Pat Welna Pat Welna died on Jan. 17. She was 93. She was the last of the second generation to run Welna Hardware on Bloomington Avenue. She was funny and always cheerful, and she made you feel special even if you acted like an idiot with a plumbing problem. She…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Openings and closings Here is a rapid list of closings, far from comprehensive, but the ones I think you might most care about: Khyber Pass, Stella’s Fish Cafe, Red Stag Supperclub, Common Roots and Bad Waitress. Openings have been slightly more numerous. Again, I won’t even…
Your coverage of the Ukraine conflict aligns with a pro-war narrative driven by neo-cons and the military-industrial complex. These actors have dominated U.S. foreign policy for decades, proclaiming U.S. hegemony and laying the groundwork for expansive wars (in non-NATO countries Serbia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria). This huge, revolving-door bureaucracy and…
BY ED FELIEN Tulsi Gabbard Did you see Tulsi Gabbard’s takedown of George Santos, the pathological liar and newly elected congressman from Long Island, on Fox News? Tulsi is a lot more complicated and harder to figure out than most of the noise on Fox. Her anti-war votes and speeches against the…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Good places to hear music on or around 2/14 There are lots of diverse choices for a concert or performance to share with your Someone Special the week around Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is on a Tuesday this year, so maybe not the ideal night for…
At the northwest corner of East Lake Street and 36th Avenue South, Elsa’s House of Sleep – a furniture, rug and mattress store – has been shuttered and dark since 2019. But last month a group of volunteers installed “Dream Sequences,” a pop-up public art project intended to beautify the…
BY ED FELIEN What does the FL in the DFL stand for? It stands for Farmer-Labor. In 1944 the Farmer-Labor Party and the Democratic Party merged. The Democratic Party was small potatoes in the 1930s and ‘40s. It polled in the single digits in statewide elections. The Farmer-Labor Party enjoyed…
BY ED FELIEN As of November, 33,476 Ukrainian civilians have been killed by Russian bombs and missiles. And the unspeakable slaughter of innocents continued through Christmas Day and New Year’s. In contrast, the bombing of Guernica in 1937 by the German Luftwaffe that inspired Picasso’s painting killed only 1,654 people.…
BY JOHN RYKHUS, JR. Many consider the oft-quoted phrase by Abraham Lincoln, “A house divided against itself cannot stand,” as almost cliché. But in reality, it may contain nearly as much relevance and be as applicable today as in Lincoln’s time. Taking into account the social upheaval and political events…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Inspo is not a tropical fish, like Nemo. Inspo = “inspiration” in millennial slang. Thanks for attending my tiny Ted Talk. In the throes of winter, even in the supposedly hopeful post-solstice part, it’s kind of hard to think about redecorating, remodeling, or (shudder) moving to…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Steve Floyd (not related to George Floyd) has been taking Black youth from South Minneapolis on trips to Africa since the early ’90s. Floyd feels that traveling to Africa is one thing that really works to help them heal from the effects of slavery throughout their history.…
BY KAY SCHROVEN The Lake Street Council (LSC), a nonprofit organization, has been around since the late 1960s. It was formed to support businesses that remained on the Lake Street corridor as the escape from the urban landscape to the suburbs continued. This exodus began in the first half of…
BY TONY BOUZA My very unscholarly appreciation of history includes the bromide that great civilizations implode through moral rot rather than outside challenges. As the saying goes, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” I agree. A recent case illustrated the point.…
BY CAM GORDON The rent control debate is heating up. With the city’s rent stabilization workgroup completing its work in December, it now falls to the City Council to approve a policy and draft an ordinance if we are to have rent stabilization in Minneapolis. On Dec. 13, the 25-member…
BY WILLIAM BURLESON Much has been written about the former White Castle on the corner of 33rd and Lyndale in South Minneapolis. It is certainly a curiosity. Something about it says it doesn’t belong there, this prefab fast-food restaurant in a largely residential neighborhood on a shady tree-lined street. It…
