BY ED FELIEN The Museum of Russian Art has a charming exhibit of watercolors by Alexander Viazmensky in one of its backrooms. It’s all mushrooms. His detail, down to the specks of dirt clinging to the roots, is astonishing. The flyer advertising the show has on its cover (unsurprisingly) a photo of…
BY ED FELIEN About the middle of September, Todd Lipelt got called to serve as a juror in Hennepin County District Court. It was a horrific experience. He was rejected for a trial the first day, but he got picked for one the second day. The case was the State of…
BY ED FELIEN I confess, I always kind of resented Joe Selvaggio. My best friend for almost twenty years, Tony Bouza, always said that I was his second favorite hero. I would ask him, “Who’s first?” He would always answer, “Joe Selvaggio.” But I had been publishing Southside Pride for…
BY ED FELIEN You see them standing by the side of the road and your heart breaks. They are begging for money, for shelter, for food. And, maybe, sometimes, they are begging for money for drugs. It’s gotten out of control at 46th and Hiawatha. Nicole M wrote on Nextdoor, “My…
BY ED FELIEN An international contingent was at the Cedar Cultural Center on August 16 to celebrate the release of a new album and a new biography of Cornbread by Andrea Swensson, Deeper Blues: The Life, Songs, and Salvation of Cornbread Harris. Jimmy Jam Harris from LA, US Senator Amy…
BY ED FELIEN Okay, so the Cheapside Carnival Freak show that is the Trump campaign, just got freakier. First, some idiot kid takes his dad’s AR-15 and, at the last minute, picks up a couple boxes of shells and heads off to become famous. He makes it to the roof…
BY ED FELIEN The Trail of Tears was the forced displacement of the Cherokee, Muscogee, Seminole, Chickasaw and Choctaw nations between 1830 and 1850. 60,000 people were forced to leave their ancestral homes. Many thousands died on the trail that led from Georgia and South Carolina more than 800 miles…
BY ED FELIEN First, what they got wrong. This whole white male privilege thing is way out of date. The last time that worked was before the Civil War. Is the antebellum South the “Great” era that Trump says he can “Make” for “America Again”? Birth of a Nation, D…
BY ED FELIEN, EDITOR We received this correspondence: “Dear Mr. Felien: “I write to request that you issue a retraction and apology for the false statements about our client, Bob Kroll, in your June 4, 2024, article titled “Trump and the threat of civil war.” In this article, you made…
Tommy Goodroad BY ED FELIEN Tommy Goodroad and The Highway Birds made it home last month. On Thursday night, July 11, they played songs from their new album, See You Around, at 7th Street Entry. Pictured above is Peter Briggs on electric steel guitar, Tommy Goodroad on guitar, George Adzick…
BY ED FELIEN Instead of burning Roman slums to make way for the Via del Corso to the Colosseum, Michael Schroeder, the planning “genius” of the Park Board, is flooding homes in South Minneapolis to make room for his vision of a swamp. If Nero could be credited with the…
BY ED FELIEN It’s a rematch from two years ago when Samuels came within two points of beating Omar. This year, Samuels says he wants to “end the divisive politics that has been so successful in dividing neighbors and even family members against one another.” He was the subject of…
BY ED FELIEN To the person pasting a QR code over our article “Never forget Hind Rajab” in our June edition: Please stop. Write to us. Let’s talk about it. Your QR code linked to a recapitulation of the horror of October 7. We have, in past issues, condemned that…
BY ED FELIEN “The road not taken,” a lecture by Michael A. Meeropol, will be Tuesday, July 23, 7:30 p.m. at the Women’s Club (410 Oak Grove St.). Admission is free. As an historian, and someone who has lived American history as the eldest son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg,…
BY ED FELIEN The Israeli military has “slaughtered” (Noam Chomsky’s word) more than 35,000 Palestinians—most of them, women and children. From Wikipedia: In January 2024, three months into the Israeli invasion of the Gaza Strip, much of the Strip was largely deserted and bombed out. The health care system in Gaza was collapsing…
Columns by Ed Felien