BY ED FELIEN Virgil Welna died last month. He was 89. For 50 years I depended on him for advice. I walked into Welna Hardware with a problem, and he knew that problem, and he had a solution for it. It wasn’t just the wise expertise, though. When he saw…
BY JOHN CHARLES WILSON Few Minnesotans know who Mark McLaughlin or Herman Liebelt were. For the safety of our transit operators, this is a crying shame. You see, on Black Friday 1998, in the mid-afternoon, Mr. McLaughlin was peacefully driving King County bus number 2106 with 34 passengers on board.…
BY ED FELIEN A report from the Hiawatha Golf Course Property Master Plan Citizen’s Advisory Committee meeting at Park Board Headquarters A friend who was there told me: “I think it was an excellent meeting. Did you notice that most of the CAC questions came from women? These are ferocious…
The South Chicago Avenue Business Alliance (“SCABA”) will host its 9th Annual Classic Car Show on Sunday, June 10, 2018, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.at the intersection of 48th Street and Chicago Avenue in South Minneapolis. As in other years, the car show will feature a wide variety of…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE If you live anywhere between Gray’s Bay Dam on Lake Minnetonka and the spot where Minnehaha Creek flows into the Mississippi River, you probably live in the Minnehaha Creek watershed and have heard of the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District, a governmental body charged with managing the…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Dilla’s Restaurant 1813 Riverside Ave. Minneapolis 55454 612-332-2898 dillasethiopianrestaurant.com The Dish continues our pursuit of international lunch options with a visit to Dilla’s Ethiopian on Riverside Avenue. Dilla’s decor is very down to earth, while its reputation for food is high, and they have a vegetarian…
Armed conflict major cause of world hunger. One of the publications I subscribe to is a newspaper-size 8-page periodical, The Catholic Agitator, the cost of which is minimal. It has a definite viewpoint: that of the poorest, not just the poor but the very poorest, the homeless and the hungry,…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Where you are born is the luck of the draw. We don’t choose our birthplace. Why is THIS my home? The rippling grain, the lone tree, the curling creek beds and endless sky. The prairie is my home. Not the desert, not the mountains, not the sea,…
More than 200 workers marched down Lake Street to Powderhorn Park to celebrate MayDay, May 1st. One of the leaders from Trabajadores de la Twin Cities said, “Today we are proud to be workers. But we should be proud every day that because we wake up at 4 a.m. and…
BY ELAINE KLAASSEN Everybody hopes they will never be jumped, assaulted, robbed, held up, mugged, etc., on the street. But it happens. It’s hard to imagine what gives perpetrators permission to traumatize vulnerable victims, such as the disabled, the elderly, young mothers, unarmed people. At the end of January, Mr.…
BY JOHN KARRIGAN It must have been something I ate. I mean, I’ve always liked buffalo. So mighty, so strong, so historical. But what was it doing in my park? And with 18 legs, or sometimes more?! What a nightmare! Oh wait, this is the beginning of the month of…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE The business and cultural scene along East 38th Street, a personal favorite east-west connector and not just because I live near it, remains lively but in a healthy way. There have been some beloved mainstays that went under—notably Southside Farm Store. I will kind of miss…
BY DEBRA KEEFER RAMAGE Some of us were deterred on April 15 from attending the Anti-War Rally by the crazy blizzard that hit us on the 14th and lasted three or more days. But not everyone! Our Twin Cities Democratic Socialists of America comrade Andy Guthrie was there and filed…
BY ED FELIEN There’s a lot you can do if you’re a City Council member in Minneapolis. Someone came to me while I was on the Council and told me they were being evicted from their apartment because the landlord hadn’t paid the utilities. They thought they should be able…
BY DAVE TILSEN April 7, at the American Indian Center on Franklin Avenue, there was a large turnout, a very diverse crowd, many East African folks, lots of Native Americans, some Latinos. A friendly crowd, but I sensed an undercurrent of tension. Not racial tension exactly, but partially, political tension.…
