Pat Thompson • December 3, 2021 • 21 With its alphabet soup, pillars, frameworks and many meetings, the Rethinking I-94 process has the effect of dampening involvement. But this is a critical time for community input.
Pat Thompson • September 23, 2021 I spent three mornings in the last week volunteering to wear a yellow vest and hold a fluorescent poster board, just down the street from my local elementary school. The sign said “SLOW You’re Almost There,” and it was addressed to parents who were driving their children to school. As they approached the curve where […]
Pat Thompson • July 8, 2021 As an avid miniature gardener, I try to keep an eye out for other miniature gardens when I see them in public places. I’ve toyed with the idea of trying to organize a miniature garden tour, but I don’t think I will ever get it together since I’m too shy to go knock on strangers’ […]
Pat Thompson • June 16, 2021 After the I-35W bridge was rebuilt, there has never been a chance for the people who live adjacent to highway 280 to say what they think about the livability of having the relatively sudden incursion of a permanent interstate next to them. Now MnDOT plans to increase the speed limit on highway 280 to 60 mph and in 2024, remove the last traffic signal. Does MnDOT care about livability, as they say they do?
Pat Thompson • April 14, 2021 As the ground thaws each spring, edible perennial plants wake up and are there for the taking if you know where and how to look. Follow a few rules so you’re safe and there’s enough for everyone.
Pat Thompson • March 1, 2021 On December 29, 2019, seven people met at Dual Citizen Brewery in St. Paul, and there we created the streets.mn Climate Emergency Committee. We had a few in-person writing meet-ups before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, and even though none of us could anticipate the events that followed throughout the year of 2020, we maintained […]
Pat Thompson • October 5, 2020 Like many transit riders, I have been riding much less since the pandemic, mostly because I have been sticking closer to my home and neighborhood. (Though note: there is starting to be evidence that transit-riding is not a big contributor to COVID-19 rates.) That decrease is a personal sadness because of the lost human connections […]
Pat Thompson • September 18, 2020 It was sunny and not quite 60 degrees when I unfolded my camp chair at the northwest corner of Energy Park Drive and the U of M Transitway on the edge of Saint Paul to count people walking or bicycling on a Thursday afternoon in September. I placed the chair right next to the beg […]
Planted medians are one of those “nice things” people always seem to be referring to in snarky social media posts. They bring visual relief to people near them and inspire traffic calming. We all know this. But where there’s soil, there’s also a place for weed seeds to fall, and those seeds grow into plants […]
Pat Thompson • June 1, 2020 Editor’s note: Julia wrote this piece prior to the killing of George Floyd and subsequent unrest. The last few days have again revealed the structural inequality that persists in our cities. These gaps come in many forms, including in access to food. As grocery stories have been destroyed or shuttered throughout many parts of the […]