The White Haze

Winters in the south are just like a really, really long fall that doesn't ever quite get to winter. There are hints that winter might just be around the corner but it just never quite makes it. We didn't have to turn on the heat until December and the air conditioning has been known to be on in March.

Thankfully, we been able to return home to Minnesota/Wisconsin each winter and it hasn't disappointed in giving us a good strong taste of winter and what we were missing. I typically go through a series of emotions from "isn't winter wonderful?" to "SNOW!!!" to "how do people live here?" to when we return home "isn't it nice to be able to wash your car in January?"

During our visit we drove from the Twin Cities to Rochester, MN to visit some friends just after a snowstorm had blown through. This was at the "SNOW!!!" stage of my love of winter and it reminded me how beautifully desolate the Midwest can be and how the early Scandinavian settlers must have felt a little bit at home staring out into the white haze on the ground and in the sky. 

A Trip Down The Hill

My first time sledding in what has to be 10 years. I'm glad I got to experience snow this winter. As I write this wearing shorts in the middle of January it is 63 degrees outside. The most winter we've had here is a frost on the car windows a day or two.

My Favorite Christmas Album

I finally got the old record player up and ready and so as we get closer to Christmas it is time to dust off my favorite holiday album, Stan Boreson and Doug Setterberg's "Yust Go Nuts At Christmas." Released in 1970, this album brings back so many memories of Christmas in Wisconsin and Minnesota and enjoying a piece pickled herring and some lefse covered in butter and sugar. 

Boreson's singing style also honors the great and strong Scandinavian accents that you hear less and less each year as people have more and more distance from their European ancestral roots. Living down in Georgia now I miss the opportunity to hear some interchange a "V" and a"W." 

Here's the title track:



And my favorite song overall from the album, "Christmas Goose (Snowbird)":

Visiting the Ukrainian Gift Shop in Minnesota

While Laura and I were up in Minnesota in July we made our first trip to the Ukrainian Gift Shop in Roseville, MN. We went hoping to get some pysanky supplies to maybe give decorative egg design another go and did we ever hit the motherload! They had so many great pysanky eggs on display.

It's not the kind of store that gets too many customers that the owners didn't know personally and so they had a few questions as to why we were there. We explained that we had lived in Ukraine last year and we soon became fast friends. We got a little tour of the shop and even got to see some pysanky being made. 

We did also find all the supplies we would ever need.

On one wall they had a wooden painting of Ukrainian poet Taras Shevchenko...who I've written about many many times.

They even had a small profile bust of Taras that I bought. It was some very old stock and was originally made in Russia before the fall of Communism based on the tag on the piece.

The Things You See Between St. Paul and Des Moines

Regularly driving between Lawrence, Kansas and Minnesota/Wisconsin you end up seeing quite a few odd things. During our latest trip we witnessed a car driving along the wrong side of the interstate and further down the road we saw this odd view coming towards us. Is that a cannon?

It sure was a cannon and the type that shoots clowns rather than cannon balls.

The El Riad Shrine Circus is based out of Souix Falls, South Dakota and have been around since 1888. Thanks for giving us a story to tell on our long drive!

Abandoned Fairgrounds

My last post was about the Minnesota State Fair and fittingly my first post in over a month and a half is again about the fairgrounds.  A few weeks ago I headed to the state fairgrounds in Minneapolis to buy a few books...more on that in a moment...I had never been to the grounds when the fair was not in full swing and so this was an interesting and slightly creepy experience.  Here is the haunted house with no one in sight. 

The Space Tower.

The Cheese Curd stand that usually has customers lined up to the street is sad and boarded up.  It just wasn't right. 

The point of my visit was to go to Half Price Books clearance sale which was at the fairgrounds Grand Stand. There are six stores located around the Twin Cities area and so I imagine that they produce a lot of clearance items over the course of the year. 

Their set up was pretty impressive and there was no book, movie, or CD over $3.  The items weren't organized in any particular order and so the book you might be looking for could be a foot away from you and you would never know it.  And as you can see it was very busy that day and it was almost too much to take in but that being said I certainly didn't leave empty handed.  

Political Buttons From The Minnesota State Fair

Since I grew up in the northwest part of Wisconsin I've attended the Minnesota State Fair in Minneapolis instead of the Wisconsin State Fair which takes place on the east side of the state outside of Milwaukee. My favorite booths to always make a stop at are the political booths in order pick up the pins they have for sale. So even though I would never be able to vote in Minnesota elections I have many, many pins from Minnesota candidates.  Here is my haul this year.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the DFL already selling "Hillary 2016" pins so I had to pick one up.

They had some Obama pins for sale that they already had but this one featuring Obama and the other Democratic presidents was something I hadn't seen before.  It's interesting to me because they include Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, and John Quincy Adams in the history of the Democratic Party when they were actually members of the Democratic-Republican Party. And although there is "Democrat" in their party's name they were more commonly referred to as "Republicans" at the time. Later the Democrat side would split from the Republican side and became what is still today the contemporary Democratic Party while the Republican side would eventually become the Whigs and fade from existence.

My last two pins are from Senator Al Franken's reelection campaign.  He is up for election in November 2014 and although he barely beat Norm Coleman in 2008 he has had very little Republican opposition in seeking his reelection.

I really enjoy this one and it plays off of Franken's joking Saturday Night Live past. I'm pretty sure this is the first political pin I own with a corn dog on  it.