It’s important to know when to get out of the way so that someone else can do better. Forty-one years ago, Nick Petrangelo at age 59 figured that would be a couple of
recent graduates in their mid-20s (myself and the late Kerry Ashmore). I started by working with Nick as editor and ad rep, training in for a few months. After 41 years, at age 65, it’s time for me to pass the torch. Vince Brown is the new publisher of the Northeaster. Vince has 17 years’ experience as production and office manager at the paper. In Northeast, we’re known for growing our own. Vince lives close enough to the office to walk to work and is tuned in to the Northeaster community. He has my full confidence.

Graci Horne, curator and story keeper for the Mnisota Native Artists Alliance (MNAA), was one of three Native American artists who shared examples of cultural appropriation with about 60 people in the Northrup King Building on Saturday, Nov. 19. Marlena Myles (Spirit Lake Dakota) and Ashley Fairbanks (White Earth Nation Anishinaabe) joined Horne (Sisseton Wahpeton Dakota and Hunkpapa Lakota/Dakota) to explain the ways non-Native people have profited from Native American art and designs and how appropriation hurts Native Americans and their communities in the panel discussion sponsored by the MNAA and the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association sponsored the discussion.

Inspired by her bilingual family, informed by her nearly 20 years’ experience teaching multilingual learners, and driven by a childhood dream to be a writer and illustrator, Wilshire Park Elementary teacher Minda Gomez introduced her second book to the world this past summer.

She labels “The Arctic Quest” as a story filled with “magical realism.” The book is rooted in the Martinez family’s Christmas holiday drive between their home in Minnesota and their grandparents’ house in Mexico. En route, the three children take imaginative detours to the Arctic Circle, where they are transformed into lemmings and seals, snowy owls and polar bears. In their animal forms, they learn lessons about responsibility and cooperation, perseverance and encouragement.

Husband and wife team, Nate and Monica Capone bring Italy to the St. Anthony Silver Lake Village Shopping Center (2700 39th Ave. NE) at Capone’s Italian Specialties. The market opened Oct. 2 and has a variety of imported dried goods, specialty oils and balsamic vinegars, fresh cheeses, and meats along with daily made-to-order sub sandwiches and salads to grab and go. In case you need another reason to visit, homemade raw meatballs and sausage from old family recipes are available and on weekends, braciole is made and sold on a first- come, first-served basis.

When St. Anthony High School student Mudit Jha co-created Dreamers Abyss in March 2022, it never crossed his mind the website would trailblaze a positive path for students to collaborate worldwide. But soon after the website went live, students on different continents around the world contacted Jha, interested to join the effort.

Most things shut down at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Eastside Meals on Wheels got busier. “We saw 40 years of growth overnight,” Executive Director Jessie Hausman said recently. Even with volunteers dropping out of sight because of stay-at-home orders, the organization, which turns 50 in 2023, somehow managed to deliver 45,000 meals to housebound seniors in 2021.

Edison High graduate Richard Kraus was barely 18 when he joined the U.S. Marine Corps in 1943. In October 1944. He was part of the amphibious assault on the island of Peleliu in the South Pacific and during the battle had volunteered with three other Marines to evacuate a wounded comrade from the front lines. During the operation they encountered Japanese soldiers, one of whom threw a grenade at them. Private First Class Kraus used his body to block the force of the grenade and died while saving his three comrades. For his bravery he was posthumously awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military award.

When U.S. Army veteran David Drews retired, he looked up his Army unit -- the 199th Light Infantry Brigade – and started going to reunions every year. Up until then, he hadn’t shared much about his time in the service. “Years back, I never talked about it. That changed when I started going to my Army reunions, and us guys would start talking about different things. I think a lot of Vietnam veterans have been doing that now,” the St. Anthony resident said.

Dock 6 Pottery recently relocated from a small gallery in the Longfellow neighborhood back to Northeast. Owner Kerry Brooks is happy to have found the right space for her classroom and gift store in St. Anthony at the Silver Lake Village Shopping Center (2700 39th Ave. NE). The 2,400 sq.-ft. space is divided equally into a classroom and a gift gallery. All items in store are handmade in the U.S. or are fair trade and include jewelry and pottery from local artists, glassware, upcycled purses, pillows and many other items.

Starting with the theme “One River’s Trash is the Same River’s Treasure,” the Mississippi River Pearl mixed media sculpture is an Art to Change the World collaboration produced by Project Manager Barbara Bridges and group members Frances Bates, Amáda Márquez Simula, Greg Volker, Margo Ashmore, Annie Merrell, Neil Granlund, Katherine Boyce, Alexis Schramel, and Kelly Frankenberg.