Critical DMs: We’re not just hotdish, or iconic but overlooked in Minnesota
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Critical DMs are lightly edited Slack conversations by members of the MPR News arts team about Minnesota art and culture.
This week, arts editor Max Sparber and senior arts reporter and critic Alex V. Cipolle respond to the nation’s limited reference points for Minnesota by suggesting a handful of iconic but overlooked Minnesota cultural items.
Max Sparber: So, thanks to the Tim Walz VP announcement, Minnesota is once again in the national spotlight.
Alex V. Cipolle: She sure is.
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Sparber: And every time this happens, people make the Minnesota references they know.
Cipolle: Uffda-Prince-Hotdish-Prairie-Home-Companion-Grumpy-Old-Men-Mania is the official term for this I believe.
Sparber: A lot of hotdish discussion on the American stage. Never mind that Tim Walz is from Nebraska.
I don’t know that people have Nebraska points of reference. Nobody is going to be making jokes about frenchies, their deep-fried grilled cheese sandwiches.
Cipolle: 🤷
Sparber: Exactly.
But I thought this would be a good opportunity to expand the conversation by discussing things that we see as uniquely or iconically Minnesotan that don’t get the same sort of respect.
Cipolle: It’s about damn time, to use Walz parlance.
Sparber: Let’s start with food since hotdish seems to be the only Minnesota food that outsiders know, which I consider to be wildly unfair to wild rice.
Cipolle: Yes, wild rice was one of my top picks, too. Especially paired with walleye, a delicious lake fish.
Sparber: Or wild rice and ham soup, a Minnesota staple.
Cipolle: The Ojibwe word for it is manoomin and it is a very significant part of Ojibwe culture and industry.
Sparber: That’s part of the reason I like it as our first pick. I think outsiders are still suckers for the idea that Minnesota is all Lutheran bachelor farmers from Sweden.
But we have a rich and wide heritage!
Cipolle: I’d like to illustrate that spectrum of culture with Minnesotan and Red Lake Band of Ojibwe artist Jonathan Thunder’s painting of wild rice harvesting above the bones of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox, juxtaposed against a Land O Lakes butter sky.
Sparber: I would also like to grab credit for the cosmopolitan cocktail on Minnesota’s behalf.
Cipolle: Ok tell me about this cocktail.
Sparber: So a lot of people claim to have invented it, which is usually the case with these things. But one of the earliest claims is from bartender Neal Murray from the Cork & Cleaver steakhouse in Minneapolis, who says he invented it in 1975. That’s one of the earliest claims!
He says he added cranberry juice to a kamikaze cocktail and somebody drank it and said “How cosmopolitan!”
Cipolle: Well, that’s charming.
Sparber: It went on to be a staple of gay bars early on, so it’s one of our contributions to LGBTQ+ history.
Cipolle: Is the bloody mary with a snit a Minnesotan thing? Or is that just more broadly midwestern?
Sparber: What the heck is a snit?
Cipolle: A beer chaser for your bloody mary!
Sparber: I have never heard it called that! But I am looking it up, and apparently it did originate in Minnesota!
There’s a two-fer for people wanting a little Minnesota in their lives!
Cipolle: Here’s the Lord of Ye Olde Frosted Tips linking it to Minnesota too.
Sparber: Well, if the Lord of Ye Olde Frosted Tips says so!
So what else is iconic but overlooked about the Land of the Lakes?
Cipolle: Honestly, I don't think outsiders “get” lake culture.
Sparber: Oh man, that’s a fact.
Cipolle: I think a lot of people think farmland when they think Minnesota. But this place is truly water world.
Sparber: We’re basically one giant lake interrupted by linked islands of land.
Cipolle: Whether it’s directly in the Twin Cities or if it’s Lake Superior, which may as well as be an ocean for how it appears from shore, to everything in between.
Sparber: Yeah, I don’t think outsiders know just how big a deal the sinking of the Edmund Fitzgerald was for Minnesotans. We’re haunted by it.
Cipolle: In the cities, people bike lakes, sail them, run them, rollerblade them, cross-country ski them, go on blind dates around them.
And then elsewhere, people either camp on them, boat and fish on them, or have cabins.
Sparber: My only impression of the Minnesota accent is just a guy going OH YAH GONNA HEAD UP TO THE CABIN HEAR THE CRAPPIES ARE REALLY BITING DONCHA KNOW.
Cipolle: Accurate.
Sparber: And that links back to wild rice, which grows on lakes.
Cipolle: And walleye which I believe grow in lakes.
Sparber: And cosmopolitans, which you drink on your motorboat.
You know how there are always a few really scary accidents in high school, like car crashes?
In my school, it was largely lake accidents.
Cipolle: Yep. And snowmobile accidents!
Sparber: Snowmobiles are so Minnesotan we invented it.
The most Minnesotan accident is to have your snowmobile fall through the ice on the lake.
Cipolle: I’ve actually never been on one. But it's a goal for this winter.
Sparber: They terrify me. That’s why I do arts, not snow sports.
We should discuss arts.
Cipolle: But sometimes the arts are on frozen lakes, too. Like the most Minnesotan art festival ever — the ART SHANTIES.
Sparber: That does feel like the most iconic Minnesota art event. Like somebody combined an art crawl with “Grumpy Old Men.”
Cipolle: Some call it Frozen Man. The Minnesota winter answer to Burning Man.
One thing that is very Minnesotan is FUNDING FOR THE ARTS.
Sparber: Here we go
Cipolle: A recent survey puts Minnesota at #1 for state agency art funding in the nation.
Sparber: By a country mile! Give me the stats.
Cipolle: You betcha. Here we go. Minnesota spends $9.62 per capita on arts funding.
Sparber: That’s like one entire cosmo.
Cipolle: Our neighboring states, not so much. Iowa is $0.34. Wisconsin is $0.18.
Sparber: You can barely get a grain of wild rice for that.
Cipolle: Iowa and Wisconsin are ranked at #48 and #49 in the nation.
Sparber: And what rank are we?
Cipolle: NUMBER ONE.
Sparber: Boom goes the artsfundingmite.
Cipolle: North Dakota and South Dakota are a skosh better at $1.65 and $1.20.
Sparber: Let’s close by mentioning one art that I think Minnesota doesn’t get nearly enough credit for, and it’s something Walz and Harris might have in common. And I would like to see at their events.
Can you guess?
Cipolle: Crop art?
Sparber: Puppets.
Cipolle: PUPPETS!
Sparber: Huge in Minnesota, huge in the Bay Area And I mean literally huge. Minnesota has had some enormous puppets.
Cipolle: How enormous?
Sparber: Like 50 feet tall. But some very small too. You used to see a lot of what were called Suitcase Puppet Shows.
Someone would just open a suitcase and there would be a set and puppets in it.
I have never seen that anywhere but Minnesota, and have seen a bunch of them here.
Cipolle: And that shows up in the MayDay parade and other events too.
Sparber: MayDay is when you would see the really giant ones. The In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre near Powederhorn Park organized the parade.
Do you remember how it would end?
Cipolle: Tell me.
Sparber: A huge puppet of the sun would approach the attendees, and everyone would sing ‘You Are My Sunshine.” People would cry.
And that sun puppet?
In a canoe.
On the park’s tiny lake.
Cipolle: 🥹
