Columnists

Regular Columnists

Ed Felien • Elaine Klaassen • Polly Mann • Tony Bouza • David Tilsen • Debra Keefer Ramage • Stephanie Fox • Johnny Hazard

Healing body and/or soul on Bloomington Avenue

August 7, 2017 October 30, 2017

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Although primarily a residential avenue, Bloomington Avenue has a plethora of small businesses, quite a few of them dedicated to wellness of one kind or another. There are also a few venerable but unconventional churches on or near Bloomington, which adds up to many varied resources…

Open Streets on Franklin Avenue

August 7, 2017 October 30, 2017

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE This year Franklin Avenue’s Open Streets celebration will be on Sunday, Aug. 27, at the usual times: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. The boundaries of the Franklin Avenue festival are Portland Avenue in the west and 32nd Avenue in the east (four blocks longer than last…

A new police chief?

August 7, 2017 October 27, 2017

BY ED FELIEN We do not need a change of the Palace Guard. Replacing the Chief of Police is not the solution to the problem with the Minneapolis Police Department. The problem is there is no accountability. The MPD officers believe they are above the law. They believe their badge…

Save Hiawatha Golf Course

July 17, 2017 October 27, 2017

BY ED FELIEN It seems nothing can stop them from closing Hiawatha Golf Course in a couple of years. At a public meeting late last month, Michael Schroeder, the assistant superintendent for Planning Services, told an anxious crowd of more than a hundred golfers that the course would be open…

“Young people speakin’ their minds Getting so much resistance from behind It’s time we stop Hey, what’s that sound? Everybody look – what’s going down?” — Stephen Stills “Social clubs in drag disguise” — Bob Dylan

July 17, 2017 October 27, 2017

BY ED FELIEN And they burned the bridges behind them. A new generation came to take their place, so they fought back. They wore the machinery down; ground the process to dust; exhausted them; outlasted them, and they remained intact. The DFL establishment that ran the Convention was the older…

Highland Park: poised between past and future

July 17, 2017 October 30, 2017

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE The automobile, specifically the Ford automobile (and truck) for good or ill, built Highland Park. This fact was amply reflected in the Ford-only Car Show that was a feature of the recent 2017 Highland Fest. But, you know, they don’t make Fords in Highland Park any…

Open Streets 2017 – Now with more Minnehaha Avenue

July 17, 2017 October 30, 2017

BY DEBORA KEEFER RAMAGE Just like last year, the Open Streets program is putting on eight events on eight separate Sundays through the summer. (Two events, Downtown and Lyndale, have occurred already.) The routes of a few of the events are different this year. Last year the event for East…

Censorship

July 17, 2017 October 31, 2017

BY TONY BOUZA Humans learned the importance of controlling the extremes of other humans very early on—about contemporaneous with learning of the efficiency and importance of conveying their messages and controlling behavior. Artists were called “the antenna of the race” by a poet who saw them as key definers of…

CONFESSIONS OF AN UNREPENTANT MAOIST: The murder of Mark Salzer, winter, 1971

July 17, 2017 October 31, 2017

BY ED FELIEN Later that winter we heard about the murder of Mark Salzer by an undercover narcotics officer of the Minneapolis Police Department (MPD). James Decowski befriended Mark and then busted him. He was in his apartment with his girlfriend. The cop pulled a gun. Mark knocked over a lamp. The cop shot and…

Save Hiawatha Golf Course

July 10, 2017 October 26, 2017

Shopping adventures on 66th Street

July 10, 2017 October 30, 2017

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Southside Pride, well, OK, me, that is I, took advantage of the long Independence Day “weekend” (flexible day Monday, off Tuesday) to visit some alluring businesses that I had heard about lining the mixed residential and shopping hub corridor that is 66th Street, just over the…

FROM WHERE I STAND: Wealth inequality

July 10, 2017 October 31, 2017

BY POLLY MANN According to research on wealth by the Boston Counseling Group, by 2021 only 1% of American millionaires and billionaires will control 70% of the nation’s wealth. Currently more billionaires and millionaires live in the U.S. than anywhere else in the world, with two out of five millionaires…

FROM WHERE I STAND: Violence brings starvation

July 10, 2017 October 31, 2017

BY POLLY MANN The U.N. has announced that it is short $220 million of the $1.4 billion which was allocated for the starving children of Syria, saying it is the worst crisis it has faced since the start of the war there in 2011. Nearly 6 million children are without…

Save Hiawatha Golf Course

July 3, 2017 October 26, 2017

BY ED FELIEN The Park Board seems hell-bent on destruction. It seems nothing can stop them from closing Hiawatha Golf Course in a couple of years. At a public meeting late last month, Michael Schroeder, the assistant superintendent for Planning Services, told an anxious crowd of more than a hundred…