We love St. Paul.

We worry about where the city stands and where it’s going, whether downtown, its neighborhoods, its schools, its businesses, its people.

There are public and private institutions talking about improvements, but no apparent inspiring vision or energized leadership pulling together the people and the resources needed to get the job of renewal done.

We fear that we too are trapped in the doom-loop cycle beleaguering once-great American cities, where the loss of businesses, jobs and services produces the lack of investment required for a rebirth of what we want as downtown.

This has become an intertwined economic, political and psychological problem to resolve.

Perhaps we are not asking the right questions as to what needs fixing, what needs to be done.

Perhaps with national trends of suburban movement, increased homelessness, political power shifting to suburban control, the loss of corporate managers with ties not to our cities but to their golden parachutes, the cities will never return to the reality from which we seek to benefit and enjoy once again.

Perhaps, St. Paul will require a new way of thinking about what a future city and downtown can and should become. We need inspiration knowing that from inspiration comes leadership and that from leadership comes achievement.

What can be our vision?

St. Paul is about people, not money; always has been. It is about families and communities.

But therein lies a problem: St. Paul is a collection of communities, not really a city. The assets of St. Paul are separated one from another like a pile of Lego pieces waiting to be assembled into a stunning construction.

How do we assemble the pieces? Who will come up with the vision?

We cannot separate downtown from the vitality of our neighborhoods and a metropolitan context.

We are fortunate to have a multitude of existing resources. We have five strong colleges and universities, two law schools; we are located on a beautiful major river.

We have a health industry complex. We have state government. We have a History Center and a Science Museum; parks and a zoo and a soulful Japanese garden; theaters; The Ordway and the St Paul Chamber Orchestra; artists; weekend markets.

We have a history which forms the basis for tourism.

We have an educated workforce.

We have an increasingly international demography, producing the workforce, culture, restaurants, art and ethnic mix of the present and future.

We have these existing resources, without utilizing the two-way benefits of having the educational resources, river, ethnic composition, educated workforce and strengths of people who love our city.

We have district councils which allow a higher level of participation for every citizen.

What we have not done is determine how to build the circular systems, where every citizen, resource, institution and service is defined not as a cost or problem, but as a capital asset contributing to the larger community in tandem with all the other capital assets – financial, educational, social, cultural.

We have hundreds of small businesses, seeking to grow, but more often worry about how to retain the few large corporations, some of whom can move on the decision of an absentee corporation, without any familiar or historical ties to St. Paul. We need to place more emphasis upon strengthening our small businesses,

If we wait for the city government to provide that leadership, we will fail.

The Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism will soon convene a process to build the vision and framework for a citywide circular system.

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It will include representatives from public, private, informational, educational and civic groups.

We have the potential to create the St. Paul for the future.

The world has changed and we cannot re-invent the past.

We are St. Paulites. We love our city and the neighborhoods.

We have problems which will not disappear, but which can be overcome with resolve, imagination and the courage of our convictions. We stand at the edge of a new frontier.

As an admired president once told us: “All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days, nor in the life of this Administration, nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.”

Todd Lefko is a member of the board of the Caux Round Table for Moral Capitalism and Stephen B. Young is its global executive director.

For over three decades, U.S. “resets” with Russia have failed. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, successive American presidents have entered office and engaged with Russia under the illusion that personal relationships with Russia’s leaders, mutual economic interest and appeasement of Russian demands would transform Russia’s role in the world.

Each “reset” failed.

So too did Biden’s policy of keeping Ukraine on life support while revealing fear of provoking Putin.

President Trump has an opportunity to change this. To do so, he should look back to Reagan, the last American president who got Russia right. Only by getting Russia right can Trump end the bloodshed in Ukraine. That means recognizing who Putin is, adopting a policy of peace through strength, and consistently enforcing it.

When Putin betrayed the Alaska peace agenda, Trump began to see this. He recently condemned Putin’s attacks on civilians and even declared Ukraine to be capable of victory. This past week, he imposed new sanctions on Russian oil companies, the first on Russia since January. Trump’s turn is a welcome shift from years of flattering and incentivizing Putin. Even Trump’s proposed deal — territory for peace — fell flat. Russia’s dictator wants more.

Appeasing and negotiating with Putin has failed for decades. America’s pattern of naïveté and capitulation reached its nadir under Obama, who blamed Russian aggression on Bush and NATO expansion. Remember Hillary Clinton pressing the big red “Reset” button with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, just six months after Russia invaded Georgia? Their “Reset” ended in Putin’s 2014 seizure of Crimea and the war in eastern Ukraine. Without Baltic, Polish and Romanian membership in NATO, we would undoubtedly be facing a wider war today.

NATO’s strength, not appeasement, has deterred Russian imperialism from seizing more of Europe.

President Biden’s policy since mid-2022 exhibited a veneer of strength, but its incoherence failed Ukraine and damaged American credibility. Belated, incomplete sanctions, straightjacketing Ukraine’s ability to use American weapons, and trepidation at Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling encouraged Russia to seize more territory. Insufficient piecemeal sanctions, half-heartedly implemented, allowed Russia’s military to rebuild and grow. Biden kept Ukraine alive. But he refused to help Ukraine win, and he refused to let Russia lose.

Trump’s policy should be based on a realistic understanding of Russia, and the pursuit of American values and interests. Trump should revisit the Reagan Administration’s 1983 National Security Decision Directive 75, which “recognize(d) that Soviet aggressiveness has deep roots in the internal system.” Reagan saw the USSR for what it was: “an evil empire” that not only repressed the freedom of its own citizens, but also sought to overthrow democracy in the West.

Reagan believed, like Kennedy, Truman and Roosevelt, that America should promote human liberty. This clarity pushed U.S. defense investment, reinvigorated NATO, and intimidated Soviet leadership, who ultimately recognized that they could not compete. Reagan empowered Afghanistan’s resistance to the Soviet invasion – escalating Soviet losses and fueling discontent. When Mikhail Gorbachev came to power, Reagan also used diplomacy to press the Soviet leader to allow religious freedom, refrain from force in Eastern Europe, withdraw from Afghanistan, and “tear down” the Berlin Wall.

American strength and resolve induced Gorbachev to respond. The leaders of two superpowers, once locked in a Cold War confrontation, became peacemakers. The groundbreaking INF agreement, the freeing of Eastern Europe from Soviet-imposed communism, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the end of the Cold War followed.

American leadership reunified Europe under democratic, capitalist systems – ushering in economic prosperity and NATO-backed security. But this freedom evaded Russia because the Soviet system was never fully dismantled. America has failed to see this, and Putin has relentlessly exploited repeated “resets”: in Chechnya, in Georgia, in Syria, in Crimea and the rest of Ukraine.

Putin is no peacemaker. Yet, when countered with decisiveness, Putin has retreated. In 2015, Turkey shot down a Russian jet violating its airspace. In February 2018, when 200 Russian Wagner fighters attacked U.S. special forces in Syria, Trump launched airstrikes that devastated Wagner. In April 2018, the U.S., U.K., and France launched 105 missiles against chemical weapons sites in Syria. In each instance, Russia threatened escalation – but backed down.

Just two weeks ago, when Trump entertained the idea of sending Ukraine Tomahawk cruise missiles, with the potential to strike deep and decisively inside Russia, Putin got on the phone to seek negotiations. Yet, after Trump stalled on the Tomahawks in his meeting with President Zelensky, Putin cagily shifted again. A stony-faced Lavrov delivered the message that Russia had not changed its position since August. In a show of strength, Trump subsequently cancelled the proposed summit in Budapest. Now he needs a comprehensive policy that demonstrates that strength and reverses the mistakes of the past.

A strong Russia policy means bolstering NATO, the organization that has kept the West strong and free for decades. Five years ago, Republicans were right to criticize NATO’s European members; they spent too little on defense. But now all NATO members are projected to meet NATO’s targeted 2% of GDP. Poland spent almost 5%, followed by the Baltics and Norway. No longer a laggard, Germany last year became the fourth-largest military spender in the world. Strengthening NATO also demands a united front. The U.S. must lead NATO in coordinating a response to Russian violations of NATO airspace, cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, social media and electoral manipulation, and other forms of escalatory hybrid warfare.

Like Reagan, Trump should invest in defense production at home to rebuild America’s and allies’ weapons stockpiles. He should facilitate joint venture defense partnerships with Europe and streamline the overly bureaucratic and political process of selling arms to our allies on Russia’s front lines.

A strong Russia policy must defund Russia’s war machine through sanctions that work. Trump should pressure China and Turkey, as well as India, to stop buying Russian oil and gas. He should leverage his relationship with Viktor Orbán in Hungary to reduce Russia’s energy exports – while promoting Qatar and Azerbaijan as alternative suppliers.

Countries and companies still funneling dual-use technologies to Russia’s military must also be stopped. The Biden administration identified the routes through Central Asia and elsewhere, but neither Biden nor Trump has blocked them.

Trump’s decision to provide targeting intelligence that enhances Ukraine’s ability to strike inside Russia is a crucial step. Beyond this, Trump must facilitate Europe’s transfer of $300 billion in frozen Russian assets to Ukraine to finance its victory. And he should sell Ukraine long-range weapons, such as Tomahawks, without restrictions on their use against legitimate military targets and oil refineries.

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For 35 years, the U.S. has cautiously avoided Russia’s defeat. Yet, a Russia routed by Ukraine, as the USSR was by Afghanistan, might be our best hope for change — for a Russia that at last abandons its imperial dreams.

President Trump has the opportunity to bring peace through strength. He can end the bloodshed in Ukraine, finally stop 18 years of Russian aggression under Putin, and solidify the liberty and security of the West. If he does so, Trump will have earned his Nobel Prize.

Kathleen Collins is Arleen C. Carlson Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. She is the award-winning author of two books on Eurasia. As a Fulbright Global Scholar, she is writing a third book on militaries in postcommunist Eurasia. Ambassador Batu Kutelia  is a former ambassador of Georgia to the United States, and a former head of Georgia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. He is  senior fellow at Delphi Global Research, and a member of the board at the Atlantic Council of Georgia.

“This is a story that had to be told. It’s a story of hope, a story of perception in how we treat one another in our darkest moments when society said ‘this is your last stop.’ ”

(Courtesy of AdventureKEEN)

That’s the way St. Paulite Pat Harris describes his moving debut novel, “A Season on the Drink,” a fictional account of the St. Anthony Residence rec league softball club that won a 1986 championship against all odds. It was an astonishing win because the team was made up of chronic alcoholics who lived in the “wet house” in St. Paul’s Midway that some felt was their last stop before dying of drink.

“…the old Saint Anthony residence was not a hotel. It was not a motel, either.” Harris writes. “It was a home.”

The home was falling apart. The front door was rusty and the old plumbing in the odorous bathroom had to handle a lot of vomit. Someone occasionally passed out and had to be carried to his room; others drank on the patio where there was camaraderie but no close friendships because their primary interactions were with their bottles. They all smoked all the time.

“A Season on the Drink” is partly about baseball, with exciting chapters describing the winning game that begins and ends the story, but thanks to Harris’ evocation of life at the residence, it’s also a peek into a population we rarely notice — or don’t want to notice. It reminds us that even those whose drinking is out of control want to be acknowledged.

Pat Harris (Courtesy of the author)

The very concept of a group of often-inebriated men coming together to play ball against well-financed corporate teams with uniforms and coolers of beer “struck me as something important,” says Harris, who served 12 years on the St. Paul City Council.

Harris worked hard to write respectfully of the St. Anthony residents who had multiple DUIs and were unsuccessful at countless hours in treatment programs.  He describes how they spent their $45 monthly checks on booze the first week of the month. By mid-month, when their money was gone, the “alchemists” took over. They were the chronic drinkers’ magicians who made elixirs out of Lysol, Gatorade, Kool-Aid and other liquids they mixed to satisfy their cravings.

As a frame for his story, Harris cleverly juxtaposes the Residence softball team’s progress with the Minnesota Twins season the year before they won the World Series in 1987.

“I thought using the Twins and the Saint Anthony team playing simultaneously shows that on the baseball diamond we are all created equal,” Harris said.

Through pitch-perfect dialogue and some humor, the story is filled with colorful characters drawn from real life.

We meet team leaders Marty Peterson and Terry Thomas, who were used to spending their days watching the Twins on a little TV in the office of Harry, the residence manager who wants to do his job without any trouble. But things change on days The Queen comes trailing scarves and authority. She is head of housing for Catholic Charities, and she wants the St. Anthony men to have something to do. So she suggests a softball team even though there’s a good chance players might forget they were on the team if they were drinking.

“The Queen and her underlings knew… that forming a softball team at one of the nation’s only homes for chronic inebriates was a shot at the big leagues of perception,” Harris writes. “Victory on the scoreboard did not matter. If the team went the distance without vomiting or fighting, they would be in the win column.”

Marty, who was a star baseball player when he was young, was the logical person to pull a team together. A quiet, thin, 30-year alcoholic, Marty wasn’t sure he could find enough men to participate. There was also the problem of whether the would-be players were physically strong enough to even make it to first base.

Before the opening game at Raymond Field, Marty and Terry waited. Slowly, enough men appeared to play. But they were still short a player. At the last minute they were saved when Wesley crashed through the bushes riding a bike across the field until he tumbled face-first into the wiry backstop. He smelled like a distillery but he was ready to play ball.

As the team began to win, neighbors who had been skeptical of this odd bunch gathered to watch. The Little Leaguers thought the team was awesome.

Best of all, the St. Anthony residents who were used to being ignored began to have pride. The Queen was right.

Harris was a VISTA volunteer in 1989 when he spent time at the St. Anthony Residence and heard the “legend of 1986.” Working in the Catholic Charities services program, he helped Marty, who eventually gained sobriety, transition to a program at Union Gospel Mission and then helped him get a job. (Marty has since died, although Harris isn’t sure when.)

“Marty left Saint Anthony and his softball team experience had a lot to do with giving him hope,” Harris said. “He was a remarkable person of extraordinary kindness. He’d had a family, a job at the post office, but alcohol took hold of him, permeated his life. He was very literate, with a collection of first editions he’d found at garage sales.”

Marty’s poetry and thoughts are in Harris’ book in take-outs he calls “Marty Interludes.”

“I knew right away, as a 23-year-old, that the story of Marty and everybody on that team that summer was important in how we look at and treat one another,” Harris recalls. “I get emotional when I talk about it. The experience guided me personally,”

Harris, who lives in the Highland Park neighborhood, is proud to say, “I am all St. Paul, all the time:”

A graduate of Cretin High School and Marquette University in Milwaukee, Harris earned an MBA from the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management. He is regional director-marketing for the AFL-CIO House Investment Trust. Among his wide-ranging community work is founding Serving Our Troops, a nationally recognized all-volunteer effort providing dinners to National Guard members and their families.

During Harris’ years on the city council, he worked on issues in the arts, poverty relief and homelessness. He has served on the Metropolitan Airports Commission and as commissioner and president of the St. Paul Regional Water Services. He also helped get funding for a new St. Anthony Residence near the one in which his novel takes place.

No wonder his acknowledgments reads like a Who’s-Who of people in Twin Cities  politics, business and sports.

Harris and his wife, Laura, met when she was working for former Gov. Jesse Ventura and he was on the city council helping the St. Paul Public Library create a separate library agency. He began writing the book in the early 1990s, after interviewing everyone who had knowledge of the legendary Residence ball team. But with three kids at home and one in college, Harris admits, there wasn’t much time to write so he got up early for several years to work on the book, published by AdventureKEEN.

“A Season on the Drink,” set at the crossroads of sports and hope, should appeal to every kind of reader. Harris will greet the public Nov. 8 during the Twin Cities Book Festival at the St. Paul Union Depot where, he says,  “I’ll be hanging around all day.”

Marty Peterson’s poetry

Marty Peterson, player/manager of the winning St. Anthony Residence softball team, was an erudite man who hand-wrote prose and poetry in his journal during his drinking years. This untitled, undated poem is in “A Season on the Drink,” used with permission of Peterson’s family.

These are the lonely ones

picking cigarette butts from the street

or out of sand ashtrays

What thoughts invade their

bowed heads

oblivious to strangers’

passing eyes

They cast their eyes

upon the ground

old clothes and worn shoes

add sadness to the body bent

Other days perhaps

found their head erect

looking skyward

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ANDREW/GAITONDE: Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew and Vishwas Gaitonde read from their work. Minnesotan Andrew (“Swinging on the Garden Gate”) has a nonfiction chapbook and Gaitonde reads from a debut story collection. 7 p.m. Wednesday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

PERNILLE IPSEN: Discusses “My Seven Mothers: Making a Family in the Danish Women’s Movement,” a memoir about growing up in a women-only household. Free. 7 p.m. Tuesday, Danish American Center, 3030 W. River Pkwy., Mpls.

JUDITH JOHNSON: Discusses “When I Bury Mister Snow,” second in her Ruth Carson series (after “Death Upon the Wicked Stage”), in which Ruth, married to a handsome opera singer, takes her granddaughter Annika to Grand Marais and fills in as a costumer for a local production of “Carousel.” (The book’s title comes from a song in the musical.) There are two murders and Ruth is worried when her granddaughter sees a man toss a gun into Lake Superior. Johnson’s leisurely cozies are inspired by her years of involvement with the Como Park Pavilion Players in St. Paul. 6 p.m. Monday, Wescott Library, 1340 Wescott Road, Eagan.

(Courtesy of Gallery Books)

MARJAN KAMALI: Bestselling historical fiction writer whose novels spotlight the lives and spirit of Iranian women across generations discusses her latest, “The Lion Women of Tehran,” in MELSA’s Club Book reading series. Free. 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Hayden Heights library, 1456 White Bear Ave., St. Paul.

EDWARD McPHERSON: Presents “Look Out: The Delight and Danger of Taking the Long View,” in conversation with Curtis Sittenfeld. 7 p.m. Monday, Magers & Quinn, 3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Mpls.

MEMORY SONGS: A reading with David Mura and Kato Kiriyama, followed by conversation with Bao Phi, who will read from his work. The three artists will explore how art and activism show up now in the intersection and continuum of their work and communities. Free. 3 p.m. Nov. 2, MU community room, 755 N. Prior Ave., St. Paul.

REVOLUTIONS ARE MADE OF LOVE: Launch of the children’s book by Sun Yung Shin and Melina Mangal, illustrated by Leslie Barlow, honoring the legacies of James and Grace Lee Boggs, using paired poems to tell the story of the married activists who worked for civil rights, labor and social justice in Detroit. 6 p.m. Thursday First Look that includes a copy of the book and early access to Barlow’s original artwork. $30. 7 p.m. free reading. University South Stores studio building, 879 28th Ave. S.E., Mpls.

SARAH THANKHAM MATHEWS: University of Minnesota Edelstein-Keller Visiting Writer series hosts the author of “All This Could Be Different,” a National Book Award finalist. Free. 7 p.m. Monday, Pillsbury Hall, 310 Pillsbury Dr. S.E., Mpls.

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