Big Things Happen at the Minnesota State Fair

The Minnesota State Fairgrounds is a pretty photogenic place, even when the crowds aren't there. Back when I attended the university, I lived not far from the fairgrounds. Every late August to early September, the grounds would become a beehive of activity and our entire neighborhood would smell like frying grease for 2 weeks. Yum! The rest of the year, The Fair is open to through traffic, meandering, people learning to drive, and so on. While we were in Minnesota recently, we stopped to take some pictures.


The Gopher is the official mascot and always smiling a welcome!

Less well-known is the Pronto Pup, actually an Oregon invention of a hot dog in pancake mix that is deep fried. Don't confuse the Pronto Pup with the corn dog, please.

This nice statue commemorates Women of Minnesota in the first 100 years of Statehood, 1858-1958.










The Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, a coalition forged by Hubert Humphrey, has a pavilion at the fair. I can only imagine what a party name like that does to the likes of Sarah "I tried being a governor for a while but I didn't really like it that much, ya know" Palin. Part of the great socialist takeover of the country...





Here's a place to dine if you want to understand the meaning of food, I guess. The Fair has a lot of good, solid, farmer-type places to get too much food for not too much money. I remember turkey dinners served up with all the trimmings for a couple bucks. Minnesota is the top turkey producing state in the country according to Minnesota Turkey. They report 250 "family" farms produced 49 million turkeys in 2008. Let's see, 250 into roughly 50 million, why that's almost 200,000 gobblers per farm! Hard to believe that's a "family" farm...

The Fair has not yet succumbed to the poutine rage sweeping North America, as you can see by fries and curds being sold at separate, but adjacent stands. I noticed that there was room for a narrow gravy stand between the two buildings, providing the vital connection.











I think a stand called "Jack's Can-O-Gravy" would be just the trick!


All-in-all, it was fun to visit The Fair, even if it wasn't fair time.

A Night Out in Minneapolis: Dinner at Nye's Polonaise Room

As you know if this isn't your first time Looking at Life, me and Dolly-girl like to head out to swanky places to tie on the feedbag. Now, if you've been giving Looking at Life the once over twice or thrice recently, then you know that me and her took the Empire Builder to the Twins and then on to Big Windy as I had some people that needed talking with in the former, and pals-o-ours live in the latter. Being as how it was gonna be a holiday weekend, it made a good time to go. First stop, The Twins on Big Muddy. Turned out it was a treat to beat our feet there.



The Twin Cities, as the Twin Cities are known by the people who live there, have always been known for ingenuity. After all, people there figured out how to live in a place that's colder than a well digger's ass in winter and hotter than mock duck on a charcoal fire in the summer. Dolly-girl spotted this example of the pioneer spirit that makes Minnesota what it is today, a State of Survival. Voilà, the Pedal Pub! What could be better than pedaling your way around the city with a group of friends while drinking beer? We looked for, but didn't spot, the Pedal Potty that must be following close behind. By the looks of their web page, the programmer has been spending too much time pedaling with the customers...



Anyhoo, turns out old Jack knows a thing or three about The Twins--I took some correspondence training in order to get my license in order way back when in order to do correspondence training you had to sit in the classroom. Yep, Jack's a Golden Gopher from way back.




There happened to be another denizen at the sit-down I was at. He suggested we might just want to head on over to Nordeast Minneapolis and renew our acquaintance with Nye's, recently named one of ten bars men should drink in before they die, and its equally famous Polonaise Room. Soon as Dolly-girl got a wiff of the possibility of a cultural experience, she was gamer than an October pheasant in South Dakota. We headed out.



Nye's has been on the corner for a long time. There's a sign on the building that points the way to Our Lady of Lourdes. I'm guessing the priest had a chat with Al shortly after he changed Heffron's to Nye's in 1950. Dolly-girl took one gander at the joint, rolled her greenies, and declared, "As I live and breathe, it's a little bit of Wilkes-Barre right here in Minnesoooota!" We slid in the door and eyed up a table near the back, close to the mandatory "Wall of Mirrors."
We were greeted at the door by the hostess, Evie Radke, who's been there longer than a Twinkie in a health food store. The joint was empty--the Twins were playing the Yankees over at the ball yard--but she was on duty and ready for action. As we walked by, we heard Nye's motto uttered, "Jedzcie pijcie i popuszczajcie pas!" Rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? "Eat, drink, and loosen your belt!"




Some of my people were already there, knocking back the Nordeasters. Missy stopped by, gave us the whaddya-wants and asked, "whaddaya-want?" We joined them. I ordered a Premium ("Local legends aren’t just born, they’re brewed") and Dolly-girl had her usual, a skid-row biancho. "Ice in that?"











She was back in a flash with the drinks. We relaxed, yakked with the other Firecrackers, and nursed our drinks. Missy stopped by with the plate of rabbit food and an onion roll. "What's yours, missy?" asked Missy.




Dolly-girl was happy to be there, but Polish food was never ringing her bell--too much exposure as a "yout" back where the Bianchis set the brake on her pram. "Bring me that fish youse catch out here--what's it? Walled Eyed Pike?" Wow, I hadn't heard her say "youse" since "weese" were back in Pennsylvania. "We just call 'em walleyes, honey. Baked, mashed, or rice?" She turned to me. The D'Mestiere familia comes from a town where gnocchi and golabki rubbed elbows every day. I was going back and forth between them and the Polonaise Plate. Missy tapped her pen on her order pad...tap, tap, tap. No one else in the place to order, but my ordering was out of the ordinary and definitely out of order. "Golabki." "You won't be sorry." "Bring me a splash of the cabbage and kielbasa too." "Good choice." "And cowfeed." "A trip through the garden? You goin' all healthy here?" "Thousand Island." "Gotcha. 'Nother Premie?" "You betcha." She was off to the kitchen like Betty Crocker on new recipe day.






The soup was thick (or is that tick) and tasty--just the right mix of cabbage and sausage and thickened up with who-knows-what, but it was the right stuff. Probably had gluten in it. Salad was salad. Dolly-girl nibbled at it but said no to a spoon of the splash. She shot one through the wave that said "I wouldn't eat that if we were in a raft in the ocean..." Oh, well, more for me!




A trio of older women and a younger guy--maybe someone's son ("In fact, I'd bet ANYTHING he is SOMEONE'S son," Dolly-girl said)--were at the table next to us. They'd been there before from the looks of the talk between them and Missy. They wanted some Kodaks so they passed the Brownie over and I did the honors. I think they wanted to be in the Chopin Room--the upscale dining room--but it wasn't open. They had to sit with us and the Firecrackers, who by now were whoopin' it up on the Nordeasters and sausage.




The walled-eyed pike hit the spot for Dolly-girl and the mashed murphies were the real thing. As was the golabki. The cabbage was wrapped tight around the perfectly spiced meat. A boiled potato was the "no-choice side" (I would have been afraid to ask for a substitution). There was so much there I couldn't finish, so Missy boxed the last one up for breakfast. I could see the greenies roll through the wave.



Missy checked back in to see if anyone was saving room for an extra couple thousand calories in the form of cheesecake. Some did. I was still full of cabbage and meat, but not too full for a Nordeaster.

I happened to notice on my way to the you-know-where, a nice bowling shirt, featuring the Nye's martini glass logo. Knowing Slim and Nunzio would die of envy, I decided to bring one home! Here, a rarely pictured Jack shows off my new garb! Turn green, Slim!



Well, the night was over. We waddled out into a gigantic thunderstorm, stood under the canopy, and chatted with our waitress, who was headed home due to the slow night. The rain wasn't letting up, so we hailed a cab back to our hotel. Good thing, if those cabbage rolls had started to roll, I'd rolled all the way to The Big Windy! Dolly-girl just shook her head. We left happy; Nye's is an experience that shouldn't be missed and we didn't.

An Afternoon Out in the Big Windy: Public Art in Chicago

We had a chance to visit Chicago recently. After an all-week meeting in Minneapolis, Nancy and I headed southeast on the Empire Builder for Memorial Day weekend with friends Diane and Ric. The timing was perfect: the weather was glorious and the weekend fit into my crazy work travel schedule. I have to say, I was astounded by the city. After years of flying, driving, and training through it, I stopped to look around. This post is about public art, which abounds, starting with the skyline itself.


We headed to Millennium Park which is dominated by some major installations, like Frank Gehry's Jay Pritzker Pavilion. Jay was a local rich guy, started Hyatt Hotels and all sorts of other stuff. I thank him, and other rich Chicagoians for their generosity, although I'd prefer it was called the Millennium Pavilion, or something like that. And, it does take the edge off a little knowing that Jay didn't exactly tread lightly on the earth or her people.

The BP Bridge leads to the pavilion (it's in the foreground of the first picture in the post). It seemed slippery to me, maybe someone spilled some oil or something...




Cloud Gate, Chicago's bean, was next. It's a magnificent polished stainless steel installation that offers reflections of the skyline, the sun, the moon, clouds, people, birds--basically anything that happens by. I don't think many people call it Cloud Gate, named by its creator, Anish Kapoor. Everybody seems to call it the bean.









You can walk under the bean and the reflections get really cool in there. You can click on these photos to enlarge them. See if you can see Nancy and Diane. Ric is in front of them. I'm above and to the right of Nancy's left shoulder. The one with the camera.

In the center of the underside of the bean, what we plant people would call the hilum (where the seed was attached to the funiculus), the reflections get really complex and contorted. I guess it's like one is looking into the creation of the bean...







Go around the corner from the bean, and you come upon the spitting fountains. Actually, they are called the Crown Fountain (because Lester Crown, another rich guy, paid for it) by Jaume Plensa. The faces change, and after a while, they spit water out on the kids playing in the fountain.







The Painted Forest, created by Moore Landscapes and the Chicago Park District. Back in my TREGRO days, building and using simulation models of trees, we used to joke about the "forests" we created. We should have taken it this one step farther, I guess...









We wandered past the Art Institvte of Chicago Bvilding, which is gvarded by 2 big lions, and apparently proof-read by Romans. The lions have a habit of sporting hats (or chapeavs) when Chicago pro teams are in the finals of this or that playoff or series. The Blackhawks (Go Hawks!) are in the Stanley Cvp finals so the lions were sporting hockey helmets.










Moose (W-02-03) is what's left in a plaza near the Chicago Trib building. Until recently, a sculpture that was wildly popular with everyone but art critics, dominated the scene. However, God Bless America, a sculpture that recreated American Gothic, was removed. It was part of J. Seward Johnson’s “Icons Revisited” project. Which seems pretty cool to me. Anyhoo, all that's left now is the moose, which is made of old bumpers and other car parts and is pretty cool himself.


We went into the very cool Carbide and Carbon Building, a great example of Art Deco.











Finally, what's more fun than neon signs? Chicago has a ton of them.

Here are a couple near Diane and Ric's. They live just a block or two south of Andersonville, the historical Swedish immigrant neighborhood. Simon's is a Swedish bar; Philadelphia Church is not Lutheran.

And, of course, a church of baseball...








To top off the evening, we went to a poetry slam at the Green Mill, a joint that looks pretty much like it did when Scarface Capone was hanging out there. It's a good thing we left Jack and Dolly-girl back at the B&B; there coulda been Trouble...

Shake, Rattle, & Read was just down the street.

Dispatch from the Empire Builder: Portland, Oregon

As we pulled into Union Station in Portland, two announcements could be heard simultaneously.

From the speaker on the platform outside: "Now arriving, Train 27, the Empire Builder, from Chicago, Minneapolis, Minot, Havre, Whitefish, and Spokane."

On board the train: "This is the last and final station stop for the Empire Builder, Portland, Oregon...

D'Mestiere out.

Dispatch from the Empire Builder: This Must Be The Spot ...

... Where Gus and Woodrow were headed in Lonesome Dove

Dispatch from the Empire Builder: An Afternoon Shower Near Cut Bank, MT

The prairie is beautiful this afternoon as webs of rain fall from a few low
clouds. The smell of fresh rain on new grass even makes it through the air
conditioning. What a grand day it has been to watch the plains slip by ...

Dispatch from the Empire Bulder: A Rainy Morning Near Devil's Lake, ND

Water makes the potholes and most everyone has some sort of bird in it.

Dispatch from the Empire Builder: Minnesota Nocturne

Dusk. I'll be watching for Trouble like Gene Wilder in Silver Streak ...