Sixth-Grade Cookie Competitors
By Steve Trimble ● 2011
David Haynes, an African American author and St. Louis native, lived in Saint Paul for many years and taught fifth and sixth grade at a downtown public school. He has written several adult novels, and decided to write for younger readers because he found a dearth of works for that age group that were set in this city. "Business As Usual" tells the story of a cookie-selling enterprise among two rival groups of sixth graders, with a few life lessons about people and economics woven in along the way.
Big Hair
By Margaret Hasse ● 2010
This fall, our son’s chosen to grow his hair out long. He keeps his tresses clean, Otherwise lets the fields lie fallow, Doesn’t cultivate with comb and brush. One woman on Grand stares so long at his hair, she trips over the curb...
Putting a SPNN on Saint Paul
2010
The segments could be about any subject we chose—as long as it pertained to Saint Paul. I learned that more than a few of those on hand already had extensive experience as television producers and/or videographers. For complete novices like me, SPNN planned to offer crash courses in video camera operation, lighting, and editing. The classes were quick but comprehensive, and gave me enough confidence to take the plunge into shooting my first video. I submitted my proposal for the project and felt ready to check out the necessary equipment and start filming.
August Wilson’s Early Days in Saint Paul
2010
Tennessee Williams. Arthur Miller. August Wilson. When you list the playwrights of American theater whose work transcends all others, those three names stand at the top. Much of Wilson’s defining ten-play saga of African American life in the twentieth century, a massive undertaking with a play for every decade, was written right here in Saint Paul. That includes the first to hit Broadway (Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom) and the Pulitzer Prize winners Fences and The Piano Lesson.
Ta-coumba Aiken
2010
Aiken studied at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where he learned to harness and integrate his calling as a healer with his creative gifts and, like his mother, to use them sensibly. The motto that he lives each day is, “I create my art to heal the hearts and souls of people in the communities by evoking a positive spirit.”
Art by Kirk Anderson
Can’t Nobody Make a Sweet Potato Pie Like My Mama
By Rose McGee ● 2010
Every holiday, every barbecue, every church social, and Lord knows for every somebody or another’s funeral, the unspoken expectation has always been that my mama makes the sweet potato pies. Calling her pies delicious is an understatement—they are heavenly.
Jimmi Owens, Midway Baseball Ambassador
2009
Unlike the horror stories about parents gone bad at Little League games that occasionally appear on the evening news, Midway has a strong tradition of respect and civility, due in large measure to Jim Kelley, the energetic co-founder of the Midway Baseball program.
Saint Paul Saints—Change-ups, Curves & Ponytails—1998
By Donal Heffernan ● 2009
As our Saint Paul Saints begin another season this year, here are a couple of stars from a bit ago. Ila Border, the first woman to play in organized baseball, and Darryl Strawberry, down on his luck from stardom from the Yankees. Both players earned the applause and joy of Saints fans in 1998.
Art by Patricia Bour-Schilla
Boyd Park
By Virginia L. Martin ● 2007
The Selby-Dale Freedom Brigade, which emerged out of this melange of ideologies, objected to using Kittson’s name for the park on the grounds that this nineteenth-and early twentieth-century entrepreneur was not a fit man to memorialize. Not only had he had at least two and as many as four Native American “wives” before marrying European Mary Kittson, he sold liquor to the Indians and bought their fur pelts for a pittance and sold them for exorbitant amounts. One brigade member said Kittson “personifies the destructive, imperialistic aspect of American history,” and he urged that parks and public buildings be named “for people who have contributed to the struggles faced by those exploited.”