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Madison eats.

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Coldwater Spring sits right above the Mississippi River just south of Minnehaha Falls. It is a nice place to end a dog walk.

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Modern Chicago selfie.

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The rain came down just after I got this excellent perspective of Fulton Street right off Halsted. Hoping to visit the street market next weekend with my family.

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I tried hard to get a picture of the city from this tiny bridge in the North Loop. The results weren’t entirely satisfying. But I’ll try again later this year.

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Off to college events with my son. Beloit brought out some impressive alumni. The parents and kids were very nice and some of the people remembered my nephew who graduated in 2014.

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View of Chicago from the south rail yards.

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Sometimes I am rewarded with solitude. One of my favorite winter night time walks is out on Navy Pier. This night the guard asked me where I was going and wouldn’t let me walk on the pier. So I took the path along Michigan Avenue and saw this stellar view of the city.

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I have been trying to walk more. I spend a lot of time on this trail in the summer, biking through the Minneapolis Grand Rounds. It was spectacular on this Sunday Morning on a rare snowy winter’s morning.

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Back in 2013 I was working in Chicago and experimenting with my iPhone camera, specifically the Hipstamatic app. I decided to give myself a project to design album covers for songs I liked at that moment. The final output was these 4 pictures: experiments in collage, color, multi-exposure, framing, and exposure.  Links to the songs below are:

Destiny / Zero 7

Teardrop / Massive Attack

Gold Mine Gutted / Bright Eyes

Not In Love / Crystal Castles (featuring Robert Smith)

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One thing that happened at Creighton is that I quickly joined the student-run radio station. A friend of mine and I had the not much coveted Friday 8-10pm slot*. We’d go in, peruse the shelves for the vinyl we liked or caught our eye, have some really lame inter-song patter, and spin some disks.

Shortly after starting, the student managers found out that the funding would be cut and the radio station would be closed.  We all considered our options. One idea was to hold a protest. A couple of people agreed: we’d lock ourselves in the radio station and call television and radio stations, asking for community support.

When the time came for the protest, my fellow DJ bowed out. And when I turned up at the station, all the other people bowed out. Undaunted, I went through with the ‘protest’ by myself. I broke a lock off in the door, announced my intentions on the air and started making calls.

A few minutes later, two campus cops came by and starting pounding on the door telling me to open up. A drill came out and within 30 minutes, I was cuffed. I had successfully called the Omaha paper and one other radio station.

Eventually, I had to meet with Father (Michael G.) Morrison, the University President. By my memory, the meeting was stern but pleasant.   I would be responsible for paying for the lock. If I got into trouble again, I might be expelled. I would be expected to do community service at a local homeless shelter.  And I was banned from entering the building that housed the radio station (pictured above). I never set foot in it again - not even on this trip.

* Freshmen DJ’s got these slots. 

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The second school we visited on the college tour was Creighton University. I attended Creighton for one year before transferring to Madison. Creighton has a complicated history for me - it took me in as a poor student, set the expectations high and allowed me to get back on my academic feet. I met some of the best people I would ever meet in college (besides my wife). But I also found the tiny campus, the religious emphasis, and the greater student body to be stifling. It was just what I needed at that time in my life. And after I got what I needed, I left.

Lars told me that Creighton had changed since I had left. We found that to be true. When I attended, the campus was the size of 4-6 blocks, surrounded by highway and dangerous neighborhoods. Today, the highways remain. But Creighton bought many of the surrounding blocks and expanded greatly, including building a giant soccer stadium.

Even though we had missed some of the formal activities earlier that day, we asked the admissions office if we could take part in a tour. They signed us up for an overview presentation as well as a tour. The presentation was very good. The admissions presentation emphasized the values of the University: a focus on the whole person (academics / spirituality), service to others and studying abroad. She stated that over 70% of attendees played varsity sports in high school and emphasized the Division I sports Creighton offered: basketball, soccer (they have a huge home stadium), baseball, volleyball, and softball. 

The tour guides were entertaining and informative about life on campus and what they liked and didn’t like about attending Creighton. The tour guides gamely listened to me reminisce about my time there “back in the 80′s”.

The effect was that it was similar - and possibly better - than what I encountered personally. I came away impressed.

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This year our family took a short family vacation and went on a college tour.  The first stop - and ultimate goal - was to stop at KU, otherwise known as the University of Kansas. 

The KU campus is situated on a ridge on the highest hill in Lawrence, Kansas. It forms a crescent around a giant park that contains the football stadium.  There are trees and the buildings range from ‘classic’ turn-of-the-century, to 60′s and 70′s brutalism, to the new “modern” return to classic forms. The campus is big, but not huge in a way that Madison or Minnesota is. It felt very manageable, especially with the numerous buses that cater to students coming and going from campus.

 The things that surprised me about KU were the hills (not very tall, but very steep) and the large number of trees. People coming from Minnesota or Wisconsin will feel right at home with the number of trees in Lawrence.

The place to eat and gather is Massachusetts Street (known locally as Mass Street) and the October night was perfect for walking the entire length and getting a feel for off-campus life. This October night we saw some parties starting through the windows just as we were leaving town to go back to our Airbnb.  This Wednesday looked fun, but not crazy which made it appealing.

The KU Visitors Center did a great job of showing off the campus. We saw some model dorms. Lars and Brita and Gretchen took the official tour of the campus, including the pre-tour presentations.

We got some tickets that enabled us to eat with the students (for a fee). This - in retrospect - was an important introduction to campus life. We saw how nice the dining hall was and the kids got their closest experience to what it felt like to be a student. Leif thought the “unlimited” hamburgers was a highlight of the entire trip.

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The words most likely to make Leif grown in pain are, “Let’s go to a museum.” And yet, he’ll actually go with me most of the time if I ask nicely.

The Spencer Museum of Art is located behind the KU student union in the same geographic bowl as the football stadium. Admission is free and we both agreed that the quality of the selection was high. It isn’t too big that you feel overwhelmed. The pieces are well selected.  I have included three pieces that stood out to Leif and me.

The first piece is a giant piece of acrylic in the shape of a lens. The lens works best if people stand close to either side and look at each other.

The next piece is a collection of broken Korean China that the artist collects from a factory and assembles into a sculpture. The card called the creation a “biomass” and that is exactly what it conveys. Standing next to it reminded me of a Miyazaki cartoon.  I was waiting for it to move towards me in order to consume me.

The final noteworthy piece was small (less than a foot tall) but noteworthy for its gruesome depiction of a decapitation. At the foot of the murderer, a dog licks the neck where the head was once connected. What shocked me even more, was the fact that this artwork was made in 1980. 

The last piece was found by Leif. The museum has stores jewelry in a cabinet with drawers that slide out. I often overlook cabinets like these - either mistaking them for museum storage or too timid to look inside. But drawers are made to open and Leif doesn’t suffer from my fears or blindness. Inside we found amazing pieces of jewelry including what appears to be a winged demon with a blue rock in its teeth and a black rock clutched in its claws.

And that’s one of the reasons I love to go to museums with Leif. He sees things I wouldn’t and points them out. We had a great time.

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Welcome to Misery! I mean, welcome to mis…er…ee. Misery? I mean Missouri.

Said to us by the woman checking us into our hotel. Let’s just say that she clearly has experienced a lot of misery in Missouri.

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Great time to remind Republicans that women vote and will not let their rights be taken away without a fight. According to news reports, more than twice as many people marched on Washington today as were at the inauguration yesterday. I was proud to march with my wife and daughter in St. Paul and glad to see so many Minnesotans out today.

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Leif's math class assigned the kids to cook a full meal for their family and then calculate the costs. We had crackers and cheese and jelly hors d'oeurve, followed by potato soup and homemade bread, followed by ice cream with Teddy Graham cookies. Leif got up at 6am to peal the potatoes. A great assignment turned into a very nice meal.