Visit the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul

During my years of pastoral ministry in Iowa, I conducted the funeral for a church member who died at the age of 108. As I prepared for the service, I thought of all the changes she had seen in her life-for example, from the first Wright brothers airplane flight to the U. S. landing on the moon. I can't imagine the emotional impact of that kind of progress on someone who has lived through it.

However, I had a hint of that impact as my wife and I recently visited the Minnesota History Center, located at 345 Kellogg Blvd. W, St. Paul, MN. When my wife and I were raising our son and daughter, we used to joke that our children could enter a museum and in five minutes flat be through the museum and examining the museum gift shop!

Instead of rushing by different objects, take the time to see what those objects really say about human beings. Other Associated Content producers have described the Center, but I would like to approach my article from the viewpoint of the human genius, progress, fragility, and cruelty that emerge from the exhibits.

Genius and Progress. One of first things you see as you exit the elevator on the third floor where the exhibits are housed is a copy of the World War I Curtiss JN-4D airplane, commonly known as the "Jenny." The Jenny was Charles Lindbergh's first airplane. When you compare that small and fragile plane with today's huge jets and space rockets, you have some idea of what has taken place since 1903 when the Wright brothers made the first successful air flight. The "Going Places" exhibit gives the visitor a taste of what has been accomplished in a relatively short period of time.

Air travel is not the only thing considered in this exhibit; there is also land travel: automobiles, the Interstate highway system that solidified the private automobile as the vehicle of choice for the vast majority of Americans, light rail transit as an alternative, and the proposed one-or-two-person vehicle called PRT (Personal Rapid Transit). Punch in a destination, pay, and be taken to your destination on a system of tracks. The company proposing the PRT sees it as the mode of travel for the future. We have come a long way from the simple automobile that Henry Ford introduced to the public, and we apparently have far to go.

Fragility. "Weather Permitting" discusses weather and its effects on the land and the people. One particularly sobering part of the exhibit has the visitor in a room that looks like a basement room. In it are radios and a television set over which are transmitted tornado warnings and pictures of the aftermath of a tornado. No matter how much humans have achieved, we are often helpless against the forces of nature. We have tamed the weather to an extent for our benefit, but there is much yet beyond our control If nothing else can humble us, nature can and often does.

The Cruelty. The "Tales of the Territory" exhibit chronicles the growth of Minnesota from its status as a territory and on into statehood. While we can celebrate the people who left their homes and life in the east in order to start over in the Minnesota territory, there is a dark underside to the story. The Native Americans, particularly the Dakota Indians, were terribly mistreated by the whites. Treaties were broken, promised money was not paid, and a way of life was restricted and finally destroyed. This was not just a Minnesota problem; it was the way immigrants to the United States commonly treated the Native Americans. If nothing else, the exhibit helps us to understand the value of any people and the need to be tolerant of and fair toward those who are different from us.

Rounding out the exhibits are "Sounds Good to Me" (music in Minnesota), "Grainland" (giving a nod to the grain and flour industry that was once a major part of Minnesota business), "Home Place Minnesota" (a multimedia presentation about homes and living in Minnesota years ago), and "Open House" (a journey through time focused on one house and the different people and cultures who succeed one another).

The Center also has an area for rotating exhibits. The current one is "Right on Lake Street," a trip through the changing scenery on, and transportation of, Lake Street, a major thorough in Minneapolis.

The Minnesota History Center is worth a trip. it will expand your view how much humanity has accomplished, not only in Minnesota, but across the world.

Sources:

www.associatedcontent.com/article/109474/why_you_should_visit_the_minnesota.html
www.associatedcontent.com/article/182520/the_minnesota_history_center_in_st.html
www.taxi2000.com/