We’re back home in Northern Arizona this weekend after a visit to Marcia’s home city of Minneapolis. We rented a super nice AirBnB right across the street from the hill where Marcia and her friends would sled when she was a kid each winter. Which (because Minnesota) apparently ran from October to May. We had spent a couple of weeks in Minneapolis two summers ago just a bit north of this neighborhood, and it was an absolutely lovely trip. But that was summer, and this was not, and it was made plainly clear to us that 18 months in balmy Arizona has definitely undone 35 years worth of biological adaptation developed from living in frigid Northerly climes. I was cold the whole time, at bottom line.

But that was all okay, as the trip was worth the effort to spend time with Marcia’s extended family, gathered for a celebration of life for her sister Mary Ellen, who died in Phoenix last winter. The celebration was held at Next Chapter Winery in New Prague, Minnesota, owned and operated by members of Mary Ellen’s first husband’s family. It was a wonderful venue, highly worth a visit should you find yourself thereabouts.

Marcia is the youngest of 11 siblings, three of whom have flown away at this point. Seven of the surviving eight were together this weekend (two having traveled from Washington state, one from Texas, and us from Arizona), along with a lot of nieces and nephews, and it’s always lovely to spend time with them all. Here are photos of the five surviving Brom sisters, and seven of the eight surviving Brom siblings, at a great group dinner arranged by Marcia’s sister Carol at Axel’s in Mendota:

We drove several times by the house where Marcia and her siblings were raised, just a few blocks away from our AirBnB. I snapped this shot of their home one morning while out chorin’, and after having had to scrape ice off of the car’s windshield, brrr!

The Brom Family backyard was dominated and shadowed by the Church of the Incarnation, which is where Marcia and I were married in the summer of 1989. Sadly, the church experienced a devastating fire a few months back, but it was good to see construction crews busily working to restore and fully re-open this historic neighborhood hub. For the music nerds who hover about here: this was the hard-scrabble neighborhood that spawned The Replacements, and Marcia had various childhood relationships with the band’s members and their families; the cool “Raised in the City” map of the Mats’ formative years features “Inky” (as the Church and its school were known locally) as key site #17, along with a lot of other neighborhood landmarks.

Since it was too cold and windy and rainy for us to walk outside much (though the Minneapolitans seemed perfectly happy to ramble around in the brisk weather), we rode over to the Mall of America one afternoon to get an indoor walking session in, and also to catch the new Nicolas Cage film, The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, which was quite the hoot, and highly recommended. I also took advantage of the chill to hunker down under a blanket at the house and get a good deal of reading done, including what I’d consider to be the leading contenders, at this point, for my best novel and best nonfiction books of 2022, thus far. Here are links to those, if you need a couple of good reads:

• The Cartographers by Peng Shepherd
• The Far Land: 200 Years of Murder, Mania & Mutiny in the South Pacific by Brandon Presser

On our last night in Minneapolis, we had an utterly stellar dinner out at a restaurant just across Lake Harriet from Marcia’s native ‘hood. It was an Argentine-inspired joint called MARTINA, and, again, we highly commend it to you, should you need a fine culinary experience while visiting the Twin Cities. Earlier in the weekend, we’d also had some outstanding carry-out dinners from Boludo (again Argentine-inspired, but this time making pizzas) and Young Man (quirky pan-Asian with a decidedly Upper Midwestern twist), both of them located near the intersection of South 38th and Nicollet, right in the heart of Marcia’s childhood neighborhood.

The day after we arrived home, Marcia went out in the blessedly warm weather for her bi-weekly golf outing, and I went out for my regular sunny-day hike. As often as I’ve scrambled up and around and through the red rocks in our neighborhood, I still spot and explore new “trails” (I use that term lightly, since I’ll follow animal tracks that most folks wouldn’t deign to risk), and that was the case yesterday as well, as I stumbled upon a new-to-me cave, and found a passable route up to the top of a prominent local rock structure with sublime and quiet views of one of the busiest tourist hiking zones in the region.

I end this post with three snaps from that hike. I’m happy that we got to spend time with Marcia’s family in the community that gives them their collective “sense of place,” even though it was a sad event that drew us all together this time. And then, I am just as happy to be back in our new-ish home town, feeling good that we’ve found our own great place at this juncture in our lives, beautiful, culturally-rich, and mostly snow and ice free . . .