Pine City native Jake Olson picked up The Rake while visiting Minnesota over the holidays. Back in his adopted home of Adana, the bustling city that is Turkey’s fifth largest, Olson served up our magazine (and maple syrup from Mora, MN’s Sapsucker Farms) to a Turkish friend on his balcony. Apparently, that view of the Sabanci mosque was no match for our January issue.
How come Britt Robson is not listed on the main page of the website? He’s all I read from The Rake—that is the sentiment of a few of my friends as well (all Wolves fans). He’s always amongst the most popular/e-mail articles as well. Let’s get Britt up at the top of the page!
I cannot tell you how happy I am to see Jeremy Iggers’s byline in your magazine. I have missed his informed, careful criticism. He is a class act every time, and I truly appreciate his thoughtfulness. I’ll be thrilled to continue to read him in The Rake. How about reviving his column on ethics?
Imagine my surprise that another Twin Cities left-wing rag has a year-end list that is strictly to bash conservatives — which, of course, always focuses on Michele Bachmann, the only true conservative this state has sent to congress. By the way, Bachmann’s bridge bill was a stand-alone bill to pay only for the 35W bridge and no additional money for Jim Oberstars’s bike trails and other earmarks. Don’t you lefties get tired of being so predictable? Try and stir things up a bit and add a token conservative to your staff. Just maybe someone will read your rag if you try something different than all the other lefty mags in this town.
“Who doesn’t love Sam and Sylvia Kaplan?” [January] Well, I guess I don’t. Nothing personal; it’s just that they stand for everything I dislike about politics and “progressives.”
Secretive meetings held behind closed doors; politicians groveling for the Kaplans’ approval; the Twin Cities’ elite hobnobbing at invitation-only soirees. It reeks of the cronyism the Kaplans are said to be against. But since they’re on the correct side of the aisle, the portrait painted is a rosy one.
Author Brian Lambert tells us that the local Republican equivalent is Bill Cooper, who of course is not as lily white as the Kaplans. Cooper’s modus operandi is “fear based”; he’s cranky, he’s arrogant. Contrast that with Sylvia Kaplan, who is “acerbic” or at worst “blunt.” It’s all in the spin.
The Kaplans are all smiles and I’ve no doubt they’re wonderful people. However, I’d challenge them to open their palatial estate to some of the downtrodden folks who live a stone’s throw away. Mingle with the people who have borne the brunt of your “progressive” policies for generations. You might then understand why some of us, living outside the Ivory Tower, just aren’t feeling the love.
Editor’s Note: Brian Lambert did not write that Cooper’s modus operandi is "fear based’; he quoted Representative Keith Ellison, who said "Cooper’s thing is fear-based."
Somehow, the September Rake still lays around, and I re-read “The Roman Arch” [Good Intentions] every few days. It must be good writing.
As dead-on as Colleen Kruse always is [“Satan in the Litter Box,” January], James Boswell may have said it best in his couplet:
The only problem with a kitten is that / Eventually it becomes a cat!
On the QT to Ms. Kruse: A helium balloon tied to an unsuspecting tail can yield hours of gut-splitting hilarity.
The Hart family (Brooke and Sean, along with sons Rio and Kai) of Minneapolis stumbled into an unusual situation while visiting Tanzania: A meeting with members of the Hadzabe, a nomadic hunter-gatherer tribe situated in the Yaeda Valley, was followed by a barbed exchange of sorts. The Hadzabes’s arrows won out against The Rake, Brooke Hart reported. “They aren’t literate, and so didn’t show much interest in our magazine,” she wrote. “But the Hadzabe were kind enough to take us hunting … They showed us how they made their arrows, and then taught us how to shoot. We set up a target and thought, What better way to show off The Rake than to use it for target practice!”
Hello to all at the Rake!
We are just back from holiday in Budapest and wanted to tell you what a great job you do with this rag! So packed with articles and stories of quality it not only kept me reading at the Szechenyi baths but for much
of the long plane ride also!
Photo of Deborah Bushinski, shot by husband Ken Bushinski, having a relaxing soak and good read at the Szechenyi Baths in Budapest. The baths were a perfect way to relax prior to the evening opera a performance of Madame Butterfly at the Budapest Opera House on December 7th, 2007.
Happy Holidays!
The Minnesota heat waves had passed in September when, visiting her
sister, Anna Lefebvre, in Minneapolis Theresa Gumbleton and her
sidekick, the shaded Sheila Sheils from Derry and Carndonagh, Ireland
took a few days Up North lake lounging on Lower South Long Lake.