I have been thinking about this week for some time. I have been wondering what I would say, what I would tell you about, and have been feeling overwhelmed. The summer is busy and is even more so this weekend with the Light Rail Transit Green Line Openingon June 14. With free rides from Lowertown to our neighbors in Minneapolis, there’s a lot to see, with activities, entertainment, and art at each stop. The Saint Paul Almanac will be at the Victoria Station with our Storymobile. Hopefully, we will see you there as well as a few other places this week. Continue Reading
A surprise and a pleasure in keeping tab on reader comments is how often a comment responds to an article you would have thought was long out-of-date. Last week, for example, Tara Thompson commented on a Planet piece about clothes for winter biking, from Nov. 20, 2012! What do you guess she Googled to that got her that link?But the prize for “late” comments that really aren’t late goes to an article by Talee Vang, The Truth Behind the Hmong Bride Price. Vang’s piece appeared last October 23. Continue Reading
I love to see Minnesota get selected for cool technology projects –and being able to map indoors based on reading from the drone with a camera is pretty cool. The Line does a nice write up of the project… Continue Reading
Lawyer, professor, scholar-activist, preacher, mom, volunteer and blogger, Nekima Levy-Pounds has a lot on her plate. The recent Star Tribune blogger (in addition to her writing for MinnPost and TC Daily Planet) is being thrown accolades left and right, but she takes it all in stride.From humble beginnings, Levy-Pounds has risen high in her career. She feels a responsibility to give back, “to try and be a driving force for change and to teach my law students that they can also be a driving force for change and thinking about the greater good instead of just oneself,” she said. “My life would be unfulfilling if I only focused on my only aspirations instead of what’s in the best interest of the broader community.”Levy-Pounds considers herself a scholar-activist, which she’s been throughout her career, but it came into focus when she launched the Community Justice Project –—officially in 2007 though the work started in 2006. The program began as a partnership between the University of St. Continue Reading
Patrick’s Cabaret is taking a night (Saturday, June 7) to stop and smell the metaphorical roses in The Lake Street Cabaret. Scott Artley, performing arts curator for Patrick’s Cabaret (PC), got the idea for the concept cabaret on his rides to and from work (located on Minnehaha and Lake). “Watching those cultures change was really interesting especially if you go over longer distance, seeing those incremental changes at each stoplight,” Artley said.The Lake Street Cabaret encapsulates the diversity of the corridor, showcasing the Burlesque-O-Rama at Bryant-Lake Bowl in Uptown, Loren Niemi from In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, MIGIZI Communications (a media organization for American-Indian youth) farther toward the east end of Lake Street, and everyone in between.Wing Young Huie’s photography from his 2000 Lake Street, U.S.A. project that turned Lake Street into a gallery, was an inspiration for The Lake Street Cabaret and will be shown during/after the show and during intermission. The photos are about 15 years old now and show a shift in culture. For example, Artley noted an increase in the Somali population, especially at Lake and Pleasant. Continue Reading
A diverse mix of city and community leaders gathered with north side residents and community partners June 2 to celebrate the expansion of Karamu Garden in north Minneapolis.Minneapolis Mayor Betsy Hodges helped preside over the garden groundbreaking and dedication ceremony entitled “Miracles Can Happen,” along with Barry Sanders, President and Chief Operating Officer of Scotts Miracle-Gro, members of Project Sweetie Pie, the Black Storytellers Alliance and a host of others. Attendees enjoyed free hot dogs and refreshments, a health fair, commemorative speeches, and live entertainment from musician Blair Lee, and Asian Media Alliance performers whose ribbons danced in the blustery wind.Karamu Garden, located on 1600 Plymouth Avenue North, and the city of Minneapolis, are one of five national recipients of a grant through the U.S. Council of Mayors by Scotts Miracle-Gro’s GRO1000 program. The program is dedicated to creating more than 1,000 community gardens and green spaces in the U.S., Canada and Europe by 2018. Project Sweetie Pie founder Michael Chaney sees the Plymouth Avenue location of Karamu Garden as fertile ground for his broader vision. “Plymouth Avenue is the Nile of the North!” proclaimed Chaney. “I’d like this garden to be the impetus for a Plymouth Avenue makeover, with Karamu Garden becoming the Rose Garden of north Minneapolis.”Karamu Garden has been redesigned to become a municipal community garden with food planted and harvested as a givng garden, unfolding over the next three years. Continue Reading
I wonder if this happens to every parent…you pause midstream and look up and think, “Oh, this. This is why I wanted to be a parent.” I can’t really explain it and I will sound like a scary mommy when I admit that some phases of parenting for me were just plain ick. Babies and toddlers were not my game. Sure, I loved a good rock in the chair, story time, and inhaling the precious new baby smell but after that…it really did feel like living in the trenches. Toddlers make you question your sanity every single day yet I know some moms who loved that stuff and still go weak when they encounter a newborn and become wistful whenever they pass the toddler section of Target. Mostly I think, “I am glad it is not me.” These are hard thoughts to admit to and definitely not popular because who can disses a baby? But it is true for me. Continue Reading
on June 14. With free rides from Lowertown to our neighbors in Minneapolis, there’s a lot to see, with activities, entertainment, and art at each stop. The Saint Paul Almanac will be at the Victoria Station with our Storymobile. Hopefully, we will see you there as well as a few other places this week. Continue Reading
