When I made the decision to create this blog two and a half years ago, I had to decide how to label myself. It was not a difficult choice: “moderate pragmatic Democrat” is what I called myself then, and I’ve not seen any reason to change the label. Each word, of course, carries its own […]
COMMENTS AT THE END OF THIS POST, as well as a photo of the Busch farm in the summer of 1907, soon after the sod-busting of 1905: Previous Heritage postings: here, here and here. “One had to be impressed with the silence. All you could hear was the jingle and creaking of the harness and […]
Last night we attended August Wilson’s play, Two Trains Running, at St. Paul’s Penumbra Theatre. It is a play first performed in the late 1980s, and set in the 1969 African-American community of the Hill District in Pittsburgh. The Penumbra engagement runs through Sunday, October 30. (click on photo to enlarge) Two Trains Running is […]
Last week I had the time to act on a long avoided task. I took on our long neglected bookshelves. Among the collected works that caught my eye was a book I had purchased in 2005, “Clueless at the Top, While the Rest of Us Turn Elsewhere for Life, Liberty and Happiness” by Charlotte and […]
An October theme for this writer came to be the topic of Heritage. Previous posts on this topic are here and here and here. October 18, found me in a classroom with multi-cultural students of French at Macalester College in St. Paul MN. We were listening to Professor of French and French in America scholar […]
If you live in Minnesota or vicinity, and you give even the tiniest bit of attention to news, you will know that THE MINNESOTA VIKINGS NEED A NEW STADIUM (or so they claim). What is more real is that they WANT a Stadium. MN Gov. Mark Dayton has called for a Special Session of the […]
Judging by the response last evening, this new book by Shawn Otto – its title describes it well – will not only be worth the read, but will provide a very useful springboard for informed discussion. And there is a great need for informed discussion. Acknowledgment: while I have the book, I just purchased it […]
Recently House of Representatives Whip Eric Cantor admitted that there is a problem with the disequity in wealth in this country. The brief commentary, here, is worth reading. Probably a more honest assessment of who has, and who deserves, and how they get what, was this letter to the editor in yesterday’s Minneapolis Star Tribune. […]
This entire program is accessible here. In all, the program is nearly four hours, but worth a watch.
Message to the assorted groups that make up the Peace and Justice community (of which I am a part): this is a time of opportunity to convey your message; but it is long past time to change tactics and strategies. Public attitudes have changed pretty dramatically, but our approach has not. We need to act […]