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 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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Southside Pride and Pulse, August 2007 What do you do with enormous disappointment? What do you do when you just couldn’t have something you really, really wanted. I don’t know. Rarely do I take big leaps—mostly to avoid disappointment, I suppose. But this time, since “I’m not getting any younger,…
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The book “A Family Torn Apart” is a heart-rending and heart-pounding story. The narrator relates in first person what happens when war and political forces that have nothing whatsoever to do with people who are just trying to live their lives, grow their crops, celebrate their holidays and love their…
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In “Changing Lenses: A New Focus for Crime & Justice” (published in 1990), Howard Zehr writes that our current criminal justice system fails on three counts: It fails to deter crime, it fails to hold offenders accountable and it fails to meet the needs of victims. The book opens with…
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We are all angry at our mortality. We don’t like it that our life has a set length to it, AND we don’t like it that we can only be our own selves. One of our big challenges in life is to get away from seeing everything through, or with,…
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Pulse, June 22, 2005 BY MARY ANN VINCENTA An exhilarating collection of two-dimensional works by contemporary Chinese artists will fill the spacious walls of the Katherine Nash Gallery until the end of July. Many pieces are so sublime they give you that bursting-in-your-chest, elevated-to-midair feeling. It is astonishing to see…
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