Columnists

Regular Columnists

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

 


“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

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…

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Highland Park: poised between past and future

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…

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Censorship

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…

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Save Hiawatha Golf Course

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…

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Shopping adventures on 66th Street

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…

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FROM WHERE I STAND: Wealth inequality

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…

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Save Hiawatha Golf Course

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…

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Save Hiawatha Golf Course

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…

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DFL City Convention July 8

BY ED FELIEN The DFL will hold an endorsing convention for mayor, Board of Estimate and Taxation and nine Park Board seats on Saturday, July 8, at the downtown Minneapolis Convention Center. There are four leading candidates for mayor: Betsy Hodges is the incumbent. She hasn’t raised a lot of…

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Open Streets 2017—now with more Minnehaha Avenue

BY DEBRA 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…

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Public art and artists along Cedar Avenue

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Cedar Avenue from the West Bank to Lake Nokomis does not, at first glance, seem to be a cultural corridor. Its houses are modest, its restaurants and other businesses not trendy or pretentious. But nevertheless, it is home to a few unique art spaces and on…

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More war in Afghanistan

BY ED FELIEN Trump is taking the leash off his pitbull. McMaster, the Bush architect of the first failed surge in Afghanistan, has his chance to do it all over again. He’s got a plan to add 3,000 to 5,000 more troops to forces in Afghanistan to settle down the…

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