First Person | Laura Billings Coleman

How to Buy a Turkish Rug

Laura Billings Coleman — Thu, 11 Jan 2018 16:30:46 +0000

A Turkish shopping adventure

Originally published in the Salon.com anthology Wanderlust

If there is something missing from the American Shopping Experience — and if you’ve been to the Mall of America, as I have, you know not much has been overlooked — it is the act of bargaining. Not buying a bargain, a blandly experienced purchase of an item whose price has merely been called back to our atmosphere (i.e., “I saw these $400 shoes marked down to $39.99 and I had to have ’em!”). No, I mean the act of bargaining, in which buyer and seller come together in the great mambo of marketing, which, in the best cases, makes each leave the exchange satisfied they’ve ripped off the other just a little bit. Bargaining may be disappearing from our commercial landscape (witness the rise of Saturn dealerships), but it lives on in the rest of the world. This is, in large part, why we travel.

Not long ago, a friend called to invite me on a cheap, off-season tour of Turkey. She promised that I would see the ruins of Ephesus and the fairy chimneys of Cappadocia, that I would wake each morning to the sound of the Muslim call to prayer and go to bed each night with a belly full of aubergine. Yeah, whatever, I said, just as long as I get to buy a rug. The truth was that ever since I bought my first car and was introduced to the delirious back-and-forth of negotiating, I had dreamed of going toe-to-toe with the guys who invented the dealer showroom. Since flying carpets were our first automatic conveyance — and if you’ve read “The Arabian Nights” or seen “Aladdin” you know this is true — rug merchants were actually the world’s first automobile salesmen.

And they’re outstanding salesmen, living as they do in the busy confluence between Europe and Asia, a ripe spot for studying humanity and perfecting the first salesman credo: Tell the customers what they want to hear. On my first day in Istanbul, I nearly fell prey to a green-eyed charmer who accosted me in the Kapali Carsi, the famous covered bazaar that holds more than 4,000 shops. (Take that, Mall of America!) “You are a great beauty,” he said so wolfishly that it was clear the antiseptic threat of harassment charges hadn’t drifted into this pungent corner of the world. “You must be Italian.” Actually, I’m a poster girl for the corn-fed Midwestern look, and was so pleased to be deemed continental that I was opening my wallet when my Turkish tour guide dragged me away.

After another half hour in Istanbul, I discovered that merchants’ flattery flew almost as quickly as the prices they quoted, but it was the numbers I had to pay attention to. At the time I visited, each U.S. dollar was worth about 35,500 lira, a complicated ratio, but one that gave me the heady thrill of announcing, “A million? No prob!” I spent the week learning, but it wasn’t until I passed the souvenir stands outside the ruins of Ephesus that I felt I had hardened myself to the Turkish marketing come-on. There, a young man bearing an armful of dolls and a striking resemblance to Johnny Depp deliberately bumped into me. “Excuse me, madame,” he said, his voice warm and rich as ripe olives in sunshine, “You dropped something.”

I looked to the ground and then to him. “What did I drop?”

He paused for a moment, searching my face soulfully. “It was my heart,” he dripped, but I kept walking. I was finally ready to buy a rug.

So we went to Oba, a veritable rug ranch of low-slung buildings and grassy courtyards, just down the road from the House of the Virgin Mary. A hawk-browed Turkish man in a double-breasted suit greeted us and gave a lesson about rug craftsmanship designed to dispel any notions we may have had that a good rug could be purchased on the cheap. He showed us baskets of tobacco leaves, onion skins and indigo used for dying fibers. He showed us the silkworms boiled alive for our textural pleasure — a sacrifice that Doublebreasted assured us the worms were only too glad to make. Same went for the young girls in the weaving room whose hands shuttled and knotted wool with the fluttering speed of hummingbirds. Doublebreasted promised that the girls got full health coverage, nutritious meals and a good wage, and that they didn’t complain when the small-motor demands of rug weaving forced them to leave the work by their late teens. “It is a privilege and an honor to make something so beautiful,” he said, but I couldn’t stop the piteous look that swept across my face as I watched a young girl squatting and squinting before an intricate Persian pattern. An equally sympathetic look crossed her face as she saw us herded into the carpet showroom, lambs to the slaughter.

We were led through a series of rooms where vibrant rugs and kilims were
layered like sheets, rolled into columns, and tacked to the walls — each room
duplicating and expanding upon the previous room’s treasures. At the end of
the procession was a ballroom-sized showroom where we were offered Turkish
apple tea, soda, beer and wine (American car dealers should reconsider the
popcorn and Coke routine, I thought).While we were served by a long-lashed
girl in harem pants, her counterpart — a sulky John Malkovich look-alike in
Western clothes — quietly shut the heavy wood door that was our only escape
route.

Like a Turkish kervanseray floor show in which a slim-hipped belly dancer
preps the crowd for the heftier model and finally for the cartilaginous
creature who shakes her extra-wide-load hips to tambourines and thunderous
applause, the rug show started slowly. Malkovich and Harempants lifted each
rug by the ends, walked to the center of the room and let gravity unfurl it,
the bright colors of Anatolia, Kars and Kayseri washing over us. As the
pacing built, the rugs started to cover the shining wooden floor, then
overlapped one another. Soon we had left our perches on the wooden bench that
lined the wall and begun crawling around on the rugs, examining their fine
weaves and lustrous textures. The climactic crescendo arrived with the
unfurling of a massive silk Persian of geranium reds and robin’s-egg blues.
Though we were already breathless, Doublebreasted clapped his hands and
Malkovich and Harempants, moving like choreographed game-show models, picked
up either end of the carpet and turned it by 180 degrees, shifting the rug’s
palette to crimson and cobalt. Amazing! we cried. Astonishing! we clapped.

At that, a cluster of salesmen who had been gathering in the room suddenly
converged on us and pulled us to separate corners. Three men whisked me into
another room. Their leader was a raven-haired fellow with cheap shoes and a
wistful expression. His name, Ogun, means “That Day” in Turkish, a fact that
was the source of huge laughs for his two squat henchmen who clearly
understood my English, but spoke only in Turkish with Ogun. I started to say
that I was in the market for a 5-by-7 kilim with a lot of red in it, but Ogun
shot me a pained look that suggested such a request was as déclassé as
demanding that an Old Master painting match my sofa. Instead, he ordered the
henchmen to unroll a series of rugs at my feet. When I shook my head at the
choices, the henchmen tossed their arms up in disgust, but Ogun had a more
courtly approach. With each selection I dismissed, he nodded appreciatively
and moved closer to me, as if irresistibly drawn to my aesthetic.

Soon he began dismissing rugs for me — “Can’t you see she won’t like that? She wants
real beauty,” he would scold the henchmen. He asked if my husband would like
my choice of rug, and I said I didn’t have a husband. He shouted in Turkish
to the henchmen, who eyed me up and down, and again tossed their hands up in
disgust. “They think this is a tragedy,” Ogun said, and then sighed toward
his cheap shoes, “and so do I.” At this point he asked if I had a credit card
with me. I said yes. The haggling began.

The rug I selected, or that Ogun had selected for me, was a jewel-toned
affair of blacks, pomegranate reds, jade greens and deep blues. Ogun
explained that normally he would start the bidding around $1,000, but since
this was the end of the season, and since I had no husband, he would start at
$500. I shook my head at the price, and though my blood was racing, I
couldn’t coax out a counter-offer. Ogun strode away from my side with his
hands thrust deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched. He nodded his head
and Henchman No. 1 scurried to the other room. Ogun smiled, puffed out one side
of his cheek, and slowly blew out a low whistle of air. A few minutes later,
the henchman returned and whispered in Ogun’s ear. Ogun told me that
Doublebreasted had insisted that I leave with a rug today — how did $260 sound?
Well, it sounded pretty good to me, now that my lust for bargaining had
flagged. Ogun wasn’t a shrewd creep, I thought, he was a fellow connoisseur.
Just then, my friend walked in and saw me handing off my credit card.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, and I explained the situation. “No way,”
she said to Ogun. “Two of ’em for $260!”

Quickly, my friend’s bad-cop display
made me realize I had allowed myself to be swept along too easily. Ogun
looked to me. “Two for $260?” he asked, and I nodded. He held his hand to his
heart. He walked to the corner of the room and sighed. “We are friends,
Laura?” he said, coaxing a small tear to the corner of his eye. “Why do you
hurt me like this?” Finally, I understood the theatrics required here.

“Ogun,” I said, so forcefully I convinced myself I was truly affronted. “I
don’t think you’re being honest with me …” and I snatched back my Visa card.

At that there was a very pregnant pause in which Ogun and the henchmen bored
their Turkish eyes at me. They huddled and Henchman No. 2 threw his hands up in
the air and pointed at me. Henchman No. 1 made a spitting noise. Ogun looked
over his shoulder. “So you want two rugs?”

“If the price is right,” I said. Henchman No. 2 sniffed and gestured again.
Ogun came back to my side and put his arm around me, hand to his collarbone
in a gesture of sincerity. “My friend, you know that I must make a living?” I
clenched my fist around my plastic. He let out a heavy sigh. “My friend, you
may have two for $400. No lower please.”

“Three hundred,” I said.

“Three sixty,” he said.

“Three hundred,” I said.

“Three twenty-five,” he said.

“Sold,” I said, and at that there were cheers from the henchmen and from the
small crowd from my tour bus that had gathered for the final negotiation. As
I handed off my Visa, Ogun took my hand and wrapped it under and over his
forearm as though we had been wedded by this exchange of currency. He
lovingly folded and packed my rugs in brown paper and then in a nylon case he
promised would fit nicely under my plane seat. It did.

Now I come across my two rugs, one in my living room, the other in my
bedroom, and I feel a wave of pleasure at my purchases. But the souvenir that
pleases me most is a photograph I have of Ogun and me. We are standing in the
courtyard of the rug ranch — I have my hands clasped and my head tossed back in
laughter; he gazes at the camera with the smallest trace of a smile. We both
look so satisfied — like we each ripped off the other just a little bit.

Location, Location, Location

Laura Billings Coleman — Mon, 05 Oct 2015 21:18:26 +0000

I wrote this little essay for the back page of Macalester Today, and I love the illustration Eric Hanson did for it. I’d never be caught dead in pedal pushers or a floral print, but he got our dog just right.

Our Pilgrims’ Progress

Laura Billings Coleman — Thu, 16 Jul 2015 17:42:53 +0000

I’m at work on a project about America’s growing fascination with geneaology, and this travel story in the May 2015 Family Fun (“The Secrets of Happy Travelers”) is one of the byproducts.

We’re particularly interested in this Groton, Massachusetts, ancestor I mentioned in the story, Ellis Barron, who was the alleged descendant of both the FitzGeralds and the Butlers, two great Irish clans of myth and legend. I say alleged, because about a century ago, there seemed to be a fashion in geneaology for improving the provenance of one’s earliest relations, and proving they were descendants of noble families. (Thus the astounding number of Plantagenet kings and Shakespeare characters in our family tree.) This trip didn’t shed much light on “Grampa” Barron, but we did get to see whales up close, and try our first ever lobster roll, so that was something.

Of Calves and Carnivores

Laura Billings Coleman — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 16:30:11 +0000

Can you love animals and eat them, too?

Originally published in Mpls/St. Paul magazine, October 2008

Though I’ve been a meat-eater most of my life, I’ve always been squeamish about its preparation. I prefer not to touch bacon until it’s been burned to a crisp. Thanksgiving morning finds me shaking a 30-pound bird over the sink so I don’t have to stick my hand in the carcass and pull out the nasty bits. I prefer cuts of meat that have been euphemized so that I don’t have to consider where they came from – chicken tenders sound tastier than breasts, chicken drummies more desirable than thighs. While Andrew Zimmern travels the globe partaking of delicacies derived from brains, guts and goo, I would drive many miles out of my way not to.

All of this is a long way of saying I was a little out of my comfort zone one recent afternoon as calf wound its tongue around my wrist, and up the length of my forearm.

“These guys are very interested in the world –they like to check out everything,” my host, Catherine Friend, says about the four Jersey – Holstein – mix calves that seem intent on joining us for a nature walk on her farm in the Zumbro River Valley, about an hour southeast of the Twin Cities. The calves are three months old, with heads that just reach my hip. They’re the same height as my four-year-old, the reason I’m here in the first place.

A few weeks before the visit, this particular son surprised me by asking where hamburgers come from. When I told him, he wasn’t just appalled–he refused to believe it. “No way!” he said. It’s true, I told him, adding that milk, cheese, butter, bologna, and those frozen IKEA meatballs he likes so much are among the foods that come from that single four-legged source. “You mean McDonald’s?” he asked, still unable to comprehend the terrible truth.

He’s hardly alone in his blissful ignorance about where food really comes from. “It took me years, and a farm, to finally link a livestock animal’s life with my own,” says Friend, the author of several books for children and adults. In her latest book, The Compassionate Carnivore, she argues that pasture walks like the one we’re taking would be an excellent way to promote health – both for humans and the animals who give their lives for our dining pleasure.

Americans eat more meat than anybody on earth, packing away approximately 200 pounds per person in 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture which forecasts that we’ll add another 20 pounds of it annually by 2016.

An unabashed animal lover, Friend is also an unapologetic animal eater who admits to having survived graduate school on a steady diet of fried SPAM. She is also a “sustainable farmer,” who along with her partner, Melissa, is responsible for the care and feeding of the 35 ewes and more than 70 spring lambs gamboling in a lovely grove of box elder trees nearby. In spite of her obvious affection for the sheep–she calls out their assigned numbers as if their first names and compares the animal’s sturdy shoulders to that of “little football players”– later this year, when they reach their full weight of about 120 pounds, she fully intends to send them to the slaughterhouse. “This is what we do for a living,” she explains. “We’re shepherds.”

The subtitle of her new book– How to Keep Animals Happy, Save Old McDonald’s Farm, Reduce Your Hoof Print, and Still Eat Meat – seems intended to reassure rather than enrage the estimated 93 to 98 percent of Americans who make meat a regular part of their diet. In fact, Americans eat more meat than anybody on earth, packing away approximately 200 pounds per person in 2005, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture which forecasts that we’ll add another 20 pounds of it annually by 2016.

The vast majority of the animals that come to our table are raised on large-scale factory operations and are not afforded the same creature comforts you’ll find at Friend’s farm, where about four dozen chickens wander freely, snacking on bugs and dozing in the sun. Ninety-eight percent of the eggs we eat come from chickens crammed several to a small cage, while 95 percent of the hogs raised in this country spend their entire life cycle indoors, according to the USDA.

Aside from the obvious ethical concerns about raising animals this way, the health and environmental consequences of factory farming are beginning to make even the most dedicated meat-eaters a little queasy. What does it mean to our own health when, as the Union of Concerned Scientists points out, 70 percent of the antibiotics sold in the United States are used to treat healthy livestock? What do we make of the 2006 United Nations report revealing that our growing appetite for meat is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions? And just how mad are those mad cows anyway?

While recent bestsellers such as Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation have turned that kind of data into dinner-party conversation, Friend comes to the table at a slightly different angle. Unlike The Omnivore’s Dilemma author Michael Pollan, she’s not against corn. “We aren’t huge fans of corn and we don’t feed our lambs very much, but on our farm it’s a challenge to raise entirely grass-fed lambs,” she explains. And unlike Barbara Kingsolver, author of Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, she’s not suggesting that we all try growing our own food. Friend’s painfully funny 2006 memoir, Hit by a Farm, makes it clear that not everyone is cut out for agriculture.

Though she’s well versed on the health and environmental concerns that come with conventionally-raised meat, Friend says that’s not why she wrote her latest book. “My main interest is in the well-being of animals,” she says, calling out to one of the three llamas that protect her flock from animal predators. “I know it seems odd, but this is how farming works–we work our butts off to keep our animals alive and healthy, and then we kill them.”

To critics who wonder why she hasn’t become a vegetarian, she argues that meat-eaters have more impact on the lives of farm animals by “remaining at the table” and using their muscle as consumers to force more humane farming practices. After all, she says, the increase in vegetarians–about 5 percent of the US population, according to estimates she cites– hasn’t decreased the demand for meat which has grown by almost 25 pounds per person in the past 25 years.

“But as carnivores, because we’re responsible for [the animals’] deaths, we’re also responsible for their lives,” she writes. It’s a paradox, she adds, that most people seem to appreciate. A 2004 Ohio State University survey found that 81 percent of respondents believe the health and well-being of livestock animals is just as important as that of pets.

Improve farm animals’ lives in the following ways, Friend says, and the positive side effects will also include improved health for those who eat them:

First, she says, “pay attention.” Though clever marketing tries to convince us that protein springs fully formed from the freezer section, there is carnage involved: almost 8.9 billion animals (not including fish) are butchered every year to feed us. Since that number may be difficult to grasp, Friend, a former economist, performs a rough calculation in her book, dividing that number by 300 million Americans (minus the 5 percent who don’t eat meat) and then multiplying the results by 80 years, and arrives at 2,500–the number of livestock animals butchered for each meat-eating American in his or her lifetime. Eating less meat wouldn’t kill us–or nearly as many of them. As Friend points out, the 16-ounce steak that’s common in many restaurants is in fact 300% larger than the serving size recommended by the USDA.

Second, she says, “Waste less.” According to Friend’s research, Americans throw 22.5 million pounds of meat in the garbage every day–the equivalent of 15,000 cows, 36,000 hogs and 2 million chickens. “No one–no one–can feel good about these numbers,” she says.

Perhaps predictably, Friends suggests replacing some of that factory-raised meat on our plates with the lamb chops and chicken breasts raised on sustainable farms like here—though she’s not the only one making this suggestion. Various sources from the Sierra Club to New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman have been promoting this sort of change, and the menu options are improving apace. Even a small but growing number of fast food chains such as Chipotle and Burgerville have been eschewing factory-raised meat in favor of animals raised without hormones or antibiotics.

Less predictably, Friend suggests going meatless more often, a campaign the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has promoted since 2005, when its “Healthy People 2010” report showed that vegetarians typically weigh less than meat-eaters and suffer from lower rates of type 2 diabetes and other diseases.

I quite enjoyed my visit to Friend’s farm, and when I got home I was still ruminating on what I saw there. The little calf that nipped at my backside nipped at my conscience a few days later as I stood in the grocery meat aisle, comparing the conventionally-raised sirloin at $4.99 a pound with the grass-fed variety priced at $10.99. I swallowed hard and thought about how happy that calf and his buddies looked. So I bought the expensive stuff, but less of it than usual. It was, I must add, delicious.

Something similar happened on a rotisserie-chicken weeknight, after my family had picked through the breast meat. Holding the bird’s rib cage over the garbage can I thought of the chickens I’d seen on Friend’s farm, and as I paused to consider what I was doing, I realized there was still food attached to the bones. I believe it’s called “dark meat.” Chicken salad the following evening was great– plus it was practically free.

My farm tour helped me connect the dots between where animals live and where I do. This month while we’re taking in the last of the fall colors, I plan to take my kids on a pasture walk of their own at one of the growing number of sustainable farms that are glad to sell their products directly to people like me. It’s time to teach my kids what McNuggets look like when they’re still on two legs.
This article was originally published in Mpls/St. Paul magazine, October 2008

Is Your Job Making You Sick?

Laura Billings Coleman — Fri, 05 Sep 2014 18:53:50 +0000

A friend of mine got a degree from a top-flight business school and took a job at one of those Fortune 500 companies where “full-time” means a minimum of 60 hours a week. At first she loved the pace, the travel, the nicely padded expense account, and the employee gym where she and her colleagues were actually encouraged to brainstorm Big Ideas on the cardio equipment. But as the economy started to tank and one wave of voluntary buy-outs was followed by successive waves of not-so-voluntary ones, the extra workload made it hard to keep her dates with the elliptical machine, or increasingly, to leave her desk for lunch. The manager who hired her was let go and replaced by another prone to yelling in the hallways, and not long after her dentist recommended a mouth guard to protect her molars from the teeth-grinding habit she took up at night. During a particularly stressful deadline crunch, her eczema flared up for the first time in years, an embarrassment she felt all the more keenly when she was called to a meeting with human resources and shown the details of her severance package.

The good news–her eczema went away. The bad news–so did her health insurance.

This recession seems intent on reminding us to take stock of a great many things, not the least of which may be the very delicate balance between what we do and how we feel. Work can offer so many ingredients essential to good health—a steady pay check, access to health coverage, and the sense of purpose and meaning that research says is essential to living a long, happy life. Yet, as the quaking economy has fueled everything from “survivor’s guilt” and “recession depression,” to a sudden surge in sleeping disorders, it’s clear that having a job in this economy is no guarantee that you’re actually feeling good.

“Stress affects every cell in the human body, and while there are certainly other sources of stress in our lives, work-related stress is huge,” explains Mary Jo Kreitzer, founder and director of the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota. “Chronic stress can have such long-term negative effects that take a toll on employees and can be a huge drain on an organization, not only in terms of productivity, but also creativity.”

In fact, estimates suggest that unmanaged work-related stress costs this country more than $200 billion a year as a result of missed days, health and mental health issues, and lost productivity—so much so that the Bureau of Labor Statistics has ranked “neurotic reaction to stress” as the fourth most debilitating labor-related injury. “I’m often surprised at how many of us think that what goes on our in our emotional world is somehow separate from our bodies’ response—but I think that’s beginning to change,” says Michelle Duffy, professor of human resources and industrial relations at the U of M’s Carlson School of Management. An expert on anti-social workplace behavior, Duffy says the damage done by bullying, sabotage, and other undermining behavior adds another $24 billion to the total bill.

Monday mornings have long been the most popular time of the week for a heart attack—a trend that requires no explanation for anyone who has felt the gathering dread of a Sunday night. But a growing body of research suggests it’s the accumulation of those manic Mondays that really raise our health risks over time. Working in a field where the cost of failure is high—air traffic control, for instance—has been shown to trigger a cascade of stress hormones that can increase blood pressure, boost the likelihood for bad behavior (like skipping exercise, or eating out of the vending machine) and actually accelerate the aging process. In fact, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic, who’ve pioneered the notion of chronological versus biological age, estimate that American presidents age the equivalent of two biological years for every one they spend in the White House—which helps explain the touch of gray we noticed on Obama almost the moment he stepped into office.

Though some job sectors have undergone seismic shifts since the downturn (car-makers, bankers, and the media all come to mind), a Swedish study released last year confirmed that a major source of workplace stress is present even in the most stable office environment, from Dunder Mifflin on down—the incompetent boss. In fact, a study published in Occupational and Environmental Medicine found that workers who had a boss they thought of as inconsiderate, arbitrary and unjust were more likely to experience angina or heart attacks than those who worked for bosses they perceived as fair, good communicators, and capable of giving useful feedback. Worse, the cardiac risk seemed to go up the longer the employee stayed in the job.

Early retirement may not be the cure. Researchers at the University of California, Davis, recently compared hypertension rates among retirees and found that men who had been managers had lower rates of hypertension in retirement, while those were managed at work had higher rates. The highest rates of hypertension corresponded with those who had the lowest status jobs, and the smallest role in making decisions.

While most water-cooler crowds could draw some easy conclusions about why bosses are having fun in their golden years while the bossed are still fuming, new research about workplace bullying further complicates the picture. A 2008 Zogby poll found that more than half of American workers say they have suffered or witnessed workplace bullying (a definition that included sabotage, verbal abuse, undermining behavior and abuse of power). Surprisingly, 40 percent of those bullies were women, who were more than 70 percent likely to bully another female.

And while programs like The Office and 30 Rock would suggest it’s the devious malcontents on the periphery of the office power structure who cause the most damage (Dwight and Frank, respectively), Duffy and her colleagues recently examined undermining behavior in organizational settings and found just the opposite. “I had thought it would be the people on the outskirts who were doing the most undermining, but in fact it was the highest performers, the people who had the most contact with their peers, who were the most likely to be undermining their competitors,” says Duffy, who notes that this is not the first time research has suggested workplace politics mirror that of high school.

The good news about this bad news in the economy, says Kreitzer, is that more workers are tuning into the ways their work environments may not be healthy, and are taking steps to change it. “I’ve certainly heard from people that have realized they’ve stayed on the job longer than was healthy because the job provided health insurance,” says Kreitzer, who says her center’s classes on mindfulness and reducing stress have been particularly popular during this downturn. “And I’ve certainly heard from people who say losing the job was the best and worst thing that ever happened to them because it forced to do something that was closer to their hearts, to do what they really wanted to do.”

In my friend’s case, she started her own business several months ago with the remains of her severance package, and has already hired two part-time employees. While she can’t yet offer them health insurance, she figures that treating them with consideration, encouraging them to eat lunch, and letting them cut out early could also be the start of a very nice benefits package.

Work Stress Stats

Employees who think workers have more stress on the job than they did a generation ago: 3 in 4.

Percentage of job turnover rate attributed to stress: 40.

Workers who say they feel stressed on the job: 8 in 10.

Of those workers, number who say they could use some help managing stress: 1 in 2.

Percentage who say their coworkers could use the same: 42

Percentage of workers who says they’ve felt like screaming on the job because of stress: 25.

Percentage of workers who say they felt like hitting a colleague in the last year but didn’t: 14 percent.

Source: The American Institute of Stress

Written for Mpls/St. Paul Magazine, September 2009

Safe Harbor

Laura Billings Coleman — Wed, 18 Jun 2014 23:52:14 +0000

Safe Harbor

By Laura Billings Coleman

Mpls/St. Paul magazine, June 2009

Legend has long claimed that the veil between the human and animal worlds is very thin the farther the sun gets from the earth, so maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised to find myself standing nose-to-nose with a white-tailed deer browsing the harbor at Grand Marais on the eve of the summer solstice. She stood on her hind legs, gazing at the watercolor clouds gathering on the horizon, before turning to nod a silent hello. I fumbled for my lens cap, but before I could catch her, the deer had dashed off to join a conga line of other ungulates dancing a hoofy version of “The Hustle” before a hooting audience dressed in plaid shirts and polar fleece.

The Wooden Boat Show and Summer Solstice Festival the third weekend in June captures both sides of Grand Marais’s wonderfully split personality—the free-spirited creative community that harbored the state’s very first artists’ colony, and the fierce sportsman culture of fishermen, hunters, and hikers who help put the flint in Gunflint.

This is not the Grand Marais I remember as a kid every summer, when my family and friends made the municipal campground home base for mosquito-filled adventures in the backwoods and the nearby Boundary Waters. In those days, Grand Marais had the feel of a way station, the final fueling stop for gas and gorp before setting out over the Sawtooths in the morning, and a welcome return to civilization and soft-serve ice cream in the evening. But more recently, this highly photogenic harbor village has remade and remarketed itself as a destination of its own, with fine restaurants featuring local catch, a thriving timber-frame campus for folk art instruction, and—to the grumbling of many locals—even lakefront luxury lodgings. While the surrounding big woods and great lake still beckon, you don’t have to leave the harbor to feel like you’ve been someplace very special.

Your day should start early with a cup of coffee from the local espresso joint Java Moose (218 W. Hwy. 61, 218-387-9400), which will help warm your hands against the morning chill. From the rocky beach, it’s a stone’s throw past the sailboats buoyed in the harbor to the red-roofed Coast Guard station, which helps make Grand Marais look like a stand-in for the coast of Maine. Turn right at the trailhead just behind the station and catwalk out to the lighthouse and wave goodbye to the fishermen hoping for a good catch. A left turn will lead you through the boreal forest and lava-smooth rocks of Artists’ Point, so called because it seems to inspire visitors to break out the watercolors. (On several trips last summer, we counted more than a dozen plein air artists squinting at the horizon.) On Saturday afternoons, a forest service naturalist is often on hand to point out the flora and fauna, though the light is best at the beginning of the day and again in the gloaming, when you can settle into a comfortable rock and feel your shoulders relax to the sound of the waves.

Depleted from your exhausting half-mile hike, you’ll have to refuel at World’s Best Donuts (10 E. Wisconsin St., 218-387-1345), which also has one of the world’s best vacation traditions—sign your name next to one of the numbers on the “donut registry,” and if you remember it next season, your first one is free. That bit of marketing ingenuity was originated by founder Merieta Altrichter, who started doling out her famous cake donuts and “skizzles” (a raised dough heap of deep-fried heaven covered in sugar) in 1969 using the same recipe her grandmother taught her, fried up in a cast-iron pan.

Altrichter passed away last year, but her granddaughters carry on the tradition and will celebrate World’s Best Donuts’ 40th anniversary on June 20. Visitors who ask co-owner Dee Brazell how many donuts have gone out the little red door will get the same answer Altrichter used to give customers. “My grandmother used to say, ‘I know I sell more donuts than McDonald’s sells hamburgers, because they have time to count,’ ” says Brazell.

Moving down the main drag, you may notice a surprising number of people wearing jackets, sweatshirts, long-sleeved T-shirts, and stocking caps emblazoned with the words “Grand Marais.” While this may be a display of hometown pride, it’s more likely these are tourists who forgot to account for the lake-effect wind chill while they were packing. Fortunately, everything you’ll need for the swift-changing weather is at the Lake Superior Trading Post (16 S. 1st Ave. W., 218-387-2020), which carries the trendy, technical footwear so favored by south Minneapolis woodsmen and the child-sized rain slickers we discovered we needed in a sudden downpour. More meat-and-potatoes types may prefer the packed-to-the-rafters appeal of Joynes’ Department and Ben Franklin Store (105 W. Wisconsin St., 218-387-2233), the department store that time forgot, where they stock Monopoly boards and Malone pants, and just about everything in between.

Now that you’re properly dressed, you’ll be comfortable for your excursion on the Hjørdis (218-387-9762), the gleaming and gorgeous 50-foot gaff-rigged schooner that leaves a few times a day from the marina. A two-hour cruise includes some sailing instruction for up to six passengers, though if you prefer to paddle your own, Superior Coastal Sports (20-B E. 1st St., 218-387-2360) offers a three-hour sea-kayaking package that allows you to hug the shoreline at your own pace. If you’d rather watch other people get wet, come for the North Shore Dragon Boat Festival July 23–26, during which teams of 20 paddlers (plus a drummer and steerer) try to beat each other across the harbor, all to the beat of a drum.

All that exercise and fresh air may build an appetite—your only problem is deciding where to eat. The dockside tables at Angry Trout Cafe (416 W. Hwy. 61, 218-387-1265) may be the best alfresco seating in the state, and the fish specials, chowders, and wild rice concoctions taste just as fresh as the breeze. The brown sugar brine–smoked fish from the deli at the nearby Dockside Fish Market (418 W. Hwy. 61, 218-387-2906) pairs nicely with crackers and a Swiss army knife on the shore.

People who prefer a tablecloth will be happier at Chez Jude(411 W. Hwy. 61, 218-387-9113), where local flavors are cleverly reinvented (sage ice cream is a treat you shouldn’t miss), or at The Crooked Spoon Café (17 W. Wisconsin St., 218-387-2779 ), where fare can range from rare ahi tuna to rabbit Bolognese. The Gunflint Tavern (111 W. Wisconsin St., 218-387-1563) on the harbor does brisk weekend business in microbrews, burgers, and even barbacoa fajitas, items rarely found this far north of Canal Park.

If you need a nap, I’m sorry to report that the pleasantly rundown East Bay Hotel is no longer the place to go. It was razed a few years ago, replaced by the surprisingly upscale East Bay Suites (21 E. Wisconsin St., 800-414-2807), color-coordinated sunset and sea blue condos with nightly rental rates that come complete with kitchens, gas or electric fireplaces, and flat-screen TVs. Preservationists may yet be heartbroken at the loss of the iconic hotel (the Viking ship from the old bar is still on display in the center stairwell), but practical types may appreciate the stacked washers and driers in each unit. (Did I mention the weather can be unpredictable?) Each has a relaxing view of the East Bay, but if the hustle of the harbor is more to your liking, check out the new Cobblestone Cove Villas (20 S. Broadway, 800-247-6020), luxury townhomes tucked neatly on the north end of the harbor. From the second-story decks you can sit back and watch sailboats come and go all day—though in this economy, it should be noted that you can enjoy a similar view, for about one-tenth of the price, at the primitive lakeside campsites across the harbor at the Grand Marais RV Park and Campground (114 S. 8th Ave. W., 218-387-1712).

This harbor has been an oasis for artists since 1947, when The Outdoor School of Painting started here as a project of the Minneapolis School of Art, a precursor to MCAD. The Grand Marais Art Colony (120 3rd Ave. W., 218-387-2737), as it’s now known, is still going strong, housed in a former church with an annex built in 2005 that has expanded studio space and class offerings. There you can take watercolor classes taught by acclaimed North Shore artist Howard Sivertson, who started Sivertson Gallery (14 W. Wisconsin St., 888-880-4369) before realizing he’d rather be behind a canvas than a cash register. His daughter Jan now runs the successful shop (there’s a second one in Duluth’s Canal Park), which features the work of more than 60 regional artists, including Hazel Belvo and woodcutter Betsy Bowen (whose print studio in town is another must-see: 301 1st Ave. W., 218-387-1992).

Inspired by all this creativity, you may find yourself signing up for a class at the North House Folk School (500 W. Hwy. 61, 218-387-9762) which has become a community center and cultural hub since the first of its timber-frame school houses went up on the harbor 12 years ago. Dedicated to preserving and promoting traditional northern crafts, North House offers year-round instruction on everything from rosemaling and wool-braided rugs, to cedar-strip boat construction and mukluk making. Each day at the school stars with a morning coffee greeting around the wood-fired brick oven, and then students peel off for their own pursuits—my husband caught up with a seminar on birch bark canoes, while I took notes on nålbinding, a nearly lost textile art that not even my Swedish-speaking grandmother ever mentioned.

Our kids went their own way, enjoying a North Shore tradition that requires no instruction and will never lose its appeal, no matter how much the harbor changes—skipping rocks across cold water.

Unsentimental Education

Laura Billings Coleman — Thu, 05 Jun 2014 15:43:59 +0000

LIVES

My Unsentimental Tutee

By Laura Billings

Published: New York Times Magazine, January 26, 1997

A literacy tutor is taught to connect with adult students by pointing out common beliefs. So when I first met Renzhen, a 30-something Chinese woman, I told her, hand on heart, how stirred I was by the spirit of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising. She cocked her head at me and blurted: ”Why? That guy who fight the tank – he totally crazy!” She then twirled an index finger around her temple, her way of saying ”Duh.” Hardly a ”Miracle Worker” moment. But it was typical of my experiences with Renzhen, a former university math instructor who came to the United States in 1991 believing (wrongly) that she would find a better teaching job. My reasons for becoming a tutor combined Pollyanna-ish social activism with too much free time. Her motivation was a more prosaic desire to pass the English-proficiency exam and a nagging suspicion that she was getting shortchanged in stores. After two years, our sessions have cured her of calling men ”she,” and I have been cured of something as well – my sometimes sentimental notions about what this country means to newcomers.

As a literacy volunteer, I’m often asked to interpret America for immigrant adults, to explain our confounding idioms, politics, bland customs and television talk shows. Usually they’re reverent about the United States and the salvation it can offer, but Renzhen remains unconvinced, an attitude I find as appealing as it is irritating.

”Who you want to win?” she asked just before the last Presidential election. I told her I was voting for Clinton. ”You can vote?” she shrieked, astonished. I started to explain that, yes, every adult citizen enjoys this right, but she interrupted. ”Choices aren’t that different.”

”Sure, but —-.”

”Sound like China,” she said, dismissing democracy with a wave and a laugh.

In China, Renzhen and her husband held advanced degress and lived in a comfortable apartment. Now they and their two children live in a one-bedroom with orange shag carpet and thin walls. Every day until her second child arrived, Renzhen put on a threadbare wool coat and shuffled off to her waitress job wearing a badge that said, ”Hi, my name is JENNY.” Once, I asked her a question from a lesson book: ”How would a stranger describe you?”

”In China, as quality person,” she answered. ”If you look at me here, you think I’m poor.”

Renzhen doesn’t quite work as a victim, though. She’s too prickly for that. She rails against Americans’ materialism and then spends $25 for lipstick to secure the ”bonus” mirrored compact. She’s delighted to learn that her daughter’s education is free and then outraged that American fifth graders don’t study calculus. Recently I brought her a newspaper article about foreign-born professionals who are making the difficult adjustment to life here. Instead of empathizing, she smiled sweetly and said: ”Seem like there is too many Mexicans here. This I believe so.”

Whether she will remain here is an open question. Her husband says it would be a loss of face to return to China. When Renzhen gets letters from friends and family back home, she lets them sit for months before she finally throws them out. ”What do I say?” she asks me. ”They say we are foolish leaving China. They are right.”

She makes such comments with great cheer, shrugging lightly, but her thoughts sometimes weigh her down. Once, I spotted her struggling down the street with two heavy shopping bags, her permed black hair – an unfortunate result of her husband’s suggestion that she try to look ”Western” – kinking in the Portland mist. I shouted and ran after her for two full blocks before I got her attention.

”Oh, I am so far away,” she said, startled. ”Long ways.”

Before Renzhen gave birth to her second child, we put aside the grammarbooks to focus on Basic American Patient with a vocabulary list that included ”episiotomy” and ”gimme the epidural!” We laughed over those lessons, Renzhen aping the hysterics of a delivering mother. We also had more serious discussions, about what she could expect for her child in this country, and what was expected for her – a Chinese woman about to be the mother of an American.

”Seems like I can’t go back,” she said one day. ”Now I must be living an American.” Was she scared? She whirled a finger by her temple. I didn’t have to ask what that meant.

Laura Billings is a freelance writer who lives in Portland, Ore.

Motherhood Leaves Some Scars

Laura Billings Coleman — Fri, 16 May 2014 18:58:48 +0000

Back in the days before five-point harnesses and tricycle crash helmets, my mom used to strap my little brother and me to her bike — one in the basket, one on the fender — and go for a ride with the neighbor ladies.

This worked nicely until the day my brother could no longer resist sticking his toe into the spokes of the front wheel. Suddenly, all three of us found ourselves hurtling — in painfully slow motion, it seemed — around the fixed point of the wheel and landing in a heap of bones, tears and blood on the asphalt.

Two white-haired ladies who’d watched the accident from their bay windows rushed out of their houses holding wet washcloths at the end of extended arms, eyes averted.

It soon became clear why they couldn’t bring themselves to look. My brother and I landed without a scrape. My mother held us so tightly she took the entire fall on her face.

Thirty-some years later, the scars from that accident have mostly faded from my mom’s face, but the lesson I learned from it is as vivid as ever: No one gets through motherhood unscathed.

If you walk down the “women’s interest” aisles this Mother’s Day, you’ll see there’s a whole literature dedicated to the scars that come from having children, most of them emotional. According to the titles, women are hurt when they have to stay home with kids, and also when they can’t afford to. They are betrayed by a culture that holds them to impossible standards of perfection, and by spouses who won’t help with their share of the housework. They are angst-ridden about which stroller to buy, which preschool to attend and which college is best. They judge other women, and at the same time, they fear that other women are judging them.

There’s really no end to the trauma.

But let’s leave those emotional scars aside today and concentrate instead on the purely physical ones. Because no matter what divides mothers these days, what unites us, like any gathering of veterans, is a fascination with war stories. This is why no group of three mothers can last for more than 30 minutes in conversation without someone bringing up her birth story. Wait a few minutes more and you’ll hear about injuries you’d never have predicted before you subscribed to “Parenting.”

For instance, a friend of mine had to drive her mother to the emergency room before she even had her license, after a bumpy lesson in stick-shift driving sent her mom’s head into the windshield. Another girl’s mom broke her ankle chaperoning a ski trip, trying to keep someone else’s sixth-grader from getting stuck on the towrope at Buck Hill. A Brownie troop leader in my acquaintance got third-degree burns by saving her daughter’s backpack from the campfire.

A friend still has headaches after getting hit in the head by an errant hockey puck. Another one who has a teenage daughter prone to saying ridiculous things (“I realize it’s important to get an education so that I don’t end up just having to be a mother like you”) surely has scars on her tongue from biting it so often.

The marketing image of Mother’s Day, with its bouquets and brunches, does not address this reality. But I sometimes wonder if the holiday might shake its obligatory Hallmark feel if we replaced that beautifully backlit mother in the advertising images with one who looks more like she’s actually been through the battle.

Not long ago, a physician’s assistant putting a few stitches in my forehead noted that I seemed remarkably upbeat for a person in the emergency room. I explained that the evening had looked like a lost cause when my toddler knocked into a heavy floor lamp that was about to land on the baby in my arms. But once I stuck my own forehead into the arc of the oncoming glass lampshade, things had turned out better than expected.

The baby was fine. The bloodstains came out of the couch. I’d found a sitter to take care of the kids. And my husband and I were enjoying a spontaneous and much-deserved evening out.

Best of all, I felt like I had finally joined the army of mothers I most admire. Like my mom before me, I’d absorbed a hard blow for the sake of my kids.

No doubt your mom did the same for you. Show her how much you care today by asking her to show you the scars.

Published 5/9/04 in the Saint Paul Pioneer Press

Weary o’ the Green

Laura Billings Coleman — Tue, 18 Mar 2014 00:00:15 +0000

According to the Census Bureau, nearly 35 million Americans claim Irish ancestry.

No such records are kept for those of us who are Irish merely by marriage, though we may be no less worthy of attention, and even some sympathy on a day like today.

I was married on St. Patrick’s Day eve. The hymn was Irish. Yeats wrote the poem. Little girls in ivory and green dresses danced to a ceilidh band of fiddles and flutes. Whiskey flowed.

For a moment, I mistook the bagpipe band my husband hired as a nod to my own Scottish ancestry, but even the pipers were Irish, named after Brian Boru, the first high king of Ireland, who kicked the Vikings out of Dublin but was killed with an ax while he prayed for a victory in the Battle of Clontarf in 1014.

This is the sort of thing you learn when you marry into an Irish family.

Also, you learn not to mention your British ancestors.

At the time, I thought this was just a wedding theme, but it has lasted well into the marriage. The Earl Grey tea I used to drink in the morning has been replaced by Barry’s Classic Blend. Friends now give gifts of Waterford crystal and books covered with shamrocks and harps. Toasts are stolen from James Joyce and “The Quiet Man.”

Our children’s names have been chosen from histories of little known Irish saints, even though my Swedish Methodist forebears wouldn’t have gone in for that kind of thing. It’s getting harder to find names that haven’t already been taken by the older cousins, and their pets, and yet one never considers going the other way, with perhaps a Gustav or a Greta. Irishness trumps everything else.

This is why you meet so many boys these days named Connor, with last names as varied as Pedersen, Morgenstern, Schmidt, Kwiatkowski and Blatz. Forget about the French-Canadian fur trappers on your mother’s side or the grandmother who fled the pogrom or the other one who knew the czar. If you have anyone on your side who came over on the boat from Cork, this is where the family story will focus.

Those of us who are Irish by marriage do not fault them for this.

We love the Irish. If we could be any ethnicity in the world, we’d choose to be Irish. That’s probably why we married Irish people in the first place. They’ve got incredible scenery, romantic ruined abbeys, music that makes your bones shake, more coffee-table books than you could ever keep up with at Christmas, not to mention Colin Farrell’s eyebrows.

Irish women have Maureen and Scarlett O’Hara as patronesses. Irish men can recite poetry at will (though most of it does have to do with 800 years of English oppression). What’s not to love about that kind of commitment to clan?

Of course, that’s kind of the rub. Because when it comes to stoking the ancestral fires, the Irish put most other immigrant groups to shame.

If you’re German, as most Minnesotans used to be, you’re probably lucky if you know whether your ancestors came from Westphalia, Saxony or Bavaria. If you’re Swedish or Norwegian, you might know only that your people set sail from Stockholm or Oslo.

But if you’re Irish, you know exactly which county you come from, and the parish, too. In fact, you’ve probably been there. Several times. There’s even a good chance you keep up a lively e-mail correspondence with the priest.

The rest of us just can’t keep up with that.

I was reflecting on all of this on our second trip to Ireland in an 18-month period, during which we ate Irish food, listened to Irish music, read more Irish history and met more Irish people. I suggested that everyone’s family tree would be just as fascinating, if there were all the time in the world to study it.

I brought up a 17th century British ancestor of mine who founded a city in Massachusetts and whose sons fought in the Revolutionary War; and the Swedish great-grandparents who kept a cow on Minnehaha Creek. I told the story of how my great-great-grandmother, the one who raised my grandfather, may have changed the course of American history with a letter she wrote at the age of 11, suggesting to Abraham Lincoln that he grow whiskers.

My husband and his daughter just rolled their eyes at my pathetic attempt to compete.

“Admit it,” he said. “You’re just jealous you’re not Irish.”

Maybe that’s what it’s really about, especially on a day like today, when everyone with a tiny drop of Eire in their veins can fill up their lungs and crow about it until the bars close. For those of us who are merely Irish by marriage, it is not easy to be so close, and yet so far.

At least the kids will be Irish.

And as we Irish in-laws are often told, that and the land are all that count.

Originally published in the Pioneer Press, 3/17/05

Loving Lutsen

Laura Billings Coleman — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 00:56:07 +0000

Originally published in Mpls/St. Paul magazine, March 2012

On a bluebird morning last March, I slid off the chairlift for my family’s first run of the day at Lutsen, and surveyed the wintery scene. To the south, the Midwest’s only mountain tram was already running at full speed, disgorging black diamond types from bright red gondola cars. To the east, sunlight glazed the granite surface of Lake Superior, as glacial chunks of ice bobbed and rippled at the shoreline. In the sky overhead, a hawk drew circles around the frozen pines. And at the top of the aptly named “Big Bunny” run, my kindergartener was screaming his head off, begging to go back to the car.

“But we just got here,” I explained to the youngest and most fearless skier in our family, the kid whose physical daring and thrillingly low center of gravity had finally convinced us we were ready for our first family ski vacation—an excursion that now seemed in danger of becoming the most expensive 15 minutes we’d ever spent outdoors. Wiping snot on his polar fleece, he caught his breath long enough to explain the problem. “You didn’t say it was going to be a mountain,” he said, accusingly.

He’s probably not the first overconfident Midwest skier to be thrown off balance by seeing Minnesota’s most familiar resort from a much loftier point of view. Five hours north of the glaciated golf-course terrain of the Twin Cities, the Sawtooth Mountains live up to the name, rising more than 1,000 feet over the surface of Superior, and giving generations of Minnesota kids their first experience on ski runs that last even longer than the chairlift ride to the top.

Though Lutsen is the state’s oldest resort, it’s looking like a surprisingly fresh alternative to more expensive Rocky Mountain retreats thanks to a new western-style Summit Chalet on Moose Mountain, glowing reviews from winter sports writers (including the New York Times, which called it “The King of the Midwest Hills”), an acoustic and authentic North Shore night life, and the increasing pain-in-the-ass that is air travel. “We’re five hours from Minneapolis and St. Paul, and in the old days, people used to say, ‘I could fly anywhere I want to in that amount of time,’ ” says Jim Vick, Lutsen Mountain’s marketing manager. “Now you can’t fly anywhere in five hours. And you’re not going to be very relaxed when you get there.”

After pricing out a family ski package in Park City, Utah, where I met my first real mountain, we came to the same conclusion, and set out from a slushy, gray St. Paul one morning to find the North Shore blanketed in blue-white snow by mid-afternoon. In fact, the Lutsen area gets more than nine and a half feet of snow on average, ensuring a ski season that lasts into April. More seasoned skiers also rave that 92 runs spread across Lutsen’s four mountains—Ullr, Eagle, Mystery, and Moose—make it possible to ski from every compass point, switching positions to chase the best conditions throughout the day.

In spite of these natural assets, downhill skiing didn’t come to the North Shore until George Nelson, grandson of the Swedish immigrants who first homesteaded the area in the 1880s, came home from the war. A veteran of the 10th Mountain Division, he’d survived cold weather training in Leadville, Colorado (where he tried one of the first tow ropes in the country), heavy artillery in the Italian Appenines, and had a vision for transforming his hometown hills. By 1945, he’d persuaded his father to winterize the iconic summer resort, and in 1948, the state’s first chairlift started up at Lutsen with just two runs, “Chickadee” and “Hari Kari.” Though Nelson had high hopes, even he was surprised by how good the conditions turned out to be. “I did not know that we had the best hills and terrain in the upper Midwest. I’m not even sure we had maps,” says Nelson, who still marvels at the fact his daughter Cindy Nelson went on to compete in three Olympics. “She was from the smallest hill of anyone in the world, and here she was, winning the downhills, which was just amazing.”

Though Nelson, now 86, sold the ski business in the 1980s, he has fond memories of hitting the slopes with all five of his kids—a Minnesota tradition he’s very pleased to see snowball the way it has. “Kids will pick it up in nothing flat, and it’s just wonderful to watch them go,” he says. It’s true. Once the kindergartener realized we weren’t going home, he plunged down the Big Bunny and never looked back, hopping on the chairlifts a half-mile ahead of us, and waving happily on his way down. The only tears we saw the rest of the trip came when it was time to get back in the car.
If you go:
Sign up for lessons: Putting a kid on the top of a mountain and hoping he’ll figure out how to ski is not actually recommended. (Our three boys had already had a handful of lessons at local ski hills prior to our trip.) Fortunately, Lutsen’s Snow Sports Learning Center does a great job at catering to new skiers and snowboarders with half and full-day group and private lessons. Make reservations early during high-traffic holidays to guarantee you’ll get in.
Don’t forget your skinny skis: Downhill is the big draw for the majority of tourists, but Cook County’s cross-country terrain is world class, with more than 400 kilometers of groomed trail, the largest Nordic ski trail system in North America. One day when the weather report called for bone-chilling lake effect winds, we took cover within snow-white forests on trails that were groomed for both classic and skate-style skis. Before you go, check out volksski.com, a website where you can log your distance, report conditions to other skiers, and record new trails you’ll want to return to.
Enjoy the view from the top: Even if you aren’t ready to take “The Plunge,” one of Lutsen’s many double black diamond runs, don’t miss out on the amazing view from Moose Mountain. Leave your skis at the bottom of the hill and take the tram up for lunch at the Summit Chalet, which offers 100-mile views over Lake Superior. Soup’s not bad either.
Stay out late: If you’re not too worn out, there’s actually stuff to do after dark, including sleigh rides, comedy shows, and live music performances at various pubs and restaurants around the mountain. Lutsen’s commitment to having live music every night of the week has helped to build a critical mass of musicians, singers, and other creative types on the North Shore—many with CDs they’d be glad to sell for the car trip home.
Find a pillow: Lutsen boasts of having more than 3,000 places to lay your weary head within 20 miles of the slopes, with options that range from ski in/ski out lodging at Caribou Highlands and Eagle Ridge, to the old-world charm of Lutsen’s shoreline resort, to condos and townhomes between Tofte and Grand Marais that offer shuttle buses to the hills. Spots closest to the mountain tend to fill in quickly during school vacations, so plan accordingly.
Extend your weekend: Perennial discount packages like Lutsen’s “3 nights for the price of 2” January special, and half-price lodging and lift tickets during midweek definitely add to the destination’s popularity with families. Most specials make it possible to pay a little less and stay a little longer, a perfect excuse to dig deeper into all the other winter activities the area has to offer, including dog-sledding, and classes in everything from knitting to blacksmithing at Grand Marais’ North House Folk School.

Originally published in Mpls/St. Paul magazine, March 2012