A flash of orange prison scrubs, followed by a web of tight, elegant braids, were all that was visible of Lamilem Badasa as she sat down for a video-conference interview. The camera angles were off, and she’s only five feet tall, so just the top of her head appeared on screen. On the other side … Read more
We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of—line dancing, acting innocent after unleashing something silent but deadly, heresy. If by chance you just thought to yourself, “Not me!” Well, the heck with you. Tell you what. Save yourself some time and page through to another article, because I think you’re lying. Twenty years ago, I had … Read more
Last year Apple sold thirty-nine million iPods. Thirty-nine million. Not all in the United States, I grant you, but I have a hard time finding anyone between the ages of thirteen and thirty with a job or an indulgent parent who doesn’t own one. Riding a New York subway a couple of weeks ago, I … Read more
For multifarious and age-old reasons the dense central city was girdled by a wide belt of poverty. Near the southern edge of this shabby cincture lay a large village. Within the village was a sandy square of sixty meters in which children played and adults gathered to talk. Everyone crossed it as they went about … Read more
Kevin Turnquist, a psychiatrist for more than twenty years, currently cares for some of the most seriously ill patients in the Hennepin County public mental health system. The good doctor, who specializes in schizophrenia, has pretty much seen it all—such as the woman who believes that during sleep she grows extra limbs that are clandestinely … Read more
On the O’Shaughnessy stage in St. Paul, forty dancers get up in glittering military chic and tap in perfect unison to Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814. They toss off complex steps, inject some get-down hip-hop moves, maneuver in kaleidoscopic patterns. A panel of judges scrutinizes the proceedings as the audience hoots and hollers. This is … Read more
The blank page is an intimidating thing, especially for a writer who only manages to spew out a couple thousand words per month. Trying to write a significant eight-hundred-word piece every month seems harder than doing an essay two or three times a week, as most columnists do. The formula (take a bit of news, … Read more
Over the last few months, I have met with Fozia Mussa several times to hear about her journey from sheltered teenager in a tiny Somali village to life as a working Minneapolis mother of five children (ranging from nine months to twelve years). Out of respect for Somali custom, I could not interview Mussa alone, … Read more
Beyond a long window that offered a panoramic view of the Minneapolis skyline, the end-of-the-workday exodus was already under way. Traffic was snarled on the streets stretching all the way downtown. Dave St. Peter had his back to the window, and he was looking and sounding like a man whose day was just getting started. … Read more
Always up for an experiment, Flaneur Productions distributed a top-secret passage from an obscure work of literature to a group of six local performers earlier this year. Each was instructed to use the text (still secret as of press time), along with the show’s creepy venue (a former coffin factory), as inspiration for the beginning … Read more