If you start me up I'll never stop

The golden horses on top of Minnesota State Capitol are straining at their harnesses and yearning to break free into the cold snowy air of February. I'm in the basement of the marble building mixing up the government journalistic medicine.

The 86th Session of the Minnesota Legislature has started and although sometimes it may seem to follow the Rolling Stones' lyric of feeling like it will never stop, the lawmaking will grind to a halt one day in mid May. On that day, barring a major climate shift, people will emerge from the Capitol and will be greeted by much warmer weather and an absence of snow. But, until then....

All I hear is the sound, of rain falling on the ground

The offices of the news gatherers are so far underground that we can't hear or see any changes in the weather. However, we do take the trip upstairs to view the proceedings and relay our observations.

The call to order in the House of Representatives did not happen exactly at noon. Proceedings got underway after the minute hand on the clock located over the House chamber door had been advancing for a while. This is known as "House Time" and this is an often repeated phrase among those involved in the process. The term usually denotes a start time between ten and twenty minutes after the advertised start time. The Minnesota Senate also has a fluid view of time that has been coined: "Senate Time." For journalists and others with deadline-oriented jobs, the chamber times can be frustrating, but one learns to live with these traditions of space and time.

I sit and watch the children play

The process of creating legislation is not child's play. However, on the Session's first day, legislators sometimes bring their families. In an early example of bi-partisan cooperation, House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, DFL Minneapolis held three year old Will Zellers, son of Minority Leader, Curt Zellers, R-Maple Grove, who helped pound the opening gavel. I captured Will teasing his five year old sister Reagan as they sat at their father's desk on the floor. This video may eventually show one of the few light hearted exchanges on the floor for some time to come. The spirit of working together may extend beyond the opening gavel, but with all 201 seats up for election this fall, it appears the battle lines are being drawn and cooperation may be elusive.

Smiling faces I can see, but not for me

The opening day of the Legislative session is much like the first day of school. Arch rivals laugh and talk with each other. Hands reach out for long hand shakes and hugs among the members are often seen. Soon enough they will be throwing policy snowballs across the historic chambers at each other. Some of the snowballs will roll out the doors and down the halls and stairs to the Governor's office. The legal snowballs grow in size as they roll and often the Executive branch shaves off some of the ice and sends the mass back to the respective bodies to work something out.

The first day of the session also reminds me of time spent at Public Schools Stadium in Duluth. As a young trombone player and yearbook photographer I was always puzzled when the cheerleaders from opposing teams would gather and talk with each other before the football games. Their animated expressions and friendly exchanges didn't ring true for me since I thought we were all united against our foes-the other team. When the whistle blew and the game began, those same cheerleaders yelled for victory against our athletic advisories. It seemed to me that the joy of seeing each other disappeared into that cold fall air once the contest began.

In many ways, covering the legislature is like covering a sporting event mixed with a stage production. There is a clock running (on House and Senate time), goals need to be reached, and both sides fight to defend their turf or try to gain their ground. The politicians deliver speeches that often seem theatrical. The audience of journalists, staff and lobbyists can't applaud in the chambers, but in offices throughout the Capitol complex where televisions are tuned to the feeds of the proceedings there are often shouts of affirmation, opposition and sometimes laughter.

Doing things I used to do, they think are new

Despite the promises that this time the law making process will be different and the work will be done quickly and efficiently (and just maybe the Session will end early) the path that a bill takes to become a law sometimes gets hung up in committees or in the debates that fill the chambers. As the session travels down the bumpy country lane of doing the people's business, long days and sometime nights wear the participants down. Nobody looks as good as they did that first day. The smiles and laughter give way to frowns and serious conferences in corners of the Capitol. The children are not there to lighten the mood. The freshly pressed clothes of the first day give way to wrinkles and the evidence of hurried meals eaten on the way to committee meetings can decorate once clean garments. This holds true for us jackal journalists as well.

The electricity in the air ebbs and flows as various bills reach the point of passage. Senators and Representatives who have declared that they will not seek re-election seem relaxed. Those seeking to occupy the seats of power again or have their sights on a higher office become more intense.

The golden horses atop the dome still want to run free. The people involved in the process will reach a point that they will desire to ride those horses to a place devoid of bill numbers, vetoes, override votes, and mind numbing debates. In the meantime, the production of making laws continues and we in the basement will sift out the golden nuggets of information that flow down the streams of government to our subterranean quarters.

The Hartbeat goes on...

The Musical Notes

The Rolling Stones provide the musical free association thread for this Hartbeat. I thought of Start Me Up as a good way to kick off the blog. I put out a message on face book that this edition would have a Stones connection to the beginning of the session and Start Me Up struck a chord among some of the flock.

Start Me Up was recorded by the lads in 1976 and failed to make it on the albums Black and Blue, Some Girls and Emotional Rescue. The song was part of the 1981 album Tattoo You and as a single was very successful. The composition has been used in car commercials, as part of a Microsoft marketing campaign and the Stones performed it at the 2006 Super Bowl. Given my comparisons between the Session and a football game, Start Me Up fits right in.

The lyrics from As Tears Go By gave a springboard for the other observations of the lawmaking process. As Tears Go By was a hit for Marianne Faithful in 1964 (she later became Mick Jagger's girlfriend) and a hit for the Stones in 1965. It was one of the first of the original compositions by Jagger and Keith Richards. The band had been performing covers of blues standards and As Tears Go By was a significant moment in the career of the band. The song was also part of the band's third appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Fans of Merle Haggard may ferret out a link to Are the Good Times Really Over in the snowball sequence, but living with the Stones for the music keeps this Hartbeat somewhat consistent.

What's Cooking on the Hartbeat Grill?

In 1984 photographer Peter Feldstein photographed six hundred and seventy of the six hundred and seventy six residents of the town of Oxford, Iowa. He set up two lights and a 4x5 Speed Graphic camera inside a storefront on the main street of town and captured images of the people.

Feldstein returned to the town in 2005 with a digital camera to photograph as many of the originally photographed residents as he could find. This time they stood against a plain wall outside the original storefront. With Feldstein sitting in, Stephen Bloom interviewed one hundred of the residents. Bloom did not use a tape recorder and asked very few questions. He let the people speak. The results are personal, emotional life stories that along with the images from 1984 and 2005 make The Oxford Project a fascinating book.

The Photo Notes

The images in this edition of Hartbeat don't have the same drama as the ones in The Oxford Project. (They are stills from DVCAM videotape.) Maybe I'll photograph these 2010 participants twenty years from now...who knows?

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