Category: Columns

  • Magic Potion

    No one ever added more acreage to the Roman Empire than Julius Caesar (the Roman geezer). Until his time, Roman territory in what is now France was the relatively narrow sliver along the Mediterranean coast that is still called Provence, precisely because it was the original Roman province. In ten years Caesar took over all…

  • The Monster Mash

    It was the Paris Hilton-Stavros Niarchos breakup that did it. I’ve decided that since the average celebrity liaison lasts less time than it takes Britney Spears to endanger a baby, I’m in favor of assigning these jet-set hook-ups shorter, more easily memorable names. The TomKats, Brangelinas, and Bennifers of the entertainment world become shorthand for…

  • Constant Commenter

    When Kate Parry became the Star Tribune’s “reader’s representative” in December 2004, she told readers she was their “advocate in the room. My job … is to take [your] concerns and make sure the newsroom understands them … It’s a good thing when someone wants to call, even if they’re angry. It’s a good connection.”…

  • Bird is the Word

    When I first came to Minnesota twenty years ago, I had never taught a class larger than ten students—mostly I had conducted the one-to-one tutorials that are at the heart of the Oxford system. My first term here I was given a class on the Roman Republic that numbered some seventy souls. The learning curve…

  • “Bitch-Slapped by Mother Nature”

    told my girlfriend Liza that I was going camping for a week with some friends at a remote nature preserve in the mountains of Tennessee, where there would be no modern conveniences. She peered at me over the rims of her geek-chic glasses. “Now, why the hell would you want to do that?” she said.…

  • Move Along

    If you really want to get Minneapolitans edgy about crime, kill some white people. Since the random murders of two middle-class whites in Uptown and downtown, near Block E, both places where affluent people live, work, and spend big entertainment dollars, Minneapolis has dramatically raised its police profile at those locations. Block E, with its…