Friendly Connections

We are excited to feature the first episode of the Saint Paul Public Library’s new podcast, SPPL Live. The first episode features Brent Olson, author of The Inadvertent Café and other books on life in southwestern Minnesota, serves up wit and wisdom from the prairie, and talks about his life as a writer, farmer, and owner of a small-town café.

Seventy-five years ago, 29 unionists and working-class socialists were prosecuted and labeled as dangerous revolutionaries by President Franklin Roosevelt’s Justice Department under the newly passed anti-radical Smith Act. Most were members and officers of the militant Minneapolis Teamsters Union that lead the historic 1934 truckers strikes. In Trotskyists on Trial: Free Speech and Political Persecution Since the Age of FDR, Donna Haverty-Stacke tells the story of how these strikers were imprisoned, and how the Smith Act was later invalidated by the Supreme Court. Haverty-Stacke is an Associate Professor of History at Hunter College, New York.

Recorded on Tuesday, May 17, 2016 The Iron Range has always held a special place in Minnesota’s labor history and lore. Now the future of the Range seems uncertain. The authors of two recent books give us a great opportunity to grapple with the connections between past, present, and future. Megan Marsnik is the author of the novel Under Ground, which centers around the roles of women in the miners’ strike of 1916. She teaches high school in Minneapolis. Marsnik is joined by Jeffrey Manuel, Associate Professor of Historical Studies at Southern Illinois University-Edwardsville, and author of Taconite Dreams: The Struggle to Sustain Mining on Minnesota’s Iron Range, 1915-2000. The authors will participate in a conversation and reading moderated by Peter Rachleff of the East Side Freedom Library.  

In his book, The Centralia Tragedy of 1919: Elmer Smith and the Wobblies, Tom Copeland, Macalester graduate and lawyer, tells the tale of Elmer Smith, also a Macalester graduate and lawyer. At the end of the Armistice Day Parade of 1919 in Centralia, Washington, Legionnaires, veterans, and others hostile to the Industrial Workers of the World, marched on the IWW union hall intending, again, to run the radicals out of town. The Wobblies knew of the plan and, on the advice of Elmer Smith, defended themselves and their hall. The attack began, the Wobblies fought back, four Legionnaires died, and three others were seriously injured. Later the Legionnaires lynched one of Wobblies. Twelve Fellow Workers and Elmer Smith were indicted for murder for one of the Legionnaire deaths. The jury acquitted Smith, but most of the others went to prison. Elmer Smith spent the rest of his life fighting, both in and out of court, for workers’ rights and for the freedom of his codefendants. Despite being jailed, ostracized, and disbarred, Elmer Smith never gave up the struggle. This is a story not often told but it needs to be heard by all those interested in the struggle to secure the rights of workers. 

Catherine Madison closes the Fireside Series with a reading from The War Came Home with Him, which tells the stories of two survivors of one man’s war: a father who withstood a prison camp’s unspeakable inhumanity and a daughter who withstood the residual cruelty that came home with him. Doc Boysen died fifty years after his ordeal, his POW experience concealed to the end in a hidden cache of documents. In The War Came Home with Him, Madison pieces together the horrible tale these papers told—of a young captain in the U.S. Army Medical Corps captured in July 1950, beaten and forced to march without shoes or coat on icy trails through mountains to camps where North Korean and Chinese captors held him for more than three years. As the truth about her father’s past unfolds, Madison returns to a childhood troubled by his secret torment to consider, in a new light, the telling moments in their complex relationship. Journalist Madison was editor-in-chief of Utne Reader, senior editor at Adweek and Creativity Magazine, founding editor of American Advertising, and editor-in-chief of Format Magazine. She has written articles for many publications, including the Chicago Tribune, Star Tribune, and Minnesota Monthly.

Ojibwe historian and linguist Anton Treuer presents his latest work, Warrior Nation: A History of the Red Lake Ojibwe, a fascinating history which offers not only a chronicle of the Red Lake Nation but also a compelling perspective on a difficult piece of U.S. history. The Red Lake Nation has a unique and deeply important history. Unlike every other reservation in Minnesota, Red Lake holds its land in common—and, consequently, the tribe retains its entire reservation land base. The people of Red Lake developed the first modern indigenous democratic governance system in the United States, decades before any other tribe, but they also maintained their system of hereditary chiefs. The reservation is also home to the highest number of Ojibwe-speaking people in the state. Warrior Nation covers four centuries of the Red Lake Nation’s forceful and assertive tenure on its land. Treuer conducted oral histories with elders across the Red Lake reservation, learning the stories carried by the people. And the Red Lake band has, for the first time, made available its archival collections, including the personal papers of Peter Graves, the brilliant political strategist and tribal leader of the first half of the twentieth century, which tell a startling story about the negotiations over reservation boundaries. Treuer, professor of Ojibwe at Bemidji State University, is the author of Everything You Wanted to Know about Indians but Were Afraid to Ask and twelve other books on Ojibwe history and language. Warrior Nation is a finalist for the 28th Annual Minnesota Book Awards, a nominee for the Hognander Minnesota History Award.

In the past fifty years, Asian Americans have helped change the face of America and are now the fastest growing group in the United States. But as award-winning historian Erika Lee reminds us, Asian Americans also have deep roots in the country. The Making of Asian America tells the little-known history of Asian Americans and their role in American life, from the arrival of the first Asians in the Americas to the present-day. Published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the United States’ Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that has remade our “nation of immigrants,” this is a new and definitive history of Asian Americans. But more than that, it is a new way of understanding America itself, its complicated histories of race and immigration, and its place in the world today.Lee is the granddaughter of Chinese immigrants who entered the United States through both Angel Island and Ellis Island. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and received her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. She teaches history at the University of Minnesota, where she is also the Rudolph J. Vecoli Chair in Immigration History and Director of the Immigration History Research Center.  

In Winter’s Kitchen: Growing Roots and Breaking Bread in the Northern Heartland Coming from her native New Jersey, Beth Dooley had a lot of preconceptions about the Midwestern food scene. As she explored farmer’s markets and the burgeoning co-op scene in the Twin Cities, these assumptions faded and she eventually discovered a local food movement strong enough to survive the toughest winter. Through In Winter’s Kitchen, Dooley shares her journey of coming to know and be an integral part of the Heartland food community. From the husband and wife who run one of the largest organic farms in the region to Native Americans harvesting wild rice, and from award-winning cheesemakers to Hmong immigrant farmers growing the best sweet potatoes in the country, a rich ecosystem of farmers, artisanal producers, and restaurateurs comes richly to life in this fascinating book, demonstrating that even in a place with a short growing season, food grown locally and organically can be healthy, community-based, environmentally conscious, and—most of all—delicious. Beth Dooley has been involved with the local food movement for over twenty years. She is the author of numerous award-winning cookbooks about Heartland food traditions and her travel and food writing has been featured in the Star Tribune, Fine Cooking, Delta Sky Magazine, and the North American Review. She is also regularly a featured guest on MPR’s Appetites with Tom Crann.

This behind-the-scenes, up-close-and-personal account relates how a handful of Minnesota rock bands erupted out of a small Midwest market and made it big, covering Augie Garcia and Bobby Vee to The Trashmen and the Castaways. Through interviews with many of the key musicians, combined with extensive research and a phenomenal cache of rare photographs, Everybody’s Heard about the Bird reveals how this monumental era of Minnesota rock music in the 1960s evolved. Shefchik spent almost thirty years in daily journalism, mostly as a critic, reporter, and columnist for the St. Paul Pioneer Press. He is the author of From Fields to Fairways: Classic Golf Clubs of Minnesota, among other nonfiction and fiction works, and has been in several working bands as a guitarist and singer. 

Faith Sullivan returns to kick off the 22nd annual Fireside series with a reading from her new novel, Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse, which celebrates the strength and resourcefulness of independent women, the importance of community, and the transformative power of reading. Nell Stillman’s road is not easy. When her boorish husband dies soon after they move to the small town of Harvester, Minnesota, Nell is alone, penniless yet responsible for her beloved baby boy, Hillyard. In the face of nearly insurmountable odds, Nell finds strength in lasting friendships, and in the rich inner life awakened by the novels she loves. Sullivan is the author of seven award-winning novels, including Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse, Gardenias, The Empress of One, and The Cape Ann. A “demon gardener, flea marketer, and feeder of birds,” she is also an indefatigable champion of literary culture and her fellow writers, and has visited with hundreds of book clubs. Born and raised in southern Minnesota, Faith Sullivan lives in Minneapolis with her husband.

Mexican women helped shape their expatriate communities in Minnesota from the mid-20th century onward. Discover the important ways they fought for respect and equal treatment in the Twin Cities and in outstate Minnesota. Download PowerPoint (© 2015 Jill Zahniser) >>

Fifty years after women won the vote, feminism once again grabbed public attention in the 1970s.  A wide diversity of women began to advocate for equality under the law, in public and private life. Initially ridiculed, “women’s lib” ended up remaking America.  Download the Presentation © 2015 Jill Zahniser >>

Minnesota suffragists were a civilized contrast to the discord which marked the American suffrage movement. We will discuss how women like Colvin and Ueland found ways to work together to win the vote and contribute to the national suffrage victory. Download PowerPoint (© 2015 Jill Zahniser) >>

Myths about Harriet Tubman persist, but the realities of her life are even more fascinating. Learn what we know now about Tubman’s life and legacy and about her role in the Underground Railroad.  Download the PowerPoint presentation

Paula Meehan, the 2015 recipient of the O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry, and Joyce Sutphen, Minnesota’s Poet Laureate, discuss their body of work and poetry generally at Merriam Park Library. Presented by The Friends and the Center for Irish Studies at the University of St. Thomas.   

Virgil Benoit, Professor of French at the University of North Dakota, will introduce the audience to Métis and French-Canadian presence in Minnesota from 1800 on based on historical dates and the events that surrounded them, illustrating the process of how history and memory work to construct identity within social frameworks. His talk will include events such as the fur trade, examples of how the Métis came to be, the creation of Minnesota’s iconic Etoile du Nord, and the subsequent watershed and spattering of French, French-Canadian, and Métis identity from Saint Paul to the Red River Valley and beyond.

Welcome to the podcast of a recent talk on “Romantic Relationships” given by leading F. Scott Fitzgerald scholar, Dr. Scott Donaldson.  The talk was the inaugural presentation of the annual Richard P. McDermott Fitzgerald Lecture, presented by the non-profit organization, Fitzgerald in Saint Paul.  The talk was presented on May 8, 2015 at the University Club in Saint Paul, Minnesota, and was co-sponsored by The Friends of the Saint Paul Public Library and Common Good Books.  One of the nation’s leading literary biographers, Scott Donaldson has written eight books about 20th century American authors, including Fool for Love, F. Scott Fitzgerald; and Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship; as well as the recently published book, The Impossible Craft: Literary Biography. A Minnesota native, Donaldson began his writing career as a newspaper reporter and editor in Minneapolis, but later received his Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota and is now professor emeritus at the College of William and Mary. Fitzgerald in Saint Paul is a recently established nonprofit organization, created thanks to a bequest by Richard P. McDermott.  The organization is dedicated to celebrating the life and literature of F. Scott Fitzgerald, the revered American author and cultural icon, especially in his hometown of Saint Paul, Minnesota. For more information visit fitzgeraldinsaintpaul.org.

Linda LeGarde Grover closes the series by sharing her powerful debut novel of love, hardship, and family bonds: The Road Back to Sweetgrass. The book follows a trio of American Indian women, from the 1970s to the present, observing their lives intersect on the fictional Mozhay Point reservation. Grover connects the sense of place with the experience of Native women who came of age during the days of the federal termination policy and the struggle for tribal self-determination. She is associate professor of American Indian studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth and a member of the Bois Forte band of Ojibwe. Grover is also the author of the short story collection, The Dance Boots, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award and the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize. 

The Life We Bury Author Allen Eskens adds some literary chills to the series when he reads from his twisting and evocative mystery The Life We Bury, called a “masterful debut” in a starred review by Publisher’s Weekly. When college-student Joe Talbert’s writing assignment introduces him to a convicted murderer, he has no idea that it will send him tumbling into the heart of a thirty-year-old mystery that will threaten to end his life. In addition to his writing life, Eskens is a criminal defense attorney with over 20 years experience. He graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism from the University of Minnesota, and a Juris Doctorate from Hamline University School of Law. The Life We Bury is his first book.

Writer and comedian Lorna Landvik joins the series to read from her new novel, Best to Laugh, which follows her latest irresistible character, Candy Pekkala, from Minnesota to Hollywood as she pursues her dream of becoming a comedian. Landvik taps her own adventurous past as a comic performer and writes in her classic style—sometimes so funny, you’ll cry; sometimes so sad, you might as well laugh; and always impossible to put down. Landvik is the best-selling author of many novels, including Patty Jane’s House of Curl, Tall Pine Polka, and Mayor of the Universe. She has performed stand-up and improvisational comedy around the country and is also a public speaker, playwright, and actor, most recently seen in an all-improvised, one-woman show Party in the Rec Room.