Category: Columns
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Looking, but Not Seeing
Lance Bass is gay? You’re kidding. Does this mean he’s not going to be an astronaut? Because I really, really wanted him to go to outer space. Joan Collins has a paid-in-full ticket to go on the Virgin 2010 flight, but she’s kind of old, and though I love her, I think Lance Bass is…
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The Cheese Man Speaks
When Bruce Wry was a marine stationed in Vietnam, he spent some time studying the local language. He never would have guessed that, forty years later, the Vietnamese he learned during the war would come in handy for selling cheese at the Minneapolis Farmers’ Market. “It’s nice. When the Vietnamese come here I can talk…
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Walking the Line
After winning the DFL endorsement at the Fifth Congressional District Convention in May, Keith Ellison has come closer than any black person (or Native American, Latino, Hmong, or Somali, for that matter), to representing Minnesota in Congress. If he wins the September 12 primary in the overwhelmingly Democratic Minneapolis, about the only thing that could…
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Red-Blooded Australian
It is a drear thought that if you can remember the Pudding Shop on the north side of Divan Yolu in Istanbul you must be well into middle age. “Those were the days, my friend,” the Seekers sang, “We thought they’d never end, we would be young for ever and a day.” As the Roman…
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The Upside of Knocked Up
My husband and I recently went over our wills. This was pretty easy for me, since I don’t actually own anything of value. In fact, the only thing I am leaving my husband is a postmortem “honey do” list. The first thing on that list is to throw away all of my notebooks and journals.…
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Who is “We the People”?
A few weeks ago, Joseph C. Phillips, one of my childhood “ace boon coons” (black Southern speak for best friends), rolled through the Twin Cities. He’s mainly an actor (The Cosby Show, General Hospital, and the upcoming Vanished), but on this trip he was promoting his book, He Talk Like A White Boy—Reflections on Faith,…