Sacred Water

By Diane Wilson ● 2022

The Oceti Sakowin, or Seven Council Fires, which includes the Dakota, Lakota, and Nakota peoples, carry an origin story that teaches the sacred nature of water. This relationship is embedded

Art by Peter Kramer

My Time as an Irvine Park Resident

By Patricia Kester ● 2019

My family once lived in Irvine Park, a community that was developed in the mid-nineteenth century by some of Saint Paul’s most influential families. It was an era of horse-drawn

I’ve Been Working on the Railroad

By Deborah Cooper ● 2019

AT ELEVEN YEARS OLD, my dad, Jack, came to a bitterly cold Saint Paul. His stepfather had been appointed pastor of St. James AME Church, on the corner of Dale

The Bazooka Bubble Gum Fraud

By Louis DiSanto ● 2019

When I turned ten in April of 1958, I thought I was pretty wise to the ways of the world, especially when it came to adults, girls, trading marbles and

Baseball on Griggs Street

By Gloria Burgess Levin ● 2019

Griggs Street runs south to north through several Saint Paul neighborhoods. But in the Como Park area, it is only one block long. During the late 1950s, this was a

Why Ain’t You a Doc?

2016

Doc Bozeman tried to concentrate on that bullet—black and glistening with blood—and not on the fact that it was lodged in John Dillinger’s shoulder. Muscle and tissue gripped it like the gangster didn’t want to give it up, and Bozeman maneuvered to get a grip with his forceps.

Remembering Dorothy Day

2016

Dorothy Day and I go way back. Granted, I never met her, but I can’t help but feel a connection after volunteering every third Saturday for the past twenty years at the Dorothy Day Center in downtown Saint Paul.

Learn the Fundamentals: An Interview with Billy Peterson

2016

Billy Peterson has left his impression on Saint Paul baseball for more than five decades.

Do We Remember . . . the North Central Voters League?

2016

The “sizzling sixties” stands out as one of the most dramatic seachanging decades in the annals of American political and social history.

Fire on Pig’s Eye Island

2016

Pig’s Eye Island owes its name to a nineteenth-century trader, Pig’s Eye Parrant, who sold liquor and guns along the Mississippi’s watery highway.

From the Beginning: Forums, Theater, and Music

2016

I grew up in the Dale-Selby neighborhood of Saint Paul. To be more exact, we lived in the upstairs of a duplex just off the corner of Dayton and St. Albans, one block from Dale and one block from Selby.

Wokiksuye

2016

Driving back from the reservation, I cross a small bridge into Saint Paul. I feel the troubled waters. I think of my grandfather’s people,the Dakota. I think of how they lived by the water, how they made fire by the water.