The Star Tribune’s Minnesota Poll, now out-sourced to New Jersey, has been in heavy play this past week. For decades a valuable snapshot of Minnesota attitudes, the Poll, as many of you know, was seriously down-sized under McClatchy ownership and “right-sized” into oblivion by Avista Capital Partners. The Poll’s most recent director, Rob Daves, was … Read more
I have an undeniable craving for salty sweet. It may be more intense during certain times: when I feel defined as a chauffer, when I’ve been bickering with the hub, when the days are so crammed with everyone else’s business there’s no time to breathe. Salted caramels, a pretzel stick jammed into a pint of … Read more
Me and the missus decided to celebrate five years of married bliss by going back to the scene of the crime, Paris, France. We had gone out on a few dates in the spring of 2000, before I went off for a fellowship at Oxford. We kept in touch during the spring by email, and … Read more
(Pulitzer prize-winning author, William Styron) I finished another novel last week. But this means little. It means I awakened at 6:30 a.m. for two years or so — on holidays, my birthday, every morning but the one my husband and I camped on our honeymoon — went immediately to the computer while my saturated dream … Read more
Most nights Hurley would sit up late, drinking, and would fall asleep looking for God. He heard leaves falling and trapped, swirling, in the alley out back. And then: the rattle of piss beneath his window and someone warbling a sad song. Some days he saw gulls, so many gulls, with no water anywhere around, … Read more
BOOKS & AUTHORS A Day without Humans Now, here’s fodder for daydreams and late-night speculation: What would happen to the earth — and, more pointedly, to our massive infrastructure of buildings, bridges, subways, and sculptures — if the human race were to disappear? Author and University of Arizona journalism professor Alan Weisman has asked the … Read more
Friday was the last day that the Star Tribune offered readers with beefs the name and number of a real person who would listen to them. Here’s the new procedure, as described under the headline “Have a Concern?” as it ran in Saturday’s paper. “The Star Tribune is committed to correcting errors that appear in … Read more
Metroblogging reviews Betty Jean’s Chicken-n-Waffles. How many times have you walked past this place without even noticing? My only issue with the Skeptical Diner review is that it should have gone on and on and on about the waffles. They are without a doubt the best waffles I have ever tastes. In fact, completely different … Read more
It must be nerve-wracking to provide a birthday cake for one of the area’s top food critics. But some mysterious baker’s wife did a bang-up job. At my esteemed co-blogger’s party the other night, we were served a towering creation from A Baker’s Wife Pastry Shop. Now, I’m not a dessert person. Fine wine, five-dollar-a-cup … Read more
The Economist reports on University of Minnesota professor Eric Weitz’s new book on the Weimar Republic.