A Month Early

I got up at 5:30 this morning to drive to Minneapolis and get to the airport by  9:30. I put my information into the United Airlines kiosk and my ticket prints out saying it's too early to board. I ask the United employee why and he informs me my ticket is for July 30th. Dang it. I get on the phone to buy a ticket for today and it costs me about half again as much as the first ticket. Oh, well, at least I will get to where I am going today.

Don't Let Go

 I used to think I didn't like mystery books but after reading Harlan Coben's Don't Let Go I think I have changed my mind. I could hardly put the book down even when I had other stuff to do. This story is about a peace officer living in the house he grew up in. He lives alone after the death  of his father. His twin brother died at age 18 with his girlfriend. They were hit by the train. He has always tried to find out what happened that night. He meets with various people in each chapter learning a little bit more. I never saw the ending coming.

Tiny Beautiful Things

 I read Cheryl Strayad's book Tiny Beautiful Things. This book is a compilation of advice letters she wrote on a website. Her advice name was Sugar so the letters are are titled Dear Sugar. She gives good advice. She uses too much profanity for my taste but her suggestions are spot on. Sometimes she tells the letter writer that they already know the answer and aren't ready to hear it yet. She is probably right. I enjoyed the letters and the advice but reading this book for over four hours got to be too long.

Welcome To The Great Mysterious

The other day my college room mate told me she enjoys reading books by Minnesota authors. She likes to be able to picture the roads or the towns they are writing about in the book. So I mentioned a couple of my favorite  Minnesota authors such as Leif Enger, Lorna Landvik, and Louise Erdrich. So then I went to see if Lorna has written any books I haven't read yet and I found one that was available called Welcome To The Great Mysterious. This hilarious novel is about a pair of twin sisters. Geneva and Ann are not identical twins. Geneva is dark like the night and Ann is light like the day. They grow up together in Deep Lake, MN which is a 45 minute drive from the Minneapolis airport. Now they are in their late 40's. Ann has asked Geneva to take care of her 13 year old son who has Downs Syndrome. Geneva is unmarried and has never had any children and she isn't sure she can do this.  Ann and her husband are traveling to Italy so he can do some research. Eventually Ann agrees and flies out to Minneapolis leaving Broadway behind. Geneva had just quit a Broadway show because her boyfriend, also in the same Broadway show, has taken another lover.  While living with her nephew for the month he shows her a box called the great mysterious. Geneva had forgotten that one summer at the cabin when she was 7 and she made this box with her sister. The box was a cereal box with pages that had envelopes glued to them. Each page had questions such as "What is the most important thing in life?" or "What is love?" Their parents, grandparents and Uncle had answered the questions. Reading these answers has Geneva rethinking her priorities in life. In the end she does return to Broadway but she is a more well-rounded person now.

The Trail Of The Hawk

 Since I had just finished a book in which Sinclair Lewis was a character, I thought I would see if I could find the book he wrote about Frances Perkins which is called Ann Vickery. That wasn't available on Libby so I got The Trail Of The Hawk instead. This novel is about a boy named Carl Erickson. He is 9 years old in the beginning. He meets a new girl in his small town and they decide to run away together. Eventually they are found and rescued. Carl grows up working on his father's farm, fishing and trapping and hunting. After high school he goes to a local college but drops out after a couple years. Throughout his early 20's he shuffles from one job to another. He works in Chicago. He hops a train out east. Eventually he gets interested in aviation which is just opening up. He is talented in aviation and for five years he gets along fine. He comes to realize that almost all of his pilot friends have died in plane crashes and decides to change his career. He gets a job designing an early version of a recreational vehicle. At the age of 30 he sees a woman on the street in whom he is interested. He follows the woman and her friend and hops on their bus. He gets off at their stop and watches them enter a house for a party. He goes home, washes up, gets dressed and joins the party uninvited. Eventually they decide to marry. I guess the story is about youthful idealism and ambition.

Hastings

Today I met one of my college room mate half way between her house in Isanti and Winona. We met about 10 a.m. at Vermillion Falls in Hastings. As you can see there is a huge quantity of water coming over these falls which are about a block away from Highway 61. As I traveled I looked over the Whitewater River, the Cannon River, the Snake Creek, and the Zumbro River. All the rivers were high. For the past week I have walked down to Levee Park here in Winona to see the river rising about 4 inches a day.

We walked along the Vermillion River for a couple of hours, had lunch downtown, walked for another hour, and drove away. Today was a fun day

 

Nearly Stepped On This Little Creature

Slightly larger than a quarter.

 

Becoming Madame Secretary

 I took six and a half hours to read Becoming Madame Secretary by Stephanie Dray. This is a historical fiction novel about a pioneering wonder woman who started the social security program with Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Frances Perkins arrived in New York at the turn on the century. She worked with children in Hell's Kitchen. She didn't always follow the rules. She wasn't supposed to give her own lunch away to a starving family but she did. She witnessed the fire at the shirtwaist factory and saw the girls tumbling out of the windows to their death because the factory owner locked the exit doors. That made a huge impact on her. She fought to make factories safer. She wanted to get rid of child labor. She wanted the work week shortened to 54 hours. While in New York she became friends with millionaire socialite Mary Harrison Rumsey and upcoming author Sinclair Lewis. She meets a man called Paul Wilson who is also a reformer. They fall in love and marry. Eventually they have a child together. She meets FDR and she thinks he is rude and using his good looks to get votes. At that time it is true. Later, when her husband is hospitalized for manic depression, she meets Eleanor Roosevelt and learns FDR contracted polio and may die. Later FDR asks her to be his Secretary of Labor. This is the first time a woman has been appointed to a secretarial office. She served during his four terms in office and has held that job longer than anyone else. I really enjoyed learning about Frances Perkins. I think the author did a great job telling her story.

MMAM

Today I walked the 1.5 mile distance to the Minnesota Marine Art Museum. I spent a couple of hours looking over their five rooms on art. One exhibit was about climate change. One was all photographs. One room was on loan from the New Bedford Whaling Museum (I have been there) and featured landscapes from New England and the Hudson Valley in huge over-sized gold frames. One exhibit was about black Americans. One was about Hmong Americans. Five pictures had audio codes so I could listen to students from the University of Wisconsin at La Crosse explain what I was seeing.

Here is a replica of the Titanic. I am glad I brought my raincoat and umbrella as it poured rain all the way home.

 

The Kamogawa Food Detectives

 The Kamogawa Food Detectives was written by Hisashi Kashawai and translated into English by Jesse Kirkwood. The story takes place mainly in Kyoto but there is some traveling around Japan searching for answers. Customers enter this restaurant for meals or to find the recipe for the one dish they are craving. Each customer comes in, eats a meal, and then gets interviewed about the dish they want to eat again. The middle aged daughter does the interviewing and her father does the detective work and the cooking. After the interview the customer comes back two weeks later to taste the dish, get the recipe, and sometimes getting the ingredients of the dish to make for someone else in their life. This is a best selling book in Japan. The food sounds really good except for the meat and fish and eels that I don't eat. I enjoyed reading about a foreign land with foreign food.

The Limits

Nell Freudenberger is the author of The Limits. In this story a teenaged girl is sent to live with her father instead of her mother. The mother is a marine scientist specializing in corals on an island in Tahiti.  The girl  flies to New York City where her father is a pediatric surgeon working long hours. Parenting this girl falls on his much younger wife who is also pregnant. The wife is a public school teacher while the daughter goes to a private school. No one seems to be able to influence or parent this girl who goes around town doing anything she wanted to do. The family dynamics made for entertaining reading.

Dirtbag, Massachusetts

 Isaac Fitzgerald is the author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts: A Confessional. This gritty memoir details his life growing up in Massachusetts. Isaac has been many things in his life including an altar boy, a college student, a homeless person, an addict, a bartender, and a volunteer delivering supplies in Burma. He struggles to make peace with his family. This is a man who made many mistakes but is open and honest about them. This is a book that is a testament to the fact that people can change for the better.

Sugar Loaf Bluff

Offspring #2 came down for the day. We went out to eat and walked around the historic downtown district admiring the architecture. We walked down to the river to see the flooding. Then we drove up to sugar loaf bluff which you can see at the top of this picture. This picture was taken at a antique store at the bottom of the bluff.

This bluff is made of limestone and stands 500 feet above the city. The water you see down there is a lake but it used to be a channel in the Mississippi. Basically the town of Winona sits on a sand bar in the middle of the river. This bluff was mined to look this way. Originally it was a half cone shape. The rock was used for sidewalks and buildings in town. Mining the rock ended in the 1880's. The walk up from the street takes about half an hour. Most of the trail is shaded in the woods. The trail near the top gets sandy and is exposed to the sun. 

This view shows Winona State University just above the lake on the left. The winter in 2004 was unusually wet. In March tons of limestone detached from the bluff and fell down through the forest and stopped about 100 years short of the nearest house. 

 

I Do Love A Parade

I walked up and down Broadway today watching the parade go by. This took a couple of hours. Here is a steam calliope playing music.

Percherons pulling a carriage.

A blue jay character walking with the US Fish and Wildlife.

A guy riding a big wheel.

Winona Counted Mounted Patrol.

Marching band.

US Marine Corp band.

Rubber duck

Chester the cheetah in an orange jeep.

Clydesdales just turned the corner. Directly behind the driver is the four story Exchange building where I am staying.

 

Difficult Women

Roxanne Gay is the author of Difficult Women. This book is a collection of eleven stories about women and their lives. Some of the women are privileged and some live in poverty. These stories tell about the modern life of women in Michigan, Florida, New York, and California. Some of the stories involve crime and others involve kindness. Some parts were too raw for my taste but all the stories were interesting.

Steamboat Days

 Steamboat days has been going on here for a couple of days and will end on Sunday. I am staying in the historic district of downtown Winona. To get to the carnival I walk out my front door, across 4th street, straight down to 3rd street and that is where the fun begins. Rides are for kids and adults. Some of the adult rides have people swinging and hanging upside down right over my head which is scary for me. They sell all sorts of unhealthy foods like cotton candy, slushies, hot dogs, corn dogs, ice cream, and French fries slathered in cheese. This is all taking place between my lodging and Levee Park which is next to the Mississippi and the Wisconsin border. Tomorrow there is a pancake breakfast at the bank and bingo in the afternoon. Tonight, after supper, I strolled down there to look around. A street performance was just ending. There was a very flexible guy about to do a daring feat. He got two larger guys from the audience to put him in a strait jacket and buckle him tight. His arms were crossed in front of him. Next the two guys wrapped a length of 50 pounds of chain around his neck and around his torso and padlocked it shut on both sides. He wriggled. He contorted. He tossed his head around I thought he was going to bang his forehead on the street. After 3 minutes he got the chain off. After another 30 seconds he got the strait jacket off too. He was a regular Houdini. I have never seen such a thing in my life. 

Kitchens Of The Great Midwest

The other day I hears J. Ryan Stradal talk at the library about his books. Then I borrowed one of his on Libby called Kitchens Of The Great Midwest. This book was very entertaining. I'd say this author is a little bit Garrison Keillor, a little bit Elizabeth Strout, and a little bit Lorna Landvik. The story progresses in time starting with Lars Thorvald, his wife, Cynthia, and their daughter, Eva. As a child growing up in Duluth, it was Lars' job to make the lutefisk for the neighborhood. Lars hated lutefisk which is why he was one of the brothers forced to make it. His parents knew he wouldn't eat any product. Naturally he left Duluth as soon as possible and got a job cooking in Minneapolis. Lars is a great cook and anxious to provide healthy food for baby Eva. He consults her doctor about starting her on pureed pork shoulder, tomato soup, and carrot cake. Naturally the doctor stops him and tells him only breast milk for the first 6 months. Lars cannot believe the baby will be satisfied with only one food. Eva grows up to be a foodie too. By the time she is 11 she is growing peppers in her closet with high Scoville ratings. When she gets bullied at school, she gets back at her attackers with home made hot chili sauce in their eyes. Each chapter has a recipe or two. This book is has one funny story after another.

 

Family Lore

 Elizabeth Acevedo is the author of Family Lore. This is a story about four sisters and two cousins. The story takes place over 3 days. The story is set in Manhattan but the back story begins in a rural area of the Dominican Republic. The four sisters were born there. The sister named Flor has a gift. As a child she could predict when people would die. Her family didn't believe her but she was always right. Now she is 70 and is planning a wake for herself. Her other sisters, Pastora, Matilda and Camila ask her why but she won't answer. The four sisters and the two cousins take turns telling the story. Not all the words are in English which made it a little difficult to understand. I enjoyed this lively story about 6 women living in Manhattan.

Author

Today I attended a book signing/lecture at the library by J. Ryan Stradal. He spoke for about an hour about his passion in writing Midwestern books. He has published three books now including Saturday Night At The Lake Side Supper Club, The Lager Queen of Minnesota, and Kitchens Of The Great Midwest. He grew up in Hastings. He named and thanked his second grade teacher and school librarian for getting him started on reading. He went to school for multi media editing and did work for a time on television shows such as The Bachelorette and Storage Wars In Texas. After his mother died of cancer at age 55 he decided to process his grief by writing. She is in some of the characters in his books. She dreamed of writing a novel someday so he is doing this for her and to keep her memory alive. Several people in the audience were friends with his mother and they wore lacy shirts with pink flamingoes in her honor. The author was funny and humble and appreciative.

I took his photo of a stained glass window at the Winona County History Center.

Miss Newbury's List

 Megan Walker is the author of the historical fiction/romance book called Miss Newbury's List. The story is set in England in 1820. Rosalind Newbury is scheduled to marry the Duke Of Marlow in several weeks. As a child she  made a list of things she wanted to do before she married. She wanted to learn how to swim, to eat sweets all day, to bury a treasure in the ground and to run away for a day. She enlists the help of her BFF Liza to accomplish these things. Liza brings her cousin, Charlie, who is staying with her family temporarily to mend his reputation and to get some space from his family. As they mark off things on the list a friendship grows between Rosalind and Charlie. Rosalind thought completing the list would make her ready for marriage to the Duke but she was wrong about that. All the characters in the book were easy to like.

Lots Of Water

 

I usually walk down the sidewalk on the right side of the road but not today. The Mississippi River is at 146 percent above normal. That sidewalk is covered in a couple of feet of water. I saw trees floating by rather fast. Boats and jet skis were out there too.

Carrie Soto Is Back

 I don't usually read books about sports but I did enjoy Carrie Soto Is Back by Taylor Jenkins Reid. The story is about a fictional female professional tennis player. Carrie is the daughter of Javier, a famous tennis coach from Venezuela.  As a child she shows talent. She has a competitive edge and a tendency to be brutally honest with others. She ends up dropping out of high school so she can travel on the tennis circuit. She is very successful and for a time in her 20's she is the top rated tennis player in the world. At age 39 she has a bad knee so she retires. At age 37 another female tennis player breaks her award winning record. Carrie decides to come out of retirement. I won't spoil the ending by telling you how she does. I found it interesting to learn about all the hours of exercise and hard work that are a part of professional tennis.

The Diary Of A Bookseller

Shaun Bythell is the owner of a used book store in a seaside town in rural Scotland. He wrote The Diary Of A Bookseller over 14 months. Each month is a chapter. The beginning of each chapter begins with a quote from George Orwell who wrote a book about being a bookseller. Then he writes down the total number of customers he had each day and how much money he took in. After that he writes about his customers and what they buy or don't buy. He also writes about the customers who bring in boxes of books to sell to him. The love he has for books in very evident. He writes about his employees including one who seldom does what he asks her to do. Besides the books he also sells walking sticks that a pagan hippie brings in periodically in exchange for books. He sells a few pieces of furniture as well. The author hilariously recounts his rudest customers and his escapades with his friends and family. In the epilogue he reveals that he still owns the bookstore. I think it would be a fun place to visit if I ever get to Scotland.

The Woman In The Library

The Woman In The Library was written by Sulari Gentill. This book has a very unconventional writing style. Half of the story is about 4 aspiring writers who meet at the Boston Library. They hear a woman scream. Later that woman is found dead in the library. The police investigate and interview the four writers. This experience draws them into a friendship. The other half of the story is told by the email responses a writer gets from a guy named Leo who is critiquing her work. He gives her suggestions on how ti improve her story. He insists she add Covid to the story. For most of the story the blame for the woman's murder in the library rests on one character. I enjoyed reading the story within a story once I got used to it. 

The Sandcastle Girls

 Chris Bohjalian is the author of The Sandcastle Girls, a family novel about the Armenian genocide. The story starts in Aleppo, Syria, in the 1915. A young woman recently graduated from college, comes to Aleppo with her father to help the victims from Armenia. She volunteers at the hospital. She brings an Armenian woman and child to live in her house with the embassy assistant. Her name is Elizabeth Endicott and she is with a Boston based organization called Friends Of Armenia. She brings food and medical supplies. There she meets an Armenian engineer named Armen. They fall in love and continue to write letters as he joins the British army to fight in Egypt. One hundred years later, one of their granddaughters finds a picture of them on display in Boston about the Armenian genocide. She writes their story using correspondence to and from them at the Friends Of Armenia center. I don't believe I ever learned about the Armenian genocide in any history lessons I attended. In some places it is forbidden to mention it. I preferred the parts of the book that took place in Aleppo over the parts that took place in Boston and New York.

Watkins

Today I was exploring the town and I decided to visit the Watkins museum and store. This is the chair of the first company president. He bought a patent for a liniment while he lived in Plainview, MN. He took his liniment to Winona where he made more medical products. Later he made vanilla extract and started selling spices.

They are still coming up with new products. Recently they started selling various meat rubs for BBQ and aromatic bitters for fancy cocktails.

 

Swede Hollow

A book showed up on my Libby app so I checked out Swede Hollow by Ola Larsmo and translated into English by Tiina Nunnally. The story is about the people who emigrated from Sweden and settled in a ravine formed by Phalen Creek just north of Seventh Street. The main family in the story arrived at Ellis Island in 1897. After trying to make it work in New York City, they come by train to Saint Paul where they meet other Swedish immigrants they met on the boat coming over. Gustaf and Anna Klav arrive after midnight on a cold winter night. The train depot is closed until morning. They happen to spot a couple of Irish lads who were also on their boat. The Irish lads live further upstream in Swede Hollow and they lead the family to the Swedish section. Much is said about the beautiful grounds and mansion where the Hamm family live. Their property is guarded by German Shepherds. The Hamms brewery will only hire people of German descent. I found the story of Gustaf and Anna, their three children, and their many grandchildren was fascinating. Life is so much easier now than it was then.

They're Out To Get Me

 Today I was walking around a lake. The walk is 3.7 miles and I walked it a few days ago. This time I went counter clockwise which put me closer to the water. As I walked by a stretch of water that had taller trees right next to the trail I noticed a bird was following my head. I could see it's shadow on the sidewalk right above my hat. This happened the other day too. Later, as I approached the fishing dock, another red winged blackbird flew at my head and struck me twice. Aw, man, they are out to get me. Other people are walking on this path on foot or biking. I didn't see any birds attacking them. A couple of years ago we were visiting Old Montreal. Offspring #2 parked the car and I got out. Even though we were not near water, a male red winged blackbird struck me in the back of my head twice. I was in the process of putting on my sun hat and that really hurt. Today didn't hurt as much because I had my sun hat on. I guess they're out to get me. With their red epaulets they look militaristic.

The Family Gene

 Joselin Linder is the author of The Family Gene: A Mission To Turn My Deadly Inheritance Into A Hopeful Future. This is a true story about her health. Beginning in her 20's Joselin experienced swelling in her ankles. Her father, a physician in Ohio and a very healthy man, also had the same issue. Gradually they came to realize that a great uncle and a great grandmother also had the same issue which stems from a blockage in her liver. Joselin and other members of her family visited a geneticist at Harvard. Fourteen members of her family had a private gene mutation. There is no cure for this genetic mutation but some symptoms can be relieved. Her story was interesting. I don't agree with all the choices she made. Grief comes in many forms I guess.