Along the West River Road, in Minneapolis, are several modern houses of the stark and low style, quite a contrast with the bungalows of the ‘teens and ‘twenties that fill most of the neighborhood’s streets.
The Saarinen (Eilel and Eero) Christ Church Lutheran church, Longfellow neighborhood, on a recent chilly snowy night (the dog and I were on our way to retrieve the car after Kelly had retrieved her recently-repaired bicycle from The Hub).
An interesting e-mail came over the transom today:
It’s my pleasure to invite you to my Father’s 70th Birthday Thanks giving service which is going to take place at Geneva United Methodist Church Geneva, Minnesota,united States on May 30th 2008, please Let us know if your compnay will be available on that day to take the Photography service for us and any other necessary things at the event,And get back to us with your package for like 5 hours, presently am not in the state but it’s my duty to take care of this part that’s why, I have to contacted you myself. Let me know if you can receive your payment with a CHEQUE from my client in the states.
There are a few things that are tip-offs here that something’s not on the up-and-up: the payment by “CHEQUE” (not how it’s spelled in Geneva, MN …), the stilted English, the suggestion that I might be an event photographer (take a look at the blurry Holga pictures and strange night pictures, and tell me if you’d really want me anywhere near your father’s birthday “Thanks giving” party…). But I find this almost touching in its lack of ambition: no crown prince of Swaziland, no royal family of Ghana, no lottery winnings from Spain or Ireland, just some guy at the United Methodist church in a little town near Albert Lea. Have the scam artists given up on their dreams and decided to settle down in Lake Wobegon?
A similar trick is outlined here: Scams on Artists, mnartists.org. The trick usually involves a cashier’s check that turns out to be bad, though after you’ve deposited it into your account, and a portion of that bad check being sent back to the miscreant (I’ll pay you $4,000, you keep $950 and send me the change . . .). And since it plays on the dreams and aspirations of someone with an artistic bent, it’s particularly cruel and nasty. Over at Daily Dickinson I pointed out another scam artist put to shame, this time by Emily Dickinson, or someone rather like her. It’s this sort of stuff that sucks the fun right out of the Internet.
It’s cold here; like, “it will warm up to -1 degree Farenheit” cold; like, your breath doesn’t just fog, it freezes into ice crystals that shatter at your feet. No one around here needs air conditioner service today . . .
This was a completely unintentional triple (or more?) exposure; the sprocket holes on the film tore, and it took a few frames for things to slide back into place. Still, I like the serendipity of it.
A couple of bits of Christmas cheer in case you’re looking for help getting your spirits in the right mood:
Six funny stories from Kevin Kling: this whole broadcast from MPR is fabulous, but of particular interest today are his story of making a friend at an Uptown bar and how to ask God to ask Jesus to tell Santa that you need a squirrel monkey. And if you need a last-minute gift, grab the book.
Christmas Past: Dick Gordon talks to illustrator and author Tomie DePaola about Tomie’s Christmas adventures, from a 1940s childhood full of magic fireplaces and war-time blackouts to Gregorian chants at a New England monastery to a San Francisco apartment festooned with a dwarf forest. There’s a great book behind this one, too; I picked up the last copy at the East Lake Street library, but no doubt it’s floating around elsewhere . . .
Wainamoinen, old and trusty,
From his couch arose the artist,
From his couch of stone, the blacksmith,
And began his work of forging,
Forging Sun and Moon for Northland.
Kalevala, Rune XLIX, translated by John Martin Crawford
Wainamoinen, old and trusty,
Thought awhile, and well considered,
How to kill the mighty oak-tree,
First created for his pleasure,
How to fell the tree majestic,
How to lop its hundred branches.
Sad the lives of man and hero,
Sad the homes of ocean-dwellers,
If the sun shines not upon them,
If the moonlight does not cheer them
Is there not some mighty hero,
Was there never born a giant,
That can fell the mighty oak-tree,
That can lop its hundred branches?
Kalevala, Rune II, translated by John Martin Crawford
Young and aged talked and wondered,
Well reflected, long debated,
How to live without the moonlight,
Live without the silver sunshine,
In the cold and cheerless Northland,
In the homes of Kalevala.
Long conjectured all the maidens,
Orphans asked the wise for counsel.
Kalevala, Rune XLIX, translated by John Martin Crawford
Come bedecked then to thy chamber,
Thus return to this thy household,
To the greeting of thy kindred,
To the joy of all that know thee,
Flushed thy cheeks as ruddy berries,
Coming as thy father’s sunbeam,
Walking beautiful and queenly,
Far more beautiful than moonlight.
Kalevala, Rune IV, translated by John Martin Crawford
These night pictures pose a few more challenges than usual: the traffic on West River Road isn’t heavy, but sneaking in a longer exposure between headlights takes some luck; the metering is bad guesswork at best; the mirror on the Spotmatic often gets stuck in bulb mode, which means I can’t see anything through the viewfinder; and the dog doesn’t understand why she has to wait 30-90 seconds while I stand behind the tripod and try to keep her from tangling up the shot. And it’s cold. Really cold. Hasn’t been above freezing in Minneapolis since Thanksgiving.
I am tall, and sound, and hardy,
Have no flaws within my body;
Three times in the months of summer,
In the warmest of the seasons,
Does the sun dwell in my tree-top,
On my trunk the moonlight glimmers,
In my branches sings the cuckoo,
In my top her nestlings slumber.
Kalevala, Rune XVI, translated by John Martin Crawford
Young Kullervo has not perished,
Has not died among the branches
Of the oak-tree where we hung him.
In the oak he maketh pictures
With a wand between his fingers;
Pictures hang from all the branches,
Carved and painted by Kullervo;
And the heroes, thick as acorns,
With their swords and spears adjusted
Fill the branches of the oak-tree,
Every leaf becomes a soldier.
Kalevala, Rune XXXI, translated by John Martin Crawford
Three pictures today (click the “Image One”, “Image Two”, and “Image Three” tabs to switch from one to the next), for largely geeky reasons:
Between my neighborhood and the Mississippi stands an oak savanna, a tiny piece of the kind of land that existed before the Europeans arrived. It’s a fascinating chunk of land, perfect for my current experiments in night photography. Maybe too perfect–my little audience doesn’t need to be subjected to a whole roll of pictures of oak trees in the snow in the dark.
The contractor I’m working with at the day job mentioned the YUI JavaScript framework; lately I’ve been pushing paper instead of writing code at work (and loathing every second of it…), so this was a chance to take a look at this framework and try it out in a new context. It’s pretty easy to use, and I may tinker with it a bit more in coming weeks.
Louhi, hostess of Pohyola,
Northland’s old and toothless wizard,
Makes the Sun and Moon her captives;
In her arms she takes fair Luna
From her cradle in the birch-tree,
Calls the Sun down from his station,
From the fir-tree’s bending branches,
Carries them to upper Northland,
To the darksome Sariola;
Hides the Moon, no more to glimmer,
In a rock of many colors;
Hides the Sun, to shine no longer,
In the iron-banded mountain
Kalevala, Rune XLVII, translated by John Martin Crawford
Loan to me the strength of oceans,
To upset this mighty oak-tree,
To uproot this tree of evil,
That again may shine the sunlight,
That the moon once more may glimmer.
Kalevala, Rune II, translated by John Martin Crawford
The Kalevala is, of course, Finland’s national epic. It figured in a small way in my story Sunshine Over Helsinki, published in 2004 at failbetter.com. Northern epics are the perfect reading material for our chilly winters here in Minnesota.
All summer, the alley on our block is busy with kids on bikes and skateboards; it’s the main highway between the blocks, and the surest place to find the short family members when it’s time for supper or baths. In the winter, though, it’s an eerily peaceful place, the silence broken only by the soft scrape of snow shovels.
