SEARCHING ”“ a Serial Novelle CHAPTER 13: Stories in the Storeroom
By Patrick Cabello Hansel
How long Angel and Luz sat in the storerooms of masks and puppets no one knows. No daylight entered their hiding place, just a few small bulbs in the ceiling lit the long hallway. It did not matter to them. They told stories of their youth: growing up amid the mangoes and papayas and alamos of their little villages in Mexico, discovering that they had been in some of the same Holy Week processions and harvest festivals. Angel laughed at some of Luz”'s stories, and realized he hadn”'t laughed in a long, long time.
As the night came on, their talk became deeper and sadder. In that crowded space, they shared””as if bread””the story of the death of Luz”' mother in a desert crossing, the estrangement Angel felt from his father multiplied recently by Angel”'s absence, the wandering spirits both of them held like a stolen treasure deep within.
Angel told Luz all he knew about the owl, the strange words, the healing of his body, the slender knowledge””cut short by the immigration raid still coursing beneath them on the street””of his ancestry. The strange lineage of the Hidalgos, how he was coming to believe that it was the ghost of Mateo Hidalgo talking to him, that he himself””Angel Augusto Cruz Rojas””was descendant of Spanish nobles and Irish mercenaries, and Aztec warriors, all rolled up in his 19 years of walking on the earth
They talked of their dreams and their defeats, their vision of the future, and the pain of today.… Read the rest “SEARCHING ”“ a Serial Novelle CHAPTER 13: Stories in the Storeroom”
Endorsements of Minnesota as “Exceedingly Bracing” and “ An Asylum for Invalids,” Inspired Hopes to Cure Tuberculosis
By Sue Hunter Weir
Now that winter is almost over and it”'s still a little too soon for us to start worrying about mosquitoes and humidity, we can take a short break from complaining about the weather. Complaining about the weather is part and parcel of living in Minnesota, but that wasn”'t always the case. There was a time when Minnesota”'s weather was considered one of the state”'s major attractions. After visiting Fort Snelling in the 1820s, President Zachary Taylor, endorsed our “exceedingly bracing” weather and wrote that the area was “probably the healthiest in the nation.”… Read the rest “Endorsements of Minnesota as “Exceedingly Bracing” and “ An Asylum for Invalids,” Inspired Hopes to Cure Tuberculosis”