And so it begins...

I am currently looking for a home on the North Side of Minneapolis. This is because I want to be near my little son, age 10, who lives in a suburb of the Twin Cities with his mother who is (I take pains to point out) an excellent mother. I also have a dream of helping to improve a troubled neighborhood and turn it into an urban utopia, a dream first instilled in me by a buddy of mine in Seattle, one Chris Gilmore, neighborhood activist and, I might add, one fine gardener and beekeeper.

A dream like that I feel is worthy to dedicate what I might call the "second half of my life." A dream like that will take years, decades, of blood and sweat and tears. I am ready.

I've virtually moved heaven and earth to be in the same city as my son, so I can see him frequently and be a meaningful part of his life. Through incredible and colorful acts of economizing, I've managed to squirrel away enough money to just about buy a home on the North Side and make a go of it.

In the course of researching homes on the North Side, I became fascinated with the issue of mortgage fraud, and heavily involved in digging up info and blogging about it on places like the TJ Waconia victims blog and Behind The Mortgage dot com. I dug up a lot of information about Universal Mortgage and forwarded it to a very good reporter in another state where Universal Mortgage was doing business, and I wait for something to come of that in the near future. I even filed "pro forma" complaints against Universal Mortgage in some states where this entity was doing business, so to start the investigative ball rolling where there appeared to be a lack of information.

Just today, while I was eating at Lucky Dragon on the West Bank, an investigator working for the State of Florida called me, asking about some further information. I went back to my grad school and filed a refined complaint with some further info. It's a very legalistic basis, but I think it has a shot of having the desired impact. We shall see.

I don't know what fascinates me so much about mortgage fraud. I'm not a victim and I've never had a mortgage before. Initially, I was just looking for some houses that might be "damaged goods" because of the fraud, looking for a bargain, but then I got totally into the topic when I saw a role that could be filled digging up info. People give me some kudos for digging up info, but I don't think it's such a big deal. I'm just compulsive about it. Once I catch the scent, I just don't quit, because I love the digging, the solving of a complicated mystery.

Of course, the North Side is the epicenter of mortgage fraud in the State of Minnesota. So it was all part of my "North Side" research, in a way. But I've also written a total of three opinion pieces about the North Side, which I'll be posting here by and by as I figure out how this blogger-roni thing works. These opinion pieces have generated a lot of commentary, both in the form of published letters to the editor/opinion pieces as well as emails. I'll be sharing what I can, but not violating any confidences for those who sent me emails with some very frank opinions, both for and against the stuff I was saying.

I love the North Side. I embrace the North Side, and I want it to embrace me. But I am ultra-realistic about the things I have seen there: fairly obvious drug dealing taking place on corners in broad daylight... a man who told me he was too scared to walk to the gas station just half a block away, because of crime in the neighborhood... rampant evidence of squatters in buildings... houses that have been left in really rough condition by the former owners, and the little surprises those houses hold. (I found a red jeweled thong on the kitchen counter of the last house I looked at, on Penn Ave N. Makes you wonder about the--dare I say?--"back story")

I also am open to and excited about the good things on the North Side, and I'm going to go out on a limb and say there is so much more good than bad, and that's why I hope grads and grad students from the University of Minnesota will consider making the North Side their nearby and affordable Twin Cities home instead of being "in thrall" to landlords in neighborhoods like Marcy-Holmes, truly a slumlord paradise. This is the best housing market in 30 years, and the best bargains are on the North Side. Buy, Gophers, buy!!!!

Good things I've seen on the North Side:

* The family-owned Asian grocery store just blocks from a house I looked at on Penn Ave. N., with a wonderful assortment of foods, some I've already learned to enjoy and others I'm looking forward to getting some cookbooks and learning all about.

* The large, beautiful Catholic church in the same neighborhood, which advertises services in both English and Vietnamese. I couldn't help thinking about one of my favorite students, Tiffany C. Dow, both talented and--at various points in her life--troubled, who embraced Catholicism and really seemed to turn her life in a good direction, now going to grad school in Wales. I thought how much she would enjoy seeing that church. She'd probably find a story idea there, as she often finds story ideas.

* The executive director of JACC, which looks out for the Jordan neighborhood, who was so eager to meet me and promote the North Side he swung by a local coffee shop to chat on short notice, his cute 6-year-old daughter in tow. She sat and read a storybook while he told me about his neighborhood. He said he was a realist. He told me about things like the need for diversity in the police force to promote more effective community policing, the need for officers to actually get out of their vehicles and interact, and how officers should live in the same city they patrol, not someplace like Lakeville.

I found myself saying "I couldn't agree more."

* The police officers who spoke to me about the neighborhood. Yes, I've heard some critical comments about how they didn't get out of their cars, they even "warned" me about the neighborhood. But you know what? They cared. They stopped to check out what was happening with a guy looking at an empty, boarded up building with a flashlight. The one who spoke to me was polite and completely controlled.

The cops are doing a good job. Yeah, we need more diversity in the ranks. We need more community policing. But you know what? The force we have is the force we have, and I don't think we can wait for the perfect force and the perfect moment to shut down open air drug markets. The Minneapolis Police Department once saved my father's life. That goes a long way with me, even if there have been periods in my life where I've been intensely critical of *some* police, or *some* police forces.

* A dream. A dream that begins to root itself in the North Side. A dream of living in the Twin Cities, the place where my father once worked as a humble cab driver, and he would come all the way back to our 11-acre farm near Forada, Minn., population 192 (now it's up to 197, I think) with what certainly SEEMED like big piles of money, and he would tell us incredible, colorful stories of the Twin Cities.

The time a naked woman ran out of a house and got in his cab. "DRIVE, CABBY, DRIVE!" she shouted. My father driving, but asking, "Um...where is your money?" The time Liberace (yes, THE Liberace) got in his cab, and graced my father with a $20 bill for a tip, and this back in the 1970s.

"Keep the change, cabbie," Liberace said, as his dazzling jeweled fingers held forth the $20.

The number of times he was robbed. My father once confided to me...while he was intoxicated, of course, which was when all the really juicy revelations took place...that he would never reveal to my mother how many times he was robbed in that cab. Once he faked out a robber with a toy pistol. Yes, it was MY toy pistol.

My father lost the Twin Cities duplex he owned in his first divorce. The culture, the economic opportunities of the Twin Cities were accessible, but oh how far away they seemed at times. Oh, how I wanted to travel to what seemed a distant land, once even hiding in his car and hoping to make the journey there. (He found me right away, and thank god) How well I remember the field trip my first grade class made to the Twin Cities, standing on the observation deck of the IDS tower and looking over the amazing cityscape.

I often feel like I carry the spirit of my dad with me. I can especially feel him when I am on Hennepin Avenue, because of the stories he used to tell about Hennepin Avenue, which at one time was synonymous with a rough part of town. Now look how Hennepin has changed. Look at how Lake Street, especially, has changed.

The same can happen for the North Side. It can be a diverse, artsy mix of the old and the new. Nobody should be "driven out," except DRUG DEALERS, but something must be added in place of all the empty, boarded-up buildings.

I want to start that ball rolling. I want to plant flowers, and put on coats of fresh paint, and describe my adventures here, including all the specifics about the different hurdles--the maze of different renovation programs available, the controversies and divisions and different points of view, and, yes, the dangers. The very real dangers. Don't tell me these dangers aren't real or try to cover them all over with this "spirit and feel of the North Side" thing, not when nice old women get stabbed in their home and a beautiful 4-year-old boy ends up in a garbage bag.

(Though let's be fair. He was first placed in a duffel bag. One newspaper used the phrase "double bagged" and I thought, "Oh, god, people are going to end up thinking about that when they buy heavy grocery items and say, "Double bag it, please." Well, let them think about it. What an awful, senseless murder. I'm just haunted by it)

Enough for a first post. I'm still figuring out how this whole thing works!
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