Peg Kerr's Journal

I took last week off work and continued my personal project to investigate things I am not familiar with in my city. Wednesday was Juneteenth, and after seeing an ad on Facebook, I decided to go to see Fort Snelling because they were doing a special tour for Juneteenth about the history of slavery at the Fort.

I am glad I went. The interpreters were friendly and very willing to answer all my questions. I had a long talk with one about the sorts of things imported from St. Louis, Missouri for the general store, and with another about 19th and early 20th-century medical technology. The tour included a lot of information about Dred Scott, whose stay at the Fort resulted in probably the worst Supreme Court decision of all time. The Court decided that African-Americans had no rights that anyone need respect, a decision that eventually led to the Civil War.

One of the most moving displays was the table set in the Fort commander's house. Each plate bore the name of a slave who had been forced to work at the fort, in a territory and later a state which was supposedly free. The interpreter explained out the US Army helped subsidize slavery, paying officers a per diem for 'servants' who were actually slaves, making it easy for the masters to pocket the difference.

Very interesting, and very glad I went. The museum at the visitor center was excellent, too, and I think did a great job of illuminating the history of the Fort while including the painful stories of the African-American and Native American experiences to which it was tied.

Image description: A view of Fort Snelling from a distance with a title "Juneteenth: Freedom Day" displayed in the sky over the fort. Center: A dining table set with a tablecloth and plates. Lower center: a closeup of one of the plates, with the name of a slave, "Jane Glasgow," with the name of her master (Zachary Taylor) underneath with a date: May 1828 - July 1829. Lower right corner: a laundress pounds clothes in a washtub. Behind her is a cavalry saddle. Lower left: an outstretched hand holds a few clarinet keys (replicas of artifacts found by archeologists behind the quarters that housed the military band). Behind it: a Civil War Union uniform.

Juneteenth



Click on the links to see the 2024, 2023, 2022 and 2021 52 Card Project galleries.

I'm posting this a day early because, you know, there is this wedding distracting me this weekend.

I went for an exploratory expedition with minnehaha last week: we spent a pleasant afternoon meandering through the galleries of the Walker Art Museum. I haven't been there in years.

We spent most of our time looking at an exhibit entitled "Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s." Quite absorbing but also rather sad. It was astounding the extent that artists would go to in an attempt to make art while evading the official censors. Sometimes they resorted to using their own bodies as canvases within a limited time frame, i.e., they would spread the word among their friends 'come to this street at this hour and enter this basement and after you see what I have written on my body, I will take a shower. DON'T TELL ANYONE WHO WILL TELL THE POLICE.'

For much of this ephemeral art there are only photographs and videos to see.

We stopped for a lovely midafternoon too-late-for-lunch-too-early-for-dinner meal at the restaurant in the building. I wanted to incorporate the beautiful cocktail I ordered into the collage, but I thought the photo was pretty enough to stand on its own.



I had a strong artistic sense of this card as I was taking photographs for it. Most of the photos I harvested had definite horizontal energy. Unfortunately, I've put it together in a bit of a hurry because I have a lot to do this weekend, and I'm not feeling patient enough to tinker with it endlessly. I've layered various works of art from the exhibit, and placed over them a semi-transparent shot of the view down a long corridor:



Description: layered images of an art exhibit at the Walker Art Museum, with semi-transparent images of various works of art, overlaid by the word 'Walker.' Upper right corner are the words 'Make Sense (of this)' Lower right corner: a black poodle.

Walker



Click here to see the 2024 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

I had taken the week after work, but as always, I don't realistically have the money to get out of town for my vacation. Despite the issue with my foot, I wasn't willing to spend the week parked on my couch and so I decided I was going to get out of the house every day. Explore the city. See things I've not had a chance to see before.

I'd had such fun visiting the Minneapolis Art Institute a few weeks ago that I hit upon the idea of checking out museums every day (there are a lot of them in the Twin Cities), particularly ones I hadn't seen before. I was particularly interested in looking into ones that would teach me about other cultures. My foot is getting better, and I figured I would be probably up for exploring museum galleries at a slow walk, and I would be able to sit down on a bench if I got tired.

This turned out to be a great idea. I've had a wonderful week.

I went to:

The Weisman Art Museum, where I was delighted to discover the glass fish statue that was one of the inspirations for my (unfinished) ice palace book ("The museum presents and interprets works of art, offering exhibitions that place art within relevant cultural, social and historical contexts.")



The Pavek Museum ("The mission of the Pavek Museum is to share how pioneers in electronic communications created enormous impacts on the evolution of society, to inspire in people a passion to make contributions to our quality of life through science and the communication arts, and to preserve the rich mosaic of the development of electronic communications through a historically significant, permanent, and living repository.")

The American Swedish Institute (free on Thursday afternoons) ("The American Swedish Institute is a gathering place for all people to explore diverse experiences of migration, identity, belonging and the environment through arts and culture, informed by enduring links to Sweden.")

The Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery ("The Minnesota African American Heritage Museum and Gallery (MAAHMG) preserves, documents and highlights the achievements, contributions and experiences of African Americans in Minnesota. ")

The Hmong Cultural Center ("HCC's Mission is to promote the personal development of children, youth, and adults through education while providing resources that enhance cross-cultural awareness between Hmong and non-Hmong.")

I have further plans to visit other places before I start work again on Monday.

I fit in a few other fun things, stopping at the Humane Society to hang out with some cats (I'm dreadfully allergic, but oh how I would love to have one), the Alliance Française to pick up information about their French conversation groups, which I may check out soon, and a few ethnic restaurants I've never tried before.



Here are some of the things I saw this week:

Image description: semi-transparent background: a Hmong story quilt. Lower right: a sculpture of a curve-necked bird made out of gourds. Lower center: black feet made from molds. Lower left: an abstract sculpture of angular wire shapes. Just above that: a wooden sculpture of three Swedish women gathered at a table for gossip and tea. Upper left: a wooden fork and spoon decorated with carved wooden flowers. To the right: a sculpture of a fish fashioned from plates of clear glass over a wooden skeleton. Overlaid over the fish sculpture is a qeeg, a traditional Hmong wooden musical instrument. Upper right: a carved wooden Swedish butter mold.

Edited to add: Discovered something in a book I'm reading about racial reconciliation about the statue of the bird I included in the card: Sankofa, from the Akan language of Ghana, translates in English as "to reach back and get it." The symbol of a bird with its head turned backward taking an egg off its back is often used to illustrate this concept. The word is also associated with an African proverb: "It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten."

Exploration



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

Here we see an example of the limitations of my self-imposed rule that the titles for these collages must be one word. Rightfully, the title of this one should be "Nature Walk."

Perhaps I'll relax that rule next year.

So, anyway, a friend notified me about the monthly nature walks led by a retired naturalist, Dave Crawford, organized by an organization known as the Friends of Minnehaha Park. (Facebook page here). So we signed up and showed up at the Wabun Park picnic grounds, and under Dave's guidance, we took an interesting, slowly ambling hike that lasted about an hour.

Minnehaha Falls is entirely dried up, because of the drought. This area was originally oak savannah, and Dave explained how the arrival of settlers and their agricultural needs gradually changed the plants growing in the landscape. He had some interesting historical tidbits to add, as when he pointed out a clump of white snakeroot, for example. If you allow your cattle to graze in a patch of white snakeroot and eat it, their milk can turn poisonous--that's what killed Abraham Lincoln's mother, for example.

It was fun. Friends of Minnehaha Park has nature walks with Dave scheduled on a monthly basis, and there are also future dates on the calendar when people are encouraged to gather to join work crews eradicating invasive buckthorn.

Tell me about a little-known thing that's fun to do that you've discovered in your town or city.

Image description: Background: semi-transparent picture of oak savannah. Top: the words "Friends of Minnehaha Park." Bottom center: a man with glasses, in a straw hat and jacket (Dave Crawford) smiles slightly at the camera. Scattered over the oak savannah are small tile pictures of plants: Pagoda Dogwood, Canada Goldenrod, Meadow Rue, Wood Nettle, Hackleberry Tree, Yew - possibly English Yew.

Nature



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

I had a much more complex vision for this collage and am frustrated by my inability to capture it. I don't have time to try to mess with it anymore, so I am finishing with something simpler. Actually, this is one of the first times that in reality, I wanted to create a collage in video.

I have been thinking about all the connections I have--to people, to businesses, to groups, to communities. This week, I have been thinking about how so many of those connections that supported me have felt as though they have been frayed, damaged, or even cut.

My vision for this collage was a woman's hands holding a bunch of ropes, which would be labeled. Some ropes would be fraying. Two of the thickest ropes would be cut: Rob. Kij. There would be shears attacking some of the ropes, also labeled (Death. Aging. Indifference. Pandemic.) I even wanted to put in a flaming torch burning some of the ropes, labeled Murder of George Floyd.

I've been thinking about this as I've been readying to go to Minicon, feeling in my gut that it's just not the same. Rob isn't there. The girls aren't coming anymore. Many friends have fallen away. It just isn't what it used to be in the glory days.

This sounds depressing, I know. But the reason I felt the impulse to create this collage in video is that I also saw new ropes coming in to add support to the dangling woman. Eric. Chris (Delia's boyfriend). Alona (Fiona's fiancé). Zoom coffee group. New rituals. New community. New adventures. New joys. The hope of grandchildren.

I think that our challenge as we age is that we grieve the connections that are naturally lost with the passage of time. Some people don't manage to move beyond this, and so their lives get smaller and smaller as they grow older. My mom and my late dad, on the other hand, have been superb role models for me because they kept reaching out for new experiences as they aged.

They showed me that we have to resist apathy and make genuine efforts to keep reaching out and making new connections. New friends. New families connections. New rituals.

I am going to Minicon this weekend. I will see old friends, even though I will miss certain faces.

Background: sky at sunset overlaid with a net. left: a cut rope tied off with a knot. Center: a woman's hands hanging onto a rope. Right: a rope nearly cut through (a pair of shears is poised at the frayed portion)

Tether



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

So: a big multi-day snow storm expected this week. One to two feet of snow, they said. My employer's building was closed for a couple days, schools and businesses were closed, and the governor declared a weather emergency. I shopped for groceries, made a big batch of lentil soup and another of vegan lasagne, and I made sure the buckets of traction grit were filled.

In the end, the predicted two feet of snow dwindled to around 13" in my neighborhood. Not as big a blowout as they predicted, but within the top 25 storms in history in the Twin Cities (Eric, on the other hand, got 20" in his neck of the woods). I did one tiring round of shoveling, but a kind neighbor came through with a snow blower for the second round. I've been cuddled up on my couch in fuzzy pajamas with tea, candles, soup, and blankets. It's been rather nice to hunker down.

( Peter Mayer's song 'Real Good Storm' has been running through my head all week. )

I do like this one. I'm pleased with the effect of the frame, made by taking and cropping a picture of my Yak Trax tracks in the snow. I had to wear them over my boots as I shoveled, as my driveway and sidewalk were caked with ice. It made shoveling treacherous.

Image description: Within a frame of Yak Trax in the snow, the collage looks out on a blue-tinged snowy street (the view out Peg's front door). Superimposed over the scene are a pair of yellow snow shovels, handles crossed. Over that are newspaper headlines (top to bottom): "Hunkered down for storm," "epic snowstorm," "Storm fell short of fears," and "Metro braces for snowfall."

Hunker



Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

In the midst of a standard update a week ago, my computer apparently had some kind of hiccup and suddenly the data was hosed and the computer couldn't boot up. Argh. It's been in the shop ever since. It was supposed to be fixed in 3-5 days and it's been 7. Still not fixed. I am going crazy.

This card is about a neighborhood art crawl that I went to the weekend before last, put on by LOLA, the League of Longfellow Artists. I bought the pair of blue earrings included on the card.

Image description: Upper left: Logo for LOLA (League of Longfellow Artists). Rest of the card is composed of various pieces of artwork. Center lower right: a pair of earrings comprised of dangling light blue beads.

LOLA



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

This week, I lost an earring.

Small thing, right? But it was one of my FAVORITE earrings. I made it twenty years or so ago myself, with a matching necklace, to match a favorite outfit that I still wear. I was really proud of the jewelry I'd made and thought it beautiful. I wore it to church and out to an outside dining patio, and somewhere or other, when I was taking on and off my N95 mask loops, the earring was flipped out of my ear.

Gone.



Another small thing: this past weekend I was missing Highland Fest, an outdoor community event that had been held on Aquatennial weekend for 36 years. I checked online only to learn that Highland Fest would not be held this year--or ever again. The business owners decided to cancel it permanently. Another casualty of the pandemic.

I've been missing Rob in the past week, and as I started mulling these things over, I started missing so many things. Everyone has lost so much. Lost jobs (or partially lost jobs, like me). Deaths from Covid. And Minneapolis/St. Paul bears additional scars: the horrendous murder of George Floyd, the deaths of Amir Locke, Daunte Wright, and now Andrew Tekle Sundberg.

The murder of George Floyd led to losses to 1,500 businesses in this community. Some came back, but some never will. Other businesses went under due to the pandemic, including places I'd frequented for years and miss terribly. Marla's Caribbean Restaurant, Riverside Cafe and Wine Bar. Cleveland Wok. Sophie Jo's Emporium, where I used to browse after my Friday coffee sessions, and where I bought one of the best Christmas presents ever for Delia. And one of the losses that has haunted my sf/fantasy community the most: the incinerating of Uncle Hugo's/Uncle Edgar's bookstores in the May 2020 riots. Uncle Hugo's was the oldest independent SF bookstore in the country. This picture of the owner, Don Blyly, standing in the rubble of what used to be a thriving store just haunts me.

And then I heard a retrospective interview with Norman Lear, the creator of so much notable television, including All in the Family, who turned 100 this week. The interviewer noted that, but then went on to say that Norman Lear makes a point of not looking back over his shoulder:

What is left to ask Norman Lear?
The living legend of television has spent his life doling out lessons, so when granted the opportunity to converse with him via email ahead of his 100th birthday, what was there to ask?
Does he know the meaning of life? “Yes, the meaning of life can be expressed in one word: tomorrow.” What pieces of advice does he have that stand out above the rest? “There are two little words we don’t pay enough attention to: over and next. When something is over, it is over, and we are on to next. Between those words, we live in the moment, make the most of them.”

I thought a lot about those words this week. Someone who has lived for a hundred years would have seen so much--and lost so much. I thought about how many people he cared about have died in the hundred years he has been alive. I suspect that his gift for appreciating each day, living in the moment, may be one of the keys to his longevity.

I have not yet achieved such wisdom, perhaps. This week, I have been keenly aware of all that has been lost.

I went on a walk this week, and I came across a memorial inscription in a park that read:

What is lovely never dies,
but passes into other loveliness
stardust or seafoam
flower or winged air

Is that true? I don't know. Maybe it's a nice myth we make up to comfort ourselves when someone or something we care about disappears. I remember when we were planning Rob's funeral, my pastor asked, "What did Rob believe about what happens after death?" There was a perplexed silence for a moment, and then Rob's brother Phil offered, "Rob always believed he would become star stuff."

Sometimes I believe in heaven, but sometimes I just don't know what I believe. One of the lines that has stuck with me the most from one my grief meditations is: We have to make the transition from knowing the beloved as someone who is sometimes physically present and sometimes physically absent to knowing them as someone who is now always physically absent but always spiritually present.

Maybe Rob is or will be star stuff. For now, all I know is that he is gone. So much is gone. And I'm feeling it.

It's grief, but it's more than grief. It's loss; it's feeling the hole that has been left behind.

There is hopeful news at least: Uncle Hugo's / Uncle Edgar's has found a new location and will be opening up again soon. Norman Lear, I am sure, would be pleased to hear that the "next" is underway.

Image description: Background: semi-transparent view of the burned-out destruction of Uncle Hugo's bookstore after the May 2020 riots. Upper left: semi-transparent head shot of Rob. Diagonally from upper right corner: blue-green dangling earring ending with a blue teardrop bead. Behind the earring, over the center of the card, the logo for the Highland Fest (a blue and black guitar crossed by a black paintbrush dipped in blue-green paint). A blue ribbon extends from below the paintbrush to center left; over that is the word "Marla's" with a palm tree, in red (the logo for Marla's Carribean Restaurant). Over the earring and Highland logo is the line logo of the Riverside Cafe and Wine bar, showing the outline of wine glasses. Bottom left corner: a cartoon of a smiling woman sitting in bubble bath tub (from the sign outside of Sophie Jo's Emporium). Bottom right: a marble statue of a woman in classical garb, kneeling with her face to the ground, one hand covering her eyes. Superimposed over the kneeling woman, written in white script are the words, "There are two little words we don’t pay enough attention to: over and next. When something is over, it is over, and we are on to next. Between those words, we live in the moment, make the most of them."

Gone



Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

I had a hard time deciding on a theme for the week since my life has been pretty uneventful recently. I thought about doing a card called "Fatigue," which would be about both my sleep disorder and Covid pandemic fatigue. But I didn't know what I could use for images, and I wasn't inclined to do yet another depressing card.

But then it occurred to me: I have started to walk around a nearby lake known as Lake Nokomis. It's about three miles around, and it's a lovely walk. For those of you who aren't in the Twin Cities: we have a beautiful chain of lakes here in the city, and I've gone through periods where I've walked regularly around Lake Harriet, which is pleasant, too. But why have I never gotten into the habit of regularly walking around the closest lake to my home? I have no idea, but after trying it a time or two this week, I have decided I'd like to do this regularly.

What's more, on one of my walks this week, I ran into a couple of excellent long-time friends I haven't seen much of recently: Pat Wrede (Patricia C. Wrede, one of my writing mentors who helped me so much when I was writing my first book) and Beth Friedman (carbonel). It turns out that the two of them walk the lake three times a week, and so I'm going to be joining them at least two of those three days. I'm really pleased about this: companionship will make it more likely I'll keep up the habit.

I took a bunch of pictures around Lake Nokomis, thinking I'd assemble them into a collage, but I particularly like the composition of this one (although I did do some simple editing to take out a couple of errant sticks) and decided to use it alone. That makes this the second card I've done this year which is just one image.

Nokomis



Click here to read about the 52 card project and see the year's gallery.

This is a really excellent blog post by my friend naomikritzer (a fellow local SF/Fantasy writer who is getting a solid reputation as a political writer; she does a deep dive every election examining state and local races). Naomi's one of my closest friends; I have coffee with her every Friday. Anyway, she does a great job here of laying out a timeline of events and presenting evidence about who the actors are and what is their motivation. What do you think of her analysis?

naomikritzer’s post here