Under Purple Skies: Minneapolis Stories

Next year, Belt Publishing will be compiling an anthology of essays, stories, and poems about Minneapolis as part of its City Anthology Series.

Minneapolis and the surrounding area has emerged as one of the literary centers of the country, and this anthology will mark the advent of the post-Wobegon era. We are looking for stories, scenes and memories from the city that evoke the place in compelling ways. Submissions can be related to a specific place, event (personal or historical) or personage, and must take place in or around the city. St. Paul will also be considered, as will most suburbs.

The anthology will be edited by Frank Bures, author of The Geography of Madness, occasional instructor at the Loft Literary Center, and editor of the Lester Literary Update. An introduction will be written by Star Tribune “Books” editor Laurie Hertzel, author of News to Me: Adventures of an Accidental Journalist.

To submit an entry, please see more details here.

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Running Wild in Duluth

201803.pdf_1-500x649Last fall I ran the Wild Duluth 100k. Here’s the race report from Ultrarunning Magazine:

The sky was dark and the ground was dry when we arrived at the shore of Lake Superior for the ninth annual Wild Duluth 100K on October 21, 2017. There were 74 of us with our crews, gathered at Bayfront Park, only half of whom would finish. There were thunderstorms forecast but it was still calm and clear at 6 a.m. when the race started. We left the lake behind and came to Enger Park, a 530-foot bluff that looks out over the city. The trail was a sheer mile up, and almost immediately back down, which was what the whole day would be like as we followed the Superior Hiking Trail south. Along the way, we would slowly accumulate 10,000 feet of elevation gain (and loss). The air was cool, and in the dark, the trail flags easily reflected the path. After about an hour, the sun rose red over the lake.

Read the rest here.

Winona’s Last War

img_2018-04_WinonLaDuke_Opener_TJTurner_GFor this story, I got to spend some time with Winona LaDuke, who took me around White Earth Reservation to see some of her many projects: coffee roaster, business incubator, solar thermal panel manufacturer, radio station, local food vendor, etc, etc. It was a whirlwind tour that barely even covered her biggest project, which is running Honor the Earth and its battle against the Line 3 Pipeline, which Enbridge wants to build across the state. Depending on what the Public Utility Commission rules this spring, here’s preview of what may be the next Standing Rock:

Winona LaDuke is in a hurry. The activist, writer, and former vice-presidential candidate stands in a grocery store’s produce aisle in Detroit Lakes, her hands briefly resting on her shopping cart as she silently runs through the list of things she needs. Even that is time lost. A busy spring of organizing lies ahead.

LaDuke’s environmental justice organization, Honor the Earth, is locked in an intense battle with Enbridge, a Canadian energy company, over a proposed oil pipeline project slated to run through northern Minnesota, part of what The New York Times calls a “historic moment” in Native American political activism across the country. As Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe Chief Executive Melanie Benjamin said this January, “Over the past year and a half, something has happened…As a band, we are awake.”

Read the rest here.

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Geography of Madness: Spanish Edition

GOMespThe Geography of Madness is now available in Spanish:

Geografía de la locura: En busca del pene perdido y otros delirios colectivos (Ensayo General)

Una desternillante exploración de las extravagancias y los desvaríos colectivos: ¿Por qué ciertos individuos creen que unos vándalos roban sus penes o que tienen lagartos bajo la piel? ¿Cuál es el origen del vudú? ¿Existe el latah, ese curioso estado que provoca bailes frenéticos y movimientos espasmódicos? Frank Bures ha viajado por todo el mundo para rastrear los síndromes más estrambóticos ligados a la cultura y contar luego deliciosas historias sobre esas extrañezas. Se confirma una vez más que el hombre es un animal muy raro.

Read the rest here.

Where to Eat Somali Food in Minneapolis

Qoraxlow_11RBG-e1517608934558New story at Roads & Kingdoms, featuring beautiful photos from Priscilla Briggs.

A few months before I moved to Minneapolis, I stopped at a gas station while visiting the city looking for a place to eat. The cashier and two customers—all of whom were Somali—conferred for a minute, then pointed me up the street to a building that didn’t look much like a restaurant. The windows were dark and the façade was strange, but high on the roof was a sign that read: Qoraxlow Restaurant #1 African and American Cuisine.

I walked inside. The place was run down: a giant TV played CNN, there were no menus, and the credit-card machine was broken. But once the door closed, the sound of talking and laughing, and the smell of rice and goat meat, brought me straight back to East Africa. I’ve never tired of eating at Qoraxlow since.

That was nearly a decade ago. Somalis had started landing in Minneapolis in force a few years earlier. After the Somali civil war started in 1991, people came to Minnesota to work in meat-packing jobs in the western part of the state. By 2010, according to Ahmed Ismail Yusuf, author of Somalis in Minnesota, their numbers had grown to somewhere between 36,000 (the U.S. census number) and 70,000 (the community’s estimate). Before long, you could find places like Qoraxlow across Minneapolis. For someone like myself, with young kids and little extra money for the kind of globetrotting I did when I was younger, these places felt like an escape. Sometimes I would meet old Somali men who spoke Italian and young ones who spoke Swahili. I could eat sambusas and drink chai and feel refreshingly far from home.

Read the rest here.

Geography of Madness: Turkish Edition

36586744The Geography of Madness is now available in Turkish:

Hangimiz, orta şekerli Türk kahvesi içtiğimizde şöyle bir ortamda göz gezdirip acaba bakacak olan var mı diye içimizden geçirmeyiz? Fala inanma falsız da kalma! Kimi zaman sırf eğlencesine yaptığımız, hatrımız için yalvar yakar baktırdığımız kahve falına, bizi gülümseten şeyler söylendiğinde hangimiz inanmayız? İnanmayız belki ama inanmak isteriz. İşte bu kitapta, inancın kültürler üzerinde nasıl etkisi olduğunu gözler önüne seriyor.

Paris Yayınları’ndan çıkan ‘Deliliğin Coğrafyası: Penis Hırsızları, Vudu Ölümleri ve Dünyanın En Tuhaf Sendromlarını Anlama Arayışı’ Frank Bures’in yayımlanmış ilk kitabı. Yazarın, Amerika’daki dergilerde yayımlanmış gezi yazıları da mevcut.

Read the rest here.

The Sound of Silence

c87f36d1-9a1e-4052-a68c-aa3806ad8a6c-1New story at Slate on Cuba’s Sonic Attacks:

A few weeks after the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump, several people working for the U.S. Embassy in Cuba fell mysteriously ill. Some lost their hearing. Some had headaches and a pain in one ear. Others reported feeling dizzy or nauseous, having trouble focusing, or feeling fatigued. Later, some would have a hard time concentrating, remembering things, sleeping, and even walking.

These symptoms were “medically confirmed,” as the State Department’s medical director Charles Rosenfarb put it, and brain scans were said to show abnormalities in the victims’ white matter, which transfers information between brain regions. The illnesses were believed by the government to be “health attacks,” carried out by a foreign power, though as Todd Brown, assistant director at the Bureau of Diplomatic Security, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “investigative attempts and expert analysis failed to identify the cause or perpetrator.”

Nonetheless, investigators concluded the illnesses, which ultimately affected 24 people, were likely the result of a “sonic device.” This conclusion seems to be primarily due to the fact that some diplomats reported hearing a high-pitched noise in their homes and hotel rooms.

Despite a lack evidence for such a weapon, or any known way it could affect white matter, the sonic weapon theory proved irresistible for both media outlets and for Cuba hawks like Sens. Marco Rubio and Bob Menendez, both of whom immediately transformed the sonic weapon into a handy political weapon.

Read the rest here.