ST. PAUL

People sometimes tell me they like my photos but my "secret," such as it is, is to live in L.A. and take all pix in sunset mode. The light in Southern Cal. makes just about anything look elegaic.

Minnesota has a whole other thing going on--there was a chance of snow last Friday--and I had lots of fun walking along the Mississippi. Peering at all the trees just coming into bud, I thrilled to spot each tiny jab of green.

I wore a hoodie, a heavy jersey, a long flowing gray garment, also with a hood, a heavy leather oilskin coat buttoned up to the neck, and a scarf against the bitter, 55-degree, penetrating cold.

The locals, on the other hand, are unimaginably hardy, the young girls skipping about in gauzy skirts, bare legs and sandals now that it's "spring;" the guys plowing boldly forth in shorts; and man, woman and child wearing at least one article of clothing identifying them as Twins fans.

I want to thank Pat Conley for making my morning at the St. Paul Cathedral go so beautifully, Ellen Roeser for ferrying me to a gorgeous Sunday Mass at the St. Thomas Aquinas Chapel and breakfast after with the seminarians, and Timmy J. Smith, himself a seminarian at St. Paul's, who took me to Loome's Bookstore, bought me coffee, and shared, as always, the language of the heart.

ST. PAUL MUNICIPAL GRAIN TERMINAL,
NOW AN HISTORIC LANDMARK

THANK YOU ST. PAUL!