BY ED FELIEN On Sept. 9 I sent the following email to Superintendent of Parks Mary Merrill: Hi Superintendent Merrill, Would you please direct staff to remove the boulder dam/weir under the 30th Avenue Footbridge that is obstructing the flow of Minnehaha Creek, as indicated in the Barr Engineering study.…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Mexican-American culture is osmosing through South Minneapolis for sure, and it’s in glorious evidence along 42nd Street. Just up the hill from El Colegio, a publicly supported charter high school “rooted in the Latinx experience,” there are two small businesses across the street from each other…
BY ED FELIEN I loved the façade on the Modern Cleaners building ever since I first saw it as a small child looking out the window of a Chicago Avenue bus. It seemed so sleek, so smooth, so modern. The architectural style is Streamline Moderne, a final flourish of Art…
resistance persistence BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE There have been a few victories in the resistance in the past month. Before the arraignment hearing (Sept. 27) came around for the group of immigrant rights protestors known as #ICEbreakers18, the court dismissed all the charges on Sept. 9. That was one victory.…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Midtown Global Market is coming into its 14th year of existence. There are a few businesses that were there at the very start and are still there. Pham’s Deli is one of them. Although I have been going to MGM for shopping or a quick meal…
BY POLLY MANN It was the first and only time I have had caviar: a long long time ago when I was in Moscow with my husband who was attending a joint meeting of American and Russian judges. The occasion was a cocktail party hosted by the Russian judges. It…
In a letter dated Aug. 3, 2018, Minneapolis YWCA management, without prior consultation with members, decreed that it would impose a pay-to-park system with gates to go into effect in September at the Midtown Y. Parking had always been free at Midtown, one of its attractions. Although the letter was…
BY ED FELIEN In late winter of 1976 I got a call from Fran Shor, a friend who was teaching at Wayne State University. He said they were hiring faculty for a new program, The Weekend College for Working Adults. It was an adult education program teaching college classes to…
BY ED FELIEN That’s what they call it. The people living in tents along the sound-wall along Hiawatha from Franklin to 22nd Street call their village “The Wall of Forgotten Natives. FDR in a radio address in 1932 introduced his New Deal programs to help “the forgotten man at the…
BY STEPHANIE FOX Tennis on Selby 1599 Selby 651-340-3998 There is little shop on Selby Avenue devoted to tennis and enthusiastic tennis players. Owner Deb Irvine was once a lawyer. She didn’t even start playing tennis until she was an adult, she says, but she became a passionate player and…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Do you realize what an insane month August was? Locally, we had merely days before the statewide party and non-partisan primaries, an allegation against a major DFL candidate—Keith Ellison, currently 5th District Congressperson, but running for Minnesota attorney general—of domestic violence. Ellison won his primary, and…
BY TONY BOUZA “They go low, we go high.” Thus, did that classy First Lady, Michelle Obama, abjure us to take the high road. Then we have Rep. Maxine Waters tempting us to the low road. All those lunch counter sit-ins ignored. What did it all mean? Think of the…
BY ED FELIEN It’s time for the Fall Parade of Homes. Until Sept. 30, you can tour 427 new homes Thursdays-Sundays from 12 to 6 p.m. It’s free except for four Dream Homes where you’ll be asked to pay a $5 admission at the door. Proceeds from the Dream Homes…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Daily emails to my inbox plead with me to “save the wolves, save the polar bears, save the bees … !” Two environmental films I saw recently at Transition Longfellow warned me of the fragile state of our Earth. I am still shaken. I know the Earth…
Hope Lutheran Church is celebrating its unique choir camping trip program, which ran from 1967 to 2003, with a reunion on Saturday, Sept. 15. All choristers and chaperones that made these trips possible are invited. These were not singing or performing tours, nor were they educational programs or religious retreats. They…
