Catalog
Deeper Blues: The Life, Songs, and Salvation of Cornbread Harris
Reviewed by Tom EggumDeeper Blues: The Life, Songs, and Salvation of Cornbread Harris Andrea Swensson Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2024 200 pages; cloth/jacket, 50 b&w illustrations, $22.95 Andrea Swensson’s Deeper Blues: The Life, Songs, and Salvation of Cornbread Harris is a biography of James Samuel Harris II (Cornbread Harris) and…
Ramsey County History Summer 2024
Haley Prochnow, Cherelle Swain, Christine Podas-LarsonVolume 59, Number 3: Summer 2024 Link to download PDF of full Ramsey County History Summer 2024 Articles in this issue: Rondo Recreation in the St. Croix River Valley, 1909-1977 Author: Haley Prochnow For some Minnesotans with a little extra disposable income, “summertime” can translate to “cabin time.”…
Rondo Recreation in the St. Croix River Valley, 1909-1977
Haley ProchnowThe Silverbrook Estate/St. Croix Valley Country Club. Courtesy of Interstate State Park. By Haley Prochnow To see this complete magazine article with endnotes and additional images, please view the PDF version. The thermostat is set at 55°F during the winter in the Baker Land and Title Company…
A Family Reclaims Its Heritage: Growing Up with Anna Belle Rideaux
Cherrelle SwainAnna Belle Rideaux. Courtesy of Rideaux, Edmond, Swain Family Archives. by Cherelle Swain To see this complete magazine article with endnotes and additional images, please view the PDF version. Whether material or spiritual, experiencing loss changes people, families, and communities. This article examines how losing a matriarch impacted her…
Violet Gould’s Operetta School
Christine Podas-LarsonThe Violet Gould Operetta School presented Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore in 1959. In St. Paul Dispatch, June 2,1959, from the collection of Christine Podas-Larson. by Christine Podas-Larson To see this complete magazine article with endnotes and additional images, please view the PDF version. Read the companion piece…
Violet Gould’s Civic Opera Musical Circle
Mady Metzger-Ziegler founded the St. Paul Opera Workshop. Her son, Max Metzger, followed in his mother’s musical footsteps as an orchestra conductor. Courtesy of Minnesota Historical Society. Mady Metzger-Ziegler (1897-1979), mezzosoprano, was a featured performer in the St. Paul Civic Opera Association (Civic Opera) and its associated Pops concerts. She…
March of the Governors: Jesse Ventura
Paul Nelson, Matt Wright, and Ken PetersonTo call our thirty-eighth governor, Jesse Ventura, unique is to engage in understatement. He was Minnesota’s first third-party governor since Elmer Benson in 1936. Though he ran on the Reform Party ticket, that party elected no one else, so he had no allies in the legislature. His plurality, 37% of…
F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography
Reviewed by Mark TaylorF. Scott Fitzgerald: A Composite Biography Niklas Salmose and David Rennie, editors Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2024 448 pages; cloth/jacket, 78 b&w photos, $29.95 Author F. Scott Fitzgerald’s masterpiece The Great Gatsby is still selling 500,000 copies a year,…
March of the Governors: Arne Carlson
Paul Nelson and Tom BeerArne Carlson, Minnesota’s thirty-seventh governor, was a Swede and a progressive Republican, like several before him, but unlike them, too. He grew up poor in New York City and had no connection to the dominant Harold Stassen political lineage. Carlson came to Minnesota for graduate school—then won election after election:…