Who can turn the world on with her smile?

Why Mary Tyler Moore was so happy to be in Minneapolis, I don’t understand. Don’t get me wrong, the twin cities are nice enough. They seem a lot smaller than I imagined them, but for old mill towns, they’ve done okay. Not super fantastic wonderful, but okay. But being here does not make me happy enough to toss my hat in the air and twirl in the street.



M and St P are odd cities to get around in. Not simply because of the bisecting rivers, but because you can find the street you want. Say X st, and want 5000 X st and travel along 1000, 2000 -- oops it stops -- is there something in the way - building? Highway, okay you go over a block down two and back and your back on X st trying to find 5000, and now your at 2500 and 3000 and 4000 and oops we’ve done it again. There is something in the way…. It’s not as bad as Memphis, but it gets old quick.


We were up very early today and went into St P. Ate breakfast at a local landmark, Mickey’s. A very old diner (the metal car type that was probably all of 6 feet across. 2 booths that they charged you to sit in. We ate at the counter. Been a while since I’ve seen a jug of lard on the grill top. Breakfast tasted good though. Perhaps I should take two cholesterol pills tonight?


From there we went to the science museum. It would be good for kids, but alas, I again found I was a little old for it and surprised myself by knowing more science than I thought I did. Still there were some cool things: a human heart, bones of animals, some interesting interactive construction elements. A tug boat to go into. But it didn’t hold us all that long.


We did see more of the Mississippi River, that was neat and some Peanuts sculpture. We than went to the mill section. Saw the Gold Medal Flour mill, but far more exciting here is Open Book, the Minnesota Center for the Book. It had a gallery space we looked at. It was very much like M’s old MFA days which was a little odd for both of us, but they also had workshop space with presses, etc. It was pretty cool to see the space and the work.


An interesting transition, we went from there to the Walker Center for the Arts and the sculpture garden. You know that famous Spoon Bridge and Cherry sculpture? Well, I didn’t know it was a fountain, but it’s also a lot smaller than it looked on TV. Not to say its small - it isn’t. But I’m always surprised how much bigger things look on television - you’d think it would be the opposite.


Anyway, we didn’t walk ALL of the sculpture garden. In truth, I liked the birds and the chipmunks more than the art. The museum itself however was pretty cool. It’s all contemporary, so it was pretty neat to me to see more works from more recent artists. (Warhol, Cristo, an old Yoko Ono movie). It was fun. Some of it I hated, but most of it, at least interesting to look at.

Starving, we also ate in the Walker's cafe.  I had a Wolfgang Puck PB&J.  Rather disappointing actually, I mean, Wolfgang Puck, you would have thought maybe some fancy jelly?  Peach?  Boysenberry?  Nope.  Strawberry.  How did he ever get so famous?


Then we moved on to the Museum of Russian Art. A seemingly odd thing to be in Minneapolis, but very cool. Far more traditional painting than the Walker and no names I recognized, but work I liked a lot more.


In between all this and dinner, we’ve driven around a fair amount - avoiding the highway and getting a sense of the cities. We debated the more traditional art museum, the zoo, etc., but we were tired today and were not sure it’s enough of a draw for us. (We both have a lot of mixed feelings about zoos in general and living near the National Zoo was rather spoiling.)


We are thinking we will head east tomorrow across countryside, not Interstate and see where we end up.