Back on the Ground

I am going to do a brief recap of where I have been:
In mid-June I was in New Orleans for the Incite! meeting but I took no pictures, thenJuly 1st I went to Atlanta for a week to attend the US Social forum and I took no pictures. Then in mid-July I went to Maine for a week for wedding. The picture above is SD and Ms. S at the house where we stayed. It was amazing there! I did take a few pictures of other things as well:


I have never been in a landscape like this and I feel like I now understand the whole going to the country, get out of the city thing which I have always thought was a bunch of crap. I guess I was wrong. It was beautiful and it was also good to spend a lot of time with friends in a different setting. The sky was amazing and just sitting around and knitting was fun.



At the beginning of August we went to Minnesota for two weeks. It was pretty hectic. I did not get a lot of sleep. We saw a lot of friends and family. We also got to go up North to a cabin on Agate lake, near Nisswa Minnesota. The babies really liked all the running around that they got to do both in Maine and Minnesota. My mom just asked me what happened to the babies while they were gone because now they are all wild. I guess that is what having lots of space to run around does to babies.



While I really liked being at the lake I was sort of bummed out that lake swimming is so gross and slimy. It was hot and I really wanted to swim but I really didn't want my feet to touch the bottom of the lake. At one point I went in to the water with Mr. Mu and I squealing about the grossness so he started crying and then I felt bad so I had to pretend I didn't think it was gross so he wouldn't think it was gross and not mind walking around. Is this what being a parent is about?

When we were driving back to Minneapolis from Nisswa, there was a huge storm coming into the cities. The light was really crazy and we were in a weird part of the city that I didn't really know. It looked very futuristic, like that weird part of Paris, La Defense.


On a side note: We got to Minneapolis the day after the 35W bridge collapse and heard a lot of news about the tragedy and the heroes who pulled people from the water and how the president promised all kinds of money to get that bridge up right away and then the conversation quickly turned to how should it be memorialized rather than the fact that transportation officials knew the bridge was faulty and didn't want to fix it because it was too expensive. I couldn't help but contrast that with my trip earlier this summer to New Orleans and how when I visited the lower ninth ward it seemed that there was a lot of work that still needed to be done there and how a lot of people hadn't moved back because their houses are uninhabitable. (In that case too I am reminded of how the levies in New Orleans were also not able to withstand Hurricane Katrina because not enough money was spent on them). Anyway, incomplete thoughts...