THEATER | Wicked-ly overhyped
by Jean Gabler and Jenny Hierlinger, TC Daily Planet
(Jean) The buildup I heard from friends who have seen Wicked numerous times made me wonder if the sold-out show could meet my expectations. Sure enough, I was not blown away. My daughter Jenny, who went with me, shared this feeling. (Jenny) I, too, was expecting to see a performance of a lifetime, and maybe that was the problem…what can ever measure up to those expectations? At intermission I felt like saying, “What I am missing here?”
MUSIC | Red House spokesfolk Ellen Stanley
by Dwight Hobbes, TC Daily Planet
St. Paul’s Red House Records has done the impossible: surviving since 1983 and, now, prevailing as arguably America’s most significant purveyor of acoustic blues and folk music. This in a day and age when corporations have shunted blues, rock, jazz, and just about every other legitimate genre off the television and radio airwaves in favor of pop-schmaltz and thug-and-stripper rap. You can hardly blame the label for congratulating itself with a 25th anniversary concert tour.
Uncommon loss: Mothers who grieve the death of a child
by Michele St. Martin, Minnesota Women’s Press
Every story of losing a child is unique and painful, and every mother grieves in her own way. Is it harder to lose a child suddenly or to lose her after a long illness? Is it more difficult to lose a baby and mourn the life that never really started, or to lose an older child or adult and mourn what was? There are no answers to these questions. But there are many common threads in the experience of losing a child, say bereaved mothers and bereavement experts.
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ARTS ORBIT | 150 best Minnesota books #33: Beautiful Minneapolis, circa 1917
by Patrick Coleman • “Minneapolis is the commercial and officially designated financial capitol of an empire greater in size than Great Brittan, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and Switzerland combined. Minneapolis is now a large city. The greater city that the future is so surely and so swiftly bringing must be a more economic, a more convenient, a happier and a more generally beautiful city.”
CABBAGES AND KINGS | KSTP is HOT!
by Rachel Dykoski • The day before the biggest elections of our lives, I had the chance at greatness. Scratch that, a new hotness: I could be seen by thousands of people and had the potential to help hundreds by manning the phones at KSTP during the morning and mid morning news programs representing the League of Women Voters of Minnesota.
THINK FORWARD | A Perfect Storm: Bretton Woods revisited as G-20 summit convenes
by Dale Wiehoff • Later this week, President Bush will hold a G-20 summit to discuss the deepening financial and monetary crisis besetting the world’s markets. Some have likened the November gathering to the historic 1944 Bretton Woods conference.
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