By Gil Kiekenapp

Once again my annual squirrel-like foraging for vittles on a stick at “The Great Minnesota Get-to-gether” a.k.a. State Fair has brought me to my emotional end of summer. In order to nosh on nutritious “Walleye Cakes” and “Salmon-on-a-stick” at Ron Shara’s village atop machinery hill, I take a 20-minute tram trip seated in an open ski-lift-type cable supported bench. As we climb higher and higher, people begin to look alike like ants; any ants present disappear entirely; and my whole perspective on people and their relationships to one another changes. Relationships between folks can be described using the discipline of political science or the language of geography. And...perhaps a best approach would be “not either-or  but both-and!”

Blasting off into outer space in my mythical rocket from Rosemont, I am aware that my description of this journey from a backyard of a small town in a rural county of the state of Minnesota taken in a United States of America space ship can use one kind of relational language. But as my space ship climbs into the air like the state fair cable tram, and people’s differences seem to get smaller, I am now seeing no observable line where the town’s name sign was planted, or where Dakota County becomes Rice, nor is there a marking between Minnesota and Wisconsin, and...Surprise!...Surprise!...going even higher up there is no line seen between Canada and the United States. Maybe we are taking what began as a political science perspective into the realm of the geographical. But if one thinks of political science as more theoretical and geography as physical,...perhaps a best approach would be...not either-or  but both-and!

While chairing board and committee meetings for our great Senior Federation, it does impress me how usually well-behaved we are, and how generally civil our discourse. Listening closely to between-motion murmurings and recess rants, however, I realize that some members speak as Greens, some as Independents, or one hears Republicans, and yes, Democrats as well. Oh, yes, and then some of us are German, Irish, Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, British, Dutch, French, European, Oriental, Asian, African,...individual or combinations of all that is our world. Then we have Lutherans, Catholics, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Baptists, The Jewish, Muslim, Buddist faith traditions, (and, deity denied, I’ve left somebody out); more identifying definitions that can tend to separate us rather than bring us together as Creation seems wont to do. Ride the tram or rocket ship upwards and out of range of arbitrary borders. Surface appearing political, ethnic and religious divisions ought not get in the way of our present Federation task of building a better ant hill. Let’s elevate our perspective and see ourselves more like those ants seen from the fair that look pretty much alike and work and play well with others. From broader perspective, we are more alike than myopic eyesight would identify us as different. Perhaps a best approach would be...not either-or but both-and!