Gardens of all sorts can build community

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Todd Larson and Macy Ashby purchased their home in 2008, and one of the first things they did was replace their furnace, putting in geothermal wells – imagine getting rid of the old octopus furnace, then paying only $10 a month in summer for air conditioning – worth it, they say.But the east side of their property (686 24th Ave. NE) along Howard Street took a beating between truck parking and the digging. “Grass is a lot to maintain,” so with the help of landscape architect friend Larry Opelt, they devised a three-year plan “which had about a 1.5 year execution,” Larson said.Read more about how the yard project really started, and what’s next, [here].Their neighborhood group, Holland Neighborhood Improvement Association, teams with Metro Blooms, which awarded Larson and Ashby both the Community Investment Award and the Nate Siegel, their highest honor, at an event Nov. 6.Metro Blooms provides training and subsidizes materials to install rain gardens to hold water on site. For Holland’s projects, they also helped recruit volunteers, some coming from the University of Minnesota’s School of Design and the Conservation Corps of Minnesota.“We had a couple rain barrels,” Ashby said; they fill up fast, “our rain garden works really well. Continue Reading

OPINION | I was a mall Santa

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An alcoholic, otherwise-unemployed Santa in the movie Miracle on 34th Street or Art Carney as Henry Corwin in Twilight Zone’s “Night of the Meek.” That’s what came to my mind when a mall-manager friend of mine offered me the Santa job in the early 1990s. His Santa had been showing up drunk or not at all. I was unemployed and living in Sturgeon Bay, Door County, Wisconsin, with a nonexistent job market; I took Robert up on his offer.I donned the cheap, fleecy red costume with black plastic belt, pulling the white trimmed red hat and white wig down to cover my eyebrows. No amount of Lysol™ would remove the idea of germs or someone else’s spit on the inside of the beard and mustache attachment. As I took my seat and waited for dreamers and wishers to visit, I wondered whether to use my own, female voice or try for a deeper male imitation.The first few children accepted my deep voice with its “Ho, ho, ho.” “Ho, ho, ho,” by the way, is not very easy to transfer to a real, natural-sounding laugh. Continue Reading

Dog Park detective: High Bridge Dog Park

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Dog Park Detective is an ongoing series in which Sidewalk Dog sniffs out the best parks in the Twin Cities metro. Check out the other parks we’ve investigated, and stay tuned for opportunities for your dog to be one of our Dog Park Detectives!

THE DAY: November 25, a blustery 17 degrees

THE DETECTIVES: Dozer, a nearly four-year-old border collie mix, and Itty Bitty, the 18-year-old Maltese/Poodle cross

THE PARK: High Bridge Dog Park in St. Paul Continue Reading

One last Polish martini; Nye’s employees and patrons reminisce before the closure

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Nye’s is a special place where hipsters and AARP members rub shoulders. Where families come for plates of pirogues and cabbage rolls, and people gather around the piano bar to confidently sing old classics while nursing glasses of Polish beer, schilowitz and large Polish martinis – a pickled mushroom instead of an olive.When the news first broke last week in the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal, the reaction across the City was as if they’d announced the dynamiting of Minnehaha Falls. Nye’s Polonaise Room, in business since 1950, would be shutting its doors next summer.In its place, developers are talking of a new high rise apartment, part of the New Urbanism, a social theory that may do to Nordeast Minneapolis what Urban Renewal did for the Warehouse District. It appears as if what little past Minneapolis still has, it seeks to destroy.Rob and Tony Jacob, the owners since 1999, broke the news to the staff, some who’d worked there for decades. Continue Reading

Would Jesus play the tuba?

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If Jesus marched in the band, would he be cool with the tubas? Would he get so wild and excited the oompahs coming out of that deep brass section that he’d agree to direct an entire ensemble of tubas knocking out enormous noise and joyful Christmas music in a chapel? Why, yes. Yes, I believe Jesus would. Continue Reading

5 below. In the dark. Under the coop.

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I started riding NYC subways and buses on my own when I was about 12. My sister and I would take the elevated train to music lessons Saturday mornings – me for flute, Cathy for clarinet. For a short stint, we rode into downtown Manhattan on afternoons to clean cages and welcome visitors at the ASPCA. Continue Reading

Cookies and herrings and eggs, oh my

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Coming off a Thanksgiving-family-high has me thinking about the gifts we receive from relatives, especially heritage, traditions, and language. In my family, Grandpa Johnson taught us girls a secret language that he called, “Counting in Swedish” He’d hold up his index finger and say, “Timmyteetta,” hold up his middle finger, “Lyckasleet,” and so on. We sisters mimicked him and memorized the sacred family counting words. We recited them for each other, for friends, and best of all, for Grandpa Johnson. One of my nieces even stood on stage before thousands of onlookers and recited the ditty at a talent show when she was three-years-old. Continue Reading