It was a long day outside, mostly in the rain even though it wasn't supposed to be raining.
I hate complaining about rain when we've been in a drought all summer, but we finally had good rain this week and it was supposed to stop this morning and be nice for outdoor events the rest of the day.
But then... more rain.
The good news: it helps the plants. And the frogs didn't mind it either:
As seen in the Creative Enterprise Zone during the Chroma Zone mural festival.
I live in a house that has several white oak trees in or adjacent to its yard. The one near the back door had a mast year a few years ago, and it's having another one right now.
That means there has been a rain of acorns for the past few weeks. If I wasn't collecting them, the path between the back door and the alley would be completely crunchy underfoot. The planted areas of the yard, where just as many acorns have fallen invisibly among the large perennials, will be producing seedling trees next year, each one with a little taproot that will make them hard to pull out.
Oh, joy.
While I was collecting the gallons of acorns from the hard surfaces and bit of lawn grass, most of which were just the nut meat, I found a few that were intact, with their little nubby cap and stem.
I thought it would be a good idea to get a photo, because who doesn't need to have a photo of what acorns looks like, since they're often used as a symbol of growing something large from a tiny beginning?
So here you go, a free photo to use as you see fit:
(Click the photo to enlarge.)
It doesn't make up for the constant noise, the physical bombardment when I'm outside, or the many weed trees I will have to pull in the future. But at least I will have this photo to remember the mast year.
Saint Paul doesn't have enough public trash cans on its streets. So when you see one, you notice. And especially when it comes with a handy slogan:
As seen on Como Avenue.
That reminds me of a BlueSky post I saw today by climate scientist David Ho:
Going forward, the US National Science Foundation research budget for all atmospheric, ocean, and Earth sciences is $110 million per year.
Trump's illegal war with Iran cost the Department of Defense (i.e., the American taxpayers) $38 billion in the first 5 months, or $220 million per day.
And these are the direct US Department of Defense costs, not the broader economic cost of the illegal war, including what it's costing us as consumers.
Twice as much in a day as we're spending in a year.
My non-resistance State Fair photos are not as numerous, have no fear. But they aren't all non-political; they just are not necessarily related to Metro Surge like the ones from yesterday.
First, the crop art. I'm not sure I've seen any of these on social media.
As always, click any piece to enlarge and see the details.
Curatorial arrangement is sometimes key. (Note that the left-hand piece is completely made with quinoa, which is being eliminated as a usable crop next year.)
More squirrels.
Did you know the Tilt-a-Whirl ride is from Fairbault, Minnesota?
I'm not so interested in the fact that one of our local radio stations is 21 years old this year, but I can't get over the fact that the white braided-looking parts of the octopus are made from hand-painted wild rice grains.
This is one of the works where the artist used red onion skin as a background element. It looks like stained glass.
Then a few pieces from the art show:
American Huaco: AR-15 by Guillermo Guardia, ceramic.
Tomato Garden, Lily Lund, porcelain. Probably my favorite piece in the Art Show.
The Fairy Who Bartered Her Wings, Ryan Dolan, ceramic.
I didn't take any photos of two-dimensional work, except a few Surge-related pieces. It was very busy in there and kind of overwhelming.
I walked 6.4 miles going to, at, and from the Fair.
I went to the Minnesota State Fair yesterday. As you may have heard, our crop art has been getting more and more popular. Last year we waited about 20 minutes before the building opened to get inside. This year, news had spread that the waits even for those who got in line before the building opened were an hour, and through the day they were worse.
As expected, there's a high percentage of imagery related to ICE, immigration, and Metro Surge. Many of the pieces can be seen in this PDF posted on cropart.com or in this wonderful BlueSky thread (with alt tags, and it also gives background on crop art generally).
Unlike some other years, I didn't take many general Fair photos that are worth sharing: just ones from Crop Art, Creative Activities, and the Art Show. So I thought I would do two posts: today is resistance day, and tomorrow will cover everything else.
As always, click on any image to see it larger.
First, the Guernica crop art by Jennifer Nelson that has gotten a lot of attention:
This is a beautiful piece with many details to appreciate, but the one I had completely missed before was the use of wild rice on the loon's wings:
(If you haven't already heard, the markings in the triangular word balloons coming out of Alex Pretti and Renee Good's mouths are their last words rendered in Morse code.)
Other Metro Surge crop art that I hadn't seen talked about online before going to the Fair much or at all:
Just beautiful craft on this one. The green peas (?) around the edge add just an extra special touch.
These three were together, very high on the wall.
This George Morrison-like piece is made out of pieces of birch bark.
There were so many creative ways of covering up the "F" in FUCK ICE. (Crop art has only one rule: it has to be family-friendly.) This one says "Free to be nice."
Resistance images in the Art Show have gotten less coverage than the crop art. The ones that have are the grid of STOP ICE stop sign photos and a dramatic black and white tear gas photo. Both are great, but here are a couple that are less in your face.
Faye Passow is a well-known Minnesota lithographer. Her small print, Worry and Wonder, captures the feeling of the time.
The sculpture It was Time to Blow the Whistles by Barbara Bridges serves as a memorial.
The Creative Activities building had its share of Metro Surge as well:
A weaving of the Burlesque of North of America screen print that was everywhere. (For those not from here, their screen print is based on the Minneapolis snow emergency signs.)
Knitting and crocheting, and other craft work by many people, all on surge themes.
Doll clothes of the resistance, ICE, and Greg Bovino's Nazi coat.
Each year, Creative Activities invites themed one-panel "quilts on a stick." This year the theme was "250 years," for obvious reasons.
Many of the ones submitted didn't turn out as the planning committee might have anticipated:
Yes, that is a dumpster fire on the right.
And then there are all of the versions of bathrobe woman, Sam Stroozas, a Minnesota Public Radio producer photographed in her green bathrobe in February as she filmed ICE crashing and then chasing a man in Saint Paul. She was in all three areas.
She appears in crop art:
Ceramics:
Painting:
Crochet:
And I hear she was knitted, but I didn't see that one.
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:
