10 posts tagged “minnesota”
Look, I know Vox isn't a late-night-posting kind of place, but I think you should know...
....even though Spring is kind of here in Minnesota...
...and even if you are wearing a whiskey jacket or two...
...twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit is not a temperature at which you can comfortably bike without gloves.
Last night I had a quick trip to the grocery store and daffodils were on sale for $2.99. I brought home a bunch on my bike, wrapped carefully in a plastic bag to protect against the big fluffy snowflakes. As I slept like a little sugarplum, the buds opened, which allowed me to take the following picture, which I call:
Daffodils with safety vest (which looks like a giant pair of underwear).
Unfortunately it is not nearly as sunny and bright outside.
This poor thing isn't my bike, but it does represent my plan to ride to work and then later to class (crushed):
It's a lake of snow out there. STUPID MARCH. Biking through it last night, it was so warm and picturesque that I would have loved it...in December. In March the only thing I like is sunny days. That's it. End of story.
Contrary to my last post, I don't subscribe to the "God, why the #*&! isn't winter over yet?! WHEN WILL THE SPRING COME?!" school of thought. Some winter days are harder than others. Some make your eyes hurt from the cold, make you worry about your toes or cast you into a deep, unending depression (well, unending until the next ray of sunshine).
In general, though, I don't buy it. You can't afford to buy into it in Minnesota, where the winter lasts from October through April, where you think winter is over but it always comes back for a little more. The first year I lived here, we had a foot of snow on APRIL 27th. I had just returned from spring break in sunny New Mexico, and BOOM, a whole lot of cold, wet snow. Not until May has winter loosed her hold on us.
I've learned to love it. I really do love it; it's not just a facade I put up to make people think it's okay. Going outside when it is twenty below zero is not an experience I had as a child. I remember one year, when I was in elementary school, and it was seven below in Albuquerque. That, my friends, is cold. Especially in the desert. I remember it clearly. I remember the feeling of nature's power, I remember feeling the cold lurking outside the walls of our home. These days it's just another work day.
Winter is bracing. It wakes you the hell up. The land changes. Winter forces you to renegotiate your place, to relearn how to get to your destination. I have to take the corner out of our driveway into the sidewalk tenderly, since it has a slick, sloping cover of ice this year. You wake up and the world is swirling with new snow, or crusty and disgusting with the muck of cars driving by. Mountain ranges of old snow spring up in formerly verdant lawns.
This has been the coldest winter since I moved to Minnesota in 2001. I was used to one or two weeks of bitter cold, and many months of sort-of cold. This winter it keeps dropping down to zero, below zero, again and again and again. And that's all well and good. It feels right that Minnesota should be this cold. I want there to be polar ice caps, and I want Minnesota to be brutally cold in the winter.
I was going to write an entry about how I want spring to come already, and then I remembered the Art Shanty Projects two weekends ago. It's an amazing village that pops up on Medicine Lake every year, full of ideas and artists and hope. I realized that I love frozen lakes because the trees are farther away so you can see more sky. And they are desolate. And you're not really supposed to be able to stand in the middle of them.
At Medicine Lake, I wanted the winter never to end. I wanted to build my own shanty and live out on the ice. I wanted the desolate snow blowing across the ice, the unexpected slippery patches. The camaraderie you get from everyone else who is outside. The utter, painful joy of a grilled hotdog on a cold day--crispy bun, warm juicy center, eating it up before it gets cold.
Click below to see all my Art Shanty Project pics:
That was the weather when I arrived at work this morning. It's beautiful and sunny, so overall it's an okay deal. I won't lie, though, I'm starting to get the wee spring fever. I want to feel sun on my limbs, not just the small amount of skin around my eyes. I want it to take less than fifteen minutes for me to scrounge up the right clothes for going outside. I would like to wear small amounts of fabric outside and feel happy about it! I want to go for leisurely bike rides.
In other news, I read this amazingly detailed and sourced Wikipedia article about Gelande Quaffing, and I want to know why we don't do this in Minnesota:
This may be the coldest weather I've biked in:
... YET.
(God, I know, I should seriously quit bragging. I hope everyone is staying warm and happy and safe, on their bikes or in their homes or wherever.)
You know you live in a hardcore city when you feel kind of guilty for taking the bus instead of biking in weather like this:
But my freewheel is frozen up and the bike won't go (also it's insanely cold). To the shop with you, bike!
In other news, Portland can shove it. As this guy says:
...and still further: The Minnesota Temperature Converter:... Portland, Ore. (the official No. 1 biking city), gets 6 inches of snow a year, while Minneapolis (officially No. 2) gets 56 inches a year. Shouldn’t that 50-inch difference count for extra credit or something?
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Mercury freezes Too cold to think Minnesotans button top button
For those of you who think it must be dangerous, check out this NYTimes article:
“The big question was, ‘Is it ever too cold?’” Dr. Castellani said. “The answer is no. People go to the poles, people are out there when it’s minus-50 degrees, people do incredible things, and safely. There really isn’t a point where you can tell people it is not safe anymore."
IT'S BRISK.
For some reason this week, despite being half as busy (or maybe because), I feel like I am barely keeping myself afloat. Trying to see the big picture is a thankless task amidst the swarm of filing, scheduling, phone calling, laundry-folding minutia of life. I don't know if it's because I haven't been riding as much or if it's because of something else, but dang, I am in a funk. I need some dang days off.
It's not all fer crap. The 3rd Annual Sage Awards were this past Wednesday, and MKT arrived in style, clad all in silver on our bikes:
The Sage Awards are awards given by the community to dancers, choreographers and other dance-related artists in the Minnesota area for exceptional work over the past year. It's like the Iveys or the Oscars or whatever, except infinitely better because a) I'm invited, b) dancers throw sweet parties, c) it's about dance and not other crappy stuff, d) I am friends with like half the audience, and e) it reminds everyone that important work happens in places OTHER than NYC, and especially that it happens in Minnesota.
They announced the nominees in advance, which I think may have been a bad idea because I got my hopes up that certain friends of mine would win and they did not. BUT everyone who won deserved it too. I got to see another sliver of Faker and totally re-affirmed my obsession with that dance.
It's been a great "Welcome Back" from Minneapolis. Around 5:30 this morning, I wake up to a car alarm going off outside my window. I look around but can't see the car, and then I hear a woman say, "Get away from my car!" Some guy yells back at her and then I hear a car drive off. No clue if her car was stolen--there isn't any broken glass in the street today, although there are some cassettes. I didn't call 911 because I didn't see anything. I don't even know if the car I heard driving off was stolen or the getaway car.
I couldn't sleep so I puttered around the house for a while. Once I got back to sleep, I had a nightmare wherein my bike was stolen, panniers and all, leaving me without a ride to work, a cellphone to call for help, money, credit cards, my brand new driver's license and my passport. I borrowed a phone to call Paul but for some reason couldn't get through. I haven't been so hysterical in a long time, real or otherwise. When Paul woke me up, I told him thank you. What a relief.
I came into work late after the poor sleep I got last night and my generalized panic due to the imagined bike theft/real car theft. And after a very leisurely commute, I got to work so light-headed that I had to sit down and close my eyes lest I puke or pass out.
What the hell, Minnesota.
It's a little disappointing that my increased aerobic strength has totally diminished, and I was only off the bike for a measly six days. Also my bike is Creaky McCreaksville these days. Why do you cry so much, little bike?
Coming soon: Pictures from my surprise trip home!
I’m throwing out some possessions. Well, I’m giving them to the thrift store. I’ve abandoned a pair of black kitten heels, my favorites for work, because the heel was worn out and I was starting to worry about gouging floors with the exposed metal support. I gave away an inch-tall “notebook” with Lisa Frank unicorns on the front. I’ve had this since middle school and always thought, “That’ll be perfect for some future project.”
Smart self: Look, Tara, you’ve had it for going on 15 years now and haven’t thought of a single project that would fit in a notebook as big as a postage stamp. Put it in the donate bag. Do it.
Stupid packrat self: But I... I can't. I've had it for so long. If I donate it, I'll forget about it.
Smart self: ....
Packrat self: Fine. Fine! I'm not going to pretend I'm happy about this. [Drops stupid notebook in paper bag.] But this miniature deck of Hello, Kitty! playing cards...I can't possibly part with these...
It's hard work with a personality like mine. My top three ways of dealing with my possessions:
- Drop things all over the house, forget to pick them up, stack them into piles.
- Put all the piles in a dilapidated paper bag when somebody is coming over. Put the bag in my closet/bedroom. Insist that no one go in that room.
- Buy lots of tacky decorations, like my ceramic cat with roses all over it or my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cookie jar. Fail to actually display any of the nice decorations we get.
Paul tries to help but it’s kind of like clinging to a palm tree in the middle of a hurricane. Not much you can do to improve the situation. I went through the house and started separating out my things, and realized that fully ninety percent of the chaos is Tara-derived. Um, I'm a really hardcore artist?
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Paul and I have plenty of cleaning and sorting and getting rid of to do, because my wee sister is moving in with us for a month and a half, starting mid-May. The plans have come together over the last week, and she is not the only one feeling pressure to get ready for a big change starting soon. We have to empty out a room and shove its contents somewhere else. This would be fine if I weren’t the aforementioned whirlwind of chaos and clutter.
It’ll be her first time living in a town other than the one she grew up in. I'm chattering with excitement at everyone I know; she's...nervous, but excited. This time is going to whip by us; our normal lives will resume before we really notice the ways in which they were gone.
I remember packing for college. It was miserable. I was convinced I would die of the cold, or at least lose a toe due to impractical boots. I didn’t know what to pack, but I took lots of ridiculous items (my vinyl prom dress?), which ultimately I did end up wearing. So all was not lost.
I was afraid and miserable and desperate not to leave home. I felt, in some illogical way, that I was going to die. There was a big blank wall separating me from life, and that wall was Minnesota. College. New people.
She wants to know what to bring. She’ll be here for the best weather Minnesota has to offer: the cool(ish) early summer, the energy of Minnesotans desperate to break out of their homes, to feel sun and air on their skin. (I’m a little surprised Minnesotans aren’t a bunch of nudists, because these people are seriously into showing some skin when the weather gets nice.)
I tell her: Bring a rain jacket. I’ll lend you a sweater or two or seventeen if you need them. We can share shoes again (hooray!). And clothes. It’s practically summer vacation! (For her it is summer vacation, I guess). But no list of items will help.
She is concerned about a new place, I am concerned about my adopted place.
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So I’m cleaning out my closets, abandoning trinkets from my thirteen-year-old self, to make room for my sister. To show her my life here. It’s not better or shinier or newer, it’s just my own. It’s the life I’ve got and it’s ridiculously full of … vegetables. Boardgames. Beer. Biking. Performing. Riding the bus. I’ve been growing into a lifestyle that is completely foreign to me, but I chip away at it, waiting for it to make sense, forming habits, fighting entropy and building something coherent. I never imagined the world could feel this brand-new to me, but I'm happy that it does. I hope it's the same for my wee sibling when she gets here.
Okay, I've sort of turned into a foodie.
I really like cooking, and I particularly love long, tedious recipes. I like hunting for obscure ingredients. I derive an absurd amount of pleasure from exotic produce...blood oranges, pomegranates, mangoes, etc. I mean, seriously. I could (and probably will) write at length about any of them. The first essay I ever wrote, in fifth grade, was about pomegranates as the food of the gods.
I really love food.
Last summer, I heard about CSAs, or community-supported agriculture. CSAs are magical entities, wherein you give them some money and in return, they give you farm-fresh produce. Some CSAs are organic, some are not. Most of them are family-owned farms.
Unfortunately, summertime is a little late to join a CSA, since they start in May and run through October. They have limited shares and they sometimes sell out. So, I researched a lot and tried to cajole Paul into joining one, and then gave up after realizing that there were very few options left to me so late in the season.
This year I jumped on the CSA train early. I did the research and I have found the perfect solution:
Double Rabbit Farm. [Cue heavenly trumpets.]
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They satisfy my foodie cravings for weird produce by supplying heirloom vegetables. I didn't even know there were such things as lemon cucumbers until I looked at their site, but now I know I must have one.
- They encourage me to go to dance class because the pick-up site is a block from the studio and I can pick it up right after Saturday morning class (and trust me, on Saturday morning I need a lot of encouragement to make it to class).
- They totally, ridiculously satisfy my desire to eat better, and to eat food that is less damaging to the environment. Food that wasn't carted across the country in big, stinky trucks. Food provided by somebody who loves growing food. There's a pretty good article in Time about it.
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And ultimately, the food we'll be getting will be tasty, unusual and diverse. I never buy kohlrabi because I have no idea what to do with it. But if I have kohlrabi in the fridge, then I'm gonna be all over the web hunting kohlrabi recipes. It's like freakin' foodie Christmas, every two weeks.
I don't love Minnesota, and I really don't love how long the winters are. But I do love the intensity of the summers, and I am just bursting with excitement at all the delicious vegetables we'll be getting. I know you're not supposed to count your purple carrots before they grow, but last night I definitely drifted off to sleep while visions of produce danced in my head.
