Filed under: St Paul
I love TEDx talks. Last week I dragged Lily to her first TEDx talk event at the Minnesota Science Museum. It was actually a Youth TEDx – the speakers seemed to focus their talks to reach younger attendees – although not too much and not too young. Here are my quick notes from the session
AnnMarie Thomas – How are Makers Made?
Thomas spoke about the importance of letting kids disassemble and build things to learn how to design. So much of the focus of education these days seems to be on theory or even moving hands on experience online – when really some kids (future makers) would benefit from a screwdriver and a little benign neglect. I wish Aine had Thomas as a teacher.
Greg Tehven – The Unleanring Curve
Tehven took a year off a successful career at age 25 to find himself. The idea was to take time to focus on today and yourself not just what you do – and that sometimes you learn (or unlearn) the most when you open yourself up to help from others. Kind of a funny presentation since I’d say lots of people in the room were parents – and so by definition we have to work towards the future of our kids. And the kids in the room, almost by definition are working on the future too. Maybe I just wasn’t ripe to hearing about chucking it all in to live for today – although I certainly was up for it when I was 25.
Solome Tibebu – How Anxiety Saved Me
It was very interesting to hear about how Tibebu and her issues with anxiety. I think it was a powerful example for some youth in the room because I think certain ages are more susceptible to being anxious about everyday life. It was interesting to hear how the message in your head (my hands don’t need to get washed again) can be overridden by the message in your body that wants to wash your hands continually. It sounds as if learning the physiological effects of anxiety was beneficial was helpful for the speaker – again a reminder for mentors and kids that just understanding how and why things happen can help take the edge off.
John Turnipseed – Fix the Damn Roof
Turnipseed was the most powerful speaker of the day. He spoke about just how a roof is an essential infrastructure for a house (or building) a father is an essential infrastructure for a family or kids. When your father is absent or as he put it, your father is the boogie man, the kid falls apart. He said he has 30 family members in jail for some degree or murder. He himself has been arrested for 10 adult felonies – but he had been turned around by strangers who showed faith in him. It started when he was young and in jail. Someone in jail was a bodybuilder. Turnipseed asked if he could teach him how to lift weights and the guys said he didn’t work with dummies. Come back when you have your GED. A month later Turnipseed had the GED. There were other mentors along the way – but eventually the right mentor helped Turnipseed turn his life around. His focus was on the power of a trusting stranger and getting the right message. He didn’t remark at the character of someone who grows up without a roof and yet is ever open to receiving a helping hand – but I think that’s important too.
Filed under: St Paul
Did you read A Wrinkle in Time as a kid? It’s the best book ever. And it’s really a lot more scifi than I normally like – or have ever liked. I don’t want to blow it for you if you haven’t read it – but the idea is that you can travel through time by folding time as you might fold a table cloth. So if you think of an ant crawling from one end of a table to another – you can picture creating an easy shortcut by folding the tablecloth so that the two ends meet.
Anyways, A Wrinkle in Time was showing at the Children’s Theatre and I saw that tickets were on sale so I got them. Aine and I liked the show – the others are all theater snobs. I was surprised they didn’t like it more. To start, it was all a lot more Dr Who than I remembered. (I am not a Dr Who fan; everyone else in the house is.) The special effects were a little seizure inducing – but I think you have to do something to signify moving through time.
The main character is pretty whiny. I think maybe that cut just a little too close to the bone for our middle schoolers.
Filed under: St Paul
So it seems as if we trick or treated about a dozen times this ear. We trick or treated in Highland Village on Saturday, on Grand Ave on Sunday (both involved trick or treating to shops) and then the girls struck out on their own on Halloween.
Filed under: Minnesota
Some of us *love* to go to corn mazes. Some of us don’t. Some of us rock with maps. Some of us don’t. All of us love a good corn pit.
So we headed to a corn maze despite the iffy weather. The good news is that we got to spent some time jumping in the corn pit. If you haven’t ever gone corn pit diving, you should. It’s super fun. It’s like a tiny massage for your feet – so long as you don’t run in your socks. Word to the wise – running in a corn pit will hurt later. Also an unexpected bonus of a corn pit is that you will find corn everywhere for days following your trip.
Sadly it started to drizzle when we headed to the corn maze. Some of us (Patrick, Lily, Kate to name names) wimped out almost immediately. The tough (me and Aine) held on – but eventually our map started to disintegrate in our hands so we had to give up. In case you haven’t been to a corn maze – the idea is to get answers from various marked posts in the maze. In this maze the answers were actually only questions related to baseball. So we weren’t really getting many of the answers anyways. And I think Grandpa was not sad that I quit calling to ask random questions about the Twins.
Filed under: St Paul
Im in the car for a while so finally have some time to catch up on the blog starting with the super cool Halloween show we saw. It was in Hidden Falls (shores of the Mississippi in a park any Highland Park kid would know). A group called Barebones does a great outdoor show every year. Every year I swear were going to go. This year we did!
To start, the show is outdoors at night. Its a full performance, puppet, dancer, acrobat show and the audience moves with the show. An impressive feat considering the huge crowd they got. The show began in waiting room for the afterlife, which was run like an HR meeting. The premise is that a jet from Japan was scheduled to crash, but didnt. So room in the afterlife has opened for those of us in limbo. So the good news is that were headed for some place good; the other news is that were headed for a Buddhist afterlife.
Then the book of the dead is stolen and once that happens were stuck in limbo and no one on Earth can die. The visuals were great. Lots of good vs evil type stuff. People on stilts, acrobats hanging from trees, huge structures unfolding and live music. It was a chilly night but that was OK since we were sitting very close. It was a great show for families although with the trekking around in the park, I felt bad for folks with strollers.
Its definitely on my must-do list for next year!
Filed under: Minneapolis
We had an interesting Sunday last week. We went to the Mall of American where we saw Anne Burrell (from the Food Network) and Duff McKagan (from Guns n Roses) signing their books. Then we headed to the OccupyMN demonstration.
The girls were not necessarily thrilled to be going to a demonstration – since our last one was the RNC. I promised there would be no guns here, which they did not believe – luckily I was right.
Occupy MN was interesting. We were there during a quiet time, which gave us a better opportunity to check out everything. Everyone is camped out by the Government Building. There appear to be a hard-core group of people who are there full time, a group of people who probably come and go throughout the day – and then looky loos, like us. I have to give credit – we were welcomed in a friendly matter and folks were quick to thank us for our support. Nice!
I got a picture of the Committee Board, which I think gives a really good idea of how things seem to be down there. There are committees to handle different aspects of demonstration life – from food to sanitation to poster boards. There was a “teach in” going on while we were there. In essence it looked like a teacher (volunteer with knowledge or expertise) was sharing their knowledge with anyone who wanted to take part.
We ran into a friend there – RuthAnn. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that RuthAnn is north of 60. She’s a librarian and she has been on site for a few hours every day. She confirmed that we were there during a quiet time. She said most folks seemed pretty supportive of the effort – the exception being some Vikings fans who suggested that maybe the demonstrators get a job. But that’s some – not all of the fans – many were supportive.
It would be interesting to know how many of the demonstrators do have jobs – clearly the full timers probably don’t – but I suspect many other do work (or are retired, or are students).
I noticed that there were marketing and cohesive message committees. That would be a tough climb – as the Occupy Wall Street manifesto seems a little all over the place – although maybe that’s a reflection on society being a little all over the place right now.
Filed under: Minneapolis
The girls, Grandpa and I made our annual pilgrimage to Pumpkinland. We’ve been going for a few years. Grandpa and I are prepared for the year that the girls aren’t so interested – but as soon as we saw signs of fall, all three start asking about Pumpkinland.
There are some generational differences in trip highlights – but I’ll try to be fair in my summary.
We get to see (and hold!) baby chicks and bunnies. You know how grandpa and I are suckers for cute and fluffy! You get to ride in a go-cart kind of thing down a hill. Really I could spend my whole day doing that. Then there are contests – like sack races – ask me who the winner was. You can swing on the hay bale thing – if you’re under 14. And best of all is the pumpkin trebuchet. We love seeing the pumpkin catapult into the lake. Love to hear the explanation of how it works each year.
This year was definitely the warmest trip yet. It was unseasonably warm and we went a little earlier than usual. No stopping at Wal-Mart for mitten this year.
We also stopped by the largest ball of twine – in Darwin, MN. We love seeing that and playing on the playground across the street – where they have old school seesaws. Someone usually gets hurt and we are reminded why most places have safetied up community playgrounds.
We capped off the day to a visit to the cemetery – where my grandparents are buried.
A fun family tradition!
Filed under: Minneapolis
Last week we went to see Imelda May. We kind of discovered her over the summer; she is from Dublin. I had hoped she would play while we were in Ireland. No luck – but when we got home we saw that she was planning to play here.
Imelda May plays rockabilly. She was great. As Patrick put it – she did a stadium performance in a night club setting.
Filed under: Minneapolis
The Weisman Art Museum is the very funky building on the University of Minnesota campus. It overlooks the River and has been closed for a long time. They reopened in October and we were there for it.
Aine and I were super into it. Patrick and Kate were not. Aine and I got brand new silk screened T-shirts. They did not. Aine and I saw all of the art. They did not.
Filed under: Minneapolis
Patrick and I attended opening night of the Burial at Thebes at the Guthrie Theater. Opening nights always include a little reception – think free wine or champagne. And think attended by people link the playwright – who was Seamus Heaney.
Guthrie artistic director Joe Dowling introduced Patrick (and me but that’s not such a big deal) to Seamus Heaney. In the picture, Patrick is actually standing near Seamus and is talking to his wife.
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