The Wake

“You mean these guys started early today?” asked one annoyed customer as we left the St. Paul Chamber Hall for intermission. “Every other event in this festival has started at least a half-hour behind schedule so far!”The festival to which he referred was the Minnesota Sur Seine Jazz Festival, sponsored by both French and American companies. The concert, which actually started right on time, was Fat Kid Wednesdays with Evan Parker. The “Fat Kids” are local titans of the jazz scene. Their most celebrated member is Michael Lewis, who readers may also recognize from another Minnesota-based free jazz trio, Happy …

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Live music is not always alive. It can be prescribed and predictable with one song dully following another. Broken Social Scene and their opener Feist defied this formula when they played First Avenue on Oct. 29. Their music was organic and bred one harmonic song after another, creating an evening of musical excess that filled me to the brim. Feist was an excellent appetizer for the packed crowd. The band, fronted by Broken Social Scene contributor Leslie Feist, warmed the crowd with their heavily rhythmic and harmonic, primal sound. Feist’s Gibson guitar produced rich, yet stripped-down melodies. Tambourines, bells, and …

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University of Minnesota MFA Reading
Nov. 9, 7:30 p.m.
The Loft Literary Center
1011 Washington Ave. S., MinneapolisThe University’s Masters of Fine Arts students will share their work with the literary world. The reading will offer fresh work by fresh authors. It’s also a great way to hear the creative efforts of instructors.Bill Holm
Nov. 11, 7:30 p.m.
Magers and Quinn Booksellers
3038 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis
(612) 822-4611Minnesota poet Bill Holm traveled and taught in China, which inspired his book “Coming Home Crazy: An Alphabet of Chinese Essays.” The book won the Minnesota Book Award in 1991. …

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I am Silent.In my head I hear
preaching I wish I could
Hear.In my head I fear
cautions that I wish I could
Fear.In my heart I feel
love, but I know it’s not near.So I feed the silence
until nothing seems
c l
e a r.

Gravity tends to act
Immediately
Except when relationships are involved.Atomic shivers probed my fingers and arms
As my fingers probed
The helmet’s hole.This belonged to the German my grandfather killed.I turned it over again in my
Young hands. I
Picked up swastikas, a toy tank, a bank,
A ring, such things as this.
This box wasn’t going to auction.Neither were the guns.But the rest of his life…
I had been to auctions. I know the sounds
They make and the smell of blue collars and pine.
Eighty years
And now he just sits confused in a chair
(We kept that …

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The story takes place in Swindon
and my thumbs hold the pages back.
Sun’s glaring and the familiar rhythm of
the tracks are punctuated by loud, dark
train stations. Sheep-speckled hills blur
by in the windows. What would happen if I spoke to the girl
sitting across the aisle from me?
Would she laugh when I say elevator
instead of lift? Or line
instead of queue? Would
we make love
in some British way and
get married in a 421 year-old church?
Would we laugh at the Americans together?Swindon is the next stop. Fiction and
non-fiction colliding.
I should …

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That ware day in October
when oil seeped into our soil
streams shriveled not flow
mouths dry, scrambling for dews drops
yams turned blue not brown You spat me out
Left me without hot sand, and gravel
Bare breast, bare feet and hands, made it coldwhen you bullied your way through my heart
made it cold, again.
staged a tribal domination, and caused elders
to rid themselves of dignity, and flee from huts,
their homestained perfect sand with innocent blood
writing in my memories – I don’t belong.
Now, you’ve left me helpless in a strange land…

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I am not dressed like a salad and I don’t prefer to be held inanimately. I wish I didn’t
have to consume so much cranberry product and more
importantly my bad circulation was not an excuse
for you to keep me warm. I think at one time
the moonlight meant danger, like trouble rising
and I can’t shake off this mist irony hanging over everything. I can’t shake it
like a woman should and there are many things that
I cannot explain, like the different models of bathtubs
but sometimes I scream underneath the water of myself and it’s not …

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On the anniversary of Bush’s reelection, over a thousand students walked out of class to protest the Iraq war through chants, banners and passionate speeches. The walkout gathered in front of Coffman Memorial Union on the University of Minnesota campus, and was organized by the groups Youth Against War and Racism, Socialist Alternative and Anti-War Organizing League. Members of the Green Party spoke on the political agenda surrounding the war. While the main point of the protest was to bring attention to military recruitment in high schools and the negative way in which Bush handled the war, other politics, such …

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Among the beer keggers, loud music and heterosexual titillation that typically define a Saturday night on Frat Row at the University of Minnesota, one fraternity stands apart. Delta Lambda Phi is the only national social fraternity for gay and bisexual men, says Tim Ortyl, president of the fraternity. Although they do not have a house, the fraternity hosts many social and service events.The response from other university fraternities to Delta Lambda Phi so far has not been very inviting. “I feel like we’ve been a pretty isolated frat, but we’re trying to change that,” Ortyl says. The fraternity applied to …

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Swarms of students, some scraggly-haired and others well-dressed, anxiously waited outside the Great Hall in Coffman Union. Some adorned with pot leaf buttons smiled, asking passers-by if they were going to the “great debate.” The longtime editor-in-chief of High Times magazine, Steve Hager, and 25-year-veteran of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Robert M. Stutman, debated marijuana legalization. Minnesota Program and Activities Council and the Onion sponsored the “Heads versus Feds” debate. Marijuana is good medicine, Hager says, and noted how doctors prescribe synthetic medicine instead of those from nature. “I do believe this …

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“Don’t they call it ‘the crack stacks’?” says Mohamed Abdi, a second year General College student. He is a resident of the Riverside Plaza apartment complex that is the recipient of the derisive nickname. The name is a prime example of the misconceptions and lack of knowledge that surround that area. Located a couple of blocks from the West Bank’s Carlson School of Management and the Arts Quarter, the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood somehow seems to go relatively unnoticed and at times is downright misunderstood by the larger campus community. Those students who do venture past the border of campus discover a …

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After a Saturday night of partying, Sunday often dawns with headaches, sore throats, and exhaustion. But what better way to get over a hangover than by jumping from a thirty-foot platform into the deep end of the University of Minnesota’s Aquatic Center?Or so is the case for a group of friends who have found a passion for plunging into water from great heights. The group originated as three friends who went cliff jumping in northern Minn. during the summer. But the concept of diving caught on with their other friends and soon more joined in on the multi-faceted hobby.Brian Trolander, …

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In an era of patriotism in the United States, with ceremonies to commemorate national events, some athletes have expressed their discontent in subtle yet powerful ways. In the 1995-1996 NBA season, while playing for the Denver Nuggets, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf chose to sit down during the national anthem. He cited his Islamic faith as the reason behind his actions. The NBA then suspended him indefinitely. Subsequently, the suspension only lasted for two games. Afterward, Abdul-Rauf closed his eyes and covered his face while saying a personal prayer during the anthem.In the 2002-2003 season Toni Smith, a women’s basketball player at Manhattanville …

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As fall settles in, the air becomes cool and crisp, leaves turn those beautiful hues of orange and red, and the maroon-and-gold football team enters the home stretch of its football season. As hooded sweatshirts emerge from their off-season storage, remember to clear open a few hours of your Saturdays to watch Minnesota’s football team compete in some meaningful end-of-the-season games.These final games of fall will have Gophers football optimists geared up already, but for the pessimists, you too are invited to cheer on coach Glen Mason’s crew. Okay, granted there was the punt attempt gone wrong, penalty plagued, late …

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