Fargo, day 2: Snowy!

It snowed overnight and through the morning, so I stayed inside. At lunchtime I ventured back over to the Plains Art Museum, site of the Monday concert/lunch, to see a quilt exhibit that caught my eye, and the rest of the museum while I was at it. The walk over involved a lot of clambering over snowdrifts that hadn't been cleared yet. The snow in the road here does funny things. It doesn't melt much, so it turns into a slippery layer of packed snow instead, which is oddly more treacherous than just regular snow. Right now it's not snowing but the snow is blowing around and creating a glittery layer on top of the dry, powdery snow.

I had lunch at the museum again. I didn't like the salad as much (it was pesto on roasted vegetables, which were undercooked) but the tomato soup was just as good as before. The quilt exhibit was just great, absolutely wonderful and amazing. I wish I had taken my camera -- instead I made do with my cell phone cam for a few of the best. I've seen quite a number of exhibits at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, so I'm familiar with art quilts as a genre, and these were possibly some of the finest art quilts I've ever seen. They were all done by quilters in the region, and included all sorts of complex techniques like beading, circular seams, 3-D fabric constructions, non-paneled quilts, weaving, hand-dyed fabrics, and more. Lots of fancy fabric overlays, and one quilt done entirely in silk, which is very difficult to work with. That quilt looked like a sunset and was made of tiny triangles. (It's the first picture in the exhibition description. The other picture was also one of my favorites.) One had a Tyvek top layer which had been selectively destroyed, leaving an interesting nubbly texture. I liked so many, but my absolute favorite was a 'quilt arrangement' done of 32 small squares, each in one dominant color. There was so much creativity in those little squares: mosaic-style piecing, a crocheted basket, a 3-D hydrangea, leaves, fruits and vegetables (I liked the 'citrus' square), faces, and just really neat designs. They had a little handmade book about the collaborators and their work which I wish they had been selling. Overall, all the quilts were interesting and a good half of them were just stunning. I kept walking around going "WOW! Oh my gosh, WOW!" and I think I spent 45 min in the gallery (which wasn't huge; it's a small museum).

Their stuff upstairs was also neat. What I liked is that except for one piece I had never seen the art or artists before, but they explained it really thoughtfully, and it was varied and of local interest, with mostly Plains area artists and some Native pieces (Canadian and American). I liked several of the pieces quite well, including one by a New Mexican artist that was a very simple picture of varying shades of green, blue, and gray with lines drawn on it suggesting water or clouds. It was so spare, and so peaceful, very carrying of the feeling of deserts and plains.

The whole top floor was devoted to an exhibition of photographs by Wayne Gudmundson, who takes pictures of North Dakota and the Plains. A lot of his photographs focus on the marks that humans leave, even after they are gone. My favorite, though, was an early work of his of a rock illuminated with light. Also neat was an island in Iceland with some blurred flying seagulls making the foreground complex and interesting. It was interesting to see how the plain isn't really totally flat like we all think it is because there are no big hills.

My favorite moment this afternoon was begin told a Norwegian joke by one of the kids I recorded:

Q. What kind of cars do Norwegians drive?

A. Fjords.

I got a good chuckle on that.

Dinner was disappointing. Before I came, I looked to see what places might have vegetarian options, and one of the places listen was Cafe Aladdin, which is near enough to walk to. I read and heard good things about the food, though people said the ambience was a bit dull. But I didn't have a good experience of the food at all, and it was empty when I went because it was fairly late so it was not just dull but dead, though the man serving (probably the owner) was kind. The hummus had too much tahini and a flavor of olive, and the spanakopita was greasy and not at all delicate -- the outer layer of dough was not phyllo dough, though the inner layers were -- and there was hardly any feta. The salad was actually disgusting. Sprinkled on top was some kind of weird flakes that tasted of fast food, and it was just iceberg lettuce and tomatoes and olives, soggy with too much dressing. Not that I'm expecting miracles in ND in December, but making the raw materials worse is unfortunate. Maybe I just chose the wrong dish but the poor hummus didn't leave me wanting to go back. I ate most of the pita plain because it was pretty good.

After eating I walked back rather slowly, checking out the historic movie theater to see if they were showing anything I wanted to see (no). It was actually a pretty nice walk with the wind a bit calmer. While I was stopped at a light, a school-age kid in a car also stopped waved at me and smiled. I saw a bookstore that I might check out if I have time. Tomorrow I'm going to try to take some pictures before I leave. I'm beginning to get a little fond of this city, I think.

Fargo sits on the western bank of the Red River of the North in a very flat region known as the Red River Valley. The Red River Valley was once a part of glacial Lake Agassiz, which drained away about 9,300 years ago. The lake sediments deposited from Lake Agassiz made the land around Fargo some of the richest in the world for agricultural uses. Early settlers sometimes called the Red River Valley a new "Garden of Eden".

I begin with this quotation from Wikipedia because one of the most momentous experiences of my first day in Fargo was finding several boxes of Red River cereal on the shelf of the local health/gourmet grocery/restaurant. I ate Red River as a kid at my grandmother's house, and it's the best hot cereal I have ever had. Bob's Red Mill 7-Grain is a decent substitute, but nothing holds a candle to Red River with milk and brown sugar. Mmm. I'm going back tomorrow to buy at least two boxes.

So, Fargo. It's a nice town. It's a city really -- the metro area has 150,000 people (Fargo proper has 90,000). That's a quarter the size of Albuquerque. I've so far had many, many people be nice to me, gone to a lunchtime concert at a museum cafe with very good food, gone to a nice coffeehouse with free wi-fi, and had a decent dinner at the aforementioned grocery/restaurant. Downtown seems nice -- they are restoring, or have restored, some of the old brick buildings. There's an art museum with a quilt exhibit (where the aforementioned cafe is). There's an old-fashioned movie theatre, which I may try to go to tomorrow. It's still a little bit droopy, I guess is how I would put it -- a lot of buildings are partly empty or look like they haven't changed in many years. But nice. There are old-style freight trains, which I find charming, being a train geek.

It's also COLD. I was wearing long underwear, a turtleneck, a polartec jacket, and a wool coat, plus a scarf, hat, and mittens, and I was still cold if I stayed out longer than about 15 minutes (even if I was walking). My cheeks got unpleasantly cold, so tomorrow I'll be wrapping my face up better. There's snow covering anything that isn't a path, and packed snow on a lot of the sidewalks, though I was impressed by the number of snow-free sidewalks. I stepped into a foot-tall bit of unpacked snow by accident and was very glad I went and got waterproof boots on Saturday (they're light hiking boots, so I'll still use them at home). It's supposed to snow again tonight, which will be interesting because I'll probably see snowplows and shovels and all those things we don't bother with in places where the snow pretty much melts the next day.

Definitely an adventure. And now that I've read about this winery I almost want to come back to Fargo someday.

But -- in the summer.

Apparently we still can't bring water or oh-so-dangerous shampoo onto the plane, but people can bring lighters again.

Yes, let me repeat: lighters yes, 4 ounces of water, shampoo, or peanut butter, no.

If only there were a Wonko the Sane to build the world an asylum.

I'll be in Fargo for the next four days (for work). See that you don't miss me too much. Apparently I do often blog about every four days, so maybe I'll tell you about Fargo while I'm there -- if you're lucky and I don't get frostbite. No, really -- people actually do get frostbite up there. They have temperatures in the negative degrees Fahrenheit. Those aren't real temperatures...right?

Merry Christmas, etc.!

Advice: do not fly US Airways/America West if you want to get where you're going. Once again Southwest proves why it deserves a gold medal: thanks to them, I managed to get home by Christmas Eve. More story on this subject later.

I have acquired a holiday cold. Bleh! At least it came after Christmas. But I think I'll be spending most of the next few days in or near bed.

I'm off to the Bay Area for a week starting this evening. For all those in Houston or other areas endangered by Hurricane Rita, I'm thinking of you and hoping everything is okay.

Visiting Dave's family this weekend. Back Sunday night.