More dead person related content

When oh when will I ever see the eight lakes again?

The south wind persists and was today quite strong from the south AND east. I easily navigated to Northrup and rode peacefully down the hill as it became Grantham as I rode along towards Saint Paul, the city to the south. By the by, according to "The Street Where You Live, A Guide to the Place Names of Saint Paul" by Donald L. Empson, Grantham Street is so named because "A village in England, near London, inspired this Saint Anthony Park street name in 1885." Just in case you wanted to know.

I wanted to head eastward once into Saint Paul so I headed up Summit Avenue, intending to do the Capitol loop. I passed by this historic structure on Western and Holly, just off Summit. It is the Commodore Hotel.The Commodore is famous, of course, as the home of dead author Ernest Hemingway at the time his novel "The Moveable Feast" was published. The novel contains the following description of a walk in Saint Paul that can still be taken today and which, in fact, TOPWLH and I have taken:

"I walked on in the rain. I walked down past the Lycee Henri Quatre and the ancient church of St.-etienne-du-Mont and the windswept Place du Pantheon and cut in for shelter to the right and finally came out on the lee side of the Boulevard St.-Michel and worked on down it past the Cluny and the Boulevard St.-Germain until I came to a good cafe that I knew on the Place St.-Michel."

Just a couple of blocks later I was across the street from the Germanic-American Institute of Saint Paul.I have siblings whose appearance is strongly suggestive of the Scandinavian side of our family, the side with which we spent the most time as children. I had always assumed that I was a Scandinavian. By chance I happened to be passing by this establishment on an October day several years ago when the annual Volksfest was in progress. I was instantly struck by the fact that THESE were MY people. I resemble the German side of the family.

I spent some time framing this photo and like it quite a bit. It is Floyd B. Olson, arguably Minnesota's greatest Governor. He was a hero to farmers and labor and is one of the primary reasons for the historical oddity that has caused the official name of the Democratic party in Minnesota to be Democratic Farmer-Labor party.Floyd is also noteworthy for being the original proposer and namesake of Floyd of Rosedale, a traveling football trophy in the shape of a pig which is annually contested for by the football teams of the Universities of Minnesota and Iowa.

With a statue on the grounds of the Capitol and a traveling pig named after him it seems to me that Governor Olson has attained a status which is certain to elude at least the two most recent of our state's Governors.