BY KATHRYN KELLY Park Board Commissioner Musich sits on her elevated hill over Lake Nokomis and surveys her dominion of Lake Nokomis. On her campaign website she says that her family loves “looking out over the park from our living room and seeing so many people enjoying OUR FRONT YARD.”…
BY PETER MCLAUGHLIN • Your job is to create a park system for all of Minneapolis. Your plan will destroy a vital, viable historic resource that has served the community for almost a hundred years. You may not like golf, but there are people who do, people who get great…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE A big subject in local educational news has been the struggle between teachers’ unions and school districts over when and how it is safe to return to in-person classes. As we explained in the October 2020 Education Section, it’s a complex issue. For some teachers, in-person…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE The state of the COVID-19 pandemic is still pretty uncertain for summer 2021. Therefore, not surprisingly, there are more virtual options than ever before available. But there are still some in-person day camps and even residential traditional camps. There is actually a huge variety of choices,…
BY KAY SCHROVEN Oh a storm is threatening My very life today If I don’t get some shelter Oh yeah, I’m gonna fade away — “Gimme Shelter,” The Rolling Stones In the 1980s when many mental health facilities were closing, 14 local churches became involved in addressing homelessness and providing…
BY ED FELIEN I feel like Oscar in Sesame Street: “I like trash.” What’s there to do during the pandemic and forced incarceration but watch trashy action flicks on Netflix? And, after you’ve watched all the James Bond movies and “Ocean’s Eleven,” you’re left with the dregs at the bottom…
BY DAVID TILSEN This year the entire Minneapolis city government is on the ballot—the mayor, all 13 council members, the Board of Estimate and Taxation and the Park Board. All of these elected officials have been through a lot as the city has been traumatized by the pandemic, the George…
BY TONY BOUZA Our—or any—society is driven by values. We repeatedly extoll the virtues of truth tellers and honest dealers. Our airways are clogged with boasts of integrity. Our morality defines us and we emphasize these beliefs in the artifacts of culture. There are not too many statues left of…
BY STEPHANIE FOX For Kurt Vickman, making sure that everyone has enough food to eat has been a lifelong mission. Once the head pastor of The Upper Room, an activist church, Vickman ran a food shelf in the church basement. He discovered that many people would ask to pay small…
Thank you for your excellent piece on Lisa Bender, published a few issues back [all February editions of Southside Pride]. I’ve lived in my own home here in the Wedge neighborhood since 1995 and I’m a semi-retired architect. I’ve also been on various neighborhood committees, beginning at the time when…
BY ERIC SKOGLUND In years past, maybe last century, I drove past Hiawatha School Park after dark in the dead of winter and saw the lights shining on an empty hockey rink—or maybe there was a solitary figure moving across the ice, skating, I presumed. It looked so cold, inhospitable…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE “By most estimates, we’ve been living in close proximity to companion animals for tens of thousands of years. Cats, dogs and other companion animals share our homes, and often our broader environments, and … are part of our families.” This is the introduction to a wonderful…
BY ED FELIEN A concerned reader wrote, “Please urge more equitable distribution. Please cover this issue right away. White arms are being injected at a much higher rate than their percent of population.” Native Americans are 1.8 times more likely to get COVID-19 than white people. They are four times…
Julian Assange, a journalist in danger Remember him? He’s the Australian founder of the website “WikiLeaks” who ended up in a London jail on 17 espionage charges and one charge of computer misuse. He could spend the rest of his life in the U.S. prison in Florence, Colo. He was…
BY JOHN KOLSTAD Is President Biden’s proposal regarding health care the improvement we need? How does it compare to Universal Single Payer (Improved Medicare for All)? Biden’s plan reads like a campaign promo piece. He speaks in glowing terms about how great the Obama Affordable Care Act (ACA) is and…
