Elaine Klaassen
Spirit and Conscience, columns by Elaine Klaassen
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.
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:…
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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…
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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…
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Editor’s note: An article by Joe Selvaggio, founder of Project for Pride in Living and MicroGrants, was published in the Nov. Nokomis and Dec. Phillips/Powderhorn and Riverside editions suggesting ways to solve the problem of poverty in Minnesota. Elaine Klaassen, managing editor of Southside Pride, responded to the article in…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Minnehaha Communion Lutheran Church (MCLC) has already been for years a place where non-members and strangers come to be buried and married (same-sex couples included). And for many years there have been regular AA, Al-Anon and Adoption Support groups that meet at the church. Community groups sometimes…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Dust to dust. Whatever. Life is hard. Fires, storms, early deaths, accidents, failures, let-downs, rejections, abandonments, wars. Life goes on. We make our chips and dip, fire up the pickup truck, shingle the roof and sew our wedding dresses. We still smile at the sunrise and hold hands at…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN There’s a special place in heaven (or, at least in my heart) for people who make music a reality in the lives of children. Such people are found at St. Helena Catholic School, a PreK-8 in South Minneapolis. The music program at St. Helena isn’t what it…
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It’s good to open a discussion on poverty. I appreciate Joe Selvaggio’s article in that regard. However, his tone makes one think that he lives miles and miles from the people who find themselves, for many, many different reasons, without the means to survive. His deprecating tone is disturbing. And…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN The federal government is planning to spend $2.1 billion on four new immigrant detention centers in the U.S. One of them will be in Minnesota. There are already 200-plus existing sites in the country. According to Community Initiatives for Visiting Immigrants in Confinement (CIVIC), in 1996 there…
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It’s good to open a discussion on poverty. I appreciate Joe Selvaggio’s article (Southside Pride November Nokomis and December Phillips/Powderhorn) in that regard. However, his tone makes one think that he lives miles and miles from the people who find themselves, for many, many different reasons, without the means to…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Cultural Uniqueness of Trinity Lutheran Congregation When I talked with Jane Buckley-Farlee, co-pastor of Trinity Lutheran Congregation, we discovered she had been at that church as long as I’ve been at Southside Pride—21 years. I’ve been reporting on religious groups, mostly churches, during all this time; overall,…
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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN I wouldn’t go so far as to say that I HATE musicals, but they are definitely not my favorite genre. I’ve heard a lot of people say they don’t much care for musicals, so for that crowd I’d say, “Go see ‘Fly By Night’ at the Jungle…
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After the shock of the national election results I felt a sense of impending doom. I still do. I am afraid for myself as an elder person on Medicare, I am afraid for immigrants and for all people facing danger in the world even more than before. I am afraid…
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My concern with racism and white supremacy in America began long before the recent election. It has been present in American society and government since the beginning. It is something that the U.S. government, on the face of it anyway, during my lifetime, has mostly always been against. Now, that…
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In 1986, Nick Boswell walked into a used-book store and picked up an old copy of the Koran. He thought, “Oh, here’s something to give my brother to reform him.” Once he started reading, though, he knew the message was for him. It astounded him, hit the nail on the…
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