Jay Wrote

  2025 - Worst. Year. Ever. I will get the terrible out of the way. Karen has had multiple hospitalizations for congestive heart failure and she is very weak. She broke her foot. My knee hurts. My cousin Mary Lou died. A postal truck ran a stop sign in front of Matthew as he was driving home at 59 mph. Our tomato crop was measly. The speed on my turntable has turned wobbly. My friend and former partner in civil rights work, Melissa Hortman, and her husband Mark, were assassinated. Tree experts had to cut down a lot of trees on our street. The traitorous, obscene, anti-constitutional, thieving cowards who run the federal government (all three branches at the moment) and everything they have tried to do.  On the other hand Karen remains positive and determined. Medical care is now more comprehensive and we’re getting some at home. Volunteers with Rebuild Together Minnesota built us a lovely ramp; ours was the Honeywell volunteers’ 89th ramp. My knee pain doesn’t stop my cycli...

Sunday afternoon in late June, it is hot. You come up the subway steps and head deeper into the Village.  Ahead, you spot the Vanguard awning stretching across the sidewalk to the curb. You duck in and down, hand a five to Max at the bottom of the stairs. The steps are steep, pipes assembled into handrails on each side. The walls are flaking red, like someone had dunked leaves into barn paint and pressed them onto the wall.  A waste pipe runs down and metal conduits up the east wall. The room is a wedge. The streetside east wall runs from the bottom of the stairs to the stage, not twenty five feet ahead.The stage forms the apex of the triangle, twenty inches high and no more than ten feet wide. There’s a curtain at the right side of the stage but there’s no room for anything other than a wall behind it. A fellow sits in front at the right side of the stage, fiddling with several pieces of equipment, including a large tape recorder. Three microphones. One angled over the piano ...

Studio Toile d’Angles was carved out of a near north Minneapolis lot and erected next door to the home of Milo Fine, Minnesota’s least compromised multi-instrumentalist, composer and instigator of modern music.  Rectangular and sunk in the land, it is maybe 18 x 30 feet; the roof points to high north and descends covered with solar panels toward the south and inside meets a wall ten feet above the floor. A kitchenette and bathroom are in a back corner. No street shoes permitted.  Twenty or so moveable padded chairs, a couch and cushions are set in loose rows seven feet from Cox and his cello. The front row audience is six feet from the end of Fine’s black lacquer Bosendorpher Imperial piano. It is nine feet six inches long and includes nine notes lower than a concert grand’s 88. Debussy, Bartok and Ravel were early adopters. Capable, I am sure, of near-Richter scale waves, Fine’s often emphatic playing still left space for Cox’s bowed, plucked, tapped, and picked cello.  ...

  You have heard of the assassination of Melissa Hortman, her husband, Mark and their dog on June 14.   You may not know that she was a fair housing heroine as well as a humble, effective and respected leader in the Minnesota legislature. In 1998 or '99 Legal Aid's Housing Discrimination Law Project, a FHIP program, had been operating for just a few years.  We were fortunate to hire a law clerk, Melissa, as she had a sterling resume and could have worked anywhere - maybe even at her family used auto parts business (junk yard).  She caught the fair housing bug.   Our sister organization, Central MN Legal Services, soon hired her as a housing attorney.   Melissa took the case of a CMLS tenant with severe repair problems.  Because she was the person she was, she didn't stop at investigating the lack of heat that brought the client to the office.  She learned that the owner of the property treated her with terrible...

  It is cold and rainy in St. Paul.  Listening to Eric Dolphy. Solo and with a band. Jazz.  The music is inspired, recorded in 1963. The sound is direct and fluent. The slight enhancement of pot tightens the mind’s links with ears. The instruments are each uniquely marked by their aural shapes in that plane of the universe just ahead of me. I hear the breath from Dolphy’s chest; percussive key runs on the sides of the saxophone. I almost feel the pressure on calluses modulating notes on bass strings. This tune is Alone Together with Dolphy on alto sax and Richard Davis on bass. An alternate take.   There are additional horns and more excellence in the mix on other tunes but the solos, as with Dolphy and Davis trading on Alone Together and with Dolphy, alone, on Love Me , are somehow brought most directly here, into my very presence. Maybe Dolphy and Davis played with the echo to achieve an experience of more than three dimensions. I can hear their moves in ...

  Linen: The Warp and Weft of History. Jay Wilkinson, April 2025 jewilkinsoniii@gmail --- jwwrote.blogspot.com “Show me that you’ve been working over, Christina.” He leaned forward in the  rocker and touched the square of linen. His speech sounded of his Silesian birthplace.  His granddaughter pulled the piece away from the loom, carefully to keep the threads  aligned and untangled.   He rubbed the cloth between thumb and forefinger and remarked: “Very vell done!  The tight weave will last a lifetime.” “It's my first one, I want it to be right so I don’t forget, poppa. You know I sowed the  the flax seeds, weeded the field, pulled the plants, laid them out, soaked them, broke  and stripped the threads out, carded out the seeds and such.” “Yes, under your muter’s supervision and with Nana’s spinning help. You’ve done  a wonderful job. Talented nine year old, you are.” I am touching this fabric as I write. Did my fifth great-grandfather,Christo...