Spring has come to Saint Paul – or so we’d like to think. One day above 60F doesn’t make a Spring, but it certainly has the snow melting, the water flowing, and the potential for a serious Mississippi flood rising. It’s awfully early to call it for real, given the lack of a vivid green budding smell in the air, but a nose full of memories knows what is on the way. Damp and slightly rotten has a smell of life all its own to those who let the stories flow.
Home » 2010 (Page 26)
Yearly Archives: 2010
March Madness
March is the big month for Downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota. It’s certainly not because of the dreary, drippy weather that gets everyone a bit down after a while. It’s our month because it’s Tournament Time, the giddy sidewalks packed with people in town to see, in turn, the Boys High School Wrestling Tournament, the Boys Hockey Tournament, the Western Collegiate Hockey Association (WCHA) Tournament, and sandwiched in there somewhere the bacchanal of Saint Patrick’s Day. It’s a good time to see what works for our city because, after all, the place is bubbling with life and energy and a lot of cash being spent.
Quotations
Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.
– Napoleon Bonaparte
The use of quotations from famous people long gone is an easy way to dress up a blog or other writing. It can be done as an epigram that frames the piece, as I did here, or something that inspires a work and sneaks in gradually. More often than not it’s an appeal to authority, a claim on the mind of someone long gone who is revered one way or the other. When it’s done well it crystallizes the point being made into an image that is memorable and mythical. That’s what makes quotations useful.
Health Care: A Line not Crossed
A political standoff in Minnesota over health care funding has resulted in a short-term retreat that may cool things down for a little bit. It also might be a sign of how things will go nationally as the debate moves on from “bait and hook” to a real engagement. If that is the case, there may be an opening for Democrats to push their advantage and achieve something very important and lasting.
Tempus Fugit
Next weekend, the USofA will adjust the clocks to Daylight Savings Time. When we come off of it in the Fall, we get no interest on the daylight that we were forced to save. Why do we have any interest in this scheme at all? Those of us who have worked with people in other nations gradually realize that monkeying with the clocks only proves how artificial the whole idea of time is, and that we’re better off with one time across the globe.
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 