Annunciation and the Altered Scale

It's been a stunningly beautiful weekend in Minneapolis, warm and sunny, the sort of weather you hope to have on Mother's Day, only arriving two months early. It's the sort of weekend you cherish later on, one that you must take advantage of. These early spring days are often a tease, only to be followed by rain, cold, snow and general misery.

So, of course, I spent this afternoon in a conference room at the Southdale Library. It was the wise choice. We'll get to that in a moment.

We began the day attending Mass at Annunciation, a parish in South Minneapolis a bit east of Lyndale on 54th Street. As you may know, Mrs. D grew up in South Minneapolis and this was the parish of her childhood, the parish where she received First Holy Communion and where she was confirmed. The church itself was built in 1961 and it has that late mid-century look to it. It's a good sized church but it's not a suburban megaparish like the one we normally attend, St. John the Baptist. And because it's not a huge parish and the Archdiocese is retrenching, Annunciation is in the process of merging with another smaller parish, Visitation, which is located about a mile north on Lyndale. Annunication is a lively place and the Mass we attended had a lot of younger families with children. That's a good sign for a parish and a good sign for the mostly middle-class neighborhood that Annunciation serves.

It's always interesting to see the differences in how varying parishes in a diocese handle the liturgy. If there's one misconception about Catholicism, especially among non-Catholics, it's that there is a great uniformity from parish to parish. That may have been true at one time, but it hasn't been true in my lifetime, which has been post-Vatican II. Individual parishes in a diocese can vary greatly, depending on the desires of the parishioners and the proclivities of the pastor. The most famous parish in South Minneapolis, or most infamous depending on your perspective, is St. Joan of Arc, which is about a mile and a half northeast of Annuniciation. St. Joan is one of the most liberal parishes in the country and is usually on double-secret probation with the Archdiocese.

Annunciation isn't much like St. Joan -- while the Mass had modern touches, it was obvious that the liturgical approach was closer to what Archbishop Nienstedt would want, although the feel was less traditional than what you encounter at St. John's these days. In a time when many Catholics struggle to find a place that feels like home, the Mass at Annunciation was mainstream, in a good way.

After Mass, we had a nice brunch at Q Cumbers in Edina, which in our experience is one of the best places to get Sunday brunch in the Twin Cities. Then we went to the conference room at the Southdale Library.

We were in the conference room to attend the launch of a new online arts journal, Altered Scale. The editor of Altered Scale is Jefferson Hansen. Jeff is an old college friend of Mrs. D and me and he is attempting something that is different. Jeff has had an interesting career as a teacher, writer, poet and critic and with Altered Scale he has created something that brings a variety of voices and approaches to bear. In music, especially jazz, an altered scale is achieved by raising a normal scale by a half tone -- this link provides an example.

I could try to explain what Jeff is doing in the journal, but I'll let him explain:

I welcome performers, visual artists, and writers to submit to this journal. I have an eclectic—I don't consider that a bad word—taste. I want to see work on any topic, not just on music. As with any editor, I will make choices as to the ordering and arranging of the pieces. I will do this with an eye toward highlighting the musical aspects of works—tone, rhythm, harmony / disharmony, and improvisation—through comparison and contrast, not any explicit commenting on them. My editorial hand is light.

Today was the launch. A number of area writers performed their work, including poetry and fiction. It included poets who regularly read their work at coffee houses around town, including some with a fairly large footprint in the local literary scene. It was an enjoyable afternoon, watching and listening to people who spend their lives trying to find ways to alter the scale. And for Fearless Maria, who is an aspiring poet herself, it was a great chance to see how poets perform and think about the work they do.

I haven't spent a lot of time in recent years swimming in these waters. It's easy to become detached from the worlds of art and performance, especially when your professional writing is anonymous and necessarily geared to selling merchandise. My customers are more interested in metrics than meter, lithium-ion batteries over lyricism. It also takes an effort to get out of the suburbs and connect with the literary scene, especially when other duties call, as they inevitably do. It's an effort worth undertaking, though, and one that I take seriously. I commend Altered Scale to your attention, especially if you find yourself reading more Mark Steyn than Mark Twain these days. It's always worth it to expand your horizons. Or to alter the scale, so to speak.