A Deserving Server - by L. Oakes and N. Norfleet

Moorhead waitress gets her $12,000 tip
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by LARRY OAKES and NICOLE NORFLEET
Star Tribune staff writers
April 5, 2012 - 9:42 PM

To weary waitress Stacy Knutson, the $12,000 rolled up in a takeout box and left by a customer at her Moorhead restaurant table last year wasn't just a tip.

It was a miracle.

Unfortunately, she had little time to rejoice before police seized the cash, claiming it was drug money. On Thursday, Knutson was blessed yet again when the authorities had a change of heart and returned the money she was counting on to help pay her family's mounting medical bills.

"I never ever lost faith," Knutson said on Thursday night, minutes before she was handed her check.

The saga began in November. Knutson, 43, was a couple of hours into her normal graveyard shift at the 24-hour Fryn' Pan in Moorhead when she noticed a takeout box that a customer had left at her table.

Knutson followed the woman to her car to give it back, but the customer told her, "No, I am good, you keep it." After taking the box back inside, Knutson realized that it was too heavy to contain just leftovers, so she opened it and was shocked to find wads of cash rolled up in rubber bands.

Despite the fact that her family "desperately needed the money," Knutson decided to notify police. Officers told her to wait 90 days in case someone claimed the money, but authorities later decided to hold the cash longer because they said it smelled strongly of marijuana and a drug dog detected a residue of narcotics on it.

An offer of a $1,000 reward

Police offered to give Knutson a $1,000 reward for turning in the money, but she filed a lawsuit last month seeking all the cash. "As Christians we believe that there are angels among us, and I do not doubt this can be a testament to that," Knutson said in the suit. "It is a complete miracle to see our prayers answered, but then difficult to face the reality of the struggle it is to obtain it from the Moorhead Police Department."

Attorney Craig Richie said Thursday he had planned to argue that almost all paper money in circulation has drug residue on it.

Moorhead police Lt. Tory Jacobson said that from the moment Knutson's lawsuit became national news this week, "everyone in this department was getting unbelievable numbers of phone calls, blasting us, even wishing me and my family would die."

But Jacobson protested that police were just following procedure. "We knew public opinion would not be in our favor, and we got some black eyes," he continued. "But we think this result is awesome. It's wonderful for her."

Interim County Attorney Michelle W. Lawson said that in order to calm the chaos and let the police department get back to business, she asked a judge to authorize the department to release the cash immediately. "Unfortunately, this came across as a case of government corruption, but it's really a story about a citizen doing the right thing and the police doing the right thing," Lawson said.

Knutson, who hadn't been able to sleep for the past couple of days, said she was thankful that everything was resolved. Money has been tight, she said. Within the past year, her family has made several trips to the hospital, including when she fractured her knee last May and had to be off the job for more than a month and when her husband was hurt at work. Knutson currently is making ends meet by working two part-time jobs, in addition to her full-time gig at the Fryn' Pan.

The decision to give her the money also drew instant rave reviews from community members. "It couldn't have happened to a more appropriate person," said the Rev. Jeff Seaver, a pastor of Knutson's church, Triumph Lutheran Brethren. He said Knutson often helps provide child care at church services. "She hasn't had it easy ... She works really hard," he said.

"This is a woman with five kids who has been a waitress for 18 years," Richie said. "She and her family were praying and asked God's intervention to touch these people's hearts, and that's what happened. It was about God providing for her."

Knutson was back waiting tables Thursday night.
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larry.oakes@startribune.com / nicole.norfleet@startribune.com

"A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney" - by David Javerbaum

[A Feynman diagram of an encounter between a Romney and an anti-Romney. The resulting collision annihilates both, leaving behind a single electron and a $20 bill. - NY Times]

A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney

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By David Javerbaum *

New York Times / Opinion

Published: March 31, 2012

THE recent remark by Mitt Romney’s senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom that upon clinching the Republican nomination Mr. Romney could change his political views “like an Etch A Sketch” has already become notorious. The comment seemed all too apt, an apparent admission by a campaign insider of two widely held suspicions about Mitt Romney: that he is a) utterly devoid of any ideological convictions and b) filled with aluminum powder.

The imagery may have been unfortunate, but Mr. Fehrnstrom’s impulse to analogize is understandable. Metaphors like these, inexact as they are, are the only way the layman can begin to grasp the strange phantom world that underpins the very fabric of not only the Romney campaign but also of Mitt Romney in general. For we have entered the age of quantum politics; and Mitt Romney is the first quantum politician.

A bit of context. Before Mitt Romney, those seeking the presidency operated under the laws of so-called classical politics, laws still followed by traditional campaigners like Newt Gingrich. Under these Newtonian principles, a candidate’s position on an issue tends to stay at rest until an outside force — the Tea Party, say, or a six-figure credit line at Tiffany — compels him to alter his stance, at a speed commensurate with the size of the force (usually large) and in inverse proportion to the depth of his beliefs (invariably negligible). This alteration, framed as a positive by the candidate, then provokes an equal but opposite reaction among his rivals.

But the Romney candidacy represents literally a quantum leap forward. It is governed by rules that are bizarre and appear to go against everyday experience and common sense. To be honest, even people like Mr. Fehrnstrom who are experts in Mitt Romney’s reality, or “Romneality,” seem bewildered by its implications; and any person who tells you he or she truly “understands” Mitt Romney is either lying or a corporation.

Nevertheless, close and repeated study of his campaign in real-world situations has yielded a standard model that has proved eerily accurate in predicting Mitt Romney’s behavior in debate after debate, speech after speech, awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment after awkward look-at-me-I’m-a-regular-guy moment, and every other event in his face-time continuum.

The basic concepts behind this model are:

Complementarity. In much the same way that light is both a particle and a wave, Mitt Romney is both a moderate and a conservative, depending on the situation (Fig. 1). It is not that he is one or the other; it is not that he is one and then the other. He is both at the same time.

Probability. Mitt Romney’s political viewpoints can be expressed only in terms of likelihood, not certainty. While some views are obviously far less likely than others, no view can be thought of as absolutely impossible. Thus, for instance, there is at any given moment a nonzero chance that Mitt Romney supports child slavery.

Uncertainty. Frustrating as it may be, the rules of quantum campaigning dictate that no human being can ever simultaneously know both what Mitt Romney’s current position is and where that position will be at some future date. This is known as the “principle uncertainty principle.”

Entanglement. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a proton, neutron or Mormon: the act of observing cannot be separated from the outcome of the observation. By asking Mitt Romney how he feels about an issue, you unavoidably affect how he feels about it. More precisely, Mitt Romney will feel every possible way about an issue until the moment he is asked about it, at which point the many feelings decohere into the single answer most likely to please the asker.

Noncausality. The Romney campaign often violates, and even reverses, the law of cause and effect. For example, ordinarily the cause of getting the most votes leads to the effect of being considered the most electable candidate. But in the case of Mitt Romney, the cause of being considered the most electable candidate actually produces the effect of getting the most votes.

Duality. Many conservatives believe the existence of Mitt Romney allows for the possibility of the spontaneous creation of an “anti-Romney” (Fig. 2) that leaps into existence and annihilates Mitt Romney. (However, the science behind this is somewhat suspect, as it is financed by Rick Santorum, for whom science itself is suspect.)

What does all this bode for the general election? By this point it won’t surprise you to learn the answer is, “We don’t know.” Because according to the latest theories, the “Mitt Romney” who seems poised to be the Republican nominee is but one of countless Mitt Romneys, each occupying his own cosmos, each supporting a different platform, each being compared to a different beloved children’s toy but all of them equally real, all of them equally valid and all of them running for president at the same time, in their own alternative Romnealities, somewhere in the vast Romniverse.

And all of them losing to Barack Obama.
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* David Javerbaum is the author of “The Last Testament: A Memoir by God."