Columnists

Regular Columnists

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

 


Culture on the West Bank, political victory in East Phillips, and the small business scene on Cedar Avenue

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Stuffed full of culture – Minneapolis’s Cedar-Riverside (the West Bank) With numerous theaters, music venues and more, Cedar Avenue’s northern stretch from Washington Avenue to Franklin Avenue is a cultural corridor like no other. There’s Minneapolis’s oldest community theater, Theatre in the Round, at 245 Cedar…

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Summer in Richfield on East 66th Street

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Summer is for parks and nature Summer in Richfield is a time to get out and about in your city. Richfield has a lot of options for outdoor activities. The two largest city parks, Veterans Memorial Park, at 6335 Portland Ave., and Wood Lake Nature Center,…

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Socializing Carol Becker

BY ED FELIEN To socialize: “to make someone behave in a way that is acceptable to their society.” Carol Becker was a member of the Minneapolis Board of Estimate and Taxation from 2006 until Dec. 31, 2021. She is a respected conservative voice in Minneapolis politics. She wrote a very…

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Writers create community

BY ELAINE KLAASSEN I’ve started going to two writing groups that have sprung up in our neighborhood. I go every time because I love words, language and people and that’s what these groups are about. I consider myself quite limited when it comes to imagination and since I wrote factual…

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‘Jersey Boys,’ a cautionary tale

BY ED FELIEN The music just carries you away. “Can’t Take My Eyes off of You,” “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “My Eyes Adored You,” “Oh, What a Night,” “Working My Way Back to You, Babe,” “Dawn, Go Away I’m No Good for You” – those…

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Medea melee in the peace movement

BY ED FELIEN Kieran Knutson held onto the door to the meeting with Medea Benjamin, threatening to disrupt the meeting. Members of Vets for Peace stood behind the door blocking his entrance. Dave Bicking asked him to leave. At least six officers and an MPD sergeant showed up. Eventually, Knutson…

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DFL conventions – Ward 12 and Ward 10

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE I am a member of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and I have been since 1986. In DSA, we like to debate something called the Dirty Break. This is premised on the decades of tension between the Democratic Party and the left outsiders, with the leftists…

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Celebrate summer on Franklin Avenue

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Seward Cafe is back! After a launch event in April, the Seward Cafe officially reopened, albeit with some changes, on May 16. Since the pandemic and the George Floyd uprising, the cafe has been closed although the collective owners and the building were not idle, at…

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My (non)dinner with Brian

BY TONY BOUZA “My Dinner with Andre” was one of my favorite flicks, so when I spied Andre Gregory in an abandoned Cape Cod pond parking lot, I rushed over and gushed my enthusiasm over his creation.  He guessed I was a professor and I had to dampen his reaction and…

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MAY DAY

On a day sometime between the spring equinox and the summer solstice, long ago, at a time when peasants worked every day all the time, before the five-day, 40-hour workweek, peasants and workers decided there must be one day just for them.  For one day they would lay down their tools.  They…

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