Tag Archives: english

Donella Westphal’s unexpected yet rewarding journey to owning Jules’ Bistro

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If you’re from the St. Cloud area and haven’t been to Jules’ Bistro yet, you are definitely missing out! From breakfast to dinner, coffee to wine, Jules’ Bistro has something for everyone!

Jules’ is owned by Donella Westphal, a 2003 St. Cloud State English Department graduate. If you’re interested in hearing about Donella’s journey to own Jules’, check out this article that so clearly describes her journey.

Located at 921 W St Germain St, St Cloud, MN 56301, the Bistro is just a short jog from campus, just 0.7 miles, to be exact! It’s the perfect stop on a morning run or a great place to begin a night out.

 

 

 

If you’re looking for a different experience, check out Jules’! Here are just a few reasons they are different than the restaurants and cafés you normally frequent:

artisan flatbread pizzas
vegan, gluten-free and dairy-free options
baked-from-scratch cakes, scones and cookies
made-from-scratch soups and chilis
unique daily specials
live music and local art
handcrafted espresso drinks
wines you won’t find at any other St. Cloud restaurant
over 30 craft beers

Food

Jules’ Bistro has a wide selection of delish dishes. According to their website, “Jules’ combines a casually sophisticated menu with a cozy, artistic atmosphere. We believe food crafted thoughtfully is food done right, and take pride in cooking and baking from scratch. Since 2005, we’ve been putting our own spin on pizza, paninis, salads and much more.”

 

Entertainment

Why not find a restaurant where you can order dinner and enjoy a show? During non-COVID times, Jules’ has a wide variety of artists, musician, comedians, and more come into the bistro to provide (often free) entertainment! Check their website for upcoming events. When COVID settles down and they bring acts back, you won’t want to miss the shows!

 

Community

One of the greatest aspects of living in and around the St. Cloud area is the local support businesses have for each other. Jules’ Bistro is no exception. They currently give back to nine local organizations: Anna Marie’s Alliance, Pathways 4 Youth, Operation Baby New Year Diaper Drive, St. Cloud State University Athletic Department, St. Cloud Shines, MN Dance Ensemble, St. Cloud Area Singing Saints Barbershop Chorus, Tri-County Human Society, and Girl Scouts Lakes & Pines. Help support these local organizations by supporting Jules’.

 

Partners

Beyond supporting the specific organizations mentioned above, Jules’ works hard to locally source as much as they can. Jules’ espresso and coffee beans come from a small roaster in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Dogwood Coffee Company, they source their pure maple syrup from a small company in Mora, Minnesota, Sapsucker Farms, their honey comes from Ames Farm, raw honey made in Minnesota, and they even support central Minnesota garbage company, West Central Sanitation, for all their garbage removal needs! Check out their “Partners” page for more information about other companies they support. I love supporting local and I feel like I’m doing so by supporting Jules’.

 

Catering

Did you know that Jules’ caters events? Need I say more?

 

If you’re still not sold on Jules’, check out Jules’ in the News where you’ll find a variety of articles and other places Jules’ has been featured.

Their food is delicious. Their service is amazing. Their team is very friendly! It’s the perfect place for you to sit down for a cup of coffee and a scone!

Calling all English Department faculty, students, and alumni!!

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Did you know that you can be featured on our blog page??

We absolutely love featuring our current students, faculty, and alumni!

Faculty!

  1. Have you recently been published? Let us know the details and we’ll put together a post. We’d also love to publish a post you wrote.
  2. Are you teaching a really compelling course? (The answer should be “yes” because ALL of you are teaching really compelling courses.) Write something about the course and send it our way. We love to read about what’s happening within the walls of Webster!
  3. Got a fun story to share? Please share it!! This can be about anything. Exciting happenings in your class. Fun summer getaways. A funny story your niece told you the other day. We love to get to know our professors and would love to have you share your stories!

Students!

  1. Have you written a really interesting paper recently? Send it to us! We’d love to publish it on the blog! We really enjoy seeing what students are doing within our classrooms!
  2. Do you have any fun side projects happening? We’d love to hear about it! We like featuring students’ projects because we like showcasing our amazing English Department talent!
  3. Are you writing a thesis or working a culminating project? Featuring something like this on our blog is beneficial because it may give inspiration to future students as they begin to think about their own culminating projects.

Alumni!

  1. Are you published (or soon to be published)? Send us a link and short write-up about your pieces and we’ll link your work to our blog. We know we have some amazing alumni and your work deserves to be featured!
  2. How about a story from when you were attending SCSU? We quite like taking trips down memory lane! Please feel free to share your stories with the blog!
  3. What are you up to these days? We feel very connected to all of our alumni and would greatly appreciate to hear how you are doing, what you are doing, and how the English Department helped prepare you for your current adventures.

Do you have other ideas for submissions? Please, send them our way! If we haven’t said it before, we love featuring faculty, students, and alumni!! Please consider writing something for the blog!

Webster during COVID-19

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Ok friends. Let’s address the elephant in the room. And by “elephant,” I mean “COVID-19.”

Everyone knows about it. Everyone’s talking about it. But, I haven’t seen anyone talk about how different campus looks right now.

I walked around Webster Hall, our home, on Tuesday before teaching my class. It was about 1:30 PM.

Before I drop the photos I took, I want you to remember what Webster was like back before COVID. I remember walking through the halls, hearing a multitude of voices and seeing students studying in the comfy chairs on every floor. I remember the English department (and other departments as well) office doors open, the office full of smiling faces ready to greet anyone who walked in! I remember seeing full classrooms of students learning. I remember an alive and active building.

I’ll admit. I was very saddened by my walk through Webster. I felt like I was alone. I didn’t get to greet anyone. No smiles. No “How are you?” No interaction. Just me and my thoughts.

 

 

 

 

Walking around Webster was a sad experience. When I finished my walk, I went to my classroom to get set up for class. Some students come in-person and the rest join on Zoom. It’s far less than an ideal situation, but at least they get a little bit of in-person instruction. When I’ve asked which method the students prefer, the say in-person. I had five students in my classroom on Tuesday. The rest were on Zoom.

Drop us a comment to let us know which method you prefer!

I hope eventually we can go back to fully in-person classes, but until then, we’re doing the best we can and I’m confident all the professors teaching here are continuing to provide high quality instruction!

Take care and be safe!

 

Ayan Omar – Alum and Leader

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This week, the SCSU English Department feels very fortunate to feature one of our past graduates, Ayan Omar.

Ms. Omar currently teaches Language Arts at St. Cloud Technical High School. Her students are very fortunate to be learning from such a tremendous leader.

In her words:

“When I was a little girl, a black-Somali-Muslim refugee little girl, earning a master’s degree in English never seemed imaginable. Earning a master’s degree in English Studies at St. Cloud State solidified my ambitious refugee narrative and community efforts. Like many great writers, growing up, reading became my vehicle to success. Books buried my failures and inspired my successes. Gifted writers taught me how to express myself more eloquently. I fell in love with language as an art. Even today, amid the chaos and division of society, I maintain my faith in a better world by reading one book at a time. In my earlier years, Maya Angelou, in her book I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, validated that all my experiences color the storyline of my life. Nathaniel Hawthorne, in his book The Scarlet Letter, branded my otherness as a pearl, despite what those in power might think. Lastly, the great writers, Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau satiated my curiosity of transcendence. Their writings inspired me to practice intentional listening in search of a universal truth. Reading provided me a clear path to knowledge and pushed me toward civic engagement.

The English Studies graduate program at St. Cloud State fostered my personal growth. For instance, my thesis evaluated the goodness of black women using three of Toni Morrison’s greatest artifacts: The Bluest Eye, Beloved, and Sula. These three creative works expose the conflicting disposition and the unconscious bias held toward black women’s goodness by society. With the help of Dr. Monica Pelaez, I uncovered how Morrison writes progressively and pragmatically about black women and for black women. The continuous support, patience, hard questions, and immense knowledge of Dr. Pelaez allowed me to narrow down my topic, structure my thesis, and revise continuously. Her insightful comments allowed me to learn and produce throughout the entire experience.

I am forever grateful to Toni Morrison and the faculty at St. Cloud State’s English department, specifically Dr. Monica Pelaez, Dr. Constance Perry, Dr. Judith Dorn, and Dr. Christopher Lehman, for their insightful guidance.”

If that isn’t inspiring, then I don’t know what is. We have such an esteemed faculty in our English department, and Ms. Omar does a great job highlighting that fact. We are so proud, as a department, to have been a part of Ms. Omar’s life and we are excited to see where her journey takes her.

Are you interested in learning more about Ms. Omar? 

Click here to read more about Ms. Omar and her journey!

Check out this video to hear her TED Talk!

Ms. Omar also had the opportunity to write a compelling article for the Washington Post where she discusses explaining her “faith to fearful Americans.”

If you’re still itching for more, please take the time to watch this video, a recording of “Face Value: Communication on a Human Scale,” a presentation she delivered at St. John’s University in 2019. Her story and

Last but not least, we highly encourage you to read her thesis, “What does it mean to be a good black woman?”, a study of the writings of Toni Morrison.

The English Language is Weird Pt. 2 – English Games

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Check this out!

In an attempt to make people chuckle, we’re gonna play some games this week, just to help prove how silly the English language really is!

Game #1 – Place the word “only” anywhere on the sentence.

She told him that she loved him.

ONLY she told him that she loved him.
She ONLY told him that she loved him.
She told ONLY him that she loved him.
She told him ONLY that she loved him.
She told him that ONLY she loved him.
She told him that she ONLY loved him.
She told him that she loved ONLY him.
She told him that she loved him ONLY.

Game #2 – This sentence has seven different meanings depending on the stressed word.

I never said she stole my money.

I never said she stole my money.
I never said she stole my money.
I never said she stole my money.
I never said she stole my money.
I never said she stole my money.
I never said she stole my money.
I never said she stole my money.

I never said she stole my money. (Someone else did.)
I never said she stole my money. (I would never rat her out like that.)
I never said she stole my money. (I merely implied that she stole my money.)
I never said she stole my money. (I just said someone stole my money and never actually pointed fingers at her.)
I never said she stole my money. (She’s just taking a really long time to pay back that loan.)
I never said she stole my money. (She stole money, sure, but not mine!)
I never said she stole my money. (She stole some other things from me, yes, but not my money!)

Game #3 – What is the correct way to spell POTATO?

If GH can stand for P as in ‘hiccough,’
If OUGH can stand for O as in ‘dough,’
If PHTH can stand for T as in ‘phthisis,’
If EIGH can stand for A as in ‘neighbor,’
If TTE can stand for T as in ‘gazette,’
If EAU can stand for O as in ‘plateau,’

Then the correct way to spell potato is really

GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU

Can you come up with any other words that could be spelled in this ridiculous manner??

We hope you at least got one chuckle out of these games!!

The English Language is Weird Pt. 1 – “Word Crimes”

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This week’s blog post is going to be a little different from previous weeks’ posts. With the state of the world right now, I just feel like we all need a good laugh, so hopefully this post will at least make you chuckle! And because I like laughing so much, I think I might just make this a series! So, stay tuned for more posts about the weirdness of the English language!

For the first chuckle, I’d like all of us to take a trip down memory lane, all the way back to 2014 (which, I know, isn’t that long ago). I had just graduated college and was on the prowl to find my first English teaching job when “Weird Al” Yankovic dropped his classic video “Word Crimes” which highlights all the standard mistakes we, as English speakers, make.

Weird AlIf you don’t know “Weird Al” he’s known for taking pop culture songs, changing the lyrics and subject of the song, and rerecording them. Most times, he keeps the original chord progressions, rhythms, and musicality. Often times, they make the listener crack up!

Of course, as I was on my hunt for my first job, I laughed way too hard when I first heard this song. I immediately thought, “This song HAS to make it into a lesson in my future classroom!!” Unfortunately, due to the “Everybody shut up” lyric at the beginning and the original inspiration for the song, it never entered my classroom. Regardless! It’s still a funny song!

“Word Crimes” is based on another song from the time. Released in March of 2013, “Blurred Lines,” recorded by Robin Thicke, Pharrell Williams, and T.I., became an instant sensation and according to the L.A. Times, it “went on to become the biggest song of 2013.” Its disco/R&B feel made it easy to dance to and its lyrics were easy to learn and sing.

Unfortunately for the singers, just two short years after the release of this song, they were found guilty of plagiarism (a hot button word in the English field) as they had copied Marvin Gaye’s chart-topping 1977 hit, “Got to Give You Up.” The singers were forced to pay “nearly $7.4 million in unpaid licensing fees and a chunk of the song’s profits,” (L.A. Times). When thinking about this, it’s slightly ironic, because in an interview with GQ shortly after the song’s release, when asked “What’s the origin story behind your new single, Blurred Lines?” Robin Thicke responded, “Pharrell and I were in the studio and I told him that one of my favorite songs of all time was Marvin Gaye’s ‘Got To Give It Up.’ I was like, ‘[Dang] we should make something like that, something with that groove.’ Then he started playing a little something and we literally wrote the song in about a half hour and recorded it. The whole thing was done in a couple hours—normally, those are the best ones.”

Lesson of the day? Don’t plagiarize, kids!

Anyway, here’s “Weird Al’s” “Word Crimes!” Have you committed any of these “crimes?” I know I have…

I think the “crime” that really rubs me the wrong way is misuse of apostrophes! I get it. It’s difficult to know when to stick an apostrophe in a word, but I still just shake my head when people use them incorrectly. Oh, that and the overuse of the word “literally.” I can’t stand that one either!

Drop us a comment and let us know which word crime tickles your feathers!!