Fifty years ago I was a young bride planning to rent an old Iowa farmhouse. My rural mother-in-law shared her successful bedbug remedy [“A Bedtime Preyer,” April].
She said: “Wash and air-dry all bedclothes. Center the bed in the middle of the room. Put each leg (bed leg) in a pail of turpentine. Don’t smoke. Sleep.”
Perhaps the vermin died running up to the feast; perhaps they died crawling down to their bedrooms. Having never needed this old-time advice, I’ll share for the future.
“Mom and I are standing in front of the Church on Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg, Russia,” wrote Ann Bernstein of Minneapolis.
“The church was built on the very spot where Emperor Alexander II was assassinated on March 1, 1881. The Literary issue was a perfect travel companion in this country, where things seem familiar until you look a little closer, and then they become strange.”
Actually, after looking closely at this photograph, we noticed that the Bernsteins (mother, Edna, and daughter, Ann) are posed with our May 2006 Guns issue. Though the Emperor was assassinated with a bomb, not a handgun, this strikes us as somehow appropriate.
Send along your Rakish travel snaps by snail mail or to prodmail@rakemag.com, and if we publish yours, we’ll send you a nonthermal, nonextreme Rake T-shirt and a $25 gift certificate from West Photo (21 University Ave. N.E., Minneapolis).
Brendan Flaherty and Sandra Yue recently traveled from Minneapolis to the southwestern province of Sichuan in China. There, they came face to face with this behemoth of a Bodhisattva, the Grand Buddha of Leshan. “This is the world’s largest stone-carved Buddha, at seventy-one-meters high,” said Yue. “It took ninety years to carve him from this cliff-face, and he is over 1,200 years old. What better way to celebrate a thought-provoking moment such as this than with the pages of The Rake?”
Send along your Rakish travel snaps by snail mail or to prodmail@rakemag.com, and if we publish yours, we’ll send you a nonthermal, nonextreme Rake T-shirt and a $25 gift certificate from West Photo (21 University Ave. N.E., Minneapolis).
Brian Lambert may have left key questions unasked in an investigative report into the writings of Katherine Kersten [“The One-Woman Solution,” February]. I would like to know if Kersten’s hiring and the pulling of advertising revenue to the Tribune from TCF Bank were connected. I would hope that a reporter with Lambert’s chops would be able to pose this question to Anders Gyllenhaal, William Cooper, and Power Line. Also, why were Cheryl Pierson Yecke and Katherine Kersten allowed to “blow kisses” to each other across the Star Tribune editorial pages?
I really liked your article on the murders in Minneapolis 2006 [“Murder By Numbers,” March]. It brought tears to my eyes—a couple of those people I knew personally, and it took me back to July 16, 2004, when my youngest brother was murdered on those same Minneapolis streets! I am angry that the Minneapolis Police Department has not brought closure to my family, and to some of the other victims I knew who were killed.
In your article about murder in Minneapolis, in the section with details of the crimes, I noticed that three people were arrested, for three different murders, who all had the last name “Bobo.” How about an investigative article, in the future, of the Bobo family, and their background? Are they from Minneapolis originally, or did they move here from another city? If so, where, and why did they come to Minneapolis? Is everyone in the family involved in crime? I’m not assuming the three men are all brothers, but they are almost certainly related in some way, perhaps cousins, since Bobo is not a common name. How does a family get to the point where three young men are arrested for murders in a fairly short period? Perhaps looking into the backgrounds of these men will yield some clues for society about how to prevent young people from becoming murder suspects when they grow up.
In our “Murder By Numbers” piece, we included three homicides by members of the Minneapolis Police Department. We then received a few phone calls from angry and/or curious readers who wanted to know why we’d done such a thing. Here’s the answer: We included them because they are part of the violence we described in the story. This was not to suggest in any way that these were murders. They were not. Nevertheless, they were the taking of a life by another person. That is the definition of homicide.
In his “Murder By Numbers” essay, writer Frank Clancy refers to a November bus-stop shooting and notes that the victim survived. But later, because of an editing error, that incident is referred to as “that November bus-stop murder.”
In the accompanying list of all 2006 homicides, we stated that charges had been dropped against Darryl D. Johnson Jr., 17, of Minneapolis, in the murder of Courtney Brown, No. 46 on our list. Second-degree murder charges were dropped, but were replaced with first-degree charges. Johnson is in custody awaiting trial.
In the case of No. 51, Trevor Robert Marsh, a 17-year-old student at South High, we transposed some ages of those charged with his murder. Raine Cee Neiss, who is charged with the murder, is 16 years old. George M. Boleo, 25, and Tia M. Dropik, 18, are charged with being accomplices. We regret these errors.
Brian Turner, Sean Bernard and John Cosgrove in some Irish Pub that they can’t remember anything about, except the bill was 150 euros when all was said and done.
Dear Rake Photo editor: This is a photo of attorneys Celeste Grant and Debra Heisick celebrating the November 2006 elections (results received by email) on a houseboat in the
backwaters of the Arabian Sea in Kerala, India. We were in India to visit lawyer friends, judge a moot court competition, celebrate the 40th Anniversary of the High Court, observe court appearances and to relax. We plan to start a tour of India for lawyers and their spouses & friends that includes volunteer work options (orphanage, free legal services) and tours of major attractions and items of legal interest.
Look, I like The Rake and was delighted to join in the celebration of its “First Ever Fifth Anniversary Issue.” I was even more surprised to see our Saintly City remembered in Jon Lurie’s piece “The Secret Garden” [March]. I delighted in the reading until finding my enjoyment tempered by the misstatement of a few historical facts regarding the property.
We St. Paul natives have long tolerated itinerant television meteorologists coming to town to reveal to us that it is cold here in the winter. We listen patiently while Mill City boosters lecture us on how “sleepy” our nightlife is while they scamper from pillar to pillar dodging random gunfire in their warehouse district. But if we are to continue to welcome Lakers on their excursions to civilization here let them at least understand our history and geography correctly.
Lurie is completely correct to state that our city drew its first identity from the liquor establishment of Pierre “Pig’s Eye” Parrant, but Fountain Cave is not located downtown. Never was. What remains of Fountain Cave is buried beneath the roadbed of Shepard Road west of Randolph Avenue. In 1838, Parrant did operate an establishment there, liberally serving soldiers from Fort Snelling and Indians from the area with furs to trade.
Finally, making a big enough nuisance of himself to attract the wrath of officers from the fort, Parrant’s hovel was demolished in 1839 by order of the army. He then relocated along the river near the base of the current Robert Street Bridge roughly beneath the present St. Paul Cultural Garden. It might also have been worth a mention that the garden is located within Kellogg Plaza, named in honor of Frank B. Kellogg, Nobel Peace Prize recipient and distinguished Minnesotan.
Lurie, you are welcome back anytime. Just bear in mind—probably because the legislature works here—we read the fine print.
Patrick Hill, St. Paul
Editor’s Note: Associate Editor Jon Lurie offices in Minneapolis, but lives in St. Paul.