Wisconsin is all right
from streets.mn by Nick Magrino
Wisconsin, America’s Dairyland, is my second favorite state. It occurred to me at some point towards the end of my stay at the University of Minnesota that, for one reason or another, a disproportionate amount of my college friends were from the other side of the St. Croix. About two-thirds of the University’s freshman come from Minnesota, so given the other 48 states and international students, we could probably ballpark it and say that about a fifth of the student body hails from Wisconsin. I don’t want to make a list, MySpace-style, and check people off, but I’d probably say a slight majority of the people I liked to hang out over my three years at the U with were from Wisconsin. I had relatively few friends from the Twin Cities metro area, and, oddly enough, most of them were from St. Paul proper, which was a bit of an anomaly.
Riding a bicycle through an intersection in America: Not so simple
from Thoughtful Bastards by Paul Udstrand
Here’s a typical intersection by the West End in St. Louis Park. I live nearby and I’ve ridden my bike through this intersection, and I’ve driven my car through it many times; I’m telling you, those are two completely different experiences. Bear in mind this is NOT an old intersection, it was built when the West End was built.
Can my therapy records be subpoenaed in a divorce?
from Family-In-Law by Michael Boulette
In the age of ubiquitous social media and the twenty-four hour news cycle, expectations of privacy aren’t what they used to be. But when families find themselves caught in difficult child custody disputes, privacy is often one of the first questions that comes to mind.
Flossenburg
from Thoughts Towards a Better World by Dick Bernard
…if you factor in everything about the place and the time and the circumstances, there is little doubt that townspeople knew only what was told to them. Even today, with all of the means of communication we have access to, we are regularly deceived and misled. Think now of some town 20 miles from you, where you don’t know anyone. Even today, lots could go on in that town without your knowledge….
One grand old WPA gym in West Concord
from Minnesota Prairie Roots by Audrey Kletscher Helbling
YOU CAN ALMOST HEAR the rhythmic bounce of basketball upon wood floor, hear the roar of the crowd as the ball swishes through the net and two points are added to the scoreboard…
Holding Robert Bly’s diaries
from A Prairie Populist by Joshua P. Preston
Back in October 2014 I went through the Robert Bly Papers at the University of Minnesota’s archives. Although I’ve done archival work elsewhere (at Morris and online), this was the first time I’d gone through the papers of a writer — and the experience filled me with such a range of emotion that, walking the leaf-covered sidewalk home, I couldn’t understand why I was weeping. Overcome with feelings of inspiration and grief, I blamed the fall air for being harsh on eyes too-familiar with the Houston heat.
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