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"The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." William Faulkner

This Star Tribune newspaper article on Citizens’ Alliance leader C. Arthur Lyman being added to a wall of slain police offers in Washington 78 years after his death during the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 has generated 29 online comments to date, and is listed as one of the most commented-upon recent stories.

Lyman was not a police offer, but a businessman who came downtown to the Warehouse District in cleated mountaineering boots to beat back striking workers. I don’t condone his beating and death in the least. There was tragedy on both sides, but the ruling class-sports imagery of those cleats speaks volumes. 

"The past isn't dead. It isn't even past." William Faulkner

This Star Tribune newspaper article on Citizens’ Alliance leader C. Arthur Lyman being added to a wall of slain police offers in Washington 78 years after his death during the Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934 has generated 29 online comments to date, and is listed as one of the most commented-upon recent stories.

Lyman was not a police offer, but a businessman who came downtown to the Warehouse District in cleated mountaineering boots to beat back striking workers. I don’t condone his beating and death in the least; there was tragedy on both sides (two strikers dead as well.) But the ruling class-sports imagery of those cleats speaks volumes. 

A new life for Eddy Hall, University of Minnesota

Rebuild for the next hundred years! This story explains how. Losing the oldest building on campus would be a tragedy. We’ve lost two other buildings in the Old Campus Historic District in the last few years. This one is in the center of campus, in the center of the district.

"Another one bites the dust"

In the interest of completeness, an account of the demise of Norris Gym on the University of Minnesota campus in Minneapolis.

Far from a Footnote

Another facet of the Vietnam War experience: women who served as nurse-officers. Their saga is told in the new book by Kim Heikkila, Sisterhood of War: Minnesota Nurses in Vietnam (Minnesota Historical Society Press). My profile of book and author appears in Fall 2011 issue of Minnesota.

Fitzgerald and the Fair

A refreshing new take on the “first day of the fair” article, from the Pioneer Press. Its subject, Fitzgerald’s short story “A Night at the Fair,” can be found in The St. Paul Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (Borealis Books, 2004). 

The beat goes on

Norris Gym is next.