Put down your shopping bags this Thanksgiving weekend and climb aboard the Holly Trolley, a special run of the Como-Harriet Streetcar feature Santa Claus, carolers, hot cider, and plenty of Christmas cheer!
The trolley runs from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m. on Friday (no concession stand this day), Saturday, and Sunday, November 27 to 29 and Saturday and Sunday, December 5 and 6.
The Como-Harriet Streetcar Line, operated by the Minnesota Streetcar Museum, operates three historic Minnesota streetcars. The Holly Trolley, decorated in lovely garlands and wreaths and featuring Santa Claus, leaves from the Linden Hills Station, Queen Avenue South and West 42nd Street, on the west side of Lake Harriet. It’s a charming reminder of the days when Minneapolis and St. Paul had one of the most extensive streetcar systems in the country.
For complete details, including directions and fare information, please visit the Museum online.
Do note that the line runs as weather permits; the Museum has done a great job restoring the cars and tracks to their full glory, but they don’t have the resources to keep them clear of snow and ice the way the proud workers of the Twin City Rapid Transit Company did before 1954.
Today is the last full day of the Bush Administration, hardly enough time to start a war on false pretenses; botch the evacuation and recovery of a major city; establish a secret prison; abdicate responsibility for the oversight of financial, environmental, workplace, and consumer safety regulations; or nationalize more sectors of the economy in a perverse socialism for the rich. But that’s no reason not to try!
Here’s a little break from the Holga rivers series: Jack and Peter at the bar at Merlin’s Rest, our neighborhood pub. This picture was actually taken by my friend Arthur Ruckle (the saxaphonist here) this past winter. And it’s a lovely picture: interesting color, wonderful DOF, and a great subject. (Though I hope I don’t lose my Den Leader’s license for taking my kids to a bar; it’s actually a very family-friendly place, in the tradition of Irish and British pubs, and they’re drinking un-spiked Sprite. I’ve even seen the grandchildren and nieces of certain local politicians, with those politicians, on these very same stools.)
The reason I’m posting this, besides its aesthetic qualities, is the fellow in the background with the baseball cap. Apparently Mr. Ruckle and this gentleman had a disagreement about what one’s expectations of privacy in a public place ought to be, and he threatened to sue the photographer if he ever sees his picture on the Internet. I think it’s unlikely that he’ll ever see his picture on the Internet (and if he does, he’ll have trouble making himself out–wonderful DOF again, he’s just an evocative blur), but I tend to agree with Arthur here: if you’re in a public place (which surely Merlin’s is, being a public house and all), your expectations of privacy ought to be low. If you choose to do your drinking alone, like George Thorogood, then by all means, draw your shades and be shocked if a camera appears.
I’m not quite as aggressive as Mr. Ruckle on this–I tend to ask before shooting, and if someone’s uncomfortable I’ll put the camera away–but if you can’t stand on principal, where can you stand?
A year ago today, we were at the airport in Portland, Maine, dealing with a delayed flight; we arrived in Chicago at around midnight and slogged to a hotel that seemed to be located somewhere in Iowa, based on the length of our shuttle ride. It wasn’t until the next morning, when we were using our hotel-supplied toothbrushes and re-packing our carry-on, that we learned of the 35W bridge collapse.
Since then, the boys have been obsessed with bridges: types of bridges, construction methods of bridges, and why bridges fail. For a couple months they were concerned about the safety of the bridges we take every day, particularly the Lake Street and Ford Avenue bridges over the Mississippi. The 35W bridge was familiar to us–it was the way we would go to get to the Target in Northeast, while the Midway store was closed for remodelling–and its collapse was just too close.
At the end of June, we took the tour of the bridge construction. This was before “the gap” was closed, when you could still see between the spans to the Stone Arch Bridge, St. Anthony Falls, and the skyline beyond–quite an impressive view.
The morning news is packed today with reflections on the bridge collapse, live from the scene; and while I’m sure the punditocracy will have lots to say today about bridges and people and the public trust, I think Mayor Rybak said it best soon after the disaster:
Our city, our state and our nation have not invested as we must in roads, bridges and transit–and our lack of investment has serious consequences. I say this as the Mayor of a city recovering from a tragedy that was not an act of God, but a failure of Man.
Yesterday was harvest day in our one-tree orchard. (This is a picture from last year, but it represents our recent take pretty well.) This year, the boys picked about half the cherries; the year before, about a third. I see the day coming soon when I can just send them out to gather the cherries without needing me to get the high clusters.
Now comes the pitting and the baking; I think I’ll avoid the cherry-tofu clafouti this year (don’t ask…) and stick to traditional pies.
Happy New Year! (Though this picture was actually taken on the 4th of July, at the Stone Arch Bridge; but fireworks are fireworks.)
A new year calls for a new plan. I’m diversifying my on-line production a bit this year, with a couple of experiments in addition to this site; and I’m scaling back a bit on this site to give myself space for the new projects and to focus a bit more on quality rather than on quantity.
At “From a Farther Room”, I’ll be publishing a new picture three times a week: Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. This will also be the place where I’ll put out the occasional book review and list of pictures.
Starting today, and continuing every Tuesday until December 30, I’ll be updating Fifty Two Encounters, a collection of completely unrelated tales that imagine interplanetary meetings. This week, you can read “The Glass Scarab”; next week, a lesson in Martian humours.
Daily Dickinson will continue unabated, because {a} “Weekly Dickinson” doesn’t have that much of a ring to it, and {b} someone else already did all the hard work back around 1862.
Another project or two are in the works, but are not yet sufficiently gelled to mention in detail.
Yesterday was all about scrambling to find boots and scarves and hats that have been put away since last winter, getting the shovels and sleds out of the garage, and re-learning the Minnesota winter driving skills we’ve forgotten during our too-brief summer (like judging your stopping distance when it’s not clear what’s between your wheels and the road). A good start to winter, all in all.
This picture was actually taken during the last blast from the winter of ‘06-’07; this pair of scarecrows stand in a yard at the corner of 46th and Lyndale, and change their outfits with the season.
Pumpkins at Mother Earth Gardens, 38th Street and 42nd Avenue, Minneapolis. These are the pre-Halloween gourds, of course; Mother Earth Gardens is currently in the fallow period before the Christmas trees arrive around Thanksgiving. (Though if you’re in the neighborhood, stop in anyway; there’s plenty of stuff inside the shop to keep a gardener happy through the dark days of winter.)
Here’s our guide and brakeman on the Mount Washington cog railway ride. On the way up, the brakeman (or brake gal in our case) doesn’t have much to do; gravity keeps the car from moving very fast, with the tons of steel and coal pushing behind it. But on the way down, she didn’t have much time for chatter; she was constantly at the two big wheels that controlled the braking system to check our descent. The trip down was a lot faster than the trip up . . .
One bit of Mount Washington lore that she didn’t tell us (and that I don’t recall seeing in the museum at the base of the mountain) was the 1967 train crash that killed eight passengers and injured seventy. There’s only one line up and down, so there are a series of complex switches that allow one train to sit on a siding while another train passes; apparently a switch was set improperly, causing the descending engine to derail and sending the passenger car hurtling down the track (the engine itself being the most effective brake).
It’s the brakeman’s task to inspect the switches after they’re set to avoid another tragedy; and for forty years they’ve done a fine job, though I’m sure there’s a fair amount of pressure on the brakeman’s mind during the inspection.
The maximum grade on the cog railroad is 37.41%, with an average of 25%. This is incredibly steep–climbing to the front of the car during the assent takes some effort, and heading back down requires considerable care so as not to end up in a pile at the back.
We rode the cog railroad up Mount Washington on our summer trip, our first actual steam-engine ride. Up to now, all of our trains have been diesels or electrics; the cog railroad engine burns a ton of sooty coal and boils a thousand gallons of water on its way up the highest mountain in New England (and not nearly so much on the way down, with gravity helping out).
My beautiful laverie, rue Oberkampf from Pariscool (I think I may actually have used this laverie, back in 1999; I sat reading “The Brothers Karamazov” while waiting for our clothes to dry. It’s at least the right neighborhood.)
Big Nobel news: congratulations to Doris Lessing, whose unflinching and complex novels and stories about the relations between the races and sexes have finally earned her the nod from Stockholm. If you haven’t read “The Golden Notebook” or “The Cleft”, get to work!
Oh, and some guy with a PowerPoint presentation won some prize or other, too. Kudos to him as well.
Alternative Reel presents a gallery of early covers of the Top 10 Banned Books of the 20th Century. I particularly like the almost-buff version of Winston Smith on Signet’s paperback cover for “1984″; the design is clearly of its time, when lurid pulps beckoned at the drugstore. Link courtesy of Farenheit 451.
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date;
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And every fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance or nature’s changing course untrimmed.
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st;
Nor shall death brag thou wander’st in his shade,
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breathe or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
The University of Michigan’s graduate library staff presents a Flickr collection of banned books pictures, including “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “The Call of the Wild”, “Slaughterhouse Five”, and “Leaves of Grass”.
I’ve added my story Summer Reading to the Stories page of this site; it seems that Somewhat.org has left the building, and with it some wonderful little gems (as well as a couple stories of mine). They aren’t even available in the Wayback Machine. More about “Summer Reading” here.
Yellow as a goat’s wise and wicked eyes,
yellow as a hill of daffodils,
yellow as dandelions by the highway,
yellow as butter and egg yolks,
yellow as a school bus stopping you,
yellow as a slicker in a downpour.
Wee, modest, crimson-tippèd flow’r,
Thou’s met me in an evil hour;
For I maun crush amang the stoure
Thy slender stem:
To spare thee now is past my pow’r,
Thou bonie gem.
O woe to small things that Robbie Burns encountered! Whither floure or mousie, he’d come tramp-tramping along, compose some sweet, sad lyrics that tied your fate to that of mankind, and then crush you lifeless. “I’m truly sorry Man’s dominion / Has broken Nature’s social union” indeed! To wee things, he was no different from the rapacious murderers of a rollicking border ballad . . .
There may be pink with white or white with rose
Or there may be white with rose and pink with mauve
Or even there may be white with yellow and yellow with blue
Or even if even it is rose with white and blue
And so there is no yellow there but by accident. Gertrude Stein, From Stanzas in Meditation: Stanza XIII
As the Spoonbridge is to Minneapolis, so Portland Head is to Maine, but more so. Horribly over-shot (and, in this case, over-processed; remember, Photoshop filters are not sufficient to make a dull picture interesting . . . ).
Jack tests his new spyglass at Portland Head Light.
The boys’ party went well yesterday, though there was a vicious water balloon attack: the 50 balloons that I spent an hour filling were thrown at me in under five minutes by a hoard of 6- and 7-year-olds. They also turned the sprinkler on me. It was somewhat reminiscent of my cautionary tale from a couple years back. The cold I was nursing got a whole lot worse after the soaking, but I think I’ll live.
Jack and Peter pluck a lobster from the sea at the Children’s Museum of Maine in Portland. Hard to believe they turn 6 today: first grade is just over a week away.
Peter at the Children’s Museum of Maine, looking out from the pirate ship out back. We hadn’t been to the museum in two years, but the boys remembered everything about it; before we left they wrote out their plan and listed pretty much all the displays: the fire truck, the grocery store, the camp site, and, of course, the pirate ship.
Sad news yesterday: Grace Paley passed away at 84. Paley was one of the great short stories writers of the last half of the 20th century; in my personal pantheon, she’s in a triumvirate with Raymond Carver and Ann Beattie. Like Carver, Paley shone a bright but loving light into the dark corners of normal people; like Beattie, she wove together private and public struggles in a way that made the political truly personal, and vice versa. And like no one else, she combined humor and sadness into uplifting tales without a trace of saccharin.
What’s especially striking about Paley is her commitment to the short form: stories weren’t a stepping stone to novels, a career move to sell a bigger book. There were just the three luminous collections, plus some poetry and essay collections, but no great epic saga. And her output was spaced widely over four decades; one has the sense that her effortless prose was actually hard-won after great struggle. Few writers have said so much with so few words.
If you’re casting about for something to do today, Sunday, August 19, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
How well the skillful gard’ner drew
Of flow’rs and herbs this dial new,
Where from above the milder sun
Does through a fragrant zodiac run;
And as it works, th’ industrious bee
Computes its time as well as we.
How could such sweet and wholesome hours
Be reckon’d but with herbs and flow’rs!
We were driving home last night from the Seward neighborhood Pizza Luce when we were overtaken by a police car on 25th Street, a block from the Clicquot Club Cafe. And in quick succession, three more police cars and a paramedic van sped down the quiet streets and avenues. We decided it was best that we read about it in the newspaper tomorrow and promptly took an alternate street.
And read about it we did: a pickup truck drove into the sidewalk tables packed with diners, sending 13 to the hospital. That this is a supper spot we’ve often enjoyed (and I’ve occasionally photographed) was more than a little disturbing (like a certain bridge that we often drove on to get to Target…).
Our thoughts are with the injured, and with the folks at the Clicquot Club, and with the driver of the pickup, who apparently lost consciousness while driving to the cafe to pick up an order.
If you’re casting about for something to do on this Sunday, August 19, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
Pull my daisy
tip my cup
all my doors are open
Cut my thoughts
for coconuts
all my eggs are broken
Jack my Arden
gate my shades
woe my road is spoken
Silk my garden
rose my days
now my prayers awaken
Pull My Daisy by Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Neal Cassady
After the funky “Sunflower Sutra”, I couldn’t help another Beat flower reference (there are so few; their interest in horticulture was limited largely to plants of a more . . . herbaceous? . . . quality).
If you’re casting about for something to do on this Sunday, August 19, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
A perfect beauty of a sunflower! a perfect excellent lovely sunflower existence! a sweet natural eye to the new hip moon, woke up alive and excited grasping in the sunset shadow sunrise golden monthly breeze!
Whew . . . there’s been a lot of black and white here over the last month–46 in a row. And while I’m pleased with many of the photographs, I realize that may be a lot of monochrome for my little audience to take. So here’s a quick set of palate-cleansing color: some Dowling Community Garden pictures from earlier this summer, taken on slide film with the Minolta on aperture priority (I’m lazy with slide film; it’s less forgiving than negative film, and I don’t always trust my “sunny 16″/”f8 and be there” instincts).
If you’re casting about for something to do on this Sunday, August 19, have I got the event for you: my friend Arthur Ruckle has organized a benefit concert for Cate Cooper, who is in Arizona to have a pontine vascular malformation repaired. It will be held at Merlin’s Rest, the best pub on Lake Street, starting at 4 PM. For more details, download this PDF version of the Friends of Cate’s Brain flyer. And heck, while you’re at it, post it around your favorite coffee shops and tattoo parlors to help bring in a few more fans of music and brains.
That’s the Golden Gate Bridge off in the distance, as seen over Fort Mason (I think; it was early, I had jet lag…). The Yashica doesn’t have a long lens, so there was no way to get a “postcard view” of the bridge from this hill, but I think this picture captures the stillness of an early morning along the shore.
We crept
through fog all night but it closed behind us:
around and very close above:
only below in the black the self-lit fishes
passed ignorantly among the wrack of wrecks
and all the water held its tongue and gave
no password. And so sealed in our silent passage
we slept. The Sea Fog, Josephine Jacobsen
And look for the fishing fleet at morning,
Shadows like lost souls,
Slide through the fog where the seal’s warning
Betrays the shoals The Sailor’s Grave at Clo-oose, V.I., Marjorie Pickthall
. . . and we shall light upon some lonely shore,
Some lodge within the waste sea-dunes, and hear the waters roar,
And see the ships from out the West go dipping thro’ the foam . . .
I was afraid that this summer’s first camping trip a couple weeks ago, to Moose Lake, would be rained out; Saturday morning was drizzly and windy and cold, with fog lying (if picturesquely) on Echo Lake. But we toughed it out, and the weather cleared up–not enough to swim, maybe, but certainly enough to enjoy the outdoors.
I’ve got a series of the Bay Bridge queued up, and then we’ll have a break from my tourist shots for a little while (or at least my out-of-state tourist shots; I’m hopeful for some Moose Lake slides that I’ll be collectng on Wednesday…).
This poor picture tried to be too much; that’s Alcatraz in the background, and the v-shaped thing in front of the boat is the swimmer from a couple days back. The Yashica, wonderful though it is, is a rangefinder best for close-in portraits and hip shots of street action, not so much a camera for many layers of detail.
I suppose it’s a terribly touristy thing to be fascinated by the antique streetcars still in service on San Francisco’s F line. But there’s an undeniable magic about them, especially the Peter Witt trams that originally ran on the streets of Milan (and which still have Italian signage in them).
St. Paul and Minneapolis were great streetcar towns in their time, their time being from 1875, when the first horse-drawn line was established on Washington Avenue downtown, to 1954, when Fred Ossanna and associates finished the pillage of the system begun by Charles Green and the last line was paved over for buses. Indeed, the rush to replace the streetcars was so hasty that the streetcar tracks are often just inches below the surface: Lake Street is in a state of excavation these days, and the old metal tracks are in plain site for the first time in 50 years.
The Minnesota Streetcar Museum operates several cars on the Como-Harriet and Excelsior lines, and we’ve ridden them all. On Father’s Day, I’m planning to have the boys take me on the streetcar ferry on Lake Minnetonka (they’re young enough to take suggestions for this outing, and I have no problem taking advantage of their train obsessions to cover for my own…).
But wouldn’t it be lovely to ride a working streetcar line to work? There’s occasional noise about returning the streetcars to service; like Stanley Gordon West, I’m waiting patiently until they bring the streetcars back.
A few weeks ago, we went to an All About Family event near the Washburn Water Tower, where we learned a little bit about the history of the tower and worked on a Lego model. Here Jack works on the stairs leading up to the tower.
A few weeks ago, we went to an All About Family event near the Washburn Water Tower, where we learned a little bit about the history of the tower and worked on a Lego model. Pictured is a painting of the current tower–the tall domed tower ringed with eagles and knights–and the original tower, a smaller, flat-roofed structure that was replaced in 1931.
Pictured above is my wife, Kelly, mother of the inimitable (thank goodness…) Jack and Peter, at the St. Patrick’s Day pre-opening of Merlin’s Rest. She’s wearing a shirt from the lamented (lamentable?) Irish Well, emblazoned with the long Welsh place name “Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch” (ask Mr. Dingley to tell his joke about the train to said spot, but set aside plenty of time).
Despite the spate of snowy pictures, it really is spring at last here in Minneapolis. One of the sure signs of spring in these parts is the sudden explosion of weekend activities; if you’ve got time on your hands and kids in your care, here are a few things over the next few days to help get the sap flowing after a long winter’s sleep:
A Washburn Water Tower LEGO model will be constructed at Fuller Park, 48th and Grand, in the shadow of the Henry Wild Jones landmark (and my favorite Twin Cities building); Peter is deathly afraid of the “guys” who ring the tower, but he’s a LEGO freak, so there will be some interesting push and pull getting to this event…
Next Saturday, April 28th, Choo Choo Bob’s Train Shop is sponsoring a series of short train movies at the Riverview Theater. For the film and train buff of a certain age, this is a nice outing. Tickets are free, but have to be picked up at Choo Choo Bob’s on Marshall Avenue in St. Paul.
A wind sways the pines,
And below
Not a breath of wild air;
Still as the mosses that glow
On the flooring and over the lines
Of the roots here and there.
With Thought and Love companions of our way,
Whate’er the senses take or may refuse,
The Mind’s internal heaven shall shed her dews
Of inspiration on the humblest lay.
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the fairy power
Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
Think’st thou that this rope would twine
If we both should turn one way?
Where both parties so combine,
Neither love will twist nor hay. Ametas and Thestylis Making Hay-ropes by Andrew Marvell
From our January snow tubing event: the piles of innertubes at Green Acres in Lake Elmo. Our trips down the hill were characterized more by mud than by snow; it sounds like things will be a little whiter there this evening, though the near-blizzard winds might make tubing more of an adventure than most people are willing to brave.
From our January snow tubing event: the bus boarding.
Another round of snow is on schedule for the rest of the week; the local Fox affiliate predicts 12-20 inches (of course, these are the folks who love to predict disaster); Paul Douglas over at WCCO predicts a more modest 8-14 inches; the National Weather Service appears to predict about 13 inches if I read their graphics correctly.
In any event, I’m glad I swung by REI on my way home last night to pick up a couple pairs of starter snow shoes for Jack and Peter. We tested them out on the boulevard, zipping down the block and leaping the treacherous sidewalk chasms. Should the streets be impassible to automobiles, I’m confident that we three will be able to brave the elements and come back to base with freeze-dried victuals, water-purification equipment, and toilet paper to get us through the storm.
The predicted snowy armageddon was slightly less than apocalyptic–Friday’s predicted snow turned out to be mostly sleet, and it took a while for things to turn over to the white stuff on Saturday. But it was still a good sledding opportunity.
No pictures yet of our recent blanket of snow, though–no time to play with chemicals after spending the day at Auntie Betsy’s house, sledding, playing hide & seek, and discovering the wonders of Dance Dance Revolution. So instead here’s a rather more bare picture from a January snow tube trip we took with the boys’ Minneapolis Kids gang. It was more mud tubing than snow tubing, but no one complained.
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the soul feels like a dried sheaf
Bound up at length for harvesting,
And how death seems a comely thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
And how the swift beat of the brain
Falters because it is in vain,
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf
Knowest thou not? and how the chief
Of joys seems–not to suffer pain?
Some leftovers from last autumn–the temperatures in the basement have been far too cold the last few weeks to spend any time over the sink with black and white chemicals.
Know’st thou not at the fall of the leaf
How the heart feels a languid grief
Laid on it for a covering,
And how sleep seems a goodly thing
In Autumn at the fall of the leaf?
Some leftovers from last autumn–the temperatures in the basement have been far too cold the last few weeks to spend any time over the sink with black and white chemicals.
I’ve started putting my out-of-print stories (so far just one, Practical Haunting Considerations), on a Stories page, and I’ve updated the appropriate URLs for the on-line stories listed on the Publications page. If you’ve got a little time to spare, and are looking for something a little different (dare I say it, more literary…) than the usual “blog” fare, I’d encourage you to visit a few of these places; there are a lot of fabulous writers to discover among my stories’ neighbors.
I’ve started putting my out-of-print stories (so far just one, Practical Haunting Considerations), on a Stories page, and I’ve updated the appropriate URLs for the on-line stories listed on the Publications page. If you’ve got a little time to spare, and are looking for something a little different (dare I say it, more literary…) than the usual “blog” fare, I’d encourage you to visit a few of these places; there are a lot of fabulous writers to discover among my stories’ neighbors.
I’ve started putting my out-of-print stories (so far just one, Practical Haunting Considerations), on a Stories page, and I’ve updated the appropriate URLs for the on-line stories listed on the Publications page. If you’ve got a little time to spare, and are looking for something a little different (dare I say it, more literary…) than the usual “blog” fare, I’d encourage you to visit a few of these places; there are a lot of fabulous writers to discover among my stories’ neighbors.
I’ve started putting my out-of-print stories (so far just one, Practical Haunting Considerations), on a Stories page, and I’ve updated the appropriate URLs for the on-line stories listed on the Publications page. If you’ve got a little time to spare, and are looking for something a little different (dare I say it, more literary…) than the usual “blog” fare, I’d encourage you to visit a few of these places; there are a lot of fabulous writers to discover among my stories’ neighbors.
I’ve started putting my out-of-print stories (so far just one, Practical Haunting Considerations), on a Stories page, and I’ve updated the appropriate URLs for the on-line stories listed on the Publications page. If you’ve got a little time to spare, and are looking for something a little different (dare I say it, more literary…) than the usual “blog” fare, I’d encourage you to visit a few of these places; there are a lot of fabulous writers to discover among my stories’ neighbors.
If you need chocolate chip pancakes and a coloring page after a long day at the Museum of Science and Industry, there’s no better spot than the Golden Nugget.
Who knows, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?
I’m not sure how Peter managed the “saint card” look, but it’s appropriate given the bit of St.Peter’s Basillica stuck in the wall of the Tribune Tower beside which he’s posing.
By day the skyscraper looms in the smoke and sun and has a soul.
Prairie and valley, streets of the city, pour people into
it and they mingle among its twenty floors and are
poured out again back to the streets, prairies and
valleys.
It is the men and women, boys and girls so poured in and
out all day that give the building a soul of dreams
and thoughts and memories.
(Dumped in the sea or fixed in a desert, who would care
for the building or speak its name or ask a policeman
the way to it?)
Over the dead line we have called to you
To come across with a word to us,
Some beaten whisper of what happens
Where you are over the dead line
Deaf to our calls and voiceless.
The flickering shadows have not answered
Nor your lips sent a signal
Whether love talks and roses grow
And the sun breaks at morning
Splattering the sea with crimson.
And having answered so I turn once more to those who
sneer at this my city, and I give them back the sneer
and say to them:
Come and show me another city with lifted head singing
so proud to be alive and coarse and strong and cunning.
Tara Hill (sans Martin McHugh) warming up before the Failte Minnesota Green Tie Event.
Martin’s ceili was last night at the Eagle’s Club in Minneapolis; the house was packed beyond packed, and it was a great opportunity to see people from the various Irish circles (music, language, theater) around the Twin Cities. I half expected the ghost of Sean T. Kelly to wander in and circulate among the throng, seeking and disseminating news the way he did for so many years on the pub circuit. Ceol, caint, agus craic, as they might say out west.
Though I live across the river and have my own mayor, who has some trouble matching his socks but is otherwise … well, a mayor … I like St. Paul’s leader. Who wouldn’t admire a mayor who turned on the snow making machines during our freakish warm spell around Christmastime, just to ensure that the wee’uns could go sledding? (Though it was actually a tad warm for sledding that night–a small lake of slushy water formed at the bottom of the hill, and on my last run down I hit it, backwards, and have never been quite so miserably soaked.)
Martin McHugh and the Tara Hill ceilidh band perform at the Failte Minnesota Green Tie Dinner.
When John Dingley still ran the (in)famous Irish Well, I went every Sunday night to marvel at Martin’s playing. He would sit down early in the evening with a cup of coffee and his squeeze box and start off a set of jigs and reels and slides. Over the course of the night other players would wander in for the seisiun (including, of course, Tom Dahill), and they’d join in, play along, wander off, but through it all, at the solid center, there was Martin, until he shut the place down at closing time. We’ve got a solid Irish music scene in the Twin Cities, and that’s largely because of Martin, who has been a mentor and an inspiration for decades.
If you’re in Minneapolis this Saturday, be sure to stop at the Eagle’s Club, 2507 25th Street East, for the ceili dance & celebration honoring the contributions of musician Martin McHugh. There’s no telling who might show up — Martin’s music has stretched half way around the world, and there’s no shortage of people who have been touched by his gifts.
Students from the Center for Irish Music in St. Paul perform at the recent Failte Minnesota Green Tie Dinner, a fund raiser to establish an Irish cultural center in the Twin Cities. (It’s a little surprising that St. Paul, with as long an Irish-American history as any Midwestern city, has no such place; Savannah, GA, and Portland, ME, do.)
Those magnificent men in their flying machines,
they go up tiddly up up,
they go down tiddly down down.
“Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines”, from film of the same name, lyrics and music by Ron Goodwin
Though, I suppose, that’s actually a magnificent gal in her flying machine. Another Ax-Man pic: the place is not only a great source of bits and pieces for your next monstrosity to terrorize the neighborhood (or the universe) — it’s a conceptual, post-contemporary art installation, too.
From our recent Ax-Man outing — Peter (foreground) and Jack show off the wheels we acquired for a project. Behind them is the periscope from a tank — mid-1980s M1 Abrams, I think — which would be pretty cool to own but which was, alas, out of our price range.
If you’ve got a couple of nerdy kids, there’s no better stop in St. Paul than Ax-Man, a surplus store on University Avenue. They’ve got wires, beakers, wheels, pulleys, and … um … doll parts. We were there recently to pick up some wheels for a project — got ‘em for $1.50 each, a lot less than Menard’s was selling them for — and came away with some vintage Northwest Airlines meal trays (with lids!) as well. If you leave Ax-Man empty handed, it just means you have no imagination.
The boys are fascinated by the model tornado at the Science Museum of Minnesota; I am, too — it can be visually striking, as in this Hawkeye shot from earlier this year. I’m not sure if nerdiness is a matter of nature — the boys have a civil engineer for a mother and a computer programmer for a father — or nurture — since Mom and Dad like the science museum, the children’s museum, the library, etc., that’s where we go. But they are certainly little nerds of the first order, anxiously awaiting their next science museum workshop.
We spotted these morris dancers at Prospect Park this summer, when the Witch’s Hat water tower is open to the public once a year. I’m not sure what morris dancers have to do with water towers, but they were a diverting distraction while we waited in the line to get to the top of the tower on the highest natural spot in Minneapolis.
Still cleaning out the archives a bit — my project for Failte Minnesota is over at last, and the Green Tie Dinner was a rousing success, but I still have to develop and process some film to get some newer things out.
This is a July 3rd picture — the boys and I went to the grocery store and, lacking appropriate supervision, came home with a few things that weren’t on the list: a box of ice cream sandwiches and a pack of fountain firecrackers. Both of which we consumed out in the alley as soon as it got dark enough.
Now, of course, it gets dark at about four o’clock in the afternoon, but it’s a little chilly to be eating ice cream sandwiches in the alley.
This is the “portage” in Savanna Portage. Though it’s not a portage across a savanna but rather across a bog that separates the West Savanna River from the St. Louis River.
Along this restored portage trail are historical markers explaining how the Voyageurs, Ojibwe, and Dakota used the paths in their voyages from Canada to Duluth. Kelly mocked me for having to stop and read each one (while swatting at the monstrous flies that gave this park its alternate name “Camp Too-Buggy”); but those historical markers are the way we history buffs communicate to each other across the great gulf of time, our tribal drumbeat that says not only, “George Washington slept here” or “Frenchman lugged canoes over this spot”, but also, “Someone who loved history came through this place, and someone who will love history will come through again.”
Taken at Savanna Portage State Park, also known as “Camp Too-Buggy” for the bluebird-sized flies and mosquitoes that chased us out a night early. For all its insect life, though, it was a gorgeous park.
The day we visited the Summit Brewery, they were installing the new bottling line, which truncated our tour (and got us to the free beer sooner…). Interestingly, the bottling line Summit installed was a hand-me-down from Boulder Beer, and Summit’s old line went elsewhere (I think to Capital Brewing in Madison, WI, but don’t quote me on that — as I said, there was free beer…). The craft-brew world has a tradition of lending a hand to each other, which is a nice thing to see in this cut-throat times.
One of the treasures of the Twin Cities is Summit beer, a locally-produced brew that’s available in most of the finer establishments around town. Back in September, we took a tour of the brewery with our former neighbor, Holly (since we only moved about four blocks from when we lived next door to her, I suppose she’s still our neighbor); the boys, who love all things mechanical, greatly enjoyed the big kettles and hoses and everything else that turns hops and yeast and water and malt into liquid gold, and they enjoyed the 1919 Root Beer on tap. I enjoyed the Scandia, Summit Grand, Great Northern Porter, and IPA. Ah, beer …
The Copper Dome, 1333 Randolph Ave in St. Paul, is a treasure: a grid-like menu with every possible combination of pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, waffles, and whatever else you want for breakfast, and walls crammed with vintage advertisements for flour, syrup, and all the fixings. It probably isn't on the list of heart-smart eateries -- one's arteries begin to clog up in the entryway -- but sometimes that's just what you need. [Hide the verbosity]
This is Sue, "the largest, most complete, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex fossil yet discovered," from our summer trip to Chicago. She was by far the most popular attraction of the trip; Jack informed me recently that I should have named him "Sue", not because it would build his character per Johnny Cash and Shel Silverstein, but because he really likes dinosaurs. [Hide the verbosity]
Now hear this! The JMWW print anthology is available for purchase, and at $6.61 for 104 pages of stories and poems and art, it’s quite a deal.
The Baltimore City Paper ran a nice profile of JMWW and its editor, Jen Michalski. (And that the story leads with the opening lines of my story “Ichthyology”, which it calls “brutal and eloquently told, a brilliant carnage of a story” — I think that’s complimentary? — in no way sways my opinion.)
The venerable on-line journal’s first foray into the print world is being celebrated on October 28 at BlueHouse in Baltimore, so if you happen to be in Charm City tonight, get yourself down to 1407 Fleet Street for the show.
Now hear this! The JMWW print anthology is available for purchase, and at $6.61 for 104 pages of stories and poems and art, it’s quite a deal.
The Baltimore City Paper ran a nice profile of JMWW and its editor, Jen Michalski. (And that the story leads with the opening lines of my story “Ichthyology”, which it calls “brutal and eloquently told, a brilliant carnage of a story” — I think that’s complimentary? — in no way sways my opinion.)
The venerable on-line journal’s first foray into the print world is being celebrated on October 28 at BlueHouse in Baltimore, so if you happen to be in Charm City at the end of the month, get yourself down to 1407 Fleet Street for the show.
Now hear this! The JMWW print anthology is available for purchase, and at $6.61 for 104 pages of stories and poems and art, it’s quite a deal.
The Baltimore City Paper ran a nice profile of JMWW and its editor, Jen Michalski. (And that the story leads with the opening lines of my story “Ichthyology”, which it calls “brutal and eloquently told, a brilliant carnage of a story” — I think that’s complimentary? — in no way sways my opinion.)
The venerable on-line journal’s first foray into the print world is being celebrated on October 28 at BlueHouse in Baltimore, so if you happen to be in Charm City at the end of the month, get yourself down to 1407 Fleet Street for the show.
Now hear this! The JMWW print anthology is available for purchase, and at $6.61 for 104 pages of stories and poems and art, it’s quite a deal.
The Baltimore City Paper ran a nice profile of JMWW and its editor, Jen Michalski. (And that the story leads with the opening lines of my story “Ichthyology”, which it calls “brutal and eloquently told, a brilliant carnage of a story” — I think that’s complimentary? — in no way sways my opinion.)
The venerable on-line journal’s first foray into the print world is being celebrated on October 28 at BlueHouse in Baltimore, so if you happen to be in Charm City at the end of the month, get yourself down to 1407 Fleet Street for the show.
I'm starting up another series of pictures of the Dowling Garden -- these were taken over the summer, on slide film, and I'm very pleased with the richness of the slide film's color. Slide film is far less forgiving than print film, so I chose to use the Maxxum with all the light metering and such; I lucked out once with slide film accidentally loaded in the FED3, but I didn't want to knowingly risk a roll of the spendy stuff. [Hide the verbosity]
From a summer outing to the Farmer's Market in St. Paul; Jack hides behind the pepper plants (one of which we bought -- it produced wonderful hot peppers for pizza and Chicago-style hot dogs right up until this month's freeze). [Hide the verbosity]
From a summer outing to the Farmer's Market in St. Paul; Kelly with an armload of flowers destined for the windowbox in front of the house. [Hide the verbosity]
Another from the summer archives. We went to the St. Paul Farmer's Market in search of flowers and veggies, and of course I lugged a camera with me (the Yashica rangefinder). A stranger offered to take a picture of the boys and me, so I set it up (thank goodness for easy aperture-priority cameras -- no one has ever offered to take my picture with my Lubi ...) and this is what came out. [Hide the verbosity]
One from this summer -- Jack climbed up the cherry tree to hang his bird feeder. Now that winter is around the corner, we'll have to set up some more feeders for our feathered friends who tough it out with us in Minnesota. [Hide the verbosity]
The Dowling Community Garden is on the edge of the boys' school; if they're cooperative in the morning (which can be a challenge...), we walk through the garden on our way to school. They enjoy looking at the flowers and vegetables, and lately have enjoyed the crunch of fresh frost under their feet. I enjoy walking through the garden myself, and after dropping them off I often walk back through the garden with a camera or three and look for little hints of magic in the changing seasons. [Hide the verbosity]
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