June 30, 2012

Where I’m Calling From

Here for a long weekend. Celebration of Life for a friend’s mom who passed a few weeks ago. Tonight an early celebration of same friend’s 50th birthday coming in a week or so. We’re north. Some ten to fifteen degrees cooler than at home. ‘Course, when it hits 90 degrees, does it really matter? We’re staying in the pyramid-topped skyscraper just right of center, dwarfed by the buildings around it. Once the tallest building in the midwest. Now the W hotel.

posted by in adventure, death, friends, gratitude | * | 10 comments 

comments

  1. Rick Neece on June 30th, 2012 at 5:53 pm

    Maybe it was only the tallest building in this state instead of the Midwest?

  2. Sheila Ryan on June 30th, 2012 at 5:55 pm

    This state, Midwest — heck, it’s tall. You’re there. That’s good.

  3. Tyler on July 2nd, 2012 at 11:09 am

    It is the Foshay Tower, the first skyscraper built west of the Mississippi.

  4. Sheila Ryan on July 2nd, 2012 at 11:12 am

    I was fixing to challenge that assertion until I recalled that Chicago lies east of the Mississippi.

  5. Rick Neece on July 2nd, 2012 at 11:59 am

    Be-ins the river runs smack-dab through downtown Minneapolis, the Foshay is only a half-mile West of the Mississippi, give or take a couple inches.

  6. Sheila Ryan on July 2nd, 2012 at 1:29 pm

    Still, West is West.

  7. Rick Neece on July 2nd, 2012 at 1:44 pm

    An inch is a mile.

  8. Sheila Ryan on July 2nd, 2012 at 1:52 pm

    I’ve mentioned my distaste for the Mississippi River, haven’t I?

  9. Rick Neece on July 2nd, 2012 at 2:00 pm

    I forgot you’re right there close to it, too. Why distaste?

  10. Sheila Ryan on July 2nd, 2012 at 2:18 pm

    It is an ill-proportioned river, generally, although at Dubuque its width remains just barely acceptable. Once you get down to the confluence with the Missouri, the thing is grotesque. It violates the aesthetic criteria to which I hold rivers. It is not the only violator.

    And sure, there is the romance of the Mississippi — Huck and Jim on the raft, paddlewheels, and all that, but there’s also “being sold down the river” and toting bales of cotton down on the levee.