BY ED FELIEN He’s their useful idiot. They’ve been playing him for 30 years. In March of 1986, Dubinin, the Russian Ambassador to the U.N., with his daughter, went up to the Trump Tower to meet Trump. According to his daughter, in an article for Komsomolskaya Pravdanewspaper, he told Trump,…
BY ED FELIEN Dave Bicking has stopped the reappointment of Susan Segal as city attorney. Bicking has been a longtime opponent of the city attorney. He challenged her decision to allow the city to give a New Jersey racketeer hundreds of millions of dollars to build a sports stadium when…
BY ED FELIEN This year Valentine’s Day fell on the same day as Ash Wednesday. They always happen around the same time, right after Groundhog’s Day on Feb. 2. What a strange collection of holidays. What could they possibly have in common? Perhaps they’re all a riff on the ancient…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Way too many people don’t take teachers seriously. Teachers have massive educational requirements, several hundred years of history as one of the major recognized professions, and they provide a service so valuable to the health of society and the needs of the economy that even in…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN In my garden grows memory, knowing and imagining. I imagine a garden. I really do. My keyboard is a protected garden, maybe an arboretum, and I imagine that my fingers are droplets of dew touching leaves, grass, branches, stones. There is no frenzy in my garden. The…
BY ED FELIEN You had a great Super Bowl party, and the Downtown Council honored you at a fancy luncheon. But you work for us, not Jimmy Fallon or Tom Brady, not the Downtown Business Council or the StarTribune. We hired you to run this City, and we expect progressive…
BY ED FELIEN It won’t happen fast. We don’t want it to happen fast. It’s an important educational experience. It should take time and it must be as public as possible, so nobody freaks out and thinks it’s a trick or unfair. They won’t bust him for collusion with the…
BY ED FELIEN This year Valentine’s Day fell on the same day as Ash Wednesday. They always happen around the same time, right after Groundhog’s Day on Feb. 2. What a strange collection of holidays. What could they possibly have in common? Perhaps they’re all a riff on the ancient…
BY ED FELIEN One of my more ambitious projects was to try to take over the electric company. It had all the romantic allure of Castro and Che sweeping down from the hills to take over a radio station and declare the Revolution. In Minnesota more than 146 municipalities owned…
BY TONY BOUZA I first heard the word a couple of years back. Its utterer seemed to be in possession of some unique verity. Profound. I was on my annual, solo pilgrimage to Cape Cod, where I’d spend January in splendid isolation. A friend—Jeff—called and said he had a video…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Fika Cafe American Swedish Institute 2600 Park Ave. 612-871-4907 fikacafe.net Fika (the name means coffee break in Sweden) is the hypermodern, innovative and esthetic cafe, bakery and cocktail bar of the American Swedish Institute, which has won accolades under all three of its chefs since its…
ED FELIEN Tomorrow night, Feb. 13, from 7 to 9 p.m., at Pearl Park Recreation Center, the Park Board will be hosting a meeting to discuss its Lake Nokomis Shoreline Enhancements Project. According to the Park Board, “This project is focused on stabilizing erosion along portions of the shoreline, improving…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Valentine’s Day will soon be upon us. This day can be a boon to restaurants offering date night specials, confectioners and bakers due to the association with sweet things, florists, obviously, and greeting card makers and sellers. The last category will find new ways to depict…
BY POLLY MANN Waning water supply produces civil war Certainly, most adult Americans are aware that the planet is growing warmer, which is not a good thing, but now we’ve another issue to be concerned about—our water supply. Yes, water, not only for drinking, but as one of the factors…
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:…
