TC Weekend: Art Extravaganza in Minneapolis and St. Paul — Uptown, Powderhorn, Loring Park and Smith Avenue

By |

The Minneapolis art fairs are huge — but don’t forget about Art on the Avenue, long Smith Avenue, from the High Bridge south to Dodd Road, in St. Paul and West St. Paul.Metro Transit offers free rides in Minneapolis. Download your free-ride pass, then take a bus or METRO lines from your home or a nearby Park & Ride lot. Show your pass for easy bus rides between all three Minneapolis fairs. Download your free-ride pass here!The St. Paul Art Hop on Smith Avenue offers a decorate-a-van event, music, art in local businesses and yard sales from St. Continue Reading

Sequestering the Constitution

By |

Imagine the David-and-Goliath posture of the federal defenders office in Minnesota. Its eight attorneys take on 70-75 percent of all criminal defense in the federal district court. They are up against 46 attorneys prosecuting those cases for the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s office. But wait — it gets worse.According to Minnesota’s Chief Public Federal Defender Katherian Roe, her office faces a cut of one-third to one-half of its already too-small staff because of federal budget sequestration.Roe said that the U.S. Attorney’s office has recently increased the average amount of time spent per defendant to 300 hours. In the far smaller federal defenders office, “we average one-tenth of that.”Why do cuts to the federal defender program pose a constitutional issue? Continue Reading

TC Weekend: FLOW Northside, Carifest, Lowertown Roots, Red Hot Arts

By |

One more summertime festival weekend in the Twin Cities! Here are links to some of the biggest events, and a Storify below with photos and news from the scene.  If you want to share what’s going on this weekend, just shoot me an email with links to your photos, or info on what you’ve seen and heard around the Twin Cities, or post on social media with #TCweekend,. (FLOW has its own hashtag: #FLOWNorthside, naturally!) I’ll update this post with your photos and info. Here are links to the events – keep scrolling for the Storify. FLOW Northside Arts CrawlCarifestRed Hot Art & MusicLowertown Roots FestivalAnd don’t forget to vote for for your favorite ice cream shop in the Twin Cities during this last weekend of National Ice Cream Month! Izzy’s is winning, but can Pumphouse or Grand Ole Creamery catch up by July 31?[If you don’t see the Storify photos and comments below, please refresh your browser window.][<a href=”//storify.com/maryturck/flow-northside” target=”_blank”>View the story “FLOW Northside, Carifest, Lowertown Roots, Red Hot Arts” on Storify</a>]Reporting for this article supported in part by Bush Foundation. Continue Reading

New Media Skills Fellowships start in September

By |

Thanks to the generosity of the Bush Foundation, we have a chance to work with two groups of Media Skills Fellows this year. The first session was in the spring, and the second group will begin in September. Our spring cohort of Media Skills Fellows was great!Now we are ready to consider applications for the ten positions in the fall 2013 group. Here’s a description of what we are looking for:Who: Ten people, diverse in race, gender, age, ethnicity and life experience, who want to learn and share skills to use on behalf of their community.What: Sharing and learning a variety of media skills, including basic reporting, use of social media and basic photo and video skillsWhy: To use these skills for better communication in/about/on behalf of your community.When: Ten sessions, 6:00-8:30 p.m. (light dinner included), on Wednesday in September-November, and additional work for a total of at least 100 hours.We will work as a small community that models and practices good storytelling and communication skills, with fellows contributing their insights and skills.Here’s what some of the spring cohort of Media Skills Fellows had to say about what they learned:How to trust my instincts as a writerThe ability to discern what a good story may be – if I’m interested in it, maybe I can make someone else interested in itInterviewing skills: ask the questions, let them talk, don’t keep interruptingThe difference between photography and photojournalismWordpressIt takes time – one thing at a time.Here’s some of what they did:I crossed the digital divide now and I’m kind of shocked that I did.I wrote that article. That was a major overhaul. Continue Reading

ST. PAUL NOTES | Taking care of business on St. Paul’s Central Corridor

By |

Construction disruption for the Green Line down University Avenue hurt the community, especially small and ethnic businesses. Old news, right? But with new Light Rail Transit, Bus Rapid Transit, and other street construction/reconstruction project moving ahead across the metro, what’s old news on University Avenue could be valuable lessons for the future of many other communities impacted by transit construction.Va-Megn Thoj, executive director of the Asian Economic Development Association (AEDA), was in the middle of the Central Corridor action. “Before construction, business mitigation was at the bottom of the list for Met Council,” he told a July 17 forum sponsored by the Alliance for Metropolitan Stability at Merriam Park Library. The Met Council said there would be no disproportionate impact on minority businesses and communities, “but we showed this was wrong.” Continue Reading

Remembering Rosalie

By |

A few years after graduating from law school in Chicago, I moved back to rural Minnesota and set up a solo practice in the town where I grew up. That was 1977, the year that Governor Rudy Perpich appointed Rosalie Wahl as the first woman on the Minnesota Supreme Court.Fighting my own battles in Litchfield, I was happy to hear about her appointment, but it seemed pretty far away. Rosalie saw it differently. I don’t know how she heard about me, but she contacted me and asked me to call and let her know when I would be in the Twin Cities. My calendar for 1978 has a notation of  “Justice Wahl” for noon on March 3. Continue Reading

COMMUNITY VOICES | Where should Minneapolis get electricity?

By |

UPDATED 8/12/13 | Should Minneapolis sign a new multi-year contract with Xcel Energy? Or should it set up a public municipal utility to provide energy for the city? The city council held a public hearing on August 1, and by August 9, Xcel had made new commitments, in a letter to Mayor R.T. Rybak, to pursue clean energy goals. Everyone from the mayor and council members to Minneapolis Energy Options then agreed that the municipal utility question should not go on this year’s ballot. In a press release, Dylan Kesti, campaign manager for Minneapolis Energy Options, wrote: Minneapolis Energy Options agrees with Mayor Rybak that the Minneapolis City Council should not place a municipal utility question on this year’s ballot, so the City can try to get the utility to live up to these commitments as part of franchise negotiations next year.“ This is a step forward, but we need accountability to hold the utility to these commitments,” remarked Dylan Kesti. Continue Reading

TC Weekend: Photo wrap, Highland Fest, more

By |

We’ve got a writer/photographer on assignment to Rondo Days, and arts reporting on other events this weekend, but there’s too much going on to get everything! Two events in my morning emails: A gigantic photo wrap happening in North Minneapolis from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and a vigil for Trayvon Martin at the Minneapolis federal building from 11-noon. Other events: Midtown Phillips Festival, Hopkins Raspberry Parade, Minneapolis Aquatennial and Highland Fest in St. Paul.  If you want to share what’s going on this weekend, just shoot me an email with links to your photos, or info on what you’ve seen and heard around the Twin Cities, or post on social media with #TCweekend — or email editor@tcdailyplanet.net to tell me what other tag you are using. Continue Reading

Evaluating teachers: Let’s talk

By |

Firing teachers because their students aren’t learning fast enough is one of the “big ideas” on the education agenda these days. The more-or-less technical term is Value Added Measurement (VAM, for short), which means evaluating teachers based on the test scores of students. The impetus comes from an understandable desire for scientific measurement, and an underlying belief that lack of student achievement has one primary cause: bad teaching.VAM brings with it a whole boatload of practical and conceptual problems. Just a few of the practical problems:Jane teaches eighth grade social studies. Should her evaluation be based on one year’s improvement in her students’ reading and math scores?Joe teaches in a poor neighborhood, and only 15 of his 30 4th graders were there for the whole year. Should his evaluation be based on only those 15 students’ scores? Continue Reading