October 30th, 2014 – Soul Sounds Open Mic – Rap Verses

October 30, 2014

Soul Sounds Open Mic it's "Rap Verses." On Thursday, October 30 we celebrate the emcees! SSOM host Tish Jones says, "Bring your hottest 16bars, a full length song and a Hip Hop spirit. It's all about the cypher!" Catch up with the crew at Golden Thyme Coffee Shop at 821 Selby Avenue (at Milton). They start at 6 p.m., as usual.

Dylan, Spider John, and the Purple Onion

October 28, 2014

Dylan, Spider John, and the Purple Onion by Bob Scroggins I got to know Saint Paul and I got to know Bob Dylan because I got to know Bill Danielson.

This Week in Saint Paul: Monday, October 27–Sunday, November 2, 2014

October 27, 2014

Every time I look at the Almanac arts calendar, I realize how much I’m missing. It’s not that I am not doing anything, although I have spent some evenings at home (doing work, of course, right?), and I have been spotted a couple of times within the boundaries of the other Twin.

An Invitation from Minnesota Author and Illustrator: Minnesota State Fair A to Z!

October 24, 2014

Count twelve days back from Labor Day and you can always figure out the starting date of the Minnesota State Fair, the largest fair in the United States. Texans argue

Dating on the Hill

October 21, 2014

Fifty-two and newly divorced. Sounds like the symptoms for something fatal. I moved to Cathedral Hill and started going to Nina’s Coffee Café for daily dialysis. Out goes the old, sad blood, in comes the new, highly caffeinated stuff. Some of my friends said, “Why don’t you date?” And other friends said, “Forget about dating. Get com- fortable with being alone.”

October 23rd, 2014 – Soul Sounds Open Mic – Ferguson October

October 20, 2014

Share a night of poems in response to the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and the activist work that is currently taking place. This is a space for poems about Mike Brown, Terrance Franklin, Ferguson, Police Brutality, new found consciousness, confusion, anger, hurt, loss, change, hope, and everything in between. The work that is taking place in Ferguson effects everyone in the United States, knowingly or unknowingly. This is an opportunity to add your voice to the conversation.

This Week in Saint Paul: Monday, October 20–Sunday, October 26, 2014

October 20, 2014

Polar vortex. El Niño. El Niña. Swirling weather concoctions made it nice to get out and enjoy our fair city. We will see what this week brings, as far as sun and warmth and cold and beautiful colors. Who knows how long before it gets cold and icy, but we will continue to have great reasons to get out and great things and people to see. I have a few ideas for this week. Maybe you have some, too.

The Vagabonds of Children’s Hospital

October 15, 2014

I wake up from a deeply sedated sleep; I am scared. I don’t understand my surroundings, nor how I arrived here. I search for a glimpse of familiarity, the eyes of my loving mother, my adoring father’s warm hands. There they are. They tell me they have not left my side in two days. I have given everyone quite a scare. Bacterial tracheitis killed numerous children in 1980. I was among the first in the state to survive. As a mother now, I can almost understand the terror that my parents felt those first forty-eight hours.

Our Lady of Peace High School 1952-56

October 14, 2014

In 1952 I became an O.L.P. girl by default. On the day I was to get measured for my Derham Hall uniform, Mother and Dad told me that I couldn’t go there after all and they immediately took me, in tears, down to Our Lady of Peace High School to register. It was a financial decision. Grudgingly, I joined the 190 girls who made up the second graduating class at O.L.P., which quickly had been dubbed the “Old Ladies Prison” by the boys at Cretin.