BY PAUL METSASinger, songwriter, and seven-time Minnesota Music Award winner My love of books started when I was in kindergarten and would spend Saturday mornings listening to Miss Smart (a perfect name for our local librarian) read from them as we sat in a semicircle around her at the Virginia Public Library in Minnesota. I … More Paul Metsa: The long, mysterious road to Blue Guitar Highway
BY BETH DOOLEYWriter for Mpls.St. Paul Magazine and the Star Tribune and regular Kare 11 correspondent As much as I love Thanksgiving dinner with our family’s traditions, from touch football in the park to the must-have creamed onions in my grandmother’s serving dish, the truth is, it’s the leftovers I relish. For a busy cook, … More Thanksgiving odds and ends: It’s all about the leftovers. Er, "make-overs."
Fans cheer during the Penn State-Nebraska game in State College, Pa. This Nov. 12th, 2011, game was Penn State’s first time playing in decades without former head coach Joe Paterno, who was fired in the wake of a child sex abuse scandal involving a former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky. AP photo. BY AMY BASSProfessor of … More *They* Are … Penn State: "Qui tacet consentire videtur" ("Silence gives consent")
The Occupy San Francisco movement in full swing. Jessica Ellen Sewell recalls how just a century ago, women were using spaces elsewhere in the city to campaign for women’s suffrage. BY JESSICA ELLEN SEWELLMember of the School of Social Sciences at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey As I was leading a walking … More Occupy Wall Street: A reminder of how radical spatial politics have changed.
Occupy Nashville protesters at the state capitol. While media pundits look for a single “heroic” leader in the Occupy Wall Street movement, others point to a reclamation of participatory democracy and an emerging model of distributed leadership. Image from AP. BY DANA D. NELSONProfessor of English and American studies at Vanderbilt University Since just about … More What Participatory Democracy Looks Like: Occupy Wall Street and the Myth of Leadership
This map displays those countries that use Sharia law and to what extent. Here, author Zakia Salime looks at the different interpretations of Sharia law. Image from Creative Commons. BY ZAKIA SALIMEAssistant professor of sociology and women’s and gender studies at Rutgers University Should the West worry about Mustapha Abdul-Jalil’s declaration that Libya shall embrace … More Libya’s declared adherence to Sharia law: What does it mean?
