Lisa Steinmann

For five weeks every winter I teach in our city parks and rec department’s Alpine ski program. Every winter, Como Park’s golf course is turned into a winter wonderland with cross country skiers and sledders occupying the lowland and skiers and snowboarders claiming 90 vertical feet of the steepest hill. We run a rope tow up both sides of it and run two snowmaking fans to keep it padded and a piston bully to groom it into shape. Each season we see hundreds of students come through our program, all ages. Mount Como is perfect for beginners and we see many families, many children in the four- to twelve-year-old age range.

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.

Last night Parthenia and I made the rounds of poetry readings. We couldn’t stay but wouldn’t miss a stop at Open Book to congratulate Patricia Kirkpatrick, winner of the first annual Lindquist & Vennum Prize for Poetry. Patricia read from her new collection of poems, “Odessa,” published by Milkweed Editions. Poetry is nice, but Parthenia and I both noticed great shoes in the crowd, especially Patricia’s soft, suede flats with ankle straps and daughter Simone’s shiny golden heels–stand-outs with black tights.