Ikebukuro Station

This picture evokes vivid memories.

April 2013, I'm underground in Tokyo, in Ikebukuro Station, the second busiest train station in the world with over 2.7 million passengers a day.

Urbex Lite

United Crushers, Dinkytown, Minneapolis

Recently, a friend and I "walked the Green Line," a light rail line between Minneapolis and St. Paul which starts service in June. Along the way, many structures caught our attention, including the "United Crushers" grain silos in Dinkytown, Minneapolis.

The silos have been disused for years. There is no "United Crushers," this is not a division of ADM (the Archer Daniels Midland Company); this is carefully applied graffiti.

Later, I fixated on the pictures in a blog entry describing a visit to the top of this abandoned structure. This type of exploration is clearly illegal and dangerous, but I find the whole idea quite exciting. Behind the facades of our cities, there are new layers to be explored, exposed, and explained.

Frozen Lakes and Lost Places

Frozen Lake of the Isles, Minneapolis

Kilauea caldera, Hawaii Big Island

"Why do you live in Minnesota?--The winters are too cold. You should move."

I hear this from a person who brought up a family in a Minneapolis suburb. When her husband retired, they moved to a new subdivision in the Arizona desert. There is no good response because I was presented with a false dilemma. Any response would only sound defensive or absurd.

I was pondering that dilemma yesterday. With Arctic air building, I walked across a frozen Minneapolis lake thinking about walks across frozen lakes in warm places.