rakemag A few years ago, when Minnesota author Faith Sullivan’s novel The Empress of One (for which she won the Milkweed National Fiction Prize) had just been released, a friend of ours mentioned that Sullivan had recently accepted an invitation to attend her diddly little neighborhood book group as a guest author. How cool is that? … Read more
Like all great artists and authors, Jules Feiffer was not a fully formed world-class creator until he’d composed a children’s book. Remember that E.B. White, his brilliant colleague and contemporary at The New Yorker, didn’t really gild his impeccable reputation until he’d composed Charlotte’s Web. This rite of passage separating the great from the legendary … Read more
We descended on Hell’s Kitchen on a Monday, the four of us, expecting the hellfire and brimstone and everlasting chaos of a kitchen under siege. Or, at least, we envisioned the antipode to the white tablecloth, fresh-flower breakfast place. Why do we expect Hell to be so over-populated? Perhaps Salvation Sundays, with brunch from 8 … Read more
Going out for breakfast on a rainy Saturday morning, lingering over those third and fourth cups of regular old coffee, chatting with the pretty young waitress about the smell of the rain in spring and the striking beauty of her just-dyed hair—what could be nicer? Key’s Cafe on Raymond Avenue in St. Paul (at the … Read more
Tucked away in downtown St. Paul (but then again, what isn’t invariably tucked away down there?), Babani’s is rumored to be the only Kurdish restaurant in the United States. (Quick geography lesson: Kurdistan is a mountainous region occupying 74,000 square miles in southeast Turkey, northwest Iran, northeast Iraq, and northeast Syria—with a population of 25 … Read more
God bless Fr. Thomas Buffer! We need more priests like him to question the accurancy of these reporters who will say anything to get a story. Judge not, lest you be judged. Have these people ever heard of the Ten Commandments? Shame on them. Keep up the good work, Father. I’m prayingfor you and every … Read more
Thanks for your article about this inspiring woman, Nellie Stone Johnson [Native Son, May]. For the past two weeks we here in Britain have been drowning in sycophantic tributes to “the Nation’s Favourite Granny”—the dear old Queen Mum, most of whose 101 pampered years were devoted to flitting between her five homes, backing racehorses, drinking … Read more
Somalis and African Americans have to end the misunderstanding that exists between them [“I Against I,” May]. Every girl and every boy has to try to talk to each other. They have to believe the reality, not just what they feel or guess. Also, African American and Somali parents and elders have to work to … Read more
Clinton Collins suggests that all the littering in North Minneapolis is done by young, male African Americans [Free the Jackson Five!, May]. How does he come to this, dare I say, startling conclusion? The people in front of his house were young and black. Therefore, we shall presume his situation is universal for citizens of … Read more
Father Thomas Buffer’s diary [“Father, Forgive Them,” May] comes off more as a bitter diatribe against the press and modernism than as any real answer as to what to do with priests who violate the trust of children. To imply that “homosexual priests have gotten sexually involved with boys under 18” due to societal acceptance … Read more