Star Tribune
Caregivers act as caregivers in St. Paul play
Wonderlust Productions’ co-artistic directors Alan Berks and Leah Cooper spent two years gathering tales and observations from caregivers for their play, “Thank You for Holding: The Caregiver Play Project.” (Jerry Holt/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
A few minutes into the scene on the park bench, the man mentions that he found himself caring for his wife quite unexpectedly. “I woke up one day to the reality that we don’t have as much control as we thought.”
Then he delivers a short monologue: “It’s part of our love story. She is always still exactly the same person to me. No matter what happens to her body, or mind. She is always a whole person, and I know she sees that I see her, and she feels less alone and less scared. It was unthinkable to me before that two people could be so intimately involved with each other. The things I now do for her — wiping her, dressing her. The things she allows me to do for her. The total trust it requires and love for her to allow me. The unconditional love we share, body, mind and spirit, and I feel this incredible reverence.”
Christin Lindberg recognizes that monologue. It contains some of her exact words.
Lindberg, a Minneapolis resident and research scientist for the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation, participated in one of the story circles. She talked about being a caregiver for her late husband, Roger Bechtel.
Lindberg and Bechtel had been together just five years when he was diagnosed with ALS (often called Lou Gehrig’s disease). Bechtel died in 2021, just one grueling year after his diagnosis.
Lindberg joined the story circle at the suggestion of a member of Wonderlust’s board of directors, a former theater student of Bechtel’s at Carleton College in Northfield, who knew their back story.
Star Tribune
As Trump threatens mass deportations, some rural areas that back him rely heavily on immigrant labor
Matt Bocklund, a Hudson, Wis., Republican activist said in a statement that the Biden administration’s border policies, along with the State Department’s refugee resettlement efforts, could lead to exploitation in the farming industry, where many refugees and immigrants are vulnerable because of weak labor protections and their legal status. That strains rural communities, many of which are already facing economic burdens, he said.
He suggests creating incentives for farmers to use only legal labor; offering tax incentives, job training and possibly wage subsidies to encourage American workers to fill jobs now held by immigrants; and penalizing farmers who hire undocumented workers while encouraging investment in automation through tax credits and subsidies.
In 2020, 62% of Buffalo County, home to Rosenow’s farm, went for Trump. And Wisconsin’s largest milk-producing counties also backed the GOP nominee by hefty margins. Trump lost the past two elections in Minnesota, but in Stearns County, the state’s largest milk producer, 60% of voters backed him
In the late 1990s, Rosenow recalled, it was a struggle to find workers: “The only people that would even respond to an ad were people that had major problems — work histories and stuff where they had dependency issues or they weren’t reliable. … Most Americans won’t work on farms.”
“We were desperate for help,” he said. “We turned to immigrants. And we didn’t want to do that; we didn’t know the language, and we didn’t know the culture … but once we did, we found out how wonderful they were, great workers, great people to be around and people you want to have as your neighbors.”
Today, 13 out of his 18 employees are Mexican. He fills out I-9 and W-4 documents for the workers and said they pay state and federal taxes “like everybody else.” Federal legislative efforts have repeatedly failed to allow dairy farm workers into the legal agricultural guest worker program under the H-2A visa.
Star Tribune
With Spike Lee actor, Penumbra’s ‘Basquiat’ channels painter whose piece fetched $110 million
Are these just coincidences or do they have deeper spiritual resonances? Smith’s juxtapositions give his thoughts away. For “Basquiat” is personal and loving, and filled with emotion, even as the performer delivers on a mostly bare stage with a lit crown painted by artist Seitu Jones.
Some have likened Basquiat’s prodigious output to jazz if the music erupted like paint onto canvas from the tough subway grilles of his native New York.
“Basquiat” nods to that soundscape. Smith teams with longtime collaborator Mark Anthony Thompson, whose sound design efficiently evokes the dancefloor where Smith and Basquiat first meet with an excerpt of Africa “Planet Rock.” Thompson also uses plinks and underscoring as well. These aural treatments, augmented by lighting designer Wen Chen Khoo’s aurora borealis color palette, help to propel Smith’s story.
In life, Basquiat the artist drew on encyclopedic influences, from music to literature, graffiti to Da Vinci. Through whispers and vocal tics, Smith draws us into the artist’s spirit. We listen hard, as if to hear the secrets of a figure who remains ineffable, perhaps not fully knowable, even as we take in the startling lyricism of his channeled genius.
When: 7:30 p.m. Wed.-Fri., 2 & 7:30 p.m. Sat., 4 p.m. Sun. Ends Oct. 27.
Where: Penumbra Theatre, 270 N. Kent St., St. Paul.
The investigators identified Benness as the shooter and the others as well “through a combination of public and private security footage, license plate readers, witness interviews, and tireless investigative work,” a statement from San Diego police read.
About 10:30 a.m. on Wednesday, St. Cloud police found Benness and arrested him while he was a passenger in a vehicle at the intersection of 10th Avenue N. and 2nd Street N.
Atoria Elem told Channel 10-TV in San Diego that Soto was her cousin and was an Operations Specialist Seaman Apprentice assigned to the destroyer USS Pinckney.
“He had the option to basically go to college, join training school. However, he was very adamant about joining the Navy to serve his country,” Elem added.
In a posting on an online fund-raising page, Elem initiated on behalf of the family, she wrote, “Albert was training in the Navy in California, away from his hometown. A casual night out resulted in him losing his life to gun violence.”
