STEAM not STEM

There’s enough stupidity and related activity going on in the world so, today we’re going to be short and sweet and positive. As we hope you know, STEM is an abbreviation for Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics. All fine and generally benevolent sectors, necessary in many ways, but not sufficient. However, if we add Arts (and Humanities), STEM becomes STEAM and, as the old saying goes, then we’re cooking!

art & science combined

Photo by J. Harrington

Unfortunately, that brings me to an embarrassing confession. Until moments ago, I was unaware that October is National Arts and Humanities Month. Admittedly, today is only October 2, but, if mainstream media covered the announcement, I missed it. (If they didn’t cover the announcement, they shouldn’t be considered MSM.) One major reason I can’t and won’t support STEM by itself is that we currently have much more of the science and technology etc. needed to respond to climate breakdown than we’re using. That’s where the Arts (and Humanities) come in, to motivate the political will and create the concurrence needed to use what we have and create whatever else we need before it’s too late.

If that line of reasoning resonates at all with you, you want to take a look at:

• Americans for the Arts Action Fund, and
• The Democracy Collaborative

That’s it, execpt for today’s poem.

Alone

Maya Angelou     1928 – 2014

Lying, thinking
Last night
How to find my soul a home
Where water is not thirsty
And bread loaf is not stone
I came up with one thing
And I don’t believe I’m wrong
That nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

There are some millionaires
With money they can’t use
Their wives run round like banshees
Their children sing the blues
They’ve got expensive doctors
To cure their hearts of stone.
But nobody
No, nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Now if you listen closely
I'll tell you what I know
Storm clouds are gathering
The wind is gonna blow
The race of man is suffering
And I can hear the moan,
'Cause nobody,
But nobody
Can make it out here alone.

Alone, all alone
Nobody, but nobody
Can make it out here alone.

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It’s time to turn positive

Here’s what’s supposed to be in this week’s community supported agriculture [CSA] share. It’s the last one in the summer series. (Yesterday we noted there have been some timing issues in notifications from our CSA about box content. As of today, we’re done for summer and the autumn shares won’t start for a few weeks.)

• CUCUMBER
• GARLIC
• LETTUCE
• SWEET CORN
• TOMATOES, and
• Peppers

tomatoes (courtesy WEI CSA)

Now that there are no 90+ degree days in the forecast, we’ll get back to sourdough artisan bread (or is it artisan sourdough bread?) baking. This time we’ll add a little kernza flour for a different flavor. I should be back in practice by the time soup and stew season is in full swing.

One week from today marks the beginning of meteorological autumn. As summer ends our wishes are that all bad luck, and bad weather, goes with it. Unfortunately, the seasonal change will bring US deeper into the election season, compounded and complicated by multiple handsful of trials in various federal and state courts. I’m seriously considering hanging a sign on our internet connection. It will say: “CLOSED - gone fishin’, back soon”

At least there is some brighter news these days. The Biden Administration is taking a positive approach with their new ad that makes Americans positively heroes in restoring the economy and responding to climate change. Plus, although I’ve not seen nearly enough coverage in the news media, the administration and the G20 are generating new tools to better account for the benefits of investments in adapting to climate change and other environmental improvements. The White House' Nature-Based Solutions Resource Guide nicely complements the USGS Piloting urban ecosystem accounting for the United States. Both augment the State of Finance for Nature in Cities 2023: Time to Assess - Summary for Local Policymakers. We can, and must, be much wiser about how we invest in infrastructure. Targeting multiple objectives for multi-benefits will give US bigger bangs for our bucks. We know how to do it. It’s time to apply that knowledge as quickly as we can in as many places as we can. Part of those solutions include community gardens that may grow tomatoes.

Ode To Tomatoes by Pablo Neruda

The street
filled with tomatoes,
midday,
summer,
light is
halved
like
a
tomato,
its juice
runs
through the streets.
In December,
unabated,
the tomato
invades
the kitchen,
it enters at lunchtime,
takes
its ease
on countertops,
among glasses,
butter dishes,
blue saltcellars.
It sheds
its own light,
benign majesty.
Unfortunately, we must
murder it:
the knife
sinks
into living flesh,
red
viscera
a cool
sun,
profound,
inexhaustible,
populates the salads
of Chile,
happily, it is wed
to the clear onion,
and to celebrate the union
we
pour
oil,
essential
child of the olive,
onto its halved hemispheres,
pepper
adds
its fragrance,
salt, its magnetism;
it is the wedding
of the day,
parsley
hoists
its flag,
potatoes
bubble vigorously,
the aroma
of the roast
knocks
at the door,
it's time!
come on!
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth, recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.

A Modest Proposal for transforming Facebook

With apologies to Jonathan Swift and the genre of satire, today we offer a proposal that could exceed Zuck’s efforts to rule the metaverse. Transform Facebook, or create a competitor, that is similar to the original SimCity game but that allows multi-players on the internet to collaborate on creating a shared and shareable vision of the kind of world in which they, and, conceivably, we, might want to live.

What's envisioned would require a significant upgrade over SimCity BuildIt by incorporating some AI version of the various algorithms and models used to test various carbon sequestration techniques, to assess the intended and unintended consequences of various urban and rural mixes, such as eliminating dairy and meat sectors from agriculture, composting food waste and then what happens to the soils and is there enough or too much compost to provide year-round food for the 10 billion expected.

But, and it’s a huge but (no pun intended), such an approach offers options to test Republican versus Democratic social and economic approaches; ways and means to test bridging or closing the urban rural splits; vegan, vegetarian and plant-based diets; and a variety of policy-based options that are currently being debated with few, if any, actual assessments of how well any policy may or may not work in a complex, emergent, dynamic world. (Build  Back Better anyone?)

blue sky flight test

Photo by J. Harrington

At the moment, we have a number of places trying doughnut economics; the United Nations has proposed its 17 Sustainable Development Goals; Paul Hawken et. al. have brought us Drawdown and Regeneration; all of which, and other approaches, require societies and cultures and nations to kind of buy a pig in a poke. If folks had access to the kind of SimWorld that’s policy-driven and systems-based, we could avoid a lot of misinformation, disinformation and consequent debate by offering folks an opportunity to plug a proposed policy into the simulation and see what happens. When multitudes are doing it at the same time, we will, I believe, at a minimum, clearly eliminate economists’ hiding behind the skirts of “rational person.” Between that and eliminating the nonsense now served on Facebook, we’ll have made major progress at creating a newer and better world. Zuck could become the snake that swallowed its own tail.

One Vote

Aimee Nezhukumatathil

            ^{After reading a letter from his mother, Harry T. Burn cast the deciding vote to ratify the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution}

My parents are from countries
where mangoes grow wild and bold
and eagles cry the sky in arcs and dips.
America loved this bird too and made

it clutch olives and arrows. Some think
if an eaglet falls, the mother will swoop
down to catch it. It won’t. The eagle must fly
on its own accord by first testing the air-slide

over each pinfeather. Even in a letter of wind,
a mother holds so much power. After the pipping
of the egg, after the branching—an eagle is on
its own. Must make the choice on its own

no matter what its been taught. Some forget
that pound for pound, eagle feathers are stronger
than an airplane wing. And even one letter, one
vote can make the difference for every bright thing.

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More dots to connect

I imagine, and hope, that most of you are familiar with this quotation from Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac :

“There are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot.”

(If you haven't yet read that grand and glorious and sensible book, please put it on your "to do" list for the near future.) As another one who cannot live without wild things, I've recently noticed that it's more and more of a challenge to find places that can be shared with them. I even have pictures to prove it.

When we moved into our current house many years ago, the "ridge" at the south end of the road was undeveloped. It was occasionally visited by sandhill cranes who foraged along the side of the "ridge." Later, just prior to the "great recession," development began on the top of that "ridge," shortly after sewer and water were extended to accommodate a major industrial development nearby. Following the custom of those developers who name subdivisions for what they eliminate, the development is called "Wilderness Ridge."

a residential subdivision, rural "progress"

Photo by J. Harrington

You probably remember how residential development pretty much tanked several years ago, during the great recession. The ridge top sat "empty" for those several years. Cranes, like the one below, occasionally visited the grasslands along the walking / biking path.

a sandhill crane near a hillside path

Photo by J. Harrington

They even followed the mostly unused path themselves from time to time.

three sandhill cranes near the start of the path

Photo by J. Harrington

Within the past year or so, the housing market has started to "come back." The houses below are behind the same tree the crane in the second photo stood beside. As I drove by yesterday, I saw four or five cranes along the path. How much more development do you think will be needed before they look for pastures that are just as green, but less crowded?

new house overlooking the path

Photo by J. Harrington

I'm writing about this not because I'm against development, but because I'm against "growth" as it's come to be accommodated.  The subdivision in question is in the midst of what used to be farm fields, some of which are still in that use. I know how that works. When I first moved to Minnesota, I bought a house in a northern suburb of the Twin Cities. Our lot backed onto the city boundary and on the other side of the boundary was a cornfield. Privacy in the back yard for awhile. That backyard cornfield isn't there any more, just as the "ridge" is no longer anything like a wilderness. And yet, there's still an abundance of ready to be serviced land between the subdivision pictured (and the one I lived in before) and "The Cities." The county in which we now live, where the subdivision is located, is outside the seven-county metro area. The Metro Council regularly prepares regional development plans for the 7-county Twin Cities Metro Area.

Now the Citizens League is undertaking (I hope that's not a prophecy) another study of how well the Council does its job. On behalf of the cranes and the truly rural folks who live near me, I hope the League's study includes lots of emphasis on unintended consequences of "urban growth boundaries" that leak like sieves. [Full disclosure: I worked for the Metro Council for more than a decade, beginning shortly after the first land planning act local plans were submitted.] This is going to become a fascinating issue as the need to respond to climate change becomes more critical and more people learn that the most energy efficient "green" buildings still require lots and lots of energy to get the occupants to and from it. Meanwhile, sandhill cranes keep getting evicted because we allow (not plan for or design) "growth" the world can't support. That might have worked before most of the world's population became "urban" and we began to regularly set new heat records. The time has come when we need much better cities and urban regions, ones that accommodate humans and wildlife with minimal conflicts and even less energy consumption.

Eve's Design

By Moira Linehan 

Then there's the Yemeni legend   

of Eve in the Garden knitting   

a pattern on the serpent's back,   

the snake unfinished like the rest   

of creation, the first woman   

thinking to add design, a sheath   

of interlocking diamonds and stripes   

along that sensuous S,   

knitting giving her time to learn   

what's infinitely possible   

with a few stitches, twisting cables,   

hers a plan to mirror the divine   

inner layer that can't be shed   

no matter what it rubs up against.

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Dilution is not the solution!

Happy St. Patrick's Day! and a belated Happy St. Urho's Day!

The Star Tribune has an editorial today about Sobering news on affordable housing in the Twin Cities. The demand keeps outstripping the supply. They also note the debate about locational factors for affordable housing. One thing they didn't mention, and I'm not sure if Myron Orfield or the Metro Council have adequately taken into account when considering where to locate affordable housing, is the location of jobs, shopping and other requirements of daily life in relation to housing. The Center for Neighborhood Technology in Chicago has some thought-provoking information on what happens to "affordable" housing that's located in suburbs where families need two or more cars. You can see a "fact sheet" for the Twin Cities metro area at this link. For the Average Household, 28% of their income goes to housing and an additional 20% goes to transportation. If you look at a map of costs for the Twin Cities metro area, the pale yellow shade that indicates locations where housing + transportation costs are less than 45% of a typical household income have very scattered locations in the suburbs, most are within the 694-494 beltway. Here's that map link. As a region and a state, we're making a notable investment in public transportation. We're not keeping up with the demand for affordable housing. We are, by most of the accounts I've seen, a car-dependant area.

houses for people or cars?

Photo by J. Harrington

To put this into some perspective, for new construction in the Twin Cities Metro Area in 2014, the National Association of Home Builders notes the median price was $336,496, the income needed to quality was $89,372 and for every $1,000 increase in the price of a new home, more than 2,000 families were "priced out." The CNT analysis is based on a household income in the $65,000 to $66,000 range. It looks to me as though the affordability question has to include location, the need for how many? garages in areas well served by transit (we can talk about what that means), increases in minimum wages and, perhaps, targeting affordable housing near employment centers. Long ago I was taught that dilution is not the solution to pollution. Deconcentration of affordable housing primarily to disburse concentrations of poverty is too simplistic a solution. We can do better. We must do better.

An hour is not a house

By Jane Hirshfield 

An hour is not a house,

a life is not a house,

you do not go through them as if

they were doors to another.

Yet an hour can have shape and proportion,

four walls, a ceiling.

An hour can be dropped like a glass.

Some want quiet as others want bread.

Some want sleep.

My eyes went

to the window, as a cat or dog left alone does.

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Missed opportunity?

Those of us who live "up North" recently have been the recipients of some visits and subsequent write-ups from folks whose blogs are normally metro-urban centric. The St. Paul Real Estate Blog had fun last Friday with a photo of the Eichten's buffalo. Before that, streets.mn did a nice write-up on their recent visit to Chisago City, Lindstrom and Central City. Since turn-about is fair play, I thought I might share some thoughts that were triggered by a recent Burl Gilyard report that I saw in MinnPost. (My Minnesota continues to believe that creating great cities is one of the best ways to protect great natural areas.) Now, to be clear, this posting is focused on the Snelling and University TOD development Gilyard mentions, not the 7 Corners site.

One point that seems to be missing from the MinnPost article, that really caught my attention when I did a little digging, is that, although the article mentions "$64.3 million in infrastructure costs at the site," it doesn't seem to have included a detail, that $40.2 million of the total infrastructure cost would be for structured parking [see above and page 13 of the report]. Perhaps that amount of structured parking has become standard for TOD, but investing (expending) two-thirds of a project's infrastructure cost on structured parking for a "transit village" seems oxymoronish (is that a word?). When I worked for the City of Minneapolis, I was involved in several potential Transit Oriented Development efforts. As part of my due diligence, I became somewhat familiar with the Oakland, CA TOD project known as Fruitvale. There's a case study available online, from which this quote is taken:

"To encourage balanced, mixed-use development, a new zone was created for the Fruitvale station area, combining residential, commercial and civic uses such as child care, education and health care. The zone allows the highest residential densities in the neighborhood. An overlay zone reduces parking requirements in the station area by half, although BART required all original parking capacity be replaced. An overlay zone created especially for Fruitvale required one space for every two units, cutting in half the city’s usual one space per unit minimum. [emphasis added]

The other aspect of the Fruitvale development that seems at variance from what I've found so far, in either the TOD Redevelopment Strategy Report or the University and Snelling Station Area Plan, is a clearly documented description of the affected neighborhoods' visions and goals. Again, from the Case Study

"Through a grassroots process involving numerous community meetings and charettes in multiple languages reflective of the many cultures and ethnicities in Fruitvale, the community suggested a mixed-use village with retail shops, community services and mixed-income housing."

The potential benefits of such an approach as that followed by the folks in Oakland was reinforced for us when, awhile ago, I read about how a truly creative developer used crowdfunding (among other approaches) to engage the neighborhood and future users of a project in a charrette process that appears to offer a potential to be truly transformative. Perhaps there's still time for city and metropolitan leadership to show the creativity of which they're capable by adapting the kind of examples mentioned here rather than creatively finding money to throw at what, at first reading, appears to be a fairly typical development proposal with limited potential to transform the surrounding neighborhoods. I hope this brief review will help St. Paul, the Metro Council and the affected neighborhoods create some great city places at Snelling and University.

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False gods

© harrington

Welcome. Thanks for stopping by. I assume that you're in favor of clean air, clean water, open space, healthy foods and wildlife and related pleasures of life in Minnesota. I also assume that, if enjoying those pleasures meant we all had to go back to living in caves and brushing our teeth with twigs and generally living a subsistence (or less) lifestyle, you'd be somewhat less enthusiastic about clean air, clean water etc. The good, actually great, news is we don't have to make that choice. The bad news is we keep electing politicians who appoint "leaders" that don't see it that way. An classic example of where we keep going wrong is summarized in a two part interview about the Stillwater Bridge. Ron Meador talks with Jim Erkel on MinnPost following up on the recent ground breaking. I've had the pleasure of meeting both of these folks and have a lot of respect for their work. In fact, if we elected and appointed lots more of us who think like these two, I wouldn't be writing this post (you're excused to go organize the write-in campaign). Part one makes the excellent point, with which I agree, that innocent people are dieing because we're investing in convenience instead of necessary repairs. (This fits with my long time suspicion that the opposite of good isn't evil, it's convenience, slippery slopes and all that.) Part two argues that slowing growth (and the existence of an Interstate bridge only 6 miles south) may make the bridge almost as good as a bridge to nowhere. (If Scott Walker keeps getting his way in Wisconsin, it will be a bridge to nowhere anyone wants to be.) Let me repeat: we didn't gain jobs with the Stillwater bridge construction. We just moved them around and shared a lot with Wisconsin. Construction jobs are created with infrastructure repair (take a look the next time you've finished your "zipper merge"). If we keep wasting our tax dollars on projects like the Stillwater bridge, we'll end up with the kind of government, world and environment we deserve, and it won't involve clean air, clean water a pleasant environment OR GOOD JOBS. I think we deserve better. What do you think? After all, it's up to us. By the way, I don't see this as a Democrat versus Republican choice, or a liberal versus conservative choice or a young versus old choice. It's a choice between smart and dumb. Thanks for listening. Think about the kind of place you want Minnesota to be. Come back so we can discuss it some more. Rants, raves and reflections served daily.

Priced in

© harrington

Where this (still uncompleted) subdivision sits today, sandhill cranes used to feed. I know because I used to see them once or twice a week. Across the road from this development are farm fields. Between this subdivision and the nearest commercial center are more farm fields. You cant see the storm water pond just beyond the widely spaced pine trees, but several small flocks of Canada geese spend summer there, at least for now. Before you get all up in my face about homes for people being more important than food for cranes, let me say that's not the point I'm getting at. I find little that's attractive about these houses and their vinyl siding in their location miles from anything but farm fields and more houses like these. This is what you get when you drive 'til you qualify. What you loose are sandhill cranes and, eventually, probably the geese too. If we're going to give up cranes and geese, and maybe foxes and butterflies and ..., can't we get something more attractive and functional in return? The National Association of Home Builders [NAHB] cites a study that claims "The 2012 estimates show that nationally a $1,000 increase in the price of the home price leads to pricing out about 232,447 households."By most of the calculations I've seen, the average house costs somewhere between $100 and $200 a square foot to build. That means that for every reduction of between 5 and 10 square feet in the average house size (equal to less than one closet?) another 200,000 plus households could afford to buy a home. They'd be priced in. Even more could be priced in if they didn't have to have two or three cars to get to work and soccer etc. The average car costs something like $5,000 to $7,500 per year. That's about two to four times the average home energy bill and something like 25% to 40% of the average yearly mortgage. So, if we just used more of the knowledge we currently have (nothing rocket science here), more families could afford homes, we could cut down on green house gas emissions while saving agricultural land and wildlife habitat. What do you say NAHB? How about a pricing in study?

Great cities, great places

© harrington

It's possible you may wonder what yesterday's post about mixed use development has to do with places like the one you see above. I believe that we need to create great cities to protect great places. Throughout history, cities have been associated with crowding, crime, pollution, illness and the like. Over the past few centuries, we've learned much more about where and how to build beautiful communities that incorporate nature and function well for people. Aldo Leopold has written about honoring a land ethic. Most cities are build on land that once served other uses. Some cities are bringing back urban agriculture. Minneapolis and St. Paul keep doing more to honor the beauty and recreational uses of the Mississippi as it flows through. Many of the communities in My Minnesota are eminently walkable. More could be. Ian McHarg has provided guidance on which natural functions most deserve protection from and inclusion with urbanization. Donella Meadows talks to us about paying attention to feed back and learning to dance with systems. Take a minute and think about what you experience in a vehicle at 60 or 70 miles and hour compared to what it's like to walk or bike and what you hear and see and smell at that more human speed and scale. If we don't do more to use what we already know about creating great cities, we're going to continue to want to move away from each other so that some of us don't have to put up with the rest of us. Once we're spread out enough (How's that sprawly thingy working out for us?), we need to substitute travel time for distance as a measure of convenience. In a well-designed mixed use neighborhood, travel time and distance are human scale, not auto scale. Places like the one above can be left undeveloped by developing more places like Crocus Hill in St. Paul, or Washington Avenue near the Open Book building in Minneapolis. Or your neighborhood?

Curb appeal

© harrington

This view looks south toward the downtown of one of the first cities in My Minnesota. The building in the center (appearing to block the road which actually curves to the left in front of it) is a block of condominiums with  units still for sale. From here, the boulevard trees nicely frame the condo building, providing curb appeal and softening the street face.

© harrington

As you enter the heart of this river city, the trees are fewer (there's a potted tree barely visible near the right edge of the photo) and, as attractive as the building's facade may be, it's appeal seems to me to be notably less than when it was framed with trees. There have been studies documenting that proximity to parks increases property value. Would a more attractive and walkable public space have led to a shortened time on market for those "Models Open" units?  Which curb has more appeal to you (and where's the bike lane)?

Dense-city?

© harrington

Can you remember when the Foshay Tower was the tallest building in Minneapolis? Now it's almost like a mushroom in a forest of redwoods. It seems that, in My Minnesota, we grow taller, we spread out, and we do both. Two of the buildings helping to dwarf the Foshay Tower are the Carlyle (behind it) and the IDS Tower (to Foshay's left). One has become iconic, the other is relatively new. What you can't see in this picture are the multitudes of parking lots within a few blocks of these towers. Is it just me or does that kind of situation seem kind of strange to you too? What could it be about the proximity of a central business district, "downtown Minneapolis," that makes a parking lot (not even a garage) the "best and highest use" for a nearby piece of urban land? This seems to involve elements we haven't quite worked out about urban design and development. It's becoming more important to get these arrangements working better since now more than 50% of us are living in cities. As we learn to create great cities we do more to protect the wilderness.

Gratitude III

© harrington

This morning I'll be participating in a meeting of the board of the US Green Building Council-Minnesota Chapter. One of the many things for which I'm grateful is that My Minnesota has one of the most active and dedicated chapters in the organization. USGBC are the folks who brought us "green building" and sustainable development through LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design). One of the less used, but I think more promising, LEED rating systems is for Neighborhood Development (ND). Many of the other systems (except LEED for Homes) focus largely on the design, construction and operation of the individual building or project. But, as we learn more about reducing energy consumption and how many people actually want to live in walkable neighborhoods, we're discovering that often it takes as much or more energy to get inhabitants to their destination as it does to keep them comfortable and healthy once they're inside. LEED-ND is one way to get a handle on that king of concern. I have some quibbles with the criteria in LEED-ND and how well they may fit with rural centers, many of whom also want to be known as being "green and sustainabe." That's one of the reasons I'll be at the board meeting. The Minnesota chapter is prioritizing a collaborative "Dynamic Green Approach" to engaging communities, schools and the governmental sector. I'm excited about that approach because My Minnesota certainly doesn't have one size or shade of green that fits all.

Gratitude II

To continue on this Thanksgiving's week theme of gratitude, I'm grateful that, in 2008, my fellow Minnesotan's enacted the Clean Water, Land & Legacy Amendment to the state's constitution, adding three-eighths of one percent to the state's sales tax to protect and preserve Minnesota's natural and cultural resources. At the time, there was concern expressed by some about the combination of "hook and bullet" with ballet types and interests. In My Minnesota, life's quality comes from living in sustainable communities set in magnificent natural environments and enjoying literary, graphic, performance and other artistic activities necessary to add value to a sustainable life. I'm grateful that increasing numbers of Minnesotans are recognizing that economy versus environment is a false dichotomy. Conservative (read efficient and effective) use of natural resources makes business more competitive in a global economy. Business externalities often turn out to be social costs the rest of us must pay for. I heard a chamber of commerce leader on the radio yesterday note that "any increased tax (cost) to business will be passed on the the customer." I'd rather see those who buy the product pay those costs than have to subsidize them through publicly paid clean-up costs. I'm becoming convinced that the best way to protect My Minnesota's natural resources is by creating great communities where we want to live and great businesses where we want to work. I'm grateful especially to those who are leading the way there.

A brighter future

© harrington

Election day was damp, drizzling and/or snowy, depending on where you were in My Minnesota. The day after election day dawned bright and sunny, no matter the cloud cover (except maybe around the 6th Congressional District). Perhaps now we can make progress overcoming our cultural reticence (janteloven according to LandOf) about promoting our local treasures. As the saying goes "it ain't bragging if you've done it" (or something like that). My Minnesota has four plus seasons, four ecosystems, numerous biomes, and a built environment that's getting smarter by the year.