Rare Birds

And MN can Keep Brett Favre on that side of the Mississippi also...

I have always thought of the Land of 10,000 Lakes as being a planetary geographic reciprocal of Indonesia, which has 16,667 islands.

The Mayo Clinic is an extraordinary experience.

And Good Fishin' on Lake Geneva .......

Number one in heart disease for women!
Could it be all that dairy?
Number one in ACT scores! HURRAY!
Best in boats! putt putt putt...
Number one in turkeys, and proud of it!
Best in quality of Medicare, but 40th in payment. S'up wit dat?
They grow the most oats and sugarbeets, green peas and corn. YAY Minnesota!
They've won most livable state (BRRR!) and healthiest state. But what about all those women dropping dead?
Don't forget HOCKEY!!

And SNOW! They got em some snow there, you betcha!
Forget Moscow...Moscow who?

Maybe they should mess with the clouds and send their snow back to Russia.  The freezing temperature is probably why there is so much heart disease in women.  The ladies are probably out there shoveling the snow which is  taxing on the heart.

Factoid:   All   of   Ohio's  lakes  are   man-made.

I  always  think of  Garrison  Kellior  hosting  Prarie  Home  Companion  {Public  Broadcasting,  live,  weekends}  when  I  think of Minnesota,  or  for  that  matter  rural  Wisconsin.   Remember  the  accent  of  the  lady  police  chief in the  movie  Fargo?    What  a  unique  subset  of  English  is spoken  in  regional  America.

Take the dome off to experience that weather -- oy vey!
 
My favorite choice was Charles Schulz.  With all of his successes he remained such a humble man.  In an interview when he was asked what he liked most about all of his success and the money that came with it.  He replied that now he could buy hard cover books.

Years ago, I went fishing at Leech Lake, Minnesota, in the Chippewa National Forest. The beautiful lake and woodlands called to mind "The Song of Hiawatha" by Longfellow...the whispering of the pine trees, the lapping of the waters - sounds of music, words of wonder...It was the first time I ever saw bald eagles in the wild and heard the haunting cry of the loon. I caught a nice stringer of crappies, too.

I love the calls of loons. I don't know why but to me it is just one of the most unique sounds from the wild. To hear them calling out to each other, in the early morning mist, That's what makes sleeping on an air matress in a tent totally worth it.
 
Olivia ~ The heart disease comes from all the salad dressing/manyoise that eaten in the midwest, ever hear of seven layer salad? Let's just say most of McD's salads are most likely WAY healthier than that one.
 
The other thing I LOVE about MN besides shopping at the Mall of America is the fact they have no sales tax on clothes. so if the pants are $20.00 a $20 dollar bill will cover it.  For the record the Mall of America is one of the few places where I NEVER seem to get lost plus they also built n Ikea next door. Double bonus...     

You mention Ventura and Franken, but leave out Bachmann?  She's the biggest joke of them all!  I swear, she gets her speeches straight from the supermarket tabloids.
 
I'm with Bert.  My mind goes straight to Lake Woebegone, and its fine citizens, living lives of quiet desperation and discussing last year's pie contest. 
 
I can relate to so many stories from the prairie of Minnesota.  We might not get as cold, and nobody I've ever met has a desire to try their manhood (regardless of gender) against a batch of lutefisk.
 
Minneapolis/St. Paul is on my list of possible places for me to move, because of that high literacy among the people.  Where better to have a bookstore than among people who read?

Michael:    Ms.  Bachmann  is  dumber  than  a  box  of  rocks,   she  is  an  embarrassment  to  her  party.  Remember  dunce  caps?    Now  they  are  politically  incorrect  in school.  In  case  anybody  still  kept  one,  let's  send  it  to  Ms. Bachmann,  and  she  can  sit  in the  corner  facing  the  walls.
 
Minneapolis/St.  Paul,   twin  cities  with  excellent  credentials  as  to quality of life  issues.  Isn't  Minnesota  Mining &  Manufacturing  Corporation  located  there?   Maker  of  Scotch  tape.
 
Michael,  the  Twin  Cities  have  a  disproportionately  high  number  of coffee  houses  and  bookstores.  That  is  supportive  of  your  proposition  that  the  population  has  intellectual  curiousity,   and  they  seem  rather  open-minded  & tolerant.

Looks like, This Time He Made It After All .......

When you can clearly hear the call of the loon, all of life's distractions have been quieted.

I quite enjoyed a day long motorcycle trip that had us winding along the St. Lawrence and then back to the twin cities...beautiful countryside, friendly people, and great restaurants.
 
Rings, you are better than me...I need a guide when I go to MOA and I still get disoriented.  When I was at the MOA shopping last summer my friend Cordelia was shocked that I'd never eaten creamed corn, she promptly ordered some and made a convert out of me.  I was really suprised at the number of GOOD sit down restaurants in MOA,  our mall here in Logan couldn't even keep an Orange Julius in business.

PETER LAKE:   I heard the call of The Loon for years, and than I made her Mother move home .......  That led to the last Pleasure Trip I took, from my house to the Airport, to put the Loon on-board ....... I shall never again have to hear those five most horrible words that any man can ever hear ....... "Mother's Coming For a Visit ..."
 
All the Loons I care about hearing from anymore come from DeBussy .......

I have summoned folks from the land o' lakes region, we shall see if they are brave enough to post.

Weren't the Grumpy Old Men movies supppsed to be set in MN?  I love those guys - anyone up for a filmfest in the club car tonight?  Manhattans are on me.  I'll pay for 'em, too!
 
A friend from MN says there is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.
 
 

Shandonista:     I  got  home  2  hours  early  to  take  advantage  of  your  Clubcar  Manhattan  Hospitality  Special.....since  we  are  on  a  train,  we  need  no  designated  drivers.

Mr. Peterman should use that quote!  They are certainly words to live by! 

and do not count out the world's largest,meanest 'skeetos

...and F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul, and couldn't wait to get out of there and be a prep at Princeton. 
 
...after he didn't graduate, he signed up for WWI, because he liked the uniforms and thought he'd look swell in one (he did, as I hear it), but they ended the War before he could go over there, but while he was waiting, down in the much much warmer clime of Montgomery Alabama, he met and fell in love with a Very Southern Girl, Zelda Sayre, who thought she wanted to live in New York City, but really, she didn't.  She went anyhow, and married F. Scott.
 
...as often happens when one marries, one finds oneself pregnant, and so did Zelda who had no patience with pregnancy, was bored and hot in the NYC summer, and so she wound up in the cooler climate of St. Paul MN, they took a house on White Bear Lake where Zelda awaited the birth of her daughter, and Scott drank.  He said he would write, he would work on his second novel, but he didn't.
 
...when he finally wrote again, they needed the money, he scratched out, among others, a short story called "The Ice Palace" where a southern girl went up north to Minnesota to meet her fiance's parents.  It was winter, it was freezing, and the girl in the story got lost in a gigantic ice house sculpted during Winter Carnival.  She was frantic, she was cold, and once she got found, she left the North and went back to the South where she belonged.  Never would she venture up there again where it was ice white and biting cold, so sharp it could cut her pale white skin.
 
...And that was the end of Fitzgerald's "The Ice Palace" short story -- the heroine left Minnesota to go back to the South, where she married a nice southern boy and had nice southern children.
 
Assuming Fitzgerald drew from real life for this story -- gee, do you think he did? -- then it's too bad that Zelda didn't do as her character did in his story:  leave St. Paul, leave Scott, and go back to Alabama where she wouldn't be cold, and where she could marry again, but to someone more suitable and familiar. 
 
As it was she stayed up there in St. Paul, too long for anyone's good, they got evicted from their house (rented) on White Bear Lake, and Scott went back to NYC, where she joined them, now with their daughter, and in eight short years she lost her mind just like the her alter in "The Ice House."  But at least she was in Paris when she went crazy, where the wind never cut through her, the way it did in St. Paul, Minnesota.
 
The End
 
 
...And Garrison Keillor is a big fan of Fitzgerald, too, he does lots of talks about him. 
 
...And I was in St. Paul just last spring, and I can say, it's one very pretty place.  The residential areas, or maybe that was Minneapolis, I don't know.  Very nice, all of it.  I can see why people want to move there ...
 
And that's the end of all I know when I think of Minnesota, other than the Minnesota Vikings, and out of respect for my fellow Wisconsinites, I'm not going to mention that name of that quarterback, he's all ego.
 
 
 
 

"The Ice House" -- in fourth paragraph from the end.  Error.  I meant "The Ice Palace."
 
 

Park4:    No  more  sipping  on  Manhattans,  while  you  still  have  creative  writing  to  do.

NEWS FLASH

A show pig in Minnesota has confirmed H1N1....probably "caught"from  people at the Minnesota State Fair. The pig is not sick, the virus showed up in  blood samples for a research project.

Dear P4,
 
 
There is an awful lot of good to be said for genuine Ice House ... Wouldn't You Say ???

If a pig gets H1N1, as Miss Blue suggested from humans at a state fair is it still called swine flue or do vets call it human flu? Or state fair flu?  And why did they test the show pig anyway?  Does this mean that we shouldn't by pork products or bacon form Minnesota? 

The Mayo was indeed an experience!  The ortho docs (5 surgeons in all) made it possible for me to walk again after being smashed by a car in Rochester.  Luckily, the bill was not mine to pay.

I definitely like my poulet WITH Mayo ....... (On toasted Rye)
 

A pig in Minnesota today made headlines because it has been diagnosed with swine flu.

Ivan:  Indeed, a real ice house was a useful thing, way back when.  In the town we lived in, in Illinois, an ice house was salvaged and turned into, what else?, but a small collection of boutique-y shops, there was no sign of the original, except in the old blown-up photographs on the walls in the walkways. 
 
It sits next to the Chicago-Northwestern RR tracks, verrry close, and the trains rumble by still, and the glass in the shop walls shake just a little with the vibration.  The owners attached one antique train car, a vintage Pullman dining car (think thesepia train!) to the building, along with a Chesapeake-Ohio car, and the restaurant is called predicatably "Chessie's." 
 
The building was constructed in 1904 for Bowman Dairy, and then served as an area ice house for 66 years.  It was purchased and "re-imagined" as the boutique-restaurant venue that it still is today.  OH, it's called "The Ice House."  Catchy name, doncha think?
 
(I didn't know about Bowman Dairy building it -- I remember Bowman's from way way back when I was a kid.  Maybe other Chicagoans do too...)
 
 

Bert, I'll take Manhattans, but only when in Manhattan, and that was a long long long time ago.
 
Fitzgerald would take Manhattans anywhere, anyplace, any time.  
 
Ring Lardner wrote that to take a bottle of booze to the Fitzgerald's residence as a gift to the host was akin to taking coals to Newcastle.
 
It killed him. Which, in turn, killed her.
 
Ain't love grand?