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Kira Gengler, St. Paul, is studying at the University of San Jose in Costa Rica. She loves the Rake and takes time from her studies to read it!

The Eder Family holiday in England this year. -Mike

I loved Brad Zellar’s article “Local Music: We grow old, we grow old” [October]. Indeed, I’ve felt totally behind on the current music scene. It takes so much time and money to keep up, to keep acquiring new tunes, to keep scouting for new music, that we become geezers before we want to. (Writing the word “geezers” reminds me that I’d like to start a movement to have stadiums offer Geezer Seating during rock concerts. I go to see the band, not listen to the under-30 set scream around me.)

I thought MPR’s the Current would help me keep up, however, the station’s broadcast range is such that we can’t get it out in the sticks (central Minnesota) via traditional radio. I listen to MPR’s news station exclusively at work, but I’d definitely tune in to the Current if it were available. (Before you suggest that I listen on the Internet, our connection at work is via phone.)

As for Mr. Zellar’s article, what warmed my heart was his couching the local music scene in terms of an aging Gen Xer. I was beginning to despair of Xers EVER getting any media attention. It was all Boomer, Millennial, Boomer, Millennial, as though we simply didn’t exist in between. Glad to see we still matter.

Mary Warner, Little Falls

Paul Bartlett’s letter [Letters, October] regarding Peter Hutchinson, Independence Party candidate for governor, stinks of antidemocratic hypocrisy. I gather from the tone of the letter that votes not assigned to Republicans are automatically a bourgeois entitlement of Democrats.

Ralph Nader and Hutchinson are great Americans who are brave enough to wage uphill battles with conviction, which is something so-called progressives would understand were they not jaded by zero-sum politics.

I will be voting for Democrats in November, but I’m troubled by those of us who have neither the character nor the values to appreciate an open electoral process. Associating the worst motives with worthy third-party candidates who run with passion and integrity is exactly the type of imperiousness that sends voters out our left door.

If our values and positions are strong, as we believe they are, we can prevail without the censorious yelping against the right of citizens to exercise their constitutional rights in any way they see fit. Any member of a party called “Democratic” should need no primer on the rights of individuals in a participatory system of government.

Chris Stewart, Minneapolis

As a board member of Mizna, I appreciated the fine article in the September issue by Leah Fabel on our recent literary gathering and journal release event (“Common Ground: Syria, Somalia and Soccer: The Arab world, as seen from the East Bank”)[Rakish Angle].

I would like to point out that there was more cultural diversity amongst the audience than the article indicated (Arab-Americans, African-Americans/Somalis, European-Americans).
My husband and I and a few others present may have been assumed to be of Arab background but we are not; we are of South Asian or other Asian backgrounds.

There also were people of other Middle Eastern backgrounds present: Iranians and Armenians, who are not Arabs either. There also were people of North African background present, who identify more as Berber than Arab.

We were all there as supporters of Mizna’s mission to explore Arab-American culture, with which we feel a certain strong affinity based on some common experience as members of culturally related American minority ethnic groups.

That does not make us Arabs, however, and we should not be assumed to be Arab just because we appear to fit a broad image (dare I say stereotype?) of what an Arab or Arab-American might look like.

Nahid Khan, Brooklyn Center

Earlier this year I was so moved by a piece of fiction in your magazine, “Thin Ice” [March] by Chris Waddington, that I tore the story out to keep. You’ve done it once again. October’s Rake fiction selection, “Party Doll” by Margaret Benbow, contains everything a reader could want, and so very much more.

All one really expects from a local publication are reviews on current happenings, interviews with local celebs, and the occasional scandal story. Your magazine is so far superior to anything else being done out there that I can’t believe it’s free! What did we do before you arrived?

Tricia Elsen, Minneapolis

Richfielder Geoff Cuddy has been reading The Rake since day one and never misses an issue. While backpacking through Jordan, he and partner Chris Stevens camped in Wadi Rum, the desert where Lawrence of Arabia was filmed (and where the real T. E. Lawrence adventured). “The night we spent there was the full moon,” wrote Cuddy (above), “and it was amazing how you lose all sense of scale in the desert.” Stevens got snapped in Jeresh, an ancient Roman city that is currently being excavated outside of Amman. For our part, we’re glad Cuddy remembered to unearth The Rake from the depths of his backpack—we had traveled with him to Machu Picchu and the Mayan temples of Tikal, in Guatemala, but unfortunately, on those occasions, “The Rake was lost in my backpack and never got photographed.”

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).