Featured Stories

Mike Fitzsimmons and John Grider, AKA Broken Crow, explain how the Irrigate initiative helped get their intense, stylish animal images up on a University Avenue business--helping that business to stand out during light rail construction.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: a pair of highly unusual--as in flamboyantly libidinous--eco-activists bring their film-in-progress to town.

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Saint Paul's music-loving mayor wants a city with a scene--a dynamic downtown with the special energy that only art and music provide. Last Thursday he shared some successes, some hopes, and some rock-concert memories with The Line.

The Talent Dividend Prize is a $1 million award being offered by the Kresge Foundation, CEOs for Cities, and the Lumina Foundation for Education--to be awarded to the city that shows the greatest number of post-secondary degrees awarded per one thousand residents over a four-year period. The Twin Cities (plus Bloomington) are in the running, along with 56 other cities. What's the prize all about, and why now? Read on.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: Midway Contemporary Art's library, a genuine hidden treasure.

The Line will take two weeks off to relax and renew, hit the State Fair (we'll be in the Merchandise Mart building listening to the guy sell those miracle chamois), and do something Lineish for Labor Day. We'll be back on September 12. Enjoy the last lazy,  hazy, crazy days of summer.

The president and the research/policy director of the local think tank Growth and Justice are "business-oriented progressives." In the face of dogma to the contrary, they dare to assert that there's an unbreakable link between economic fairness and economic growth. And they're bringing that spirit to the most compelling economic issue of all: jobs.

Our yearly onstage carnival of the odd, the eloquent, the poignant, and the perverse is over for 2012. Bill Kelley was in the audience at the Rarig Center and Intermedia Arts to record six of the 163 shows that took the Fringe stages between August 2 and 12. From a raucous burlesque version of a classic TV sketch to Chinese dance to a surreal Dust Bowl fable, here are images of performance at its edgiest.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: Irvine Avenue, Saint Paul's street of mystery.

With a new school year approaching, we take a look at three unique programs that show how Minnesota has become a "thought leader" in developing--and funding--positive alternatives for youth.

In A Line or Two, I share some of my discoveries and enthusiasms as I make my way around the Twin Cities. Call it an editor's note as blog entry. This week: a lunchtime celebration of local Japanese food.

It's a different "greening" of the urban landscape: highly visible bike lanes, often protected from other traffic. Is it the next step in making America a leader in 21st-century transportation?

As new export niches open up, Minnesota companies are selling some unconventional products overseas. Case in point: an inventive, environmentally aware North Minneapolis outfit that creates ADA-compliant interior signage for public buildings--and markets it in China, Brazil, and the Middle East.

Minneapolis-based educational consultant Nate Eklund sheds some fresh light on our public-education challenges by suggesting that if we make schools great places to work, they stand a better chance of becoming great places to learn.