Heidemarie Stefanyshyn-Piper is grounded, indefinitely. The St. Paul native and 1980 Derham Hall grad was scheduled to take her first trip into space on May 23, as a crew member aboard the shuttle Endeavour. But following the February 1 Columbia disaster, NASA put all its shuttle missions on hold. Stefanyshyn-Piper was slated for STS-115, a … Read more
Mark Backman is an infuriatingly calm 25-year-old whose life has direction, financial stability, and purpose. Yet he has no home, nor does he have any idea where he’s going to be next February. His line of work can be dangerous and frequently takes him to distant states and lands. He embarks on fascinating adventures and … Read more
Last fall, when I signed my daughter up for a season in St. Louis Park’s Mite league, one of the many expenses was a $200 check, above and beyond the association fees and equipment rental. It was a security deposit against the volunteer hours required of every parent with a child in the hockey program. … Read more
In between the yarn-stuffed aisles there were a half-dozen customers fretting over supplies for their projects. Mostly, they were exactly the kind of people you would expect to see at Depth of Field, a Minneapolis knitting store: older women choosing needles for baby blankets and rifling through patterns for cardigans. And then there was Anne … Read more
Local paint companies will tell you that business has been booming for a couple years now. Crazy times bring out the nesting instinct in people, and when that happens, they notice how badly the walls could use a fresh coat. When they reach for a gallon of flat interior latex, they typically don’t reach for … Read more
Members of the baby boom generation may not be getting the hover cars or personal helicopters that the futurists of their youth forecasted, but it appears they will have a self-balancing, battery-powered two-wheel scooter. As the focus of one of the biggest hype campaigns in recent memory, the Segway scooter is slowly being rolled out … Read more
In Porgy and Bess, caddish Sportin’ Life lures Bess from virtuous Porgy by crooning “the things that you’re liable to read in the Bible, well, it ain’t necessarily so.” Sportin’ Life could just as easily have been talking about the assumption that most men make—that their children are really their children. Many times, well, it … Read more
Enough tension-building hysteria. Yes! The polar ice-caps are melting! Yes! Migration habits are disturbed! Yes! The ozone layer has more holes in it than I-94 after the spring thaw! (Rim shot, please.) Environmentally, politically, socially, morally—we’re screwed. As humans, I believe this state of events is our natural habitat. That doesn’t make it right; it … Read more
Life is weirder than I thought. Take, for example, my new polyfiber leopard-skin car seat covers—a gift from my teenage almost-step-daughter, Britta, and her boyfriend, Ben. They thought themselves pretty clever with this bit of cheer (although they did very considerately leave behind the gift receipt “just in case,” ha, ha). But I’m not one … Read more
She’s bumpy and oddly shaped, often times covered with a film of dirt. She prefers the dark, the underground areas. She’s like the slightly stinky kid in class who keeps to herself but gets all her work done on time. You think you know her—she’s simple and hard working, maybe a little bland. And then … Read more