Buying dishes for the fighting governor

Amidst the stories about the war in Iraq, the flooding in the Midwest and horrible deaths inflicted on more innocent persons came a short story reporting that 50 pieces of fine china from the Minnesota Governor’s Residence went on sale through the Department of Administration’s online surplus auction program beginning May 28.
Normally I probably would have over looked it but that day, suffering from an overload of doom and gloom stories, I needed a spot of tea served on fine china to soothe my jangled nerves – china like the first five pieces for sale which were made by Mikasa and Lenox. China is china even if it is slightly chipped or from a broken set.
Today is the last day to bid on the first five pieces – all plates of various sizes and patterns: Tuxedo, Eternal and Lexington. Just reading it triggered a bit of the escapism mood similar to that engendered from reading a modern romance novel where the heroines eat gourmet meals served only on the finest china dishes and the villain eats peanut butter and bread made with a plastic knife and served on a paper plate – if anything.
The story breathed a whisper of refinement in the midst of tumultuous news day.
I checked it out at http://www.mmd.admin.state.mn.us/mn03008.htm and found front and back views of each dish formerly used at state dinners at the Minnesota governor’s mansion. And that is the appeal – some of the guests eating with those dishes included: Mikhail and Raisa Gorbachev of the former Soviet Union, King Olav V and Crown Prince Harald of Norway, King Carl Gustav and Queen Silvia of Sweden, Princess Margaret of England, President Jimmy Carter, John Denver, Mary Tyler Moore and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Buy a Lexington plate and you may have a piece of history. Use the dish to hold your crumpets for your afternoon tea and you may be eating on china that once served European Royalty.
If you struggle with the powers that be at the office, take out the Tuxedo pattern plate from Lenox and imagine dining with world powers and realize that you too are empowered with food served on a plate that once served heads of state.
Imagery is everything.
So why do I keep getting this image of the pre-gubernatorial Arnold Schwarzenegger in his early movie mode of loin cloth and automatic rifle sitting down to eat a fine state dinner with former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura dressed in red white and blue tights accented with a pink feather boa?
Perhaps because that imaginary dinner explains the “broken sets” and ”slightly chipped.” I can not imagine these two guys who used to smash their way across the big screen and around the ring having a meal together at the governor’s mansion with any kind of finesse.
And that is another reason to buy a piece of Minnesota history – for comic relief and as reminder that even when headlines are heavy with gloom and doom, life has it finer, and funnier moments.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)