Bosca Dubh

That’s a lot of black and white, and a lot of Chicago; let’s do a little color this week, shall we?

This is a street scene at the Twin City Model Railroad Museum at Bandana Square, which I visited a couple months ago with the boys. It’s a pretty impressive layout, with the Stone Arch Bridge and Washburn flour mills in O-gauge. The boys, of course, were in seventh heaven…

A Moody Monday favorite for “False”–can’t you feel the love?

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart’s core.
Lake Isle of Innisfree, William Butler Yeats

Another from the Heart of the Beast puppet theater’s May Day parade at Powderhorn Park.

Yes, it’s that iconic landmark of Minneapolis–St. Mary’s Basilica. With a big metal cherry in front of it.

I’m running on auto-pilot today–we’re in Chicago for the weekend, checking out the Field Museum and the Shedd Aquarium (my four-year-olds are nerds, and I see no reason not to encourage it). So if you’ve made a comment, rest assured that I’ll respond when I return–I’m not being rude!

This is a detail on the exterior of the Rand Tower in Minneapolis, my favorite downtown building. It’s a wonderful art deco extravaganza, built about the same time as the Foshay Tower but somehow a little classier, if shorter.

There are aviation motifs throughout the building, most notably the Oskar Hansen statue, “Wings”, in the lobby. The tower was commissioned by Rufus R. Rand, scion of the Minneapolis Gas Company and World War I pilot. These figures–wing-footed Hermes launching a biplane?–were one of my favorite sights when I worked downtown and would walk up Marquette Avenue every morning; why can’t architecture in the ‘burbs be more inspiring than concrete boxes broken up with reflective glass?

A Minneapolis photoblog without a picture of the Spoonbridge at the Walker Art Center’s sculpture garden? For shame!

I used to visit the sculpture garden occasionally when I lived in Nordeast; it was a nice summer bike ride. But then I moved to the south side, bought a house, got married, and had kids.

The day before Easter I had an unencumbered few hours while Kelly was studying and the boys were at Auntie Kathleen’s house, so I took the train downtown and hiked through Loring Park. I hadn’t been to the Walker for five years or so, and I felt like a tourist. Well, not quite as much of a tourist as the people who were posing for pictures in front of the Spoonbridge, trying to make it look like they were taking a bite out of the cherry or holding it in their fingers. Such fun. I may have some shots of the shenanigans taken with the Spotmatic; we’ll see how they come out.

This was taken with the Nomad–it’s what the cherry might have looked like if it had been built in 1951 instead of 1991.

Four years ago today, my mother passed away after a brief but intense battle with leukemia. And of course, hardly a day goes by that I don’t think about her and miss her. She would have been very pleased to see Jack and Peter grow up–they were less than a year old when she died–and would probably have had some useful advice for their parents. Or at least a knowing wink at their more annoying tendencies–I was called “Motor Mouth” at their age, and I’m sure their 1001 questions a minute is a sort of karmic revenge.

This picture was, I suspect, taken with my father’s Spotmatic, which I’m using to some effect these days; the colors and bokeh are characteristic of the kit lens, and other clues–the hairstyle, the L.L. Bean 60-40 parka (why don’t they make this anymore?)–date it to some time around 1973.

Sledding at Longfellow Park.

The Million Writers Notable Stories have been announced by storySouth! My story Self Defense, published in Pindeldyboz, made the list, as did many fabulous stories from around the web. Set aside some time to sample the stories on the list; you won’t be disappointed.

The Top 10 will be posted on April 1.

Let us thank God for having given us such ancestors; and let each successive generation thank him, not less fervently, for being one step further from them in the march of ages.

Main Street, Nathaniel Hawthorne

My ancestors–at least a good three quarters of them–were Puritans of the worst kind, the sort who banished Christmas as a too-pagan celebration and flogged Quakers for failing to conform to the Puritan program. They were made of stern stuff, those Puritans, weathering harsh New England winters and carving a civilization out of the wilderness by brute (and brutal) force. They were also the source of our obsession with work, if we take Max Weber at his word–dauntless and intrepid labor is its own reward.

I like to think I’ve travelled a long way from those ancestors some three and half centuries past, that I’m thoroughly post-modern and totally hip. But a big snow like we had last week gets my Puritan blood thumping; getting to work, normally a thankless task that I dread, becomes an adventure, a proof of my ability to stand up to adversity. And probably, in some deep Puritan corner of my heart, a guarantee that I am, despite all evidence to the contrary, among the Elect–for surely God guided my car through the snow drifts.

Jack and Peter are not yet driven to be intrepid. They were excited by the snow, and wanted a snowman, but thought that maybe it would be OK if they watched out the window while Dad made a snowman. Of course, I dragged them out into the blizzard so they could work on the snowman, and they had a good time, but I don’t think they saw the challenge in it. But then, their Puritan blood is diluted by sensible Irishness that knows that when it snows you stay inside.

The Million Writers Notable Stories have been announced by storySouth! My story Self Defense, published in Pindeldyboz, made the list, as did many fabulous stories from around the web. Set aside some time to sample the stories on the list; you won’t be disappointed.

The Top 10 will be posted on April 1.

This picture is available as a notecard at Zazzle.