Microblog

My Wednesday lunch tradition at the Minneapolis American Indian Center after a morning of tutoring: bison melt on wild rice bread that’s baked in-house. The salad has a light, citrusy dressing.

Rode the light rail with a friend and our bicycles to St. Paul, then explored points beyond. I hadn’t noticed Swede Hollow Henge before. Behind, the abandoned Hamms Brewery awaits a new purpose. Until the 1950’s this area was a shanty town with no electricity.

Posted In Praise of Tactile Controls.

Long cycle ride, bar lunch, short cycle ride, cup of tea, nap.

Assembled a grow light stand where we’ll grow herbs, baby greens, and microgreens. Each set of LED lights is connected to the Internet. I’ll be adding drip irrigation and will create IFTTT applets to control the lights and the irrigation.

While I cycled, the Buddha reclined in a St. Paul parking lot.

Pushed my bike alongside railroad tracks, following the route of a proposed cycle path, the Min Hi Line. These tracks once served several flour mills. Just one mill is still operating, producing one million pounds of flour every day.

Posted Wildflowers and Participatory Games.

Cycled around an industrial area of St. Paul’s Midway. Spotted Bang Brewery, housed in a grain bin. Peered through the door at vats biding their time.

Cycled to St. Paul’s Union Depot. Took the train home.

Cycled to the football stadium to see what the X-Games are all about. Just about everybody was inside on this hot day, presumably cheering along skateboarding and other “extreme sports.” The large blue foam construction blocks waited for a different demographic.

Made jerk chicken marinade. For something so simple, there’s a surprising number of ingredients. A coffee grinder we keep for spices and an immersion blender brought all this together in short order. I froze half for another day.

It’s a little too convenient living one block from an excellent ice cream store. “Existential Crunch” (dark brown sugar, Jameson whiskey, creme fraiche, praline pecan, and cashew brittle) topped with a small scoop of “Umeshu Chocolate” (dark chocolate and Japanese plum wine).

Prototyped a drip irrigation system for about fifty plants on our balcony. I’ll create IFTTT applets to control the pump based on reports from the moisture sensor. Next on my shopping list: a 30-gallon tank.

Sat in a room with hard-working Somalis in the basement of a Carnegie library. One hundred years ago I would have been sitting with Swedes in this same room.

Cycled with a friend past eight former St. Paul fire stations, and a monument in Oakland Cemetery to firefighters who lost their lives while on duty. This fire station, built in 1872, was St. Paul’s first.