Good news?

The Washington Monthly has ranked UMM as a ‘standout school’.

UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, MORRIS (MN)

Predicted grad rate: 60%

Actual grad rate: 60%

Net price: $9,255

Reason it made the cut: One of the only public liberal arts schools in the nation, UMM ranks just behind cash-rich Amherst and Williams for bang for the buck among schools of its type.

Morris students, a third of whom are first-generation college-goers, shoulder the lowest debt burden in the University of Minnesota system, and among the lowest in the Midwest. The public school price tag, in tandem with a low student-to-faculty ratio of 15 to 1 and other private/liberal arts school attributes, makes Morris a unique value proposition. And if a liberal arts degree may not seem like the most efficient ticket to social mobility in a depressed economy, consider this: 94 percent of recent Morris grads either went on to pursue advanced degrees or found employment within a year of leaving school, which they attribute to the resources, reputation, and connections that the campus enjoys as part of the University of Minnesota system. In addition to being able to choose from thirty-five different liberal arts majors, Morris’s 1,900 students can select from eight preprofessional programs like engineering and nursing, as well as an online learning program—reminders of that public school status and network despite the school’s small size and capacity.

I’m tempted to say, though, that you shouldn’t come here. We’re really, really good, but we’re also full up with students. All the faculty in biology are stretched thinly to keep up with everything — I don’t know that we could handle any more workload.

So unless you’re absolutely brilliant, ambitious, and enthusiastic about getting an amazingly good broad education in the liberal arts, you shouldn’t apply here. Maybe you can go to the University of Minnesota Twin Cities instead? It’s a perfectly nice second choice.

If you can’t get in here, I’m sure you’ve got some acceptable safety schools, like Harvard or something.

Wincing…and applauding

Oh, man, I can’t endorse this action by Lakota and Dakota women. I think people have a right to do as they please (as long as it doesn’t harm others) on their private property — that goes for worshipping Jesus or Thor, desecrating Bibles, or even flying Nazi flags. (All bets are off if the Nazi sympathizers in Leith, ND, who were trying to stage a takeover of the local government, were flying that flag as representative of the city.)

So I can’t support seizing the Nazi flag and burning it, if it were someone else’s private property. But I still look at this picture and think…whoa, but they are badass.

Lakota and Dakota grandmothers captured the Nazi flag hanging in Leith, ND and burned it. Warriors!

Lakota and Dakota grandmothers captured the Nazi flag hanging in Leith, ND and burned it. Warriors!

A blissful silence falls over the town

The Curse of Morris is no more. Last month, someone cut the wires to the cheesy carillon located in the cemetery just north of me, and the chimes no longer ring out every goddamn quarter hour. The obnoxious ass, Ted Storck, who is responsible for these horrible things wrote a letter to our local paper and also mailed me a note in which he accused me or my amoral atheist buddies of having done it.

Cutting cemetery chimes was a savage act

I hope the person(s) who used a hatchet to chop the wires going to the chimes at Summit Cemetery is happy with himself or herself. Those chimes brought comfort to many folks at burials, as well as those visiting the cemeteries at other times. The chimes are maintained by the veterans posts of Morris, and the repair cost will mean less money to assist those in need, both veterans and others. The chimes were placed there to honor those who served our nation. You dishonored their service by your savage act. You even cut the wires we use to turn off one speaker to the northeast when there are no burials in that area, so if we can’t afford to repair that wire, all four speakers will be left on even when there are no burials in that area, but burials in Calvary and areas to the south. When there are burials, as the hearse enters the cemetery, the bells toll and then after the service, hymns are played.

Be proud of yourself; I’m sure your mother and father would be proud of how they raised you.

The mortality rate in Morris must be tremendous, because those hymns were played every quarter hour, starting in the early hours of the morning, so there must have been 50 funerals a day. Maybe the reason they’ve gone silent is that everyone is dead now?

Storck is such a dishonest fraud. No, I and the other residents of this neighborhood would have no objection at all if the chimes were played for funerals, or for the special ceremonies the local veterans have there; that would be entirely reasonable. The constant din is not. And for Storck, that arrogant carpet-bagging out-of-towner, to insist on subjecting others to a level of noise he can’t hear is unconscionable.

As for the claim that I’m responsible: no. I admit, I have fantasized about seeing them shut off, but usually those daydreams involve a squadron of A-10s howling overhead and turning them into a smoking, flaming crater with Hellfire missiles, not a few chops of an axe. And of course, I have two good reasons for not doing it: as a moral person with an opposition to vandalism, I’d prefer it were handled more ethically, and also as the village atheist of Morris, Minnesota, getting caught vandalizing a Catholic cemetery would have wider repercussions than the merely personal.

But then, Ted Storck can’t comprehend that, as his moral sense has apparently atrophied and replaced with religious dogma and a large dollop of sanctimony.

I’m just going to enjoy the peace and quiet before they repair the damage, after which, knowing Storck’s attitude, they’ll probably redouble the rate or volume of the curse he’s bestowed on this town.

Cafe Scientifique resumes!

I’m giving you plenty of advanced warning, because I know it’ll take you a bit to arrange air flights and all that. Our first Cafe Scientifique of the new school year will be on 24 September, at the Common Cup Coffeehouse in downtown Morris. Biologist Pete Wyckoff will be telling us about

The Impact of CLIMATE, DEER, EARTHWORMS, and the INVASIVE EUROPEAN BUCKTHORN TREE on the FORESTS of WESTERN MINNESOTA

Wait, what forests of Western Minnesota? I guess we’ll find out what happened to them.

As a special inducement, we have charismatic and cheerful students doing all the introductions — no more bearded old guy being boring. And also…door prizes! And a trivia contest! With prizes! Brush up on your tree lore before coming around, because you’ll be getting quizzed on trees and forests.

Wait, this is Western Minnesota. These will have to be really simple questions, like “what is a tree?” and “is it a plant or an animal?” and “what do you call a herd of trees?” Maybe Pete will show photographs of forests so the locals will learn to recognize them.

Don’t you wish you’d chosen UMM?

Now that the academic year is starting, the Star-Tribune puts out a short summary of success at Minnesota colleges. We’ll use it next year to recruit more students.

The University of Minnesota, Morris stands out among the state’s public four-year institutions for generating more grads than expected at a good price. UM-Morris Chancellor Jacquie Johnson attributes that result to a tight-knit, supportive campus culture that allows the nearly 1,800 students to build strong relationships with faculty. One of every three students at Morris is either minority or international in origin. The school’s success with that diverse student population warrants examination and imitation.

Yay, us!

Last call, Minnesotans

The fun and informative Minnesota Regional Atheists conference is over for another year, but there’s a little tiny bit more. After Atheist Talk radio this morning, Annie Laurie Gaylor and Greta Christina will be joining us for brunch at Q Cumbers — an open event. So if you weren’t able to make it to the conference, but you’d still like to meet some of the guest speakers, this is your chance.

Al Franken exceeding expectations

Salon has a nice review of our senator from Minnesota, Al Franken (quick, who’s the other one?*). He really has been doing well, working hard, mostly coming down on the side of goodness and reason, and he’s also a darn nice fella in person — he’s even visited our quiet rural backwater a few times.

We could use a few more like Franken in congress.

*No, it’s not Michele Bachmann. It’s Amy Klobuchar, the woman politician from Minnesota who always gets unfairly overshadowed by the kook from the 6th congressional district. We have two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor, I’ll have you know.

An atheist goes to church: Federated Church of Morris

Today I attended the Federated Church of Morris. I’ve actually been here many times before in a different capacity — it’s where my district goes to vote (but that’s a different bag of worms to complain about). It also has a reputation as the most liberal church in Morris, so this is where a lot of the believing faculty go, and I suspect most of the registered Democrats in town.

So I was not at all surprised at all of the effete decadence I saw going down in there.

First, the service starts at the odd hour of 9:30 — they just have to be out of phase with the rest of the town. One of the notable things I saw at the other churches was their remarkable punctiliousness, with every service starting precisely on the hour, and ending exactly one hour later. Not the Federated Church; they were a little more casual with their time, starting 5 minutes late, and the service went on for an hour and a quarter. I know, you’re already shocked, but the worst is yet to come.

Unlike the other churches, we were asked to stand once at the beginning (and then, only “if you are able”) and once at the end. I could spend the whole dang hour and a quarter with my butt firmly pressed against my seat (And, of course, the pews were padded, but then that seems to be par for the course here in degenerate Morris). My knees did not get a workout in this place at all.

The pastor is a woman, and the opening hymn even included a line about “Mother God”. The church isn’t even organized traditionally. There was a central altar, and the pews were arranged in the round around it. Or, should I say, since there were 5 banks of pews, they were arranged rather pentagonally…or perhaps [duh-duh-DUUUUHH!!] pentagrammatically.

So, anyway, so far it seems to be my kind of place. Thumbs up on ambience and clientele and hosts. What about the content?

And that, alas, was all too typical. Hymns, prayers, and invocations of some dude named Jesus all over the place; readings from some stodgy old book; a list of prayer recipients we were supposed to remember. Somebody has been giving the pastor lessons in good pedagogy, because rather than lecturing at us, she called for active participation from the audience. If only the interactions had been interesting! We had a blank page in the papers we were handed at the beginning, and she asked us to come up for names for their god — and so people were offering up happy pablum, like “love” and “service” and “parent” and so forth. I was coming up with names that I would not have wanted to utter in the respectful atmosphere of a church, so it’s a good thing she didn’t call on me. I think the nicest things floating around in my head were “nothing”, “ghost”, and “nonsense”, and even those would have been disruptive to use. So I kept silent.

Don’t ever say I don’t know how to be polite!

Unfortunately, despite the well-meaning attitudes of this congregation, all I heard was a lot of mumbo-jumbo. I’m afraid that even the mildest of Christian habits, praising a non-existent god, is as nonsensical to me as going to a charismatic church and seeing people twitching on the ground, chanting “FALAFA DOOBA SHADA BAKA LAKA ZALA FA NA”. It left me cold, bored, and wondering what the heck people got out of this repetitive fantasy. It’s sad. I think they were all good people, but they have this need to dress up humanitarian good-heartedness with goofy old legends, and for some, I’m sure, the goofiness is the point. But I can’t share that view.

So I’m hanging this project up. The Federated church would have been the high point of my experience, I’m sure — these are my kind of people, except for the religion thing — and it would all be downhill from here. There was still our local biblical literalists, the Apostolic Christian Church, and the Morris Assembly of God, and the Kingdom Hall, but those folks be batboinking nuts, and I think I could only get a worse opinion of religion by visiting those. So that’s enough. I’ve had a charitable sampling of local faith.

Also, I’ve got to tell you — church services are goddamned boring. I think that’s how the tediously dull game of football got to be such a big sport in this country — they only had to be less boring than church.