The Lesser Twin

Garrison Keillor almost exorcised St. Paul's Second City neurosis vis-a-vis Minneapolis. And now that Prairie homebody has defected to his lady's Denmark--and not very gracefully either, scowling all the way to Lindbergh International Airport. Is there life in Pig's Eye (the burg's original name) after Lake Wo is begon?

All my heavy thinking in SP begins at breakfast at Mickey's, the only Art Deco diner in America which is a National Hysterical Sight. I always order "Two's" for breakfast--two eggs over light and two pancakes garnished with four of the tastiest link sausages pigs have ever bequeathed to mankind.

Keillor was not on the mind of eighteen year old Colleen O'Leary the newest waitress on the block. The budding painter wanted me to know about the Open House the Lowertown Arts neighborhood was flinging. She was a good advertisement for anything in Mickey's new black uniforms.

Fortified by the best and most abundant coffee in North America, I began to make my downtown rounds. Mickey's (for impecunious travelers with brass butts) is across the street from both Greyhound and Trailways, the latter of which I noted moved next door since my last visit in much upgraded surroundings.

One block up and over is the Science Museum of Minnesota where many years ago I learned to love OMNIMAX, the continuity for which originals was written by no less a muse than the radical local poet Tom McGrath, whom Robert Penn Warren told me was the best student he ever had back at Huey Long's Louisiana State. On June 21 those canny programmers are starting a new Omni "Seasons" on the very day of the Summer Solstice.

"A green leaf spreads over the Omnitheater's 75-foot diameter domed screen and changes into an explosion of reddish orange as fall approaches." Zowie! But the main attraction of this Museum which is eloquent enough to turn the most hidebound humanist (viz., me) into a drooling Sci Freak is The Science Show a circus where you are the ringmaster and science is the main attraction.

It's a Six Ring Circus with sections on Energy, Gravity, and Stability, Nature's Shapes, Images, Vision, and Sound. In the Energy ring, for example, you use a laser beam radio to see how energy is used to communicate and generate power with a bicycle-powered turbine.

Garrison who? Kitty Korner from the Science Museum is the World Theatre, newly refurbished and world renowned as the Saturday night venue of "A Prairie Home Companion". Is it empty? Unh uh. (Tickets are sold out for "Prairie" through its June 13 sayonara show.) But they're turning the retrieved Schubert circuit vaudeville hall into a multipurpose concert center--jazz, "The Duck's Breath Mystery Theatre," readings, whatever.

And of course it will be the venue for a new variety show hosted by Noah Adams, the warmest tonsils from coast to coast, ex-toast of "All Things Considered". I trotted up the two blocks to Minnesota Public Radio's handsome HQ across the street from St. Paul's latest bid for international attention, the towering World Trade Center set to open on August 12. At MPR they're running Noah locally in the fall, with a January 1988 national inaugural.

The Landmark Center in downtown St. Paul is one of the most savoury cultural centers in our country,a recycled 1890's Post Office/Federal Building. Gracing the Minnesota Museum of Art's satellite place now is "Lost and Found Traditions: Native American Art 1965-1985" which dispels the myth that Amerinds have stopped creating indigenous art to concentrate on kitsch for the tourists. The American Federation of Arts catalog is a best buy if you can't get to the show. In the lovely Art Deco main MMA (a recycled Women's Club with a gasper of a view of the mighty old Mississippi from its dining room windows) there is a Edward Curtis photography exhibition.

Other cultural attractions in beautiful downtown Pig's Eye this summer include an exhibition of Minnesota painters celebrating the the golden jubilee of their artists association in the James Hill House on Summit Avenue (Yes, Virginia, that's Scott Fitzgerald's Summit. But the manse in question derives from the Empire Builder of Northern Pacific rail fame.)

There's more. Taste of Minnesota, a food freakout on the steps of the State Capitol over Fourth of July weekend, and RiverFest on Harriet Island in the Mississippi July 10-18. Paddlewheel excursion boats churn up and down Ole Miss all summer long.

There's a plethora of pamphlets on the racks in the Ramsey County Court House and more alternative weeklies than you can read in a weekend at the Landmark Center. Visit Ramsey to see my favorite civic sculpture in all America, Carl Milles' "Indian God of Peace" which St. Paulites are so proud of there's a minilibrary of brochures touting it.

Is there life after Keillor in the Lesser Twin? In a Pig's Eye, you better believe it!