Lifestyle

Add another candle

By Lisa Gray, Restless Gray Girl

As the year winds down, I am wondering what the new year will bring. More than anything, I am reminded that as much as each of us has a story to tell, there is much that we can do to shape what those stories might be.

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Restless Gray Girl

Fun, frivolity and work

By Teresa Boardman, Teresa Boardman on TCDP

It is Friday and Fridays are for fun. The world was supposed to end last Friday and this is the last Friday of the year.

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Teresa Boardman on TCDP

OUR SCENE | Video vet Hamil Griffin-Cassidy: "The scene here can be chaotic, but I like that"

By Hamil Griffin-Cassidy, TC Daily Planet

Hamil Griffin-Cassidy with Carolyn Kopecky

I was born in Portland, Oregon. When I was a baby, my folks were looking to take my newborn’s lungs away from the raining ash of the newly active Mount St. Helens. They found a comparable city in Minneapolis and we’ve been here ever since.

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K Jay wows at Acme Comedy Company

By Dwight Hobbes, Sounding Off On Sound

Photo by John Ballew Photography, courtesy K Jay

It has been a long time since I’ve had a chance to write about K Jay. So, when I invited him to be my guest for Tracey Ashley at Acme Comedy Company, it was a pleasant surprise to learn he was on the bill. Such a pleasure, in fact, that I didn’t bother feeling insulted. K Jay always treats me like a wet food stamp. Never gives a heads-up on his gigs—including nights he’s opened for Fancy Ray McCloney, my other favorite Twin Cities comedian. I don’t feel insulted, but I do make a mental note to accidentally forget, yet again, to give him back his album Redd Foxx Uncensored.

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CENTRAL CORRIDOR VOICES | "April," a poem

By Diego Vázquez, Jr., Saint Paul Almanac

Photo by Diego Vázquez, Jr.

nature abhors
taxation
as does the
populace

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Homemade Christmas 2012

By Amy Doeun, Crazy Boy Farm

Have I mentioned how much I love a homemade Christmas? In all honestly as a child I had my list of gifts I wanted and would pass them out to relatives. There were few handmade things on the list. But now as an adult I fully realize that I have everything I need and love to see what my family and friends have made. I also love making things for my family and picking out just the right project. This year was a little more difficult since I was honestly absorbed in other things until early December, but it is a great way to get in the Christmas mood.

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Crazy Boy Farm

CENTRAL CORRIDOR VOICES | Mid-century adventures at the Pig's Eye Island City Dump

By Cynthia Schreiner Smith, Saint Paul Almanac

Photo by Diego Vazquez Jr.

When I was growing up near Mounds Park during the fifties and sixties, fresh milk was delivered to our stoop like clockwork; however, no one came to haul away the refuse. A big, rusty metal drum in our back yard received the trash instead. When it got full, my father lit it on fire. Items you couldn’t burn—bottles, cans, old plastic toys—were driven to the Pig’s Eye Island City Dump.

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Who says you can't go home?

By Patrice Johnson, Cultural Construct

My first real job was at Kopper Kettle in "downtown" Osseo, Minnesota. Busing tables and backing up servers at that booming diner should have put me off food service for a lifetime. Oh how I hated waking up early on Saturday and Sunday mornings, biking into town, and spending the better part of my weekend running dishes and scrubbing tables, constantly spilling hot coffee over the front of my apron, and sucking up to the waitstaff so they'd give me my fair share of tips at the end of a service. I never got used to smelling like grease and cheap pancake syrup. Now, I appreciate the hard work that goes into running a successful restaurant. Back then, I only appreciated sleeping late on Saturdays.

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Cultural Construct

Scandinavian saudade

By Bill Nelson, Trail Baboon

I was standing in line yesterday at Ingebretsen’s, the 90-year-old Scandinavian market on Lake Street, as I have for at least 40 Christmas seasons. There were about 35 people in front of me in line and at least as many behind. Now, I hate standing in line. There is almost nothing I want badly enough to warrant standing in a long line. But, as I waited, I suddenly realized I was enjoying myself– enjoying the understated camaraderie and the people watching. I was having such a good time that, when my number was almost up, I considered trading with someone else further down the line.

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Trail Baboon

Feeding the spirit on Christmas Eve

By Lisa Steinmann, Word Canoe

In 1982, when I first traveled to the farm hamlet in western Värmland, Sweden where my grandmother and her people are from, most everything was a mystery to me. I had spent a lot of time studying Swedish and could pronounce it well and get by with polite phrases, but I had no deep knowledge of the language and how it related to the land. For example, the names of the farms I was visiting intrigued me.

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Word Canoe
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