Posted in Gratitude, Haiku, Love, Poetry, Relationships, Seasons, tagged autumn, end of summer, tanka, the passage of time, weddings on September 15, 2013|
Last Harvest, Droid Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2013, photos © 2013 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Unpredictable—
September. Cattail wind tousles
vine-ripe tomatoes;
early autumn showers christen
my oldest friend’s wedding.
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, September 15, 2013
Posted in Nature, Photography, Poetry, Practice, Seasons, Things That Fly, tagged bees, coneflowers, end of summer, gogyohka, Great Black Wasp, happy accidents, imposters, insects, photobomb, summer in Minnesota, wasps on August 22, 2013| 5 Comments »
Ode To A Black Bee, Droid Shots, Minneapolis, Minnesota, August 2013, photos © 2013 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Coneflower summer—
the accidental black bee,
my unsuspecting lens.
The photobombing imposter?
a Great Black Wasp.
-posted on red Ravine, Thursday, August 22nd, 2013
Posted in Culture, Food, Holidays, Life, Photography, Place, Poetry, Seasons, tagged A Night at the Fair, end of summer, Great Minnesota Get-Together, great ways to spend Labor Day weekend, grilled shrimp, Minnesota State Fair, neon signs, night owls, Nightshots, shadows & light, summer in Minnesota, summer people, tanka, Ye Old Mill on September 5, 2011| 5 Comments »
Summer’s Last Hurrah, leaving the Minnesota State Fair, Droid Shots, St. Paul, Minnesota, August 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
Buttered popcorn shrimp grilled in sight, for your delight, the tunnels of Ye Old Mill— shadow people light the night bearing Summer's last hurrah.
-posted on red Ravine, Monday, September 5th, 2011
-related to post: haiku 4 (one-a-day) meets renga 52, MN State Fair On-A-Stick (Smartphone History On-The-Go)
Posted in 13 Moons, Animals & Critters, Art, Bones, Dreams, Growing Older, Holding My Breath, Home, Life, Nature, Photography, Place, Poetry, Practice, Relationships, Seasons, Skies, Spirituality, Things That Fly, Vision, Wake Up, tagged BlackBerry 52, BlackBerry 52 Collaboration, BlackBerry 52 Jump-Offs, building community through the Arts, collaboration, dragonfly, Dragonfly magic, Dragonfly Medicine, Dragonfly secrets, dragonfly wings, Dreams, end of summer, green, living my dreams, summer, the dreamtime, view from the sky on August 16, 2011| 5 Comments »
Dragonfly Revisited – 33/52, BlackBerry 52 — Week 33 Jump-Off, Golden Valley, Minnesota, August 10th 2011, photo © 2011 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved. Medium: Original Droid snapshot of a dragonfly on our front window at the end of Summer, August 2011. Altered in Photoshop Elements.
A month ago Thursday, a road trip West, dragonflies swelled the North Dakota skies. Hundreds of dragonflies, one place. Everywhere—
we stopped; winged clouds of a prehistoric past.
Another Full Moon, a long day at work. Head bowed, walking toward the door. There, in the wind, completely still. Dragonfly, tucked under the lip of the window eave. Inside, outside, everyside. Luck follows Dragonfly. Dragonfly follows the dreamtime.
In time, I dream.
-posted on red Ravine, Tuesday, August 16th, 2011
Lotus and I will continue to respond to each other’s BlackBerry Jump-Off photos with text, photography, poetry (however we are inspired) for the 52 weeks of 2011. You can read more at BlackBerry 52 Collaboration. If you are inspired to join us, send us a link to your images, poetry, or prose and we’ll add them to our posts.
-related to posts: first dragonfly, Flying Solo — Dragonfly In Yellow Rain, Shadow Of A Dragonfly, Dragonfly Wings — It Is Written In The Wind, Dragon Fight — June Mandalas, The Sketchbook Project, haiku 4 (one-a-day) Meets renga 52
Posted in Architecture, Art, Authors, Books, Culture, Family, Food, Growing Older, Life, Photography, Place, Practice, Seasons, Short Story, Writers, tagged 71 foods on-a-stick at the MN State Fair, A Fabulous Fair Alphabet, A Night at the Fair, alphabets, children's books, Debra Frasier, end of summer, end of summer rituals, F Scott Fitzgerald, F Scott Fitzgerald Walking Tour, F. Scott Fitzgerald & the MN State Fair, Fairborne, Fairchild, Fitzgerald Theater, food and culture, food on-a-stick, Great Minnesota Get-Together, illustration, memories, Minnesota State Fair, Minnesota State Fair Food Finder, Minnesota State Fair history, MN State Fair Alphabet Project, preserving memories, St Paul, stories about the Fair, Who are Fairchild & Fairborne?, writing about the MN State Fair on August 29, 2010| 39 Comments »
MN State Fair — Fairborne & Fairchild, MN State Fair, St. Paul, Minnesota, August 2010, all photos © 2009-2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
The Minnesota State Fair kicked off this week and it’s time for our annual State Fair post on red Ravine. We’ve covered a lot of history over the years, including the debut of Peach Glazed Pig Cheeks On-A-Stick, the fine art of Princess Kay of the Milky Way (and the Butter Queens), Minnesota State Fair poster artists, the history of Fairborne and Fairchild, and the tradition of Tom Thumb Donuts.
This year we honor the work of two writers who have written about the Minnesota State Fair. In 1928, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote his classic short story “A Night at the Fair.” And this year, Debra Frasier, author of On the Day You Were Born and the Minnesota State Fair Foundation’s current Author-in-Residence, has written and illustrated A Fabulous Fair Alphabet.
Debra Frasier — A Fabulous Fair Alphabet
What started as a collection of photographs taken by Minneapolis author Debra Frasier on daily visits 
to the Minnesota State Fair, has turned into a work of book art. A Fabulous Fair Alphabet is Frasier’s tribute to the “Great Minnesota Get-Together” and the impetus for the State Fair Alphabet Project, a labor of love for hundreds of Minnesotans who are passionate about early learning. The book has also gained national acclaim, with the New York Times noting, “Frasier brings to life a jaunty Ferris wheel, a sunburst-yellow pitcher of lemonade and a swirling roller coaster.”
The book is interactive and there is a wonderful article about Frasier’s process in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. She intentionally left the front-piece page blank in hopes that families will use the page to personalize their copies of the book as a keepsake, a place to store their own Fair memories, images, and words:
Going to the State Fair together is a ritual for many families. Grandparents have passed along their favorite Fair traditions to their grandchildren. The book is a place for all generations to record their experiences together. Imagine if we had a list of favorite words from our relatives’ 1901 trip to the Fair, or 1945, or 2010 for fairgoers of 2060!
-Debra Frasier
Debra Frasier will be giving book signings from Noon to 2 p.m. daily at the J.V. Bailey House (across 
from the Space Needle) and I plan to visit her there. You can also visit the Alphabet Forest at Baldwin Park, across from the 4-H building. There are teaching materials based on the book, coloring sheets, instructions on making animals-on-a-stick or a cereal box stage, a bibliography of fair-themed books, display letters, a script that deepens the story and a look at how Frasier created the book at her official website.
F. Scott Fitzgerald — A Night at the Fair
F. Scott Fitzgerald is a Twin Cities icon who continues to live on through art and author happenings at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul. Most Minnesotans know that he penned the short story, “A Night at the Fair,” but after a comment from one of our readers, I started to wonder how many had actually read the story (myself included).
It begins like this:
The two cities were separated only by a thin well-bridged river; their tails curling over the banks met and mingled, and at the juncture, under the jealous eye of each, lay, every fall, the State Fair. Because of this advantageous position, and because of the agricultural eminence of the state, the fair was one of the most magnificent in America. There were immense exhibits of grain, livestock and farming machinery; there were horse races and automobile races and, lately, aeroplanes that really left the ground; there was a tumultuous Midway with Coney Island thrillers to whirl you through space, and a whining, tinkling hoochie-coochie show. As a compromise between the serious and the trivial, a grand exhibition of fireworks, culminating in a representation of the Battle of Gettysburg, took place in the Grand Concourse every night.
–F. Scott Fitzgerald, A Night at the Fair
If your imagination is captured, you can read all 15 pages at Project Gutenberg. One of my favorite parts is when Scott writes about Ye Old Mill. 
The same Ye Old Mill at the Fair today. Located at the southwest corner of Carnes Avenue and Underwood Street, and touted as the “original tunnel of love,” Ye Old Mill is the oldest ride on the fairgrounds and is owned by the same family who first operated it in 1913.
The ride runs on a 40-horse power engine that turns the mill wheel and keeps water running through the 1300-foot channel. When you read Fitzgerald’s descriptions, you can imagine Basil and Riply chugging along on the Fair rides and Midway of the 1920’s. Memories preserved through story.
F. Scott Fitzgerald Walking Tour — St. Paul, Minnesota
I’m a writer who has lived in the Twin Cities for over 20 years. Until this summer, I had never seen the place where F. Scott Fitzgerald was born, walked on the steps of St. Paul Academy where he went to school (with a Fitzgerald 
statue created by Aaron Dysart), or taken a photograph of the sign at the Commodore Hotel where Scott and Zelda lived when their baby girl, Scottie, was born. Those old hotel walls have breathed in tales we can only imagine, real life stories of their drinking and partying at the Commodore bar.
For my birthday this year, our Poetry & Meditation Group walked the 13 stops of a self-guided Fitzgerald tour, from 481 Laurel, where Scott was born, to Mrs. Backus’ Boarding School at 586 Holly, the building where Scott enrolled in dance class. However, the heart of the tour is a four-block radius surrounding the intersection of Kent Street and Summit Avenue, “one of the grandest rows of Victorian Boulevard architecture anywhere in America.” From there, Summit 
stretches nearly five miles to the Mississippi River in the country’s longest span of residential, Victorian architecture.
Slip on a comfortable pair of shoes, and walk in the footsteps of the writers who came before us. Francis Scott Fitzgerald (named after Francis Scott Key) has a birthday coming up on September 24th; take the tour to celebrate his birth, brushing oaks along streets his parents walked in 1896. At the time he lived in St. Paul, F. Scott visited with writers like Sinclair Lewis and Donald Ogden Stewart. Here’s a link to every stop on the F. Scott Fitzgerald Walking Tour.
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Spaghetti & Meatball Dinner On-A-Stick, Fried Fruit On-A-Stick, Macaroni & Cheese On-A-Stick, Bull Bites, Deep Fried Tater Tots On-A-Stick, Grilled Shrimp On-A-Stick, Vintage Kids & Fair Food!, Leprechaun Legs, MN State Fair, St. Paul, Minnesota, August 2008, all photos © 2008-2010 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
MN State Fair – Foods On-A-Stick
Our Minnesota State Fair post wouldn’t be complete without the annual foods on-a-stick list. Here’s the lineup for 2010. If you are looking for the location of specific foods at the Fair, here’s a link to their FoodFinder with a map of the Fair. The Minnesota State Fair runs through Monday, September 6th. From the 20,000 gallons of milk served by the the American Dairy Association, to the 338,000 dozen mini-donuts consumed, and the 22,000 rolls of toilet paper used at the Minnesota State Fair, there is nothing else to do but ENJOY!
Total Number of Foods-On-A-Stick: 71*
New Minnesota State Fair Foods In 2010
(including *2 new foods on-a-stick not on list above)
State Fair photos on Flickr.
-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, August 29th, 2010
-related to posts: MN State Fair On-A-Stick (Happy B’Day MN!), On-The-Go List Of Must-Haves (MN State Fair), Nightshot – Carousel, MN State Fair On-A-Stick II – Video & Stats, food on-a-stick haiku, F. Scott Fitzgerald: On Money & Mess, Runes, Oracles, & Alphabets
Posted in Architecture, Art, Everyday Art, Family, Fotoblog, Growing Older, Home, Life, Personal, Photography, Relationships, Seasons, Structure, Vision, tagged back-to-school, dog days of summer, end of summer, endings, hanging a collection of photos, motherhood, mothering, mothers and daughters, new beginnings, redecorating rooms, routines, teenage girl bedrooms, teenage girls, transitions, working mothers on August 14, 2010| 14 Comments »
Flowers Closeup, images of flowers grouped together,
photo © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
The girls were at camp for a week, which is the first time since this time last year that we had the house to ourselves. It’s late August, almost September, and this particular camp — which is always held the week before school starts — is the last hurrah of summer.
My oldest starts high school next week. During a few days off recently I began a room redecoration project with her. We had intended to go to the cabin for two days with Jim and Em, but I forgot about an orthodontist appointment for Dee that couldn’t be changed. So off they went while Dee and I set about redoing her bedroom.
She decided on a black-and-white color scheme with lavender, light blue, light pink, and other accent colors. We bought a new bedding set, plus two white shag rugs (I know!), a white desk chair, and a zebra print lamp. But the best part was when she got to select artwork for the walls. She found seven photo prints of different flowers, black-and-white with hints of color, in double-white mats.
I then purchased ready-made frames from Michael’s (my boycott there didn’t last long) and did something I rarely do. Instead of procrastinating and letting the new prints and frames sit untouched for weeks, I actually put them all together and hung them in a group on Dee’s wall.
Wall of Flowers, to hang multiple pictures together on the wall, I used this excellent “how to,” photo © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
The end of summer and beginning of school is a welcome time for me. Much as I enjoy the excitement of vacations and a general lazy feeling that lasts for two-and-a-half months starting in May, summer reminds me how much I cherish the routines that back-to-school brings in our household.
One such routine is quiet time for my artwork. With the girls back in school, that means they’re not staying up late on weeknights. Weeknights, often after 9p, are when I can pull out my jewelry and lose myself in the tactical work of designing bracelets, gluing on designs, sanding edges, and mixing resin.
Just last night, I worked on several new bracelets. I am always amazed at the vibrancy of the work and delighted any time a new color scheme or design emerges. I turn my music on loud — usually k.d. lang belting out hymns of the 49th parallel, James Taylor, or Collective Soul — and don’t look up again for hours.
Bracelets in Process, pieces coming together, (calendar
stuck on June), photo © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
But summer ain’t over ’til it’s over. Besides a couple of New Student orientations, the first day of school isn’t until Thursday. There is much yet to fit in over this last weekend.
Em is starting a new transition, too, from elementary to middle school. She also got new accouterments for her bedroom, such as bedding in bright oranges, magentas, lime greens, and turquoise. Jim has to fix the cool and colorful lamp inherited from Dee’s room, plus we have a few items yet to purchase. And there is still more to do to finish up Dee’s redecoration — the full length mirror, more wall hangings, and putting up the curtains that are being hemmed by a local seamstress.
It’s only now that summer is almost over that I can see how important these particular new beginnings are for my daughters. I like to mark beginnings — transformation in one’s life, new seasons, milestone dates, new roles.
And as I celebrate, it’s with a bittersweet heart because as the saying goes, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”
Mother and Child, antique framed Catholic print, hung to look over my art-making space, photo © 2010 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.
Posted in Everyday Art, Food, Fotoblog, Haiku, Nature, Photography, Practice, Seasons, Wake Up, tagged celebrating the ordinary, digging in the dirt, end of summer, gardening, gardens, god in the details, ode to a red pepper, red pepper green, red pepper study, red peppers, secrets of color, summer, summer in Minnesota, the practice of gardening, the practice of haiku, vegetables, withering summer on September 14, 2009| 14 Comments »
September Red Pepper, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2009,
all photos © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
red pepper study
yellow, green, orange palette
god in the details
Pepper Study: Pepper Pot, Green Before Red, Pepper Leaves,
Hole In A Pepper Leaf, Red Pepper Green, 8 Faces Of A Pepper Stem,
Alone But Not Lonely, Minneapolis, Minnesota, September 2009,
July 2009, all photos © QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
-posted on red Ravine, Monday, September 14th, 2009
-related to post: haiku 2 (one-a-day)
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