Smiling Jack – a living legacy
Sometimes you don’t get quite what you ordered for breakfast. Sometimes you get a helluva lot more. I ordered pancakes and coffee and got Smiling Jack. Read more
Indian Fry Bread – positively orgasmic
I had a list of food I wanted to try during our California/Arizona road trip. At the top of it was a bacon cheeseburger from In’n’Out in LA. The second was prime rib, which I managed twice – once in Phoenix and a second time in Maricopa. The third was a carne asada burrito which we managed in Torrance, CA. The fourth was a trip to the Olive Garden – that one I never made. But something I hadn’t expected and didn’t even know about was Indian Fry Bread. Read more
2019 Grateful 47: Made in America
Wandering around Williams AZ shortly after 8 am on a Friday morning, I spotted a rare sight. A man smoking. It was such a novelty that I went to join him. We’d been stateside a week and he was maybe the third person I’d seen with a cigarette. Ah no, you say, you’re not back smoking? I’m not, but I have the odd one when I feel like it. And sure amn’t I on my holidays. Anyway, this particular cigarette would prove to be the most interesting one I’ve ever had. Read more
A Valentine’s Day to remember
Sad really. Neither of us could remember what we’d done for the last three years on Valentine’s Day. Nothing memorable obviously. Himself would rate himself as more of a romantic than not, but perhaps in thought rather than in deed. Pragmatic runs to my core – romance is the stuff movies are made of. That said, I always appreciate flowers, no matter the occasion, but having surreptitiously checked whether a dozen long-stemmed roses would fit in the console of the rental car, I nixed even voicing that wishpectation. Read more
2019 Grateful 48
It’s Sunday night. I’m sitting at the table in the Jungle Mansion. One of their 13 friendly local raccoons is messing around outside. It’s dark. It’s cold. It’s an unseasonable California. The talented SRP is playing the piano. She’d asked what my favourite piece was. I didn’t have to think. Panis Angelicus. She’d not heard it before, but went online, downloaded the sheet music, and played it. Beautifully. Such unpretentious talent is humbling. Read more
2016 Grateful 20
Back in 2001, when I had a feeling that my time in the USA might be coming to a close, I took a road trip with the inimitable RosaB. On our way from somewhere to somewhere in the State of Alabama, we passed a billboard for the Ave Maria Grotto in Cullman. Then we passed a second. By the time we hit upon the third, the advertising had done its job and we left the highway to see what the fuss was about.
Built by a Bavarian Benedictine monk, he himself a little on the small side, too, the four acres is known far and wide as Jerusalem in Miniature. Not far into the twentieth century, Br Joseph’s job was to man the pumps and watch the oil gauges at the Abbey’s pump house, a mind-numbing task he did for 17 hours a day, 7 days a week. To keep himself sane, he started to build little grottos around tiny statues. He made tiny copies of the Holy sites in Jerusalem and eventually had enough to put together a miniature of the city. The monk had rarely travelled so he built his pieces from images on postcards. [I still send postcards – maybe somewhere, someone might put them to use. You know who you are.]
The Abbot of the monastery would have made Walt Disney proud. He soon cottoned on to the winner he had within his walls. He had great plans for an OTT religious grotto, carefully landscaped, meticulously made. Work began in 1932 in an abandoned quarry in the Abbey’s grounds and today, it’s visited by millions. It was one of the highlights of a memorable trip. Well worth a look if you’re in the vicinity.
Fast forward a few years, and I’m in the UK. I’d gone to meet my then boyfriend who was on leave from the QEII. We ended up in Wimborne with its 1/10th scale model town. An idea that incubated during the 1940s, it opened to visitors in 1951. The buildings are made from concrete with beech windows. I still remember feeling like Gulliver as I wandered through the tiny streets, afraid to put a foot wrong lest I step on something or a little someone. All very real it was. Another lovely memory. Another one worth a visit.
In Portugal recently, we happened across a third such marvel in the village of Sobreiro. Aldeia Tipicia (typical village) was a the brainchild of potter José Franco who began work on this masterpiece in 1960. Driven to preserve the customs and crafts of Portugal, he wanted to replicate the old workshops and stores, the houses, and the communities that were all in danger of being swallowed up by progress. He also wanted a miniature village for kids, with working windmills and all sorts. Later he added a third part – an interactive children’s agricultural centre inside some castle-like walls. Franco died in 2009 leaving a legacy that, like the others, and indeed like Miniversum here in Budapest, is still working its magic.
Because no matter what adult worries and concerns you might have going in, when you happen upon these miniature places, you can’t help but revert back to being a child. Rediscovering the open-mouthed child-like awe often jaded by cynicism is quite the experience. I found myself pointing and exclaiming like a kid on Christmas morning.
None of the visits were planned. But all happened when I needed some perspective. Someone up there is looking out for me. For this, and for the artists like Br Joseph and José Franco who made them possible, I’m truly grateful. Cost of entry: free. Recalibration: priceless.
A walk through a cancer survivors park
Death and cancer are not synonymous. Fight. Don’t give up.
In 1980, Richard A. Bloch (co-founder of H&R Block, those people who help you with your US tax returns) was given the all-clear. He had battled with lung cancer and won. In 2004 he died of heart failure. In the intervening years, he and his wife Annette dedicated their lives to helping others fight the Big C. The RA Bloch Cancer Foundation is now a major resource for victims in North America.
In 25 cities in Canada and the United States, you might just stumble across one of Bloch’s Cancer Survivor Parks, just as we did when walking around Minneapolis. Intrigued by this rather substantial patch of green in the midst of what has to be prime real estate area, we had to take a look.
The parks all have the same three elements but are designed to fit in with their surroundings. There are two different walks. The positive mental attitude walk has 14 plaques, 4 inspirational and 10 instructional. One of the instructions is simply to read the Foundation’s free book Fighting Cancer.
The second walk is the Road to Recovery, seven plaques that explain what cancer is and what’s needed to overcome it. No rocket science here, nothing we don’t know, but somehow it’s easier to digest. A good example, I think, of the medium being the message. The Foundation notes the intention of a park on its website: To newly diagnosed patients, it is meant to give hope and courage. To those in the process of fighting the disease, it is meant to give directions and determination. To those who have not had cancer, it is meant to reduce fear.
The most evocative for me, though, was the life-size sculpture of eight people passing through a maze that represents the disease. Those going in show all the emotions we associate with a diagnosis – fear that we or our loved one won’t make it, hope that we/they will, and a determination to try. The three coming out are happy they’ve made it.
The sculpture – Cancer… there’s hope – is the last work of Mexican artist Victor Salmones. It’s quite something. Two weeks after he had completed it, Salmones was diagnosed with cancer. He died in 1989. A fitting legacy.
A parallel universe
Although it’s been more than a month since I was in the States, one morning in particular keeps replaying itself in my head – the morning we went to the West Bank and ended up in Somalia.
When we had driven through the Minneapolis neighbourhood of the West Bank on our way to St Paul, I had a made a mental note to come back and walk around what looked like a very vibrant, ethnic neighbourhood, a splotch of colour on an otherwise rather typical grey steel and glass cityscape. I was particularly taken with the shop names. I wanted to get out a world map and stick a pin in every country mentioned.
Also known as Cedar-Riverside and Little Mogadishu, the West Bank is a vibrant community that was at once foreign and familiar. Its demographics have morphed over time, from predominantly Scandinavian at the close of the nineteenth century to being home to one of the largest Somali communities in the USA today. In the 1960s and 1970s, it was where the hippies hung out. Think perhaps Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. It was here that the activists fought the developers, where the anti-war protesters made their opinions known, where poets and musicians found their inspiration, where actors tread the boards.
Were I to relocate, I might upset the age balance. It’s a young place with nearly three-quarters of the residents under the age of 35. The community sits in the shadow of the multi-coloured Riverside Plaza – where the TV character Mary Richards lived in later episodes of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Today, it’s home to thousands of Somalian.
We walked, and talked and took photos. And then we got hungry. Not much was open – not even the Acadia pub, which proudly boasts NO CRAP ON TAP on its window decals. Another doorway asked the world to SAY YES TO PEACE AMONG PEOPLE. It was morning and while appreciative, I was craving eggs not invocations to do my civic duty. Breakfast ain’t breakfast without eggs so we popped into the only open café we could find: a large rectangular room with the basic tables and chairs and a small counter at the end whence reigned the woman of the house. A television was showing some soap too asinine to hold anyone’s attention for very long. The menu was a peculiar mix of African takes on America staples. Our fellow diners were all male, all African, and all speaking something other than English. They all seemed to know each other. Those who came in as we were sitting did the rounds, greeting all the others in the room, moving from table to table if a something more personal than a catchall hello from the doorway was needed.
We sat over coffee so strong a mouse could trot across it. We ate food that again, was both foreign and familiar. And we listened to everything going on around us, unable to understand a word. It was light years away from any TV depiction of the American Mid West. A parallel universe. And I wondered how long it would be before the language was lost, the culture diluted, and the food choice changed. I thought about the melting pot that is America and the generations of immigrants who now call it home. And I thought of Europe and the myriad migrant communities that are mushrooming in , say, Germany and Dublin, whole neighbourhoods where German and English are the foreign languages and schnitzel and coddle the foreign foods.
Just up the street, Neighbourhood America lives on , unabated. Palmer’s Bar is a local institution. Had it not been so early and had it not been our last day in the city, I could have parked myself on a high stool and paid attention to nothing but the world ticking by.
From the outside it looks like a throwback to the speakeasy days. From this inside, these old photos speak of community and spirit. Ranked by Esquire as one of the best bars in America, a recent review tagged it as a refuge of coexistence, the bar beats with diversity. Anarchists, the homeless and academics all dwell there. Bob Dylan no doubt pounded a few beers here in his Minneapolis days and Bonnie Rait has been known to drop in when she’s recording in town. If I ever needed a reason to go back, this might just be it.
Walking on air
There’s something a little surreal about being about to walk around a city without once going outside. Given the cruelty of the Minnesota winter, this is an added plus for those living in Minneapolis. The city has 8 miles of glass-walled skywalks connecting government buildings, office buildings, shopping malls, and public amenities over 69 blocks downtown. It even has a skywalk map. Think London underground … in the air.
The skywalk is the brainchild of real estate developer Leslie Park, who even in the early 1960s, had vision enough to fear the damage indoor shopping malls could do the heart of a city by taking all the traffic to a convenient, one-stop shop as it were. To combat this convenience and to keep people shopping and using downtown Minneapolis, he started building skywalks. Those in existence today are owned by the various buildings they connect and therefore don’t have regular opening and closing times. [Could locked skywalks replace underground carparks as terrors spots in movies I wonder?]
Given that the nearby city of Bloomington is home to America’s largest shopping mall, this was smart thinking on his part.
The Mall of America, a shopping mall in Bloomington, Minnesota, is the largest shopping mall in the United States. It is also the most visited shopping mall in the world. Opened in 1992, the mall receives over 40 million visitors annually. Currently, it features 520 stores, a theme park, an aquarium, a movie theater, a wedding chapel, 50 restaurants and about 20,000 parking spaces. The mall is so big that it has its own zip code (55425)
I was fascinated. We walked miles. I could have done the same again the next day, had we had a next day. You simply never know where you will end up or what will be around the next corner. Look over a balcony down onto 
an indoor garden, a bank, a café. See sculptures and statues. Stop for coffee in the famous Caribou coffee shops. Pop into Macy’s to experience the magic of American Customer Service, where, if you’re lucky, the shop assistant will conspire with you to find you the best online coupon to use … on their phone!
Charles Strite, who invented the pop-up toaster, was born in Minneapolis. Mars Inc., father of the Milky Way and the Snickers bar, was founded there in 1920. The city and its suburbs are home to 12 Fortune 500 companies. Bob Dylan used to live there (in Dinkytown, in what’s now the Loring Pasta Bar, where we had dinner one night). And, of course, it’s where Mary Tyler Moore threw her beret in the air at the start of the Mary Tyler Moore Show. Classic TV.
Whether it’s theatre [Minneapolis (combined with St. Paul) is the 3rd largest theatre market in the US and is second only to New York City for the most live theatre seats per capita] or birdwatching [the Eloise Butler Wildflower Garden and Bird Sanctuary is the country’s oldest public wildflower garden], skywalks or shopping, Minneapolis is a city that has someone for everyone. And, alongside Madison, WI, it’s a city I think I could live in.
PS – The local airline, Sun Country, has put in a bid for a Cuba route. Just sayin’
Floured
I’m not a great one for museums. Unless of course they’re connected to the Holocaust, genocide, resistance, war, the Inquisition – things that we need to remember not to forget. Then I could happily spend an afternoon re-educating myself. Of my non-awful museums of choice, the Unicum one in Budapest is a favourite. But museums generally are not high on my list of places to see when I’m travelling.
When in the Twin Cities recently, my hosts took me to see the Mill City Museum. They’d planned the day around it and it would have been churlish of me to suggest alternatives (not that I had any – I’m not big on research). If you’d told me that I’d find flour so fascinating, I’d have called you names. But fascinating it was.
It’s an excellent museum that chronicles the importance of the mills to the area. From when the first mill opened in 1866, people have been earning a crust by grinding, milling, sifting, and packaging flour. The grain elevator tour is a gem. You sit in the elevator which 
stops at various floors in the mill and explains through video and narration what went on back in the day. Brilliant. I never knew that flour dust was explosive! I never knew that white lung was also billed as occupational asthma. And I never knew that Minneapolis was once the flour milling capital of the world. Back then, the men could swing a 100 lb sac of flour as easily as if it were feather pillow. [deep sigh]
The city is home to the famous Pillsbury doughboy, but that mill is no longer in use and has been converted into artists’ lofts. From the viewing platform high up in the museum, there’s fantastic view of the cities, which is worth the admission price alone. And if that isn’t enough to convince you, local man Kevin Kling’s movie – 330 years of history in 19 minutes – has to be one of the best ( if not the best) history synopsis I’ve seen of anywhere. An excellent example of how a city lives through its people and how its culture lives through its stories. Sharp, witty, engaging, and to the point, tourist boards the world over could take a lesson from this man’s book. If you’re in the neighborhood, it’s definitely worth a visit.
The great teardown of Minneapolis which saw 200 buildings razed in 5 years has left its twin city, St Paul, just a tad more attractive.
The Cathedral of Saint Paul, which opened its doors to sinners in th early 1900s, is a replica of St Peter’s in Rome. Sitting atop of Cathedral Hill, its copper dome shines down over the city. JFK attended 11am mass there on 7 October 1962 and the pew in which is sat is now marked with a bronze plaque. There’s also a stone from the castle in Rouen, France, where Joan of Arc was imprisoned back in 1431. It’s a magnificent building, in stark contrast to the last church I was in, but beautiful, too, in its own right. My favourite part was the Shrine of Nations, a series of mini altars/chapels featuring saints from around the world, including our own St Patrick.
The drive up to the Cathedral took us through the posh part of town, with massive old houses lining both sides of Summit Avenue. Had we had time, I’d happily have spent an afternoon just walking the streets wondering who lived where (F. Scott Fitzgerald was a local in his day). As it was, I was 
already praying I’d win a lottery so I, too, might afford the view.
One of these houses was home to a certain James J Hill, a man who was before his time. A man with a vision. Canadian by birth, he made his way to the States when he was 17 where he worked as a mud clerk on the Mississippi. He made his millions on the railroads, and married a waitress from his local café. Mrs Hill never forgot whence she came and ensured that her kitchen help had wooden floors to stand on rather that stone 
flags. It was the first house in the city to be fully electrified back in 1890 – 9 miles of wire it took to wire it up. In its day, Hill’s art collection was valued at $1.7 million, all housed in his private gallery, also home to a 1006-pipe organ. Add this to the 156 rugs that cover the floors on three landings, the 2000 square feet of hallway, and the fabulous stained glass windows (he’s said to have turned down designs submitted by Tiffany), it’s a house I’d have little trouble imagining myself living in.
He had showers in the bedrooms. The master suites had walk-in wardrobes. The place was fire proofed (no one wooden beam touches another), burglary-proofed (stylish steel grids on doors) and for a man who was permanently blind in his right eye and fond of an onion sandwich before hitting the sack, James J was quite the character.
The dining room, where he hosted President McKinley for dinner has a gold-leaf ceiling and leather walls with a 25-foot long dining table. I was salivating. The massive red house next door was his wedding present to one of his sons. [Dad?]
It was a different world back then. In many ways arguably a better one, a simpler one. But like anything, this appreciation might well have depended on how far up the 
stairs you were sleeping. It was a lovely glimpse into times gone by and further confirmation that the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St Paul have a lot going for them – not least among which is their hospitality. It’s been a while since I’ve felt so at home. Thanks MB & J.
