Hands-Free

Today I went down by the riverside to lay down my sword and shield. No baptism took place but I did get a glimpse of Minneapolis’ former life as the flour capital of the universe.

The Mill City Museum is really well done and I can say that I now have basic understanding of how the river was used to power all those giant mills along its banks. The water goes in and pushes a big thing around that turns a lot of other big things. Those big turning things transform little things like grains of wheat into even littler things like flour. Or the turning things make blankets, socks, electricity. The river was crazy useful.

And the old buildings of the former mills are crazy handsome. Majestic in their size, they give perspective to our place as specs in the universe. Like the pyramids or the Corn Palace in South Dakota, they are humbling.

Hard to believe that every single one of those mills has now been converted to luxury urban housing. Or so explained the docent at the museum. The museum itself is a new building that was somehow slipped into decrepit ruins of the old Washburn Mill A. And the condos got slipped in too. The Residences at the Ruins. Strange, but the buildings are beautiful, even ruined and if putting condos in them is going to be how they get saved from the wrecking ball, I’m all for it.

Then I was over in the Somali neighborhood, Cedar Riverside where there are again, bustling shops and modest cafes and restaurants that cater to this community of very recent immigrants. I chatted with a merchant, Farah who got my attention when I picked up a package of biscuits named Glucose and he remarked that these were his favorite and I bought them to give Glucose a try. Farah said he has been here for ten years and that he has been “treated like a king” since he arrived and has been able to open his own shop and prosper. He said that after 7 wars in his country it was time for him to find another life.

Farah’s store is in the shadow of a soviet-style housing complex that is an architectural ode to poured concrete:





There were plenty of people walking around to do their marketing and small clusters of men chatting on the sidewalks. The women were dressed in hijabs, some of them very very beautiful in their flowing miles of fabric. I know it’s not considered very feminist of me probably but their dress was beautiful, especially compared to the guys who sport wester style clothes.

One woman I saw driving a minivan was talking on her phone and had ingeniously jerry-rigged a hands-free situation by simply tucking her cell underneath her head scarf so that it clung to her head while she drove. And I thought, wow that lady is really clever and then two minutes later I saw this woman waiting at a bus stop:

Sorry this is sideways too but I am having issues with the upload. Technology has its own ideas...