BY ED FELIEN The ancient Egyptian goddess Isis is the mother of the Greek and Christian religions.   She begins the myths of the journey into the wilderness, the death and the resurrection. The ISIS of the Islamic State of Syria and Iraq is really a secessionist movement of Sunni Arabs…

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BY ED FELIEN The big meeting organized by the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board to discuss pumping at the Hiawatha Golf Course took place Tuesday, June 14, at Pearl Park.  There was a big storm predicted for the evening, with a tornado watch for the 6:30 to 8:30 time of…

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BY KRISTOPHER BISHOP Sanford Middle School students look out their classroom windows and see mountains of dirt piled outside. They have seen and heard the construction for a year and a half. Despite a rocky road along the way, the school has had a renaissance in the last few years…

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BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE The stretch of Franklin Avenue that goes through the Seward neighborhood has always seemed to me the perfect urban avenue in many ways. It’s got houses and apartments old and new, long-time residents and constant influxes of new communities, fairly low crime, a bus route or…

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BY ED FELIEN Before driving out to Smith College in Northampton, Mass., I stopped at Chicago for the New Left Convention.  I went to Old Town, met some lovely people and we decided to bring a little bit of the Summer of Love to Chicago.  We talked a liberal church…

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BY ELAINE KLAASSEN “The Geography of Madness: Penis Thieves, Voodoo Death and the Search for the Meaning of the World’s Strangest Syndromes” is a book that challenges not a few assumptions. And Frank Bures is a writer for whom nothing is weird. To research the book, seasoned traveler Bures criss-crosses…

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BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Here is a message from the board and staff of In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre: “Our beloved Avalon has been home to HOBT for 28 years. During that time, this building has functioned as a performance space, a puppet building workshop,…

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BY ADAM M. SCHENCK It may be the Indian subcontinent that has the caste of untouchables, but it is our American culture that holds untouchable subjects. Chief among them: race. Racism lurks under the surface of campaign slogans like “Make America Great Again” and in the unspoken rules in the…

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BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE The Minnesota Democratic Farmer-Labor Party held its 2016 state convention on June 4 at Orchestra Hall in Minneapolis. I did not attend as a member of the press, but as an alternate, then upgraded to delegate, to Bernie Sanders. As a delegate I could be on…

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BY ADAM  M. SCHENCK A preference is, by definition, a greater liking for one option over another. For some odd reason, however, I cannot fathom how someone would not like the genre of the English romance, which focuses on romantic relationships and concludes with an optimistic ending, typically a marriage.…

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BY ASHLEY FRAY My first memory of discussing about race was when I was 5 years old. My African-American father sat me and my sister down and gave us a speech on race. “You are proud Afro- Americans. Never trust a white man and never marry him. He’ll turn you…

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BY ED FELIEN Are you concerned that the number of hillbilly militias, racist rednecks with assault rifles, has grown from a little over a hundred groups to more than a thousand groups in the last few years? Are you concerned that the FBI warned in 2006 that white supremacists have…

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BY CARLA WALDEMAR Hi-Lo Diner 4020 E. Lake St. no reservations parking lot in rear Move over, Mickey’s: You’ve got a shiny, new contender for Supreme Leader of the local diner universe. This classic 1957 diner traveled from a site in Pennsylvania to its new home on East Lake Street…

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BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE On May 24, the Minneapolis Public Schools school board announced its final choice for the permanent position of superintendent—Ed Graff, formerly superintendent of schools in Anchorage, Alaska. Meanwhile, Michael Goar, who had served as interim superintendent since the departure of Bernadeia Johnson in early 2015, left…

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During the last several months, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and the City of Minneapolis, in collaboration with the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District, have studied the effects of pumping ground water and storm water from the Hiawatha Golf Course into Lake Hiawatha. While no conclusion on future pumping has…

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