Jill Stein rocks the boat
BY ED FELIEN
It was looking like a sleepy political season. Gentle and predictable waves were washing against the small ship of state, and, then, Jill Stein jumped into the boat and the boat started rocking!
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Batman, The Joker, Nazis and the culture of violence in America
BY ED FELIEN
“Life imitates art far more than art imitates life.” Oscar Wilde
 Should we blame the Batman movies for the tragedy in Aurora? After murdering the people in the movie theater, James Holmes put his guns in his car and calmly told the police, “I’m the Joker.” He had booby-trapped his apartment so that anyone entering it would have set off massive explosions probably killing many more people. This begins to sound like “The Dark Knight,” where The Joker blew up a hospital because he was frustrated in getting revenge.
What explains the perverse pathology of The Joker? At one point in the movie he says he mutilated himself in sympathy with his wife who had been scarred by a knife, but later he says: “You wanna know how I got these scars? My father was a drinker and a fiend. And one night he goes off crazier than usual.
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Why don’t we get to vote on it?
BY ED FELIEN
On May 25 the City Council voted to accept the legislation that authorized the State of Minnesota to collect $150 million in sales taxes generated in the City of Minneapolis to pay for the construction costs of a new Vikings stadium. The $150 million is just the beginning. The total cost with escalating maintenance costs could run from $675 million to $890 million.
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Great Blue Herons, toads and the ‘Dalliance of Eagles’
BY JOHN KARRIGAN
 Last month I started with a complaint about not seeing many neighbors and park walkers because of the extreme weather.
August has not been quite as extreme and I have seen more people, but the weather has still been hard on many people and other living creatures and plants.
The usual three kinds of Herons have been pretty regular at Powderhorn but with some behavior differences. The Great Blue Heron has been on the lake or island almost every day I have been there. Then last night I did not see him (or her). Then I saw a large bird overhead going west. I got the bird in my binoculars and it was a Great Blue Heron, probably 150 feet above me and just passing over the lake.
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The hungry insurgent
BY CHARLEY UNDERWOOD
For a gardener or forager, this time of year is just crazy busy. It seems like every plant in the universe has conspired to come ripe at the same minute, demanding your attention. The tomatoes are ready all at once. The corn should have been picked two days ago. It’s time to turn the basil into pesto before the first frost kills it. Busy, busy, busy.
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. . . and the Revolution was led by a hand-crocheted, multi-colored flag
BY ED FELIEN
 Steven Be wants Chicago Avenue to be known as Art Street. Just as Nicollet Avenue is known as Eat Street, he wants everyone to know that Chicago Avenue is where art is happening. He reminds you that just between Lake Street and 38th Street there is the Pillsbury House Theater; the Fire Arts studio and gallery; the Blue Ox Coffee House and Café SouthSide where they have entertainment and music; the Wing Young Huie Photography Gallery; Modern Times Café with its adjacent art studio and Southside Pride newspaper upstairs. He wants banners up and down the street proclaiming Art Street: “We feel the time is right.”
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Polly goes home to Arkansas and finds Walmart
BY POLLY MANN
Pole Cat Creek, Toad Suck Park, Pig Trail Scenic Highway and Eat Buck Nekkid Barbecue—these were some of the highway signs my friend and I encountered on a recent trip from the Twin Cities to Hot Springs, Ark. It was a memorable vacation. The most interesting place we visited was in the town of Bentonville in northwestern Arkansas, home of Walmart, Sam Walton’s corporate empire.
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U.S. health care: The crisis continues
BY RICHARD TAYLOR
One of the curious aspects of the Affordable Care Act is that it continues the ongoing practice of making health care less affordable for healthcare consumers, formerly known as patients.
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September
Phillips Powderhorn
Community Calendar
ANNOUNCEMENTS
Remembering Lauren Maker
A gathering will be held Friday, Sept. 7, at 4 p.m. on Boom Island—the small pavilion closest to the river. Friends are invited to share her words and our memories while acknowledging her contributions to the City of Minneapolis, her community, her family and friends. Please bring a lawn chair, garden flowers (we have vases) and an appetizer to share. Donations to the Lauren Maker Fund, c/o Northeast Bank, 77 N.E. Broadway St., Mpls. 55413, will be used to place a Remembrance Memorial Gift in a park along the river.
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Phillips Powderhorn
Religious Calendar |
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Vote NO
A group of 150 clergy gathered at the entrance to the fairgrounds to speak out against the proposed constitutional amendment that would limit the freedom to marry for committed, same-sex couples in Minnesota.
Pastor Grant Stevenson represented Minnesotans United for All Families. The amendment “would tell a certain group of people that their relationship is not valued in our society and not valued by God,” he said. Bishop Anne Svennungsen, who leads the Minneapolis Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the largest synod in the country, cited the resolution passed by five of six Minnesota ELCA synods opposing the “marriage amendment.” Rabbi Harold Kravitz, the Senior Conservative Rabbi of Adath Jeshurun Congregation, said, “This amendment would end that conversation permanently.” Pastor Adam Rao, an evangelical Christian minister at SafeHouse Church in Minneapolis, said, “To vote yes is to say that God is not to be found in gay and lesbian people—that love and commitment are not be found in their relationships.”
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September 2012 
