David Beard Posts

Reflections on Race and Community-oriented Policing

DavidBeard_SEThis is going to begin in Milwaukee, pass through St. Paul, and end in Duluth.

When I was a kid, the Milwaukee Police Department gave away baseball cards. The cards were printed for the police with the Milwaukee Brewers as the celebrities. Each officer carried two, and you had to talk to more than one officer over the summer to collect a full set. It was a great strategy for bringing families and police together. My favorite Brewer was Rollie Fingers, because he had a handlebar moustache. I didn’t know anything, any damn thing at all, about baseball.

Rollie Fingers Baseball Card

The baseball cards were part of a “community-oriented policing” initiative. I was a kid; I barely understood what that meant, but I understood the problem it was meant to address.

In 1981, when I was nine, Ernest Lacy was arrested on suspicion of rape in Milwaukee. According to an account in The New York Times, Lacy was taken into a police van, where “two of the officers then held his legs down by placing their feet on his legs, and a third officer placed his knee between Mr. Lacy’s shoulder blades, forcing him to lie face down with his left cheek pinned to the ground. … Then, one of the policemen pulled Mr. Lacy’s arms up beyond his shoulder blades and over his ears [with] one violent, convulsive seizure and then the black man was absolutely still. … [T]he extension of Mr. Lacy’s arms toward his head interfered with the flow of oxygen to his lungs. … [T]his was fatal.” Lacy was taken alive into a police van and was removed dead, a victim of police brutality.

(Another man was convicted of the rape, if that matters to anyone reading this. It shouldn’t for Ernest Lacy any more than it did for Clayton, Jackson and McGhie.)

Boat – People

I found this poem on my desk — you step away for a week, and everything you see when you come back is bright and new. These are just the last stanzas, because I want to honor copyright and because they move me:

Amy Lynn Clark Boat - People

The Last Singles Night (for now)

I attended the final Singles Night … for June. I promised I would not write about it (because when I am thinking about writing I am no longer “present”) and there was disappointment among some folks. So a final post about the final Singles Night (for June). It will go on, in August, if there is desire and support.

Shopping Alternative Ways of Thinking

Duluth Alternative Shopping

I went shopping in the most unusual shops in Downtown Duluth.

Fathers, Sons and the Use of Force

DavidBeard_SEI have no memories of my father or the life my mother, sister, father and I lived until age four. Our home was in the middle of the city, but it was so old, it used to be the center of a farm. The garage had lived a former life as a barn, with hay lofts refitted for storing unused garden tools.

I don’t remember my parents’ divorce. In kindergarten, I understood that my mother filed, and that my grandparents moved in with us, because my mother was afraid that he would hurt her. By middle school, I understood the kind of hurt she feared.

My father is my paradigm case of what it means for a man to use force.

I’ve been thinking about the use of force. And every June, I think hard about fatherhood. The thinking is coming together this year.

Christian thinker and philosopher Simone Weil describes force as something that “turns anybody who is subjected to it into a thing.” She is writing about Homer’s Iliad, a poem about war, the force that turns men into corpses.  But she goes beyond war to talk about the threat of force as well.

A week of art, music and singles mingling

How do I catch you up on the past week, PDD?

Last Thursday, I went to the reopening of the Tweed. Mayor Larson was there, exciting. Ken Bloom directs one of the most significant cultural resources in the region. Bill Payne‘s tenure as Dean of the School of Fine Arts at UMD made great things possible for the Tweed, too.

Quiet (Singles) Night at the Depot

Duluth Singles Night at the Depot

I spent Wednesday night at the Depot.

It was singles night, a weekly event in June. The event included $1 Castle Danger beers and entertainment from DJ Trivia. The event included free tickets to local events from KQDS and some locally owned restaurants and some tickets to Tribute Fest (I won three — anyone want to go? I feel no desire to pay tribute to any of the bands being covered.). The highlight of the event: a package to Las Vegas.

Art and Indigenous Community Health

I spent last Friday at the AICHO Complex, in Trepanier Hall for an event about art, health and indigenous communities.

Parking Crunch in Canal Park

The season for enforcing paid parking in Canal Park has begun (see the DNT article here). Parking in Canal Park will get tight and expensive.

Lake Superior Magazine image

Lake Superior Magazine image

The photo at left is of pre-redevelopment Canal Park, not parking this weekend. But you get the idea.

If you are reading this and remember life in Duluth when this was the beach, I’d love to hear stories.

Meanwhile, parking…

I used to meet friends at Endion Station, which was the (I think) last cheap place to park in Canal Park until the meters were upgraded.

And for a while, I joined the Great Lakes Aquarium because the free parking given members of the Aquarium was cheaper than parking in Canal Park. Plus the Aquarium is awesome.

What is the last secret of the local for getting into Canal Park this summer with a car?
 

Archetypes in Wrestling: Reflections on Recent Matches at Wessman Arena

DavidBeard_SEI spent last Saturday night thinking and rethinking about cultural archetypes through the most popular form of American theater, the wrestling show.

Heavy on Wrestling, a Duluth-based promotion, has organized numerous cards over the past decade at casinos and entertainment centers throughout the region. Last week’s event at Wessman Arena was intergenerational. Baron von Raschke, who started wrestling in 1966, served as the “commissioner.” For those a bit younger, who remember wrestling on network TV, “The Million Dollar Man,” Ted DiBiase and Eugene were present; DiBiase signed autographs and Eugene wrestled Minnesota wrestling mainstay Mitch Paradise.

If you thought wrestling was something that only happened on cable TV, you are missing out. There are more than a half-dozen wrestling promotions in Minnesota running shows throughout the state. To learn more, follow the work of Razzling Rick.

Sustainable Design at UMD

Sustainable Design6

I’m lucky to have worked on a sustainable art project on the breezeway leading to Darland Admin Building at UMD with Darren Houser, Mindy Granley, Catherine Meier, Kathy McTavish, and Wildwoods.

Duluth is a bottleneck for bird migration. Birds flying south prefer not to fly over open water, and so follow the coastline until they read the head of the lake in Duluth.

Sketch Bomb with John Hoban at UMD

Local artist John Hoban organized a Sketch Bomb at UMD.

Local artist John Hoban organized a Sketch Bomb at UMD.

John Hoban, creator of Captain Artichoke, Apocalypse City, and Night of the Smurfing Dead, lead a Sketch Bomb at UMD on Monday. The event was planned by Pat Maus of the Archives and Special Collections area of UMD’s Martin Library.

Wing Young Huie on Immigration

Port Cities People

Found at a local antique shop for fifty cents: An issue of Lake Superior Port Cities magazine (now Lake Superior Magazine) with an article and photos by Wing Young Huie.

Barbarian

DavidBeard_SEMy friend John and his wife Chieko left John’s son from his first marriage behind at Stone Farm. Stone Farm, Suffolk, is all I need to write as an address on the letters and postcards I send to him twice a year in the United Kingdom. The family home (occupied by John, Chieko, John Jr., and John’s mother) is older than the United States. When the bowing timbers used to frame the home were cut, the colonies were still colonies.

John spent a week in Duluth. He was to give lectures at the Alworth Institute about energy policy in the U.K. And of course, ostensibly, he was here to visit his friend, David. But John was a fisherman. You don’t cross the Atlantic to talk about U.K. dependence on natural gas to Minnesotans. You come to fish.

We visited Gooseberry, and John took romantic photos under the falls. We ate smoked fish and lobster — John ate at Red Lobster so many times because the exchange rate between the pound and the dollar was so favorable.

Comics on my Mind

Local artist and design teacher Darren Houser presents on his work, among other presentations at the Martin Library at UMD, organized by Pat Maus.

Local artist and design teacher Darren Houser presents on his work, among other presentations at the Martin Library at UMD, organized by Pat Maus.

A recent event at UMD spotlighted comics as a scholarly and artistic pursuit.

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