I have a seven-year-old daughter now, and though I consider myself one of the “cool” moms who won’t shelter her child from the Real World, my thinking has been challenged these days. Ah, the memories of our argument back in kindergarten over none of her shirts being short enough to merit the title of “belly.” … Read more
Emily Goldberg’s childhood memories of the Twin Cities are profoundly blurry. Literally. Growing up on Long Island, she traveled regularly to Minneapolis with her family to visit Dr. Irving Shapiro, a friend of the family and an ophthalmologist. The Goldbergs would get their eyes checked by Dr. Shapiro. Goldberg remembers the doctor’s dilating drops; they … Read more
Victory is especially sweet after so many defeats. Pete is going to be a father after working at it for almost two years. He was starting to get worried that he and Amanda weren’t going to be able to get pregnant. Amanda had gone to her doctor, and they had figured out that if they … Read more
There are few things the Irish enjoy more than a decent pint or an English football team falling from grace ungracefully. Having both at once, now you’ve hit the jackpot. This month, the more worldly local sports bars—or at least Hibernian pubs with DirecTV—will provide dozens of opportunities to tickle the fancy of an Irishman. … Read more
1938’s Reefer Madness occupies a special place in stoner lore. Originally conceived as an urgent message film about the dangers of the demon weed, it was rediscovered in the sixties and seventies by scruffy, long-haired countercultural types who grooved on the film’s all-around ineptitude, hysterical tone, manic overacting, and patently false portrayal of pot as … Read more
Before she got into it, Sonja Tengdin thought her kids could scoop dog poop for money. “We started talking about it at the dinner table,” she recalled, winding around Lake of the Isles en route to her kids’ school one recent morning. “I said I’d pay them ten bucks. They refused. Then I thought, I’ll … Read more
Wynne Yelland and Paul Neseth are partners in Minneapolis’s design firm Locus Architecture. They recently set down what looks like a spacecraft over by Cedar Lake. It is a polycarbonate-walled, metal-roofed, four-bed, four-bath, postmodernist machine for living. They call their sleek structure Nowhaus 01, and it stands out from the ramblers and cottages on its … Read more
I’m getting married this fall, I hope, if we can manage—between three jobs and six kids—to plan a wedding celebration. We wanted to wait until the dust from our previous marriages and divorces had settled. Then one day I woke up and realized that the “dust” might never “settle.” What’s more, the fallout from divorce … Read more
Along with its pollen counts during spring and summer, the local news should also offer an index on real estate fever. My case is rather acute this year. No doubt it has something to do with a recent move from a city with an obscene real-estate market to one where it is merely overheated (and … Read more
Selling water in Wayzata would be like selling beer in Baraboo. How then to explain the one thousand people who streamed into Wayzata Community Church the other day to hear a lecture called “The Hidden Messages of Water”? The pews were brimming and the ushers tersely redirected latecomers to folding chairs spilling out into the … Read more