BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE It’s hard to believe but summer is not that far away if you have a kid who needs enrichment, extra tutelage or a grand new experience. The Twin Cities offers a dizzying array of offerings and if you expand your search to outstate camps and events,…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Tiny Diner 1024 E. 38th St. Minneapolis This is my relationship with the restaurant “empire” of Kim Bartmann—it started way before I had ever heard of her. In 1992, my teenage daughter came back to live with me for her last year of high school. That…
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 DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE How did clandestine lovers communicate in the days before email, cell phones and Skype? Well, not surprisingly, it wasn’t easy. And just like today, when even encryption will fail if you don’t use it right, sometimes things didn’t work out so well. Take Romeo and Juliet,…
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…
BY DAVID TILSEN We had another wonderful MayDay parade, ceremony and festival last spring. The creativity of the puppeteers, sculptors, playwrights, performers and other workers continues to be first rate, and our community supports and benefits from this joyful annual celebration. In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask…
BY TONY BOUZA The name certainly conjures a shudder of emotion—cum—eroticism. As a cop in New York, I observed the information that the local distillate—illegal and popular—was, of course, called Kong. Potent. That it killed or blinded many of its imbibers did not appear to be a deal breaker. Hooch…
BY ED FELIEN What does the Los Angeles teachers’ strike have to do with Minneapolis? Well, actually, quite a bit. Some part of the strike was about wages. They got a little bit of the raise they asked for four years ago. They got smaller class sizes and school nurses.…
BY ED FELIEN On Thursday, Jan. 3, County Attorney Mike Freeman released this statement: “Two Minneapolis police officers will not be charged in the fatal shooting of Travis Jordan, Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman announced Thursday.” Officers Ryan Keyes and Neal Walsh fired a total of eight shots at the…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE There was a flurry of interesting and useful events in December, but I was not able to squeeze a resistance persistence article into the paper to tell you of them. The one that still sticks with me was put on by an organization called No More…
BY ED FELIEN What happened? A little over three years ago, on Sept. 30, 2015, you held a big community meeting with more than a hundred people at Plaza Verde to talk about the dangers of gentrification. You told Ryan Williams-Virden from the Twin City Daily Planet, “Gentrification is a…
BY TONY BOUZA The very word conjures a freighted emotional frisson we barely dare acknowledge or express. Watching “Thurgood,” a biopic on the Supreme Court Justice and the NAACP, inspired me to think of the role of Jews in America. They arrived at the Lower East Side of Manhattan and…
BY ED FELIEN Brad Bourn has prepared a special welcoming gift for Al Bangoura, the new superintendent of parks due to take office on Jan. 20. Almost the first thing on his desk will be the contract to hire an intergovernmental relations administrator. Last month we noted: “Park Board President…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE I’m going to assume you don’t. For the past two or three years, I have been on a quixotic quest to raise awareness about the incredible prevalence of child slave labor in the production of chocolate, and the enormous “conspiracy of silence” that leaves otherwise conscientious…
Why should your child die from a gunshot wound? The doctor has found the task a most difficult and onerous one and who wouldn’t? Dr. Marianne Haughey of St. Barnabas Hospital in Jersey City, N.Y., has been assigned victims of homicide for 25 years and one of her tasks has…
