Readers Write: Seniors and technology, voting, the new state flag
Why not mandate telegrams while you’re at it?
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How nice of Michelle Benson to be thinking of us old folks as we hunt the mastodons and woolly mammoths with our stone axes and flint-tipped arrows! (“Medical info shouldn’t be kept behind QR code,” Strib Voices, Aug. 29.) As I was saying to my neighbor Oorg-makak, next cave over but one, “We really need someone to understand that we have no grasp whatsoever of modern methods of encoding data. And gosh! I sure need more paper to throw at the saber-toothed squirrels.”
Seriously, I do not need any more hard copies of the incredibly dense and poorly written information supplied by the pharmaceutical manufacturers. I write as a technical writer with 40 years’ experience. Most of what is in the information is overly technical for the consumer and even for the experts. And does Benson truly believe that the manufacturers send boxes and boxes of paper to be handed out by the pharmacies? Of course not! The pharmacies print most of these pages when they fill the prescription from bulk containers. Only the boxed medicines (read: “high-priced”) have the paper inside, typically in a font that is only barely big enough to read if you don’t have eye problems. (Reading glasses are two aisles over.)
Speaking as one of the troglodytes Benson is allegedly trying to help, please don’t. I would rather scan a QR code and read the drug information on my tablet than to toss away more paper. The pharmacies, I’m sure, would rather cut their paper and printer expenses. The trash and recycling companies would like to have less waste paper to deal with. And I would really like to have people like Benson stop thinking that I’m preliterate and too technologically challenged to live without a keeper simply because I was born before smartphones existed.
Daniel Beckfield, New Brighton
VOTING
Confusion is not necessarily malicious
I’ve been an election judge for the last six years and have noticed that young voters don’t always know where to vote. Our election laws are rooted in the idea that voters are living in more or less stable residences and have an emotional attachment to the city they live in, an assumption that doesn’t always apply to voters in their late teens and 20s. Some examples:
- A college freshman living in the dorms at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. In November, this student will be only six months removed from high school. Their driver’s license will have their parents’ address, possibly in another state. Emotionally they’re still attached to family and friends back home. They know the mayor of their hometown, but have no idea who is best suited to run the city of Minneapolis. Their inclination is to get an absentee ballot and vote in the hometown election rather than the Minneapolis election. Are they doing the right thing, or could someone twist this into election fraud?
- Someone taking a gap year. They spent most of the year in a national park in Wyoming, including Election Day, but traveled some and expect to move, somewhere, for the winter. Where do they vote?
- Someone who spent a year in Montana, another in Texas. Did some traveling and lived abroad as a member of the Peace Corps, then lived with their parents in Wisconsin. They’ve been living in the Twin Cities for six months and will be here for the election, but after that, not so sure. Their driver’s license is still from Wisconsin and it has their parents’ address, but they haven’t lived there for five years, except for a couple of months last year.
These are stories about how election law can be confusing to young, mobile people, but also about the effect of election laws that take into account only a resident’s current address. It also touches on accusations of election fraud where a young person votes where they are emotionally attached rather than where they live. It’s an innocent mistake, but one ripe for exploitation.
I don’t have a solution, but I’m empathetic to young voters who may be confused or innocently breaking election laws. At a minimum, I think the secretary of state should reach out to these voters and clarify the law so they can vote with confidence and advocate for change if they feel election laws aren’t fair.
Doug Shidell, Minneapolis
STATE FLAG
It represents ... something. Just not Minnesota, or the North Star.
Thank you to Jim Triggs for his piece (“I should weigh in on this flag thing,” Strib Voices, Aug. 28). It was amusing and entertaining. I have become reasonably comfortable with the new flag design with some minor issues. I have seen and read a number of items regarding the process leading to the final result. I understand some of the main considerations were that the design should be simple and readily recognizable to all with no explanation required, especially from a distance and in a breeze. That is the problem: I don’t think the new design satisfies either consideration.
First, let’s look at that image on the left side of the flag that is supposed to be an image of our state. It is certainly simple, maybe too much so. It is a contemporary caricature of the state shape. What does this mean to the people in the other 49 states? Do they recognize it as Minnesota? Why couldn’t they have used a shape more in line with the real shape, the shape they see on every United States map? And what’s with leaving the Northwest Angle off? That and the Arrowhead Region are the two things that make us different from Wisconsin, the rectangular Dakotas and every other state. How do the people who live in the Northwest Angle feel about being cut off? Every once in a while, there is talk about the Northwest Angle seceding and becoming part of Canada. When you are left off the state flag, maybe you should.
The other problem I have with the new flag is that symbol that is supposed to be a star. Others, who live full time outside our state borders and may have little knowledge of us, might have the same impression I had when I first saw this emblem: What is it? Is it the state flower? Is the state flower a sunflower? Or is that a symbol of a machinery cog wheel? People from elsewhere can ask us, “Why do you have a cog wheel on your flag? Does Minnesota have a history of cog wheel manufacturing?” Why couldn’t they have made the star symbol more starlike? Think the star over Bethlehem on Christmas cards. Four long streaks of light at the compass points with the northern streak slightly longer. Between the long points of light, you could have much shorter points of light so that the symbol is an unmistakable star of the north for the North Star State.
It’s a good thing they left out the loon so we wouldn’t become known as the loony state.
Well, it’s too late now. The cog wheels are churning making sure the new flag is on display everywhere. Be prepared for some questions, folks.
Marlin R. Workman, Inver Grove Heights
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Does Karen Tolkkinen not know that the Minnesota state flag was changed in 1983 (“Poles apart on flags, for complicated reasons,” Aug. 26) so that the Native American is not riding into the sunset but more toward the farmer?
Darcy Kroells, Green Isle, Minn.
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The new state flag celebrates nothing so much as the state’s superficiality. A splash of blue (sky, water) and green (trees, grass, peas?) should be joined by a dash of yellow for cowardice.
The original state flag endured several iterations as the state grappled with the essential crime of America: the robbery of Native lands, the rape and murder of Native women and children and the horrible torture of being strangers in a familiar land.
However imperfectly, the old flag dealt openly with matters of significance for all. The current inane banner carries all the weight of a yachting pennant.
William Boudreau, Minneapolis
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