Can’t say I was the most productive person this week. Can’t say I did much of consequence, besides the usual work. Some weeks I feel as if I did my part, but some weeks I think, well, my part in what, exactly?

I do know that Thursday felt almost completely normal. Big thunderstorm - pelting rain pounding on the gazebo roof, thunder that made Birch want to go in the basement and to the the garage and get in the car. Jasper, who hated fireworks and thunder, wanted to go in the car as well. It probably felt safe because it was enclosed, a den, a throwback to the cave. But since he couldn’t go in the car, Birch stayed between my legs and the kitchen cupboards as I made dinner. It had the extra advantage of being a good place to get a frozen French fry if it fell off the counter.

Earlier today we were taking a walk, and ran into Rotaria, who was heading up to the lake. He saw her from a distance - uncertain tail wag - then he was sure - straining at the leash - then he bolted to greet her. You! Wow! Great! He really does regard her as a member of the family, which of course she is, and this also means he was loath to see her go, and got all the Dog Worries as she walked away.

The moments of their lives are so all-consuming, and such understandable analogues of our own.

Except for the shrew-eating part.

Daughter had her first real work-day at Target today. Not the one where she’ll end up, but the one at which she’s training, the one we’ve been going to for years. They put her on the register! Right away, bang, you’re up. She loved it, and loves the chit-chat, making people’s shopping moment merry. It’s her personality, but maaaaybe my old rule about making any possible simple human interchange bright, and not just grumping through life, was a good example? I’d like to think, self-flatterer that I am.

She also enjoyed bagging, which pleased me down to my soles again. Yes! It’s a spacial puzzle, a challenge, 3D Tetris! Frame that bag and firm it up!

Oh you better believe I am going to hit her lane before this is over.

Okay. Well, it's been a good week, and I hope I've earned your visits. Let's do the Friday Stuff. BTW, you're really going to like the Friday Stuff for 2021. Major classy-type artsy-tooty stuff, bro. We're talking like PARIS art. Part of my plan to shake this thing up a little -

Who am I kidding? Nothing gets shaken up, I just pile more stuff on top of it.

From my vast collection of things with almost no monetary value whatsover, I bring you this week's entry.

You can figure this out, right?

Aurel Vlaicu (19 November 1882 – 13 September 1913) was a Romanian engineer, inventor, airplane constructor and early pilot.

Died in the saddle:

Aurel Vlaicu died on September 13, 1913 near Câmpina, on the outskirts of Bănești commune while attempting to be the first to fly across the Carpathian Mountains in his now aged A. Vlaicu Nr. II.

He was buried in Bellu cemetery, in Bucharest and was posthumously elected to the Romanian Academy in 1948.

The cause of Vlaicu's crash remains unsolved. Vlaicu's friends Giovanni Magnani and Constantin Silisteanu dismissed claims of sabotage, the two being among the first to inspect the wreckage as they were following him in an automobile. The most plausible cause of Vlaicu's death was that the airplane stalled while landing with the engine off (as it was common practice at the time, landings were made with the engine off, however this made it difficult for the pilot to abort a misjudged landing)

That's a detail about the early years of flight I'd not heard before.

I still feel peculiar about this future, what with All that Happened, and the other changes in the city. The Park Department just announced that the homeless population is free to sleep in the parks. They don't even say it's temporary, unless I missed something. It's intended to avoid the concentrated encampment of the dispossed, the mentally ill, and chemically dependent in one particular park, and it's difficult to see how it won't result in tents spotting the shores of the lake and the park.

By law you can't stay in the parks, but, well, "law."

As the advocates for tents in the parks say, it's a lack of affordable housing. I don't know how people who have serious mental health or addition problems can afford anything. They mean the lack of free housing or shelters with addiction assistance. But that's another day.

I've show this large complex downtown from other angles; this is the north side.

It just got a hat.

It is a silly hat.

Meanwhile, down at the BTC Gateway site, the ponderous struggle from the pit continues. It's so slow and so dense because it's taller than anything else built in the last decade, at least.

The weekly 5 second sweep, from RBC to the new apartment tower going up on the other side of Hennepin.

I have this queasy, greasy feeling in my stomach that all these signs of the growth and enthusiasms of my beloved city will end up as reminders of something we thought would continue - but stuttered and fell.

There's a lot of tubulence in the Minneapolis psyche these days. A lot of readjusting and rebalancing. Pretty sure what the end result will be, too.

First panel dialogue: That's a completely natural thing for a human to say, right

Solution is here.

Another listen - our last - to the revival show "Future Tense," which took its name from the opening description of "Dimension X."   The show ran on WMUK, "the college radio station of Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, Michigan." So says archive.org. But the announcer said Buck was on WBUK, no?
		WBUK, at the time, was a S&W station in the area. Buck Evans - hmmm, might have been a stage name. That mocking cue was one of the first I ever captured with an audio digitizer, back in 1991 or so.
		The end of the show uses the opening sequence for X-Minus One. Who'd know, except the OTR collectors?
		This is from a different ep, and I include it as more evidence of a common belief of the early 70s.

In the 50s they thought the same thing, and blamed nuclear testing.

He was known as "The Father of Mood Music" - and you can certainly see why. This has more of a 40s vibe than 50s; it has the orchestration you'd find in a movie about a Tortured Composer.

It's Muzaky, yes - and doesn't that sound like the name of a Hungarian composer - but it's far more grown-up than the overly lush, echoey Muzak of the late 60s and 70s.

		A local Minnesota chain, lost in the retail contraction.

That'll do. A better week than most, all told. See you around.