Arts & Culture

Lisa Fitzpatrick speaks a lot of languages.

And she loves poetry.  In fact, she was the one who originally thought of a poetry feature on KUMD, sharing poetry in different languages.

But when she started thinking about a poem to read, herself, there was only one choice for her: Turkish.

This is a poem by Aşık Veysel called "Uzun İnce Bir Yoldayım"

And here is the complete poem read in Turkish:

Annie Dugan is thinking a couple of thoughts she's pretty sure other people share:

1) I wonder if it will be easier to make the case for the importance of the arts and arts funding when this is over?

2) Grade-school teachers absolutely deserve three months off.

Despite the pandemic, despite the stay-at-home orders, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency wants to go ahead with a series of  "telephone town hall meetings" about the approval/disapproval of some permits for the Line 3 tar sands pipeline.

Most of the time, we don't talk about books that haven't been published yet on MN Reads, much less books that haven't even been written.

But when Tom Hanson, Ecolibrium 3 and the rest of the Lincoln Park neighborhood gets an idea for something great - there's no stopping them.

You can find out more about the OMC Smokehouse Cookbook and the Lift Lincoln Park project here.

Annie Dugan's not the first teacher who's thrown out the syllabus as classes moved online.

But when she assigned her students this "mega master list" website* and asked them to find "art that quiets the mind," she didn't know how much she was going to need their results.

Incidentally, Annie writes:

  If I had told her she had lung cancer on that Thursday, the diagnosis of “pneumonia” never would have been in quotes. She would have continued to see me as part of her medical team. My education and my abilities never would have come into question. But she would have gone into her Easter weekend with a death sentence hanging over her head and nowhere to turn for answers. She didn’t have many days left, and those few days with her family were important. Knowing her diagnosis two days earlier did not change her outcome.

Duluth author Margi Preus joins us to talk about her book launch. Once a shindig as befits the launch of two books at once, it's become a virtual event online, and we'll find out how you can take part.

More information about Margi's virtual book launch, live reading and more at her website, and on Facebook under Margi Preus Books.

Elias Mokole grew up in the United States, but his cultural history is rich and complicated. It includes, as does that of many people, a story of language lost in an effort for immigrants to “fit in.”

Elias shares two poems with us this morning.  The first was written by Mahmoud Darwish and it translates to “The Impossible.”

Draw-A-Long Fun Time

Self-styled "graphiquè artistè" Brian Barber says: "A couple months ago I thought about doing a very short, very silly draw-a-long type series of videos, and this seems like a heckuva good time to give it a shot. Kids are stuck at home, we need something other than Netflix to get through."

Tara Austin – Boreal Ornament III

In Hmong culture, it's an insult to call someone a "tigerbite."

It means you were stupid enough to approach a tiger and get bitten.

Tigers have been a metaphor for "things you should stay away from," and for many Hmong women, raised in a traditional, patriarchal culture, that list included anything that wasn't staying home and taking care of children and elders.

Ojibwe author Jim Northrup took me aside at his seventieth birthday party a couple of years ago and told me it was time for me to write a book.

The best part about working from home, beyond a doubt, is getting to pick the radio station, all day, every day.  

33 years after he published Birds in Minnesota, author and birder Bob Janssen returns with a revised and updated edition.

The bad news?  Bird populations across North America are casualties of climate change, habitat destruction, and cats.

The good news? Trumpeter swans, once extinct in Minnesota, have made a triumphant return and the Sax-Zim Bog preservation efforts are turning it into one of the premier conservation spots in the country.

Dr. Ahmed Maamoun was born and raised in Egypt. He is an Assistant Professor of Marketing in UMD's
Labovitz School of Business & Economics

You can read the Arabic and English translations of The Flower of All Cities by Assi and Mansour Rahbani here.

You can see a video of the song, Zahrat Al Madaan by Fairouz, with footage and English subtitles here.

Here's a roundabout you will LOVE.

Carlton County's Round About Art Tours hit the gas on Thursday, with seven venues, a chance to meet the artists, refreshments and more, all for the bargain price of ... nothing.  It's free.