It's very poignant to be here again. I'm in Minneapolis so rarely that I can still distinguish each visit, but the overall sense is one of extended memory, that is not just of my own, but of anecdotes from my mother and grandmother about their lives here, my grandmother as a (very) young adult, and my mother as a kid.

Not all the memories of mine are good--the week we spent in Bloomington ranged from weird to horrific, the axis we kid spun around was the sound of my mother crying in the bathroom when my bio grandfather started his daily drinking and turned into a monster. We kids at least escaped with his bio kids (our age, his second marriage) but mom couldn't escape--we had the car.

The city that was best to them all (though mom only got to visit, never got to live there) was Red Wing. I adore that place! There's something so peaceful about Red Wing. And extended memory is very complete, as we heard ALL the stories about life on the farm, etc. But it wasn't idyllic--my grandmother and her older sister had to go--that was the conditions my great-grandmother accepted when she remarried in order to save the farm, around 1930, with the Depression really digging in. The man said he could abide the two younger girls but the sixteen year old (my grandmother) and her older sister had to get out and find their way on their own. Which they did, in Minneapolis, waiting tables.

Anyway I'm here for a con. I came a day early, knowing that getting in at one in the morning would leave me a zombie for a day. The weather is perfect--cool and cloudy. I think I'll go out for another walk.

I was taking to a felow customer when I stopped for sandwiches while strolling around downtown Albany last night, and when I commented on the deepeness of the verdure around me--I can't get enough of it--he said that it's been a very wet season here.

I took a walk along the Hudson, stopping at a little side canal, or whatever they are called, when I saw a bridge and inviting shadows (the sun was overly warm and the hair humid and kind of dirty). I snapped this shot:



If it works right, and you embiggen, look just above the top branch of the fallen tree. I'd spotted a pair of geeze swimming toward it, and thought they'd make a splendid shot framed by the two branches. But they never emerged from behind the top one, some twenty feet below me and upstream. I could see the ripples from them paddling, but no sign of the geese.

When I looked closer, I just spotted a black and white goose head peeking at me from beyond that branch. They were clearly waiting for the monster to lurk somewhere else.

And now I'm on my way northwards toward Montreal, which I should reach this evening.