QUITE RIGHT

My wife's birthday fell on Thursday last week, and we celebrated by going to a restaurant near our home in Apple Valley. Linda had had her eye on the place for a while, and when we checked out the website the menu suggested it was home to interesting American cuisine and the photographs of sedate lighting and white linen tablecloths bespoke an ambience of warmth and good taste.
 
The restaurant lived up to its promise, but if there was a downside, it was most of the other diners.
 
This was a special occasion, so we purposefully chose the place over, say, an inexpensive "family-style" restaurant or an amped-up sports bar with the 360-degree TV motif. But you would never have guessed there was a difference from the apparel worn by most of the other patrons. Blue jeans (the scruffier the better), tank tops, T-shirts, flip-flops, cutoffs, sweat shirts — you get the picture. I'm surprised I didn't see some pinhead wearing a baseball cap backwards.

I recall the episode of "The Sopranos" in which Tony took Carmella to an elegant restaurant and, after being seated by a nervously unctuous waiter, Tony spotted a slovenly dressed dimwit sitting at another table wearing a baseball cap backwards. It was bad enough that the imbecile didn't know enough to remove his hat indoors, but the effrontery was compounded by the manner in which the hat was worn.

The tableaux was made even more outlandish for the lovely way in which the trog's date was dressed.

My heart raced at the thought of Tony ordering a hit (to me, a mercy killing) on the fool, but after some words were exchanged and the offending diner removed the symbol of his boorishness, Tony magnanimously sent a bottle of wine to the clod's table.

Restaurants aren't the only places where bad manners are on conspicuous display. It's everywhere these days. Places of business more often resemble high-school parking lots than sites of serious work, and even many churches on Sunday look like the congregants were headed to a Twins game and mistakenly took a wrong turn.

My point is that the way one dresses reflects the respect one has for one's self and the company one keeps, as well as the work in which one is engaged. If nothing is deemed important enough to dress for the occasion, how very banal and monochromatic life will be.

* * *

Would somebody please give Brett Favre a dictionary with the page bearing the definition of "dignity" clearly marked. He seems to have misplaced his several years ago.

* * *

The hottest news video of the week is the Tasing of an elderly woman west of Austin, Texas, by a sheriff's deputy. The incident was everywhere on the tube, but it seems to have been on a loop at Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and Headline News.

Kathryn Winkfein apparently was going 60 miles per hour in a 45 mph zone in Marble Fall, 50 miles west of Austin, when she was pulled over in her white pickup truck by Travis County Sheriff's Deputy Chris Bieze. A dashboard video camera on Bieze's cruiser caught the action.

Winkfein not only refused to sign the ticket Bieze issued, but she became verbally abusive. The deputy even had to push her off the road so she apparently wouldn't be struck by traffic.

Winkfein went ballistic. "You're gonna shove a 72-year-old woman," she said angrily, according to the Associated Press.

"If you don't step back, you're going to get Tased," Bieze yelled back.

"Go ahead, Tase me," Winkfein said. "I dare you."

That's exactly what Bieze did.

Not content to have the diminutive great-grandmother on the ground, the deputy yelled: "Put your hands behind your back or you're going to be Tased again."

She didn't comply. Zap! He nailed her yet again.

Winkfein has been charged with resisting arrest, a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and fines up to $4,000.

She said she's hired a lawyer. Good.

What is so appalling about this episode is that the hulking deputy believed he was unable to control the septuagenarian, obstreperous though she may have been, without using potentially deadly force against her. The disparity in the sizes of the two, not to mention the training Bieze ostensibly received, would have suggested that this incident should have been resolved in a more civilized manner.

Law enforcement is one of the few growth industries in our increasingly policed society. It is clear from this incident, and an alarming number like them, that the use of force is not always the last resort.

The early afternoon sun poured through the large window of my Fairview Southdale Hospital room, cut by the blinds into strips of gold. It was May 11.

I was sitting in bed with all sorts of wires attached to my chest and stomach, and various tubes affixed to the veins on both arms, reading the Star Tribune, which a nurse had thoughtfully provided.

A tall figure in a starched white medical smock glided noiselessly into my peripheral vision. "Mr. Bonafield?"

"Yes."

"Good afternoon, I am Dr. …" I had never seen her before, didn't recognize the name. But she carried herself in a manner that exuded authority. She had the physician's usual accoutrements — stethoscope, pens in a pocket on which a name was neatly embroidered, clipboard — and a pleasant, if serious, demeanor.

"I'm afraid I have some bad news for you, sir. You have cancer."

The rest of the conversation, aside from some odds and ends, is lost to memory, the victim no doubt of the previous day's morphine drip and subsequent regular doses of Percocet.

The doctor was tall and stately and remarkably articulate in the sense that what followed wasn't a recitation in medical-speak, but a candid assessment in laymen's language of what the batteries of seemingly endless tests had revealed.

The only other person in the room, aside from an 88-year-old anesthetized gentleman sequestered behind a partitioning curtain, was a young nurse whose countenance changed instantly from sunny to that of someone who suddenly comes across a car wreck.

"I'm afraid there is something else," the doctor said. "You have developed another aneurysm, this one in the abdomen" — I already had one that was discovered in October on the ascending aorta — "that is dangerously large. It will have to be dealt with immediately."

I knew something was up, I just hadn't expected it to be so, well, ominous.

Two days before, my wife, Linda, and I had gone to Red Wing for a day trip. While Linda puttered around an antiques store, I thumbed through some old books. There was a nagging pain in my right knee, but I didn't think much of it. By the time we got home that evening, it was getting bad, with intensifying pain extending from the knee all the way up my right leg to my hip.

By 10 p.m., I was on the floor of the bedroom on the verge of vomiting from pain that was so intense, so unrelenting, that it took all the strength I had to keep from screaming. In the relative calm of a brief respite between waves of pain, it crossed my mind that only one thing could cause agony like this, but I was too sick to dwell on that.

Linda drove me to Fairview Ridges Hospital in Burnsville, where I was asked to describe the pain on a scale of one to 10. "Twenty-six!" I replied through gritted teeth.

Shot up with a painkiller that didn't do the job and then switched to more powerful doses of something else, I lost my sense of time and vaguely recall being wheeled around to various rooms for different tests. Finally, at 5:30 Sunday morning, I was loaded into an ambulance and shipped to Southdale.

And so began the latest chapter in my life. I've opened it to you because I want you to know why I've been off the firing line here at MinnPost for two weeks. And if my postings are a bit irregular for a while, I hope you'll understand and cut me some slack.

The good news is that the cancer, called "arena cell carcinoma," is apparently neither aggressive nor life-threatening. It sits atop my left kidney like a jellyfish. I will lose that kidney. The cancer is the source of what the doctors call "referred pain," and is also the cause of a fairly constant feeling of low-grade nausea. I'll be glad when that's over.

The abdominal aneurysm, however, is a potential killer. It will be attended to first. The fact that I have two of these things in me is a matter of great concern to the physicians. I have appointments with my cardiologist, who must make certain the aneurysm on my ascending aorta is stable, and with my regular physician, for a complete physical prior to the first surgery.

It's a mess, but my spirits are good, and I am confident everything will be fine. The first operation is scheduled for June 16, followed by a 10-day recovery period. Then it's on to the surgery to remove the cancerous kidney. I just have to keep my blood pressure under control, so it's adieu for the time being to addressing the likes of the lamentable Nancy Pelosi and the spitting contest between Dick Cheney and Colin Powell.

But I'll be back, to quote another notable pol. Count on it.

A dear friend and former colleague in California once remarked acerbically that "San Diego County is about 4,100 square miles wide and half an inch deep." His point in context was that most residents of the place had no idea of the area's history — and likely would have cared less, anyway.

One suspects the same holds true for most people in the Twin Cities.

Oh, sure, we all know (vaguely) about the flour barons and the milling empire that arose on the banks of the Mississippi, and something of the heyday of the huge steam locomotives that powered commerce in the metro area. But the deep history and remarkable cultural diversity of the area probably remain a mystery to most of us.

For example, not many people know that Minneapolis produced a saint — Alexis Toth, a priest of the Russian Orthodox Church who originally was sent here in the late 19th century from a province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire that today is part of the Slovak Republic.

The story is complicated, as befits the part of the world from which Toth hailed. He wasn't even an Orthodox priest when he arrived here, but, rather, the pastor of a congregation of several hundred souls who were Greek Catholics, or Uniates, an Eastern branch of Catholicism in communion with Rome.

Father Alexis presented his credentials, as protocol dictated, to Roman Catholic Archbishop John Ireland in St. Paul. The legendary Ireland was a larger-than-life cleric who ruled the diocese with an iron hand. The meeting between the meek Toth and the leonine Ireland was not the archbishop's finest hour. Toth was promptly shown the door after a dressing down by Ireland, who a) viewed the polyglot-tongued Uniates as antithetical to his determination to Americanize the Catholic church, and b) was irate that Toth was married, a dispensation granted by Rome to Eastern-rite clergy notwithstanding.

Hurt and angry at what had transpired, Toth's congregation prevailed on him to petition the Imperial Russian Consulate in San Francisco for help, which was forthcoming. Father Alexis traveled to the Coast, no mean feat in those days, for a meeting with Bishop Vladimir, who subsequently came to Minneapolis to receive Toth and his 361 parishioners into the Russian Orthodox Church.

It was the first in a long list of conversions that eventually included various Eastern-rite parishes as far east as Pennsylvania. Through Toth's efforts, more than 20,000 Carpatho-Russians and Galicians were embraced by the Orthodox Church. Moreover, the church has documented miracles over the years that it attributes to the intercession of Toth, who died on May 7, 1909.

To mark the centennial of Toth's repose, St. Mary's Orthodox Cathedral in northeast Minneapolis will celebrate his life with a lecture tonight and a special program Thursday that includes Metropolitan Jonah of North America and Canada and Archbishop Job of the Diocese of the Midwest.

"When the Russian Orthodox Church accepted the Greek Catholics in Minneapolis, freely and generously and without demands, because it was the right thing to do, the church took a very big risk," said Archpriest Andrew Morbey, the cathedral's dean. "It was willing to reach out, to bless particular customs and practices, to integrate and celebrate cultural diversity and traditions to the greater glory of God and his church. It did this in Alaska, in Korea and China and Japan — and here in America, starting in Minneapolis!"

Say diversity these days and you are understood to be speaking almost exclusively in terms of race or sexuality. That's too bad, for diversity is an exceptionally large, vibrant and multifaceted tapestry; among its more dazzling threads are the various creeds that Americans profess.

Full disclosure: I am a convert to Orthodoxy and a communicant of St. Mary's. Our large and diverse parish is composed of people whose heritage includes Irish, Italian, Greek, Scottish, Ukrainian, Slovakian, Slovenian, Russian, Canadian, Polish, Ethiopian and Armenian. I've even met an Orthodox Jew at the cathedral. My heritage is French. Viva la diversité.

Is there a conservative in the house?

There is now.

I'm delighted you stopped by, and I hope what you'll find here is informative, stimulating and, ultimately, representative of views too often undercovered and, sometimes, not covered at all in the general media. Most of all, I hope you'll enjoy your forays here.

Conservatism is a big-tent philosophy, and in our sometimes fractious, remarkably diverse family you'll find people with an astonishing variety of views. I hope to introduce you to many of them, particularly those active on the Minnesota scene, and the issues they believe matter in public discussions today.

I'll be offering reporting — with a point of view — on the diverse conservative movement. There are neocons and paleocons, traditionalists and social conservatives, crunchy cons and the religious right. Here also are libertarians in all their variations, admirers of Ayn Rand (who prefer the moniker "objectivists"), and fusionists — devotees of the late Frank S. Meyer who emphasize the common ground among all conservatives.

You'll find me among the traditionalists, whose paladins include Edmund Burke, Adam Smith, William F. Buckley Jr., Richard M. Weaver, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Suzanne Massie, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and the Southern Agrarians, to cite but a few of the thinkers whose work I find especially appealing.

The only things you will need here are an open mind, inquisitiveness and a sense of humor. "There isn't a smile in a boxcar full of Marxism," the legendary journalist James Jackson Kilpatrick once remarked, and our friends on the left side of the aisle are forever proving the point. Dour, excruciatingly self-righteous and seemingly in thrall to the totalitarian impulse, they are a target-rich bunch. We'll be dealing with them in detail.

We conservatives also have our share of kookiness and loose cannons, and they'll feel the flat of my blade as well whenever their shenanigans get in the way of serious discourse. That means you, Rush and Ann.

I pitch my tent in the Republican Party, which for the most part has been reflective of my values. You're going to meet here Minnesota GOP leaders who are well known and many rising stars whose names you will be hearing for the first time. Conservatism is at heart a grass-roots phenomenon, and Minnesota is home to the most eclectic array of conservative thinkers and activists you never heard about. Not all of them are Republicans, mind you, and that makes for a really interesting discussion.

We won't be concerned exclusively with politics, either. We'll also be looking at the culture, education and the arts, all of which have suffered grievously at the hands of vulgarians and boors. Nowhere has the profoundly anti-intellectual doctrine of political correctness been more corrosive than on college and university campuses, where droves of shockingly ill-educated automatons are churned out annually.

Young conservatives on campus have sometimes paid a terrible price for bucking the mandarins of political correctness, and you will also meet them here.
 
On the national political level, conservatives are in serious disarray following the election of a unique president whose coattails proved exceptionally long. Barack Obama did not receive my vote, but I like what I've seen so far of the man. He is articulate, intelligent and, importantly, has a good sense of humor. His policies are a different matter, however. Obama is exhibiting an alarming propensity to cater to the most irresponsible elements of party in which extremism seems to be a growth industry.

Beyond that, I think David Brooks got to the heart of the matter following the election when he wrote in the New York Times that there are racists in America, but Obama's election proves that America is not a racist country. Hear, hear!

Ready to have some fun? I am, too. See you in a few days — after the bon voyage party for Arlen Specter.