Located on a hellish strip of University Avenue in St. Paul, the utilitarian structure sports the name of the candidate – a name which sparks equal amounts of love, hatred and a lot of stuff in between. The drab walls within, like those for any campaign headquarters, are sprinkled here and there with images of […]
Standard Operating Procedure
April 11, 2008 by
How much of a story can be told by looking at a photograph? What is considered fact and proof? Is seeing truly believing? The documentary film Standard Operating Procedure breaks apart these questions by delving into the lives of soldiers stationed at Abu Ghraib prison, in Iraq. Academy Award winning director Errol Morris used photographs […]
Happy Fun Friday!
March 21, 2008 by
It’s Friday, and like that girl you had in the backseat of your dad’s Buick back in ’82, Spring just ain’t giving up the goods. And while the putrid grey color of today’s sky and frozen water the clouds vomit forth inch by cursed inch may bode well for today’s opening of the new North […]
The Art of War
July 22, 2004 by
The administrative areas at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts can be rather labyrinthine, and are also closed off to the general public, so Corine Wegener, the diminutive assistant curator for the Department of Architecture, Design, Decorative Arts, Craft, and Sculpture, agrees to meet me outside the gift shop. After we pass through the security doors […]
Back to Iraq
January 23, 2004 by
Twenty-seven years ago, I left Iraq on the first leg of a journey that would take me to the United Arab Emirates, Germany, and finally the United States. Today I am an American citizen, a businessman, and the father of three sons. Because my small business, Sindbad’s Café and Market, has become a crossroads for […]
Repetition Compulsion
December 19, 2003 by
“We have to speak up about this war. Now we don’t even count the bodies. We only count the American bodies. Woo-hoo. That’s even more self-obsessed. We kill hundreds and hundreds of Iraqis, and we don’t pay any attention to how many there are. We don’t call up the hospitals; we don’t call up the […]