Elaine started at Southside Pride in 1996 selling ads, maintaining the religion calendar and writing articles that eventually became a column called Spirit and Conscience. Since 2011 she has been the paper’s managing editor.
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN My friend Chikondi Elvis Chabakha is 30 years old. He’s the principal of Cornerstone Christian High School (CCHS) in Salima, Malawi, on the continent of Africa. When the school opened a few years ago there were seven students and one large room (building). But, given the great…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Tom Dickinson is a multi-faceted person who lives in the Powderhorn neighborhood. Friends and neighbors know him as a concert pianist, a Buddhist (Kwan Um School of Zen), an activist (WAMM committee Tackling Torture at the Top), a cat-lover, and/or as the founder and president of an…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN On Thursday evening, Sept. 5, I joined a group of about 70 concerned people in a global “Amazon Day of Action” at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (MIA). According to Mighty Earth, one of the numerous environmental groups that organized and supported the event, the purpose of…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Along with most of my friends, I wish to reduce my carbon footprint. My environmentally-friendly friends and I think if we live sustainably we can somehow alleviate and mitigate the climate heat that is exponentially encompassing the entire planet. (You know, the hotter it gets, the hotter…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN In “Mennonite values in a warming world,” David C. Garen articulates spiritual guidelines for living on the Earth. (The piece was printed as a “web-exclusive” for themennonite.org.) Garen is a retired hydrologist who spent most of his professional career with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN The first oil pipelines were installed in 1853, in Canada. Rockefeller took over the oil pipeline industry in the U.S. toward the end of the 1800s on the East Coast and it spread from there until today, thousands of miles of oil pipelines cover the globe. The…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Southside Pride has been running the following in our Phillips/Powderhorn edition and on our website for a long time: *All Saints Episcopal Indian Mission 3044 Longfellow Ave. –Sundays 5:30-6:30 p.m. First Nations Kitchen: Healthy, organic dinners in setting of radical hospitality. Serving since November 2010! To learn…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN One day a member of Minnehaha Communion Lutheran Church (MCLC) said out loud, “I want to feed people pie,” and her thought did not fall on deaf ears. The Peace of Pie festival was born, and will be held in the fruit tree orchard of Adams Triangle…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN When people come into the U.S., through various entry points at the southern border, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) considers them a danger until proved otherwise. Once an asylum seeker has passed the “credible fear” interview and can show they have a family member or sponsor somewhere…
J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece “The Hobbit” will be playing at the Children’s Theatre Company until April 14. Go and see two hours of excitement in this adaptation written and directed by Greg Banks. Altogether the show is two hours, counting the 20-minute intermission, but I count it all as excitement.…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN “The Scramble for Africa” is a very long book about Europe’s takeover of the continent of Africa at the end of the 19th century. The story is appalling, mostly because of the confidence of European rulers to just take and control whatever they found there, as though…
Love for the Earth BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Since all the great romantic loves of my life are now either married, dead, or sainted hermits, I decided on Valentine’s Day that my last great love affair will be with the Earth. As my good luck would have it, there was a…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN A friend’s beaten dog inspired the kindness of Southside Pride’s IT support person. Celia Wirth and her husband, Ron Wirth, are friends with a senior citizen, Gemma Barry, who lives a few blocks from the restaurant/bar where Ron is a brewer, Roma in Mahtomedi (50 beers on…
COMPILED BY ELAINE KLAASSEN According to treehuggers.com, “Icelanders have a beautiful tradition of giving books to each other on Christmas Eve and then spending the night reading. This custom is so deeply ingrained in the culture that it is the reason for the Jolabokaflod, or “Christmas Book Flood,” when the…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Sunday night, Dec. 9, I went out into the cold dark night to witness wonderful collaborations—people creating art moments together—at Pillsbury House Theatre, 35th and Chicago. Children in the after-school program there had paired up with professional volunteer performers, playwrights and directors to create the little 10-minute…
