Putin's Poodle

My sister in St. Paul sent me some photos of the march in the Twin Cities on day 2 of the Trump administration, when millions of people nationwide were marching peacefully to express their concerns over the president's statements, actions and intentions, stated or secret.  At the same time, Sean Spicer, the brand new White House press secretary, was administering his notion of a beat-down to the press in an unhinged, 5-minute howl at  "youz guys" for reporting on the relative size of the inaugural crowd while the president was standing in front of a wall honoring fallen CIA heroes at the CIA giving a stump speech, as shameless sycophants in the audience applauded him when he promised that the "dishonest" (substitute the word "critical") press would pay big time in his "running war with the media."

My sister reported there were about 100K marchers in St. Paul.  The top picture is by David Joles of the Minneapolis newspaper, the next three are by David Brewster, formerly of the St. Paul newspaper.

On Sunday, advisor to the president Kellyanne Conway gave her notion of a beat-down to the press in a cringeworthy 13-minute yowl in which she laughably cited to "alternative facts."  Meanwhile the president still falsely claims that the reason he lost the popular election by almost 3 million votes is because millions of illegal aliens cast votes.

Russian strongman and former KGB chief Vladimir Putin and FBI Director James Comey would seem to be unlikely bedmates.  They gave us this meglomaniacal narcissist.

35W Bridge Collapse

She Do Run Run published a nice post about the 35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. Particularly poignant is the story of her friend Dean, whose workplace overlooks where the bridge was. He didn't see it go down but he looked out the window a moment later and the view was wrong. The wrong bridge, the arched one, was now in the forefront. The other one was just . . . gone.

Dori writes nicely, travels widely to interesting locations like Fargo, ND and is well worth reading. She, like Bex, is moving out of this country soon to go live in California. Why are all the good ones emigrating?

My sister owns a yarnshop in St. Paul. You can see her in this video taken inside her store (she's the one with the blue hair).

Folks in Minnesota are the salt of the earth. They're normally hard to spot because it's not as if they identify themselves by wearing cowboy boots like Texans or having radiant tans like Californians. I can discern them when they say "a-boot" for "about," "you betcha!" for "oh, sure" or "Geez" for "Aww, Jesus!" It's a hoot to hear.

My sister called family members on the night of the tragedy to leave messages saying she was okay, which we were all grateful to receive. (I have five siblings spread out across the country from Santa Fe to Queens.)

I called her back the next day and she was with her husband underneath a highway bridge in some town south of Winona on the River Road. Winona is the town on the Mississippi River where my father was born in 1925 and in which he grew up.

My sister's husband works for a paper in Minnesota and after the bridge's collapse, he had been detailed to visit the structurally deficient bridges in the state and record his impressions. My sister said the bridge they were currently under was noisily shaking and shimmering due to the traffic load. I felt strangely uneasy and wished she would get out from under that bridge.

It was probably like a lot of bridges all across the US.