by the Night Writer

Having lived in St. Paul for a number of years, including a stretch in the Selby-Dale neighborhood, I am very familiar with Tiger Jack’s Store on Dale St. next to the northern entrance to Highway 94. Tiger Jack Rosenbloom was a black entreprenuer who, along with his wife Nurceal,  sold a little bit of everything from their 8′ x 10′ wood and metal shack The store was a fixture in the old Rondo neighborhood (a neighborhood essentially gutted by the highway’s construction) and a fixture at that corner for decades. Tiger Jack and Nurceal died several years ago and the original shack was donated to the Minnesota Historical Society, but their son, Lucky, has continued to run various enterprises from the tiny plot of land and has been a bit of a conservative gadfly in the community.

Driving by there these days I usually get a smile from the signs Lucky has posted in recent years, asking people to accept Christ, offering lessons to women for conceal and carry permits and volunteering the site (no bigger than my backyard) as a location for Christian Revivals.  Lucky was there on Wednesday night working on his campaign for the St. Paul School Board but decided to step out: “I think my mom and dad and God told me to get out of there for a while,” Rosenbloom said.

While he was gone, a panel truck lost control and crashed through the wall of the store.

On Wednesday, Rosenbloom had been at the store’s other building for several hours signing copies of his book, “Liberal Racism and the Black Conservative,” and waving a sign encouraging people to elect him to the St. Paul school board. He had gone inside the store briefly and was starting to pack up.

 

That’s when he decided to take a short break and headed to a nearby gas station for juice and lemon cake. He was on his way back when the crash occurred. He thought at first that someone had been shot near the store, but police officers filled him in on what had happened.

 

“One police officer kept coming over and saying, ‘Lucky, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ ” Rosenbloom said.

 

Rosenbloom does not yet have an estimate of damage. He’s also not sure if he will rebuild, but if he does, he might build a small museum to honor the Rondo community and his parents.

 

“They trusted me with that corner,” he said.

Fortunately, no one was hurt in the accident and I hope Lucky continues to make his presence — and thoughts — known on that corner for some time to come.

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 by the Night Writer

I came across this story from the New Orleans Times-Picayune as part of my day job. It cites a study in the May issue of Risk Assessment by two Dutch researchers from Delft Univesity and two researchers from LSU (emphasis mine):

Four years later, researchers still count New Orleans’ Katrina dead, parsing them into categories, puzzling over exactly how each of the more than 1,400 victims perished — and what might be done to protect them the next time a big one rolls in off the Gulf.

 

Their findings, though incomplete, jibe with common sense. The dead were overwhelmingly old. Most lived near the levee breaches in the 9th Ward and Lakeview. About two-thirds either drowned or died from illness or injury brought on by being trapped in houses surrounded by water.

 

The rest died from maladies or injuries suffered in or exacerbated by an arduous evacuation — or an inability to evacuate quickly enough, including many who died in local hospitals that lost power and other life-sustaining services. Neither race nor gender made anyone more likely to die, only a failure to evacuate and a location near a levee breach.

 

…

The study of Katrina deaths provides a grim reminder of the hazards of staying for a dangerous storm. The authors concentrated on 1,100 victims in New Orleans and St. Bernard Parish. They found that nearly 85 percent were older than 51, 60 percent older than 65 and almost half were older than 75, the report said.

 

That compares to pre-Katrina population statistics showing only 25 percent of the two parishes’ residents were older than 50, 12 percent were older than 65 and only 6 percent were older than 75.

 

The Katrina statistics were similar to studies of deaths during a catastrophic 1953 flood that overwhelmed levees in the Netherlands.

 

Gender apparently played little role in the Katrina deaths, with 50.6 of the victims male and 49.3 percent female, compared with the pre-Katrina population of 47.1 percent male and 52.9 percent female.

 

The statistics “do not directly support claims that African-Americans were more likely to become fatalities, ” as some believed in the storm’s aftermath, the study said. A slightly smaller percentage of African-American residents died in comparison to the pre-Katrina population numbers for the neighborhoods in Orleans and St. Bernard parishes that the study examined.

 

Of the 818 fatalities for which race is listed, 55 percent were African-American, compared to 40 percent white, 2 percent Hispanic and 1 percent Asian-Pacific. There were 35 victims in the deaths studied for whom race was unknown.

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by the Night Writer

The adventures of pirates have been much in the news in recent months, and it has nothing to do with Johnny Depp or box-office hits. Whether it’s hijacking of a ship loaded with Russian tanks, to the latest misadventure with an American-flagged cargo ship, pirates are becoming good copy. One might be tempted to think this is a relatively new threat but in fact it is one that has never really gone away, as I pointed out in a post back in November of 2005. It’s relevant to our current overnight sensation news stories, so I’m re-running it now. All of the links below are still current. The StarTribune article referenced in the first graf is no longer available, however.

Yo-ho and avast, there still be pirates — and why you might care

I saw an article today in the StarTribune, Miami-based Cruise Ship Attacked by Pirates off Somalia, and it reminded me of a book I read last year by John S. Burnett entitled Dangerous Waters.

It’s an excellent and eye-opening read about a subject most people think has become quaint: high seas piracy. Burnett was motivated to research and write the book after his own small boat was boarded and robbed. While you won’t find much in the way of masted ships flying the Jolly Roger looking for easy pickings today, the reality is that the basics of piracy in the 17th century and today are still in place: slow-moving, lightly-guarded ships loaded with valuable cargo in international waters with little controlling authority — and a large, international pool of people greedy enough, or desperate enough, that have access to fast boats and weaponry and little fear of being caught. In fact, about all that’s changed is the technology. Galleons have been replaced by high-speed boats; cannons replaced with rocket-propelled grenades; cutlasses with Uzis.

While this (literally) cut-throat business has never really gone away, even in the age of high-tech navies, it is mostly invisible because it doesn’t affect our lives in many noticeable ways. As Burnett points out, however, piracy today can easily lead to a serious and confounding global problem.

One of the most pirate-infested areas today is the Malacca Straits. While the location might not be as colorful-sounding as, say, the Caribbean and you might be a little vague on the geography, the Malacca Straits are a very important little body of water. They link the Indian and Pacific Oceans and are the shortest sea route between India, China and Indonesia. They are filled with shallow reefs and tiny islands and there are only narrow channels available for the nearly 1000 ships – mostly cargo ships and oil tankers – that pass through each day like slow, fat fish in a barrel. Heavy traffic in narrow confines makes for relatively easy pickings for pirates in “smash and grab” types of raids (board, loot any crew and passengers, take electronics and other valuables from the bridge and beat it to a nearby hideout or fishing village). Sometimes, however, this results in tanker or cargo crews being tied up and their ships left to plow on out of control through a highly congested area. It doesn’t take much imagination to think of the effects that a grounding or sinking of a tanker in this area could have on this vital commercial thoroughfare. Here’s some of what the above link about the straits has to say:

The narrowest point of this shipping lane is the Phillips Channel in the Singapore Strait, which is only 1.5 miles wide at its narrowest point. This creates a natural bottleneck, with the potential for a collision, grounding, or oil spill (in addition, piracy has historically been a regular occurrence in the Singapore Strait, but over the past 15 years has grown alarmingly). Some 400 shipping lines and 700 ports worldwide rely on the Malacca and Singapore straits to get to the Singapore port. For example, 80% of Japan’s oil comes from the Middle East via the Malacca Straits. To skip the straits would force a ship to travel an extra 994 miles from the Gulf. All excess capacity of the world fleet might be absorbed, with the effect strongest for crude oil shipments and dry bulk such as coal. Closure of the Strait of Malacca would immediately raise freight rates worldwide. With Chinese oil imports from the Middle East increasing steadily, the Strait of Malacca is likely to grow in strategic importance in coming years.

Whether through criminal accident or premeditated terrorism (elements of Abu Sayaff and Al Quaida are active in this area), it may be just a matter of time before such an incident fills headlines around the world.

It’s not an unknown threat to people who’s business it is to be concerned with these things, Burnett’s book and others (see below) does a good job of describing the efforts cargo and passenger lines, governments and military forces are making to mitigate the problem while also describing the bureaucratic, political and logistical hurdles they face.

All in all, today’s news story (selected by the Strib perhaps because it was so unusual sounding) highlights an issue we often overlook. If you’re intrigued by this information, Dangerous Waters is a sobering but very interesting read. You might also find the following related books suggested by Amazon of interest:

Jolly Roger With an Uzi: The Rise and Threat of Modern Piracy by Jack A. Gottschalk

Pirates Aboard!: Forty Cases of Piracy Today and What Bluewater Cruisers Can Do About It by Klaus Hympendahl

Maritime Terror: Protecting Your Vessel and Your Crew Against Piracy by Jim Gray

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Gino, here are a 24 to 50 more reasons to come to Minnesota for the wedding…

Pet Pigs Go Hog Wild in Western Minnesota
Officials recently discovered that pot-bellied pigs — a southeast Asian species imported to the United States, often as pets — have been roaming wild and apparently reproducing for the past few years. The pigs could number 25 to 50, and the first ones either escaped captivity or were illegally released into the wild.

“It’s just really, really bad news,” said Steve Merchant of the Department of Natural Resources. “They can be very destructive to native plants and wildlife habitat, and they carry diseases that can affect wildlife and livestock. We’re definitely concerned. We want to get them out of there.”
…
Pot-bellied pigs can grow to 300 pounds. Vacek said the carcass of one pig he examined probably weighed 90 to 100 pounds. It was a boar with 4-inch tusks.

Come out a few days early and maybe you can help us save some money on the reception menu!

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Bob Greene is a master, and writer who’s style influenced my early days. He’s done a number of tributes over the years, but none have been better than the one he just offered to Paul Harvey who passed away Saturday at the age of 90:

I’ve never been one to attend the performances of symphony orchestras, but off and on, for more than 35 years, I gave myself the gift of something even better:

I would go and sit with Paul Harvey as he broadcast his radio show.

It was music; it was thrilling. I met him in the early 1970s, when I was a young newspaper reporter in Chicago, and that’s when he allowed me, for the first time, to sit silently in his studio as he did his work. Over the years, whenever I felt a need for a Paul Harvey fix, he was always welcoming, and we came to know each other well. I would sit there wordlessly and observe absolute excellence.

He would invariably be wearing a smock when I arrived — he had been working since well before the sun came up, and the smock would cover his shirt and tie. It was the kind of smock a jeweler might wear, or a watchmaker — it was crisply pressed, the uniform of an expert craftsman. I never asked him why he wore it, but I suspect that was the reason — pride in craftsmanship.

He would be at the typewriter, honing his script. He was famed for his voice, but the writing itself was so beautiful — his respect for words, his understanding of the potency of economy, his instinct for removing the superfluous. The world heard him speak, but the world never saw him write, and I think he honored both aspects of his skill equally.
…
And then the signal from the booth, and. . .

“Hello, Americans! This is Paul Harvey! Stand by. . . for news!”

And he would look down at those words that had come out of his typewriter minutes before — some of them underlined to remind him to punch them hard — and they became something grander than ink on paper, they became the song, the Paul Harvey symphony. He would allow me to sit right with him in the little room — he never made me watch from behind the glass — and there were moments, when his phrases, his word choices, were so perfect — flawlessly written, flawlessly delivered — that I just wanted to stand up and cheer.

But of course I never did any such thing — in Paul Harvey’s studio, if you felt a tickle in your throat you would begin to panic, because you knew that if you so much as coughed it would go out over the air into cities and towns all across the continent — so there were never any cheers. The impulse was always there, though — when he would drop one of those famous Paul Harvey pauses into the middle of a sentence, letting it linger, proving once again the power of pure silence, the tease of anticipation, you just wanted to applaud for his mastery of his life’s work.

He probably wouldn’t have thought of himself this way, but he was the ultimate singer-songwriter. He wrote the lyrics. And then he went onto his stage and performed them. The cadences that came out of his fingertips at the typewriter were designed to be translated by one voice — his voice — and he did it every working day for more than half a century: did it so well that he became a part of the very atmosphere, an element of the American air.

Read the whole thing to get the “rest of the story” about an American legend. Good day!

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