News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Monday December 22nd 2025
The Best of Times, the Worst of Times
TIPS FROM A COVID-19 CASE INVESTIGATOR
By LINDSEY FENNER
As I am writing this in late April, I have just gotten my first dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine. After doing pandemic
response work for almost a year, it was an incredibly emotional moment for me, as I know it has been for many people. My tears of joy were matched by the broad grin of the man getting vaccinated across from me, his elation clear through his mask.
But my joy in getting vac- cinated has been tempered by the cold reality of rising COVID cases in Minnesota. At work, we watched the numbers slowly inch up in the month of March, and then saw them pick up speed in April. We don”™t know when this latest surge in Minnesota will peak. I desperately hope that by May, the worst will truly be behind us, but right now, as I write this, we just don”™t know.
Why have cases been rising again? Perhaps the biggest reason is the growing dominance of the variant strain B117. B117, the variant of concern first discovered in the UK, has torn through Europe, and is now tearing through parts of the US like Michigan and Minnesota.… Read the rest “The Best of Times, the Worst of Times”
Past, Present, Theater
On Stage involves local students in a closer look at Nina Simone”™s work around racialized violenceÂ
By JESSIE MERRIAM
Don’t tell me
I tell you
Me and my people just about due I”™ve been there so I know
They keep on saying “Go slow!” But that”™s just the trouble
—Nina Simone “Mississippi Goddam” 1963
“When we listen to Simone sing ”˜Mississippi Goddam”™–it could”™ve been written yesterday. Somebody needs to write a ”˜Minnesota Goddam”™ right now,” Twin Cities actress Thomasina Petrus declared to the group, gathered on the morning of April 1 to explore the play Nina Simone: Four Women and Simone”™s reverberating legacy.
This gathering was arranged by On Stage: Creating a Community Dialogue Around Live Theater, a Twin Cities nonprofit that brings the scripts of local plays to college classes and community centers and facilitates discussions with the aid of theater creators and educators. On April 1, Professor Jo Lee”™s “American Drama by Playwrights of Color” class at the University of Minnesota was joined by creators/ artist-activists Nora Montañes and Sun Mee Chomet, as well as Petrus, who performed in the 2016 Park Square Theatre staging of Nina Simone: Four Women in St.… Read the rest “Past, Present, Theater”
Godzilla vs. Kong
MOVIE CORNER
By HOWARD MCQUITTER II
Godzilla vs. Kong (2021 Warner Bros.) ★★1/2☆☆☆
The last time the two mammoths monsters Godzilla and King Kong – one a reptile, the other a mammal – fought one another was in the 1962 film by Japanese director Ishiro Honda. Back then men dressed as Godzilla and King Kong battled it out, costing thousands of lives. In that film the battle between Godzilla and King Kong climaxes on Mount Fuji.
Director Adam Wingard’s Godzilla vs. Kong, as to be expected, uses plenty of C.G.I. (computer-generated imagery) making the beasts larger than ever. Oh, how Godzilla and Kong have grown in size since their beginnings! Today both beasts are as big as – if not bigger – than the skyscrapers they easily knock over. And the way it looks in Wingard’s hyper C.G.I. version, it’s Godzilla who is the villain. I think.
     What also can be said (and in more recent movies on Godzilla or Kong) is that the Japanese get a big breather from both beasts who in the past have made it a point to level or near level their cities and leave thousands of deaths.… Read the rest “Godzilla vs. Kong”
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