Saturday reflections

I took this picture as we were trying to navigate our way out of the car rental lot at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport in June. I liked the abstract weirdness of that grid and the reflections on the car.

More downtown Minneapolis

Another picture I never got around to posting from Minneapolis: the Wells Fargo Center, designed by César Pelli.

Though the Art Deco design looks very early 20th century, it was actually completed in 1988.

Saturday reflections

 

Downtown Minneapolis, in 2022.

I'll be back in Minneapolis Tuesday, though only for a quick overnight at an airport hotel before heading west on a road trip early Wednesday morning.

Saturday reflections

Continuing with cleaning out the old folders: the Depot Rink Train Shed in Minneapolis, two summers ago.

Saturday reflections

The stadium in Minneapolis last summer.

Saturday reflections

Here's a flashback: an inlet on the Mississippi River in Minneapolis last summer.

Saturday reflections

Okay, a little late. COVID and all the usual winter viruses are running rampant through the Saturday English program; my classes were canceled and I slept for eighteen hours.

This is Foshay Street in Minneapolis last summer.

Saturday reflections

The US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis is supposed to suggest a Viking ship. (I have seen actual Viking ships and don't really see the resemblance.) But I do love the way it reflects the streets of downtown Minneapolis below.

Urban poetry

Say it is the serenade
Of a man that plays a blue...piano.

In Mill Ruins Park.

Speaking of mills

The Gold Medal Flour sign sits atop the grain elevators of one of the defunct mills in Mill Ruins Park; that mill complex is a National Historic Landmark. The sign was unlit for more than thirty years after the mill closed in 1965, and was restored in 2000.

You can just see the Pillsbury's Best Flour sign in the other picture. That's also an old mill complex, across the river from Mill Ruins Park, but this one is being converted to artist's lofts.

Mill Ruins Park

This park along the Mississippi contains the ruins of several abandoned flour mills. I didn't really explore much because I was hot and sunburned after walking across the river.

Farewell to Minnesota

This is the bridge over the Mississippi River a few blocks from my hotel. I walked over it on Friday afternoon, and it was hot, and there was no shelter from the sun. I quickly wished that I had a hat—or that I had remembered to put on sunscreen.

It's going to be over a hundred degrees here today, so I am getting out of town in the nick of time.

Minnehaha Falls

The waterfall the park is named for.

Though Longfellow never visited this waterfall, he stole the name for the heroine of his poem The Song of Hiawatha. I still shudder remembering our awful sing-songy recitations of portions of that masterwork in grammar school: 

By the shores of Gitche Gumee,
By the shining Big-Sea-Water,
Stood the wigwam of Nokomis,
Daughter of the Moon, Nokomis.

But the waterfall, and the park, are lovely.

Sunday bird blogging

I did see a bald eagle today, but it was on the other side of the Mississippi River so I have no photographic evidence. All I can offer is this pair of grackles in the creek below the falls at Minnehaha Park.

Saturday reflections

And now, Greetings from Minneapolis!

This is the Two22 Tower, formerly known as the Campbell Mithun Tower, in downtown Minneapolis.

I took this picture from the observation deck of the Foshay Building, an interesting Art Deco spire built in 1929. That's the building you can see in this reflection.