MSP and IRA

I’m at the annual International Reading Association meeting in Minneapolis, Minnesota. This morning I served as a discussion leader for a panel. Our topic was Censorship/Intellectual Freedom. If you think of this issue as 2 sides of a coin, censorship is the negative side where you are stopped from thinking and doing “things;” intellectual freedom is the positive side where you are asked to think critically about issues and events and come to your own conclusions. We had a lively discussion about the topic and that’s the purpose of such an event.

The rest of the time, I’ve spent looking at children’s literature, teaching approaches, advances in internet technology and the like. I’ve also spent some time exploring downtown Minneapolis, which is quite beautiful. The architecture contains a healthy mix ranging from post-modern to art-deco buildings. Downtown is alive and filled with people, businesses and restaurants.


Among the downtown skyscrapers is the Foshay Tower which is the 2nd tallest cement structure in the world (only a smidge shorter than the Empire State Building—which was the tallest) and it claims to be the first skyscraper in the city. I took a picture of it reflected in one of the newer taller buildings that now grace the cityscape. They say the Foshay was designed after the Washington Monument, but it has windows and a distinct art-deco bent so I think you need a good imagination to see any resemblance other than it is a plinth that is wider at the bottom than at the top.

As I walked downtown, I saw one building had an Egyptian Motif. Compare the Minnesota building with a glyph I found in Egypt. There are bas reliefs on one building reminiscent of the carvings found on temples and tombs in ancient Egypt.



The Mall of America is located in Minneapolis too. This is one HUGE MALL. Inside you can have fun in an amusement park with a roller coaster and several other rides; view sharks and turtles and other underwater denizens at the aquarium; play in LegoLand; see events happening in the different rotundas (I went to a robot competition); go to a movie; eat at a ton of restaurants; take a bus to a casino; and if you want, I guess you can shop. There are a ton of stores that just do not exist in my little hometown, so I had a grand time looking at them. I stayed till my feet started talking to me. It’s impossible to see such a mall in one swell foop (as it were).



There is a clean, light rail system that connects downtown to various parts of the city. I have ridden it twice and found it to be a good way to get from point A to point B without too much confusion. There are signs in the cars reminding folks to take care with the equipment, and people seem to follow the signs. The cars are clean; the upholstery is neat; there’s no graffiti, and I did not see any feet resting on the chairs. I was impressed. The fare was reasonable too with a 2.5 hour pass costing $1.75 for adults, and $.75 for seniors.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by Minneapolis. I’ve liked the MSP International Airport for years, and now I have a similar feeling for the city where it lives.