Polly Mann

BY ED FELIEN I got to know Polly during her first run for the U.S. Senate in 1988.  She was running for DFL endorsement against Skip Humphrey at the DFL Convention in Rochester.  My wife and I helped stuff envelopes, and Carol got elected a state delegate.  I got a…

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What we do at Southside Pride

BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Meredith Webb, the third-grade teacher at Hiawatha Leadership Academy, at 38th Avenue South and 56th Street, called Southside Pride asking if someone could talk to her class about newspapers. In the absence of our owner/publisher/editor-in-chief, who was out of town, I was the logical candidate since I’m…

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Queen of Cuisine: Giordano’s Chicago’s finest

BY CARLA WALDEMAR Giordano’s 2700 Hennepin Ave. S. 612-444-3143 Take-away orders: www.orders/giordanos/com “Is the Pope in town?” I wondered, trying to make my way down South Hennepin through crowds of the devout. Well, sort of. Blame the traffic hazard on Giordano’s, the Holy See of stuffed pizza. The new Uptown…

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Stay loud!!!

BY ELENA KUENNING VIDAS I’ve been thinking about “Jane the Virgin” a lot lately. In the midst of all this ugliness about “us” and “them” in current events, I’ve been thinking about a TV show. Dylan, my husband, and I marathoned this starting last month and it is hands-down the…

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Letter to the Editor

You’ve probably never heard of DARPA, the secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency of the U.S. Defense Department. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, in the 1990s, DARPA has been active in many areas, from solving infectious disease to transforming humans for the theater of war. For example, with…

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Prisons

BY POLLY MANN There I was sitting on the long bench facing the condominium’s mail boxes going through the mail—at least eight requests for donations from organizations that, each and every one, represent good causes. I delegate the majority to the recycle bin since there’s a limit to what I…

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My dissertation

BY ED FELIEN Before the 20th century, drama entertained by telling a story.  The first modern innovation came with Henrik Ibsen’s introduction of social purpose to the story; his plays used drama to prove a thesis: a woman’s need for self-actualization—“A Doll’s House”; the need to confront a community about…

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Black Lives Matter

BY LARA NORKUS-CRAMPTON The Twin Cities Coalition for Justice 4 Jamar Clark held a rally and march despite frigid temps on Dec. 19.  Hundreds of peaceful protestors representing a diverse coalition of civil rights, community, labor and faith groups marched for several hours from the 4th Police Precinct to Downtown…

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Paris and Raqqa

BY ED FELIEN Or, should we say San Bernardino, Paris and Raqqa and Beirut?  A day before the Paris attacks, two ISIS suicide bombers killed 43 people and injured 239 in Lebanon. Or, should we say San Bernardino, Paris and Raqqa and Beirut and Russia?  A Russian tourist flight from…

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Did Jesus celebrate Hanukkah?

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE The short answer is yes. The long answer, ah! That is a story rich in incident, with enticing side journeys into such areas as hermeneutics, historiography and linguistics, part of a wider question about the history of these celebrations, one Christian and one Jewish, and how…

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Release The Tapes!

BY ED FELIEN Early Sunday morning, Nov. 15, 911 Emergency was called to treat the victim of an assault at a party in North Minneapolis.  Paramedics called for police support once there, because, they said, Jamar Clark was interfering with their treatment of the young woman.  Police came and intervened. …

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