Can we fix our parks?

BY CAROL BECKER Minneapolis has 160 neighborhood parks and 49 neighborhood park buildings.  This excludes any regional parks like the Chain of Lakes or the Riverfront.  A study done last year by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board showed that we need $14 million a year to maintain these neighborhood…

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Are we watching a slow-motion train wreck?

BY KARI ANDRADE Republican delegates are bound on the first ballot at the national convention to vote based on election results even if that is not their chosen candidate.  If there is no candidate with a majority, then there is a contested convention and delegates can change whom they vote…

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Artistic Director Sandy Spieler of In the Heart of the Beast will be directing antics for the Mayday Parade May I.  Check the Center Section for a report on HOBT and other cultural activity on Lake Street.

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The return to Mud Lake

BY ED FELIEN The map above shows the area around Lake Hiawatha in 1900.  It was called Rice Lake on the map, and on earlier maps it was called Mud Lake. The map is interesting because it shows housing and streets built up all around South Minneapolis; they went as…

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Understanding Trump

BY ED FELIEN Nixon said, Democrats move to the left for the nomination and to the right for the election, and Republicans move to the right for the nomination and to the left for the general. But no Democrat has moved as far to the left as Bernie Sanders in…

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What’s going on with the MPS Board of Education?

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE The spectacular failure of the search for a new permanent superintendent of the Minneapolis public school system is very like an iceberg. It’s a massive frozen thing blocking your progress, threatening your safety, and concealing who knows what further ugliness lies beneath the surface. Here is…

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Queen of Cuisine: Savory Bake House

BY CARLA WALDEMAR Savory Bake House 3008 36th Ave. S. 612-729-1310 http://savorybakehouse.letseat.at/ So … did East Lake Street need a bakery? “We opened on Dec. 18 and I just had my first day off,” declares overworked Matt Okray. He’s the man behind Savory Bake Shop, at 3008 E. 35th St.…

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Pope perplexes Mexico

A review of the pope’s visit in the Mexican press BY JOHNNY HAZARD Jorge Bergoglio, aka Papa Francisco or Pope Francis, arrived in Mexico on Friday, Feb. 12, for a six-day visit. Before his arrival two questions loomed:  a.) Would he meet with families of the 43 education students disappeared…

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Teaching in the Rhetoric Department

BY ED FELIEN After a couple of years in graduate school, and after earning a masters’ degree, I was looking around for a possible teaching position at the U of M.  I heard they were hiring in the Rhetoric Department at the Institute of Agriculture on the St. Paul campus. …

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A leaf flutters to Earth

FROM DICK BERNARD’S BLOG: OUTSIDE THE WALLS My friend Wayne Wittman wasn’t at his Minnesota Precinct Caucus on Tuesday, March 1. My guess is he’d never have missed his precinct caucus. He was always an activist. From his obituary: “Wayne lived every day of his 86 years to the fullest. He…

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Remembering Bill Rowe

William Leal Rowe Oct. 7, 1926 – Feb. 16, 2016 William Leal Rowe, age 89, died peacefully in Chicago on Tuesday, Feb. 16, of natural causes. He is survived by his sister, Patricia Bade, and her family; his daughter, Julia Rowe and her husband, Josh Radinsky; his son, James Weldon…

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The architectural legacy of Hennepin Avenue

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Hennepin Avenue has been a vein of history since before it existed as a named road. Like many other main streets of North America, it follows the course of a walking trail of the Native Americans, in this case a route between what the Europeans called…

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