An Eleven-Year-Old’s Profile in Courage
2015
It is a good collection of boys, my son’s Midway baseball team. They won their share of games, but the biggest victory came with the biggest loss for one of Sid’s teammates. It was an unparalleled profile in courage, not just for him but for all the boys.
Up and Far Out of Sight
2015
It was a hot day like so many days in July, the weekend of the Taste of Minnesota. Weekends around the house always but always, to the dismay of the teenager of the house, consisted of time-intensive, labor-filled yard projects.
Cinnamon Rolls and Neighbors
2015
A few years ago on the Fourth of July we wanted to invite some neighbors over for homemade cinnamon rolls. I make the rolls from scratch; my wife invites.
Rondo Pioneers
By Danta Wilson, D’Onna Clark, Damone Presley, Erica Dennis, Maya Clark, Mietta Green, DaVante Jackson ● 2014
As the Black poet J. Saunders Redding said: The relationship between a people and their history is the same as the relationship between a child and its mother; history not only tells a people where they are and what they are—history also informs us what we still must be and what we still must do.
“The Chug and Deubner Hill”
2014
I grew up in the West End on Arbor Street, by the old Schmidt Brewery. One of our pastimes in the mid-fifties was building and racing “chugs,” which were homemade go-carts, made entirely of found parts—boards, bent nails we straightened with a hammer on the sidewalk, and of course the most cherished find, wheels big enough to use (many baby carriages were wheel-less that summer).
Helping Father in the Garden on a Summer Night
2014
Swatting mosquitoes in the rhubarb,
I watch you pull husky potatoes from the earth.
You roll them in your palms and scuff the dirt from their bulging eyes and moony grins.
Here’s Mister Potato Head!
The River Bench Series, Garden Encounter
2014
The Cherokee Heights Garden Club has celebrated seventy-five years of service. They have faithfully beautified and tended the flowers on Smith Avenue at the High Bridge for years. Returning from
Kwame J. C. McDonald: He Faced Death with Courage
2014
Kwame McDonald was a much-loved icon in the community. He was well traveled and well known across the country. My relationship with him—a relationship of associating and working together—lasted over thirty years, right up until the time he died. This is also a story about the manner in which he died, his whole attitude about life and death, and the acceptance of his fate.
The Zoo at Night
2014
You’re not alone with your sleeplessness. The lion is roaring. There’s a peacock, too, though you didn’t recognize its call until Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom went to India. You’re not alone because a distant siren cues the timber wolves, all of them except the shy ebony outsider, the only one who doesn’t fight over the salami your brother tosses into the Wolf Woods.
All Good Things Are Wild And Free
2014
“IN THE MIDDLE of all the chaos of life, a massage,” smiles Andrea Sullivan. She is a practitioner of Shiatsu Anma, Chinese Abdominal Detox Massage (Chi Nei Tsang), Thai Yoga Massage, and Taoist Medical Qi Gong and meditation, and to watch Andrea giving a massage in the moiling farmers' market is becalming.
Paper Planes
2014
My grandmother had forbidden me from going to their house, so Jaine and Tamara starting sending me airmail. My bedroom window faced their yard, and when my grandmother wasn’t home or it was dark out, they would write me notes on paper airplanes and send them up through my window. I had just learned to read and write so it was all very exciting...
Dylan, Spider John, and the Purple Onion
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.