Imniza Ska (“White Cliffs” of Saint Paul)
2015
One day in June 2011, my wife, Mary Beth Faimon, and I took a riverboat cruise on the Mississippi River from Harriet Island in Saint Paul. On the cruise, I saw, for the first time, Imniza Ska, the white cliffs that line the Mississippi River.
Respite
2015
Skin flakes like the brown earth. The grass, each small and singular strand, lies listless, without hope.
Bratz
2015
A HALE FELLOW with a flair for retail, Todd Romocky grills, listens, hustles, grins. “I’ve been a meat-cutter for the past twenty years.
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.
TWISP | This Week in Saint Paul: Monday, Jan. 5–Sunday, 11, 2015
2015
I hope your new year is starting well. The year looks bright. For the moment, the weather has decided that it is winter, just in time for Saint Paul’s world-famous Winter Carnival. Unlike in the past, we don’t have an ice castle every year. I wonder if climate uncertainty makes for uncertainty over whether we can have ice castles. Even so, the art climate is fine and this week is ready for your basking pleasure!
TWISP | This Week in Saint Paul: Monday, December 29, 2014–Sunday, January 4, 2015
2014
I have this strategy where I wait until the new year has come weeks after we have ventured into the next year before I buy my pocket calendar. My next wall calender has been fixed behind the old one for some time, my Minnesota Farmers Union calendar that I pick up each summer at the Minnesota State Fair. The pocket calendar is a different story. I wait because they go on sale at some places.
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).
“Painting is Easy Until You Know How”
2014
RICHARD ABRAHAM paints outside. “Painting is easy until you know how,” Edgar Degas knew, and now Abraham knows. His pictures delight.
TWISP | This Week in Saint Paul: Monday, December 22–Sunday, December 28, 2014
2014
We are halfway through Chanukah, on the verge of Christmas, and peaking at Kwanzaa around the next calendar corner, not to mention the other thirty-odd holidays that my friend Mooks tells us fall in December. If you have been looking at the Almanac arts calendar, you know how busy this world has been.