Anytime the streets of an old city are disturbed, the past bubbles up to the surface. That’s definitely true of Saint Paul. The heavy construction Downtown has ripped up many of the ancient streets of Lowertown and secrets are bound to see the light of day. Something has been found there, however, that no one wants to talk about just yet. When will the truth be revealed?
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Category Archives: People & Culture
All about the standing-upright chimps that really love to talk about themselves.
Dia de la Raza and Thanksgiving
To our North, in Canada, today is Thanksgiving. To our South, in Mexico, it is Dia de la Raza. Our brother nations here in North America have found things to celebrate in the early days of Autumn, but here in the USofA we have nothing but the pseudo-holiday Columbus Day – something we’ve tossed over our shoulders and given up on.
This may be a measure of our ability to get anything together.
Online Life as an Onion
Too much information. We all have it blasted our way and we all share it. Understanding the limits of what we should be sharing and how we should process all this information is the key skill of our time as the internet becomes the appliance that defines much of our life. Many people have written volumes on this topic, but in the end the choices are all very personal.
I’ve recently started daily updating on Facebook to give people who know me a bit more information about my daily life. It was in response to a number of questions from friends and fans who find Barataria a bit too cold and impersonal. As I advise my clients who have products to sell, the reasons for doing this are not simply to be on Facebook but to use it as a tool to fill a need. The experience has taught me a few things as I work out the details of where my lines for “too much information” lie.
Acceptance
Now that we’ve passed out of Summer and into Autumn, a strange quiet has settled over my neighborhood and my city, Saint Paul. It’s been raining hard enough to cause an unusual September flood in many parts of the state – a bubble of Gulf of Mexico air has reached this far north and continues to refresh itself. The start of Hockey season has been met with temperatures above 70F. Everything seems a bit out of sorts and silently anxious.
Call me a romantic or an idiot, but I think that the weather is always trying to tell us something.
Cities & the Future
Cities mark the landscape across this nation and all others. Images of the handiwork of a culture often define the people who come to inherit the space and, in turns, mark it with their own generation’s values. Yet they are so much more than static collections of icons – they are where people come together and live their lives right now. They are always ultimately about the connections that make them alive.
Even the bricks and mortar or glass and steel is ultimately a connection across time to what made the city what it is today. Though it’s the stuff that makes up a city which gets photographed and noticed, they are much more than that.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 