MINNESOTA WOMEN’S PRESS POWERFUL. EVERYDAY. WOMEN. Places & SPaces Nekessa Julia Opoti: The Story of Immigration Green Card Voices: Where Do I Belong? Minnesota Authors Explore Place The Women of Outward Bound: 1965 SPaces Issue womenspress.com July 2018 Issue 34-7 MINNESOTA “In the exhilaration of natural wonders, absorbed in our own WOMEN’S PRESS survival goals, we come through the POWERFUL. EVERYDAY. WOMEN. fog. We find vistas of peace and one- ness with each other, comfort, and acceptance.” — Devvie Cersine What’s inside? Editor Letter 4 Finding Place in the Space We Share COURTESY CRAIG WIKLUND CRAIG COURTESY Reader Response 5 Where Have You Felt at Home? Grounded 6 Smooth Sailing at Age 105 GoSeeDo Calendar 8 Places & Spaces 12-19 • Minnesota: A Place of Refuge? Pat Marble takes Up Kayaking, page 6 • Nekessa Julia Opoti: Arbitrary Borders • Act Now: Immigration Welcome Steps Contact Us MWP team • Green Card Voices: Where Do I Belong? 651-646-3968 Owner/Editor: Mikki Morrissette • Think: Immigration Facts & Data Send a letter to the editor/suggest story idea: Business Development Director: Shelly Damm [email protected] Managing Editor: Sarah Whiting Ism Schism 20 Subscribe: [email protected] Jessica Ostrov: Why Green Spaces Are White Contributors: Zaynab Abdi, Nancy Breymeier, Advertise: [email protected] Devvie Cersine, Maxine Davis, Shannon Drury, Linda BookShelf 25 LeGarde Glover, Kelly Gryting, Nekessa Julia Opoti, Minnesota Authors Explore Place: Wildflowers, Events listings: [email protected] Jessica Ostrov, Kelly Povo, Veronica Quillien, Maya Onigamiising, and Bakken Oil Fields Rao, Erica Rivera, Phyllis Root, Regina Santiago Our vision: There is much to be done, now Learning Life 30 more than ever. We believe it is the creative Reporter: Siena Iwasaki Milbauer Outward Bound for Girls: 1965 and collaborative energy of women that will Digital/Events Development: Mikki Morrissette Column: Shannon Drury 38 bring measurable change for all lives. We turn This Is My Space the dial by bridging communities — by sharing Design/Photography: Sarah Whiting the multiple perspectives of powerful everyday Factchecker: Selena Moon women. Copy editor: Kelly Gryting Ad guides The Minnesota Women’s Press is distributed free at 500 Proofreader: Quinn Dreasler Pets Guide 10 locations. To find a copy near you, visit womenspress. Advertising Sales: Shelly Damm, Ashlee Moser The Security of Dogs at the Airport com and click on “get a copy” or call 651-646-3968. Help fund our storytellers with a subscription: Accounting: Fariba Sanikhatam Health & Wellness Guide 22 [email protected] Cable Access Yoga Operations: Kari Larson Minnesota Women’s Press LLC Buy Local _____ 32 970 Raymond Ave., Suite 201 Past Publishers: The Growth of MetroIBA St. Paul, MN 55114 Mollie Hoben & Glenda Martin (1985-2002) ©2018 by Minnesota Women’s Press LLC Kathy Magnuson & Norma Smith Olson (2003-2017) Classified Ads 36 All rights reserved. ISSN #1085-2603 Finding Place in the Space We Share Mikki Morrissette n my mid-30s, at a lower ebb in my life cycle, when I did not have a clear idea of what I wanted to do next — my funds were dwindling, I’d ended a relationship, my living Ispace was in flux, my freelance work life was light — I entered a writing contest, simply because the grand prize was a free round-trip ticket to Ireland. I wrote a short story about a loner who traveled to escape, who met an introvert who traveled to find. I won! There was a reading in a New New Roots enable us to explore, inform, inspire, York City bookstore near me, then I was For many people, our identities are and bridge around particular issues. off, spending several weeks traveling almost inseparable from land. When we Currently, we are seeking your input through a country I love. I had gotten to are uprooted, sometimes traumatically, about who you are, and the issues that know Central Park horse-and-carriage from our origins, and relocated to a matter to you. Share your voice at a drivers who were from Ireland, and I place where we don’t know the plants Survey Monkey page, in our Reader stayed with some of their family and and waterways and spaces — where our Response questions, and on our social friends. One mother took me to daily histories are ripped away from us — media pages so that we know where to mass; a brother took me to confession. how do we regain a sense of belonging? focus our collective energies. A group introduced me to American I asked that question of Robin Details: tinyurl.com/MWPreaders blues music and the Cork Jazz Festival. Kimmerer, indigenous author and One helped me find parish records and science activist, when I met her a few tombstones in one of eight areas my months ago. She offered this: Our sense What's Trending Online? Irish ancestors came from. of innate connection is not only about In Galway, I took a hike through the land. “We are a part of the story. We In June we posted links on our social the hills and had a pivotal moment of cast a shadow on the ground.” media pages to retired soccer player Abby transcendence. I was seated on a rock Wambach's 2018 commencement speech Kimmerer called it “Re-story-ation.” at Barnard. She tells the story of how nestled high above a beautiful river, and It is in creating human community and was overtaken by a deep sense of head- the wolves reintroduced to Yellowstone reciprocity that we build our stories. National Park, once thought to be a threat, to-toe peace I had never felt before. Even in an urban environment, where were actually its salvation. She equates I found myself uncharacteristically we might feel separated from the land, women with the wolf. “Our landscape is chanting ebulliantly, “Life is good, life “I rely on you, you rely on me — that’s overrun with archaic ways of thinking is good.” where the belonging bond begins.” about women, about people of color, After I returned, a friend remarked about the 'other,' about the powerful and Many of the women you also will hear the powerless. And these ways of thinking that I was a changed person. My dark from in these pages tell the stories of the days largely drifted behind me. Within are destroying us. ... We will not Little Red difficulties of finding a home away from Riding Hood our way through life. We will weeks I was offered a publishing home, along with tips on how we can unite our pack, storm the valley together, management job that gave me the funds grow new roots together. and change the whole bloody system.” to buy a home and eventually have two children on my own. This is the work of our magazine. I believe it is in the spaces where we Telling Stories Together allow ourselves to be still, to be silent, to In the coming months, the Women's Our website audience so far is gravitating be in tune to nature, where we reconnect Press community will be connecting our toward our articles on exploitation. The with the potential of that which is larger stories in deeper ways. We will begin February story on “Making the Invisible Visible: Sex Trafficking Victims,” has been than our individual lives. a campaign soon to build a stronger website for digital storytelling. the most popular. Second most popular: Some of the women in these pages Our March BookShelf by Stephannie Lewis, this month tell those stories. We will launch a series of Minnesota “Understanding Implicit Bias.” Women's Press Conversations, building Details: womenspress.com on the success of our April event, that @mnwomenspress 4 Minnesota Women’s Press womenspress.com July 2018 Reader Response Where Have You Felt at Home? Grandma's House I had a difficult childhood growing up in Minneapolis. My safe place was all the way in Milwaukee, where my grandma lived. I'd take the train to spend spring breaks with her. For that one week, I knew I was free to be a kid. I keep her photograph on my desk. Her warm smile comforts me still. — Anne Curtin Proactively Seeking a Support System I came to Minnesota from Nigeria to fulfill my mother’s From our friends at Tweed Museum in Duluth, as part of the exhibit “In Solidarity: Revolutionary Women of Print.” dream for me of getting a good education. I was going to be an excellent student and would have many friends. I started Puget Sound well, and I was doing well in my academics. I tried to make As a child I visited my aunt on Puget Sound, and the whole friends, which did not work for me. I did all I could, attended house and land felt like home instantly. When she died, I met events, joined organizations, and went to everything related her daughter/my cousin, and we went to my aunt's home and to networking. I did not have a support system. I made only we cooked together for the rest of our family. It was as if I one friend in the end. I'm grateful for her. had lived there for years. Everything was where I would have I was ready to book my flight home, but my mother wanted placed it, both in her kitchen and in her office/library. I felt me to earn my degree first. It was tough. I did not have very safe and comforted, despite the distance from home and enough to pay bills and rent. I struggled until I graduated. the sadness of her death. — Jane Wicherski Non-citizens hardly get any financial aid, or jobs due to visa restrictions.