An Increasingly Impatient Cycle

I sat down to reflect on my year a few weeks back, and the first words that went down on paper were “well, that was frustrating.” I’m not sure this is entirely fair to 2017, as a lot of good or at least necessary things happened, personally and professionally. But if I’m frank about it, there were also slow moments, as if I were a hockey team running aesthetically pleasing but ultimately mindless cycles in the corner without ever generating any shots on net. There should be more.

Whatever 2017 was, it was not a year for venturing outward. My longer trips were to places I’ve been before. It involved weddings and funerals and reunions and a lot of valuable extended family time, often filled with explorations of the past. 2017 was my first full year in the working world, and it often left me marveling over how easy it is to slip into a humdrum routine, and how rebellion against that instinct has to be a conscious effort every day, even in a field of relative freedom and flexibility. The struggle is real, and it is endless.

These life changes are probably evident in the content on A Patient Cycle. Over the past few months, this blog has boiled down to my core writing commitments, hockey and fiction. This is in some measure a sign of satisfaction: I’m on the road or out being social fairly often, and I don’t lament the loss of some of this time that might have gone to writing in the past. I try to keep family life out of here, for the most part. Hockey remains my release, a sort of second career that doesn’t feel like one. And the fiction bug remains my most effective method for making sense of my world and just letting my mind go, a tortured and exacting process that tries to make art out of timeless human struggles. The hockey posts are by far my most read, and often spur great dialogue; the fiction is the least read, and often met by vague praise or crickets. It is what it is. Neither of those two is going to stop anytime soon, especially in the middle of a season and now that I’ve generated some fictional momentum in recent months.

But beyond those two topics, A Patient Cycle, much like its author, has now left its adolescence and is trying to make its way in the working world. After four and a half years, I’m not sure there’s much to say about my own theories on the world that I haven’t already said at some point or another. One of the founding principles of this blog was that it should never fall into a routine where it bludgeons the same tired themes over and over again. I’ve tried to honor that pledge of late, and the dearth of philosophy or national politics is a reflection of that. It’s been a pretty tumultuous year, but nothing that happened in it really shook up my worldview in any major way. I have an argument to make here, but I’m also at the point where results feel much more useful than words.

I’m also still deciding what sort of local political voice, if any, A Patient Cycle should offer nowadays. I may drop by here or there, but I’m not going to start attending Duluth meetings religiously like I did a few years back. When it comes to local reporting, I think my friends at the News Tribune continue to do a pretty solid job with the resources they have, and a couple of muckrakers at the Reader and its ilk fill a niche, too. I could turn this blog into more of an opinion mouthpiece, but in many cases I think I have more effective levers at my disposal than yelling these opinions out into the internet, and I’d prefer to use those when I can. I can see some situations when said yelling would be counterproductive, too.

To some extent here, I’m looking for ideas from my readership: is there something that needs covering from a perspective you think I can offer that no one else is currently covering? Where can I still add new thoughts, given my own background and interests? Prompts are always welcome. Lately, they haven’t been coming to me naturally.

I’m not saying it was a lost year, or that I’m in some sort of unpleasant funk. 2017 had its peaks, and I am mostly a contented person. I cultivated a lot of valuable old ties, and will continue to tend to many of them. I have settled into a place at work that is rarely stressful and usually recognizes my contributions. I had some lovely opportunities for reflection, usually in the midst of physical exertion up and down and around the hills and lakes that I love. I visited most of my usual haunts in the Upper Midwest, and a few new ones, too. I was about as fit as I’ve ever been, though that tailed off some toward the end, and I did a better job of taking control of some things that required some control as well. Sometimes this foundation-building work, slow and uneventful as it may seem, can wear down the opposition and create some openings to seize at a later date.

I know a lot of people laugh at me when I lament how I’m getting old. In my professional circles I’m almost always the youngest person in the room, and these self-deprecating jabs are mostly meant in irony. But I also don’t want to wake up and find that I’m 30 or 35 or really any age and not on a path toward making my dreams into reality. I learned early on not to take any day for granted, and it can be way too easy to do that. I have little use for any state of affairs, personal or professional, that fails to move things in that direction. Time is wasting away, and even if I have a lot in front of me, that just means there’s so much more I can do with that time.

2018 will therefore, I think, be a watershed year. Within it, I will learn a lot about what my future in Duluth holds for me, for good or ill. Time to crash the net.

Always Running

This is Part 3 in a short story collection. Here are Part 1 and Part 2.

“Alright, this is pretty simple. You’ve got the tent. If you need more water, catch up with me. I’ve got a filter pump in my pack. It’s thirteen miles to the campsite. Whoever gets there first wins.” Mark chances a half-smile to his charge as he deftly lifts a large pack to his knees, swings it on to his back, and snaps a belt buckle into place.

“Why do I have the tent? It’s heavy,” Austin gripes, stumbling as he tries to haul his own pack to his shoulders in one graceless motion.

“Weigh your pack against mine if you want. We’re even, unless you threw in anything else back home.”

“Nah, just some Cope.”

“No, dump the chew. None of that shit.”

“Mrs. Johnson said the Mexicans chew it to keep them going when they’re hiking.”

Mark suppresses a violent groan. “That would be the Incas, bro. And they chew coca, not tobacco.”

“Goddamn, you’re lucky you’re a goalie. I’d pound you so hard in practice if I could.”

“This is what you wanted, right? You wanna get your life back in line? This is how we’re gonna do it.”

“Didn’t realize you were a torturer. Can’t I at least take the water pump?”

“Guess you might need it more than I do. Should be right in that outside pocket.” Mark turns so Austin can reach the zipper and cringes when he hears Austin’s pack go crashing to the gravel parking lot. “I’m keeping the bourbon bottle, though.”

“You brought booze? Thought you were trying to clean me up.”

“I am. Never said I was trying to clean myself up.”

“Fuck you.”

Mark shrugs. “Hey, I’ve got my vices. But they haven’t kept me from getting anywhere I want to go.” He makes a show of taking off his Yale snapback to throw back his hair, the one flourish he’s added to his otherwise spartan trail running attire.

“Some help you are.”

“You said you wanted help, I’m giving it to you my way. You’re in deep now. Hope you can keep up, cuz I don’t let up.”

“You think I can’t keep up? You know how much ice time I was getting last year?”

“You smoke shit and you don’t work out, Breyer. I’m gonna kick your ass.”

Without another word, Mark sets off up the hiking trail at a brisk trot. After a few yells, he hears Austin hoist up his pack and come stumbling after him. Mark decides to toy with him and lets him barrel on ahead. He hangs back for the first two miles, just close enough to hear Austin trundling up the path ahead of him. He closes the gap around the muddy stretches so as to watch in amusement, and tries not to laugh too loudly as he watches Austin stumble through the slop with all the elegance of an obese walrus. For the most part, though, he lingers out of sight, lest he become too distracted by the kid lumbering through the woods in his bulky boots and wife-beater. He should enjoy this, after all. Mark drinks in these woods he’d hiked in his younger years, even takes some time to admire the lowland stands of aspen in a way he doesn’t when he careens down trails. He should have brought along that tree ID book he’d picked up to annoy his ex. He’s forgotten how fun this can be. But another instinct sets in before long.

Mark waits until he gets to the first serious climb up a ridge, and then turns on the burners. He flies past Austin in no time, and while he hears a string vulgar yells and the loud footfalls of an inexperienced trail runner trying to keep pace, he blocks out his feeble follower with a passive smirk and pushes harder. No matter if flying up the first hill is bad trail running form: it’s all a psychological game, and this is where he can destroy the competition. He always does.

Not only that, Mark muses, but he has home ice advantage. He is back in his element, back in his home along Lake Superior’s North Shore, and he could shut out everything else and keep on like this until the end of time. When the trees fade into scrub on the upper reaches of a ridge, he chances a glance backward. He can see Austin laboring a quarter of a mile below him, and the gap widens with each step. But this is no time for cruise control.

He comes to an overlook over a pair of inland lakes, mildly regretting that he can’t linger if he wants to humiliate Austin as thoroughly as he does. Middle school Mark wandered these hills when he found himself desperately out of place in Silver Bay, snuck up to this very spot to steal a first kiss with the ever-so-eager Emma. They didn’t have much in common, but at least she had some understanding of how alien an East Coast blueblood felt in a mining company town. That lost kid seems so far removed from this cynical bastard who now inflicts pain on Austin for his own pleasure, so innocent compared to this craven and compulsive high achiever who simply can’t restrain himself.

But no, he tells himself as he barrels down the next slope as quickly as he dares: he was always like this. He was just as troubled as a fourteen-year-old, grumbling his way through dark and bitter thoughts. Above all, the bitterness: a function of his pride, he supposes, his insatiable ego that even now has him humiliating someone out of some noble quest to save him. Austin is as skilled a defenseman as his high school has ever produced, but with lackluster grades and a fondness for illicit substances, he’s failing to live up to his hype. Mark had lashed out at him in front of the entire team in a summer captains’ practice, and Austin replied by calling Mark a spoiled daddy’s boy who hadn’t had to work for anything. In response, Mark offered to teach him a lesson on what a work ethic could do, and to his shock, Austin took him up on it. That was all the spark he needed to know there’s something worth saving beneath a kid who otherwise struggled with anything beyond monosyllables. He’d like to think he’s in a different league from this bumbling hick with his souped-up truck littered with empty cans of chew, but in the end they’re both vain, horny boys whose athletic exploits are their claim to fame. This, of course, is too close for Mark’s comfort.

And so he’s hatched this ridiculous trail run to make his power clear. Not that it won’t tax him some, too. The next descent is so filled with choppy rocks that he doesn’t move any faster than he would if he’d been hiking. He stumbles, and scrapes his hand as he catches himself on the trunk of a birch tree. A few more mornings at the gym and a few less wine-and-deep-thoughts nights with Evan would probably have made his dominance that much more thorough. A slight price to pay, he supposes, to steal a few final nights with his departing best friend to confront life’s great worries. Evan may have left Duluth, but he still has a question to debate with him the next time they talk: is he leading Austin on this run because he truly cares about the kid, or is it just to prove to himself that he can capture anyone, make them bow down before him as he shows off his control? Mark Brennan: egomaniac, his every maneuver a ruse to win at another slice of life.

Mark begins to mount the largest hill on the route, a gradual but unending 700-foot climb, and shuts out his meandering mind to focus on his ascent. He surges with energy and finds another gear, even as his lungs struggle to keep up with his legs. Finally, he summits the hill. He comes to a rocky outcropping over a complete panorama, both inland lakes nestled among the hills to the north and Superior, lost in a light haze, to the south. The fog will come rolling in before long, he expects; hopefully Austin doesn’t do something stupid and wander off the trail, or, worse yet, bail on him when he gets to the state park and hitch a ride back to his truck, which they’ve stationed at the tail end of the hike.

He does some rudimentary math, decides he has some time. He nibbles on a granola bar and cracks open the bourbon, sips lightly. The fog rolls in even faster than he’d expected, and suddenly even the inland lakes begin to fade. He’s caught in a cloud. Symbolic of something, he figures, laughing to himself. His younger self had loved the metaphor of running up hills, always in pursuit; it had become sort of a credo for him and his closest friends, all Type A athletes who push themselves to the brink in every aspect of life. Even now, he still gets that runner’s high. But it doesn’t take long now for it to lapse into frustration. All this running, but for what?

He hypes the chase, but he’s not sure when he’s ever done much that wasn’t expected of him. He’s been an utterly conventional all-American boy, a straight-A student and a hockey star who’s always had his choice of girls. His one failure, he figures, was with Jackie, the unrequited lover in Evan’s grade who’d strung him along for a couple of years when he always knew he was merely a Plan B. He’d come away hardened, content to view love as a cynical pact between himself and anyone who would open up her legs for him. This past week, that meant a college-age friend of some ex-teammates, one willing to take a ride with the smooth high school senior who knows just how much he can drink before going over the edge. She’ll blur in with the rest before long.

And where has it all left him? Alone in his monumental solitude, and for all the culture and knowledge he’s accumulated, for all of the accolades, he is still no better than anyone else at controlling the impulses that flow through him. He should be able to pause and think clear thoughts like this at will, to step back and play a long game, master tactician that he is. Instead, he just pushes harder. His meeting of goals has only grown more relentless and the thrill he gets from them only shrinks, perhaps because they all seem so instrumental, merely another line on a résumé that cannot be anything less than perfect.

Is he just an achievement machine, incapable of intimacy? No: he’s had it, both in fleeting moments with Jackie and of course with some of his boys through those male bonds he cherishes. But that’s all disappearing now. Jackie is going to college in Chicago, and Evan is off to junior hockey in Fargo. Mark, meanwhile, is left behind in a dead end Rust Belt town where all the girls seem to fall short somewhere on the three-legged stool of ambition, attractiveness, and brains. And despite his seeming status as the big man on campus, his list of close male friends left is also vanishingly small, a frustrating collection of sexually desperate and dim jocks, insufferable self-seekers who think they’re cultured because they own guitars or read Kerouac, and decent people whose idea of fun somehow involves sitting in the cold for endless hours with fishing rods or guns. His family, forever trapped in its infighting, is no fallback, either.

Mark hates himself for how uncharitable this all sounds. All his urges to diagnose and analyze leave him estranged from anything resembling intimacy. He scolds Austin for being an addict, but sometimes he thinks his own addictions are far worse. He has that insatiable hunger, the same desperate search for everything that led his father to make millions and dump both his first wife and Mark’s mother. He doesn’t want that life. How he’d like to build something of his own, find some way to resist all the entropy around him and marvel at something beautiful for more than a few fleeting seconds.

Tears well up in Mark’s eyes. It’s an alien sensation, one he can’t remember happening since some preschool playground injury. His parents’ protracted divorce, those crushing season-ending losses, the end of the affair with Jackie: they had all inspired bitterness, self-flagellation, wistful wishes of what could have been. But never this. Is this really sadness? he wonders. These are spontaneous tears, and he’s not sure quite exactly why they come. He sinks to his knees on the hard rock, shivers slightly now that he is fully swathed in this blanket of fog. He reaches up to wipe his eye, but decides he should just let the tears flow. Evan would be proud of him; he’s been trying for years to draw this sort of raw sincerity out of his best friend. Mark won’t say a word about this to him, knowing he’ll get a full lecture on the power of the world beyond him or some such nonsense. And yet, here he is: he can still break through the cynical shell when he pushes himself to the limit in some new way. Half a laugh escapes his lips, and a smile forces its way across his face to divert the tears sideward.

Now, finally, Mark reminds himself who he is. The Yale-bound renaissance man, the most formidable goalie in the state. The Platinum Curtain, a nickname for the rich kid with sweeping blonde hair that he must outwardly disdain but secretly loves. He may not have a girlfriend, but he knows what he wants in one, and he’s had no trouble finding mutual pleasure in the interim to satisfy his cravings. And above all, he knows he has the wisdom to continue a search for meaning through all of this, that his dithering and dwelling on his past need not be a weakness. He runs to cleanse his soul, to bring new clarity to his many pursuits, and the aches in his knees just purge his pent-up frustration. There you go, Evan, he thinks to himself: he’s a believer after all, even if that belief never quite goes beyond his own self. He hops to his feet and careens down the next slope faster than ever before.

Mark feels a pang when Austin stumbles into camp two hours after nightfall. He is a disheveled wreck, leaves caught up in his shoulder-length hair and one leg dragging behind him and in obvious pain. Doing his best to keep up a businesslike front, Mark offers him a first aid kit, a hairbrush, and a few sips from the bottle. Austin is so drained he cannot even muster up any anger at Mark for his death march, even though Mark suspects he would deserve it. Proof he isn’t as soulless as he pretends he is: he feels guilty, not only because he knows how vicious he’s been, but because he’s known it all along, and never done a thing to change it. He must repent now, somehow, even if his audience is a woeful meathead who won’t understand a word. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t kick that Christian instinct.

“Goddamn, you can run.”

“Been running all my life, one way or another,” the sinner confesses.

“Huh.”

“I’ve been running from losing. Afraid to lose. Afraid of losing more than I already have…which is plenty.”

“You, lose? You’re the golden boy.”

“You don’t know…no. I’m not going to rant about that.”

“Shit, I’m sure you’ve had it rough.”

“Fine, you wanna know why I did this to you? It was cuz you called me a daddy’s boy. Well, try having a dad who tells you that having you was a mistake. That he wishes he’d never slept with my mom. Wanted her to get an abortion. Who can’t manage one word of praise for his kid who’s only ever done everything right. Or try having a mom who’s sweet to you but who’s so fucking clueless cuz she doesn’t get your dad’s world or any of this drive he’s infected me with to never lose. Or maybe try watching your brothers and your sister never talk to you cuz they hate you for ruining their family. Try getting forced to move to a place that feels like the end of the earth filled with shits like you.

“And you know what I did? I made myself a home. Home in a dead end city in a fracturing world…but, god, I love it to death. It was the only place I could do it. The golden boy figured out what he was meant to do. And you wanna tell me I’ve never worked?”

“Shit.”

Mark laughs.

“You think you’ve got something you’re meant to do?”

“Yeah. A destiny.” The words sound almost hollow to Mark; it’s the sort of thing Evan or some of those athletes who slap Bible verses in their social media profiles would say. But he loves the taste of them as they roll from his lips, and figures he could get used to them.

“You’re fucking crazy.”

Mark purses his lips, manages to hide any sense that he’s been struck dumb. He casually stretches out his legs, knowing Austin has no such dexterity left after his run.

“Crazy enough that you’re here with me cuz you know I know something you don’t.”

Austin looks at him in incomprehension, but Mark doesn’t care: he pulses with power, and loves every second of it. But he has to bring Austin along. What good is his power if he doesn’t use it? Everyone in his life has a lesson for him, if only he can unlock it. Those cruel dismissals of other people in his life? That’s his father talking, not him. He is not that man. That isn’t what Mark Brennan does. He rises above.

“Sit back and relax, man, let me cook ya some food and tell ya what I know. I can’t guarantee I’ve got answers, but at least I know I’m asking the right questions.” For once, Mark even believes it.

This collection continues here.

Duluth East 2017-2018 Season Preview

The start of a new season can never come fast enough in the aftermath of a double-overtime section final loss, but at long last, an agonizing wait is over. The Duluth East Greyhounds start their 2017-2018 season on the road in White Bear Lake tomorrow, where they hope to avoid a repeat of last season’s upset loss in the opener. They’re right back at it the next day with a home game against Wayzata, another potent opponent that gives this East team an immediate chance to set the tone. As well they should want to: on paper, this is the best East team since the 2011-2012 dream team that got upset in the first round of the State Tournament.

The similarities between these Greyhounds and that group six years ago are almost uncanny: a high-flying top line with a long history together, two excellent supporting lines, a deep and offensive-minded defense, and a new goalie who is the obvious heir apparent. Sure, there are some differences: the top line has yet to reach the point totals of Jake Randolph, Trevor Olson, and newly minted NHLer Dom Toninato. Both teams lost to the state champion in several overtimes the season before, though this incoming group went down in the section final, whereas the 2011 Hounds made the title game. Missing the Tournament two seasons in a row brings a different sort of pressure than coming in as a three-time defending section champion, though there are still four kids on this squad who have seen the bright lights of March and played in the 2015 title game.

The comparison will be especially apt if the Hounds can unleash their Weapons of Mass Destruction. Garrett Worth, Ian Mageau, and Ryder Donovan—aka the WMD Line—are in the conversation for the best line in the state. Worth is the sniper, Mageau provides a powerful big body that will go into corners, and future North-Dakota-Whatever-They-Are-Now Donovan is a smooth-skating giant who had a big offseason and could be set for a genuine breakout. This line has the potential to put up numbers on par with the greatest East lines of all time, and if they do so, this team will have every chance to play for a state title.

The factor that could separate East from the field this season, however, is its depth: they may have the three best lines in the state, as their top nine forwards all return. Ricky Lyle took strides over the offseason and now looks very dangerous, Nick Lanigan (once he’s healthy) will bring an excellent work rate, and a full sophomore campaign from Logan Anderson will be welcome after injuries disrupted his second half last year. Austin Jouppi, Brendan Baker, and Jack FitzGerald were all solidly productive a season ago as well, and with all three lines firing and taking a step forward, this team will be able to bury in opponents in ways that few others can. Only a handful of west metro teams and St. Thomas Academy are even close to them here.

The Defense is led by newly committed Wisconsin Badger Luke LaMaster, and in what is admittedly a thin year for front-end senior defensemen, he’s a contender for the Reed Larson Award for the top blueliner in the state. Hunter Paine had a huge second half last season, and with he and LaMaster ranging forward, Will Fisher needs to be the defensive rock to protect Lukan Hanson in goal. Carson Cochran rounds out the top four in terms of talent, and E.J. Hietala is also in the mix; the third defensive pair is about the only spot on this roster where there’s some room for new kids to climb in.

In goal, it’s Lukan Hanson’s time to shine. He looked capable in sporadic action a season ago and in the Elite League this fall, so now it’s just a matter of translating that play into the regular season and holding up under the spotlight. There’s no question the job is his, so he’ll have to deliver.

While the Hounds are the undisputed frontrunner in 7AA, a crowded group will be nipping at their heels. Elk River is probably the best of the bunch top to bottom, and maybe they’re in better shape with less hype and pressure this season, though I’ve said that before. Cloquet has the skill coming up to make things interesting, and if they can jell under a new coach, the rivalry factor will also help close the gap. Marshall isn’t the deepest team to ever grace the ice, but their top unit is as good as anyone’s, and like Cloquet, the Hounds are very much their target. Young Andover will look to crash the party, too. And then there’s Grand Rapids, which is way down from the past few seasons. But they are the two-time defending champs, and the only team in the section that has beaten East with any regularity in recent seasons; if Gabe Holum gets hot, it’s not impossible.

The Hounds’ schedule is unique in that they don’t play any of the other three teams in the top preseason top four (Edina, Moorhead, St. Thomas). But, they do play nearly everyone else who’s ranked: 19 of 25 opponents are in my preseason AA top 25, and a couple of the non-ranked teams aren’t exactly pushovers. As usual, the toughest stretches come right away and again in early January; things ease up with a lot of somewhat lighter home games toward the end, though they do have big section games with Cloquet and Elk River in that later stretch. Lots of teams will be gunning for East, as they’ll be the favorites in most games they play. There are few opportunities for off nights against this schedule.

Given all of that, East’s evolution over the course of the season will be key. The 2012 team, and also the 2008-2009 squad that was East’s other no-doubt preseason top five team in the past decade, both came out of the gates looking dominant, but seemed to stall as January and February wore on. The warning signs for their first round State Tournament upset losses were all there. Of course, no East fan would complain if they ran the table, but if they don’t, a little adversity wouldn’t be the worst thing to hit this team, so long as they respond well. One just has to trust that Mike Randolph’s systems will continue to grow, and not settle into tedium.

Randolph was the subject of an excellent profile by the Louie St. George in the News Tribune earlier this week, one that hits on many of the same notes about his career trajectory that I’ve mentioned over the past few years. In this golden stage of his career, Randolph sits at 597 career wins, and should track down number 600 in the first couple weeks of the season. The next milestone, in my mind, is even more significant: with a 20-win season, which seems like a realistic goal, he will surpass Willard Ikola for third place on the all-time coaching wins list. 600 is just a number, but joining a man like Ikola goes to show the depth of the influence he’s had over twenty-nine seasons as a coach.

The sky is the limit for this team, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves: March is still a long way off. Whatever comes next, this ride will be a memorable one.

2017-2018 Preseason Notebook

After 255 high school hockey-free days, the puck drops on the 2017-2018 regular season the day before Thanksgiving. The fun starts early, as the opening weekend includes two excellent tournaments featuring some of the state’s finest, and just about everyone else will be under way over the next two weeks, too. I’ll devote a full post next week to a Duluth East season preview, but here’s a heap of things I’ll be looking at right off the bat this season.

You can find additional coverage from me here: Preseason AA Rankings | Preseason Podcast

Early Season Storylines

Can anyone catch the Hornets and Hawks?

Edina’s assemblage of talent is up there with the best teams they’ve ever produced, and that is, of course, saying something. They were already in contention for preseason favorite before they added Demetrios Kouzmontzis, who tore up the fall Elite League, and now that Blake McLaughlin has defected to the USHL, Sammy Walker is the favorite for Mr. Hockey. The sky is the limit for the defense, and if they live up to their potential, this team won’t be giving up more than 15 shots on goal most nights. If they can get respectable goaltending and Curt Giles can instill enough physicality in a somewhat small forward group, they’ll be hard to stop.

In Class A, meanwhile, two-time defending champion and eight-time defending finalist Hermantown is number one yet again. But, for what it’s worth, they do look more beatable this season: they lost a ton of talent, and these next few classes, while still elite by A standards, aren’t quite on the level of the past couple. They’ve got two top-end forwards in Tyler Watkins and Blake Biondi, and the defense is rock-solid, but they don’t quite have the overwhelming depth of the past two seasons. That leaves a couple of other teams with some genuine front-end talent and deep defenses within striking distance, most notably St. Cloud Cathedral—though they’ll have a battle to get past Alexandria in a tough 6A.

The 2AA Free-for-All. There’s a lot to like about Minnetonka’s depth and talent, but they’re no sure thing in 2AA, which is once again the most loaded in the state at the top. Four-time defending section champ Eden Prairie is right there behind them with a deep offense and a coach who can usually get his team to lock down. Holy Family, after falling a goal short in last season’s section final and enduring an offseason filled with comings and goings, still boasts a potent top line and a strong defense. The second tier in the west metro is also very strong, so we’ll be set for an entertaining run here.

The Hill-White Bear War. Stillwater has interrupted one of the state’s great rivalries these past few seasons, but with Ponies in a reload year, White Bear and Hill-Murray have a chance to collide in 4AA again. Both combine a few veteran talents with exciting youth at their core, and if these two make it through to the 4AA final, Aldrich Arena will be a zoo. On paper they’re both maybe a year away from state title contention, but if the kids grow up quickly enough, both could be in the equation. Which of them will show the most potential early on?

Last year’s Class A Tournament: fluke or new reality? Fans were treated to the most entertaining Class A tournament in years, if not ever, last season, as the entrants from 1A, 3A, and 5A, long punching bags for the favorites, were all highly competitive. 1A is wide open after defending section champ Northfield got shifted to 4A, while Luverne is the prohibitive favorite to repeat in 3A. 5A features a North Branch team that has a chance to be this season’s MAML behind Brady Meyer, so long as a high-scoring top line can get some support; Pine City, which returns a deep group, may be their most serious obstacle. The metro area, meanwhile, will have to prove it has a real Tournament contender: Orono has some good talent but didn’t make it out of a section quarterfinal a year ago, and Mahtomedi is deep but needs some players to take the next step. There might be a gap for a rare surprise in 2A or 4A.

Chasing the Northern Frontrunners. Hermantown, Duluth East, and Moorhead are all clear favorites to make their way back to St. Paul, but nothing is guaranteed, as there are large chase packs in both AA sections. In 7A, Greenway and Virginia may be somewhere in the equation if there are any cracks in the Hawks, though the odds remain long. 8A, meanwhile, is shaping up to be a decent two-team race. East Grand Forks is another top-end Class A team with a rock-solid defense, and Warroad, led by another Marvin, brings back a lot and will look for its first trip to St. Paul since 2010.

Games to Watch in the First Few Weeks

Youth Hockey Hub opener. Outside of Edina’s Lake Conference games with Minnetonka, there are only three regular season games among the top five. Two of those come in the first weekend of the season, as St. Thomas Academy collides with Moorhead and those Skippers. Games against Tonka could well decide the top five, as they’re the only ones who play all of them. It’s a great four-team showcase, as the Spuds look to pick up where they left off last March and take care of some unfinished business, the Skippers look to join the state’s elite under a new coach, and the Cadets try to prove they can overcome their recent playoff upsets. Lakeville North is also in here to play spoiler.

Grand Rapids vs. Greenway. This classic Itasca County rivalry figures to be the first game I attend this season. The Thunderhawks are, of course, the defending AA state champs, but will look nothing like the group that won a title a year ago. They return a number of their depth players at forward and they’ve got a goalie who can steal one in Gabe Holum, but there are a lot of question marks beyond that. They head into the Snakepit to face an interesting young Greenway team that has two D-I commits on its roster. Both have a lot to prove, and should come into this one hungry.

Wayzata’s early run. As usual, the Trojans host the Turkey Trot on the season’s opening weekend, which features a toss-up game with Maple Grove and a follow-up with either Holy Family or Edina, the top-ranked team they’ve eliminated from the playoffs the past two seasons. After that, they take a road trip north to face Hermantown and Duluth East. The 2016 champs have their usual remarkable depth, but we’ll see how their two top-end forwards jell with their defensive style, and if they’ll spend a portion of this season wandering in the wilderness as they did a year ago.

Blaine vs. Centennial and Maple Grove in mid-December. The first round of 5AA battles comes fairly early, and the Bengals, with a strong leading duo of Bryce Brodzinski and Will Hillman, will get a chance to prove they belong up there with preseason section favorite Centennial and defending champ Maple Grove.

East Grand Forks at Orono. An early collision between hyped teams that will have implications for the Class A top 5. The Green Wave doesn’t have a ton of returning scoring, but does have a stout defense, while Orono is deep and had a lot of success at the youth level.

The wait is finally over. Let’s play some hockey.

Duluth Election Dissection 2017

Another year at the polls has come and gone. Now, as is my wont, I’ll play Monday morning (Wednesday evening?) quarterback for the campaigns. Sadly, I no longer have easy GIS access (unless I have any volunteer GIS slaves out there?), so I won’t have pretty maps like I did two years ago, and will spare my readers the Microsoft Paint maps I made four years ago. You’ll just have to make do with some descriptions of the precinct-by-precinct results.

It was a fairly predictable night in city council politics, as is generally the case. The school board, meanwhile, saw a more dramatic change in direction. Voter turnout was low, even for a non-mayoral off year election. Rates ranged from about 40 percent on the east side to less than 20 percent in a handful of downtown and west side precincts, for a city-wide total of 27.9 percent.

Council Stability Continues

In the at-large city council races, the two incumbents, Zack Filipovich and Barb Russ, carried the day. The end results mirrored the primary. Filipovich’s ground game and ability to lock up labor support separated him from the pack, and he ran comfortably ahead of the field. Russ was the candidate among the four least likely to inspire strong emotions; while the other three all had their ardent supporters and vocal critics, everyone seemed more or less fine with Barb Russ, and that was enough to edge her past the two challengers, Janet Kennedy and Rich Updegrove. The end result was a vote for continuity, and for two incumbents who may not inspire the activist base of the Duluth left, but are certainly acceptable to most of them and know the ins and outs of local politics.

Kennedy had a core committed supporters, and while there were some strong symbolic acts associated with it, as in her trek from one end of the city to the other, that attention was largely limited to a core of high information voters, and I never got the sense that she generated attention beyond that outside of a couple of core neighborhoods. (For example, I received multiple leaflets from every other candidate on my ballot, but never saw a thing from the Kennedy campaign.) Updegrove generated some strong early momentum, but in the end his campaign didn’t seem to move past generic talking points associated with the leftward wing of the Democratic Party, and while that platform will do reasonably well in Duluth, it isn’t at a point where it will win, either. For me, at least, this was a noticeable juxtaposition with the likes of Russ, who was deep in the weeds on housing policy specific to Duluth. Following the lead of her ally Filipovich, she did the necessary retail politics to pull out the election.

In the Second District, Joel Sipress cruised to re-election over political newcomer Ryan Sistad. It’s possible for a 23-year-old to run a successful campaign—see Filipovich’s effort four years ago—but Sistad didn’t have anywhere near that level of polish. While Sipress’s politics may not be all that different from those of an Updegrove, he has a keen knowledge of how to play the political game, focusing on neighborhood issues and emphasizing his service to a district in a way that other staunch members of the left do not. They have something to learn from him, though the caliber of one’s opponents also makes a difference.

Finally, in the Fourth District, Renee Van Nett eked out a win over incumbent Howie Hanson. As the most suburban district in the city, the Fourth is fertile ground for the fiscally conservative platform Hanson ran on; frankly, I think anyone else running on Hanson’s issues in this district probably would have won. But Hanson is a recent adopter of many of these issues, and anyone who has watched him in action knew that he (to put it politely) wasn’t always the smoothest ambassador for his positions. Van Nett brings some newfound diversity to the Council (two out of its nine members are now at least part Native American), and with her emphasis on building consensus and cooperation instead of hard policy stands, she’s one of the more blank slates to enter the council in recent years.

The geography of the votes was also fairly predictable. Filipovich won most of the precincts, while Kennedy collected a handful downtown and on the hillsides, plus Irving out west. Upedgrove led on the UMD campus, which is often an outlier, while Russ didn’t win one. Filipovich and Russ, whose vote totals tended to move in concert, did their best on the east and west ends of the city, and also cleaned up in Piedmont and Duluth Heights, where they likely benefited from not having anyone to their right and were likely considered the least bad options by Duluth’s more conservative neighborhoods. Kennedy’s strength of support was in the center of the city, though she also did passably well on the west side. Updegrove, in contrast, was at his best on the east side but ran poorly on the west side, which was probably his undoing.

In the Second District, Sipress cleaned up pretty much everywhere, with Kenwood being the only precinct in which he was (slightly) under 60 percent. Predictably, Howie Hanson did his best work in Duluth Heights and Piedmont in the Fourth District, while Van Nett owned Lincoln Park. She rolled up her margins in those lower-income precincts down the hill, and stayed competitive enough in Piedmont and the Heights to take down Hanson.

In the end, the results here are pretty clear. While this election removed one of the two semi-conservative councilors in Howie Hanson (if one could even call him that), it also rejected a move further left in the at-large races, in effect staying the course. There was perhaps a slight leftward drift given Van Nett’s breakthrough and the failure of the conservatives to get a candidate to the final four in the at-large race, but there are enough asterisks with Hanson that I don’t think the end result signals any sort of sea change in Duluth politics.

The Great School Board Slaughter of 2017

There’s no real way to spin this one: the 2017 school board elections were a decisive mandate for the DFL-backed candidates, the current district administration, and the present direction of the Board.

The slaughter was most extreme in the two district races. In the First District, Rosie Loeffler-Kemp, the incumbent perhaps most strongly aligned with the district administration, had no trouble dispatching of Kurt Kuehn. But even more eye-opening was Jill Lofald’s demolition of two-term incumbent Art Johnston in the Fourth District. Johnston has withstood intense opposition before, but this time he suffered a 15-point loss. Things were somewhat tighter in the at-large race, but Sally Trnka and Josh Gorham still comfortably outpaced incumbent Harry Welty and newcomer Dana Krivogorsky.

Heading into Election Day, I wasn’t sure if running as a unified ticket with Welty and Johnston, who have their supporters but also their share of baggage, would help or hurt Krivogorsky and Kuehn. In 20/20 hindsight, it’s hard not to see it as a mistake, as Krivogorsky’s careful attention to finance charts seemed to get lost in her association with the other campaigns. Ten years after the Red Plan became reality, beating that same old drum has exhausted Duluth voters. Longtime readers will know I think Johnston and Welty have raised important points over the years, but the rhetoric here has become so repetitive and so personal that I can see how even many who are not thrilled with the nonstop positivity of the DFL candidates would sour on the same old act. Johnston seemed tired, Welty’s blog posts degenerated into a lot more snipping at opponents, and Loren Martell’s columns in the Reader lately might have come out of a Loren Martell Column Generator. Casting protest votes that never achieve anything concrete gets old after a while, and I’ve long maintained that when the focus is more on the candidates themselves than the causes they represent, it’s probably a sign that their time has come and gone. This district needs newer, more constructive critics of the board’s recent direction.

This victory may prove short-lived for the new, completely post-Red Plan school board. Budgetary issues loom large, and unsold buildings still sit vacant. ISD 709 can’t afford many more cuts. The pessimistic case would say that these new, ever-so-positive board members are naively barreling into a future they are ill-equipped to handle. The optimistic case holds that removing the old Red Plan warriors may be a healthy thing: instead of assuming the same old battle lines, perhaps we can now have more open and honest debates on the issues in front of the board. It’s possible to be critical without being abrasive, as Alanna Oswald has shown us, and some clearer air could do everyone some good. Perchance to dream.

The precinct results still reveal some measure of the old east-west divide in Duluth school politics: the combined total for Trnka and Gorham cleared 60 percent in nearly every east side precinct, while the totals were much closer on the west. Still, Welty and Krivogorsky only combined for the majority in three precincts in the city: the two in Duluth Heights and in Irving, which is traditionally the most anti-Red Plan in the city proper. Normanna and North Star Townships, which they also carried, are similarly on the far fringe of that issue. Factoring in Johnston’s defeat, the east-west divide was actually less pronounced in 2017 than it has been in recent years: Lofald’s win was so thorough that Johnston was only within ten percentage points of her in Irving. Meanwhile, in the First District, Loeffler-Kemp swept the deck in the Duluth precincts in the First District, and Kuehn was fairly competitive only in the low-vote townships and Rice Lake.

Street Tax Success

Duluth voters voiced their support for a sales tax dedicated to street repairs by a margin of over three to one. This was the clear message I expected them to send, but by an even more decisive margin than I might have guessed. No one much likes it, but we have to take our pills, and frustration with potholes seems to unite Duluthians regardless of their political leanings. Another tax increase isn’t the easiest thing to swallow, particularly for voters on fixed incomes—I can only hope that the other shoe doesn’t drop when it comes to a future school board levy—but with a clear need and overwhelming popular support, mayor Emily Larson has the vote of endorsement she needs to move this through the state legislature.

Side Notes

I’ll end with a special shoutout to Jono Cowgill, the new District Four representative on the Minneapolis Parks Board. The MURP Class of 2016 is doing big things. Who’s next?

Muir and Roosevelt

The lake’s resident loon eyes the sudden disturbance to its serene lake with suspicion. The dull clunks of paddles on aluminum echo across the darkening waters as a pair of tired canoers ply their way toward a low-lying peninsula. After five lakes, a beaver dam-filled creek, and seven portages, the paddlers are alone in the midst of the wilderness. A sudden wind picks up tosses their canoe from side to side, an ominous reminder of how alone they are if something goes wrong.

Evan had hatched this journey just the week before. He’d imagined it as a restorative trip before the start of his senior year, a chance to be alone with his favorite confidante, a rising junior named Mark who’d moved to Duluth the year before. Mark is an outcast in northern Minnesota, the precocious child of a family that had accumulated vast wealth on Wall Street before a string of affairs and divorces had driven them to attempt a refresh along the shores of Lake Superior. His father had paid Evan’s freight to an exclusive hockey camp earlier in the summer, so this invitation seemed the best way he could pay Mark back, even if a canoeing permit pales in comparison to a week with a host of ex-NHLers. But Mark, he knows, appreciates the gesture, and welcomes a chance to escape the juvenile locker room antics that bore him.

What he did not count on was Mark’s complete disinterest in stopping to gaze up at the eagle in the tree on the second lake, or to study the flowers and listen to the birdsong along the creek. Evan had hoped to revisit a couple of lakes he’d paddled with his dad five years earlier, but instead, they’ve pushed themselves to the limit, traveled about as humanly far from civilization as possible. But while Mark has set the pace, Evan finds himself drunk off his longing for ever greater solitude, and takes a perverse pride when Mark is the first one to suggest they bring their day’s journey to an end.

“Okay, would really like to find a campsite before dark, bro.”

“It says there should be one here.” Evan grimaces as he stares down at the sopping wet map while still taking halfhearted paddle strokes.

Mark surveys a rock-strewn shoreline that fronts a dense thicket of tamaracks. “There isn’t.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Give it here.” Mark leans over the bulging packs in the center of the canoe, stops to stabilize the rocking craft amid the chop, and snags the map.

“Oh, come on. Learn to read. It’s on the next point.”

“Fine, fine. Maybe wanna help me out here?” Evan paddles frantically to guide the canoe away from the rocks. Their chatter, incessant all afternoon, dies as they swing their bulky craft back outward into the lake and steer it into the next bay, where the waves return to a manageable level.

“The mosquitoes are getting me even with all this wind,” Mark grumbles, his paddle strokes reduced to feeble splashes as he slaps at his barren knees. “I need more bug dope. God, why did we think this was a good idea?”

“You’re cute when you’re angry.”

“Oh, shut it.” Mark resists the urge to pile on. It’s the sort of thing his dad would do on one of their family vacations to the Caribbean when he inevitably lashed out at his mother for being late for dinner or forgetting to buy enough rum. He is not his father. For that matter, Evan is not his mother. Mark’s dad sometimes had a point, even if the way he expressed it usually led Mark to hide in his room, where the goalie-in-training would bounce tennis balls off his wall and try to stop them from getting past him. His release had the added benefit of making an obnoxious racket that would occasionally distract his parents from their yelling. Occasionally.

“Damn, now we’re going straight into the sunset,” Mark complains.

“You could, you know, actually wear your cap forwards to shade your eyes.”

“C’mon Evs, you know I’m too vain for that shit.”

“I’m sure you’re gonna pick up a lot of girls out here.”

“Little sympathy here? Not all of us can have perfect girlfriends like you.”

“I tried to get Bridget to come, but she won’t sleep in a tent. And I don’t think my mom would’ve gone for that anyway.”

“I love how your mom thinks she’d be a bad influence on you, but just loves me.”

“Well, you are scary good at fooling adults into thinking you’re not the little shit that you are.”

“You’re not half bad yourself.”

Evan grumbles but settles for channeling his mixed emotions into a few powerful strokes. Mark is right, of course: compared to much of the hockey team he’s the quiet and articulate one, the one who’s seen a bit more in life than most. He’s built himself an image as the saint. But when he looks at his own conduct over the past year—sneaking out to surf when he can, the stolen moments with his girlfriend, lying through his teeth at those events where role model high school athletes tell younger kids to stay away from parties—he hardly thinks he deserves that reputation. The simple fact that he’s drawn to the likes of Mark instead of some more modest friends, he suspects, shows where his true loyalties lie. No regrets, he tells himself, or at least not any glaring and lasting ones.

“Heyo…look, there’s a campsite,” Mark announces, breaking Evan’s reverie. “Amazing what you can find when you can read a map. Nice big rocks, should block out all this wind.”

“Means we’re gonna get eaten alive by bugs.”

“Crap.”

“It’s this or another portage at dusk. Remember how much you hated the last one?”

Mark swats a mosquito on his arm and eyes the flies circling his head warily. “The portages only suck when you’re on them. Easy to bounce back from. Just like going over the boards for another shift, right?”

“Like you’d know, ya damn goalie. We do that next one, you’re carrying the canoe and doing the cooking in the dark.”

“Actually now that you mention it, this site here looks just fine.”

“That’s what I like to hear.” Evan guides the canoe into a rocky landing, and a few clunks of aluminum on rocks again shatter the silence of the lake. Mark hops out and maintains some measure of grace as he pulls the prow into a small bite in the shore. He dances a mosquito-directed jig as Evan clambers over the bags and on to dry land. They haul their bags and the canoe up on to an embankment and collapse on to the log alongside the fire ring.

“Well, considering how far we came, we made damn good time,” says Evan, tracing their route on the map. “Course it helps when your travel partner only has one speed and is getting D-I scouts looking at him…”

“Would’ve been faster if those dicks at the second portage didn’t take up the whole landing.”

“Not sure if they were more bitter about how we went blasting past them or what you said to them.”

“It needed to be said. Might be my first time in here, but at least I know my freaking etiquette.”

“Glad you paid attention to that Leave No Trace video.”

“Or I’m just a model of decency. East Coast class, baby.”

Evan’s eyes roll into the back of his head, but the buzzing mosquitoes distract him from a retort. They’re out for blood, so he picks out a tent pad and sets Mark to staking it out while he fumbles for the cooking gear.

“Where’d you get all this stuff?” Mark asks as he admires the little-used tent.

“It’s left over from my dad.”

“He was outdoorsy?”

“In a good, Minnesotan way. Camped, fished, hunted. Learned it from his dad, taught me enough to get by.”

“You did all that, too?” Mark asks. Evan has surprised him before, but he has yet to get him to join in one of his trail runs or early morning swims across the lake at a mutual friend’s cabin. For good or ill Evan isn’t ever one to rebel against a group, even as he stays in careful control of himself. He is an utter conformist, if at least a thoughtful one. This invitation into the wilderness was a shock, the closest thing to a risk he’s ever seen. Unless he’s hiding more? Mark has seen Evan’s brooding look just often enough to believe his friend may be capable of things he doesn’t let on.

“I know, I know. Never really liked fishing, thought it was boring. I was way too much of a mama’s boy to ever kill anything. My mom’s sold off the guns now anyway. Your dad ever do much like that?”

“My mom’s family did, actually, but nah, you can’t catch my dad sleeping on anything other than Egyptian cotton. He likes his nature, but from a safe distance. And he’s pro-Second Amendment since he’s a good Republican, but god forbid he actually pull a trigger himself.”

“Figures,” says Evan. This is either the seventh or eighth time Mark has bemoaned his father’s hypocrisy since the start of the day, a habit that long ago wore thin. “Hey, you know how to use a water filter?”

“No freaking clue.”

“Here, I’ll teach you. Come on down here…just watch, it’s not hard.”

“Emma tried to get me to drink lake water straight once. That was a red flag right there.”

“That was your Silver Bay girlfriend?”

“Yup. Total granola girl.”

“Somehow I don’t see that being your type.”

“Eh. Fun to fool around with, but so damn flaky.”

“Now that I can see.”

“We’d go on day hikes so we could make out in the woods and smoke some pot. Or, mostly, she smoked pot and I played along just enough to seem cool so I’d get what I want.”

Evan groans. “Don’t know why you’d need an altered state what you’re already sort of in one just being out here. God, I love it. Or, I guess it would be more of an unaltered state. Untouched by man, cept for us campers.” He smiles, hoping to draw at least some momentary appreciation for their surroundings out of Mark.

“And the loggers who clear cut the whole thing and gave us the forest as it is now. Or the natives who managed it forever before that. Or—”

“God you always ruin things.”

“Plus I hope you don’t mind a little altering after dinner.”

“Shit, man. What’d you bring?”

“Whiskey.” Mark fetches a bottle from his pack and slams it down next to the sputtering camp stove. “Hauled that over all those portages, it better be good.”

“Damn. You ever had Scotch before? Where’d you get it?”

“Nope. But divorce has its pluses.”

“I should’ve known,” Evan says, shaking his head. “Your mom’s little prince gets everything he wants.”

“She’ll do anything to make me like her after what she put me through. Kinda sad, but I’m gonna milk it for all it’s worth.”

“And I’m sure the kind that comes in a plastic bottle is the top shelf stuff.”

“Here, let’s take a swig. Worth celebrating that we made it this far.”

“I’m game.” Evan suppresses his natural fear, cracks the bottle, and knocks it back. “Woah. That’s fiery. Way better than most of the cheap stuff we normally get.”

Mark follows suit. “Yeah, this I can do. Good call, me.” He kicks back and takes a second sip, freed from momentary mosquito annoyance, and musters up his cockiest smile.

“God, we’re terrible.”

“Come on, Evs. You and me, we’re some of the most responsible people out there. I’m not gonna feel guilty that I can handle my shit.”

“Good way to put it…but I’m gonna remember that line next time I have to babysit hung over Marky.”

“Harsh, harsh. What’s for dinner, anyway?”

“Pasta. Only thing I know how to make, so I hope you like it.”

“Well, we can wash it down pretty easy.”

“Only then we’ll have to pee when the bugs come out.”

“‘When they come out?’ They’re already draining pints.”

“Oh, just wait till dark when it gets totally still.”

“So much for campfires and marshmallows.”

“I’m sure you’re real sad we’re not gonna get to sit around and tell ghost stories.”

“You know I love my alone time with my Evs. Gotta steal you away from Bridget every chance I get.”

“She does say you’re the best third wheel she knows.”

“What an honor. Real fun for me to hang at your place when you’re banging however many times a week.”

“Oh, shut it. As if you don’t wheel with the best of them.”

“Just…nah. Doin my best not to moan. I’ll get there.”

“That’s my Marks. Hey, we’re boiling here.”

“Thank God.”

Dinner is a rushed affair, one punctuated by the steady staccato of mosquito swats and a chorus of curses from Mark, interspersed by the occasional grumble from Evan. After the dinner Evan washes the plates as rapidly as he can while Mark surprises himself by successfully hanging a bear bag on his first attempt. Confident that he’s completed every task on his checklist, Evan deems their evening a success. The Scotch bottle then heads straight into the tent, where the two boys take long pulls during their search-and-destroy mission aimed at the mosquitoes who have made it in the doors.

“Ah, damn, this one’s inside too. How are we supposed to sleep with all this buzzing?” gripes Mark as he smashes another bug into the mesh door.

“They’ll die down. Maybe if we’re lucky we can go out and look at stars later. Can you grab my book from the bag?”

“Yeah, what you got…a John Muir bio? Hah. Someone’s stickin with the theme.”

“What do you have, backlogged Wall Street Journals?”

“Close enough. Last four copies of The Economist.”

“God, you’re predictable, you tool.”

“As if you aren’t, ya damn hippie.”

“I read one book about Muir and now I’m a hippie?”

“You do kinda have that vibe.”

“What vibe? Like I smoke pot and drive a flower bus?”

“Nah. Just okay spending time with yourself in the woods.”

“Huh, wonder why I’d have that after what’s happened in my life.”

“Not everyone goes that direction when the shit hits the fan.”

“As you always remind me.” Evan smirks at Mark to show his dig is all in good fun, and Mark shrugs in concession and returns to his magazine. His eyes travel across the text, but retain little: the light is bad, and even he has to admit that a bunch of sarcastic Brits’ thoughts on inflation in sub-Saharan Africa don’t quite fit the mood of the moment. He takes another swig from the bottle and casts a sidelong glance at Evan, composed and buried in his book. Annoyed, he looks away, and makes the mistake of turning his gaze up toward the mob of mosquitoes trapped between the tent and the rain fly.

“God, that buzzing doesn’t stop.”

“Kinda makes you think you need to pee, doesn’t it?” Evan flashes a grin.

“You’re evil. You’re actually evil.”

“I thought I was the saint in touch with nature.”

“You had your chance up until now. Now, no chance in hell.”

Evan returns to his reading material and Mark reluctantly follows suit, and the two strain their eyes as the sunlight slowly fails. Evan pulls out a mini lantern for a spell, but he can see Mark fidgeting out of the corner of his eye, and suspects he needs to provide some entertainment. Before long, he shuts off the light and gazes out at the emerging stars.

“John Muir was kind of a mystic, you know. Felt like the trees and the waterfalls spoke to him, in a way. Basically all the wilderness people were like that, Aldo Leopold, Sigurd Olson up here when they made the Boundary Waters. It was a big fight to get it. You need some kinda conscience to make that movement happen, some deep faith. You gotta believe in what you see around you. But when I’m out here, just looking out at that sunset and that still lake…I get it.”

The darkness hides Mark’s scowl. Is this Evan taking a poke at his militant atheism, or just him trying to one-up him with his more appropriate reading choice, always-perfect Evan yet again made one with his environment in a way that Mark, for all his worldliness, cannot?

“When people start talking to me about their chats with trees,” he says, “well, we’ve got hospitals for that kind of thing.”

“You’re so joyless.”

Mark shrugs. “Just think the world can be a pretty place without throwing in gods under every little rock.”

“Maybe. But it’s more than that, you know? Out here, all those things we worry about every day just seem…small.”

“Matthew Four.”

Evan shakes his head, unsure what this means. Mark mumbles something about years of brainwashing and Evan doesn’t press it, knowing it will invoke Mark’s typically vulgar reaction to the Evangelical childhood his philandering parents tried to force upon him. Mark is relieved that Evan lets it go, but, knowing Evan, he’ll tuck this away, look it up when he gets back to technology, and subject him to conversation when he drives him home after hockey practice next week. Mark knows all of this; why, then, this need to murmur that verse? Instinct, he figures, and the knowledge that Evan will understand when he does look it up. Evan plays the humble game, but Mark knows that a god complex lurks beneath. Would they be friends otherwise?

Mark knows it because he lives it. He usually took advantage of his mother’s inability to instill discipline in the Sunday school class she taught at their Silver Bay church to play cell phone games with the closest things he had to friends there in the back of the classroom. But, overachiever he always is, he’d still memorized all the Bible verses they studied. He’d enjoyed Matthew Four because it was Jesus at his most badass: going straight into the wilderness and thrice thwarting the devil himself. He’d wanted to be tempted in that same way, to prove his worth. For Mark, the allure of wilderness isn’t in the promise of solitude: it is in its war with temptation, a war he must prove he can win. He always wins.

“I still say getting out of tents and into AC was a win for humanity,” he says. “How many freaking people are gonna die in Africa tonight cuz they get bit by the wrong mosquito, and here we are going into the woods to do it to get away from our first world problems.”

“You thought it was a fun idea to come here…”

Mark collects himself before responding. “I did. And I still do. But because I love to conquer shit and push myself, and this is an easy way to do it. And, like I said, gets me some alone time with my Evs.”

“Let’s save the kissing for later. But—how bout this. I just read this chapter on Muir and Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy’s like you, East Coast money, total boss, all about conquering the world. But he got it, he knew why we need to do this. When he went to Yosemite, he and Muir snuck off and just spent three nights in the wilderness, deep talks the whole time. Talk about living.”

“That’s awesome, I’ll give you that. Hell, I think anyone we elect President should have the balls to go out and do that. Still…goes to show you can love this without becoming one with the trees or whatever shit like that.”

“But Teddy loved being with Muir. He understood what he was talking about, even though he couldn’t stay. He had this…this feel for things beyond him.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“It’s…” Evan struggles. “It’s like this. Why do you always have to play the hardass, man? I get it and I love it when you do it. But sometimes…I just think you’re so sure that you think you know all there is to know that you just get a little…blind.”

Mark collects himself, again talks himself down from a vicious rebuttal. “Wouldn’t doubt it. You’re not the first person to tell me that. But wonder alone ain’t a gospel.”

“No, of course not. Not sure it needs to be. Still really hurts to lose it.”

“I believe that. And I need to piss.”

Evan cackles. “Have fun! Don’t let too many mosquitoes in when you get out…”

“Gonna leave the door open for a while just to spread the love.”

Evan purposefully kills the unwanted entries as Mark takes his leak. He can lead a friend to wonder, but he can’t force him to see it. It’s a pity; who knows what a god-driven Mark would be capable of? Instead he meanders, forces the issue when he sees fit and practically always wins when he does, but Evan senses no underlying strategy or logic, not even from the smartest kid he’s ever met, the closest thing to a kindred spirit he has. Is there one for anyone? Perhaps not; not entirely, at least. But there can at least be some guiding maps across the portages between these lakes. This is what he seeks in his releases; this is what Evan DeBleeker lives for. Contentment wafts over him, and he lets loose a sudden laugh: somewhere in here is his college admissions essay.

Mark returns, cursing up a storm. Evan joins in the silent slaughter of mosquitoes, but isn’t sure how to convey his sense of serendipity. He arranges a ragged old PeeWee State Tournament sweatshirt as a pillow and zips his way into his sleeping bag. Mark, however, stays sitting upright.

“Do you think it’s good to go chase the wonder on purpose like this?” he asks. “Or should we just let it come when it’ll come?”

Evan sinks further back into his sweatshirt-turned-pillow and closes his eyes. “I dunno that you can force it. You’ve at least gotta be open to it, though, right? And willing to wait, or find it in places where it’s not always easy. Travel does that for me, usually.”

“I get that. Seeing new stuff and all.”

“Yeah, that’s it. And…maybe places that bring out memories, too. Nostalgia.”

“Your dad?” Mark asks. He takes Evan’s silence as assent. “It’s tough for me to feel nostalgia much, honestly…maybe I just gotta build it where I am. Least I’ve got the people to do it with now.”

“Aw. Best way I’ve heard it.”

“Bro, you’re the best there is at breaking me down.” Evan once again stays silent, sure that Mark can read the necessary message from it. Satisfied, he begins to drift off. Sleep does not come as easily to Mark; it never does, his mind still racing along at breakneck pace, trying to make sense of his best friend’s simultaneous poise and lingering grief before his mind wanders off to his old girlfriend Emma, his parents’ failed love life, and whether he should play his senior year of high school hockey or run off to juniors once Evan, one year his senior, has graduated and he loses the only person he’s ever felt comfortable telling the full story of his family. In time the drone of the mosquitoes starts to wane, and the loon resumes its mournful lament. Mark shivers and huddles up in his sleeping bag, but the cool night air only invigorates him. The soft wind pouring through the tent door reminds him of the breaths of breeze through the windows in his father’s ridgetop fortress up on the North Shore of Lake Superior, a place that brings him no joy but still carries the air of some simpler time.

“You awake, Evs?”

“Mmm.”

“Shit, sorry.”

“I’m awake now I guess. Was having this dream, though…”

“What kind?”

“Don’t remember. It was good, though.”

“Damn. Sorry.”

“Nah. Dreams are fun, but they’re not real.”

“Not unless we make them real.”

“Anyone can, it’s you. Go get it, Marks.”

“I will. But man, let’s make sure we keep doing this. Once a summer, once a year, in our backyards or off in some other country when we’ve got the time and the cash…just me and you, getting out and escaping so we can see it all.”

“Just keep the search alive. Ya got yourself a deal, Marky,” Evan mumbles. Within seconds, he’s issuing the deep breaths of sleep. Chagrined, Mark settles back and looks toward the stars. He tries to pick out constellations, but his memory for such trifles isn’t what it should be. What a shame, he thinks. He’ll have to fix that.

Here’s the next piece in this series.

Taking Root in Rural America

Take one on rural America, from Brian Alexander in a recent Atlantic article:

The social good of such places, [Arthur] Morgan insisted, was being “dissolved, diluted, and submerged by modern technology, commercialism, mass production, propaganda, and centralized government.” While many big-city residents might not worry about the fate of small towns, Morgan believed they should because the “controlling factors of civilization are not art, business, science, government. These are its fruits. The roots of civilization are elemental traits—good will, neighborliness, fair play, courage, tolerance, open-minded inquiry, patience.” These traits are best transmitted from one generation to the next in small communities, he argued, from where they are then spread throughout entire societies. To erode small-town culture was to erode the culture of the nation.

Take two, from Kevin Williamson of the National Review in the run-up to last year’s election:

The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

I spend my days working in regional community and economic development, which means devoting a fair amount of time and thought to towns across my corner of the world in northeastern Minnesota. I attend a number of small-town meetings, almost all of which are heartening: from Virginia to Sandstone, from Two Harbors to Aitkin, people deeply committed to their towns come out in force to these meetings and share their love for them. They acknowledge problems but are devoted to fixing them, and in many of them civic engagement seems far more robust than in Duluth, where politics appears to have devolved into vicious tarring of one’s opponents on social media. (Okay, I’m being an election season cynic, but the pettiness is a wonder to behold.)

Even so, it’s not hard to sink into doubt about the future of small towns, either when one looks at macro level trend data or takes a walk down Main Street. Not much is happening, the population is greying, things are boarded up, and yes, in some places, one can find people on the streets high on something at midday. Occasional new development on the outskirts gives some dated facilities a needed refresh, but leaves behind empty space in places where that’s not easy to fill. Many towns can seem trapped in a slow, downward spiral with no clear escape.

On Friday, work took me to Bruno, Minnesota (population 102). There’s not much to Bruno: a bar, a church, a small gas station, a thrift store, a handful of houses, many of which have seen better days. It’s 40-odd miles from Duluth on a beautiful but fairly lonely road, so it’s not one of those small towns that enjoys the spillover from a convenient metropolitan area. But, tucked up a side street sits a former schoolhouse, sits the Nemadji Research Corporation, a world-class medical billing and data mining company with 47 employees on site.

Bruno’s champions are the founders of Nemadji, Gene and Becky Lourey. The late Gene was the brains behind the operation, whose tech skills were decades ahead of his time; Becky, to use her own words, provided the heart. That exuberant human touch was so evident that Becky, whose picture probably appears next to the phrase “bleeding heart liberal” in mid-2000s encyclopedias, got herself elected to the Minnesota House of Representatives and then the Senate in this rural district, and also mounted a failed campaign for the DFL gubernatorial nomination in 2006. (Her son, Tony, now holds the Senate seat.) She infuses Nemadji with a deep conviction born of a long and tumultuous life that has never seen her waver in her enthusiasm and grit, even as she endured business failures and lost three children. Its facility includes a daycare, a lunchroom, and an experiment in hydroponics; employees get excellent benefits, which in good times have even included college tuition. Becky Lourey has built a legacy in northern Pine County that will last long after her, though at 74, she’s not exactly showing any signs of slowing down.

Not every town can have a Nemadji, but the Loureys offer lessons for local communities everywhere. Their power is remarkable, and it’s worth nothing that their roots aren’t miles deep in the Bruno area: they grew up in different Minnesota towns, and if Becky had had her way, they would have stayed in Minneapolis’ Lowry Hill East neighborhood, where they lived for a spell and helped found the local neighborhood organization. But once they settled down in Kerrick (just up the road from Bruno), they left a mark. One need not share the Loureys’ politics, but one does need to recognize where Kevin Williamson’s assessment of small town struggles goes wrong.

First off, rural America is not a monolith. And while small towns may not exhibit much demographic diversity, there is a lot of economic diversity both within and between them. Williamson commits the now-frequent fallacy when he implies the people dying from painkillers are the ones voting for Trump when instead it’s usually the relatively well-off rural voters who are reacting to all of the decline around their relative success. For every dying small town, there’s another that’s holding its own and producing its share of decent jobs. Even places like Virginia, the Iron Range town where the population is down while poverty and perceptions of crime have multiplied, still serve as vital links in one of the nation’s most important industries, even if we can now get iron ore out of the ground far more efficiently than we used to. And while I’ll shelve a full examination of this for a later date, the interplay between low birth rates, immigration, and politics has particular consequences for the American rural-urban divide.

The deeper issue with Williamson’s thesis, however, is his conception of economics as a strict matter of “satisfying human wants, not defining them.” This is true insofar as that we should not expect economic theory to behave in moral ways on its own. But even Adam Smith understood the necessity of a moral support structure behind capitalism to build a stable society. Badly aligned incentives can unravel whole cultures, and when culture unravels or collapses, whether into the inner city crime waves of past decades or the silent scourge of drugs and disability in small towns today, the ugliness never ends. It has a direct political spillover, drives migration patterns, and leaves behind wreckage that may stick around for decades. The physical signs of decline may fade away over time, but the pain in the present and in future generations can be a mountain to overcome. Every effort should be made to overcome it, but the odds are hardly stacked in a favorable way.

This brings me back to Brian Alexander’s insistence that small towns do matter, a perspective he renders with proper respect toward metropolitan areas. There is a fair amount of mushy ground here, as the piece paints the suburbs in a lazy trope, and it’s impossible to prove whether or not small towns are a sort of moral compass and proving ground for a nation. (I am, however, generally sympathetic to the notion that forcing people into proximity with other people from a wide range of backgrounds is a healthy thing for personal formation. This doesn’t just come through sharing a town; after my grandfather’s funeral, a cousin and I discussed how having so many aunts and uncles in our sprawling family gave us an immediate window into a broad swath of life.) But there are some essential insights in his piece.

Just as Williamson tell us failing small towns deserve little sympathy, it’s become fashionable in certain urbanist circles to shrug and say that the economy is what it is, and that small towns are doomed to die. No doubt the dwindling, especially in a relative sense, will continue in many places. But decline does have profound political consequences, and the alterations to a national culture that stem from economic and cultural upheaval are not to be taken lightly. Change will continue, and we’ll need as many Loureys as we can get to weather the storm. Relying on that exceptional level of dedication and service is a bit of a Hail Mary; efforts need not go that far to be a success. But they do require a moral commitment to place that goes beyond graphs of economic performance and understands what it means to take root in a community. Cut off the roots, and the tree will die.

Pinstriped Pleasures

Half the fun of being a Yankees fan is the freedom to revel in being rich and evil. By those standards, the Bronx Bombers’ 2017 season was an odd one. With this year’s squad, we had a chance to enjoy things the way most other fans must: with cautious optimism, excitement at rising prospects, and eventually coming to realize that hey, maybe this team can make the playoffs and has a fighting shot once it’s there! This Yankee team was fun to watch, their most entertaining in years, and gave a necessary jolt of life to a franchise that had been treading water for years.

This didn’t come out of nowhere. Luis Severino and Gary Sanchez had both shown their potential at the major league level, and there are always enough high-priced stars in the Yankee constellation to keep them relevant, even if said stars are past their prime (CC Sabathia), having down years (Masahiro Tanaka), or otherwise not living up to their contracts (Jacoby Ellsbury). In the Age of the Bullpen, they had about as impressive an assemblage of talent for the late innings as any team ever. With a young core and a strong farm system, an 88-win season and a chance at the second wild card berth didn’t sound too outlandish at the start. The ultimate result was within the margin of error of that prediction.

It didn’t come easy, though. Many of the things we assumed would be strengths (Tanaka, that bullpen) were surprisingly inconsistent. Injuries depleted the lineup at times, most notably to Gary Sanchez, but also afflicting Aaron Hicks and Starlin Castro after fine starts to the season, and ruining most of Greg Bird’s year. The Yankees had the run differential of a team that should have won 100 games, meaning their end total of 91 was in some sense a pretty serious underachievement.

They made up for it in the postseason. After an early deficit against the Twins made the Wild Card game look lost from the get-go, Gregorious had an instant response, and the Yankee offense rolled from there. Down 0-2 to a Cleveland juggernaut after a brutal blown lead, they flipped a switch and restored order in the Bronx behind a rejuvenated rotation and that bullpen. Again down 0-2 to Houston, the offense awoke at home in Game 3, and a late stunner in Game 4 seemed to flip the whole series. Yankees fans had every reason to be confident heading back to Houston with a 3-2 lead in the ALCS, but you can’t predict baseball, Suyzn, and the feisty Astros fought back, while the Yankee bats went cold.

Unlike the Yankees’ ALCS run, a 2012 push that felt like it was running on fumes, this roster was laden with energy and hope for the future. To get the obvious out of the way, there was Aaron Judge, whose record-setting rookie season got most of the national headlines, and gave the Bronx Bombers a bona fide offensive star for the first time since Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez listed into decline. Didi Gregorius set the Yankee record for home runs by a shortstop, and has succeeded at the impossible task of being Jeter’s successor. He and Castro create a dynamic double play combination with plenty of years ahead of them, and combine with Judge and Sanchez to form a multifaceted offensive core.

Some of the more important moves for these Yankees took place off the field. ALDS review snafu aside, Joe Girardi stayed himself, handling the craziness of New York and (eventually) managing his pitchers well, and while I’ve gone up and down on him over his ten(!) years in the Bronx, I believe he deserves an extension. Brian Cashman comes out of the past year and a half looking brilliant, with particularly with his deadline moves. In 2016, he had the guts to admit the Yankees were out of it and held a fire sale that rebuilt the farm system overnight. This season, he shored up the rotation and the bullpen with a couple of decisive moves that made a deep playoff run possible.

They bring back everyone who was anyone on offense, and have Clint Frazier and Gleyber Torres lurking in the wings to help in the spots with the biggest long-term question marks. The bullpen will be just as lethal, and if it lives up to its fullest potential, will be practically unhittable. The rotation, the weak spot to begin with, remains the biggest issue, though it’s full of respectable options. They’ll have to make decisions on Tanaka and Sabathia, whose postseason performances may have earned them both extensions; they could do a lot worse than those two, especially with Tanaka, whose rough regular year was probably a blip. Severino is still growing into his role, Sonny Gray is fairly reliable, and if Jordan Montgomery can reprise his respectable role from this past season, they could have a complete rotation, albeit one with little margin for error. Of course they could just go shopping to shore things up, but within a monster free agent class coming up after this next season, I expect they might save their pennies for now.

No season without a pennant is a true success in Yankeeland, but it was hard not to enjoy this one, even with the end result. Yankee Stadium came alive again, or perhaps truly alive for the first time since the move across the street in 2009. It’s been loud, of course, but the intimidating Yankee environment hasn’t quite been the same in the new behemoth, and the ring of ever-empty box seats and paltry attendances (by Yankee standards) at times even this season attest to this loss of the old ideal. But this fall the Bleacher Creatures seemed to find that raucousness that made the old building shake, bouncing around and singing like soccer hooligans. After a phase of gradual decline and painfully long good-byes to old icons, the Yankees and their fans are finding their swagger again. The Yankees won back the Bronx this postseason, going 6-0 at home, and with any luck a couple of its old residents, Mystique and Aura, aren’t far behind.

For now, though, it’s time for a long winter, and for the first time in a while, “maybe next year” is more than an idle wish. And I do believe high school hockey teams drop the puck in less than a month…

Farewell to the Patriarch

John Maloney, the co-founder of a family that included a wife of 68 years, 12 children, 20 grandchildren, and four great-grandchildren, passed away over the weekend. My grandfather ruled his clan from his suburban Chicago roost, and in his later years from a lake home in northern Wisconsin as well, always a welcome meeting point for the Duluth-based branch of his family. His obituary spends over half its words listing offspring, a fitting tribute to an expansive legacy. He was a true patriarch, a throwback to a now-rare masculine ideal of a father, a breadwinner, a man of faith, and one whose larger-than-life figure left an indelible mark.

My grandfather had a certain curmudgeonly quality, the sort that intimidated me as a young kid but delighted me as I grew into a person who had more than a few things in common with the man. We shared strong literary interests, fondness for baseball on the radio, pleasure in hosting large parties in spite of our introversion, enjoyment in holding court on weighty affairs, the occasional need to escape to a lake, and some skinny ankles. At the most profound level we both aspired a quiet but firm sense of righteousness stemming from an intellectual worldview, and a desire to leave something that lasts. I don’t aim to copy him, either in his unflinching faith or in his reproductive prowess, but his life is evidence that something akin to what I aspire to can be done, and he is as much an inspiration here as anyone I know.

My grandfather, composed entirely of pictures of his progeny, now hanging in my hallway.

It wasn’t easy to break through the crust with Grandpa. He was firm in his beliefs and set in his ways, a product of both his times and his faith. While he was rarely one to open up or acknowledge that things were not always right, he did live by example, and set a standard whose consistency said what words sometimes could not. Grandpa lost his own family fairly early, and wasn’t going to let the same thing happen to him. The son of an accomplished PR man whose employers included the Museum of Science and Industry before an untimely and alcohol-driven death, he attended the University of Chicago, where he met my grandmother, and married her at age 19. By the time he was 30, he had nine children. He settled into life as an actuary, became an iconic midcentury father figure who put twelve kids through college, and with his wife instilled in so many of them his fondness for letters, music, liquor, and the finer things in life.

Central to Grandpa’s kingdom was the kingdom of God, and his robust Catholic faith was the foundation of his life. That faith produced remarkable marriage, and all of his certainties on family life the he lived out until the end. He savaged me for going to Georgetown—“that’s a Jesuit school, why aren’t you going to a Catholic school?” he asked when I was accepted—but it was all in good fun; perhaps he even hoped Georgetown might guide one of the wayward members of his flock back into the faithful fold. (I think he thought I should have been a priest, which, given my fondness for sermonizing and asking big questions, might well have been my fate in a different era.) The last substantive conversation I remember having with him before his decline was about a former professor of mine who wrote in First Things, a densely intellectual and traditionalist Catholic journal that he read. His belief was profound, both spiritual and intellectual, a totalizing force that left no room for doubt. I never shared it, but I certainly admired it.

The last chapter of his life was not an easy one to watch. Grandpa never did recover from the effects of prolonged anesthesia two years ago, and most traces of his once formidable intellect faded away. His final years were spent slumped in his recliner, or rolling about in wheelchairs through hallways of several homes for the elderly with increasing levels of care, the institutionalized prolongation of desperate dreams that old age has become. I only had glimpses of this life, but it was still a shocking window into this sad decline; a sort of pain and loss of faculty that I cannot fathom and doubt I’d be able to handle without going insane.

Fortunately, though, we can choose what to remember of those who leave us, and with Grandpa, that means focusing on the rich first 85 years instead of the feeble final two. It’s a string of memories that begins with him forcefully squishing his grandchildren, and shaking our hands with his vice-like grip. It has him sitting at the head of the table and carving up the meat at Thanksgiving at the Lombard house, or seated at the piano to lead carols at the Christmas party. It features him heading out on East Twin Lake in his fishing boat or telling tales over drinks and cards late at night to the tune of the loons of the Northwoods. It meant classical music blasting on a Sunday afternoon as he devoured some large tome; Viennese waltzes on New Year’s Day and Garrison Keillor on Saturday nights. Popcorn at four, happy hour at five, bedtime in the little twin beds he and Grandma had side by side. Mumbled blessings before every meal, and the Cubs on a lazy summer afternoon. What a life well-lived. So I’ll toast my wine, pack my bags for an Irish wake and a funeral mass, and bid farewell to a man who built a family to endure through the flux of modern life. We descendants have big shoes to fill.

Chasing Rings

No, this post isn’t about the practice of athletes joining certain teams that increase their odds of winning championships. Instead, it stems from a C.S. Lewis lecture that has new life thanks to the efforts of a few luminaries in the American semi-conservative intelligentsia. David Brooks writes about it here, and Rod Dreher has a couple of blog posts on it; both drew their thoughts from Alan Jacobs’ modestly titled new book, How to Think.

Lewis’s lecture to some Cambridge students in 1944 (read the whole thing) was an education on the banality of evil long before Hannah Arendt minted the phrase. His point was that most of the bad decisions made by the talented, well-reared Cambridge students before him would not be out of sheer malice or evil. Instead, it would come out of an earnest desire to prove oneself in certain circles, to move ever upward into vaunted inner rings. Whether those rings involve high school cliques or local political factions or artist collectives or something akin to high society, they are the unofficial circles that people use to measure their status. Exclusion from inner rings leads to alienation; entering them leads only to momentary satisfaction. Per Lewis, it’s impossible to make it.

The hunger for the inner ring, for acceptance and the comfort of doing the same things as others, drives so many decisions in life. This is especially pervasive in a society that likes to think it is a meritocracy: all people who prove their worth in some form or another are worthy of admission into inner rings, with no inherent barriers based on birth or status. When anything is (allegedly) possible, there are rings galore that we might want to enter. It is also probably more likely to afflict people who spend much of their time on quests for knowledge, and who might like that other people will pay attention to the things they say or write.

Lewis has some ideas for how to resist the siren call of the inner ring. He tells the Cambridge students that they should aim to be “sound craftsmen” who do what they need to do in their work not to climb the ladder, but to be excellent in the task before them, and so earn the respect of other craftspeople who do things right. He counsels them to spend time with people one likes so that rings emerge naturally, without any of the self-conscious exclusion of the inner ring. The guilty truth is that, for many of these Cambridge students, those people are generally going to be people who are fairly intelligent and ambitious themselves. But those traits are not prerequisites, but instead byproducts that lead us to take certain leaps and be in the same place at the same time. And rather than pulling up the ladder to anyone else who might join, this sort of circle is always open to new entrants.

Another trait that will keep a circle open is the ability to level of its members to level with themselves, both individually and with regard to the group as a whole. Dreher is at his best in posts such as this one on the inner ring, in which his writing unfolds in a sprawling fit of self-reflection that exactingly examines his own participation in certain rings. I find that I’m willing to forgive a lot of disagreements with, or errors in the lives of, certain people if they are able to articulate a level of honest, raw self-reflection and criticism. That sincerity speaks more volumes about their character as political actors (using that term broadly) than the stances they take. I want the people in my own closest circles to be capable of that sort of reflection, so that we all thereby do all we can to avoid the risk of falling into closed inner rings.

While I’d like to think I’ve generally resisted the need to belong to certain circles in the way Dreher had it, I do certainly recognize that desire in many phases of my life. Lewis also correctly notes that such resistance can be the source of its own form of conceit, and here I try to stay especially aware of any self-righteousness over my decision not to pursue certain career choices, many of which stemmed from an evolving but meticulous view on how to live a good life. Inner rings can be just as restricting in a corner of northern Minnesota, too, and while I haven’t found any that are too frustrating in one year back here, I also have a sense for how easily they could appear or throw things off. Roots are important, but for a tree to grow upward, it must grow outward, adding a new ring each year. It may not always be a speedy growth, but it can’t ever stop.

A Patient Cycle

Karl Schuettler on Culture, Politics, and High School Hockey

Menu