Art by Ta-coumba Aiken

William Taylor, First Fiddler of Minnesota

By John Heine ● 2019

Who led a band in the Minnesota Territory known as “the favorite of the dancing public”? A Saint Paul resident, barber, and Black man by the name of William Taylor.

Arts Roots in Saint Paul: The Seventies!

By Peg Guilfoyle, Molly LaBerge Taylor ● 2019

We remember it as a time of great energy and excitement in the city, when it seemed that anything could be accomplished, and everyone was ready to pitch in. It

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

Memories of a Boy Becoming a Man

By Robert Tilsen, Noah Tilsen ● 2019

as interviewed by Noah Tilsen I was born in January 1925. My father and mother, Edward and Esther Tilsen, thought it would be too difficult to get a doctor in

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

More Champagne?

By Will Tinkham ● 2019

Her orphanage sat innocently in the middle of Washington Street, just above the Upper Landing docks of the Mississippi, with the Bucket of Blood Saloon at one end of the

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

Evelyn, Aging

By Christina Joyce ● 2017

AUNT EVELYN AND I HEAD TO CALVARY CEMETERY, as we do every June, to place flowers on Uncle Jerry’s grave. Along Front Street in Saint Paul, this Catho­lic cemetery is

Art by Patricia Olson

Where I Belong

By Joan Maeda Trygg ● 2017

SAINT PAUL IS MY HOME. I am made of the water and air of this place. I am accustomed to the short urban horizon, to the slant of sun that

Art by Lisa-Marie Greenly

Young Sins

By Beth L. Voigt ● 2015

“Mom, what’s a sin?” Mom straightened the newspapers on the coffee table, picked up my brother’s two sweat socks and his blue Highland Groveland baseball shirt, and moved the armchair

Saint Paul Connections: The Labor Movement and the Civil Rights Struggle

By Peter Rachleff ● 2015

The August 28, 2013, march in Saint Paul commemorating the fif­tieth anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington expressed the historic interconnections of the labor movement and the civil rights