Hey hey, ho ho, Gov’nor Walz has got to go!

BY ELINA KOLSTAD In the month of November, Gov. Walz made two missteps that should cost him any chance at reelection. His administration deployed excessive force to a protest on I-94 and approved the 401 water crossings permit for the Enbridge Energy Line 3 pipeline replacement project. On Nov. 4,…

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NENA reconsidered

BY ED FELIEN Last month in this space we published a notice we found on the Nokomis East Neighborhood Association (NENA) website about a new program they were planning: Nokomis East Neighbor-to-Neighbor Communication Project. We felt this could be a very useful community resource. Who could disagree with their organizing…

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The art of winter wellness

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Oh, great. Not only is it winter, but it’s in the peak of a terrible pandemic. And you want to talk about wellness? Is that some kind of sick joke? When the conditions are most stacked against your goal, that’s not when you give up, it’s…

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Bloat

BY ED FELIEN In ancient China, the state apparatus was 3,000 years old when the student revolts on May 4, 1919, began the Nationalist revolution that eventually overthrew the emperor. The bureaucracy was so far removed from the people that they spoke a different language. They had contempt for the…

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Holidays are holy

BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone,” Joni Mitchell famously sang. I have been thinking about the many local delights that are gone, or may be soon. In 2016 I was still working for Heart of the Beast Theatre. We put on “La Natividad”…

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The battleground that is Lake Street

“We are in pain, don’t choke us.” —Ira Azhakh BY KAY SCHROVEN Despite ambitious efforts by the city and a Neighborhood Action Plan to reimagine Lake Street, Ira is not hopeful. After 40 years in the car business in the 4500 block of East Lake Street, he has closed. Before…

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The slab

BY TONY BOUZA On Nov. 28, 2020, The New York Times reported the discovery of a 12-foot steel monolith in the desert called Red Rock Country, Utah. It described it as evocative of Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film “2001: A Space Odyssey.” In that film primates howl around an unexplained monolith.…

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The first Southside Summit

BY KAY SCHROVEN During the week of Nov. 9-13, the first Southside Summit, hosted by the Powderhorn Park Neighborhood Association (PPNA) and sponsored by the Graves Foundation, took place (virtually). It was a meeting of the minds from a number of organizations involved in enhancing and improving our communities. As…

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Does the Park Board really care what we think?

BY KATHRYN KELLY Results of the latest Minneapolis Park Board survey on the Hiawatha Golf Course Master Plan have, again, shown that a HUGE majority of respondents do not support a plan that has, so far, cost over $870,000. The responses have been compiled and quantified in a best effort…

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Lee Ross, Presente!

BY SARAH MARTIN Lee Ross, a lifelong activist and longtime Women Against Military Madness (WAMM), member died at the age of 94 on Monday, Nov. 16. Lee was the youngest of three children born to parents from Tsarist Russia. Her parents moved first to Paris and the French Riviera before…

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