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PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT CANCELLED.

“If there is a thief in a novel,” said Elif Shafak recently, “it doesn’t make the novelist a thief.” Nevertheless, the Turkish novelist faced three years in prison for the purported crime of “insulting Turkishness” by having an Armenian character in her novel The Bastard of Istanbul refer to Turks as “butchers.” What’s more, Shafak was forced to watch her televised trial from the hospital bed where she had just given birth to her first child. Though she was acquitted, the case shed light on the culture clash within Turkish society. Shafak herself pointed to “those who want an open and democratic society” on one side, and, on the other, “those who speak the language of fear … [who are] so aggressive that they manage to manipulate the political agenda and give the country a black eye.” Sound familiar? 300 Nicollet Mall, Minneapolis; 612-630-6174; www.friendsofmpl.org

Even casual strollers of downtown St. Paul will most likely notice the majestic High Bridge, just west of the business district. Towering above the other bridges of the city’s scenic Mississippi River valley and summiting at 160 feet above the Big Muddy, the High Bridge carries Smith Avenue from the bustling West Seventh Street commercial strip to … where, exactly?
Even for many St. Paul natives, this can be a tough question. To the naked eye, Smith Avenue crosses the river to the high bluffs on the city’s West Side, and seems to disappear up a steep hill into a leafy residential area known as Cherokee Park. But if you follow the Avenue to the top of that incline, you reach Annapolis Street eleven blocks later, the dividing line between St. Paul and the suburb of West St. Paul. While some West Side merchants hope Smith will become the next Grand Avenue, plenty of locals hope that it doesn’t. Unlike its bigger-scale cousin, which has been colonized by chain stores, Smith Avenue still boasts that rare hip-yet-unpretentious vibe. This is still essentially a working-class neighborhood full of pre-war, single-family homes with modest yards, so pick-up trucks outnumber SUVs on the streets, and neckties are few and far between. Here, the West Side’s large Latino population mingles easily with the hipsters and elderly white folk who live nearby.
The Annapolis intersection is anchored by several retail businesses. Thanks to two of them—the Old Man River Cafe and Caspers’ Cherokee Sirloin Room—it’s possible to walk down Smith and smell roasting coffee and sizzling steaks all at once. The coffee shop, owned by a pair of former journalists, occupies an old brick building that for seventy years was a pharmacy. Today, it serves not only as an outlet for its own line of java, but as a hub for the neighborhood’s social and political life, attracting a cross-section of local residents, Smith Avenue commuters, and West Side political junkies and activists.
Across the street at the Sirloin Room—an excellent example of a family-owned institution that stuck around long enough to circle back into relevance—a dark, woody bar captures that feel of the comfy neighborhood joint, but with a hint of edge, especially on weekends. The place has been there since 1970, longer if you count the twenty-some years it was the Cherokee Tavern, before the Casper family bought it.
West St. Paul Antiques is the corner’s cultural attraction. While it has a fine collection of antiques for purchase, it’s also fascinating as a museum. In its basement is perhaps the most overwhelming collection of St. Paul Winter Carnival memorabilia ever assembled in one place. Where else could you find the marching band uniforms of the Northern Pacific Railroad’s 1948 Torchlight Parade Drill Team?
Farther down Smith toward Dodd Road, a few more small shops build on the arts-and-crafts theme of the corner. The Lisan Gallery of Art and Design shows mostly local artists such as June Young and Jodi Hills but is also providing a venue for artists from the Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, scene that was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Next door at Fine Restorations, woodworking artisan Vanya Hoeffding does complicated repair jobs on treasured antique furniture while Classic Upholstery handles the more rank-and-file cases. Throw in a pair of picture framing shops, and you have a reminder of what it was to walk Grand Avenue in the 1970s.

I’m wearing yellow in honor of Jupiter,” declared design-cum-business maven Stephanie Odegard. The Minneapolis native was in her twelfth-floor studio in the New York Design Center, cosseted in a modest office near two large showrooms that feature her acclaimed carpets and furniture. Odegard Inc. has six sales offices in the United States, operations in Nepal, and twelve thousand employees worldwide. She pays her workers a living wage, sponsors schools, and is one of the forces behind Rugmark, a program that certifies carpets made without child labor. But the strong impression one gets of Odegard is not of a capitalist titan but of a metaphysical seeker. Odegard’s company earns more than a million dollars a month, yet she takes the time to don a yellow scarf in observance of Jupiter’s Day, which, according to ancient astrological tradition, is Thursday.
Although Odegard “craves color,” she describes herself as a design minimalist. Her carpets are quiet seas of aquamarine, cerulean, tanzanite, and scarlet, sometimes with dashes of black at the borders. When she does include patterns, they are often subtle, just shades different than the background hues. Her home is a 1,200-square-foot Soho loft that she strives to keep empty. “You have this impulse to say ‘Here’s an empty space, I should put in a chair.’ It’s easy to fall into that, but I don’t want a house that’s filled. I can’t stand kitsch,” Odegard said, with a shudder and wave of the hand. “I live in fear of people giving me little presents. I don’t like lots of small things.”
Yet her office, where she spends most of her waking hours, is filled with small things. This is where a secondary aesthetic comes into play: object as memento. There are many gifts on the shelves, including a miniature collection of brown clay houses and temples arranged like a Nepalese Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. On a lower shelf sits a set of four white ceramic cups from India, each painted with abstract, blue flowers. There are also ceramic, glass, and silver vases as well as many awards and a few framed photos of Odegard with the Dalai Lama.
Odegard came to design for unusual and idealistic reasons. She longed to see the world and make it better. In interviews, she often speaks not of design but of the need for people to be well nourished and educated. She travels the globe trying to accomplish these missions, creating jobs and buying materials. The gifts and oddities she’s collected—the spinning toy tops kept in a vase, the metal inlaid mirror of the Hindu elephant-headed god, Lord Ganesh—represent alliances, friendships, and business well conducted. Having them around creates an atmosphere of positivity. By her own account, Odegard travels so lightly that she often runs out of clothes, but you get the distinct feeling she would dutifully lug home a bag of bricks if they were given to her by someone she liked or attached to a meaningful event. Suddenly the paradox of the minimalist with an office full of things makes sense. To seek objects is noisome; but to reject what arrives is to court bad karma.