Semblance of a Whole

A Visit To St. Paul

Although I have lived in Minneapolis or its suburbs my entire life (with interludes in Poughkeepsie, New York; Ann Arbor, Michigan; and Edinburgh, Scotland for schooling), I have never understood the whole "Minneapolis vs. St. Paul" thing that most people here go on about. I don't think anyone has ever backed up this claim with any actual hard data, but people here are always talking about how despite the fact the two cities border each other and their downtowns are only a few miles apart, people who live in once city never go to the other. Minneapolis vs. St. Paul is a favorite subject of the local media, and it inevitably resurfaces every time a big event (like the Republican National Convention) comes to the Twin Cities. As soon as any celebrity comes to visit, the question is bound to be asked.

As a kid, we made regular visits to both cities for cultural events, to eat out, or to shop. A Prairie Home Companion and the Science Museum ensured we made regular forays to downtown St. Paul, and downtown Minneapolis was the site of the much-anticipated, annual post-Christmas shopping trip as well as the home of what my parents deemed one of the few decent Mexican restaurants in the Twin Cities during the 1970s: Guadalaja Harry's.

In addition to the elephants and their ilk, St. Paul was also the home this week of Jon Stewart's The Daily Show. Tickets for the studio audience were made available last May and I was lucky enough to secure a reservation for last night's taping. Like those free movie preview passes you can sometimes get, these tickets didn't actually guarantee a seat. They only guaranteed you the right to stand in line to try to get a seat. The show has set up shop at the History Theatre, located directly on the designated protest route through downtown St. Paul. As I sat on a ledge outside the theater, enjoying the September breeze and the musicians playing Indigo Girls covers on the lawn of the adjoining McNally Smith College of Music Media, I could also observe the many barriers set up along the sidewalks, police in full riot gear, and then a large group of protesters flanked by cops, "peace patrol" members in yellow jerseys, and journalists.

Shortly after the protest went by, the Daily Show staff decided to move the line inside the building, for fear of possible violence or general mayhem. Sure enough, when the show was over and we came outside at about 7:15pm, we saw a mass of people on the bridge crossing I-94, just to the north of the theater, with an equally impressive number of police blocking their progress towards the Excel Energy Center to our south. Since our car was parked on the opposite side of the street the police were blocking (after arduous navigation of the various detours created for the convention's security zone), we beat a hasty retreat, afraid our path to the car might soon be cut off. As it turns out, the stand-off continued for quite some time but never made it past the bridge. It certainly made for a interesting visit to our state's capital city.

The Daily Show was great fun, and definitely worth both the wait and putting up with the RNC security zone. You can see the episode I was in the audience for online. I was sitting in the 2nd row, stage left, but you can't see me at all on camera. If you listen real closely, I'm the one in the background shouting "Minneapolis rules!"

Jetsetting

Between various work-related trips and vacations, I have been away from home for almost an entire month. I just realized that during that time, I have been to the three largest U. S. American cities: New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. I covered the breadth of the continent and waded in two oceans.

My first trip, in late June, was to Los Angeles for a conference (the seen of the somewhat abortive "live blogging" attempt in my last post). Just five days after getting back from L.A., I found myself in New York City. In Los Angeles, I drove for miles of highways under flawless blue skies. My one attempt at walking in Los Angeles -- a mere half mile from the conference hotel to a restaurant for lunch -- required taking my life into my hands, as the sidewalk was non-existent in some areas and the cars speeding by seemed oblivious to the presence of any life unencased by steel panels. In New York, I walked miles of sidewalk under cloudy skies in the shadow of skyscrapers, muscling my way through crowds of pedestrians. Absolutely no driving was attempted! In Los Angeles, I drove down Sunset Blvd from Fairfax to Brentwood, observing with interest (through the sealed compartment of my rental car) the diversity of neighborhoods that street runs through. In New York, diversity hit me like a hammer over the head the moment I stepped out of the Port Authority Bus Terminal into the cacophony of 8th Avenue. Within minutes I had heard at least five different languages being spoken and seen more examples of humanity than I did in an entire week in Los Angeles. To be sure, Los Angeles is a diverse city, but the sprawl and the car-centered culture lessen the intensity of the experience for the visitor significantly.

Both of the two cities include pockets where you could easily forget where you are. In Los Angeles, it was the Farmer's Market, with its densely packed fruit and vegetable stands, food stalls, and souvenir shops. In New York it was Central Park, with its gardens, lawns, forests, and even a castle.

My travels included visits to both the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans. In Los Angeles, I spent an afternoon at Venice Beach, and my trip to New York included a quick jaunt to the boardwalk in Atlantic City. While the cities of Los Angeles and New York City couldn’t be more different, the two beaches felt much the same. The sand was different, but the seascapes weren’t that different, and the boardwalks were lined with the same souvenir shops, ice cream parlors, and busking musicians. It’s just that Atlantic City’s board walk was peppered with casinos, while Venice had muscle beach.

And then there’s Chicago. After a two week hiatus from the city in the oasis that is Pinewoods, I returned to Minneapolis for two days and then flew to the Windy City for a work-related meeting. Chicago seems so straightforward compared to New York and Los Angeles, the archetypal city. More dense than Los Angeles but minus the cacophony (and the stink!) of New York, this trip made me realize how much more comfortable I feel in Chicago than any of the major American metropolises. Maybe it’s because it’s Midwestern. Maybe it’s because as a native of the Land of 10,000 Lakes I feel more comfortable in a city on a lake than an ocean. Or maybe it’s because they say “pop� and not “soda.�

I’m back in Minneapolis now, and I’m staying put for a while. Well for another week, anyway. Then I’m off to the airport again. . .

Live Blogging a Blogging Seminar

I'm currently in Los Angeles, attending the annual conference of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the American Library Association, otherwise known in the local parlance as "the RBMS Pre-Conference" (the "pre" refers to the fact that it precedes the American Library Association Annual Conference, which takes place in Anaheim starting Friday). My recent, public expression of laptop envy has yielded some benefits: My husband took pity on me in my state of digital deprivation and decided that since he had recently gotten another laptop through his new job, he would pass on to me his older machine. It's beat up, and the battery won't hold a charge for more than 30 seconds, but it's small and it works. So, for the first time in my life, I was able to bring a laptop computer to a conference. Thanks to the ubiquity of free WiFi, I can now be one of those people quietly clicking in away in a corner of the room simultaneously taking notes on the session, skimming email, and instantly accessing any web site mentioned by the speakers.

At this very moment I'm attending a seminar on blogging in archives and special collections, so I couldn't resist the opportunity to "live blog." Actually, I was too chicken at first, but one of the panelists noticed me tapping away in the back and eagerly asked if I was blogging. So I decided why not?

The seminar started with an overview of blogging and a near-real-time demonstration of setting up a blog (using the example of the seminar blog), showing how easy and fast it can be. Next we heard from three panelists who are using blogs in their repositories, Stephanie Horowitz at the Charles Babbage Institute, John Overholt from the Hyde Collection at Harvard, and Nancy Kuhl at Yale’s Beinecke Library.

More later. . .

Perforated, but Perservering

This seems to be my month for medical adventures! Unfortunately, my most recent one was of a more direct and personal nature than the one recounted a few weeks ago. It seems that my gall bladder decided, without warning or consultation, that it was time to part ways. According to my surgeon, the crafty organ had been plotting against me for some time -- years, even -- but waited until 3:30 on a Saturday morning when I was sound asleep to put its evil plan into action. That's when I was awoken by an intense pain deep in my chest.

I sat up in bed and debated for a few minutes what to do. I didn't really feel like I was having a heart attack (I didn't feel like my heart or breathing was labored), but the fact that the pain radiated through to my back concerned me. Of course my husband woke up, too, and from my description, which sounded similar to something he experienced a few years ago, he thought maybe it was some kind of bad heartburn. We decided to call the nurse line, but those folks want to err on the side of caution, so I wasn't surprised when she told me she couldn't rule out some kind of "cardiac involvement" and that I should go to the ER.

So off we went. We are fortunate to live near several hospitals, but we figured we should just go to the closest, which is the county hospital downtown. That turned out to be a mistake. I walked in and even before I could say what was wrong, the triage nurse was telling me that there was a 4 1/2 hour wait. I explained that I'd just like to find out if I was having a heart attack or not, and that seemed to galvanize them a bit, but I still had to sit down at the registration desk and discuss such inanities as my name, address, and social security number (I'm still wondering why they wanted that. I was thinking of arguing about it at the time, but in my extremity, I didn't have the energy to bother), and of course, the insurance information. Meanwhile, the pain had increased to the point where I was feeling quite desperate.

Once the staff satisfied themselves that I was a real person with an identity of some kind and an insurance company they could charge, they took me straight back for an EKG. I remember it seemed like it was taking forever for them to hook up all the electrodes, but once they finally had me wired up, the test took about one second. They just turned it on and flipped it off again. I concluded I was not in immediate danger, as I was sent back to the waiting room to await further attentions, presumably once the gunshot, car accident, and other trauma victims were out of their hair. The strange thing was that the waiting room was mostly empty. There were maybe two or three other people there awaiting treatment, plus a small group of people waiting for updates on someone who was already being seen. It was almost eerily quiet. Nothing like TV, I can tell you.

The Story of the Tell-Tale X: or, Mind Your C's and G's

About fifteen years ago or so, we began noticing some odd things about my father. An avid skier all his adult life, his friends noticed he suddenly seemed to be having balance and coordination problems on the slopes. My mother was troubled when he seemed to lose interest in many of his favorite activities, including working on wood carving, carpentry, or electrical projects in his workshop, and even, god forbid, the computer. Running, skiing, and other active pastimes fell by the wayside. He seemed increasingly tired and lethargic, but the change was gradual. After a few years, we realized he had come to spend most of his day dozing in his favorite chair.

My mother took him to the doctor, but they couldn't identify any particular ailment. The symptoms only grew more alarming as time went on. The changes were so gradual, we wouldn't realize he was getting worse until were suddenly faced with the reality that another daily life activity had joined the list of things my father could no longer do. I remember vividly the day I realized my father could no longer drive safely. One day my mother came home from work to find my father lying in the bedroom, where he had apparently been most of the day, unable to get up. There were more doctors, but still no answers.