The other impact of Gustav

By |

The Other Impact of Gustav
By Jeff Fecke, August 31, 2008 • While it pales in comparison to the potential damage it could do to Louisiana, Gustav has already done serious damage to the Republican National Convention. Mindful that having a big party in St. Paul probably comes off negatively if compared to a newly demolished New Orleans — especially given that it will naturally call to mind Hurricane Katrina, and the awesome job the GOP did with that disaster — the GOP is already making plans to curtail their convention:
Continue Reading

A place for the perplexed: Part three

By |

by Emilio DeGrazia, 8/25/08 • I’m relieved when all the cars and pickups sporting flags these days go somewhere away. I can never stand still long enough for the sadness to sink in when I face the American flag, now crowded with fifty stars and many invisible satellites. Continue Reading

A good death ends a good life

By |

by Joe Nathan, 8/29/08 • You often hear that someone lived a good life, but rarely hear that a person had a good death. Both happened for John Brandl, a friend and Humphrey Institute colleague who died last week.

Brandl’s funeral drew hundreds of people to celebrate his more than seventy years, including service as a college professor, Minnesota State Representative and Senator, and U.S Government administrator.

Why did both former St. Paul Mayor George Latimer and brother Gene Brandl refer not only to his life, but to his “good death.”

Continue Reading

Inside the Daily Planet, 8/30/08

By |

NEWS YOU CAN USE | Back to School by Mary Turck, TC Daily PlanetAs teachers and students head back to school, they need help. If you can donate school supplies, here are some ways you can help:Profile of a collector: Walker Teen Arts Council (corruption) by Alex Amend, ARP! (Art Review & Preview)There are approximately 9,600 objects in the Walker Art Center’s permanent collection, yet only seven percent of the collection is currently on display. Now, a vitrine in the Walker’s Bazinet lobby contains the newest additions: a locked suitcase, a pregnant Barbie, and a copy of 50 Cent’s Get Rich Or Die Tryin’, among others. This small collection, created by the Walker Art Center’s Teen Arts Council, is the product of a concerted effort by the program’s artists-in-residence to make the teens think about the nature of the institutions that display art.China’s Olympics an awesome spectacle by Jennifer Holder, Minnesota Spokesman-RecorderThe Olympic flame has been extinguished, marking the end of the XXIX Summer Olympic Games. Continue Reading

Inside the Daily Planet, 8/29/08

By |

THINGS PEOPLE SAY | Oral Roberts U grad Bachmann says Harvard grad Obama ‘isn’t well-schooled’ by Karl Bremer, Minnesota IndependentMichele Bachmann recently told the Hometown Source, an online extension of ABC Newspapers in the northern suburbs, that Barack Obama “isn’t well-schooled and prepared to be President of the United States.”That’s an interesting observation, coming from a graduate of a law school that once lost its American Bar Association accreditation. Continue Reading

A place for the perplexed: Part two

By |

by Emilio DeGrazia, 8/25/08 • Whitman, poet of democracy, urged us to be tolerant and large, to contain multitudes, to connect and make passages to all parts of the globe. So it’s tempting to think boyishly big again—to be stirred by the democratic idealism of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism and to cheer on the new globalism. The technology to do so is at hand, literally. In the techno-moment of our current now how can I not be lured into cyberspace and the globalism it empowers? Continue Reading

A place for the perplexed: Part one

By |

by Emilio DeGrazia • August 25, 2008 • My good neighbor, who has yet to read one of my books, keeps asking me over for a cup of tea. Wants to know me better, he says, though sometimes I don’t know about him. He’s a Welshman, a Quaker, an interior decorator with a long past on sailing ships, and a vegetarian who loves tubefuls of Icelandic fishpaste. I haven’t asked him if he knows where I live, because he’s sure to say in my house. Yes, I do live there, even when I don’t. I’m uppity enough to get snooty about where I live. Continue Reading

Profile of a collector: Scrapper Joe (scrap metal, etc.)

By |

In this city, a pick-up truck creeping down the alley loaded with washers, bike frames, and other metal scrap is not an uncommon sight. All kinds of people collect—as this is being written, a woman, babe strapped to her back, is picking through the recycling in the alley, placing aluminum cans in the bottom of a stroller that carries another child. But Scrapper Joe, as he’s known in Minneapolis’s West Bank, only patrols the alleys when he’s broke. “I didn’t want to become a scrapper, ‘cause I just knew I’d end up collecting a lot of crap,” says Joe, sitting on a discarded steel safe slowly sinking into the earth outside his West Bank warehouse. But there are many reasons to make one’s living as a scrapper in spite of that. Continue Reading

Inside the Daily Planet, 8/28/2008

By |

Views and ReviewsJunkyard Empire embarks on “Anti-RNC Tour”by Dwight Hobbes, TC Daily PlanetHard as it may be to believe, not everyone is delighted to see the Republican National Convention come to the Twin Cities. While the City of St. Paul and the St. Paul Police Department pulled a pretty good fast one, revoking the Welfare Rights Committee’s permit to assemble during the RNC, at least one relentless voice is determined to be heard: that of the avant-garde jazz and hip-hop band Junkyard Empire. They don’t need a permit and plan to state their case profoundly as possible with what they’re calling the Anti-RNC Tour.Music note: A Mighty Fair(ly) night on the patio with Storyhillby Melissa Slachetka, TC Daily PlanetDespite the dreary weather and competition from the State Fair, last Thursday saw a sold-out show for Patio Nights at the Minnesota Museum of American Art featuring two soul-stirring groups: Mighty Fairly and Storyhill.Two friends review the Penumbra’s FencesTheater note: Full of baseball metaphors, Fences slides into homeby Jean Gabler, TC Daily PlanetThe newspaper ad grabbed my attention: it shows just a baseball and one line. Continue Reading