Cedar-Riverside

Should you choose to see Theatre in the Round’s production of Treasure Island, your evening may go something like this: an usher takes you to your seat, walking you across the treasure map painted on the stage, and the first thing you notice is the smell of wood and smoke. When you take your seat, you realize you never left the set at all, because rigging and seagulls and pirate paraphernalia adorn the walls around you. Then the lights come down, the waves roll, and the story begins. You join Billy Bones in singing “Dead Man’s Chest” in spite of yourself. Soon Jim and the pirates are dashing through the aisles beside you and perching in the balconies above you, and you wonder for a split second if you remembered to feed the cat before going in search of buried treasure.

As the organizer of the Twin Cities Pun Slam, I am appalled at the idea that quality can dictate whether or not a pun is a pun. Slate.com writer Simon Akam suggests that portmanteaus (a subset of puns) such as "chillax," "Wikipedia," and "Bridezilla" are not puns because they stray too far from what some text book says a pun should be. He says we are experiencing "the death of the American pun, replaced by something grosser, dumber, uglier."

Minnesotan photographer Xavier Tavera has produced a large and diverse body of work since immigrating to the United States from Mexico. In Calle Lake, an exhibit opening on January 14 at Augsburg College's Christensen Center Art Gallery, Tavera documents members of the Latino community on Lake Street in Minneapolis. These photographs were selected by Tavera from among those that will be on display.