A Few Observations on Weather

Talk about your second takes.  Banana Blossom reopened.  I know, that’s old news, it happened months ago, but it’s great news to me because I still haven’t dropped in yet, and I am so excited to try this place.  I thought I had missed my chance.  They were open for a couple years with me driving by at least five times a week and thinking I really wanna try the food there.  Then it was hit by a tornado.  Not just grazed, either, but really slammed into like a hockey puck to the larynx.  It was over.  I lost my chance.  And chances don’t come along everyday on the north side.  When I moved into this neighborhood seven years ago there was a fantastic Caribbean joint a block from my house.  They had the best food, a spectacular happy hour, and plans for a delightful & sunny patio.  They got a glowing review from Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl back when she was with the City Pages.  Even with all of this going for them they took on too much debt and closed within the year.  I’ve read the statistics - 60% of restaurants fail in the first three years, and by five years the failure rate jumps to 75%.  I’ve worked in the industry for over a decade (I even waited on Dara once, when I briefly worked at Tryg’s), and I knew how the cards were stacked.  I knew I had completely missed my window of opportunity to try Banana Blossom’s fare, and that they were not coming back.  Yet somehow they did come back after the tornado!  Last fall the new glass went into their large front windows, and now they’ve been reopened for some time, and their food looks spectacular in photos!  I shall not continue to squander this blessing.  I shall support these ridiculously lucky NoMi entrepreneurs, and go there this week, I promise.

The end of May was the anniversary of that North Minneapolis tornado.  MPR made a huge deal about it.  I was on the bus on my way to work the next week, and noticed they had taken another house on the block on the northwest corner of Broadway & Penn Aves.  Now there is the old fast food place that’s boarded up, and one house still standing.  That is all.

I honestly don’t know if anyone is living, or considering living, in this house (it’s doubtful, but there’s no plywood over the doors or windows, so it’s not unthinkable), but still it occurred to me how odd it would be to wake up one morning and be the only house left on your block.  What do you do, with no fences, no hedges, no gates or delineations whatsoever, when you have a WHOLE CITY BLOCK to yourself?  On a major crossroads?  It’s not like this house is down by the park or tucked away along the creek or anything – it is smack in the geographical center of the poorest neighborhood in the city, and it’s alone on an EMPTY block.  The building I wanted my start-up business in used to be there, but has since been torn down (a result of the tornado).  St. Anne’s Catholic Community is right across 26^th  Ave, too, so it’s not like no one is ever walking around here.

Take a moment to imagine yourself at home.  Now imagine waking up one morning to find you could peer across the street in every direction without obstruction.  Weird, right?  One recent Sunday I found myself on the 50^th floor where I work, and from 750 feet above street level you can definitely see the stripe of no trees slash diagonally across North, from Broadway & Penn to Lyndale & 42^nd.  I always found it difficult to locate my house from up there, now it’s right next to the white stripe, half way up, a few blocks off the left side.

No, we haven’t completely recovered.  A year later there are still houses with bright blue tarps on their roofs.  Many of these houses will probably never again support human life.  Many have already been taken by the bulldozers and the excavators, but of those that remain, few will stand in another year.  My favorite anchor on Penn & Broadway is trying to recoup & rebuild across the street from their now demolished building, on the empty block – I assume just because they have half a century’s worth of ties to the neighborhood.

I was at ALDI the other day buying some groceries, and there was a woman in front of me in line with the words “Project Bitch” tattooed just above her waistline, in a cursive tramp stamp.  I thought it was an apt metaphor for our shared neighborhood.  It IS a project.  It is a project that we’ve been working on for years, and one that is consistently frustrated by profiling, or stereotyping, or tornadoes.  It is something of a bitch, and there is still a narrative on the north side of a person with their fists up, a person who resents the scrutiny.  We take care of our own here; it’s just what we do.  We don’t need local TV news to pat us on the back for it.

So now everybody’s impressed with how many things have returned to normal on the north side.  Really?  It’s been A YEAR.  Many homes weathered the winter snows (thankfully sparse this year, but still…) WITHOUT ROOFS INTACT.  That is not normal.  Nor, in any other neighborhood, would you dream of saying, “wow, they’ve come so far” if that were the case for any fraction of the housing stock.  A year later they are still bulldozing tornado homes.  That’s how many were affected.  And the sad thing is most of them had only minor damage.  They just didn’t have any tenants or non-bank related interested parties to fix the minor damage, so exposed to the elements for a year it has become major damage.  If you want to know how far we’ve come in a year, come park at Penn & Broadway and get out of your car.  Take a moment to turn 360 degrees and really take in the cityscape.  You’ll wonder how many DAYS it’s been since the storm.

So feel free to congratulate us on the progress we’ve made, but don’t pretend there aren’t still empty lots full of crabgrass that no one wants to own.  We live in a vacuum that can only be filled by investment.  We need people to want to live where we live in order to recover, and right now on the north side of Minneapolis that prospect seems like something of a pipe dream.  All I can say is how much I love my neighborhood, and how much you’d love it, if only we could get some commerce up in here, and if only we could get some positive press.  I’m still waiting to see a billboard that says, “North Side: Come weather the storm with us, and rebuild something today.”

Thanks, Pop.

I recently saw this post on the Newscut Blog by Bob Collins.  It got me to thinking.  I have seen pictures of my dad when he was younger than I am now.  In fact, I once made a lamp for him and my mother made from slides from when they were first married.  It didn’t occur to me then, but now I am a couple years older than he was in those old photos.  I’ve heard stories from when he was younger than me.  The only problem with this is, the things people tell stories about are the exceptional things:  great accomplishments, life-altering journeys, epiphanies, and the like.  I don’t feel my personal story-worthy life events even compare with what I knew about my dad when I turned 19 and moved into my first apartment.  He was an Infallible Elder to me then.   All of the wonderful, relatable things I know about him, the things that have made us peers, I’ve learned since then.  I’ve learned that we’re a lot more alike than I ever assumed growing up.  I remember going to a Twins game with him and my friend Jill at the HHH Metrodome and having Jill tell me afterwards how weird it was to see the two of us sitting together, both leaning forward, arms on our knees, fingers interlocked, our weight on the balls of our feet, in the exact same pose as one another without intending it.  It was made more noticeable by the fact that white guys with beards tend to look alike, but at age 23 I was already becoming my father.

You think by the time you move out of your parents’ house that you know everything there is to know about these people who raised you.  I know I did.  After all, I’d spent every day of my life either with them or in relation to them.  What I hadn’t considered was that they hadn’t spent their every day in relation to me.  They had a whole life together before I came along.  A life when they made some of the same choices and mistakes that I have since made, because there are certain lessons that cannot be taught, but must be learned.

When I was 20 I moved to California, and my dad helped me get there.  When you spend two and a half days in a truck cab with someone, sleeping in rest stops with all your possessions just behind the back wall, there’s no way to not learn a few new things about them.  On that trip I learned about Dad's college weekend road trips, but also that he had a lot more wisdom to impart than just how to use a band saw (although this has proven helpful too).  That trip is also why, when Mom tells me that Dad is driving solo from my sister’s house in Seattle to my parents’ home in Tucson, I don’t worry.  I still want my mother to check in when I know she’s on the road.  Dad I know I don’t need to worry about on crazy feats of endurance travel.  I’ve seen the man do it.

After I bought a house back in Mpls, Dad came north to help me paint it.  I recall coming home one day to find he had climbed up the ladder to the porch roof with the six-foot A-frame ladder over his shoulder.  He had then propped the A-frame against the side of the house on the pitched roof to hang onto my louvered attic vent with one hand and use the other hand to paint the peak of the gable of my house (I assume he did this while I was at work because he knew I’d talk him out of it if I were home).  That is something I would never do.  Not for anyone.  I don’t necessarily have a fear of heights, I just don’t trust my own sense of balance that much.  If he ever asked, though, I’d do it for Dad.  Because I know he’d do the same for me, and has.  I won’t go into specifics, because I don’t want to give him ideas, but there are countless things that I’d never dream of doing ordinarily that I wouldn’t hesitate to do for my father.  When someone has your back like that, you have to reciprocate.  The man taught me how to be me, for god’s sake.  You can’t ever hope to repay that – all you can do is pay it forward.  Thanks, Dad.  I love you.  Happy Father’s Day.

Call me a Beverage Enhancement Technician

I had to stop in at the hotel to use the phone when I was downtown a couple weeks ago and I noticed something when I walked in. Since I normally come in through the back entrance, I seldom take note of anything in the front lobby. Up until recently, the big wooden desk to the right of the bell stand, the purview of the front desk staff, had a little name card on it saying “Manager on Duty.” Now, the plaque is less specific. It says “Hotel Information/Journey Ambassador.”
I am not making that up. It actually says “Journey Ambassador.”
That’s a bogus title. You’re not a Journey Ambassador. You’re a Concierge. And that’s cool. Say I’m staying at a hotel on business. I don’t need a “Journey Ambassador.” I’m just not that important. All I need is someone who can tell me where the nearest Walgreen’s is because my shaving foam, unwelcome in my carry on, depressurized and exploded. That is not a Journey Ambassador. Again, that’s a Concierge. I work for an international hotel chain. I won’t say which one, just in case our HR people stumble across this blog, but we have the same loyalty program every chain has. If you stay with us a lot, we’ll give you upgrades. If you stay with us a ton, we’ll learn your name and how you take your coffee. If you really drop some change our way, we’ll go out of our way to make sure you never feel want while you’re in our building. Hence the Journey Ambassador.
Here’s the thing: people want us to think right now that we’re special. You. And me. And all those people over there. Every one of us is deserving of an elaborate title, because every one of us is providing a unique service to society. We each, in turn, deserve to have an equally elaborately titled footman to acquiesce to whatever whim we may have. It’s like a short story by Gogol. Everybody has an important sounding sobriquet and a feeling of entitlement, but no one is actually providing a service anyone would miss if the position were gone. You’re not special. Neither am I, nor are any of those people over there. We are not doing anything so important that we need everything we want the moment we want it.
I’ve noticed a trend in T.V. ads lately. Both Starbuck’s and McDonald’s, two of the most faceless corporations on the planet, have started new campaigns that are really heavy on the individuality. Coffee is not only brewed, but also grown, roasted, and ground specifically for you. Every Big Mac is assembled with you, and your personal culinary preferences, in mind. This is incongruous with the very premise of Starbuck’s or McDonald’s. The whole point was that it was fast. It was pre-made and served up the minute you drove through because everybody wants a Big Mac the way a Big Mac is made. Now everybody wants a Big Mac to order?! That’s not part of the freaking deal. You either go to a chain and get what you expect, or you go to a neighborhood joint and get what they give you. You don’t get to walk into a Target and say, “well I think the pharmacy should be over there.” It’s laid out on a template.
So the government of my state officially shut down on July 1st. And this isn’t some sissy, Only The Poor People Feel It shutdown. This work stoppage means business. 22,000 state employees have been laid off. Everyone was turned out of state park campgrounds for the July 4th weekend. Highway rest stops are closed. You can renew your license plate tabs, but if you just turned 16 you can’t take your exam. If you want to get married, you can get a license for that through the county registrar, but if you want to catch and eat a Walleye, that license if you don’t already have it is unobtainable. Yes, I realize all this is goddamned absurd.
On Thursday I went to the DMV because no one knew yet what would remain open if the government shut down on Friday. I had to renew my auto registration, and figured it would be a while, so with earbuds in, I grabbed a number and sat down in the front windows while U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” blared forth from my ipod. If you’ve never listened to “Where the Streets Have No Name” at the DMV, I cannot recommend it highly enough. This is the situation that this song was designed for. Of course, I recognize the song was written about 1980’s Belfast, but through its ambiguous lyrics and first-track placement on the Joshua Tree album it has become an ultimate anthem to freedom and endless horizons; while hearing it from tiny cauliflowers in your ears that no one else can share while sitting in a fluorescently-lit hanging-ceiling cavern may be interpreted by some as depressing, for me it was nothing short of inspiring. And if you ever need assurance that you’re not that special, this experience will sear it onto your mind. Because hearing this song, all I wanted to do was get on the highway and drive. Fast. But before I could, I had to wait for the woman with the elaborate title to call my number and take my money. The DMV does not do Made To Order, nor should it.
So we really have the two extremes meeting in the middle. There is the Orwellian bureaucratic dystopia where you are a subject to the titled people, or there is the free-market, unregulated utopia where you have the title and everyone in your world is subject to you. Of course, in both worlds you still answer to someone. Both worlds have titled people, but some titles are more regal than others. Is one version inherently better or worse than the other? I mean, for anyone other than those with titles? I personally prefer a world where there is familiarity I can make for myself, where I have a home where everything is to my specifications, but anything outside of that sphere is up for grabs. Maybe I have to educate myself on what the norms and mores are for a different place. Maybe it seems weird, or even unpleasant to me. Maybe I grin and bear it. Maybe I become a better person for it before returning to my comfort-sphere. Maybe that’s the real world we all live in.
Really the only situation where I could justify a Journey Ambassador is in a world where nothing is ever the same. That is the world where I need a Journey Ambassador. When every day I wake up with a different set of rules, I need someone there to show me how to navigate the place. But when every hotel I stay in has the same offerings, amenities, and menu items in the on-site restaurant, I don’t need a Journey Ambassador. I need a more exciting life.

Stormy Weather

On Sunday, May 22nd, I was at home watching a thunderstorm roll in from the southwest. I had all the windows open to air out the house (our house has deep eaves, so I wasn’t worried about the rain). When the power went off I started closing windows for the oncoming storm. Then the sirens started. I went out the (open) back door to the deck into a noise unlike anything I have heard in my yard before. When I looked eastward, toward the front yard, I could see a cloud of debris beyond the neighbor’s houses moving from south to north, brown and chunky in the yellow-green light of the afternoon. They have said that by the time the warning was issued and the sirens went off the funnel cloud was already on the ground. I went back inside, and downstairs.
Over the last three and a half weeks I have seen things in my neighborhood that I haven’t seen in six years of living in my home. I have seen people who may have lived next to one another for years without exchanging hellos, but now are out working together getting a limb off of a porch, or clearing shingles out of a driveway so the construction crew can get through, or nailing a tarp over a gaping hole in a roof.
It’s almost a cliché to point out the Coming Together and Neighbors Helping Neighbors aspect of it all, but it truly is something of a surprise. The day of the storm my favorite neighborhood liquor store was hit pretty hard. The conventional thought is “liquor store – can’t be a good thing for the neighborhood,” but this place really was an asset. They had wine tastings, they were always out front putting annuals in the giant flower pots on the sidewalk, they almost never had panhandlers around; they were just a locally run small business with a fifty-plus year history on West Broadway – a fixture of the north side. The storm came on a Sunday, when liquor stores aren’t open. No one was there when the windows blew out. They were looted. That is sadly what I expected to hear more of, but as far as I’ve heard it was an isolated incident. I’ve heard stories about renters caught up in bureaucratic snafus with the city inspections division, which do not surprise me in the least (don’t get me started on the city of Minneapolis inspections division – if you’re interested, see the comment from Kevin Moberg after the Newscut link below). But I am embarrassed to admit that, even after six years of saying hi to my neighbors and lending them yard tools and such (even the one or two whom I didn’t care for), it surprised me to see the level of cooperation this neighborhood has risen to.
In the day or two directly after the storm, there were people who just sat in their vans in vacant parking lots on corners, waiting for someone to need a ride somewhere. There was one guy who got kicked out by the city for his volunteer efforts. There were shops that, as soon as they had plywood over the still-exposed broken glass in their windows, immediately spray-painted “We’re open!” all over the outside of said plywood and threw their doors open to the people of the neighborhood. Monday morning Lisa and I went to the Lowry Café for some breakfast, and our waitress said they were the only building on that corner with electricity. People were coming in all morning to charge cell phones and blackberries, without being made to purchase anything. Now that’s neighborhood.
I grew up in an insular suburban community. We all would have pooled our resources to help Mrs. Pearson, or the Sawyers, if they needed it, so I’m familiar with neighborly bonds. What is weird is that in that community we all already knew each other. In north Minneapolis, some dude could walk up from the alley and tell me he’s lived here for ages, and needs some help getting debris out of the way down the block, and I’d grab a saw. I wouldn’t ask who he is. I wouldn’t question his motives. Because I’ve been on the receiving end of this Good Samaritanism, and I am more than happy to pay it forward.
I have nothing against suburbs - I loved growing up in them. And I love visiting my friends on the south side of town, or across the river, or outstate. I love living in a state where everyone is happy to help one another no matter where they come from or what their background may be, but I will say that I really love my neighborhood, and my neighbors. We on the North Side are a resilient people, more resilient than may be obvious to most of the Metro Populace, and I am proud of my neighborhood for having set a high bar as the standard for communities working together in the Twin Cities. God bless, and god speed your recovery, friends.

Abraham, Martin, and John.

Right now in Minneapolis there is a controversy raging. A racially sensitive controversy. The kind of controversy that tears communities apart. It’s about an off-leash dog area in a park. I will repeat that. In Minneapolis right now, respected elders of the civil rights movement are arguing to prevent an off leash dog park from being opened between a soccer field and a freeway because the larger park is named for Martin Luther King Jr.
I admit, as a white guy raised in one of the whitest suburbs of one of the whitest cities in America, I maybe don’t have the kind of historical or cultural perspective to comment on such a controversy. However, I have owned a home in the poorest and highest-crime area of this city for the last six years, which in this town tends to mean it is populated mainly by people of color. Not that this issue is more economic than racial – it would appear from reports of the park board meetings that it is divided exactly along lines of race.
Here’s why I think that’s unfortunate: It should be about socio-economics. Dr. King’s namesake park in Minneapolis is on the more affluent south side, but it is still wedged between a freeway sound wall and a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood. It is a memorial park, yes, but it is not solely a memorial. Here’s its park board website. You will see, I believe, numerous sports facilities, youth recreation areas, public art installations, and if you GoogleMap "4055 Nicollet Avenue, Minneapolis, MN," some quality wooded knolls in the corners. Dogs are (& I can’t believe I have to say this) allowed on leashes in public parks in Minneapolis. The only controversy about the proposal is the idea that the city would allow a small parcel of these (approximately) 20 acres to be fenced in and free for unleashed dogs.
As someone who lives in an area of the city where people of all ethnicities try to kill each other every day (and we’ve lost a few in the surrounding blocks over the last twelve months), this offends me. How can someone spend their energy fighting a dog park (F.Y.I. the nearest dog park is over two miles away) on racial grounds, while in my neighborhood poor black people are killing other poor black people because they associate with the wrong crowd? How is a dog shitting in the woods more offensive to the memory of Dr. King than a hoodlum catching a baby girl in the crossfire of some stupid turf war that adds another tally to the homicide rate of an ordinarily peaceful city?
Let’s build a city where people in any geographical space have a chance to create something good and profitable for everyone. Let’s dwell not on past superficial slights, but on future opportunities for the common good.
If the opponents to the dog park really care about creating a place for the majority of minority constituents in the city of Minneapolis to raise children free of violence, they should embrace my neighborhood too, and they should try to keep guns off of our streets, on the north and south sides, but they should also allow dogs to shit in the grass next to I-35W, because that has nothing to do with race or economics, but everything to do with the responsibility of cleaning up after oneself, a healthy dose of which I think could benefit anyone in any neighborhood in this city.

Blessing Count 2010

Lisa and I worked both days this blizzarific weekend at The Hotel in Downtown Minneapolis. Saturday morning we got up and I had to give myself a little extra time to clear off the car before we left. We decided to park in the heated garage under The Hotel to avoid what we’d already heard would be a snowstorm of biblical proportions. It was crazy downtown. Everything was closed. The people in The Hotel had nowhere else to eat. We were busier than we’ve been on a weekend in months. By 2:00 P.M. when we were done with work, the airport had closed. The people who were supposed to check out ended up having to stay another night before flying home, so there were no extra rooms for employees. We thought about leaving the car in the garage (since we don’t have one at the house) and busing home and back downtown the next morning, but by that point the buses had stopped running. We didn’t have a choice. We had to drive home.
Everything went well at first. The thoroughfares were passable. Not clear, but flat-ish, and about ten feet wide between canyon walls of plow deposits. The problem came when we turned off of Penn Avenue to travel the one block to our house. The snow was just a bit higher than the undercarriage of my Geo Prism, and we couldn’t go. A car was trying to pass around the protruding rear end of the Geo, so I had to run a half-block to the house and grab two shovels. When I returned they tried to help me dig out of the bank, but the car wasn’t going anywhere. Out of sheer luck a guy drove up with a plow on his pickup truck. He opened his window and hung his stubbled face out, cigarette hanging unattended from his mouth, and asked if we could roll back far enough for him to clear us a parking space on the curb of 34th. Seriously, if he hadn’t come along at that moment we would likely have been digging out for hours into the night. He looked a little like a young Billy Joel, if Billy Joel drove a plow for a living. That was the first Christmas miracle.
The next morning we came out to the car to drive back to the hotel for day two of Blizzaricious. We turned around without incident (since Billy had cleared the whole intersection the day before), and got up to the light to turn back onto Penn. The problem was this: Penn Ave is a snow emergency route – it’s the first to be plowed. 34th is not – it’s low priority. So turning from 34th to Penn involves barreling through the plow contrail left the night before and ice-hardened into a car stopping rampart. We hadn’t had the foresight to stow shovels in the car before we left, so we sat, hung halfway between the street we lived on and the street that would take us to work, while I poked at the snowpack under the car with my windshield scraper and cursed. Our neighbor, a man we had met on the street but not really exchanged more than a moment’s pleasantries with, happened to be waiting at the corner for a bus that I assume was never coming. He came over and helped us push off of the plowridge, to universal delight. We weren’t sure if buses had been reinstated at that point, but offered him a ride downtown anyway. He doesn’t speak English super fluently, but we shared some laughs on the drive nonetheless. That was the second Christmas miracle.
By the time we were done with work at 1:00 on Sunday life was almost back to normal. The snow was manageable, the streets were clear, and the populace was self-absorbed again. People had dealt with the adversity and moved on and were either gearing up for the workweek or heading home to finally relax, but I won't forget that twice over the stormy days we were rescued by an unlikely Samaritan. To mystery plow man, thank you, and you may in fact be right – I may be crazy. To our neighbor, come up the block, friend, and we shall feed you. I’d love to hear more about where you have come from, and how much we have in common, while we share some dinner together. Skol.

Do Not Disturb

There’s snow here now, and there has been for about a month. It was weird: unseasonably warm autumn with low squinty sun but comfortable afternoons on the porch, and 48 hours later there were nine inches of snow on the ground. Later this weekend we’re supposed to pick up another six inches or so. I think that’s cool. Last fall I was a little miffed – we’d had an anemic summer without any real heat and the snow came early. I felt cheated out of a season. This year, our last snow fell in late February. We had an almost unprecedented snowless March. I had our garden entirely planted by the first of May. Then September was dry, and October was warm enough to give us a second crop of heirloom tomatoes. This might be the longest I’ve gone (except when I lived in Eureka CA for a year) without trudging through snow. I can honestly say I’ve missed it.
I was prepared. I raked the yard, I drained the hose and shut off the spigot, I cleared out the garden. I was just waiting for mother nature to tell me I didn’t have any work to do outside for the next few months. The window boxes were all blank, and ready for a covering of reflective white insulation. In short, it was time to hibernate. This summer was awesome, it was long, it was hot, it was glorious, but now I had a new winter coat from Old Navy and a pantry full of canned vegetables and jams, and I was fully prepared to make the shift from grilling green and red things in a citrus marinade over flames to frying orange and brown things in animal fat over cast-iron.
Plastic went up on windows, salt went out on sidewalks, and Kev went into a warm bath. Seriously, if it’s going to get dark this early in the afternoon I’m going to put on pajamas and check out before dinner. And thank god I live in a place where such is possible. All summer I keep sandals on and stand in front of the grill until 9 P.M., but come November I can step into slippers and sink down into the LaZBoy at 5 when it gets dark and watch the news, or a movie, or all six seasons of The Sopranos (over the span of several weeks, of course).
Since buying a house I’ve come to realize that this is an important time of year. And perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself with it, as well, for first must come the holidays. There’s shopping to be done, and family parties to attend, brittle and bark to be made, gifts to be wrapped, et al. There is really no relaxing, in the true hibernatory sense, until after the first of the year. However, the winding down of the outdoor activities and the battening down of the homestead for the impending winter is an essential first step.
The Earth itself will actually cocoon us into idleness if we let it, and after New Year’s Day I fully intend to let it. It’s one of the glories of this landscape: In the summer our workshop is the whole of the world (or the whole of our world, anyway), an immense expanse waiting to be subjugated and controlled by us in the form of lawns, gardens, parks, etc. In the winter our purview moves indoors to a smaller, more controlled, and more insular kingdom. My basement is finally going to be tamed, if only because it is my only habitable frontier for the foreseeable future. In the mean time, the raspberry sticks in the side yard will have free reign over the sidewalk because it’s cold and no one else would want to walk on it. I’m inside with a book, or a pie recipe, or a band saw and a blueprint. Eventually though, this house will bore me to tears. I love my house, but it is small, and doesn’t offer the kind of creative challenges I would enjoy. I will organize my basement, and repaint the bedroom, and want another canvas on which to work. With any luck, by then most of the snow will be gone and I will be able to move my operations back outdoors to rebuild the herb beds, expand the lettuce garden, shape the hedge just so, or adjust the boulevard garden for larger and more extravagantly humble stock. Anything to keep me busy and out of the house until I need to hibernate once more.