Star Tribune
Politicians try to rile up the Christians again
Goodness gracious, our illustrious statesmen do like to get the Christians worked up!
U.S. Representatives Tom Emmer and Pete Stauber and retired state Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka all voiced horror this week that the Minnesota Satanists erected a holiday display at the State Capitol.
Stauber called it a “disgrace.” Gazelka called it “a huge insult to Christians.” Emmer felt that it insulted all Minnesotans.
Well, gents, as a Christian, I’ve gotta tell you something. I’m not insulted. What I am is saddened — by you. You want me to feel insulted. You want me to be angry. You want me to forsake my Christian values that call me to turn the other cheek, to radically love others. Jesus said that if someone takes my shirt, to give them my coat also. Jesus said that if someone forces me to walk with them one mile, that I should walk with them for two. You tell me the opposite, that I should practice the politics of umbrage, to bridle at an imagined insult, that I should react in outrage instead of compassion and understanding.
Never mind that the Minnesota Satanists don’t even believe in Satan. Never mind that the primary display is of a phoenix rising from the ashes, a symbol of renewal found in ancient cultures around the world. It even resonated with at least one early Christian leader. In a letter to the Corinthians, Clement, sometimes called Clement of Rome or Pope Clement I, referred to the phoenix as building a nest of frankincense and myrrh (sound familiar?) and other spices as it prepared to die and be reborn.
With the new year around the corner, it’s a timely symbol. It’s not the only religious display there. There’s also a Christmas tree and a manger scene, with a menorah on its way.
The Satanists are actually trying to do something commendable. At a time when Christian nationalism has some people mistakenly believing that we are a Christian nation, the Satanists are reminding us that we are a secular nation that protects the right of all of us to worship as we see fit, as long as we don’t harm anyone else.
It is true that for generations, Christian identity prevailed in the United States. As late as the 1990s, about 90% of the population considered themselves Christian, according to the Pew Research Center. But just because most people belong to one religion doesn’t mean that the government itself is religious. In America, the government has no religious role to play; a good thing, if we want to avoid the bloody sectarian power struggles of the past. Sects and denominations can come and go and the government keeps chugging along, paving roads, funding schools, protecting the nation.
He needed to make money. When he found that spruce top buyers would come to nearby towns like Floodwood and Embarrass, he decided to give it a try.
“I just kind of went with it,” Buschman said. “I got better at it. It’s not a common thing.”
The season is short. It starts in early September, ideally after the first freeze so the tops will stay green and fresh. It ends in early November, when stores have typically stocked up all the fresh spruce they’ll be able to sell through the holidays.
Buschman looks for areas where the spruce is mostly short, in the 9- to 15-foot range. He’ll snip off the top 2 to 3 feet. He’ll spend several hours or days in a good location, cutting and tying the tops into the bundles of 10 buyers prefer. Years ago, he would sometimes have help from his brother or friends. Mostly, he’s been on his own. In some seasons, he would use his black ATV — a three-wheeler — and a makeshift trailer with a bed-frame propped up as one of the sides to haul the tops from the woods. Other years, he goes by bicycle and on foot into the bogs and drags the tops out with a sled.
“I used to do it straight by the book,” he said. “Completely legitimate. But it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if I cut them in a legitimate place or not, he’s taking them from me. It’s become a head-butting battle, this Bermel character and me.”
Bermel said he’s frustrated, too, and that sometimes as fast as he can write a ticket, people are back cutting more. He likens it to any other kind of theft, but in this case people are stealing trees.
Selling bikes is interesting, but being in the woods in spring, gathering maple sap, is addictive, a distinction Mark and Melinda Spinler know well.
The Spinlers live about 7 miles outside of Grand Marais, the small town on the North Shore that was more quaint than trendy when the couple moved there in 1984.
Mountain biking wasn’t yet a thing when the Spinlers arrived in Grand Marais. But they were into it, and opened the town’s first bike shop, which they operated for about 30 years before selling it.
Now, instead of two-wheelers, they peddle wood-burning stoves. Also, Mark has a chimney-cleaning business. And together, come March, he and Melinda, both 65, decamp to two relatively small stands of maple trees — one they own and one the state owns — to begin a process that will produce about 270 gallons of syrup, which they market to local businesses.
“Northern Minnesota is a wonderful place to live,” Melinda said. “But a hard place to make a living.”
Mark Spinler returns his chain saw to the sugar shack on his Grand Marais, Minn., property after trimming some downed limbs that had fallen on the network of tubing he uses to collect sap from maple trees. (Jeff Wheeler/The Minnesota Star Tribune)
It’s the syrup business that has embroiled the Spinlers in a standoff with the Department of Natural Resources that speaks to a larger debate about public lands and their proper use. Similar issues have affected northeast Minnesota residents since at least 1926, when the border region that would become the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness was first established as a roadless area.
But the Spinlers’ brouhaha has nothing to do with paddling or camping.
At issue instead is a 13-acre tract of relatively isolated state land adjoining their property that they have leased from the DNR for about 25 years.
A Richfield man said he was mad at being targeted by thieves when he shot at a pickup truck and killed a woman in the fleeing vehicle, according to a criminal complaint.
Luke Joshua Cain was charged Thursday in Hennepin County District Court with second-degree murder in connection with the shooting of Sofia Rose O’Hotto, 26, of Minneapolis, outside his home in the 6200 block of 5th Avenue S.
O’Hotto was shot in the back of the head of 3:30 a.m. and found in the pickup about a half-hour later after a 911 call sent Minneapolis police to the 4500 block of Hiawatha Avenue S.
According to the complaint:
A report of gunfire sent officers to Cain’s home, where he told police that he saw several people appearing to steal items from his van that was parked out front.
Cain said he confronted the people, who got in the pickup and drove off. He did not say anything about shooting at them.
Police interviewed Cain again on Wednesday and identified some of the items officers had recovered from the pickup, when they found the vehicle soon after the shooting.
Cain acknowledged that no one in the pickup had a weapon or threatened him in any manner. He then admitted firing two shots at the pickup as it left.
