Minnesota!

After a several year hiatus, we visited Rochester, Minnesota over Valentine's Day weekend, seeing old friends and letting the boys play in the snow - a warming trend melted most of it away, but there was enough to go sledding.

Abby helped Michael and Jack get situated.

After that, Jack refused to go by himself - smart kid.
He even refused to ride in front. Smart kid.

Unlike his daredevil older brother.

Aunt Mary introduced M & J to her folk harp, where they transferred their Suzuki lessons.

There were whimsical ice sculptures downtown. A martini-serving penguin.
That's a real glass.

That's a real fish.

And Larry, a friend from old L'Abri days in Switzerland, where we caught up and traded notes on how our mutual buddies have been doing.

Didn't take long after landing to remember the warmth and friendliness of the Midwesterners, although Rochester - home to Mayo Clinic - has a local reputation for kindness, perhaps, due to the presence of many folks all over the world who come hoping to better a desperate medical condition.

For a small-town in an obscure area, Rochester gets an international crowd, due to Mayo's medical school and clinic. Walk through the Kahler Hotel lobby and you are apt to see Arab shieks, evangelical televangelists, US senators, and everybody else. 60 years ago, you might have even seen my father, who was a chick-sexer at a downtown hatchery!

Before running small businesses, my father was a Japanese chick-sexer (Google that at your own risk), which, apparently, was a skill invented by Japanese in the 1920s and exported to the US and Brazil. Likened to chess (or Go?), it is based upon pattern recognition underneath the skin of baby chicks, so is extremely difficult for most of us to ever learn. He did this seasonally in the Midwest (my brother was born in Albert Lea, MN), until settling the family down in LA. I have kept his chick-sexing aprons, certificate card, and remember well the overhead lamps he hung as he worked through the night. I would occasionally accompany him on trips to hatcheries throughout MN and South Dakota, where he worked night shifts. We had baby chicks as pets, and always seemed to have an unusual supply of eggs in the garage fridge.

Chick-sexing died out, so my folks turned to grocery and liquor stores. It was a tough transition, and I recall some embarrassment living amongst other kids' whose folks were professionals of some stripe. Was my dad a migrant farmer? OMG. Still, the back-and-forth crisscrossing between CA and MN - hitting every national park and obscure highway in-between - fueled my imagination and sense of regional belonging (or lack thereof).