BY CHARLEY UNDERWOOD In order to make our food systems more local and more resilient, we can take one of two different approaches. We can work with governments and committees, attacking the restrictions on local food production and providing broad incentives. Along these lines, we can support City Council candidates…
BY CARLA WALDEMAR World Street Kitchen 2743 Lyndale Ave. S. 612-424-8855 www.eatwsk.com World Street Kitchen is a playground for the Wadi brothers, owners of the esteemed, James Beard Award-nominated Saffron in the Warehouse District. There the intriguing Mediterranean menu (with emphasis on the swell eats of Palestine, where the bros…
BY JEROME A. HOCHBERG Tony Bouza’s latest book, “Expert Witness—Breaking the Policemen’s Blue Code of Silence,” should be required reading for all police officers in command positions. It should also be a required textbook for police training programs. For the layperson, this book is an eye-opener into the serious problem…
BY RAINA GOLDSTEIN BUNNAG There are always new diets popping up that claim to cure health conditions and promote weight loss. Wading through hundreds of blogs and “expert” advice to find legitimate information is a great undertaking. I’m here to help provide some truth to the overwhelming world of eating…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN We are social beings, we long to be with others, don’t we? I suddenly had the desire to mingle in gatherings of people, to talk to people randomly and for no particular reason. I think I got the idea to do this after my trip to California…
In 1986, Nick Boswell walked into a used-book store and picked up an old copy of the Koran. He thought, “Oh, here’s something to give my brother to reform him.” Once he started reading, though, he knew the message was for him. It astounded him, hit the nail on the…
Southside Pride and Pulse, August 2007 What do you do with enormous disappointment? What do you do when you just couldn’t have something you really, really wanted. I don’t know. Rarely do I take big leaps—mostly to avoid disappointment, I suppose. But this time, since “I’m not getting any younger,…
The book “A Family Torn Apart” is a heart-rending and heart-pounding story. The narrator relates in first person what happens when war and political forces that have nothing whatsoever to do with people who are just trying to live their lives, grow their crops, celebrate their holidays and love their…
In “Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime & Justice” (published in 1990), Howard Zehr writes that our current criminal justice system fails on three counts: It fails to deter crime, it fails to hold offenders accountable and it fails to meet the needs of victims. The book opens with…
We are all angry at our mortality. We don’t like it that our life has a set length to it, AND we don’t like it that we can only be our own selves. One of our big challenges in life is to get away from seeing everything through, or with,…
Pulse, June 22, 2005 BY MARY ANN VINCENTA An exhilarating collection of two-dimensional works by contemporary Chinese artists will fill the spacious walls of the Katherine Nash Gallery until the end of July. Many pieces are so sublime they give you that bursting-in-your-chest, elevated-to-midair feeling. It is astonishing to see…
Pulse, March 23, 2005 BY MARY ANN VINCENTA The classical and elegant exhibit Inside Eternity challenges our temporal map. It is a library of timeless, floating dreams. The sculptor Natasha Dikarev and the painter Vladimir Dikarev tell us there is a beautiful place to live—for real—outside the stupid and evil…
Meditation in prison We step into a grand entrance hall. Shiny large letters high up over the first set of iron gates say “Stillwater MCF.” Shiny woodwork and smooth stone panels delineate the soaring walls. Tiny white and green hexagonal tiles cover the floor of the enormous entry and stretch…
At first glance she appears to be watching TV. Her face is pointed in the direction of the television, but upon closer observation it is apparent she is simply staring at the screen. This is my mother’s first full day in a 24-hour care facility. She sits in her tiny…
Getting acquainted A lone building stands across the alley from the Dairy Queen in the wasted land at the corner of Portland and Franklin in the Phillips neighborhood. Peace House, as this solitary oasis is called, has been around since October of 1985—long before the corner was empty. From its…
