Victoria Perkins on being an artist but not making a living as one. It’s a story that’s a long time in the making.
Artists who work crummy jobs to pay the bills have a unique perspective as opposed to non-art-making workers: “People who make art don’t consider their other job to be their career and they have distance from it, so they’re an artist primarily,” says Oakley. “The people who are actually making work consider that to be their job and the other things kind of fall by the wayside.” The joy and meaning in life for many artists comes from their art, the job is just what keeps the joy sustainable. Sure, it’s not the most glamorous lifestyle, but if it keeps you in art supplies, what’s so bad about it?
Jake Mohan takes a look at the group of cyclists typically ignored by most media: those who “ride bikes not because it’s cool or healthy, but because it’s the most efficient, cost-effective option when cars and public transit are off the table.”
Looking for more bike coverage? Take some time to read one of our first pieces about resources for Women/Trans/Femme and LGBTQ cyclists. And although you may not be interested in biking a bike now as our daylight continues to fade, our staff-written guide on buying a bike is full of info to tuck away through winter.
What are you doing here?
Someone asks me this question after the service, a woman whose name I don’t quite catch. She doesn’t mean it how it sounds. What she wants to do is welcome me, and find out what brought me here in the first place.This question is more complicated than you might think. It’s a husk, containing the kernel of another, deeper question—a question about faith and religion and church in the 21st century, in an age of science and new atheists, churches in decline, the Tea Party in ascendance, and pastors burning Qurans and waving signs that say “God Hates Fags”: Why bother? Why church, why now? What’s the point? Just what in God’s name are you doing here?
Andrew DeYoung reflects on finding a way of being Christian that he can live with, in this week’s piece exploring churches that attempt to appeal to younger congregations in the Twin Cities.
If you’re sitting at home dreading the coming work week and wondering why the internet never seems to have anything new on Sundays, we are here to help! Deborah Carver gathers the best stories from community newspapers, and this month’s roundup is all about birds.
Speaking of birds, would you like to put a loon on it? The screenprinted poster above (by Steady Print Shop) can be yours by supporting the Twin Cities Runoff’s kickstarter project.
Well hey, it’s been a while since we updated the tumblr! Here’s what we’ve been up to at Twin Cities Runoff.
From the picture above, Soleil Ho tells her story after attending OccupyMN on Indigenous People’s Day. Lindsay Lelivelt discusses the birds, bees, and those ever sexy punnett squares in her essay on reproductive fitness. And Chelsey Perkins shows the struggles of laborers as they fight against Cub Foods and other retailers.
Have you missed anything? Take a peek!
A lot of times, young people say they don’t know where else to shop, or have tried a couple of discount furniture stores that were still way over budget and scared away anyone with an entry-level salary and massive student loans. Some of us avoid furniture stores entirely because they just look expensive. But one of the benefits to living in a mid-sized city is that you can continuously find good deals on used furniture without hypervigilant stakeouts to beat everyone else to the good stuff. For the most part, shopping at smaller stores is much less stressful than driving out to the supercrowded superstore, where it’s not actually that much cheaper, and where you wind up buying a bunch of extra stuff you don’t really need that’s going to break in a couple of years. You don’t have to buy a whole bunch of new things at once to make your place look good.
This week we talk about making your house look nice, for not too much money, without heading to buy flat-paks in Bloomington.
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The Minnesota Tumblr List - Updated -
Every so often I come out with a list of Minnesota “organizations” that have a presence on Tumblr. Many of these groups work at their Tumblr and keep posting updated information about themselves, while others get hot and heavy for a few months and then fizzle out maybe because the Summer intern…
Hey, we’re on this list! Thanks for including us! (Even though we don’t use Tumblr best practices all the time, but we try!)
Official-looking in our official t-shirts in front of official cameras at Minnesota Community Pride Day. Photo via The Uptake.
“Almost always, I write from a snippet, a moment, in my real life, kind of craft an aesthetic response. Sometimes it’ll be riding the bus, and there’s an overheard snippet of conversation that seems particularly indicative of some facet of the human condition. There was this woman who was just saying “Hallelujah” over and over again as she got on the bus, after every sentence she said, even though each sentence was really sad. So it was like, her feet hurt: “Hallelujah.” She was late to pick up her children: “Hallelujah.” And I remember thinking, “Man, that’s a really intense expression of how you understand your faith to relate to the daily struggles of your life.” So that was an example of something I jotted down in the notebook that I try to carry with me most of the time. Something that seemed poignant, something that seemed like it might grant a glimpse into a larger truth about the way we’re living our lives together.” —
Dessa, in this week’s Twin Cities Runoff: “Don’t Get Stuck on Being a Girl.” Managing Editor Colleen Powers interviewed five Twin Cities women MCs— Desdamona, Tish Jones, Dessa, Heidi Barton Stink, and Irenic— about their beginnings in hip-hop, the origins of Intermedia Arts’ B-Girl Be, and musical and personal inspirations.
The Twin Cities hip-hop scene has a huge amount of opportunities for women and queer artists— and definitely doesn’t tolerate the sexism and homophobia that often rears its ugly head in mainstream hip-hop. Read what these women have to say about their beginnings and the obstacles they still face.