News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Sunday December 21st 2025
Minneapolis Edible Boulevards Seeks Your Input
By MICHELLE SHAW
Ring in 2023 by joining us for our free January cooking class! This month Kelly Shay of Harmonious World and Wellness will teach us how to make something delicious on Zoom. You can find the registration link and grocery list (for those who also want to cook!) on our Minneapolis Edible Boulevards’ Facebook and Instagram pages. If you don’t have either, feel free to reach out to minneapolisedibleboulevards@gmail.com.
Minneapolis Edible Boulevards wants to hear from you! It’s essential to not only have resources available for our neighbors, but also to listen to community members in our partnering neighborhoods. What’s important to you? We have a survey on Instagram and Facebook to capture those thoughts and ideas.
As a City pilot for the past 3 years, we’ve also been advocating to change the City ordinance since 2019, because Minneapolis currently doesn’t allow food to be grown on our boulevards (while St. Paul does). We’d like to know about any other changes you’d like to make to the current ordinance on what we’re allowed to grow there (the language is included in the survey).… Read the rest “Minneapolis Edible Boulevards Seeks Your Input”
SOMETHING I SAID: The Animal Factory
Book Review
By DWIGHT HOBBES
Rule of thumb goes, the book’s better than the movie. Edward Bunker’s The Animal Factory (St. Martin’s Minotaur) and Franchise Pictures is a tossup. Both are brilliant. The novel’s narrative is fluid, with compelling immediacy. Co-screenwriter John Steppling teams with Bunker for an ingenious adaptation.
Bunker (Education of a Felon: A Memoir /St. Martin’s Griffin,) made his way from the wrong side of the law to a career as screenwriter-actor (Animal Factory, Straight Time). He was “Mr. Blue” in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs.
The Animal Factory protagonist, 20-something, privileged Ron Decker is slapped in prison so the judge can stand hard on white offenders, not just criminals of color. Never mind that Decker, no angel for sure, dealt weed and coke, but this is his first bust. He’s a politically correct scapegoat. Street spawned, veteran of incarceration Earl Boen takes him under his wing, shows him the ropes. In a hellish environment, they become unlikely allies, then fast friends – in an environment where young, pretty Decker can use someone influential having his back. Circumstance irreversibly changes their lives. Some brute thinks he can rape Ron. Earl’s crew convince him otherwise, ganging up to stab the guy, severing his spinal cord. … Read the rest “SOMETHING I SAID: The Animal Factory”
Artifacts and Curios (and a Piano)
Tales from Pioneers and Soldiers Cemetery: 206th in a series
By SUE HUNTER WEIR
The caretaker’s cottage is a wonderful place. The two front rooms were built in 1871, which means it may well be the oldest existing stone building in South Minneapolis outside of Fort Snelling. The back room was built during the Great Depression by workers employed by the Works Progress Administration, a program designed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt to create jobs for displaced workers.
But it’s not just the structure that’s interesting. The inside of the building is something of a way-back machine. There are artifacts and relics dating back in some cases to the 1870s. None of the items are of any great monetary value, but they capture a piece of Minneapolis’ history that might otherwise have been lost.
The Layman family, the cemetery’s original owners, were prodigious recordkeepers. There are dozens of ledgers in which they recorded the sales of cemetery plots, some for as little as 50 cents. There are Lot and Block cards which show who’s buried in every grave (not a small task to maintain, given that there are currently more than 22,000 people buried there). There are burial permits dating back to the 1870s, and index cards with the names and burial locations of not only those who are currently buried in the cemetery, but also of the 5,000 or so who were removed.… Read the rest “Artifacts and Curios (and a Piano)”
Keep citizen journalism alive!
