On June 17, 2006, we quietly paddled the Heath Ledger across the Canadian border. We hadn’t exactly planned to sneak into Canada. Joe and I were on a mission—to reach Hudson Bay by canoe, still hundreds of miles to the northeast—and as we approached the border we realized that interactions with government officials might endanger … Read more
John Parizek was standing on a stage in the middle of the Mall of America’s rotunda, waving some sort of a racing flag and speaking into a microphone. Even though he was less than twenty-five yards away, nothing Parizek said was intelligible. Granted, the Malliest Mall of Them All is a noisy proposition on most … Read more
Business wasn’t great at the little budget steak house in the St. Paul Midway, so the Hang family, Hmong refugees from Laos, decided to try something different. They brought in cousin Christian Hang, a recent culinary-school graduate, as chef; remodeled the dining room with a tasteful black and orange décor; and added Asian fusion to … Read more
I passed up these farmer’s market jewels again and again, even though they were right there under my eyes the whole time. Not one for plate decoration, I figured the papery squash blossom to be a useless bit of frill, destined to sit prettily and quietly beside some pallid piece of fish. Talk about misjudgment. … Read more
I must say I have never understood what the Playboy bunnies saw in Dr. Kissinger. Perhaps they’re professionally equipped to detect charm and wit where mere men miss it. Who knows, the long fluffy ears may contain hidden sensors programmed to relay subtle messages to secondary brains located in the bunnies’ gluteal powder puffs, which, … Read more
“We’re going to get booted out of there pretty quickly,” one of the bunch predicted. With that, the full implications of our parking squat—the Twin Cities’ first, as far as we knew—became clear. Inspired by similar actions in New York, San Francisco, and even a city in Sicily, we were going to lay claim to … Read more
Milt Helmer comes off as a happy salesman—all smiles under a thinning twist of salt-and-pepper hair—but the retiree glares through his square glasses if he thinks somebody’s trying to pry hard-earned bits of wisdom out of him. “What should the daily newspapers do to remain viable? Let them figure that out for themselves. I’m not … Read more
Later this month, the World Future Society brings its annual conference, including a Minnesota Futures Day, to Minneapolis. To mark the occasion, Dregni sat down with the most outspoken member of the Society’s Minnesota chapter, Hank Lederer, who forecast possible advancements over the next century for the book, Follies of Science: 20th Century Visions of … Read more
Pulitzer Prize-winner Michael Dirda is something of an endangered species: a professional book critic. At a time when daily newspapers are shrinking their book sections or eliminating them altogether, Dirda soldiers on at the stalwart Washington Post Book World. His criticism has always been marked by real passion for reading—that’s maybe too fancy; the guy … Read more
Agee has always been a fascinating study, as well as refreshingly free of literary conceits and pretension. She has a distinctly Midwestern, blue-collar sensibility, and is fearless (or perhaps heedless) when it comes to her subjects; this is a woman, after all, who somehow managed to publish a collection of stories built around automobile racing, … Read more