all that's past is prologue...

Besides a bad back ache that's got me popping the advil like skittles, I'm feeling pretty mad-domestically-skilled right now. Last night, I used foraged mulberries from Summit to make mulberry vodka and a mulberry shrub, both of which you can taste in about 4 weeks once they mature. I used nanny berries from the tree there to make a coffeecake, and cooked up several quarts of rhubarb simple-syrup (I really need my own rhubarb plant next year so I stop foraging firm everyone else's). Today, in reading about Iceland, I realized that I really needed some better hiking pants that were more water-repellant — but I don't have the time or the cash to just run down to Patagonia. Patrick had a few pairs in the clothing exchange bag, however. So I grabbed a pair, pegged them along the inner seams, darted the waist, and took them up (they're still a leeetle long, but that's because I decided partway through that measuring was for chumps). Not bad for a quick project,

Last year, at about this time, friends of mine posted about their backup meal under the Lowry bridge when "Dinner in White" was cancelled due to rain. "Dinner in White," I thought, "What's that?" And so began my fascination. Here's the story of how the whole thing started, should you want to fall down the rabbit hole the way I did. In the Twin Cities, it's simpler — join the Facebook group (I think I needed an invitation to do so, IIRC), plan for the night, wait for the announcement of the site, show up. Patrick was a little bit of a hard sell on it. But when Beatrix was invited to a sleepover that night, and I would not stop talking about it, he went out and bought a white shirt from UpSix Vintage, and graciously agreed. It was our first year so we kept it simple. Just us, a folding table, 2 chairs, and a bag with some good alfresco food, a tablecloth, china, flower arrangement, candles. The site was announced — the Stone Arch bridge!

Last night I went to a presentation of the results from a historic survey conducted in a nearby Saint Paul neighborhood. It was generally a good presentation, with a lot of historic photos and some good rationale for areas for further study within the community. One thing that really hit me, though, was the study's focus on demographic data. In many cases, the presenter would out up a slide of a house, call it the "SwensonJohnsonAnderson House," (for the original owners, which is standard preservation practice), and give a fair amount of detail about the owners, culled from sources such as the census, the Dual City Blue Books, and other demographic data  — along the lines of "Mr. SwensonJohnsonAnderson was a clerk for the Northern Pacific Railroad, whose family had emigrated to America from Sweden at the turn of the century." To some extent, I understand this impulse. I know that the SHPO and Saint Paul HPC offices have asked for similar information from me

This month, for her book club (four ten-year old girls who have had a book club since kindergarten, it's pretty awesome, Beatrix picked my friend Kelly's book Magic, Madness, and Mischief.  She and I had discussed it, and she wanted to read it because she knew Kelly, she was excited the book was set in Saint Paul, and she thought it would be cool to have her book club meet Kelly and ask him about the book (the fact we met in the cat cafe in Menomonie probably helped a little too). Patrick, Beatrix and I read it aloud, round-robin style, which we have not done before — but we all wanted to experience the book. And I have to admit there were several times when I was glad my chapter twas over, because I was getting really choked up. The books is a pretty thinly-veiled story of Kelly's own youth, at begins just at the time I met him (yes, I've known him for that long). The characters, and experiences, and especially the emotions brought back extraordinarily real memorie