Sunday, 29 January 2006
Wander the Walker Art Center‘s Minneapolis Sculpture Garden and you will discover that Canada Geese congregate at the pond around the iconic Spoon Bridge (hence not pictured here), making access for admiration or photography, well, fraught with suspense…. Wander deeper into the Garden and you may encounter these lips (part of Judith Shea’s “Without Words,” 1988).
or, in this weather: “Chapped lips“!
Friday, 27 January 2006
One of the fun things about the urban scene is the neon, some of which is totally invisible by day, while at night it dominates your visual scan.
How different, too, is our perception of the city we have seen in daytime when we look at it again with a dark night obscuring so much infrastructure (and structure) from the nighttime landscape.
Pillsbury is one of the iconic brands of American foods, yet mostly it’s relegated to the bottom shelves of your local grocery, maybe appearing in a few so-called women’s magazines in conjunction with a new product (mango muffins anyone?). Here it gets its due, high above Minneapolis.
The newest high-profile resident of downtown Minneapolis: Al Franken (and his lovely—I hear—wife Frannie). And the state’s abuzz with talk about whether Al will run for office soon. I hear the bets are on the 2008 Senate race.
If you haven’t already sampled him and you have a speedy connection to the web, catch Al afternoons from 12-3 on AirAmerica radio (alternatively, you may be in the listening area of a station that actually broadcasts his show!). Sometimes he kinda phones it in, but most of the time he’s pretty engaging. He has some regulars who call in to chat with him. Christy Harvey is one of my favorites; she even has a song that Al sings to her just before she comes on the air! Al always introduces her with her long title: Director for Strategic Communications at The Center for American Progress….
Thursday, 19 January 2006
Fine points of philosophy are beyond me (heck! so are many of the main points!), but I conceive of the world around us as layer upon layer of reality, such that by singling out any particular piece, you falsely eliminate many others.
Last year, the Atlanta Botanical Garden hosted a display of Chihuly glass, and several pieces remained when the exhibit moved on. This one sits in a huge fountain in the most formal garden, which used to be the Rose Garden.