all that's past is prologue...

NOLA Thanksgiving in the books. Started the day with pumpkin pie. Auspicious. A morning spent walking around the Bywater, checking out the houses, meeting a woman opening a new coffee place on Poland Street, talking to a guy rehabbing a house. Thinking and dreaming. (her Grand Opening is tomorrow morning, meet us there?) Wandering around City Park (sculpture garden was closed) Off to the racetrack. The horses were great, the hats were better. Wandered around the Garden District. Fantastic Thanksgiving dinner at Lulu Distillery. French 75s at the mothership (honestly, Patrick's are better but these were lovely). Remembered eating there with my mom when I was 5. Hotel Monteleone but no room at the Carousel Bar. That's ok. Time with family. Much to be thankful for. Everyone was friendly as we walked around, wishing us a happy Thanksgiving. And it's warm and everyone is vaccinated and it feels great to be here.

I have a lot to say about our trip so far. And it's been an incredible few days. But here, the most important thing, is that absolutely everywhere I go I feel safe because of this: NOLA is a city based on tourism. It's crucial for its survival, and it is incredibly evident, everywhere in the city, how much the past few years have ravaged this place. But I really wish everywhere else in the country, including my hometown, had this kind of guts.

Tonight we went to the Upper School fall play — Peter and the Starcatcher . It was the first Upper School time back on the stage since November of 2019; the middle school had the last musical with Dear Edwina just days before the shutdown, and they were the first back to the stage this fall. So when I saw Seves afterwards and told him "I would call that a triumphant return to the stage!" I meant it. Yes, the performers were all masked, and the audience is masked and distanced, and there's still kind of a sense of restraint, but it was glorious to see them perform. Every theater I know is struggling with that as they go back. It seems perilous to perform, and houses are not full in general. But the sense of fighting for it remains, and as I said to Erin Murphy in a call yesterday, this is the joy that might save us. I was so glad to be there for a piece of that tonight. Tomorrow we leave to go to New Orleans (if you are a creeper stalking this blog, we have a house-sitter...

You'll have to forgive me for double posting, because to some extent I have posted about this before. But today was the day we finally got all the stacks of pictures off of the landing and hung on the walls. We had hung many earlier this year, but kept running out of steam, and lost impetus as to where to put them. So they waited. But now the front stairway is finding its shape. As is the back staircase. And the family photo wall. We still have to print some photos and put them in the rack there and in this frame (sort of a changing gallery.) We even got some pieces up in our bedroom! It felt really good to get this done, along with some picking up and general futzing with things that have been bothering me for awhile. I guess when Viv disused "overcoming obstacles" in yoga today she was right!

I was musing on this as I was #coronacleaning up the back yard this morning — covering the furniture, digging out the dead annuals, planting bulbs last minute like a squirrel (2 weeks ago I was lovingly layering them and putting in bone meal and measuring and such, today I was digging holes and tossing them in and what do you want to bet these will look better?) I was offered 2 sets of theater tickets to shows I wanted to see this weekend — A Christmas Carol at the Guthrie and the tour of Oklahoma at the Orpheum. In both cases I had to turn them down because there was too much packed into the weekend already. But I am not sure I made the right choice. I wonder if seeing one of those shows would have been better for (Beatrix's and my) mental health than poop-scooping the yard. But the poop-scooping needed to get done, and needed to get done now. I don't think any of us like the pandemic changes. I suppose a few — like a new appreciation for Taylor Swift, or more time with fami...

It was a fantastic weekend full of get-togethers with friends, the Circus Juventas Gala, yoga, yard cleaning, beer outside, a clothing exchange, and more (perhaps more on all of those later!) But the most unusual event of the weekend was doing indoor sky diving with Beatrix's Girl Scout troop! The whole thing was pretty great. The girls had a 90-minute zoom class talking about the science of skydiving, which was very well-done. (yes, zoom fatigue is real, but the instructor seemed to keep them in check) Then we all met out at the Ifly center in Richfield to actually do the skydiving. Each person got two sessions — once in the tube to generally get acclimated, where you are suspended about 5' and the instructor helps you get acclimated. On the second run there's a "high fly" where you go up about 20' with the instructor! Turns out circus girls are generally good at it... I still don't think I'm jumping out of a plane anytime soon, but I'm glad I ga...

Sometimes, you just get a bug in your bonnet and have to stop working early so you can clean the bathroom.  Especially when you are incited by getting a big basket off the free board. Before: After: Before: After: More room for the new stuff I got when I went to my friend Lana's tonight to talk about Trixie Belden books!

It's Election Day tomorrow. I hope you're voting (or have already voted), most of all. I'm happy to talk to you about why I am making the choices for mayor and school board that I am. But this post is why I'm voting no on the "rent stabilization" ordinance, despite the fact that affordable housing is extremely important to me, and is the reason I got into historic preservation as a community planning tool in the first place years ago. Yes, I'm a landlord, so you would assume that we might have an incentive to vote "no." One reason we have the properties that we have is so that we are able to help people out by renting at below-market rents. I understand that this is not the usual business model, and that maybe we are the *only* ones in the city of Saint Paul who do that. But it means that, as it stands, should something happen to our current tenants or with the properties, we could raise our rents somewhere between $12-30 a month. This is not sus...