
Dating on the Hill
2014
Fifty-two and newly divorced. Sounds like the symptoms for something fatal. I moved to Cathedral Hill and started going to Nina’s Coffee Café for daily dialysis. Out goes the old, sad blood, in comes the new, highly caffeinated stuff. Some of my friends said, “Why don’t you date?” And other friends said, “Forget about dating. Get com- fortable with being alone.”

October 23rd, 2014 – Soul Sounds Open Mic – Ferguson October
2014
Share a night of poems in response to the recent events in Ferguson, Missouri and the activist work that is currently taking place. This is a space for poems about Mike Brown, Terrance Franklin, Ferguson, Police Brutality, new found consciousness, confusion, anger, hurt, loss, change, hope, and everything in between. The work that is taking place in Ferguson effects everyone in the United States, knowingly or unknowingly. This is an opportunity to add your voice to the conversation.

This Week in Saint Paul: Monday, October 20–Sunday, October 26, 2014
2014
Polar vortex. El Niño. El Niña. Swirling weather concoctions made it nice to get out and enjoy our fair city. We will see what this week brings, as far as sun and warmth and cold and beautiful colors. Who knows how long before it gets cold and icy, but we will continue to have great reasons to get out and great things and people to see. I have a few ideas for this week. Maybe you have some, too.

The Vagabonds of Children’s Hospital
2014
I wake up from a deeply sedated sleep; I am scared. I don’t understand my surroundings, nor how I arrived here. I search for a glimpse of familiarity, the eyes of my loving mother, my adoring father’s warm hands. There they are. They tell me they have not left my side in two days. I have given everyone quite a scare. Bacterial tracheitis killed numerous children in 1980. I was among the first in the state to survive. As a mother now, I can almost understand the terror that my parents felt those first forty-eight hours.

Our Lady of Peace High School 1952-56
2014
In 1952 I became an O.L.P. girl by default. On the day I was to get measured for my Derham Hall uniform, Mother and Dad told me that I couldn’t go there after all and they immediately took me, in tears, down to Our Lady of Peace High School to register. It was a financial decision. Grudgingly, I joined the 190 girls who made up the second graduating class at O.L.P., which quickly had been dubbed the “Old Ladies Prison” by the boys at Cretin.

October 16th, 2014 – Soul Sounds Open Mic – with MC Longshot
2014
One of the hardest working and most underrated emcees in the business, MC Longshot is a well seasoned and professional hip hop artist from Chicago, Illinois. Aside from his undeniable talent and high quality music, Longshot propels his own life experience through his lyrics to inspire and motivate others.

This Week in Saint Paul: Monday, October 13–Sunday, October 19, 2014
2014
Last week was a big arts week for Saint Paul, with the first three readings of the Almanac Literary Festival and the the Fall Art Crawl. We are pretty busy this week, too. There are more events in the Literary Festival and the second The Way We See It: A Fresh Look at Vision Loss, a groundbreaking anthology from Vision Loss Resources created with the help of the Almanac’s unique editor process.

October 9th, 2014 – Soul Sounds Open Mic – with Downrange Telemetrics
2014
This week’s Soul Sounds Open Mic will feature Downrange Telemetrics. They are poet Becca Barniskis and musician Nick Jaffe. Becca is the curator of The Dirty Hands Banfill-Locke 2014 Reading Series. Her chapbook of poems, Mimi and Xavier Star in a Museum That Fits Entirely in One’s Pocket, is also available both in vinyl LP and in digital formats as a collaboration with musician Nick Jaffe.

2015 Saint Paul Almanac Literary Festival
2014
Featuring writers published in the 2015 Saint Paul Almanac reading their poems & stories in venues around the city. Events are free and open to all ages.