Sometimes you have to put your fingers in your ears and say "I'm not listening" to *everything* and just... eat some ice cream.
I saw these two word graphics at a local ice cream shop recently:
Ice cream hyperbole. But it works for just a few minutes.
I recently spent most of an hour early on a Sunday evening standing on a corner where two relatively busy streets in Saint Paul intersect.
The two most interesting sets of passersby I saw:
1) Two parents, ambiguously gendered, walking a leashed miniature Samoyed as their 4-year-old son drove a tiny electric convertible Hummer while wearing a white dress shirt, black tie, and brown shorts.
I really wanted to take a photo of the family, but of course did not.
2) A guy (I assume it was a guy) wearing a Scream mask, driving a red crotchrocket motorcycle. He sat across from me at the signal, revving his engine, for an uncomfortable length of time as far as I was concerned. I thought he would run the light, but he didn't. When it finally turned green and he roared away, I could see that he had a baseball bat strapped across the back of his seat.
I thought about calling the non-emergency cop number, and if I'd gotten his plate number, maybe I would have because what the heck? Was he going to softball practice wearing a Scream mask... or planning to bust some windows?
I also experienced:
A guy who yelled out the window of his car to me, "Fuck Trump and fuck the Jews!" So that was unexpected, and obviously disconcerting.
There was also a somewhat older, maybe somehow disabled guy on an Army-green ebike who went behind me on the bike path. As he passed, he said, "Yeah I agree with you. [Referring to the No Kings sign I was holding.] That's why we left Europe." I acknowledged him.
As he rode out onto the street, he called back, "It's why I don't pay taxes anymore. You can't tell where they go" — or something like that.
20 minutes or so later, he came back past in the other direction and commented again about how he doesn't have to pay taxes anymore, and how you can't tell where the money goes.
Whatever, man. If you aren't paying taxes and you're supposed to be, you're playing a dangerous game. It's pretty much only the rich who get away with it in the long run. And definitely don't go bragging about it to random people when you're out in public.
On the other hand, if you don't need to pay taxes because your income is low enough that you don't need to file, that's fine, but don't say it's because we can't tell where the money goes. It's because you're poor.
I still wish I had a photo of the family with the Hummer-driving kid wearing a tie.
For the past year and more, there have been dozens and dozens of highway bridges and street corners in the Twin Cities where people show up weekly to protest the Trump regime and what it’s doing to this country. I’ve been participating in one of them since last summer.
We stand during rush hour on a noisy bit of concrete that arches over an urban freeway. We hold long banners with messages in large letters, readable from a distance, created by the person who started the bridge brigade, plus a variety of other signs and flags that people bring with them.
We wave at the drivers going past below us, many of whom honk or flash their lights in return. We celebrate when semi drivers blare their air horns.
There are about 20 regulars on the bridge, almost all retired, and several over 80 years old. It’s hard for any of us to talk to more than one other person at a time as we line up in a row facing traffic because the vehicles are so loud. The traffic also creates a wind-tunnel effect, which always makes it at least 10°F colder than elsewhere. Yes, we were out there all winter, too.
We don’t come out to the bridge because it’s comfortable. Why do we do it? Who are we?
I began to think about documenting this place and these people, to record one piece of the resistance to the fascist Trump regime: who we are, and why we’re doing what we’re doing.
It makes me angry that I have to anonymize this and don’t even feel comfortable saying which bridge it is, because a violent right-winger stabbed a person at a different local bridge brigade last fall.
But know this: the full record exists, and if it’s ever safe to keep it in a Minnesota state archive, it will be available. One small example of the resistance that exists in this country.
Who we are
Of the 20 people I interviewed, there are 13 women and seven men (my assumption about genders). Six are from Minnesota originally and grew up in the state. Four are from states close by. There are two immigrants, both who experienced repressive governments in their countries of origin. The other eight are originally from many different parts of the U.S., though all have been in the Twin Cities for at least 15 years except maybe one.
The University of Minnesota was by far the main reason people came to the Twin Cities from out of state, either for education or a job, followed by coming here for a job or school elsewhere — whether for self, a parent, or a spouse.
I did the interviews on the first anniversary of the bridge brigade. It began in early June 2025, when the founder of the brigade saw two women on the bridge, one wearing an Uncle Sam costume. They had a boom box and were dancing. They told her they would be out there the same day the next week at 7:30 a.m. for an hour, so she went to the bridge to meet them then, carrying her grandfather’s World War II veteran’s flag and a sign that said ENOUGH in large letters:
But they weren’t there — she was alone! Her husband came by after a half hour and stayed for the rest of the hour. This was the week before the Hortmans and Hoffmans were shot at their homes by the right-wing murderer Vance Boelter.
After that, she let her neighbors know what she was doing, and the gathering has grown from there. She began making banners a month or so later. Some of her closest neighbors were the first to join and still are part of it, and many of the people come from the surrounding neighborhood, but not all. 
Why we do it
There are common threads in the reasons the regulars give for coming to the bridge:
More specific reasons:
In addition to opposing ICE and Metro Surge, specific issues that were mentioned:
What people bring
Signs:
Flags:
Wearables:
Intangibles:
Reality:
We’ll be back out next week, and the next, until this regime is history, when we’ll be working on the reconstruction this country will need. Then we won’t have time for the bridge brigade.
As one of the banners today said: ONE YEAR – STILL HERE.
On a bad day, this photo can be used to represent the state of the city of Saint Paul:
Okay, I can see that it's a little hard to tell what's what there.
The roundish brownish thing is a pot hole in one of our city streets. The photo was taken during a street festival, where there were many people on foot.
Some thoughtful person had placed a tiny orange warning cone (it was no more than 6" high) in the pot hole in hope of keeping people from turning their ankles in it.
It's been a busy, beautiful day here in Minnesota, one where you want to be outside digging in the earth, or maybe going to a book club, and you don't have time to think of a blog post.
So instead, you spin back through your photos and come up with some from just about 10 years ago, inspired by a friend who mentioned she will be in Bologna for a conference soon.
Here are a few photos of signs I saw in that city that I didn't share at the time:
Why is this legal to drive on a city street? Why is it legal to drive this without a more advanced driver's license?
There is no good reason for either of those facts, except this country hates pedestrians and its policy-makers think everyone should be driving everywhere in the biggest vehicle possible, armored cars preferably.
Get it off of my street.
I have been standing on a corner in my neighborhood several times a week near an elementary school this winter and spring because of Operation Metro Surge.
That corner also happens to be next to a gas station, which means I've had a good view of the increase in gas prices before and after Trump's attack on Iran. The prices just went up again today, so before I lose the various pieces of paper where I've been recording this data, here it is:
I know gas prices are a lot higher than that in some other states. This is what's happening in one neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
I saw this in the blood-draw area of a clinic:
The blue thing is a recycling bin, if I'm not mistaken. Not sure what kind of paper they put in the "DO NOT Throw away" box, but it must be something they want to keep.
The funniest thing about this is that this is a newly built clinic. The building opened in 2025 — purpose-built from the ground up in a greenfield location — but they couldn't make the phlebotomy area functional for the people who use it.
It's been a long day, so I'm playing the photo roulette wheel: spin back through my Photos app and land on a photo I haven't posted before.
This one, taken in June 2023, seems appropriate these days.
There were somewhere around 200,000 people at No Kings 3 in Saint Paul today. People were coming to the Capitol for three or four hours between at least 11:00 a.m. and well after 2:00 p.m., when the official program was said to start.
First, here's the sign I brought:
I went to the Western Sculpture Park, one of the rally points for people to gather to begin a march to the Capitol. It was the one closest to the Green Line light rail train, and also to Daughter Number Three-Point-One's house, so we walked from there.
These are things we saw at the Sculpture Park:
Yes, that is the giant Constitution you may have seen in coverage of the general strike march in Minneapolis this winter.
These three are from the Capitol grounds:
It was really windy, which made it a great day for flags.
I didn't take very many photos on the Capitol grounds because it was just so crowded, you either couldn't move or were trying to avoid colliding with other people. Come to think of it, you generally couldn't see the signs people had, either.
I had to get back to my own neighborhood by 2:45 for an event, unfortunately. After it took us 15 minutes to squeeze through the crowd over a distance equal to only about a block, we decided we'd better turn around and head back earlier than we had planned.
So we worked our way back to the northwest corner of the Capitol grounds before the official program even got started at 2:00 p.m., and were back at DN3.1's house by 2:15. Very hard to estimate how long things would take.
As we were walking back to her house, we saw hundreds, maybe thousands of people still streaming into the Capitol area.
This is a helicopter shot from BlueSky:
The previous large events I've been to at the Capitol have not filled that lower area of lawn the way you can see here (the part past the curved street), and they also were not packed as tightly as it was today.
I believe the 200,000 figure I've seen reported.
Yesterday was Alex Pretti's 38th birthday, which makes him just a bit younger than my oldest nibling (on my side of the family).
I hadn't been over to Minneapolis to the memorial site on Nicollet Avenue until Saturday. I wasn't sure if I would take photos, but I did.
The snow is all melted from the area where he was shot and killed:
There are Sharpie markers left on top of some of the structures, and people keep leaving messages on the wood and on notes that are already posted in various places. I saw someone writing while I was there.
The lane in front of this part of the sidewalk is closed to cars, but the street is open. The close-by businesses — Lu's Sandwiches, Christo's Greek restaurant, Glam Donuts, the Black Forest Inn — are all open and need customers, as do all the businesses of the Twin Cities.
It's been a while since I've made a bad logo post. Here's an example:
Is that supposed to be a hill that's also part of a bridge? Are those supposed to be... people on the left? Like a little family of Playmobil figures in silhouette or something? Are they longing for a house, which Bridge Realty can make happen for them?
Except the hill isn't attached to the bridge piers, so how does that work? If those are piers.
But the sun is rising.
Or maybe the bridge has been blown up, and the yellow glow is from the explosion.
It's all too much. I'm tired.
While doing an ICE school patrol shift today, I saw a parent walking a kid home who had on a cute, cat-eared knit hat. The hat was red. The child was about 7 years old... and a child of color.
Maybe the child has been wearing that hat all this season. Or maybe the parents got the child the hat so that in case they're snatched by agents of the state, the photos that are taken will be more likely to engender sympathy from strangers.
It's a strange country we live in, that I had to wonder such a thing about a kid's hat.
In that outside area between the entrance and exit doors of supermarkets, there's always something for sale. In warmer months, it's usually plants of some kind. Later, it's Halloween or Christmas decorations.
Yesterday, at one of my local stores, it was these:
Which I guess are remnants from the holidays, or just general winter luminaries (which is what it says on the yellow signs)?
I would never have guessed what they were for. Do you put a candle inside them?
And then you store them all spring, summer, fall, and part of winter when they're not in use?
I don't get it.
I went to the large anti-ICE march that started from Powderhorn Park in South Minneapolis this afternoon.
On the way there, I could tell it would be large because there were a lot of people (young people, at least to me) who didn't know how to navigate the bus system who were heading there. I helped them figure out where to get off the connecting bus for the B line on Marshall Ave. 
On the way to the march with my sign, coffee can, and drum stick. And mittens.
About six of us got on the B at Cleveland. More and more people got on at every stop going west on Lake Street, and almost all were going to Powderhorn Park. Some of them got off at Cedar, many at Bloomington, and our original group exited at Chicago.
Too many of the sidewalks as we went south from Lake Street, as I expected, were terrible — never shoveled, so the surfaces were completely uneven ice. Dangerous. At Powderhorn Park itself, 10th Avenue alongside the park had ruts in the driving lane with a wide, flat, hard ice ridge between them. The protected bike lane next to the park had a 2-foot-tall ice ridge crusted between the plastic flex poles, which was dangerous to clamber over as you went into the park. Walking was a dangerous enterprise. I'm surprised I only saw one person fall the whole time.
The northwest corner of the park is flat, but not large enough for the huge number of people who arrived for the event, so people filled 10th Avenue and probably 32nd Street at the north edge and maybe 33rd as well (I couldn't see that far). 
As usual, my goal was to find the Brass Solidarity Band, but I never managed to do that. Too many people this time! So I found another person with a drum to join up with so I could accompany him with my coffee can.
I think there were a lot of people there who have not been to marches before. There were so many signs made from unfolded cereal boxes, or unfolded Amazon boxes, and just miscellaneous pieces of cardboard. There was one couple who each carried signs made from small pieces of cardboard taped to wooden yardsticks. The funniest improvisations I saw were a person who had used a purple magic marker to write an anti-ICE message on the inside of a gray Rubbermaid tub cover, and a person who had made crude lettering with masking tape on the back of their winter coat.
Anger was the primary mood. The chant of the day had to have been "Fuck ICE – ICE out!" It wasn't one of the official chants done by the person leading from the sound truck. It started from behind me, after the march finally started to move. At first I didn't understand what the words were. I could only hear the rhythm of it. But it carried forward through the crowd until it reached the spot where I was. This chant was repeated over and over spontaneously by people who just started it, block after block, interspersed with other chants.
The march route went from the park up to Lake Street then west past Chicago Avenue. There were also a lot of FUCK ICE tags on various signs along the way on Lake Street. I have very few photos of anything, though, because I was banging on the coffee can, I had mittens on, and as usual at these things, I had turned off touch ID on my phone for security purposes, which makes it even harder to take photos quickly. 
The last photo I took before turning off touch ID (also taken on 10th Avenue by the park).
When the march turned south off of Lake Street onto Portland Avenue, I knew the intent was to go to the site where Renee Good was killed, between 33rd and 34th Streets. Which is what happened.
The X marks the spot where Renee Good's car came to rest after she was shot.
It was strange being back on that block again after I was there on Wednesday, just after the killing. There were too many people there today for it to be only about her, and the people were too angry about everything ICE is doing and the federal government.
Another person who was at the march posted this:
The march was so long that when we finished, after an hour of marching, there were still people waiting to start matching. We made a protest ouroboros.
Another:
I stood by the Midtown Global Market [at Lake and Chicago] chanting for the march as it passed. It was 2 hours long from front to back. Steady flow the entire time. Huge numbers.
Yesterday "Homeland Security" announced it is sending another 1,000 storm troopers from other cities it has previously invaded to Minnesota, so there will be 3,000 of them here. That means they will even more overwhelmingly outnumber the total number of cops in our two cities and our state troopers.
You never know what you'll see when you look in a bowl of stickers:
As seen at Next Chapter Books, Saint Paul.
If you're in the Twin Cities and you want a wide selection of oddball-brand sodas, Nelson's Cheese & Deli on Como is the place for you.
I only photographed the ones with the relatively retro labels. There are others with jankier looks, and a lot more varieties than this.
As seen at the counter of an immigrant-owned coffee shop in Saint Paul:
These days...
You never know when you need a gag gift this time of year.
The Ginkgo Coffee House on Snelling Avenue in the Hamline-Midway neighborhood has always had an assortment of unnecessary but fun things for sale, but lately the variety seems a lot greater.
Here are three I saw last night when I was there to listen to some music.
The first thing that caught my eye were the multi-colored, miniature rubber chickens:
Then there were the handerpants:
I suppose those might have the added benefit of helping to keep your hands warm in a cold office.
Last, there was the shelf of office squirrels:
I have enough real squirrels around my house, so I don't feel a need for those, despite the cuteness factor.
I generally don't shop at Menard's (a regional mega-hardware store in this area, owned by a Wisconsin conservative family), but I needed 4x8' sheets of polycarbonate, as you would use on a greenhouse, and that's not the kind of thing my local hardware store stocks.
On the way out of the store, I saw this in a big box located off the end of the cash register area:
I don't know quite what kind of animal it's supposed to be, since it had a long tail. But it was sure big, and it may impress whatever child it's given to, as long as the child is smaller than the animal.
