Firefighter's memorial

Sunday was a really nice day. PW and I went to the State Capitol grounds to witness the dedication of the newest memorial on the lawn - a statue to the 207 Minnesota firefighters who have died in the line of duty in Minnesota's history. PW's son, Steve, who is the fire chief in Grand Rapids was there with his wife, too, so we sat near them.

 The firefighters from across Minnesota came to the dedication and creatively hoisted a very large U.S. flag near the Capitol building.  Fire trucks for scale.

This is the new memorial on the Capitol lawn.  It may look familiar to some.  It was for a time displayed in the Lindbergh air terminal at the Twin Cities Airport.  It depicts a fireman rescuing a child from a fire.

It was a nice ceremony, but pretty lengthy, because they read the names of all fallen firefighters and presented the family of each a rose and an opportunity to shake the hand of the guv (Mark Dayton), the St Paul mayor (Chris Coleman) and Minnesota's senior senator, Amy Klobuchar, plus other local dignitaries.  Somehow Al Franken missed the event.

Today was another really nice day.  The main photographic highlight was a tour of Lake Como to see how the leaves were turning.  Some are still green, some are very red and yellow, and some of the ash trees have given up completely.  It's been dry and the ash trees are notorious quitters.

I'll probably revive the concept of Kelsey trees.  Those are the ones that refuse to give up and keep their leaves long after the pikers have packed it in.  It's a little early yet to begin judging the tree's vigor, but it will become clear later in the month who they are.

This is a partially obstructed view of the lake from the south side of Como.

Quite a lovely red maple stands near Lake Como, on the east side near the parking lot.  It was the best of the lot today, IMHO.

I chatted some this morning with PP. She got an email, purportedly from Winona Laduke, saying that Winona had been mugged in Madrid and needed 1450 euros to pay her bills and get home. The email asked PP to send it if she could. PP has had some contact with Ms. Laduke on a volunteer basis at the White Earth Indian Reservation, so she thought it might be a valid situation, but after talking it over with Unky Herb and me, it was clear that there had been a hacking of Ms. Laduke's email account and someone was trolling for dollars. PP sent an email to Winona advising her to change her password, preferably to something more complicated than the usual run of passwords. I think PP changed her own password, too, to be on the safe side. I guess that Tanzania is the wild, wild west of the internet.

The Other Senator

There is a link on the Strib site that lists the people who were arrested in St. Paul this week. It has been a busy week at the court house so there were 30 pages of names. Our fair state has been invaded by the Doe family, Jane and John and their clones, who were repeatedly arrested for rioting, etc. The rioters who gave their addresses were mainly from out of state. Apparently the RNC was too much to be passed up.

I had another hike down to the Zone to see if I could recognize any famous Republicans. But first I recognized our Democratic Senator, Amy Klobuchar, as she was exiting the MSNBC stage at Rice Park. She had just been interviewed about some political subject or another.

Later on I recognized another woman Senator. This one is Kay Bailey Hutchison from Texas. She's the one in the bright yellow suit. She had just left the stage at MSNBC and was going back into the Xcel center for some more politicking. She is a long standing and quite powerful member of the U.S. Senate. She was surrounded by people attracted to power.


I recognized several other famous faces - Tom Ridge, Norm Coleman (again), Julie Nelson from KARE-TV - but the woman below being interviewed is not familiar to me. She was wearing a power suit, sitting in Rice Park and answering questions by the woman on the right, in an animated fashion. Let me know if you recognize her. I'm sure that she's famous somewhere.

This is a crowd shot near the MSNBC stage featuring some demonstrator who was decrying bird porn. I'm not sure what his cause really was, but he was garnering quite a bit of attention. It seems to me to come under the heading of political theatre.


It was pretty peaceful while I was near the zone. There were clearly some very important people in the crowd and it was pretty clear that they knew that they are important.

Later, I played three sets of tennis and won only two. The geezers were out in force on one of the nicest days of the summer.