Last month, Hubby and I had a free Saturday with nothing planned, which doesn’t happen real often. We decided to go out-and-about to wherever struck our fancy. Erik wanted to visit a site in Minneapolis that he had driven past many times without realizing it existed. Somehow he learned of it and thought I would like to see it. As we drove up to this striking landmark on a hill in a quiet Tangletown neighborhood,…
Last week, I went on a road trip with some of the board members and staff of the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits (MCN). I serve on the board and we were carpooling in a giant van to Fairmont, Minnesota, for a board retreat. Because MCN’s St. Paul office is about two-and-a-half hours from Fairmont by car, we planned to make one pitstop during the drive. Prior to the trip, our parking lot conversation led to…
Last Saturday (August 31), as Hubby and I were trying to decide what to do with our day, he made a suggestion that surprised me. He wanted to visit Fort Snelling National Cemetery. His grandparents are buried there and he’d never been to see their graves. The weather was gorgeous, so the visit was pleasant. Upon arriving, I was struck with how very many white stones there are, all lined up with military precision from…
Forewarning: I touch on politics in this post, so if that isn’t your thing, go ahead and skip this. Author John Scalzi, whose work I’ve read a lot of this year, recently wrote a blog post called “Please Don’t Idolize Me (or Anyone, Really)” in response to people searching for a new creative person to look up to after several allegations of sexual assault surfaced against author Neil Gaiman. If you have a tendency to…
I recently returned to an old fiber arts project that I started probably 20 years ago. It’s not uncommon for artists to have multiple projects going at any one time, or for us to start a project and either set it aside for a [long] while or abandon it altogether. This particular project started with a challenge fabric. I was part of a quilting group at the time and that’s where the challenge came from.…