But if a decade (and then some) of blogging has taught me anything, it’s that you have to press on. It’s taught me that the writing helps. It’s taught me that a lot of crappy writing has to come out, and that’s OK. This isn’t for you, it’s for me.

In the midst of all of this the one thing I can say is that the only reason we’re still kicking is because we’re standing on the shoulders of giants. I don’t know how people go through crises like this alone. I couldn’t do it. Friends are stepping up and helping us, and not just in a vague, ‘we’ve got your back,’ way, but in a real, going around the world and back kind of way. And it’s not just a couple people or a handful of people. It’s a crowd.

That’s humbling. I don’t deserve any of it. And yet there they are.

And it’s a good thing, because it feels like it’s getting worse. We’re not out of the woods yet. We’re just getting started.

[And there’s another lesson from a decade of blogging: Being cryptically vague. I thought I left those days behind me. Guess not.]

A work-at-home dad wrestles with faith, social justice & story.