Not Quite Sunday

03/10/2023

Neat live show coming soon! ⬇️⬇️

REBIRTH: An Evening of Medical Storytelling with The Nocturnists and the University of Minnesota’s Center for the Art of Medicine.

09/23/2022

Life is Right, Here
Poem by Barbara Powell at The Day Between

Let me lay here all morning
the sun is yawning upward
sheets wrapped intimately
between my legs.
I don’t reach for my phone
I don’t want to know
what’s going wrong in the world.
Life is right, here:
my lover set the coffee pot
steam slips beneath
the crack of the bedroom door.
I must ask:
Do you know the delight
of a dog crawling beneath
the covers to curl up,
his pact of protection and love?
How slivers of gold Sun
peek through blinds
like a mother’s voice
cooing: Good morning?
Let me lay here all morning
with the coo of the Sun
steam of the coffee
and curl of my dog.
I have nowhere to go —
life is right, here.

09/02/2022

Julie’s voice is a bite of caramel-drizzled chocolate torte for your ears. Check out this hopelessly romantic album by the talented husband-wife duo, Broadway star Julie Benko and pianist Jason Yeager—

Album · 2022 · 13 Songs

06/20/2022

Sometimes we can get real antsy about where we are headed and how fast we are getting there. This poet's self reminder is to simply "hold on" after reminded by a friend that we tend to arrive gradually, and then all at once.

"Honestly, I think of our progress as individuals and as a collective, especially as we honor Juneteenth this weekend and today. We can gradually get to where we are headed, and we might be able to arrive there all at once (as I was reminded recently by a friend) -- which is the inspo for my little poem." -Barbara Powell

Hold on

In one more step
in one more moment
you’ll get to where you’re going.
In one more second
in one less hour
you’ll be filled with much more knowing.
I’m in it too
I’m trudging slow
I’m all too eager about where to go
and how to run
what’s next for me —
But hold on, hold on —
trust you’ll arrive, gradually.

05/22/2022

Writing about writer's block to shake myself loose from writer's block. What do YOU do to get un-stuck from a creative rut?

08/09/2021

New episode of Extraordinary People!

A young woman draws on unique life experiences to foster dialogue on critical issues in healthcare. Unknown to the community before 2021, "Q" went from 100 to 8,500 followers in only 8 mon

06/08/2021

Congrats to The Nocturnists for landing their award winning candid healthcare worker audio diaries in the Library of Congress, where they’ll be preserved indefinitely.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Library of Congress has acquired a digital archive of the real-time impressions of more than 200 frontline health care workers documenting the country’s descent into the coronavirus pandemic .

05/29/2021

The May 25th George Floyd 1-year remembrance in images, video, and sound. An e-postcard from Minnesota. Not the same as being there and feeling the gravity of the scene, but at least you'll get a taste of the day.
Production credit:
Kirk Klocke
Bekah Johnson ( bekahjohnsonmedia [dot] [com] )

On May 25, 2021, the one-year anniversary of the late George Floyd's death at the hands of Minneapolis police, revelers gathered for a day of remembrance that…

05/26/2021

Spoke with Pastor Curtis Farrah of the church World Wide Outreach for Christ near Square tonight. More from our chat tomorrow!

04/20/2021

I wanted to write about joy today
April 20th, 2021

I really wanted to write about joy today.
I wanted to write about a joy that I am craving, needing, seeking
and feeling deeply unable to find.

I wanted to ask all of you how you’re getting it:
what’s your dose, your frequency, your medicine-of-choice.

I wanted to crowdsource joy and spread it around
like a sweet jam, sticky and sweet, a treat for all to share.

But I realized
the reason I wanted to ask wasn’t quite right.

The reason I wanted to ask was to mask up
and hide all this discomfort & palpable pain.

I wanted to side shuffle away from the gnarly, difficult feelings
and skip right into the joy-creating,
as if it were a mask made of colorful clay that I could shape up
with the pinching of my fingers and place on our faces.

So, even though
I wanted to write about joy for all of us,
I need and want to respect the pain.

To feel this alongside the rest of Minneapolis,
the rest of this country
as we shift toward inevitable change:

the emulsifying caterpillar before the butterfly;
the pressure of the stone before the diamond;
the collective rawness before the nourishment.