News & Views of Phillips Since 1976
Sunday December 14th 2025
The Alley”'s Roving Reporter at the August 13 Bridging Event: “What is something about this event that you will take home with you?”
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- Brittany Freeman and Sharon Beckford (Above) [Friends who live on opposite sides of the bridge.] “It was our first time on that bridge! Our wish is that the murals don”'t wear out in the winter! It was amazing to hear from the person who in 1973 tried to start an event about this bridge. It just shows that sometimes it takes a little while to get something started but once it starts”¦!”
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- Sandy Spieler “I loved the process of walking across the neighborhood and stopping at key spots and finding out more about a part of the community or a building from the people who were there. I was in a couple of places I had yet to step inside of and talked with people that I had not met before. I enjoyed hearing from Muriel Simmons and her beautiful idea for the community.”
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- Lee Cunningham “I really enjoyed the Sub-Saharan music. The audience engagement piece about soil that occurred near the bridge was very inspiring.
“Talking in the Backyard” Gardening Grows More than Food
by Ariele Strachan, Cultural Wellness Center
The Backyard Initiative (BYI) now has 13 Citizen Health Action Teams (CHATs) implementing health strategies developed by members who are local residents. The Growing the Backyard CHAT was given support by the BYI Community Commission on Health for their Family Garden Project in April of this year and have been working with families on gardening since late May. The Family Garden Project has connected with eight families in the Phillips, Powderhorn, Central, and Corcoran neighborhoods (the Backyard area) and has helped each of them to install a 4×4 foot raised bed garden. The Family Garden Project works with whole families ”” parents, children of all ages, grandparents and other members of the family ”” to make gardening a natural part of everyone”'s day where different gardening activities are less chores and are more activities to bring the family and the community closer together.
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Keep citizen journalism alive!
Doo Wop And Cannon Falls
by Peter Molenaar
The luckier members of my generation were again able to watch public television”'s annual review of the Doo Wop Pop Rock music emergence (late ”˜50s””early ”˜60s). As always, it was an awesome emotional head swoon. Moreover, let us self-reflect, the splendid performances of so many popular Black artists served to educate and humanize millions of white Americans
Note: I was born August 26, 1950”¦
How is it that these tunes are lodged in my brain and subject to recall? Probably it is owing to the daily school bus rides into the town of Cannon Falls. The good bus driver had the radio on all those years.
Yet the town remained white, with just a touch of Dakota blood mixed in. Any outside person of color was sure to incite such internal red flags as: Get a grip, be nice but do not touch. It was from elsewhere, moved by the music, that some white folks went South to confront the terror regime there. The news trickled in. We learned that some were killed.
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