Month: December 2006

  • My Blizzard

    The blizzard shook the whole town like a cuff on the head and in ten minutes our house was not visible from the park across the street. It was a blessing and it obliterated the Christmas Day funk that had fallen over everything. There had been a two-day thaw and the old snow and raw…

  • Love

    My grandfather wanted to tell me the story of the horse that died of heartache. “What are you thinking?” my grandmother said. The horse’s name was Sully, my grandfather said. (Which must have meant something quite different in another language. I did not ask.) “A beauty,” he said. He said it was true, the story…

  • St. Paul

    “To find a new name for St. Paul’s RiverCentre Convention and Visitors Authority (RCVA), the city’s tourism and convention arm, officials are raising $76,000 from private sources to hire a Nashville firm that bills itself as a community branding expert.” —StarTribune, December 11, 2006 The Rake is wary of this latest foray into “community branding”—…

  • Coming Back Around

    Thank you for the wonderful article on Circle Pines’ history [“A People’s History of Circle Pines,” November]. My family and I are moving back to the area after a ten-year stint in the Northwest (we grew up in Columbia Heights). We just purchased a house in Circle Pines, have become curious about the cooperative history,…

  • Race: Are We So Different?

    From Kanye West to Mel Gibson to Michael Richards, 2006 was a year of unexpected outbursts on race. Is it possible to have a more productive dialogue on a topic that is habitually avoided in “polite” conversation? The Science Museum of Minnesota and the American Anthropological Association believe so—thus this groundbreaking exhibition. Slated to tour…

  • Eduardo Blidner, City vs. City: Images of 14 Great Cities of the World

    When Blidner last showed in Minneapolis it was selections from his “Tango Argentino: The Spirit of Buenos Aires” series—some hundred highly stylized images, appropriately doused in drama, of men and women performing the national dance of his home country. He ventured much farther for his new project, training his lens on Helsinki, London, Milan, Cologne,…