Author Archive
Minneapolis Public Housing Authority Is Building New Multifamily Housing. Is this a good thing?
By LINDSEY FENNER When I received the community meeting notice about a new three-story apartment building directly behind my house, my first concern was for my garden, and how much sunlight it might lose. When I realized this was a redevelopment project by the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority, I knew I needed to dig a little deeper. What would happen to my neighbors living in the existing public housing duplex? How is this project funded? In the very back corner of my mind, I remembered something from a few years ago: concerns about the privatization of public housing. Did that have anything to do with this project? The redevelopment on my block is part of a larger, city-wide project by the Minneapolis Public Housing Authority. MPHA is best known for the large apartment towers they run. Less well-known are over 700 MPHA single family homes, duplexes, and fourplexes scattered throughout Minneapolis. MPHA is redeveloping 16 of these “scattered sites,” including the [...]
ADVENT CANDLE: PEACE
A POEM BY THOMAS R. SMITH Peace to the goose with the broken wing, eliciting the maddening kindness of human beings, maddening because inconsistently applied. Peace to the snapping turtle burrowed in the riverbottom mud, frozen and sealed as if for Judgment Day. Peace to the queen bee in her hive, kept warm at the center of a ball made of thousands of her subjects, not all of whom will survive the winter. Peace to the bear in her leafy den, giving birth in her sleep, as it seems that poets sometimes do, astonished to awaken to the bright, hungry eyes of the poem. Peace to the trees keeping their minds on heaven, while holding fast the under-sky of roots and mycelia. Peace to the clouds, shielding the sun from the glaring follies of humans [...]
RETURNING CHAPTER 15: WHAT IS IN THIS PLACE?
By PATRICK CABELLO HANSEL Our beloved family did not know the history of the garage they were cornered in. It was built as a barn by Sigurd Amundson in the summer of 1900, to store his cart and horse. Sigurd had begun building the house on Ascension Day in 1899 and moved into it on Candlemas Day, 1900 with his wife Evangeline (nee Magnuson) and their infant son, Ronald. Sigurd had immigrated to Minnesota from a small town near Lund, Sweden when he was eight years old. His parents, William and Jeanette (nee Olson) were charter members of St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church. (The one on 15th Avenue, built by Swedes, not the one eight blocks away, built by Norwegians.) They were buried in Soldiers and Pioneers Cemetery two blocks away, along with three of Sigurd’s siblings, who died at ages 2, 7 and 11 of dysentery, cholera and a work accident, respectively. Sigurd first sold vegetables, used clothing, and pots and pans from his cart. As the automobile became more prevalent [...]
