Minnesota Rocks Again

I ventured outside my sphere of influence to track down another of the Minnesota Rocks sculptures that I've been sporadically photographing and posting here. This one is called the "Goodnight Kiss" by an Italian stone sculptor, Pasquale Martini. It was perched at its current location and dedicated in late July. The location is more in Mr. Moohoo's biking range, if I'm not mistaken, in Vadnais Heights at City Hall. A map is included this time.


The map. Clipped out with Mac software and modified to JPG format by iPhoto.


I talked to the beloved Japan-sited English teacher this morning. She was using her air conditioning in her Ogaki apartment while I shivered in the 55 degree heat in Minnesota. She had tales to tell, but you'll have to check her xanga blog to get the gist of them. She looked marvelous to these old eyes.

Herb has returned from Chicago again. His Corolla has over over eighty thousand miles now, many of the miles on I-94 and I-90 to Chi-town.

The finals of the men's US Open tournament are now history. Roger Federer won his fourth consecutive championship. Congratulations. Novak Djokovic had set points in each of the first two sets, but was unable to convert. Several of the key points were decided by the software of the "Hawk-Eye" lookalike. Software! I know enough about software to distrust the results, especially when a ball misses a line by millimeters. Soon we may even be trusting the results of national elections to software. Oh, I guess we already do.

Some old photos again

Saturday is often predominately a tennis day for me, but today was more so than usual. As usual, I played with the older gentlemen this morning at Marie Park. It was the second tennis day in a row, but it was pretty social and I played well enough to split sets. The US Open men's semifinals and the women's finals were played today and were televised on CBS. Novak Djokovic and Roger Federer won their matches in straight sets and will meet for the championship tomorrow after the Vikings play their opening season game. Justine Henin won her seventh major championship pretty easily over Kuznetsova. She's a very good player and has a better serve than most men.

And I bought some tennis balls and a tennis shirt at a local sporting goods store to load up for next week's matches.

Adam is still in Chicago, but I used his scanner again to move these photos to digital format. They are both from 1990 - 17 years ago when times were much different. This is Kelsey with a fish she caught in Wisconsin at Fred Prouse's cabin that summer. It's the only fish that I know she caught - ever - and she was pretty excited, and cute. I used to have the picture on my desk at work.


This is also from 1990. Adam and his buddy, Andy (Mr. Excitement, we called him), were making movies with the video camera. I think they did some sound dubbing and maybe some story boarding for their mini-classic, "The Package." The footage is still in existence and can be made available for a modest fee. This film making was fitted in between the video gaming sessions that went on quite a bit in those years.


I tried to do some digging today to find out why that Friedrich Schiller guy has a statue in Como Park. There was some googling to do and a pass through Wikipedia. It seems that Schiller made Carver's Cave in St Paul popular in some of his writings and thus may have encouraged some of his compatriots to emigrate to Minnesota. Carver's Cave used to exist in Dayton's Bluff in St Paul, but was destroyed many years ago in an orgy of railroad building. It had been a sacred site for the Indians when they owned the land and was reputed to be quite lovely. Another example of unplanned urban development.

September Tomatoes

I haven't shown the backyard tomato plants for a while. The tomato patch isn't very pretty any more because of some collapse of the plants under the weight of the fruit and the supporting branches. The season is still going strong, however. The ripe tomatoes continue to appear, a couple of them every couple of days. That should continue until the first hard freeze.


I had a trek over to Como Park to view the Minnesota Rock sculpture that Gzmoohoo discovered a couple of days ago. It is where he reported it to be and I took a photo of the sculpture (by a guy from Ely, Michael Sinesio.) It would be redundant to post that photo, so I am posting this photo of a statue of Friedrich Schiller, the German philosopher, which is also in Como Park. I don't know why his life and work deserve a statue in Como Park, but it's a pretty nice one. Schiller was born in Germany in 1759 and died at 45 of tuberculosis in 1805, also in Germany. As far as I know he never visited the USA, much less St Paul, but he was a good friend of Goethe.
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After a day off from tennis, I played somewhat better today. I spent several hours yesterday restringing my newest racket, but didn't use it today. It's a nice racket, but I haven't adjusted to playing with it very well. It's a heavier racket and very much like the one that Roger Federer uses. Roger thrives with the racket, but it just tires me out. I used the restringing machine that Mr Moohoo sold me some months ago to change the tension on the strings from 55 pounds to 50 pounds with the purpose of gaining some power. I'll try the restrung racket soon, perhaps tomorrow when the geezers gather to play.

Venus Williams lost to Justine Henin today in the US Open 7-6, 6-4. It was a pretty good match, played in the wind, and Justine was just a little the better. She's in the finals against Kuznetsova tomorrow night, and should win easily. Roger Federer has to beat the Russian Nikolay Davydenko, who he has beaten 13 times in a row, to gain the finals. Novak Djokovic is likely to be there to play him in the finals. That could be a decent match-up.

Hot September Day

It was 90 degrees in St Paul this afternoon, maybe more if I could find any recent temp records on the internet. I played about an hour and a quarter of tennis on a quaint single court at MacKubin and Laurel. The surface was a little rough and the net a tad low, but it was 9:30 and the day was still cool, in the 70's. There is ivy growing on the fences, too. Picture a couple of retired guys banging ground strokes at each other. Most of the rest of the day was spent avoiding the heat.

This former elm tree stands across the street from the governor's mansion on Summit Avenue. It's starting to deteriorate a bit, but to me it is authentic public art.


The US Open had some good matches on TV today. The match between Novak Djokovic, the number 3 seed, and Juan Monaco was inspired tennis and a grueling 4 hours long. Djokovic won in four sets, but not without using most of his resevoir of energy. In tonight's featured women's match, Justine Henin beat Serena Williams 7-6, 6-1 to get to the semis, where she may have to play Venus.

Longfellow's Flower

It was a nice day - coolish in the morning with a clear blue sky. I walked around the grounds at Minnehaha Park and revisited Minnehaha Falls to see if the volume of water was up from July. There was a nice strong stream of water flowing in Minnehaha Creek and over the falls. I didn't include a photo, because the falls has been shown several times before in this space. Besides, I shot this lively blue flower at Longfellow Gardens, just across Hiawatha Avenue from the park. The bees and butterflies evaded this shutterbug, but the flower is pretty. For the benefit of KS, there is also a significant prairie restoration project in progress there by the creek.


There is also a nice statue of Hiawatha and his princess, Minnehaha, at the park. It's a little off the beaten track, but stands very near the creek. It was erected in 1911, so has stood there 96 years.


So much for Minnehaha Falls. I also checked out the hiking trail around Lake Como to see how the cleanup of the multitude of downed trees was going. I would call the progress exceedingly slow, but work men with a truck and hoist were there and they were removing dried up branches and leaves from ex-oaks and ex-ashes. The guy operating the hoist was working and the other five guys were watching. They'll be done with the cleanup by snow fly, I expect.

Tennis tonight at Marie Park. I played in the lower range of acceptable and my team lost both sets. It was a beautiful night, however, and it was enjoyable just to be out in the weather. The other guys appreciated the wins and didn't indulge in cheap taunting. Not a bad outing, all in all.

The U.S. Open continues. I watched a couple of sets of Nadal winning his opening match against an Aussie qualifier who was ranked about 125 in the world. Nadal is number two. Nadal also seems to be having knee problems. He probably plays too much tennis, and from today's action I'm pretty sure that he won't make it to the finals this year. That's just a guess, of course.

Changeable

We have plenty of rain the last few days. Overnight we had a deluge and some power outages were reported.


I played tennis indoors at Wooddale last night because of the threat of rain. We are getting the mixed doubles team ready for the sectionals in September, so it was an oppportunity for practice with the team and get some court action. My 8.0 team qualified for the tournament via the back door. We didn't win the league (it was the winter league), but the team that won the winter league also won in the summer, so we were moved up. We'll be playing the second weekend in September at Reed Sweatt (aka Nicollet Tennis Center). Last night we split sets and then won the ten point third set tie-breaker.

The US Open started this week in New York. The Williams sisters are both playing and both won in the first round. They are in the same bracket so won't be playing eah other for the title this year as they have in the past. I'm predicting another Williams tournament win, but I'm not saying which one until after they play each other. The men's title may go to the new kid on the block, the Serb youngster, Novak Djokavic, but Nadal and Federer are more likely this year. Djokavic holds recent victories over both Nadal and Federer. Not a small feat.