Notes on the Winter Carnival Medallion Hunt
By Brad Yaritz ● 2008
Just about the time our Vikings' season is over, all of the grass is covered by snow. The mornings of scraping the ice off your windshield have become repetitive. It's getting to the coldest time of the year. Thanks to the great City of Saint Paul, there's a week of celebration in the snow. Parents and their families come out of their homes. It's like a Minnesota version of a hibernation break. After months of being indoors, the Saint Paul Winter Carnival and the great treasure hunt are finally here!
Poem: Landscape
2008
I drive across the High Bridge with Saint Paul sprawling before me, built on hills like Rome itself.
Poem: Riding the 16
2008
Forty-five minutes in the 2000s Is enough time to write A small book of poems But they never seem to come Until you're furthest away from a pen.
Saint Paul Curling Club—A Primer
2008
I'd driven by the two-story white stucco building with the Saint Paul Curling Club (SPCC) sign on it at 470 Selby Avenue many times, wondering, "What the hell goes on there?" I must admit, I'm suspicious of anybody who considers sweeping a sport; not even broomball players go so far. But curiosity trumped my skepticism.
River Prayer
By Linda Back McKay ● 2007
The old man was not really in a rowboat under the Mississippi River bridge. He was in the process of turning inside himself, as we all will do one day...
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.”
The Turf Club By Jenny Gehlhar
By Jennifer Gehlhar ● 2007
The Turf Club is an historic landmark in the Twin Cities music world. One might wonder how this club set in the Midway—the land between downtown Minneapolis and downtown Saint Paul—amongst porn and pawn shops, liquor stores and Ax Man, maintains a name at all. This is not the hubbub of nightlife; no river views, no skyscrapers, no horse carriages or antique fire trucks, no pretty street lights, no Snoopy. It's University bus stops and Snelling traffic.
The Ford Bridge
By Vernon Holmberg ● 2007
As a forbidden summer activity, we enjoyed swimming at the Ford Bridge over the Mississippi River between Minneapolis and Saint Paul.
Rondo Oral History: Deborah Gilbreath Montgomery
By Kate Cavett ● 2007
My name is Debbie Gilbreath Montgomery. I grew up at 978 Saint Anthony, which is on the corner of Saint Anthony and Chatsworth.