Twin Cities Daily Planet (https://www.tcdailyplanet.net/author/saint-paul-almanac/page/4/)
In the spring of 1994, I was a writer in residence for Consortium of Associated Colleges in the Twin Cities. This meant that participating campuses would house me for seven days, and during this time I would do individual and group writing critiques, a workshop, and a formal reading for the entire campuses at St. Continue Reading
I’ve lived in Dayton’s Bluff just a few blocks from the Mounds Theatre all my life, but not for the whole life of the Mounds Theatre. It was built in 1922, and I was born twenty-nine years later.
The Mounds started out as a silent movie house. It was billed as “The Pride of Dayton’s Bluff.” It had a small stage for vaudeville acts. Local musicians played in an orchestra pit.
I was a young Philadelphian, freshly divorced, and looking for a new city in which to start my new life. I was tired of rat-filled alleys and dirty heaps of black snow that lined the streets like piles of coal. At a library, I happened upon a travel magazine. And on those glossy, full-color pages, I spotted a picture of the Saint Paul Winter Carnival.
Tiffany’s mother Sy’s garden in 2010 (Photo: Tiffany Lee)
Her garden, growing on Germain Street, needed just as much as a baby, every bit of her attention, love, and care. We moved so many times. The house on Germain was the fourth we moved into, but not the last.
On a warm afternoon in late May, a long yellow Saint Paul school bus huffs and puffs down the street, full of noisy kids on their way home from school—kids full of high spirits because it’s warm again and summer is approaching fast; high spirits because soon school will be out.
City Paper A-List: The Almanac‘s Lowertown Reading Jams
Right: Melvin Giles
We were halfway around Como Lake when I heard it—the long mournful three-tone whistle-cry that grew in volume. I stopped. What is that? What is that? I know that sound. But it was utterly out of context, and I had to think to place it.
I hold out my hand and feel the soft tapping of raindrops on my palm. They are cool and don’t seem to care where they end up. I take out my umbrella and hold it up so I don’t get wet.
It is fall. The wind starts up, and I am glad I wore my sweatshirt and rain poncho. The rain starts coming down harder now, and my patrol flag flaps madly as if trying to escape my grasp.
Waiting in the Skyways. (Photo courtesy: Sharon Mollerus/Flickr Creative Commons)
In April 2009, my wife and I lost our house, then I decided to be homeless, and being depressed didn’t help things. This was a year from hell. Then I met some angels in the skyway of downtown Saint Paul.
