BY ED FELIEN He’s their useful idiot. They’ve been playing him for 30 years. In March of 1986, Dubinin, the Russian Ambassador to the U.N., with his daughter, went up to the Trump Tower to meet Trump. According to his daughter, in an article for Komsomolskaya Pravdanewspaper, he told Trump,…
BY ED FELIEN Dave Bicking has stopped the reappointment of Susan Segal as city attorney. Bicking has been a longtime opponent of the city attorney. He challenged her decision to allow the city to give a New Jersey racketeer hundreds of millions of dollars to build a sports stadium when…
BY COOPER Recently, I took my third trip to Paris. My first was when I was 17, to visit family friends and to take my first trip to Europe. A week into my trip I was scouted for a top model agency—Marilyn in Paris, one of the top five agencies…
BY ED FELIEN This year Valentine’s Day fell on the same day as Ash Wednesday. They always happen around the same time, right after Groundhog’s Day on Feb. 2. What a strange collection of holidays. What could they possibly have in common? Perhaps they’re all a riff on the ancient…
BY JOHN CHARLES WILSON Metro Transit is planning something called the D Line for the Chicago Avenue corridor in South Minneapolis. The D will also serve Fremont Avenue on the north side and will follow the C Line, which is planned for Penn Avenue North. These streets are currently served…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Way too many people don’t take teachers seriously. Teachers have massive educational requirements, several hundred years of history as one of the major recognized professions, and they provide a service so valuable to the health of society and the needs of the economy that even in…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN In my garden grows memory, knowing and imagining. I imagine a garden. I really do. My keyboard is a protected garden, maybe an arboretum, and I imagine that my fingers are droplets of dew touching leaves, grass, branches, stones. There is no frenzy in my garden. The…
BY ED FELIEN One of my more ambitious projects was to try to take over the electric company. It had all the romantic allure of Castro and Che sweeping down from the hills to take over a radio station and declare the Revolution. In Minnesota more than 146 municipalities owned…
BY TONY BOUZA I first heard the word a couple of years back. Its utterer seemed to be in possession of some unique verity. Profound. I was on my annual, solo pilgrimage to Cape Cod, where I’d spend January in splendid isolation. A friend—Jeff—called and said he had a video…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Fika Cafe American Swedish Institute 2600 Park Ave. 612-871-4907 fikacafe.net Fika (the name means coffee break in Sweden) is the hypermodern, innovative and esthetic cafe, bakery and cocktail bar of the American Swedish Institute, which has won accolades under all three of its chefs since its…
BY POLLY MANN Waning water supply produces civil war Certainly, most adult Americans are aware that the planet is growing warmer, which is not a good thing, but now we’ve another issue to be concerned about—our water supply. Yes, water, not only for drinking, but as one of the factors…
BY DEAN ZIMMERMANN Annie Young lived life to the fullest for 75 years. I feel lucky and blessed to have known her for the last 45 of those curious, remarkable and productive years—and, to call her my best friend for much of that time. Friends tend to come and go,…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN I think about my white privilege. First of all, both my maternal and paternal grandparents OWNED farms in southwestern Minnesota, that is, they were in control of land that was stolen, but if they ever had a passing thought about it, it probably went something like this:…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Thirteen years ago, within a period of 18 months, Mary Bergerson’s losses were more than anyone could imagine. Her mom died of brain cancer, her soldier husband took his own life, her youngest brother died suddenly, her step-children were taken away because her disability eliminated her right…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Many years ago a little piano student of mine wanted to play a scary Halloween song. When we couldn’t find anything he liked, I wrote him a simple piece about the howling wind, the gusting, cracking wind, a windy Halloween night, when the trees groan and rattle…
