I read Cam Gordon’s take on rent “control” [“Competing options for rent control,” Jan. 2, 2023]. Now I have more questions than I did prior to reading it. The options Cam wrote about are vague; they contain no specific examples of how an option would affect renters and developers/owners. Wouldn’t…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Openings and closings Here is a rapid list of closings, far from comprehensive, but the ones I think you might most care about: Khyber Pass, Stella’s Fish Cafe, Red Stag Supperclub, Common Roots and Bad Waitress. Openings have been slightly more numerous. Again, I won’t even…
BY ED FELIEN Tulsi Gabbard Did you see Tulsi Gabbard’s takedown of George Santos, the pathological liar and newly elected congressman from Long Island, on Fox News? Tulsi is a lot more complicated and harder to figure out than most of the noise on Fox. Her anti-war votes and speeches against the…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Good places to hear music on or around 2/14 There are lots of diverse choices for a concert or performance to share with your Someone Special the week around Valentine’s Day. Valentine’s Day is on a Tuesday this year, so maybe not the ideal night for…
BY ED FELIEN What does the FL in the DFL stand for? It stands for Farmer-Labor. In 1944 the Farmer-Labor Party and the Democratic Party merged. The Democratic Party was small potatoes in the 1930s and ‘40s. It polled in the single digits in statewide elections. The Farmer-Labor Party enjoyed…
BY ED FELIEN As of November, 33,476 Ukrainian civilians have been killed by Russian bombs and missiles. And the unspeakable slaughter of innocents continued through Christmas Day and New Year’s. In contrast, the bombing of Guernica in 1937 by the German Luftwaffe that inspired Picasso’s painting killed only 1,654 people.…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Inspo is not a tropical fish, like Nemo. Inspo = “inspiration” in millennial slang. Thanks for attending my tiny Ted Talk. In the throes of winter, even in the supposedly hopeful post-solstice part, it’s kind of hard to think about redecorating, remodeling, or (shudder) moving to…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Steve Floyd (not related to George Floyd) has been taking Black youth from South Minneapolis on trips to Africa since the early ’90s. Floyd feels that traveling to Africa is one thing that really works to help them heal from the effects of slavery throughout their history.…
BY KAY SCHROVEN The Lake Street Council (LSC), a nonprofit organization, has been around since the late 1960s. It was formed to support businesses that remained on the Lake Street corridor as the escape from the urban landscape to the suburbs continued. This exodus began in the first half of…
BY TONY BOUZA My very unscholarly appreciation of history includes the bromide that great civilizations implode through moral rot rather than outside challenges. As the saying goes, “All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing.” I agree. A recent case illustrated the point.…
BY CAM GORDON The rent control debate is heating up. With the city’s rent stabilization workgroup completing its work in December, it now falls to the City Council to approve a policy and draft an ordinance if we are to have rent stabilization in Minneapolis. On Dec. 13, the 25-member…
BY ED FELIEN Kyrsten Sinema: Sinema’s great moment of fame came when she emerged as one of the principal architects of the bipartisan infrastructure bill. She suffers under the self-aggrandizing delusion that without her it wouldn’t have passed. It was a budget bill. It only needed 50 votes plus Kamala…
BY ED FELIEN What just happened? Did we get hit with an inflationary spiral that skyrocketed prices just before the election and then calmed down just before Christmas? It seems evident that a rise in gas prices began the action. This was caused—it was widely reported and believed—by the Saudis…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Healthy eating – let food be your medicine The phrase “Let food be thy medicine” is often attributed to Hippocrates. But a Dutch doctor specializing in nutrition and natural medicine (see www.drgoodfood.org/en/vitarecipes/foodfixes) scanned every known bit of writing by him and found nothing that can be…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Because I am not a member of the American Swedish Institute, I had to shell out an extra five bucks for my ticket to the annual ASI lutefisk dinner, which was held on Nov. 20 this year. The things I do for journalism. And maybe for…
