Hi Kids
Had to take down previous post eulogizing the great Paul Wellstone. It's too early for that sort of thing.
It's a natural reaction to try and control grief and outrage and desperation by waxing eloquent about a loss, but it's bullshit. It's like those pieces in the New Yorker after 9/11. You don't get poetical like that so soon unless you're in denial. All I really feel right now is dumb confused grief and the need to be with my family, and to be in Minnesota. It's no good being here, when nobody even seems to care, or even know what has happened. Nobody understands what this means for the entire country, and the world. Paul Wellstone was Minnesota's but he was really everybody's. I won't stomach one more person ever saying Minnesota is hicksville.
I've said it before and it pains me, but Minnesota is far more sophisticated than L.A.
I walk around today and yesterday and I see working class Latino families, black teens, my lesbian neighbor and her GF, and I see myself, a young woman, and I think, you guys don't even know you just lost a true friend. If Wellstone had lived in L.A., he would have been the champion of the city that I know and love. He cared about making it easier for families to prosper. He was not a judgment guy. He wasn't an ego guy. He was a growth and action guy. He trusted the essential goodness of people.
Fuck, here I am babbling again.
Yesterday me and my old Minneapolis buddy Benno drove around in a daze, listening to NPR and stopping to eat. I needed to be with Benno yesterday. Benno and I go back a long, long twisting way, deep into our Minnesota indie-rock days, and he understands how it feels, because he's from Northfield, the town where Wellstone taught for nearly 20 years. He played soccer with Wellstone's son, who's a couple years younger than us.
With Benno, I didn't feel like I had to cry or not cry, or say anything smart, or not. Mostly, we talked about the Hives and the Strokes and punk rock.
I have to go call my parents. I'm going to Minneapolis in a couple weeks, coincidentally, and I just wanna go now, you know. I want to go where people are not acting like nothing's happened. I want to go where everything has stopped, and people are just being together and being dumb. It seems cruel to me that the planets keep going around the normal way. They should have taken a day off.
OK bye, kids.
love,
Kate
Had to take down previous post eulogizing the great Paul Wellstone. It's too early for that sort of thing.
It's a natural reaction to try and control grief and outrage and desperation by waxing eloquent about a loss, but it's bullshit. It's like those pieces in the New Yorker after 9/11. You don't get poetical like that so soon unless you're in denial. All I really feel right now is dumb confused grief and the need to be with my family, and to be in Minnesota. It's no good being here, when nobody even seems to care, or even know what has happened. Nobody understands what this means for the entire country, and the world. Paul Wellstone was Minnesota's but he was really everybody's. I won't stomach one more person ever saying Minnesota is hicksville.
I've said it before and it pains me, but Minnesota is far more sophisticated than L.A.
I walk around today and yesterday and I see working class Latino families, black teens, my lesbian neighbor and her GF, and I see myself, a young woman, and I think, you guys don't even know you just lost a true friend. If Wellstone had lived in L.A., he would have been the champion of the city that I know and love. He cared about making it easier for families to prosper. He was not a judgment guy. He wasn't an ego guy. He was a growth and action guy. He trusted the essential goodness of people.
Fuck, here I am babbling again.
Yesterday me and my old Minneapolis buddy Benno drove around in a daze, listening to NPR and stopping to eat. I needed to be with Benno yesterday. Benno and I go back a long, long twisting way, deep into our Minnesota indie-rock days, and he understands how it feels, because he's from Northfield, the town where Wellstone taught for nearly 20 years. He played soccer with Wellstone's son, who's a couple years younger than us.
With Benno, I didn't feel like I had to cry or not cry, or say anything smart, or not. Mostly, we talked about the Hives and the Strokes and punk rock.
I have to go call my parents. I'm going to Minneapolis in a couple weeks, coincidentally, and I just wanna go now, you know. I want to go where people are not acting like nothing's happened. I want to go where everything has stopped, and people are just being together and being dumb. It seems cruel to me that the planets keep going around the normal way. They should have taken a day off.
OK bye, kids.
love,
Kate
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