Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Haiku, Holding My Breath, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Seasons, Spirituality, Wake Up, tagged Babyland, cemeteries, changing seasons, Chinese Community Memorial, gateways, history of Minneapolis, Lakewood Cemetery, Minneapolis, promise of Spring, the practice of haiku on May 9, 2008 | 4 Comments »
Gateways, Lakewood Cemetery near Lake Calhoun, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 2008. Spring blooms in Babyland, near the Chinese Community Memorial. Photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
white-belled bleeding hearts
spring sweeps through silent gateways
cemetery pause
-posted on red Ravine, Friday, May 9th, 2008
-related to post, haiku (one-a-day)
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Posted in Art of Rebellion, Bones, Culture, Death, Essay, Family, Gratitude, Love, Memoir, Photography, Place, Relationships, Spirituality, Travel, tagged Beverly Donofrio, Catholicism, cemeteries, grandmothers, honoring the dead, honoring the past, Looking for Mary, mothers, New Mexico, Raton, religion, Virgen Maria, Virgin Mary, visiting graveyards on May 3, 2008 | 35 Comments »
Mother Mary as in a Dream, Raton, NM, photos © 2008 by
ybonesy. All rights reserved.
Last Wednesday afternoon I found myself in one of the best spots I could imagine, with my parents and oldest sister, and in the company of my beloved grandparents and best-ever uncle. We were in the cemetery in Raton, New Mexico, [...]
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Posted in Art, Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Photography, Practice, Relationships, Seasons, Spirituality, Structure, Vision, Wake Up, tagged changing seasons, circles, coloring as practice, Coloring Mandalas, mandalas, Marija Gimbutas, Susanne F. Fincher, The Great Round, Wheel of Life on April 30, 2008 | 8 Comments »
April draws to a close in a few hours. Though it snowed last Saturday, the light of April’s last day is clear and blue. The front yard is bursting with new life: erratic shoots of thick, green grass, day lilies skyrocketing out of tender wet ground, red-stemmed dogwood buds, one purple bloom in the [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Death, Life, Nature, Personal, Seasons, Skies, Writing Practices, tagged April full moon, changing seasons, Frog Moon, Pink Moon, spring in Minnesota, the practice of writing, writing about the moon on April 29, 2008 | No Comments »
I was torn. Pink Moon, Frog Moon, Moon of the Greening Grass. I liked Flower Moon and Broken Snowshoe Moon. I imagined fumbling out of a leather strap on an antique snowshoe, ice jamming the buckle, stepping out just long enough to sink knee-deep into what’s left of Winter. But it is the Frog Moon [...]
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Posted in Art of Rebellion, Culture, Death, Family, Gratitude, Memoir, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Place, Poetry, Relationships, Skies, tagged Bear, Bearhug, Cielito Lindo, death of an uncle, honoring death, Mary Oliver, Michael Ondaatje, The Cinnamon Peeler, Why I Wake Early on April 28, 2008 | 12 Comments »
In Bloom, wisteria blooming in the mid-April spring before
the hard freeze, photos © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
My Uncle Bear died yesterday. I was at my daughter’s horse show when I got the call from Mom. Dad was crying too much to tell me himself.
I wonder what it’s like to lose a younger sibling. [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Haiku, Life, Nature, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Seasons, Silence, Spirituality, Taos, tagged 1 Year Anniversary of Virginia Tech, anniversaries, black & white photography, Georgia O'Keeffe, homage, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Morada Walk, New Mexico, Penitentes, Taos Mountain, the practice of haiku, white cross on April 16, 2008 | 10 Comments »
Morada Walk, Taos Mountain in the background, white
cross Georgia O’Keeffe painted, Taos, New Mexico,
January 2003, Tri-X black & white film print, photo ©
2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
gusty April winds
ruffle brambled shoots of green
Spring bounds from behind
anniversaries
separate fiction from fact
squeeze light from the dark
photosynthesis
through veins of a single leaf
gives life to the world
-posted on red Ravine, [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Death, Dreams, Family, Growing Older, Life, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Personal, Place, Politics, Practice, Topic Writing, Vision, Writing Practices, tagged cemeteries, honoring the dead, Martin Luther King, Maya Angelou, mirrors, the practice of writing, the process of aging, visiting graveyards, writing about growing older on April 11, 2008 | 22 Comments »
I’m looking at my ruddy face in a small, round, silver mirror. I look older than I remember. Thick eyebrows, salt and pepper hair; it looks the grayest to me right after a haircut. There is something about the way it lays across the black plastic smock, and falls in shredded pieces on to the [...]
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Posted in Death, Dreams, Gratitude, Photography, Quotes, Silence, Taos, Vision, tagged Martin Luther King Jr., Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, Taos on April 4, 2008 | 12 Comments »
Shadow Of A Bridge (The Journey), looking out from the Rio Grande Gorge Bridge, outside of Taos, New Mexico, January 2003, C-41 color film photo © 2003-2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak [...]
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Posted in Art, Body, Death, Growing Older, Life, Quotes, Vision, Writing Topics, tagged aging, centenarians, longevity, writing about growing older on April 3, 2008 | 11 Comments »
Sarah (Book of Genesis), gouache on wooden board retablo,
painting © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
You can’t stop it. The tick-tock of the clock.
Once I heard someone say that time doesn’t pass (as if we’re standing still and time flows on by); instead, we pass through time.
Perhaps you don’t want to stop the passage of time. [...]
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Posted in Body, Death, Essay, Family, Gratitude, Jugular, Love, Personal, Photography, Practice, Relationships, Writing, tagged Bob Chrisman, death of a mother, hands, honoring death, red Ravine Guests, writing through pain on March 27, 2008 | 28 Comments »
By Bob Chrisman
I took a photograph of my mother’s hands before the visitors arrived at the funeral home. When she was well, she cared for her hands and nails everyday, but that stopped in the nursing home when she lost the strength in her hands and arms. Her nails grew long and dirty. That bothered [...]
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Posted in Art of Rebellion, Authors, Bones, Books, Death, Love, Memoir, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Photography, Place, Quotes, Relationships, Silence, Taos, Writers, Writing, tagged Angelo Ravagli, D. H. Lawrence, epitaphs, Frieda Lawrence, Kiowa Ranch, Mabel Dodge Luhan, Not I But The Wind, relatives of the Red Baron, Til Death Do Us Part on March 16, 2008 | 10 Comments »
Not I, But The Wind, tombstone of Frieda Lawrence, near Taos, New Mexico, February 2007, photo © 2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Emma Maria Frieda Johanna Freiin
(Baroness) von Richthofen
In Memory of twenty five years of incomparable companionship - Angie
Emma Maria Frieda Johanna Freiin (Baroness) von Richthofen was a distant relative of the “Red Baron” [...]
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In her post on names and the importance of names, QuoinMonkey wrote that “When we are long gone, our names are the one thing that will live on through time. My great, great grandmother wanted to be remembered by the things she loved. What epitaph would you want next to your name?”
A rich conversation ensued. QM [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Family, Growing Older, Laughing, Life, Memoir, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Personal, Photography, Place, Writing Topics, tagged ancestors, cemeteries, epitaphs, excavating memories, family history, names, researching memoir, Shirley Ellis, the name game, what's in a name, writing about names on March 13, 2008 | 42 Comments »
I continue to pore through photographs and tapes of my trip to Georgia and South Carolina last summer.
“What’s taking you so long?” Monkey Mind yells from the wings (grabbing every opportunity to scratch his haunches).
“It’s a slow process, excavating the past,” I soberly reply. “Don’t rush me.”
Family history rises from the rich, black compost - memories, stories, [...]
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Posted in Art, Death, Life, Place, Practice, Structure, Vehicles, Work, tagged Marvin Franklin, Metropolitan Transportation Authority, MTA, New York Transit Museum, subway deaths, train deaths on March 7, 2008 | 37 Comments »
Self Portrait, by Marvin Franklin,
image from The New York Times slide show
An article in this week’s The New York Observer caught my eye, about Marvin Franklin’s first art show, at the New York Transit Museum.
Franklin was a Metropolitan Transportation Authority track worker who was killed by a train on April 29, 2007, at age 55 and [...]
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Posted in Animals & Critters, Body, Bones, Death, Dreams, Gratitude, Life, Personal, Practice, Seasons, Wake Up, Writing Practices, tagged Bat medicine, feeling frozen in my tracks, January Full Moon, January in Minnesota, realizing your dreams, totem animals, winter, Wolf Moon on January 23, 2008 | 23 Comments »
The January Wolf Moon was wide and full, smeared across the morning sky the way an artist rubs a chalky finger across gray charcoal on paper. It was Liz that pointed it out to me, half asleep in the kitchen making coffee. By the time I got to the window, she was already out the [...]
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Posted in Art of Rebellion, Bones, Culture, Death, Dreams, Gratitude, Holidays, I Don't Remember, Life, Photography, Vision, Wake Up, Writing Topics, tagged American history, Civil Rights, Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial, creating change, Emma Lazarus, Enrique Rivera, Harvey Milk, honoring the past, Human Rights, Mankato 38, Martin Luther King, memories, planting seeds, Stonewall on January 21, 2008 | 15 Comments »
Planting The Seed, Lightpainting Series, stained glass window, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
When I walked out into the sub-zero temperatures yesterday to warm up my car, a piece by NPR’s Enrique Rivera poured out of the Alpine radio speakers. Rubbing my hands together, and pulling the end of [...]
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Posted in Art of Rebellion, Authors, Bones, Creative Nonfiction, Death, Dreams, Essay, Practice, Quotes, Vision, Writers, Writing, tagged following your dreams, kids & creativity, living as a writer, Monkey Mind, Ray Bradbury, writing practice, Zen In the Art of Writing on January 13, 2008 | 15 Comments »
I wonder if the 8-year-old girl, who was sketching at the Frida Kahlo exhibit a few weeks ago, will someday look back with wonder like Ray Bradbury. It could happen.
Sometimes I am stunned at my capacity as a nine-year-old, to understand my entrapment and escape it.
How is it that the boy I was in October, [...]
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Posted in Animals & Critters, Body, Bones, Books, Death, Growing Older, Holding My Breath, Home, Life, Love, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Quotes, Relationships, Silence, Structure, Writers, Writing, tagged December (Christmas Box), Fitzgerald Theater, Galway Kinnell, Josephine Dickinson, MPR Talking Volumes, Silence Fell, Strong Is Your Hold, Where Were You When I Came In From The Evening Milking, Writers Hands, Writers reading their work, writing through grief on January 9, 2008 | 28 Comments »
Writers Hands VI, Josephine Dickinson, Fitzgerald Theater, St. Paul, Minnesota, April 2007, all photos © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Josephine Dickinson read her poetry at the Fitzgerald Theater last April, sharing the stage with her mentor, Galway Kinnell. She met Galway at a poetry reading at Morden Tower in Northumberland. She was drawn to [...]
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Posted in Death, Film / TV / Video, Food, Gratitude, Great Places To Write, Growing Older, Holidays, Laughing, Personal, Quotes, Seasons, tagged A Charlie Brown Christmas, A Christmas Story, Bob Clark, celebrating the Holidays, Holiday classics, Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol, never eat December snowflakes, nostalgia, Peanuts, snow, Vince Guaraldi, winter on December 24, 2007 | 17 Comments »
A Charlie Brown Christmas, snippets on YouTube by FlyingForGlory
Patty: Try to catch snowflakes on your tongue. It’s fun.
Linus Van Pelt: Mmm. Needs sugar.
Lucy Van Pelt: It’s too early. I never eat December snowflakes. I always wait until January.
Linus Van Pelt: They sure look ripe to me.
I love to watch the snow fall. I’m a [...]
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Posted in Bones, Culture, Death, Dreams, Gratitude, Holding My Breath, Holidays, Nature, Personal, Practice, Seasons, Silence, Things That Fly, Vision, Wake Up, tagged celebrating the seasons, fire, letting go, making light of the dark, Solstice & Equinox time chart, winter, Winter Solstice on December 23, 2007 | 6 Comments »
Solstice Fire In Winter, December 22, 2007, Winter Solstice in Minnesota, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
We celebrated with friends outside by the pond. It was frosty cold, hovering around 5 degrees. Frozen hands. Sparks fly. A light wind blew from the West. The brilliant sunset was undone only by a circle wreath [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Body, Bones, Death, Dreams, Family, Life, Love, Personal, Photography, Place, Practice, Relationships, Structure, Taos, Topic Writing, Vision, Writers, Writing, Writing Practices, tagged Jeanie Bernard, Katherine Reynolds, letting go, Melissa Studdard, Petroglyph Practitioners, petroglyph rock, red Ravine Guests, Sally Sontheimer, the practice of writing, writing community, writing groups, writing process on December 18, 2007 | 13 Comments »
Petroglyph Rock II, Mabel Dodge Luhan House, Taos, New Mexico,
February 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
The Petroglyph Practitioners are four women — Jeanie from North Carolina, Melissa and Katherine from Houston, and Sally from Rome, Italy — who write, alone and together, following the rules of Writing Practice. They tell [...]
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Posted in Culture, Death, Family, Growing Older, I Don't Remember, Life, Memoir, Personal, Practice, Topic Writing, Writing Practices, tagged Crayola, crayons, Goldenrod, Mahogany, memories, writing about color, writing practice on December 9, 2007 | 23 Comments »
I had a hard time choosing one color, the way I have a hard time choosing anything. When I looked over the list of Crayola colors, I realized I must have had a 64 box of crayons because it would have been impossible in my age range to grow up with a box with 80 [...]
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Posted in Authors, Bones, Death, Fiction, Quotes, Writers, Writing, tagged creative process, norman mailer quote, writing advice on November 10, 2007 | 10 Comments »
Norman Mailer died this morning. Here is a quote from Mailer:
I think it’s bad to talk about one’s present work, for it spoils something at the root of the creative act. It discharges the tension.
Words to write by.
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Posted in 25 Things, Authors, Bones, Books, Culture, Death, Dreams, Fiction, Fotoblog, Life, Love, Memoir, Photography, Politics, Quotes, Reading, Relationships, Structure, Vision, Writers, Writing, tagged Ann Patchett, Bel Canto, Fitzgerald Theater, interviews, Kerri Miller, Lucy Grealy, Memoir, Minnesota, St Paul, Talking Volumes, The Second Coming, Truth & Beauty, W. B. Yeats, Writers, writers on tour, Writing, writing relationships on November 6, 2007 | 31 Comments »
Writer’s Hands IV, hands of Bel Canto author, Ann Patchett, signing a copy of her latest book, Run, Fitzgerald Theater, downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, October 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Part I.
On a rainy October night, inside the haunted Fitzgerald Theater, Ann Patchett held the audience rapt. She has created a huge life [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Bones, Culture, Death, Family, Food, Great Places To Write, Growing Older, Holidays, Laughing, Life, Personal, Photography, Practice, Random, Relationships, Spirituality, Vision, Writers, Writing, tagged 1 Year Birthday of red Ravine, All Souls' Day, anniversaries, birthdays, celebrations, Day of the Dead, Food, Halloween, Happy Birthday To You, rituals, writing relationships on November 3, 2007 | 25 Comments »
Day Of The Dead Birthday Celebration, detail of Halloween bouquet, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
We went out to dinner at Mysore Cafe in Uptown to celebrate a friend’s birthday last night. It was All Souls’ Day, day after All Saints’ Day, and both days following the Celtic rooted celebration [...]
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Posted in Art, Bones, Culture, Death, Doodling, Holidays, Seasons, tagged Day of the Dead, Halloween, pen and ink drawing, pumpkin, skeleton on October 31, 2007 | 17 Comments »
Posted in Culture, Death, Family, Food, Haiku, Holidays, Photography, Poetry, Seasons, Skies, Things That Fly, tagged Boo!, Family, Food, Haiku, Halloween, Holidays, mask, moon, Poetry, Seasons, sky on October 30, 2007 | 20 Comments »
Boo!, All Hallow’s Eve by the fire, one year ago, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 2006, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
North
pumpkin-faced Milk Duds
Willy Wonka candy corn
12 tricks for a treat?
South
Dead flash toothless smiles
2 Grandmothers walk the earth
Spirits dance on fire
East
gloved hands wipe chafed lips
crooked teeth eat twisted stems
shadows swim through oaks
West
hollow frosted rose
Hunter’s Moon [...]
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Posted in Death, Family, Laughing, Life, Personal, Practice, Writing Practices, tagged humor, inappropriate giggling syndrome, stupid jokes, uncontrollable laughter on October 25, 2007 | 21 Comments »
I find humor in the oddest places. In fact, I think humor finds me.
Like nervousness, humor sneaks up on me. It replaces my nervousness. I can list all the times where I have giggled uncontrollably in places where I should, instead, have been somber.
Jim’s parents’ Thanksgiving dinners. I’ve now gone to how many years of [...]
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Posted in Bones, Culture, Death, Home, Personal, Practice, Secrets, Writing Practices, tagged fear of ghosts, ghosts, haunted, sixth sense on October 20, 2007 | 14 Comments »
I want to write of ghosts, real ghosts or imagined, the kind who gently bump your backside as you brush your teeth. That happened to me in my bathroom, weeks ago now, and Jim had already shared his suspicions that a ghost lived in our house. “She’s not evil or bad,” he said as I [...]
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Posted in Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Dreams, Family, Growing Older, Home, Life, Love, Memoir, Personal, Place, Practice, Relationships, Topic Writing, Writing, Writing Practices, tagged cemeteries, daughters, grandmothers, graves, grief, haunted, loss, mothers, trains, writing practice on October 19, 2007 | 20 Comments »
I’m more haunted by the things that haven’t happened, than I am by the things that have. Half worn radials rumble over the railroad tracks near Winnetka and Bass Lake Road, wipers slap another day of dreary fog and rain; I drudge up the things that haunt me. Porcupine quills in tender skin.
There were no [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Authors, Bones, Culture, Death, Holidays, Life, Memoir, Photography, Practice, Seasons, Writing Topics, tagged All Hallow's Eve, Exit Ghost, ghosts, Halloween, haunted, Holidays, Philip Roth, Practice, writing topic on October 10, 2007 | 15 Comments »
The Haunting, All Hallow’s Eve By The Fire, one year ago, Minneapolis, Minnesota, October 31st, 2006, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Maybe it’s the time of year — Halloween and Day of the Dead nearly upon us. Nights grow longer. Frost kills the plants, and another season is put to rest.
Or maybe it’s [...]
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Posted in Books, Culture, Death, I Don't Remember, Life, Maps, Photography, Place, Practice, Reading, Structure, Wake Up, Writers, Writing, tagged Hennepin Avenue, independent bookstores, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Orr Books, Reading, Uptown, Writers, Writing on October 7, 2007 | 11 Comments »
3043 - What’s Left Behind, inside what used to be Orr Books, Hennepin Avenue, Uptown, Minneapolis, Minnesota, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
While walking to dinner in Uptown a few weeks ago, I snapped a few photos of the shadowy insides of 3043 Hennepin Avenue, last location of the (almost) 40-year-old Orr Books.
The [...]
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Posted in 25 Things, Body, Bones, Culture, Death, Dreams, Film / TV / Video, Holding My Breath, Jugular, Life, Love, Photography, Random, Relationships, tagged film, Jodie Foster, movies, Simplex, Terrence Howard, The Brave One, vintage on September 29, 2007 | 32 Comments »
Yesterday, 35mm Movie Projector detail, inside the recently refurbished Parkway Theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2007, photo © 2007 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
After dinner at the Tea House last night, Liz and I went to see The Brave One. I’ve always been a big Jodie Foster fan. She’s got charisma, isn’t afraid to tackle psychologically [...]
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Posted in Bones, Culture, Death, Dreams, Film / TV / Video, Money, Practice, Seasons, Work, Writing Topics on September 8, 2007 | 27 Comments »
On Thursday, September 6, the City of Santa Fe, NM, hosted the annual “Burning of Zozobra.” Zozobra is a fifty-foot-tall bogeyman, Old Man Gloom in effigy. Each year he is set before an audience of thousands and burned. (Burn, baby, burn!) Most onlookers are ecstatic to see him go; others feel sorry for him in the [...]
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Posted in Art, Authors, Bones, Books, Death, Dreams, Gratitude, Growing Older, Life In Letters, Love, Money, Obituaries & Epitaphs, Personal, Place, Politics, Random, Reading, Relationships, Structure, Vision, Wake Up, Writers, Writing, tagged Charlie Orr, closing Independent bookstores, history of Orr Books, independent bookstores, Natalie Goldberg, Orr Books, support Independent bookstores, Ted Kooser, Twin Cities Independent bookstores on September 7, 2007 | 37 Comments »
Ranked by local Twin Citians as 15th on a list of top independent bookstores in Minneapolis, Orr Books was one of my favorite independents. For almost 40 years, the tiny, quiet store resided in the largely urban Uptown section of Lake Street. The parking was terrible, but the staff was knowledgeable and friendly. And I could [...]
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