The Alley Newspaper

This article may sound like I’m currying favor, or being really self-serving, but I want to praise what I see in the Alley and in Ventura Village. When I started writing articles for the Alley five years or so ago, I didn’t really expect anyone to read them. I thought this was a small neighborhood […]

It was about forty yards to the gallows. I watched the bare brown back of the prisoner marching in front of me. He walked clumsily with his bound arms, but quite steadily, with that bobbing gait of the Indian who never straightens his knees. At each step his muscles slid neatly into place, the lock

Like many people in this part of Minneapolis, I am continually reminded of the challenges facing our neighborhoods. High crime rates, limited resources, livability crimes, drug use…. you know the list as well as I do. Aside from my personal observations, I hear about the challenges the members at Peace House Community deal with every

Anything worth doing is worth doing poorly at first. It’s worth doing poorly many times until you get good at it.-Paul Tracy (or maybe it was Zig Ziglar; I can’t remember which one said it.) Go on failing. Go on. Only next time, try to fail better. -Samuel Beckett As someone who grew up receiving

Among my other duties, I help coordinate the adult education series at the church that I attend. This fall and winter we have had various congregation members speak about the intersection of their vocation and their faith. In other words, how does their faith affect their work, and how does their work help them see

Dave and Ray Davies, the brothers who led the British band The Kinks since the 1960s, have a famously volatile relationship. Even though they managed to stay in a band together for over 40 years, they often despised each other and had explosive arguments. They addressed their relationship in the song “Hatred (A Duet)”, which

As a kid, I used to be fascinated by anthills. I constantly wondered how animals with such tiny brains and no obvious ways of communicating on a large scale could create such a complex society. It wasn’t until I grew old enough for deep theological reflection that I realized my view of the ants was

I recently attended a webinar hosted by the National Alliance to End Homelessness. The discussion focused on how housing advocates can speak about Housing First programs to gain support for those programs from the general public. (For this article, you don’t need to worry about what Housing First is, because that isn’t the point of

Lately, the negativity of the world has affected me more than usual. Over the last few months, several supporters and members at Peace House Community have died or experienced some form of trauma. World news has been bleak. The mornings are darker and colder. Sadly, I’m one of the fortunate ones, as I know many

After the doom and gloom of my last few columns, I wanted to write something a little more upbeat this month. Based on my current thoughts, I may not succeed, but by the end of this article I will try to have found a ray of hope. At the end of July, I travelled to