WELCOME TO BIFOCAL FRIDAYS

I recently started a new job in a formal business setting after 20 years of working in a very independent environment. I absolutely love my new gig, but it does require a pretty unwavering commitment to a solid 9-5 schedule every day, with a generous but very structured vacation policy. I miss some of the flexibility I had before, to take a day or an afternoon or a few hours off at the drop of a hat.

So imagine my delight a few months into the job when I learned that we keep “Summer Hours” for the months of June, July and August. That means Friday afternoons entirely off. I felt like a kid in a candy store as I considered the unexpected gift of this special time suddenly available to me.

It reminded me of one of my favorite childhood books, The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright, which I have read countless times. In 1940s New York City, the four fictional Melendy children lament that their weekly allowance of 50 cents each isn’t enough to do anything really good with. So they decide to pool their money, and one child will have it all each week in turn, to do something special for a Saturday adventure.

Ten year-old Randy gets to go first, because it was her idea. As she luxuriates in considering her options, she thinks she mustn’t waste a minute or a penny of it. “It was like a door opening into an enchanted country which nobody had ever seen before; all her own to do with as she liked.” This is how I felt about the idea of my Summer Hours. While mine wasn’t an issue of limited spending money, the idea of not wasting a single minute of it was paramount. So I made the decision to approach my Friday afternoons very intentionally, committed to making each one count in a unique and meaningful way, all summer long.

As the Melendy’s father said when he granted approval to their scheme, “See that you do something you really want; something you’ll always remember. Don’t waste your Saturdays on unimportant things.” I wouldn’t waste my precious Friday afternoons. I would do something wonderful (or at least notable) every week, and write about it here so I’d be accountable to the commitment and fully mindful of the adventure.

Of course not every Friday will pan out as some big amazing thing. Maybe one afternoon I will simply clean my house and revel in the fact that I have this lovely home with a new love who has given me a new lease on life in my 50s. Maybe one day I will simply weed the garden and think about life. But there’s plenty to be gotten from that as well.

“We lead a humdrum life when I think about it. It’s funny how it doesn’t seem humdrum,” said Randy Melendy over tea with an old family friend. Mrs. Oliphant replied, “That’s because you have ‘eyes the better to see with, my dear’ and ‘ears the better to hear with.’ Nobody who has them and uses them is likely to find life humdrum very often. Even when they have to use bifocal lenses, like me.”

Join me on my “Summer Hours: Bifocal Fridays” adventures. Maybe you’ll find something new to do with your special time, or just a new way of looking at things.

Friday #13: August 26, 2016

On the road to the best museum you’ve probably never heard of

My boss had been recently extolling the virtues of an unexpectedly good art museum in the rather unlikely locale of Winona, Minnesota so I decided this week’s Bifocal Friday would be a road trip downriver to check it out. Even without the tantalizing promise of a destination like that, a drive along the Mississippi is one of my very favorite ways to spend a day – or thirty.

Some of my readers may recall another writing adventure project of mine, when I took a month’s sabbatical from work and family in 2006 and drove down one side of the Mississippi all the way to New Orleans and back up the other side, exploring the towns and sights along the way and blogging about “one golden thing” every day. If you care to embark on another arm-chair adventure with me, here’s the archive of that: Mississippi Gold

In any case, I never tire of the river’s story and I never cease to marvel at the day’s wonder that can be experienced with just a few hours of driving south from Minneapolis-St. Paul.

I generally prefer to make my way over to the Wisconsin side for the downriver journey, crossing over at Prescott where the St. Croix River merges with the Mississippi. The road hugs the river through Prescott and then curves around farmland and small industrial railroad and sand mining towns like Diamond Bluff, Hager City, and Bay City before you hit scenic pay dirt beginning around Maiden Rock.



Down through the quaint and artsy town of Stockholm, then just a few more miles to Pepin, home of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s “Little House in the Big Woods.” Through Nelson, with its cheese factory that’s been making cheese for over 100 years, and to Alma, where I stopped to visit a few shops and galleries. The town offers an incredible view from the Buena Vista park that sits high atop the bluff and looks down on the Army Corps of Engineers Lock and Dam #4, and at what seems like a little O-scale model railroad and shipping town below.

After Nelson comes Cochrane, which you would hardly notice except that it has a consolidated area high school. And then Czechville, which I actually never HAVE noticed except right now when I’m looking at a map to refresh myself on the place names. Then just before Bluff Siding I cross back over to Minnesota and come into the city of Winona, home to one of Minnesota’s state colleges and apparently home to this amazing museum I’m about to see.

Did I say amazing? I meant freakin’ AMAZING!

The Minnesota Marine Art Museum sits alongside the river just north of the old industrial section of downtown Winona, on eight acres of gardens and grounds. 


Built in 2006, it is a beautiful state-of-the-art facility designed to house the incredible marine art collection of Bob Kierlin (founder of industrial supply company Fastenal) and his wife Mary Burrichter, along with many other pieces that are on loan to the museum.

The common thread to the substantial collection (primarily paintings), is that the piece must include a body of water big enough to boat on. The water doesn’t have to be the central focus of the piece, but it has to be present in some significant way. There are the sailing ship scenes you would expect – but then there are seaside and waterlily and river drifting and factory working and pretty girls wading by the likes of Monet, Frederick Childe Hassam, John Singer Sargent, Paul Signac, van Gogh, Camille Pissaro and Renoir, just to name a few of the Impressionist superstars that snuck up and hit me on the head right here in River City. 


Then there’s Picasso, and oh here comes the Hudson River School crew and American masters like Winslow Homer, George Bellows, William Glackens, and modern wonders like Georgia O’Keefe. All that AND a special exhibition of tattoo art in the sailor tradition!

It truly was a mind-boggling and wonderful encounter for such a small town as Winona, population 27,500. And another reminder that putting on the spirit-bifocals and focusing on something new can have big-time results.
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