wedding in Minneapolis

I want to start and end this post with Minneapolis. I’ve neglected it thus far, even as the city defines my days here.

And it continues to define this day, Sunday, even though I should be, by now, in Madison.

I admit – I am losing faith in public transportation in the Midwest. The Megabus, battered from an earlier accident, rumbles in late. The orderly line ceases to be orderly. Everyone is anxious to find a good seat. At the very least, we all want to avoid the bad seats. We're on board.

One rumble, then silence. Another rumble, more silence. The bus cannot sustain power long enough to even pull out of its parking place. We sit cramped and hot, waiting, hoping, even as we know we're not going anywhere. There’s good news and bad news... The good news is that we’re not being invaded by Godzilla-like monsters. A driver with a sense of humor. I remember him from Thursday. He was mildly funny then too, when the AC broke down. The bad news is that y’all have to get off and wait many hours for another bus.

It surprises me how quietly resigned to this fate everyone is. Most are traveling to Chicago. It’ll be past midnight now before they can hope to get there. At an airport there would be a revolt, a demand for compensation, or at least free lunch. Here, the feeling is that you paid little and you get little. People sit down on the sidewalk (Megabus does not run out of terminals to keep costs low) and wait. The air quickly fills with cigarette smoke and stories of horror on the highway. The trash bin at the corner is already overflowing. Trash litters the sidewalk.

I want to get away from the bus stop.

As so often, I am the lucky one. I have energy and I have almost no luggage and I have money for a cappuccino. I hike over to Dunn Brothers coffee roaster and settle in for the wait.





I’m spending some minutes now thinking about yesterday’s wedding. If you could use only one word to describe it, you’d have to say “beautiful.” Lovely in every detail..

Even though I almost missed it.

The cars of the various invitees traveling from the hotel were pretty full and so I decide to walk to the Weisman Art Center – the place of the ceremony, reception and dinner.

At first I think it may storm, but the clouds blow over. I'm truly enjoying the walk. (See this cable car lookalike? The customers pedal along as they sit at the "bar.")




















Until I reach the river and am told the bridge is closed. Preparing for fireworks tonight -- they tell me. Yes, but if I don’t cross it here, then I am thrown off my googled route. Sorry.

I walk over to the next bridge (a lovely one!) and cross there, right by the locks...





...and try to understand how now best to make my way to the museum. The original google locator timed it to be 50 minute walk. With the detour, I have gained minutes of walking. Too many minutes.

Then there is the construction...

I ask for directions – ohhh, a woman tells me. It’s far! It’s ten to six. "Far" and "ten minutes" are not a good match. I hail a cab and get in. Get me to the wedding, quick! Weisman Art Center.

Okay, but that’s just two blocks. Sorry, I still have to charge you $5 anyway. There’s a lesson in there somewhere. Not sure what it is, but it's there. I arrive hot and thirsty, but pleased, too. It is two minutes to six.

And soon my sweet friend and her husband walk in...





...and the groom's parents and various wedding party people and finally my friend’s daughter and it’s all so, well, beautiful!

Poems are read, music is played, melodies reverberate against the tall white walls lined with paintings. Gorgeous stuff.

And then it’s over.

Trays of drinks and food come forth – champagne cocktails and old fashioneds, exquisitely presented in hues of orange and bronze, canapés and flatbreads and puffed pastries...





... the lovely bridesmaids sit back and relax. Everything was as smooth as can be.





...and outside, the dusk rolls in.

The bride and groom are toasted...





....the cake is cut...





...the dancing begins. Marlo – grandson of the other friend here – obliges me with a dance and the evening rolls forward with great merriment...

I take a last handful of photos, including of Marlo and his mom, and Marlo with his mom, dad, his aunt, and grandmom...









...and of the fire tinted skies over Minneapolis outside.





... but soon after ten, I am ready to leave it to the next generation to party on. I go outside and think how best to retrace my steps, just as the fireworks end with a final big explosion...





An hour later, I am at the hotel.



On Sunday morning, I feel like one does after a party – in need of good coffee and protein. I walk over to Hell’s Kitchen for a breakfast of delicious eggs and fried potatoes.





And I take a closer look again at this city of glass and concrete – so incredibly vivid against the blue sky.

This is Minneapolis. The city that looks always fresh and solidly put together.




























But, I’m ready to go home. Even as I wait at the curb and wonder how many more hours before a bus comes for us. It's going to be a very very long day.

prewedding, continued

Still searching and sampling. A morning run to a Baker’s Wife and then the Angry Catfish. The first has a traditional air about it.





The second has coffee and... see if you can guess from one of the posters what else:





No, not lady's (under)garments, though I am very sympathetic to the plight of the woman who bikes in skirts and dresses. The shop also sells and services bicycles. The coffee, by the way, is superb. (Hi Marlo!)





And I should point out here that Minneapolis is a city that's rich in (coffee and) bike culture -- having also adopted the bike rental program (the Paris model) of pick up here and drop off there, and if it’s for a half hour it’s free, and otherwise -- $5 for the day. And perhaps more importantly, this city is (unlike Paris) a bike friendly place, though I do think you have to view these virtues in perspective: if I can only stand to bike in Madison April through October (and then not every day in April and not every day in October), how much shorter is the biking season here?

But, today is warm. We end the morning bakery run with perhaps the most known of the lot – Rustica café and bakery. With a cool assortment of Danish-like pastries, brioches, and galettes, it wins as the day’s favorite for baked goods.








Okay, sweetened up, we proceed with the rest of the day.

[I have to mention this, because if ever the was a running thread to this week-end it is that of the camera snafu that has seized all non-eating and visiting spare minutes of my waking hours and some of Ed’s as well. I wrote some while ago that I sold my malfunctioning SLR and was ready for something different. My “something different” did not arrive on time for this trip and in any case, it’s been sold out nearly everywhere. Trying to accomplish an Internet purchase where a dealer would actually be able to deliver on a promise has been a major challenge. I have made endless tiresome orders and cancellations on my credit card -- reflecting the fact that it's a mean world out there, in camera sales. Eventually, the mess will be straightened out, but if someone tells me Internet buying is a cinch, I most definitely have a counter example for them.]

Eating aside, we are doing some strolling and people watching too, especially in the late morning hours, as we walk to the farmers market by the Mill City Museum. Beautiful. And colorful. Let me just put up one or two photos that might show off some elements you’re not likely to see at out Madison Saturday markets.









And now, errands for bride’s family behind me (400 powder blue coctail napkins -- check; one soft camera lens cover -- check), I’m finally ready to walk over to the wedding itself. It’s a bit of a hike so I must get going.

prewedding

I am in the thick of color. And I mean so much more than the hues and tones around me. (Though not to ignore those!) If you’re not impressed by vignettes from a day of good people and good food then come back tomorrow, or better yet – the next day.

If you’re bemused that I should travel far, early in the morning, with a food loving bunch in search of a good bakery, right before we are to head for a wedding brunch, to be followed by an early dinner at the new and exquisite Piccolo, then read on.

No, I changed my mind. Go ahead and retire for the night. I should as well. Still, did I mention here how delightful it was to go through the day (as described above) in the company of Marlo?

He’s the grandson of one of my friends here. He was with us at the bakery (see how he takes to the iPhone here, with his dad, Jonny, a chef at Madison’s Underground Food Collective)...





... and he was with us at the pre-wedding day brunch (there’s my friend-- the proud grandmother, with her two daughters and her grandson)...





...and he neglected his nap so that he could watch with us the sun throw dappled light on plates of exquisite food, accompanied by the best white wine sangria ever...









...and he was with us at dinner, but I did not photograph him much then. Can’t let the little guy become too comfortable with all the attention. Okay, one photo:










He was such a good little guy. He didn’t even mind it that we got hopelessly lost and he didn’t roll his eyes when his grandma and I demonstrated our complete ignorance in working the GPS on the iPhone. Oh, you mean the icon stays put and the dot is supposed to move? Ah.

It was a wonderful prewedding day.


Excuse me? You want to see the couple about to be married? I can oblige. From a late night moment at the hotel bar, all glittery and golden.






And in the shadows, the three good friends -- the grandmother of Marlo, the mother of the bride, and the blogger. Seen it all and then some. Satisfied that our daughters are doing just fine.

in the backseat

The NYTimes describes today the inroads bus travel has made in the Midwest and along the Northeast coast. Well okay. (I am writing this as I sit on a Megabus bound for Minneapolis. Cost: $30.95 one way.) I leave the driving to someone else. There is a spell of heavy rain and it’s good not to worry about sliding off into a ditch.

But please, it’s no bullet train.

Last time I took the northbound Megabus, the electrical outlets weren’t working. This time the AC is failing on the lower deck of the bus. That’s fine, I’m upstairs, in the last row, with a sweet but tired kid (to my right) who I am sure would rather be elsewhere.

And the roof is leaking from the emergency hatch. If you are sitting two rows ahead of me you are going to arrive in Minneapolis wet. An enterprising young man attaches his heavy pack to the handles to keep the roof in place. I watch the pack dangle and I worry about the kid next to me -- he is in the line of fire should it fall.

The bus makes a refreshment detour to a truckstop. A half hour wait in deep nothingness. People buy Wendy’s fries and soda because what else can you do. You might as well eat fries and drink soda. With a five hour ride ahead, I suppose a break is welcome relief for the driver. Still, he seems young and peppy. I’m hoping he’s buzzing to go. Certainly we, the passengers, are buzzing to go.

Especially since the bus is already late. Last time I rode the Megabus to the Twin Cities, it was very late. Today, it came in to Madison (from Chicago) just half an hour late and then proceeded to be late some more as the Great Search for a disembarking person’s suitcase took place. All black suitcases removed. She finds hers. All black suitcases put back in the cargo hold. We all wait for the suitcase mess to resolve itself. It does. Eventually.





I don’t mean to compare, but Van Galdar buses, which I use frequently to get to Chicago, are exceptionally punctual.

I glance across to the resting young body of the kid. His dad is fiddling with music (regrettably, he seems not to have earphones); a third person further down in the back row seat hands over a leftover piece of chicken sandwich to the kid, who wakes up, eats it, goes back to sleep. As does his dad. In a surreal moment, I see them against pastures of deep gold and skies of true blue.





It’s a window screen on a parallel bus.


At the rest stop, another passenger asks me if I know how many hours we have before us.
Two? -- he’s hoping.

Maybe three...

Hell, that’s not so bad. It used to take my mom and me fifteen hours to come up from Chicago to Minneapolis!

Fifteen?

She insisted on stopping at all the Walmarts along the way. Things got cheaper as we got further away from Chicago.

In the seat in front, a young man is telling his life story to a woman who would rather be reading the biography of Nabokov resting on her lap. He either doesn’t notice or pretends not to. I’m surprised how revealing he is. Finally, two hours outside Minneapolis, he asks her -- by the way, what’s your name?

On my left side, another young man is listening to music, but through earphones. I can hear it anyway. I like it. It seems mildly jazzy. A good balance to the story of a life in front and the pop sounds to my right.

Are we still in Wisconsin? – the kid’s dad asks me..

Oh yes. Still a couple of hours in the back seat.




It’s 9, but it’s only just barely dusk.

My mind is spinning back to 1984. I was pregnant with my second child and I was in the middle of my law school years, but the summer of that year I spent with my then husband and our oldest in Cambridge England, where her dad was doing research. My two sweet kind wonderful law school pals traveled across the ocean to visit. They were single moms then, facing the same challenges of parenting and studying, and they brought their daughters to England and you could make a sit com from the days we had there with our most exquisite and willful girls (plus the one in my belly).

So now here I am in Minneapolis, with a different familial configuration for all of us, even as essentially nothing has changed.

I rush to call my friend – the one who has also traveled here for the wedding. The two of us take a walk in the last rays of the setting sun...





... settling in at an outdoor table for a pizza and a carafe of wine.

Sometimes you feel like life is forever throwing punches at you. Not this week-end. Not for me.

men, women...

I’m on the motorbike behind Ed and we are weaving our way to campus (construction makes a snake of the normally easy and straight road). I’m in a hurry so I opt for the fast ride rather than my slower pedal-power cycle.

I think Ed is a stellar motorbike rider (even as I also think that he is a bored and therefore indifferent car driver). On the rather small (by Harley standards) Honda, he dominates his space on the road. He exudes confidence and caution all at once. He’s in control.

We stop near the Law School and I unload. I look up as Ed draws my attention to a Harley man. They’ve grown old – he tells me. I think – ahh, age. Once the bad boys, now they worry about stiff knees and pension plans.

A young man zips by, reminding us of what it was like to zip through life with fire in your eyes and knees.





After class, I walk by a student parked on a bench. He’s thinking it through, he tells me. I’m hoping he’s thinking through what we just discussed in class, but I don’t really know. My thoughts have already cycled forward: I’m back to thinking that men’s minds work sometimes in mysterious ways.





There’s a wedding up north in Minneapolis this weekend. That of a daughter of a supremely close friend of mine. Ed, by virtue of his traveling companionship with me, is invited, but he wont go. He says he could not sit through any wedding and to my knowledge he has never attended a wedding.

So how do you explain the fact that a favorite NYTimes clip for him to watch, along with (typically) a sentimentally sobbing me is the Styles-Vows video, where two people explain to the rest of us how and when he asked her (or he asked him, or she asked her, but almost never did she ask him) for her hand in marriage?

Weddings conjure up for me the great expanse of a lifetime. And they make me think of friends who married and stayed married.

I do tonight something I have done on and off for the past several years, but never with much success: I search on the Internet for my best college friend – a woman who has disappeared from my radar screen, to say nothing of my computer screen. This time I think I have found the vital information that I need.

I reach for the phone and call her, but no one answers. I leave a message, without much hope that I’ll hear back.

Ed is doing a Wednesday Night bicycle ride now. Last week, I had ready a plate of rice and shrimp in a fresh and honest spicy tomato sauce for him for when he returned. He was so dehydrated that he passed on the dinner and ate a half a watermelon instead. This week I have a chicken vegetable soup and a watermelon waiting.

energized

Back in June, when Ed and I came down the mountain in the Pyrenees of Spain amidst thunder and lightening and sheets of rain, I was so relieved that we survived that if you offered to sell me anything at all at that moment, I would have said yes.

As we pull out and head toward the coast, away from the Pyrenees, I suggest we pause for a quick espresso. Magically, we pass through a town with a café bakery right along our route. We park the car and go inside.

What would you like?

An espresso and a pastry – maybe something typical for this region?

Typical? These cookies are typical.

Okay. We’ll take the pack of cookies. How much?

11 Euros.

11 Euros?? (Shockingly expensive.)
They are very difficult to make...

We buy the little sack of cookies and very quickly we realize that they will not keep well. The crepe like coating hardens instantly and as we take out one cookie each day, we gnaw mightily at it so that it will break into manageable pieces.

Today, we finished the last cookie. Was it good? Yes, even as it was very very stale.

And yet I was reminded – of mountains, of peaks to climb, of danger and of the sheer joy of stopping for an espresso and a sweet treat.

It was surely the most expensive sack of cookies I ever bought and it was almost certainly one of the best sacks of cookies I ever bought. Before they went stale.

Things do grow stale. Ideas, projects, cookies.

But if you can keep energized, inspired, hopeful...





...then they don’t.

canvas

As I contemplate my next move (which will happen once the condo sells), I think about how important the commute has always been for me between home and office. I do not much care about the vehicle that gets me there and back and indeed I almost never use a car for this trip. But I care about what I see as I pedal (or walk) along. I want to be able to look up and see something deserving of a paintbrush.

And I’ve been lucky these last few years. For instance, today, I biked past a community garden. For a second, I thought I was before a late nineteenth century canvas.





Or, is it that summer makes me blur the line between what is surely art and what is merely a daily tapestry of lush color?

Biking to work along the lake path I think how this summer has been especially generous with its stream of warm days and pastels skies.





On campus, I run into a former student of mine. He is looking so sharp and professional that I almost don’t recognize him. He tells me his wife has bought some of Ocean’s photos for their home (I still sell them at a Fitchburg café and on line if someone puts in an especially sweet request, though it is so financially unrewarding and so time consuming that I’ve stopped making the effort otherwise). I think again how good it is to take a scene like that of a community garden and put it on canvas in the only way I know how.


An evening at my condo. Is it to be the last summer here? Probably.

I fix yet another summer market salad for supper. Baby potatoes, peas, cucumbers, tomatoes, almost hard boiled eggs, scallions, herbs and a Dijon mustard vinaigrette.





Unfussy, uncomplicated. Pleasure in the ordinary. Deliciously ours.

lazy morning

How luxurious! My daughter is in town until early afternoon. We head out to the neighborhood where she will be living starting September. Night storms cleared the sky, but it is still very very warm outside.

We talk about meals that will be eaten in and around her new home. We stop in at a grocery co-op and nod our heads appreciatively over this item, that one – favorite things on the shelves of a store just across the street from where she'll spend so many waking hours.

We eat brunch at Lazy Jane’s. Welcome to the neighborhood – they greet her. Here, enjoy this scone while you wait for your food. 

















It’s a hot day, but not too hot for a walk afterward. Up one street, down the next, admiring gardens where owners have taken care to plant flowers that will inevitably bloom their heads off.





And now she’s off, my girl is – back to her work in Chicago. But she’ll be back. With her sister. In a few weeks. Because when you live that close, it’s just a bus ride away.

Two people separately in the past week say to me – you are at the core such a... well, happy person. It’s true. I could fight it, but it will come back – the conviction that so long as you (and your loved ones) are on your feet and able to toddle along, you've got a reason to grin shamelessly.

the whirligig

From dawn to nightfall – I haven’t the minute that I need for Ocean. You surely understand. This is how it looks: finish the writing of the ad for the condo. Zip out with daughter to downtown farmers market. Except that you can’t zip anywhere downtown when Paddle and Portage is in progress.





Visit Café Soleil for a last time before they move to their new fancy digs. Sentimental. I baked for Satruday markets here not too long ago. But, our cafés change staff so fast that no one (but the chef) is there from the days of my apprenticeship.






Shop at market. The basket fills. Weeks’ worth of produce. Yes, the French beans and baby potatoes continue to dominate, but there is so much more...















Flowers. I need flowers. I cannot even try to sell a condo without flowers on the table and in the kitchen.








daughter with bouquet


There. Shopping done. Market sights and pleasures duly recorded. Time to rest? Like these two?





Not us. Ed scoots over and we set out to hike. And swim. When my daughter wrote about visiting, she asked meekly (this after realizing that there would be a heat wave here at the time) – might there be a place to swim?

Sure. We've got it all.

We pick up the Ice Age Trail near Merrimac and head toward Devil’s Lake. It is a hot and buggy hike, but who would fuss on this glorious Saturday when skies are blue and summer is in full bloom.














And after a few hours, we look for the descent toward the beach. We find it.









...and we swim.

At the shore, a wedding is taking place. Alongside a grilling family and another and another...









I mean, it’s Saturday at Devil’s Lake – you can hardly expect quiet. And it pleases me no end that so many people are enjoying the Great Outdoors.


We swim, yes, forward and back, all three of us, and then we refill our water bottles and head for the car. And we drive home. Not for long though. A quick shower, a walk down to the theaters for a movie, and finally a late late dinner outdoors. Seaweed salad and sushi.









I’m home now. At the condo of your dreams. (Not mine for long. Too big. Too expensive. Sigh...) My daughter is asleep, Ed, too, has disappeared to consider the world and the day from a reclining position.

So, surely you’ll understand – I can’t write much today. Too full, too tired, in a happy sort of way.