THE DISH: Lunch Around the World (Delights of Ethiopia)

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Dilla’s Restaurant 1813 Riverside Ave. Minneapolis 55454 612-332-2898 dillasethiopianrestaurant.com The Dish continues our pursuit of international lunch options with a visit to Dilla’s Ethiopian on Riverside Avenue. Dilla’s decor is very down to earth, while its reputation for food is high, and they have a vegetarian…

Continue reading

Migration (chance)

BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Where you are born is the luck of the draw. We don’t choose our birthplace. Why is THIS my home? The rippling grain, the lone tree, the curling creek beds and endless sky. The prairie is my home. Not the desert, not the mountains, not the sea,…

Continue reading

MayDay March on Lake Street

More than 200 workers marched down Lake Street to Powderhorn Park to celebrate MayDay, May 1st. One of the leaders from Trabajadores de la Twin Cities said, “Today we are proud to be workers. But we should be proud every day that because we wake up at 4 a.m. and…

Continue reading

Vulnerable citizens, opportunity for the unscrupulous

BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Everybody hopes they will never be jumped, assaulted, robbed, held up, mugged, etc., on the street. But it happens. It’s hard to imagine what gives perpetrators permission to traumatize vulnerable victims, such as the disabled, the elderly, young mothers, unarmed people. At the end of January, Mr.…

Continue reading

Comings and Goings on East 38th Street

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE The business and cultural scene along East 38th Street, a personal favorite east-west connector and not just because I live near it, remains lively but in a healthy way. There have been some beloved mainstays that went under—notably Southside Farm Store. I will kind of miss…

Continue reading

The Justine Damond case revisited

BY TONY BOUZA In August and in October 2017, I wrote essays on the Justine Damond shooting in Minneapolis in these pages. I called it murder and criticized the mayor, police chief and prosecutor. The first two are gone—not, I’m confident, as a result, but following a vague chiasma of…

Continue reading

Police protection and guns

BY LYDIA HOWELL After Sept. 11, legislators didn’t hesitate to act. War, expanding surveillance—national security! Ignoring civil liberties—like jailing 1,000 Muslim men without charges—public safety! Yet, for homegrown gun violence, lawmakers and police are strangely inert. Local police were alerted by concerned people or called to the Florida school shooter’s…

Continue reading

THE DISH: Lunch Around the World (Izakaya, from Japan)

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Zen Box 612-332-3936 602 Washington Ave. S. Minneapolis MN 55415 zenbox.com Before there was Zen Box Izakaya, there was a much smaller lunch place in the Minneapolis skyway called simply Zen Box. They sold Japanese-style lunch to go—bento— which is the Japanese name for a lunchbox—not…

Continue reading

Running on empty

BY JOHN CHARLES WILSON Running on, running on empty Running on, running blind Running on, running into the sun But I’m running behind –Jackson Browne This month is the quarterly schedule change at Metro Transit. Unfortunately, or fortunately, as you may see it, there aren’t many changes this time around…

Continue reading