Central Minnesota Political

The future isn’t cast into one inevitable course. On the contrary, we could cause the sixth great mass extinction event in Earth’s history, or we could create a prosperous civilization, sustainable over the long haul. Either is possible starting right now. — Kim Stanley Robinson Thanks Wikipedia

Last week the United States Congress passed a new NAFTA. Who will benefit, I wonder? Twenty-five years ago this New Year's Eve, while the President of Mexico slept on his yacht off the Pacific coast, the indigenous of the mountains of the Mexican State of Chiapas surrounded the city of San Cristobal de las Casas and the towns of Las Margaritas and Ocosingo. On New Year's Day, 1994, the day NAFTA went into effect, these people who no longer had anything to lose, liberated these three places from the Mexican government in the name of the Zapatista Liberation Army. Commandante Ramona of the EZLN Thanks Wikipedia In January of 1996 I accidentally found myself in the town square of Comitan de Dominguez, a place strategically located between the three places that the Zapatistas had briefly liberated. Overhead helicopters chopped and around the square tanks and jeeps armed with big machine guns roamed. But in the square a group of several hundred small brown people had cr...

Today, at the Long Prairie Catholic Church, we celebrated The Virgin of Guadalupe Feast. My family has been celebrating this feast of color and light and joy for many years, either here or in Melrose. This year was extra-special because my grandson and daughter-in-law were invited by our dear friend Rafaela Orozco to join the Mexican children in the children’s parade of roses. I didn’t hear her, but I saw her hand Thomas a rose and I imagine she said, “Ven, Ven” and signaled for them to follow her to where the children were. And then, there was the little boy in a plaid shirt holding a rose and walking in time to the music with the children in all their wild and radiant traditional finery. Thanks Wikipedia Seeing Thomas there brought tears to my eyes. Long Prairie may not have been ready for it, but the world came to us nearly two decades ago. And this annual fiesta makes it ever so clear that growing families of  Orozco, Garcia, Cervantes, Chavez, Salazar, Martinez, Ahe...

Monster on Agnes: The True Adventures of a Boy Guide and Other Stories by Tim King A Boundary Waters Canoe Area Guide sees something frightening in the campfire light at Luisa Falls. Years later he learns what it was. Chosen the scariest story for Halloween 2016 by Friends of the Boundary Waters. You can get a copy of this self published chap book of my stories by sending $15.00 to: Tim King 15261 County 38 Long Prairie, MN  56347

The memory of a scorpion bite maintains a tenacious clarity.  It is a wood tick on the mind.  But recalling a beautiful vista is akin to pinning a fog's wisp to a bulletin board.   Some months ago I stood near the window of my bed, dresser, and no chair sized apartment in San Andres, Guatemala, and tried to burn such a vista into my memory's folds.  With the aid of the window, itself framed by lemon yellow walls, I wrapped the banana’s leathery leaves, the citrus tree, the sky, the high hill falling away down the pueblos steep streets to Lago Peten Itza's shore, and the smooth slate of the lake with the wake of a boat fanning out like a feather's veins into memory.  Each of these things I caressed with my eyes, one by one, and lay them into my mind as a whole and then, again, repeated the process as if I were an athlete and the scene in the window were a baseball blazing toward me at ninety miles an hour.   I became one with the scene.  Then, ...