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.

My favorite silhouettes

It is theme day and I'm using three photos from last year on September 11, taken by Unky Herb. They should be viewed listening to this music by the Diamonds.

Silhouette number two, shortly, very shortly, after number one.

Silhouette number three taken very shortly after number two.  Again, very shortly.

And a really large flag with PW for scale.

And that's theme day for another month.

Last Friday in the week

It's nearly the end of September and thus the end of the third quarter of the year. My tennis log is filling up, but I've been putting off calculating and summing up. That part of it will wait for another day. After tomorrow's session I will have played on 14 of September's days - not bad for having spent a week in Michigan and a couple of weekends in the northland. I guess I'm satisfied with that.

 Today at Marie Courts we had a foursome, including the visitor from Arizona who was pictured here yesterday. After playing two sets in nearly perfect, windless weather, one of the guys reminded us that we'd decided to go to Summit Brewery in St Paul on the first day that they could legally sell and serve beer at the brewery. There used to be a Minnesota statute forbidding that practice, but it was changed in the last tumultuous session of the legislature. Summit brews its beer in a business park near highway 35E and Shephard Road. We sat in their patio, had a beer (Summit Extra Pale Ale), and reanalyzed our tennis styles among other idle chit-chat. It was a pleasant way to spent one of the last really nice days of September.

It's been a hard week of tennis and I think I need a couple of days off to recover. Next week will be a bit slower and probably a bit more varied.

The trees across the pond from the tennis courts at Marie Park are changing color. The chlorophyl is retreating leaving only the colored sugary cells.

I had a phone conversation with the Prairie Princess today. She's arrived at her field work station in Amani Nature Preserve, but it appears to be without internet. So I guess she may only be reachable by telephone until sometime in December. Unless she finds a way to get to the internet. I checked with my long distance phone provider and they quoted a price of $6.48 a minute to talk to Tanzania without a special plan. They had a cheaper rate to sign up for ($5 a month plus $.49 per minute when calling). Even that seems pretty pricey. I'm sure going to miss iChat and Skype over the next two and a half months.

Tennis, Tennis

It was another really nice day in the Saintly City. It was a day custom made for a bit of tennis, and luckily, my old tennis buddy and nemesis is in town for the upcoming Hamline Homecoming and various alumni activities. That Hamline stuff isn't until next week, so today we went to Linwood Park and smacked some balls at each other. I guess we're getting older and maybe not quite as quick on our feet, but we got around the courts pretty well and managed to play two full sets of our favorite game. Then to prove that we were there, we took pictures and here I am posting a photo of Rich after a bit of competition.  He even worked up a bit of perspiration.

It's a two session day. I'm off to play a little competitive tennis in a bit with Jerry and the hard core girls. I guess that might be called re-tennis.

Life is good.

Great grandparents

Sometimes I like to get out the old photos and look at them, maybe think about how much different the really old times were about than what is now before us. I have three photos of G.L. Jones - grandma Melissa's dad - from various times in his life. He lived a long and varied life, blacksmith, soldier in the Civil War, newspaper editor, father, husband, and much else that I'm not cognizant of. He lived until he was 97 and died in an old soldier's home in Washington state.

George L Jones (January 26, 1834 - April 1, 1931) taken about 1880. (I'm guessing)

George L Jones in 1919. He was 85 at the time of the photo.

George L Jones as an even older man (1930??)

I have only this picture of Jennie Jones. Her real name was Sarah, but she wrote for the newspapers as Jennie. She died in 1883 at the age of 43, mere months after the birth of her youngest daughter, Melissa Sylvia Jones, my own grandma.

Jennie Jones (March 1, 1840 - June 9, 1883).

Extra added details (10:50 Wednesday night):

This bit gets some of G.L. Jones' life up to about 1902 when he was 68.

"G. L. Jones was born in Cassville, Grant Co., Wisconsin., in 1834, and moved to Menomonie, Dunn County, in 1852. In 1858 he went to Texas with five other young men. At the breaking out of civil war his companions entered the rebel army but he made his escape to the north leaving several hundred dollars worth of property which he lost. He enlisted as a private in the union army, served three years and was mustered out an orderly sergeant. He survives eleven relatives who served in the union army. After the war he located at Bloomer, Chippewa Co., Wisconsin., and carried on a blacksmith and wagon shop until 1880 when his health failed and he engaged in newspaper work. He owned and edited newspapers in Bloomer, Chippewa Falls and Shell Lake, this state, and always retained his individuality, without bowing to party, church, rings, or bossism. It is his especial pride that during his twenty years as a newspaper man he never did any saloon advertising and never voted for saloon licenses. He sold his paper at Shell Lake over two years ago and moved onto a homestead in Burnett county. One son, John E. Jones, is not yet weaned from newspaper life. He is editor of the Washburn Times and also postmaster at that place. Another son, E. James Jones, has abandoned his trade as a printer for the delights of homesteading adjoining his father's place. A daughter, Miss Melissa, is one of the popular teachers of the county. A step-daughter, Mrs. Amy Huth, lives a few miles east of him, and with his children thus close around him he is spending the happiest days of his life. He has great faith in the future of Burnett county and is ever ready to help the home seeker secure a place to his liking. His post office address is Weblake, Burnett county, Wisconsin. He has an excellent opportunity to engage in the raising of cranberries and at the present time the spring brooks on his farm are filled with hundreds of speckled trout. The visitor who stops there for a few hours wonders how any man can live in a great city after having seen how Jones and his family enjoy the pleasures of backwoods life."

page 118. - Official Report of Burnett County Board of Immigration, Concerning the Resources of Burnett County, Wisconsin. 1902. The Journal Print, Grantsburg, Wisconsin.

Shadow tennis

After a nice weekend, most of it spent somewhere near Grand Rapids, I came home for a full week's schedule of tennis. Today there were five mostly retired gents at Marie Park. Five is a hard number to work into a tennis rotation, but we've come to this scheme [why isn't scheme spelled with a "k"?] where the fifth wheel rotates onto the court after every complete game, so that each gent sits out every fifth game. The server is always on the south end of the court so that he doesn't have to look into the sun, and we keep score of the games as though it was north side vs south side. Today the south (always the server) won 11-2. Then Tennis Dennis had to go home and we played a set of men's doubles.   Did I say that it was an absolutely beautiful day?

That's what I'm going to call shadow tennis.

On the way home from my exotic tennis session, I noticed once again that it's political funny season and lawn signs are springing up everywhere. I drove past a sign in Mendota heights that screamed "Jesse!" at passersby. "Who is that?" one wondered. I slowed and saw that it was an old lawn sign for Jesse Ventura and Mae Schunk for Minnesota governor and lieutenant governor from 1998, when Jesse unexpectedly was elected guv of Minnesota. I guess whoever put up the sign is nostalgic for the good old days. I'm sorry that I didn't have my camera ready, but I may go back for photographic backup.

The trees are getting closer to turning bright colors again. This little body of water is somewhere between Nashwauk and Keewatin and some of the surrounding trees are surrendering to their colorful fate.  The equinox has passed and the harvest moon is expected this weekend.

Potpourri

My memory is not good enough to know if I've posted this photo before. I looked around a little in the blog history and couldn't find it. I even tried the google image search to no avail. So I'm posting this photo of the circa 1930 G.E. Miller family including Dutch, the dog. It's the whole family except the eldest son, George (Bob), who likely was behind the camera. Does everyone know which one is Jane? Charles? Tom? Betty? John, Melissa? The old guy is George Eugene, of course.

It was my third straight day of indoor tennis. It's actually pretty nice to be playing inside. There's no wind and the sun is never in your eyes when you serve and when you hit overhead smashes. We played at Fort Snelling today. The thing that has been added to the indoor courts in about the last year is a new set of lines painted on the court. The game has been modified so that little kids have an easier time mastering the mechanics. They have a shorter court, so that the serve has a much better chance of getting over the net. There are a few other changes for little kids - shorter and lighter rackets, and softer balls that don't bounce as high and that can't be blasted so hard that little people can't hit them back.

The main reason we played tennis inside today is that the weather turned noticeably colder. Some of the weather wizards are predicting an inch or so of snow in the state this weekend, but probably mostly in the north. Tomorrow is the equinox - the day that daylight and night time are supposedly the same length of time. Because I know that light hangs around quite a while after sunset, the actual equality of light and dark is somewhat in doubt.

The sumacs are turning red.

A trip to the DVS

These are the current tennis nets at Hamline on the courts that I used to play in 1961-1965. The courts used to be concrete, but they have been upgraded in the 47 years since I left.  They even have supplied nice white benches for the players to sit during the change of sides on the odd numbered games.

I went to the DVS today to get my driver's license renewed. It's a once every four years thing, but it's always just a bit stressful. I always wonder if I'll still be able pass the eye test, and then there is the dreadful photo that they take of you that you have to carry around to show people for the next four years. I got a pleasant enough guy to handle the renewal process. We even joked a bit about the eye test and the photo. He said that he was jealous of my ability to read the top line of the eye test contraption. He has to wear glasses. I commiserated. And he let me look at the photo and gave me editorial control. It was digital and he'd take another one if I didn't like the first. The photo wasn't so bad, and my ego has long ago recognized that I'm no longer 30 years old. I went with the first try. That's done. I'm glad that piece of stressful activity is in the rear view mirror.

There was tennis tonight.  Indoor season has begun.  I played at Wooddale with Jerry and the hard core girls in a continuation of the mixed doubles tussles that we've been having the last few years.  It was competitive and fun and I realized again how much I appreciate that I'm able yet to play well enough to keep them willing to try again and again to beat me.  They're successful enough of the time and it's always a struggle until the last set finishes.

My tax money at work

I guess autumn has begun to invade this land. The temperature dropped to 43 this morning and rose briefly to 61 in the "heat" of the day. I turned my home heating system back on.

I visited Como Park for a rest day walk and a chance to explore a bit. I like to see what kind of changes the powers that be are making to my favorite park. I walked part way around the lake and then thought I'd go to the Conservatory and see what sort of flower show was in session. The signs suggested a summer flower show and I was curious to see what they had.

There were a couple of changes on the way over Lexington and past the labyrinth. They have finished restoring the pool area just past the Lexington pedestrian bridge. For many years the pool was dry and the concrete was cracked. This summer enough money was available to get the pool into the condition in the photo below. It seems to be a big improvement.

And then before reaching the Conservatory I came across a sign announcing the restoration of the Friedrich Schilling statue that greets people as they enter the park. It's been there since 1905, and it has apparently fallen deeply into disrepair. They have a restoration specialist working on making it good again. The specialists have taken it off its pedestal. Here is photo of the statue last year.  Schiller was an important German philosopher, poet and playwright who died in 1805.

There was also work going on on expanding the Japanese garden near the Conservatory using Ordway money, but that won't be done until the spring of 2013.

The Conservatory flower show was pretty good but anticlimactic.  The flowers - roses, hibiscus, sunflowers, etc - are still in bloom outside.  I have included one photo anyhow.

September is more than half gone and we're just a few days from the equinox again (September 22).  Soon enough I'll be pining for sweet September.

Home is good, too

Unky Herb and I are safely back in the saintly city. He arrived about 9:30. I haven't calculated his average speed, but he didn't indicate any speeding tickets. The GFTNC also is safely back in the north country with the good dog, Magster.  I'm happy to be home after a lovely week by the big lake with Santini and company.