Journeys 3.1

Walked over to Chloe, a French-style bistro, for lunch with friends. The building was once a tractor factory, now repurposed as a hotel with two restaurants. The face sculpture is fashioned entirely from welded bicycle chains. Toward the back of the photo, an atrium cuts up through five floors, letting in natural light.

Built a gentle adventure around the #2 bus route which runs every 10 minutes near our home. The route takes in some wonderful institutions as it travels through the U and across South Minneapolis. Today: Northrop (cuppa in the cafe of this U auditorium), Weisman Art Museum (architect Frank Gehry), eye clinic (used a credit to replace lenses in my sun glasses), Minneapolis Institute of Art (took in an exhibition by Kenji Nakahashi who loved diagramming, categorizing and coding).

Simple tonkotsu udon at Kinzö between medical appointments at the U. Campus is a bright place to be: art exhibitions, student energy, reminders to keep perspective. Cycling to and from keeps things feeling normal.

My big cycle ride today was just two blocks to Open Book for coffee with a friend I’d normally be cycling with. Open Book was serving as a polling station for the primaries, but with no masked government agents lurking, my friend and I talked freely. We chuckled at the image of the prez hiding in an airline catering container, fairly confident we weren’t offending anyone at the adjacent tables.

My low energy nudges me toward an equally low-energy task: learning enough about crypto to answer the question, “What is crypto?” Forbes classifies 67% of crypto investors as high confidence, low literacy; it seems they’re attracted by a belief wealth can be safely created out of thin air. Like them, I cannot even explain its basic terms, so today, I opened a Kraken account and transferred $100 to kick off my research, triggering a fraud alert from my bank questioning this “suspicious activity.”

As planned, I crossed the Hennepin Avenue Bridge while Dwight continued to Plymouth Avenue; I’m not yet firing on all cylinders. Picked up peaches at Trader’s for a chicken dish Dwight’s planning. Emptied our almost empty mail box: flyers for County Attorney in the upcoming primary convey the importance of this role against a vindictive federal government.

Spent my day on the couch nursing a fever from the study drug. My current read, Embracing Defeat, covers the years of the American occupation of Japan, 1945–1952. Among all the failures of a collapsed society to support itself, a glimmer of hope is Japan’s 1947 constitution, which was written by a committee of Americans and remains Japan’s constitution today, remarkably with no amendments. Back then, America imposed democracy; today, our leaders undermine it.