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Saturday, September 27 was a wonderful and important day for Open Arms. In a joyful and emotional ceremony, we broke ground on our new building in the Phillips neighborhood of

As we prepare to break ground on Open Arms’ new building on Saturday, September 27, I find myself reflecting on all of the events of the past 22 years that

On June 5, 1981, the Centers for Disease Control reported on a new disease that was afflicting five gay men. We didn’t know at the time, but that day would

(Reprinted from Insight News, July 28-August 3, 2008) Ato Shallo Dhaba, Director of the Regional Health Bureau of Oromiya, Ethiopia, visited the Twin Cities in January of 2008 on the

I’ve been thinking a lot about body mass index (BMI) lately. Body mass index is the weight to height ratio that is an indicator of whether one’s weight falls within

My morning routine changes considerably when I travel and wake up in a hotel in a city like Addis Ababa. The one thing that is constant is that my day

Follow any ground transportation route on the African continent, such as roads driven by long distance truckers who are transporting goods great distances, and you will notice elevated rates of

The popularity of coffee becomes even more obvious in Ethiopia when meeting with representatives from social service organizations who work on issues like hunger, malnutrition, and HIV/AIDS. At every meeting

Ethiopia is a landlocked nation in northeastern Africa. Unlike the rest of the continent, Ethiopia avoided colonialization, though the brief Italian occupation (from 1936-41) is still evident by the pastas

I really am a farm kid from rural Minnesota. I rarely think about that when I’m in the United States, but when I wake up, as I did this morning,

What’s in an acronym? Usually neither the acronym itself, nor the upper case words that form it, provides a true understanding of what the abbreviation means. I just returned from

I am a committed advocate for the arts in the Twin Cities. Our household supports the WalkerArtCenter, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and Minnesota Public Radio. We have season tickets