I read Tom Bartel’s article “Discounting the Value of Work” (February). I would like to comment on it:I have worked for over forty years in the baking trade, with a lot of six-day weeks and Sundays. I also worked twenty years as a part-time janitor for a church. In the coming election, I hope we … Read more
I enjoyed my niece’s observations on “evangelicals” (“Do You Really Believe?” February) and attended the church she speaks of in Phillipsburg, Missouri. when I was her age. I don’t recall a fervor for a literal interpretation of the Bible particularly espoused, but I know many of the church members there did have those views. I … Read more
Lowell Pickett might want to downplay the Dakota’s beginnings at Bandana Square (“Planet Pickett,” February), but for many of us the club’s move was the lamented end of a lovely era And not just due to the loss of that family feeling, either. The Bandana site was cozy and intimate, with nary a bad seat … Read more
Last fall Erik Bergling made a pilgrimage to the jungles of Vietnam to visit the army base where his father served during the war. Needless to say, his devotion is admirable. But so, too, is his curiosity. This photo he sent us shows him across former enemy lines, where he took a moment to peruse … Read more
Recent conversations with Jon Ferguson, that rising star of the local theater scene, revealed a topical theme: The man is headlong in love. Since he and his partner, performer Megan Odell of Live Action Set, recently welcomed a baby boy into the world, Ferguson—formerly an itinerant, couch-surfing bachelor—finds himself an unlikely inhabitant of a state … Read more
As part of its celebration of National Poetry Month, Open Book will host The Face of Poetry, an exhibit of Margaretta Mitchell’s photographs of celebrated practitioners of the art, not one of which is recognizable to the average American (March 7–April 30) … One such luminary, Edward Hirsch—an excellent poet and a truly great writer … Read more
St. Paul filmmaker Ali Selim’s Sweet Land, a Minnesota-made indie labor of love that garnered critical acclaim and spawned a minor cult, was adapted from Bemidji writer Will Weaver’s 1989 short story “A Gravestone Made of Wheat.” The Rake’s Cristina Córdova will moderate the latest installment of The Talk of the Stacks series, as the … Read more
Bronx born and bred, Richard Price is arguably the country’s grittiest version of a zeitgeist Renaissance man. Following his first two novels The New York Times Book Review dubbed him “The Fonzi of Literature,” which may or may not have been intended as a compliment. But if early Price seemed like a flyweight greaseball with … Read more
Sarah Ruhl, Sarah Ruhl, Sarah Ruhl. We’ve been writing up, and seeing, our fill of plays by this hotshot. Still, we’d be fools not to note the occasion of the regional premiere of Eurydice, the play that made Ruhl a certified superstar (thanks to last summer’s extended Off-Broadway run). This production marks Ten Thousand Things’ … Read more
Ok, while I sit here in my favorite Karen Neuburger house clothes, it dawned on me that there is no time like the present to talk about why I won’t be attending many social functions anymore. As you may know, I recently turned 40, and along with feeling a little bit older, I feel a … Read more