My son Isaac and I were playing Scrabble at our dining room table one recent evening when the phone rang. As always, Isaac ran to answer it. He heard his sixteen-year-old sister’s voice on the other end of the line. She was calling from her father’s house in St. Paul. When he heard that she … Read more
Maybe driving along slick January roads while the radio bleats its incessant lose-the-fat/cut-the-carbs/celebration’s-over messages doesn’t bother you, but it whips me into a frothy rage. Your hangover has only just barely passed (with the aid of a nice greasy burger) before all these diet people start making you feel horrible about the past few weeks … Read more
Back in the seventies, when I was tender and impressionable, my mom used to chat with her houseplants. “It helps them grow,” she’d explain to me as I followed her around from one beaded macramé hanger to the next. “They don’t understand the words, but they can tell you’re talking to them. They like the … Read more
For ten years, Low’s music has seethed with quiet rural rage—the undercurrent of emotional tension that hums in austere Midwestern places, among people whose deeper feelings are seldom expressed. From the band’s home base on Duluth’s Central Hillside, it has built an international cult following for creating rock music that’s intelligent, intense, ambient, and awesomely … Read more
Lynx number one was a hard-luck kitten. He was barely a year old, in March 2003, when he walked into a box-like trap near Isabella, deep in the Superior National Forest. Isabella is an old logging village bisected by Highway 1 as it slices inland from Lake Superior to Ely. Beyond the village is a … Read more
One cool winter afternoon, an attractive young Jewish woman enjoyed her new bungalow in southwest Minneapolis. She’d finally moved back home, after a decade in New York City. She’d come to realize that life is much too hard in a place like Manhattan or Brooklyn. In New York, you cannot live like an adult—with a … Read more
Attention, restroom patrons. Please do not assault the tall, dark-haired, suspicious-looking man taking pictures in there. He is not a deviant who will soon be cackling over his snapshots like Richard Widmark in Kiss of Death. Jon Thompson is the co-founder and creator of Restroom Ratings, a pithy online guide to public conveniences. He is … Read more
Crew Jones is a trio of white guys who met while living in a Grand Marais hippy commune. Named after a character in the 1986 BMX movie Rad, the Joneses call themselves “Minnesota’s Northernmost Rap Band” and the “inventors of Forest-Rap.” They also claim to be “holding it down as kingpins of the cutthroat Twin … Read more
It is often said that there are more televisions than indoor toilets in this country—today, slightly more than two per household. But that doesn’t account for non-residential sets, and it also confuses the issue of how many sets there may be in bathrooms. Still, it’s obvious that TVs have infiltrated the non-domestic world, too. It … Read more
Jim Gaulke sat down for a quick chat at the Bryn Mawr Coffee Shop. Brian Hazlett, the shop owner, put a lid on a to-go cup and followed suit. Both wore button-down shirts and jeans. Hazlett wore a baseball cap. Sipping coffee at the window table, they looked like decent, responsible citizens, family men even. … Read more