October in September

It was primary election day in St Paul. I felt my civic duty and went to the polls. There was a single race on the ballot - the race for City Council for Ward 2. While I was signing in, the election judge noticed the street that I live on. He wasn't busy. I was the only prospective voter in the room. He said that he thought that Amelia Earhart (1897-1937) had lived near me in St Paulwhen she was a teen-ager. That sounded interesting, so when I got home, I used my favorite search engine and found a biography of the famous aviatrix(?), "East of the Dawn." According to the book, she lived just down my street about a block, but only lived here in 1913, the year she was 16, and the year my mother was born. They lived in a house that they couldn't afford to heat. I'll get a picture of the house soon, and launch it into cyberspace. She moved to Chicago the next year and graduated from high school there. She became world famous as a dare devil flyer. In 1937 she and her airplane were lost in the Pacific and her body was never found.

It was cold enough today that it reminded me of Christmas. I have an old photo of Kagami Sensei and her baby cousin, Wireless, from, Christmas, 1989. It's cute enough to be reproduced here. KS looks like she's about to break into a dance.


As unbelievable as it seems, a hard freeze is expected tonight in the northern half of the state. Less than a week ago it was over 90 and I had to stop playing tennis because I only had one bottle of water and its contents had been swallowed. My tomatoes are safe tonight here, the weather creatures predict 38 degrees.

Twelfth of Fifteen Rock Sculptures

Apparently the city of St Paul has been installing the Minnesota Rocks sculptures in the last month while I was otherwise occupied. I found Minnesota Rocks 12 at the Phalen Picnic Pavilion today. I had been in the exact spot at least twice in July and the stone was not yet there. There are a total of 15 sculptures, of which I have discovered and photographed 12. See link to Minnesota Rocks. The three that are left are number 9 (should be at Upper Landing Park by the Mississippi), number 13 (should be on Mounds Boulevard and McLean, but has been removed for repair because it apparently was vandalized), and the one by a Finnish sculptor which is supposed to be in Salo Park in St Anthony Village. As the monkey said when the train ran over his tail, "it won't be long now."

This one is a beauty and is located in a lovely spot. It was created by a Chinese sculptor, Lei Yixin, and is called "Meditation." After I find them all I'll try to pick out the top three most impressive. This is a top contender.


I have located the rugby World Cup tournament on Versus, the same channel that telecasts the Tour de France. The USA and England were having at it this afternoon and I watched a few scrums. Many thanks to Santini.

Also more information than necessary about Carver's Cave can be found at link. Carver's Cave was a recent subject in this blog relating to Friedrich Schiller's connection to St Paul's Como Park. He was a popularizer of the cave to his German readers.

Two sets of tennis today. It was a lovely evening and I played so-so, but managed to be on the winning side twice in the two sets.

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.

Puma

It was a plus 90 degree day again, but I found myself on the tennis court for the fifth consecutive day. The Wednesday geezer group plays on Wednesday, even if we have to risk heat exhaustion. I was mediocre on the court, splitting the two sets we played, 7-5, 2-6. The effects of too much tennis were evident and I have resolved to take tomorrow off.

The excitement of the last few days is the wildlife shown below. It appears to be a puma peering from the garage top into my backyard native grass garden where the bunnies live. Shortly after the picture was taken the puma pounced into the garden. I went to investigate and apparently the pounce was fruitless. The bunnies live on.


Maybe I've had too much sun.

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.

Psychedelic

Unky Herb rendered this photo into something exotic with free photo software called GIMP that he found on the internet. I liked the effect well enough to post it here on the blog. The original photo, featuring the Tousan, was taken at the Sculpture Garden near Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.


There was more tennis this a.m. to ready the 8.0 mixed doubles teams for the tournament. We played at Highland High School again. We got in two and a half sets and a ten point tie breaker, and finished in about two hours. I am nicely knackered and plan to take a day off tomorrow.

I collected my spices from GZ and Wireless tonight. I ordered Watkins 100% organic nutmeg and basil flakes from Wireless because her boat company owns Watkins and she gets an employee discount. I'll be using the nutmeg on my morning oatmeal, and the basil will spice up my homemade soup concoctions and veggie burgers.

The second week of the US Open is starting and my favorites in the women's tourney, Serena and Venus, are still unbeaten. Serena plays Justine Henin tomorrow. Roger Federer, my men's favorite, is also going along pretty well

More and better bridges

It's the first Sunday in September. I'm leading with the bridge again. This is more of a context shot that I took last week on Friday from the Cedar Avenue Bridge. The 35W bridge still fills the river. Barge traffic upriver is stopped here. The workmen have built a road out into the Mississippi to haul off the pieces of bridge as they are separated from the pile of debris. Up river you can see the locks normally used for barge traffic, the dam that holds back the river and allows the water level to be lowered for the work, and the stone arch bridge that is a bike and pedestrian crossing of the Mississippi. The Metrodome, home of the Vikings and Twins can be seen off to the left in the distance. The IDS tower can be seen, too. The water downstream from the bridge is muddy and murky, while upstream it is fresher and cleaner.


On the east side of 10th Street, which is the northeast extension of Cedar Avenue, stands this large old apartment building. This is in the heart of the University of Minnesota campus and someone hung out this sign on a sheet. It speaks for itself.


Two other things to report. Herb and I chatted with KS this morning via the internet. She is back from the Miyazaki organic farm and from a week visiting her old friends in Takehara. She can report on her activities herself, and probably will, but I am gratified to know that she is back in Ogaki and in contact with her tousan. She had a good time and likely will share some photos on xanga. She starts teaching English again on Tuesday. She looked marvelous.

The recent tennis activity continued. It was a hot day for tennis, but Jerry scheduled the mixed doubles team to practice in the middle of the day, two p.m. I played two sets before I ran out of water in my water bottle. Using my geezer status and my good sense, I quit. "When I'm out of water, I'm out of here." We had 12 people and used four courts at Highland High School for at least the 90 minutes I was there. I played with Marsha and we split sets with two separate teams, 6-4, 2-6. We are scheduled for 10 a.m. tomorrow, a more civilized hour of the day.

Twin Cities Traffic Signs

I live in St Paul, but this is the Twin Cities, really just one metropolitan area. I have photos of traffic signs from each city for the first of the month theme day. The Minneapolis signs below are nestled among the debris of the 35W bridge, upside down and currently, not of much use. The whole scene is other worldly and the bridge is not of much use.


These signs are on Summit Avenue to announce the bike lanes which are used mainly in the summer, and, below that sign, the reminder for parkers on the street when the snow plows are to be expected after those four inch snows. These are fairly representative of typical activities in St Paul, my fair city.


I played some tennis today with the older gentlemen. We started at 9 a.m. and lasted about 90 minutes. That compares, not well at all, to the four hours that James Blake and Fabrice Santoro played Thursday night in the US Open. Today's big news was the ouster of Maria Sharapova.

It was, and continues to be, top-notch weather here in River City.