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 … Read more
On the O’Shaughnessy stage in St. Paul, forty dancers get up in glittering military chic and tap in perfect unison to Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814. They toss off complex steps, inject some get-down hip-hop moves, maneuver in kaleidoscopic patterns. A panel of judges scrutinizes the proceedings as the audience hoots and hollers. This is … Read more
Kevin Turnquist, a psychiatrist for more than twenty years, currently cares for some of the most seriously ill patients in the Hennepin County public mental health system. The good doctor, who specializes in schizophrenia, has pretty much seen it all—such as the woman who believes that during sleep she grows extra limbs that are clandestinely … Read more
For multifarious and age-old reasons the dense central city was girdled by a wide belt of poverty. Near the southern edge of this shabby cincture lay a large village. Within the village was a sandy square of sixty meters in which children played and adults gathered to talk. Everyone crossed it as they went about … Read more
Last year Apple sold thirty-nine million iPods. Thirty-nine million. Not all in the United States, I grant you, but I have a hard time finding anyone between the ages of thirteen and thirty with a job or an indulgent parent who doesn’t own one. Riding a New York subway a couple of weeks ago, I … Read more
We’ve all done things we’re ashamed of—line dancing, acting innocent after unleashing something silent but deadly, heresy. If by chance you just thought to yourself, “Not me!” Well, the heck with you. Tell you what. Save yourself some time and page through to another article, because I think you’re lying. Twenty years ago, I had … Read more
A flash of orange prison scrubs, followed by a web of tight, elegant braids, were all that was visible of Lamilem Badasa as she sat down for a video-conference interview. The camera angles were off, and she’s only five feet tall, so just the top of her head appeared on screen. On the other side … Read more
This is about boats, so of course it’s about desire. The beautiful forms of boats arouse the longing to have one, and to go places you couldn’t without it. My father had this bad as a kid. In the summer of 1932 in Duluth, he talked his friends into building the next best thing to … Read more
“There are hidden energies in a home. And you can’t predict them; you’ve just got to find them.” Two years ago, Anna Lee was settling in to a new apartment in Northeast Minneapolis. The now-thirty-year-old milliner and producer of local fashion shows attempted to set up the spare bedroom as her studio, lugging her desk, … Read more
This month, the Minnesota History Center hosts its debut RetroRama event, whereat America’s mid-century lifestyle will be celebrated, relived, and perhaps even a little bit appropriated. The series kicks off April 26 with a post-war-themed fashion show. (A vintage furniture event is planned for November.) Five local fashion designers, including Anna Lee (see page 90), … Read more