Urban Renewal

Posted on 17 December 2010 by Erik Hare | 16 Comments

Workers started removing the fountain in Irvine Park, Saint Paul, today. It is being shipped off to Robinson Iron Works in Alabama, where it was made, for a general refurbishment that they hope to have done by May.

This tiny tidbit of very local news may not seem important to the rest of the world, but the story of the little neighborhood of Irvine Park is rarely told the way it needs to be. It’s just one story of urban activism among thousands but it is important because this is repeated constantly throughout the world. The lesson is simple – if you want the really good things in life you have to make it happen.

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Boreas Rex

Posted on 15 December 2010 by Erik Hare | 7 Comments

King Boreas. The name doesn’t strike fear into the hearts and minds of Minnesotans because we’ve learned to live with his terrible reign. He is the king of Winter, the tyrant we overthrow every year in the little festival we call Winter Carnival, at least in Saint Paul. But this year he got to have his own fun over in Minneapolis. It’s good to be King.

You may think this is all legend and fun but it’s serious business. Who else but King Boreas could reach out and tear a new hole in Minneapolis right on schedule?

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Not the Kid

Posted on 13 December 2010 by Erik Hare | 11 Comments

The big snowstorm was seen coming for days. Everyone had braced for it and started hunkering down early. We parents at Great River School had one more thing to attend to, however. It was my daughter’s Winter Choral Concert, scheduled to end just a few hours before the big dump was to come. Time fell around us all as the clockwork precision of life was scheduled to stop for a moment.

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National Wellbeing

Posted on 8 December 2010 by Erik Hare | 13 Comments

Can government improve our happiness? Can it at least measure how happy the people of a nation are and work toward improving it? The idea is being implemented, but not as some strange leftist diversion. The Prime Minister of the UK, David Cameron, has been interested in the idea since he first ran for the leadership of the Tory (Conservative) Party in 2005 and has elaborated on it several times. Now that he is the leader of Britain he has charged the Office of National Statistics to formulate the questions necessary to judge just how happy the British people are.

The “Wellbeing Project” is expected to report by 2012. The debate on the project’s importance has, naturally, already started.

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Winter Tea

Posted on 6 December 2010 by Erik Hare | 10 Comments

This time of year, there’s nothing I enjoy more than a cup of tea. When the sky turns grey and the moisture falls heavy in clouds of snow I come in from walking my dog with a thin icicle dripping from my nose. In a moment apart the steam from my mug then warms my nose and soon enough my gut. I am warm and refreshed.

It is the break that makes it special. The water has to be heated and the tea steeped for 5 minutes, and then it is time to relax. I have to make time for tea, I have to stop being in motion for a short while to enjoy it.

In this moment the revelation comes as the steam rises in thin curls that disappear into nowhere. Evaporation like this is what makes life on earth possible, although in nature it is driven by the warmth of the sun. But in my small mug I can imagine the mysterious forces that bring water away from the sea.

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