Duluth lags behind on Proud Boys, conspiracies...

Written By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune on Saturday, February20

 One of the problems we have here in Duluth is that it seems like we’re always behind the times — not in step with what’s going on in the rest of the country.

 

Right when such issues as “conspiracy theories” are a really a hot thing in other parts of the (not very) United States of America, we don’t even have any. We’ll take care of that later in this important column.

 

But first, you also hear a lot about this boisterous jingoistic camo clad group known as the “Proud Boys,” and what do we have here? A bunch of timid fellows who call themselves the “Shamed Boys.” They meet on alternating Wednesdays in the basement — of course, the basement — of the former YWCA (Young Women’s Chastity Alliance) headquarters, abandoned in the 1960s.

 

I was introduced to a Shamed Boy recently at a COVID-19 mask wearing fashion show sponsored by a local philanthropy under proper social distancing conditions. Besides a paisley mask, he was wearing faded jeans and a sweatshirt bearing the inscription: “Go Ahead and Tread on Me.” I was wearing my buffalo plaid mask.

 

“How’s it happen that you call your group Shamed Boys?” I asked the neatly turned out fellow whose mask bore the inscription “Leave Me Alone if Possible.” My mask is inscribed “Bigfoot Lives.”

 

“Well, we’re ashamed of the way things are going in this country, all the riots and stuff like that,” he said. “We’re ashamed that the politicians can’t get along and nothing gets done in this country. We’re perturbed as heck and hope we don’t have to take it anymore.”

 

I could see his point. I’d been feeling a little ashamed myself, and thought maybe I should join the group, although Wednesdays are choir practice in normal times when there’s no global pandemic threatening, among other things, choral singing. We’ll see when it’s over.

 

Meanwhile, we have to address our conspiracy theory — elsewhere labeled QAnon — shortage problem. While they’re gaining currency in Congress and elsewhere, we don’t have any here in Duluth at all. Other parts of the country are swimming in them and we’re frozen out up here in the north. I think it’s time we came up with a few to get in step with current trends.

 

And, of course, we have to keep in mind that our conspiracy theories will be accepted as gospel truth by some readers of this, a number of whom could use them as a basis for mounting political campaigns or rising up against the government, or else they aren’t really conspiracy theories, right? Good.

 

So let’s get started. We’ll call them DAnon (D for Duluth, get it?) conspiracy theories.

 

DAnon No. 1 — Everyone thinks our Enger Tower, atop the Duluth hill, is an innocuous tourist attraction and a good place from which to view the city from above. That’s what it appears to be, but it’s not really just a tourist trap.

 

People believe it is named for a dead Norwegian furniture dealer, but ENGER really stands for Electronic Notification Gyroscope for Emergency Reconnaissance. The tower is wired to communicate messages to a subversive naval alt-right nationalist group known as the Proud Buoys (naval branch of the landlubber Proud Boys) out on Lake Superior plotting to attack Duluth beneath the winter ice. (See DAnon No. 2.)

 

DAnon No. 2 — During World War II agents from Hitler’s Germany smuggled parts for a submarine (U Boat) through rural Canada for assembly in a remote cove of Lake Superior. The purpose of the submarine was to attack iron ore shipping on the big lake but the war came to an end before the submarine was ever used. The German agents were captured and sent to Remer, Minn., to cut timber, and several married local women. But that’s another story.

 

The assembled submarine remained in the remote cove until recent years when the seafaring Proud Buoys commandeered it and are conspiring to attack the massive installations of the Salvation Navy on the Duluth waterfront after sneaking through the Duluth ship canal beneath the Aerial Lift Bridge under water and ice in the dark of night. (See DAnon No. 3.) 

 

DAnon No. 3 — The Duluth Aerial Lift Bridge figures strongly in our final DAnon. Duluthians and tourists love our bridge. It is an iconic symbol of everything Duluth, with all of its ups and downs, like the Eiffel Tower in Paris. It is the most photographed single object in Minnesota. But what people don’t notice is a pipe running up one end of the bridge, across the top, and down the other end. The pipe is a conduit for all of the raw sewage from Park Point, making it the most photographed sewage pipe in the western hemisphere. Put that in your sewage pipe and smell it.

 

Hold it! That’s no conspiracy theory; it’s true.

 

Never mind.

 

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org. 

Sometimes facts of life are fiction...

 Written by By Jim Heffernan for the Duluth News Tribune, August 22, 2020

"There comes that morning when no money shows up under the pillow replacing a lost tooth. "

There comes a time in every parent’s life when certain things must be discussed with their children as the kids rapidly approach an age when they should be told what used to be known as “the facts of life.” At least some of those facts.

 

This is an uncomfortable time for many — I daresay most — parents who have nurtured their little ones from sweet innocence when they are very young all the way to the cusp of the teenage years.

 

The realization creeps up in the parent’s mind over a period of time and is often put off longer than it should be, or not broached at all. In my own life, there were no such talks from parents — it was relegated to learning these important life lessons on the street, or, perish the thought, in an alley.

 

This is not the best way to handle it, child psychologists aver. But you can’t blame parents for putting it off because most are uncomfortable with openly discussing certain matters with their own offspring. Besides, we were Lutheran.

 

I believe it is best in families if “mom” talks to daughters and “pop” talks to sons. Being a pop, I can only reflect here what I have experienced strictly on the male side of the family.

 

There are two principal approaches to having these conversations, although it likely is not a conversation at all, but rather a lecture.

 

There is the oblique approach in which the adult drops hints to see if the child already is aware of certain things, such as the discovery of large footprints in the woods.

 

Looking backward, when I was “coming along” there was much unsubstantiated evidence that we were in danger of being invaded from outer space by little green men and, it can only be hoped, green women, scooting around the sky in “flying saucers.”

 

I remember my father pouring too-hot coffee into his saucer at breakfast and slurping it from there, so saucers didn’t seem to be much of a concern to me.

 

Now I see concern about unidentified flying objects (UFOs) has risen again in America. There are rumors they are being investigated by “the Pentagon,” which is shaped pretty much like a big flying saucer itself.

 

I merely cite this as an example of the kind of thing that young people will encounter as they make their way from early childhood into those pre-teen years when there are so many questions about life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and so few easy answers. Questions like, if a vampire gets you, will you have any blood left to donate?

 

There are others too. There’s that certain “jolly old elf” who seems to show up every December. How to explain that is a conundrum difficult for most parents to resolve. I must admit I skirted that one in life. Couldn’t bring myself to discuss it with my children. Let them find out in an alley.

 

It’s different with the tooth fairy. There comes that morning when no money shows up under the pillow replacing a lost tooth. The situation speaks for itself, no explanation necessary. Does any parent have to sit a child down and say, “There is no such thing as a tooth fairy.” Of course not. You just withhold the change.

 

Same with Jack Frost. Imagine how idiotic you’d feel if you awakened a child on a cold January morning when the windows are caked with condensation and told her or him, “There is no Jack Frost.” They’d laugh you right out of the bedroom. 

 

Johnny Appleseed? Don’t get me started on Johnny Appleseed. Paul Bunyan? Different story. Isn’t he from Bemidji, or is it Brainerd, or both? I clung to a belief in Paul Bunyan longer than I should have as a child, but it was that outsize blue ox named Babe that gave him away. Let’s face it, oxen aren’t blue, unless they are as depressed as they always look with those yokes on.

 

What about the Easter Bunny? I believe children are disabused of a belief in the Easter Bunny long before they admit it in order to reap more candy on Easter morning. No explanation necessary.

 

I do think, though, when doubt lingers on a child’s part the direct approach in such matters is preferable to the oblique strategy in which the parent “fishes” to see if the child already knows certain things. I’m sure Drs. Phil, Oz and Mary Trump would agree with me. Also Dr. Fauci.

 

Hence, seize the moment, trap the child in a speeding car or some other place where escape is impossible, wrest the phone from his (we’re talking man to boy here) hands, take the bull (or ox) by the horns and come right out with it:

 

“There is no bigfoot.”

 

Then let the chips fall where they may.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.