Mississippi dreams

Harry and I love to go down to the old St. Anthony Main area of Minneapolis on warm summer evenings. We headed down soon after we returned from Mexico and found a surprise awaited us; a new park near the infamous falls of St. Anthony. You can stroll along watching the mighty Mississippi as it cascades over the the ancient falls where the city of Minneapolis was born. The falls of Saint Anthony, as Father Hennepin the priest/explorer named them, have been mightily transformed over the years. The Ojibwa Indians who first lived along side the falls believed them to be sacred. The pioneers who came in the 19th century saw the falls as the perfect site for milling flour and building the city of St. Anthony. Their dream came true, sacred fell by the wayside, and the falls we see today the Indians of old would no longer recognize. St. Anthony was renamed Minneapolis and went on to became the flour millling capital of the world, home to General Mills and Pillsbury.

Now, with the construction of the new park, you can walk down for a very close breathtaking look at the falls and have a great view of the old Stone Arch bridge as well. The park has drawings and photographs of the falls along it's pathways depicting the man-made changes in the falls over the centuries. The Stone Arch was built in the 1880's and is one of the two oldest bridges still spanning the Mississippi. We have walked across the old bridge many times looking west to view the powerful falls. When you go to the St. Anthony Main area you can also walk the oldest street in Minneapolis, appropriately called Main Street, and have a beer at the the nearby turn of the century bar, Pracna on Main. Pracna is the oldest restaurant in Minneapolis and has been restored to it's early elegance. The food is dreadful but the people watching from their curbside tables is the best in town and the beer is great! You can also take a horse drawn carriage ride down cobble stoned Main Street if you wish.

Another interesting surprise came yesterday in the form of an email from the owner of the condo we rented in Mexico this past year. Betty wanted to know if Harry and I would be interested in teaching English to foreign second language learners for a "stint" next winter at a college prep school, St. Stanislaus, in her city of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. Betty's four sons have all attended this boarding school she informed us and it has, in her opinion, an excellent reputation. The school has a special ESL program for students who come from Latin America to study English every year in January and February. Bay St. Louis was hit hard by Katrina and the school is trying to rebuild it's student body which shrunk to 300+ post hurricane from it's former 500+ students. Bay St. Louis is close to New Orleans and is noted for it's good restaurants, casinos and pristine white-sugar beaches. (Probably not pristine for very much longer however.)

We are clear, due to our advanced age and some recently acquired wisdom, that any teaching job we took would indeed need to be a short term "stint" and it would have to pay better than what we were paid in Mexico. It would be nice to have some curriculum provided as well, thus not having to create your own as you go. It has been my fantasy to find a short term teaching job that could help finance a future car trip around southern France and northern Italy. A girl has to dream!! Harry likes the idea of getting out of Minnesota in January and February and the idea of playing black jack at the casinos. Something or nothing may come from Betty's inquiry, but however this turns out, it was fun to get the unexpected email from Mississippi and it was fun to find a beautiful new Mississippi park at St. Anthony Main. Life is nothing without a little new adventure!