Last Year

A year ago today I was in St. Paul, Minnesota finishing up a week of training for work. Across the street from the training is the Landmark Center. It's a wonderful old building, a former post office and courthouse. Inside it houses a bunch of museums. One day I spent my lunch hour investigating. There's a great collection of old pianos and harpsichords in the basement, and I was almost late getting back to class when I stopped in at the American Association of Woodturners gallery. The exhibit that was on display was called "Step Up to the Plate". It contained pieces created for the annual meeting of the AAW, which was held in Louisville, Kentucky home of the Louisville Slugger baseball bat company. It was an amazing collection of primarily baseball themed work.

Work was being done in the park area outside the Landmark Center while I was there. If I remember correctly from my first visit to St. Paul it used to just be grass and pathways. They had added several pieces of sculpture celebrating the work of Charles Schulz, a St. Paul native. Included were Charlie Brown and Snoopy (you can see them in the lower right corner of the first picture), Schroeder and Lucy, and looking over a short wall Linus and Sally.

I had some time between the end of the class and my flight home, so I wandered a little in St. Paul. A few blocks from here is a wonderful artist's co-op (Tilsner Artist Co-op). I love places like that so that was on my list of places to stop before I left. I wandered around looking at the wonderful pieces. I found that I kept coming back to one photograph. Two, three, four times I went back to look at it. Finally I decided that I had to bring home a copy. It's a photograph by Jeffrey Hansen taken on the shore of Lake Superior. You can see it here. It's still waiting to be framed (it is matted) - as are many things in our house. It makes me smile everytime I see it. I'm very glad I took the leap and brought it home with me.