Micheal “Eyedea” Larsen—A Great St. Paul Poet
2013
We flip through the pictures You are moving We listen to each song You are undoubtedly alive...
Reflections on Patricia Hampl’s “A Romantic Education”
2013
I never saw the Schmidt Brewery that Patricia Hampl presents here, alive with its reverie-enhancing, rhythmic, red neon sign. But the first time I discovered the hulk of the brewery’s abandoned buildings sprawled out along West Seventh Street in the fall of 2004, I recognized immediately what I was looking at; its vacant structures flooded me with the memory of reading about that flashing sign in Hampl’s acclaimed 1981 memoir, A Romantic Education. Soon the Schmidt site will take on a different look as “developers” trick it out to new purposes—a welcome change.
The Goddess of Film
2013
“Sally Dixon is the Goddess of Film,” asserts digital artist Bonita Wahl. A dancer with Kairos Dance Theatre, a cultivated soul, and a legendary angel for artists of all sorts, Sally was one of the first curators of avant-garde film in America. She exhibited pioneering experimental works by the likes of Stan Brakhage, James Broughton, Carolee Schneemann, Robert Breer, and Kenneth Anger at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum of Art during the 1960s...
When Our Elders Perish, an Entire Library Burns to the Ground (African Proverb)
2013
Private Ivy Hagan and Josephine Hicks Hagan became the twenty-something ensemble known as “Aunt Jo and Uncle Ivy.” They mentored children of all ages and needs throughout Saint Paul between 1933 and 1994. They were gifted storytellers, speaking in parables of their African American memories between Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Saint Paul, Minnesota. I listened, observed, and learned.
A Civilized People
2013
I take a seat at a corner table facing the window. A blustery spring day. The mutter of cars and buses as they pull up to the stop sign. Western Avenue, once the city limit back when little farms lay between St. Paul and the milling city of Minneapolis.
Nanny and Nanny’s Daddy
2013
p>Nanny is my grandmother. Daddy is her husband, my grandfather. One day, years ago, Nanny and Daddy were out looking for the Winter Carnival Medallion. They watched others find the medallion on the grounds of Nanny’s old house.
End of the Line
2013
Take the bus? Sure, I can take the bus. Moving to Saint Paul from a small southern Minnesotan town in 1976 was thrilling. I was nineteen years old and fearless; riding the bus didn’t seem like a big deal.
XXX Searle
2013
A chunk of snow falls while my grandma Dorothy Marie Miller Wick Rangitsch Hayes stares out the window. She is eighty-nine years old and lives in the disorientation and terror of dementia.
Tickets
2013
A RENOWNED RECYCLER with a long history of community service, Richard Miller writes parking tickets as part of his job as Building Service Assistant for the Minnesota Historical Society.
The Sweetest Kiss in Saint Paul
2013
As you go through life you get kisses you remember forever. There is the kiss you get in the parking lot of Porky’s Drive-In when you are fifteen. There is the first kiss that tells you this is the girl you are going to marry someday.
Swimming with the Sharks
2013
Among our family stories is one with a lesson: Don’t try swimming with the sharks.
Mawk-Eyed
2013
A RETIRED NEUROSURGEON, John Mawk teaches all the sciences at the international high school in Lowertown.