The Wake

After an hour of judo practice, the mat room in the St. Paul rec center smells strongly of sweat. It’s no wonder. The U’s judo club has been hard at work practicing the Japanese sport. Eric Shellum, sensei and club coach, demonstrates a “seoinage,” a shoulder throw, in which Shellum flips his partner across his shoulder with a surprising amount of skill and ease. In attendance are nine club members, whose belts signify skill level ranging from beginner (white) to advanced (black), each member watches carefully. After several demonstrations, the club breaks into couples and practices the move they’ve just …

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Take my thoughts, experiences and epiphanies and put them in a blender. Turn it on frappe without the lid, on and watch it all splatter in my face like a bad date. Philosophy can have a comparable effect on a student. I walk into discussions hoping that what I’m saying will penetrate the minds of those around me. Perhaps, today my ideas will cause them to sit back and think, “Jesus, how did I think any differently before these wise words?” This rarely happens. In any number of typical classroom settings, if you put enough thought into what you are …

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I’m being audited by the state of Minnesota, which I find both appalling — my tax refund is only $46 — and embarrassing. What’s more, I know they picked me because I can’t do math. I have avoided math for decades, careful not to board trains leaving Peoria at 5 p.m. traveling 62 m.p.h., quietly changing banks whenever I screw up my checkbook and confident that, unless I am buying carpet in Egypt, I probably don’t need to know how to figure the square footage of a pyramid. Having lived a full and rewarding life without math, I was slightly …

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“I’m Wesley Willis. I’m 36 years old. I play music and do art. I have schizophrenia,” says Chicago’s self-described “Daddy of Rock ’N Roll”, in the introduction to his 2003 biographical documentary.Wesley Willis: The Daddy of Rock ’N Roll, will air this Friday at the Arise! Collective in Uptown. It’s the second in a three-film series at the radical book store, and is sponsored by a local branch of the Icarus Project, a national mental health support network and media project. “We wanted to show films that have honest perspectives on mental illness, films that don’t glamorize it,” explains local …

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It takes some serious courage to get onstage and make a fool of yourself. But that’s what performance is essentially about: having the valor to let it rip in front of perfect strangers. Balls Cabaret, a weekly show inviting performers from “any and all” disciplines and experience levels to spend five to seven minutes onstage is as much a reference to the last name of its creator (Leslie Ball) as it is to the guts it takes to participate. Since 1991, Balls has been a staple of the Minneapolis performing arts scene that is as much about baring it …

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The sounds of self-described psychedelic-pop duo The Bird and The Bee evoke images of sun-streaked afternoons and lacy curtains. So it may be more than a coincidence that vocalist Inara George and instrumentalist Greg Kurstin formed The Bird and The Bee on a similarly pleasant evening, while in Kurstin’s home studio in Echo Park, California. “It is a very easy process that we have together,” George reminisces over the phone, in her slightly husky, signature rock-star voice. “Playing together was really fun and relaxed. I’d go over [to Greg’s apartment] around 12 p.m., and stay until maybe 4 p.m. There …

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My Adidas
walk through concert doors
and roam all over coliseum floors
I stepped on stage, at Live Aid
All the people gave an applause that paid –”My Adidas,” Run D.M.C
From Run’s Adidas to Nelly’s Air Force Ones, hip-hop artists and their sneakers have gone hand-in-foot. Just for Kicks, a Caid Production and Program 33 documentary aired at Varsity Theater last month, tracing the sneaker’s music-laced origins, from b-boys to b-ball. It all began with break dancing. “We added the element of style, we wore sneakers for the way they looked and they way they matched …

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Through skin translucent her heart
beat like a small strobe light.
Downstairs her mother kissed her
slippery cheek, a red brand of initiation. She wondered why someone with scales and webbed toes
lived in open prairie, the grass rubbing like
chalk and nails against bare legs, with trains
casting lines into the depths of the wide continent,
and long whistles into the night — She spent the day
drinking the rain, something sliding into her
rounded and present, a question mark. At the greyhound station her skin
stretched and rang — the late dampness,
the slight …

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My eyes are a bit glassy today
Whether from the wind whipping tears
Or
This physical sickness, born from that misbehaving cigarette.
Flickers on the security monitor
Make me think of barrels + counters
And their coming of age love story.
A purely mental headache develops.It’s this state of buildings
Changing the weather.
Twisters can’t even touch the ground
And the sky must hush itself.
To not feel the elements
Of that “Evil” they speak of seems unnatural.
Every “people” has been brought
Down on its knees in centuries.It’s not a matter of justice.
It’s …

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I
She sits across from me all night engaged
the sounds of her voice, and the crinkles my eyes make toward her breast.The best state of affairs would have our smiles be white
glazed china masks, thin, the lips painted red.Beneath our masks would be draperies of flesh, plastic moments of
writhing heat and black tufts of hair. Beneath
our masks would be a locus for this steaming rhythm
of words, bandied through our porcelain mouths.At the end of the night when she unclasps her bra, I think
she’s lying, but for an inexpressible moment, breathing
into each other’s ears, …

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The original Darwin D. Martin complex includes the homes of Darwin D. Martin and George F. Barton, two New York business tycoons, as well as a conservatory, carriage house and a pergola. All designed by Frank Llyod Wright, an exhibition of the new interpretations of these buildings is on display at Rapson Hall on the University campus.The eight-bedroom Martin house is the jewel of the property. The home was built in 1903 and cost roughly $175,000, when an average home at this time cost about $10,000.The Buffalo, N.Y. complex became a depressed area when Martin died in 1935. The house …

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You know you’re from Minnesota when the seasons change during the course of one lecture. Watching the faces of students coming out of a lecture on Oct. 11 was entertaining. Some were shocked, others angry, and a few were filled with excitement. When these students went into class, it was fall. When they came out, it looked more like February.While most would agree that October is too early for snow, true Minnesotans know that anything is possible. A scene like this quickly brings to mind the infamous Halloween Blizzard of 1991, which serves to easily identify the out-of-state students. But …

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The MacLaurin Institute is a Christian study center serving the University of Minnesota – “bringing God into the marketplace of ideas.” Dr. William Monsma, a physicist-theologian from the University of Colorado, founded it in 1982. Each year the institute brings 10 to 15 Christian scholars to the U of M campus, along with holding a conference each year presenting a distinctly Christian alternative. The U of M’s latest speaker, Mustafa Akyol, is a Muslim writer based out of Istanbul, Turkey. Akyol, 34, graduated from Bosphorus University. He travels around the United States and the United Kingdom giving seminars …

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It was all smiles and positive thinking at the first annual Northland Bioneers Conference, held at Minneapolis Community and Technical College over the weekend of October 20-22. A newly annual three-day interactive presentation, the conference is dedicated to spreading knowledge about the environment, health, social justice and holistic spirituality.I arrived on the second day of the Northland Bioneers Conference open-minded but three-and-a-half hours late. The majority of patrons were already in small workshops learning about the various aspects of environmentalism, sustainable living and social change. Glancing at the schedule, I quickly glided through the main room, past booths representing …

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Have you ever heard of a game that is played like soccer, positioned like basketball and the intensity of rugby? That is exactly how Water Polo President Chris Redman explained the game as we sat in the lobby at the Rec Center, overlooking the pool. “I still think this campus is my favorite place to compete,” Redman says.The game is played with seven players in the pool at one time, one goalie and six field players. The goalie is not allowed on the other half on the pool. The position of the six field players is …

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