Carnival

By Susan Solomon, January 31, 2012
1986 Saint Paul Winter Carnival ice palace, taken from Cherokee Heights (Photo: Axel)

I was a young Philadelphian, freshly divorced, and looking for a new city in which to start my new life. I was tired of rat-filled alleys and dirty heaps of black snow that lined the streets like piles of coal. At a library, I happened upon a travel magazine. And on those glossy, full-color pages, I spotted a picture of the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.

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Sleigh Ride

By Gerri Patterson, January 31, 2012
(Photo: Rudy Arnold)

Homemade snow pants of thick wool, ice caked on my jacket sleeves and on my mittens: I head out with my best friend, Rita doll...

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Thirty Degrees Below Zero

By Mary Wlodarski, January 31, 2012
(Photo: Patricia Bour-Schilla)

I like the cold so brisk and fresh

it cuts through clothes

and crimps nose hair...

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A Nostalgic Zephyr: William Hoffman on the Old Jewish West Side

By Patrick Coleman, January 31, 2012
p18-panel

It is difficult to choose from Bill Hoffman’s writings because they are all so compelling. Street by street and door by door and character by character he documented an important piece of Saint Paul—Jewish life on the West Side flats—that no longer exists. Hoffman should be required reading for recent immigrants and for those who have forgotten that their families were once immigrants.

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Saturday Morning

By Michael Teffera, January 7, 2012
(Photo: Henry Jackson)

It was around 9:55 a.m. I was waiting for the library to open.
I saw a cute Ethiopian girl coming toward me. She had dark brown skin, short hair, and a pretty baby face.
“What time is it?” She asked me. Her English accent was very good.

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The Dead of Winter

By Richard Broderick, January 7, 2012
(Photo: Patricia Bour-Schilla)

We speak of it
as though it were a place,
a battlefield strewn
with corpses,
a burial ground
of shattered statues
hooded with snow.

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Radio Crew

By Gayla Ellis, January 7, 2012
Ione’s cousin, Elaine, and Ione, dressed in her work coveralls. (Photo courtesy Gayla Ellis)

Although I live in Minneapolis, I have a strong connection to Saint Paul. When I worked as a legal secretary in downtown Saint Paul, I could see across the Mississippi from my twenty-second-floor window to where my mother, Ione, worked in 1943 during World War II: Holman Field. Born in Spicer, Minnesota, Ione moved to Minneapolis in her early twenties. During the war, she had a long commute from North Minneapolis to her job in Saint Paul: A bus took her to downtown Minneapolis, then a streetcar brought her to downtown Saint Paul, and a shuttle carried her across the Robert Street Bridge to the Northwest Airlines Modification Center, where she worked on a radio crew for the B-24 bomber plane known as the Liberator.

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