BY DANIEL COLTEN SCHMIDT Smith Foundry is an iron foundry in the residential East Phillips neighborhood. It has been in operation since 1923 and has been polluting the neighborhood since its inception. This past August, 100 years after the foundry opened, the EPA sent Smith Foundry a Notice of Violation…
BY CAM GORDON The 2023 election is over. On the Southside, the races in Wards 8 and 12 were the most hotly contested, with some of the highest numbers of people voting. Aurin Chowdhury won Ward 12 with 6,525 votes on the first round over Nancy Ford and Luther Ranheim.…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE An almost all-purpose gift idea We’ve all been there. A major holiday is just a week away, and we have put off getting a gift for an important person in our life. When this happens to me, I usually get them a book. Here is a…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE What makes us human? Is it our capacity to love, to imagine the numinous, to conceive of our own Creator? Or is it our belief that we are somehow beyond the reach of the natural, so that we try to separate civilization from our fragile, earthly…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Be a superperson! You can be an actual superperson with these three weird tricks. 1. Eat superfoods! 2. Use superherbs! 3. Move your superbody! But, I hear you say, how do I know what is really a superfood when almost every food claims to be? And…
BY KAY SCHROVEN Recently, I ran into a friend whom I’d not seen in a while. She is a suburbanite. During the conversation she mentioned that she and her husband had recently driven down East Lake Street for the first time in a while. “What a shit show!” she said,…
BY ED FELIEN Most Palestinians want peace. Most Israelis want peace. But Hamas and right-wing Israeli politicians know that their ticket to success is to sow the seeds of fear and loathing. If they can convince their people that there is a tiger at the gates that wants to devour…
BY STEPHANIE FOX It’s nearly Christmas and here in the North, that means holiday lights, tinsel-covered trees, and lutefisk. For many, it isn’t Christmas without a traditional bite or two of this iconic Norwegian delicacy. What many people don’t realize is that most of the country’s lutefisk originates right here…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Openings and closings We usually start with these, as they have been numerous in the upheaval since 2020 (and were even pretty frequent before then, due to economic chaos). But things seem to be leveling off, so I may drop this practice. The only notable closing…
BY FERN SNEDEKER (they/them) A queer community under increased surveillance. Queer bodies under attack—psychologically, ideologically, physically. Nudieland—where two men shot seven and killed one at a queer punk show in Phillips—is the most recent example on my mind. But it’s not even the most recent attack on the trans community,…
Why do you think Keith Ellison and Ilhan Omar endorsed Andrea Jenkins over the DFL-endorsed Soren Stevenson? It’s surprising because they have both benefited from DFL endorsement as did Soren Stevenson in this campaign. He lost by only 38 votes. Jenkins’ opponent Soren Stevenson refused to meet with the Star…
“It’s easier to fool someone than to persuade them that they’ve been fooled.” Most Americans, asked whether they support empire and imperial behavior, would say no. They don’t think we live in it—notwithstanding over 800 U.S. military bases around the globe and a trillion-dollar military budget, a constant state of…
As a Minneapolis resident and an arborist with 30 years in the tree care profession, I want to offer some deeper context to the issues raised in Cam Gordon’s Nov. 8 article on emerald ash borer and insecticide treatments. I ask fellow community members not to assume ill intent of…
I worked for the Minneapolis Park Board forestry department in the late ‘70s on a takedown crew with Dutch elm disease at its peak. This is where I heard the sound of the chainsaw singing the song of death for the elm trees. Now I’m a retired arborist who ran…
BY DANIEL COLTEN SCHMIDT Right now, Minneapolitans are demanding more participation in governance, particularly in the cases of environmental justice. In May of 2023, the East Phillips Neighborhood Institute (EPNI) was able to secure community participation in the redevelopment of the Roof Depot building. Now our attention must shift to…
