A year ago, I watched as two excavators knocked down a 116-year-old house in north Minneapolis in the name of urban redevelopment. I had written an eight-stanza blog series that culminated with the demolition of 2717 Penn Avenue North. Acquired by speculators, struck by arson, caught up in a foreclosure and condemned by the city, 2717 Penn had transformed in a few short years from a comfortable old wooden three-bedroom home to a blight on the city landscape. A cheerful sign on the lot of 2717 and the house next door, which was also demolished last summer, promised that new housing would spring up.

So far, nothing is growing there but grass.

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As my colleague Maura Lerner reported this week, the state suspended the license of a South St. Paul doctor who admitted having sex with two patients, even infecting one of them with a sexually transmitted disease, which he then treated. Dr. John Beall also prescribed “escalating quantities of narcotics” for one of the patients “without an objective basis for the increased dosages,” according to the Board of Medical Practice’s “Stipulation and Order for Indefinite Suspension.”

The Minnesota Board of Medical Practice, the agency that licenses and disciplines doctors, now makes it easier than ever to look up your physician’s priors. Maura had to walk me through the web site, however, to get to the site with the most information.

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Last week’s unexpected escape of a door from a National Guard Chinook helicopter didn’t hurt anyone when the fugitive 150-pound chunk of metal plummeted into a swamp behind a fire station in Maplewood. But it did pique my interest into how often pieces of aircraft fall from the sky before the scheduled landing of the rest of the flight.

The answer: about once a month in the Federal Aviation Administration’s Great Lakes district, FAA district spokesman Tony Molinaro told me. “It’s really rare when it actually hits something or someone,” he said.

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The demolition of the fire-gutted Lee’s Cleaners took months, rather than the one week promised by the property owner back in April. But gone are the charred and hazardous remains at 1st Avenue South and 26th Street in south Minneapolis. In its place Friday, a vacant lot with a single black sedan parked in it. If you know any other eyesores, please let Whistleblower know about it.