Take your choice today. We’ve got a timely memoir by Minnesota’s first woman lieutenant governor, three stories of crime in old St. Paul, and selected/new poetry inspired by “up North.
” “Rise to the Challenge: A Memoir of Politics, Leadership, and Love”: by Marlene M. Johnson (University of Minnesota Press, $24.95) My inauguration was a breakthrough for women in state government and a step on the journey to a public service career that I had envisioned for myself, yet it had happened so fast it was hard to believe.
I felt ready for a new challenge, while at the same time I was aware that I had much to learn and that my long-held professional and personal insecurities lingered. — from “Rise to the Challenge” At the Brothers Deli in Edina Rudy Perpich ate chocolate cate and Marlene Johnson sipped coffee while the former governor invited Johnson to be his running mate in his 1982 campaign to reclaim the office he’d held from 1976 to 1979. That invitation sent Johnson on a journey that would make her Minnesota’s first woman lieutenant governor, serving from 1983 to 1991.
“I was excited to get started and determined to do all I could to do a good job and help create more opportunities for women and minorities in state government,” Johnson writes in her new memoir. Johnson’s political/personal story couldn’t be more timely as we wait to see if the United States will have its first female president in Kamala Harris. If Harris wins, Gov.
Tim Walz will be.