a guid new year to ane an’ a’

New year, new resolutions. Given my feelings of despair at the end of 2016, I vowed to document goodness in 2017, week by week. I started the first week of January and added to it as I saw fit, trying to include at least one pleasantry per week.

1. Cracker/Camper Van Beethoven at the Fine Line (image below)
2. A multitude of friendly birthday greetings and a yummy cake
3. Sworn in as a commissioner to the City of Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Commission
4. Sufficient energy to go out on Friday after a week of household illness (sometimes I aim low)
5. Survived my first HPC meeting (3.5 hours long)
6. Learned about  Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis, an amazing building (image below) and a progressive congregation that has built a fantastic legacy within the areas of racial and social justice.
7. Lunches with people I miss just to remind them I’m still around and their friendship matters to me
8. House repairs finis! Character. Old houses have character. Ugh.
9. dada at Amsterdam Bar and Hall
10. Iowa State Cyclone men win Big 12 Tournament and both men and women receive an invite to the Big Dance®! Always proud to be part of the CyclONE Nation!
11. I learned about the Handicraft Guild and the evolution of the Handicraft Guild building complex in downtown Minneapolis at the MNSAH Annual Meeting
12. I bit the bullet and uploaded the family tree to ancestry.com; immediately overwhelmed by the “hints” provided for all of our ancestors
13. New idea for blog posts about “Preservation Mythconceptions” (to be rolled out in 2018)
14. First evening on the patio (image below)
15. Learned that we can be covered by Marv’s insurance in Iowa starting July 1!
16. Learned about historic properties associated with Prince in the Twin Cities
17. Marv decided we needed something to get us through the summer so he invited me to attend Campout 13 with him this Labor Day
18. I got to be a bachelorette while Marv meets up with friends in Chicago
19. Minnesota History Whatever allowed me to be surrounded by historians who are doing amazing and transformative research
20. Minneapolis Heritage Preservation Awards; see the winners here
21. Mom’s 77th is a beautiful day for a breakfast ride
22. The nice thing about working from home is when one of us has a staycation, the other gets to enjoy it a bit, too
23. While at the Preserve Iowa Summit, I took a few moments to reconnect with some familiar buildings: the Sioux City Bandshell, Park Inn, and the Egloff House
24. Semisonic reunited to play Great Divide in its entirety, along with a few other gems thrown in like a cover of Prince’s “Erotic City” and a new song “Basement Tapes” (image below)
25. I cannot adequately express the extreme happiness Driftless Organics delivers to our neighborhood every other week
26. Just over two pounds of cherries made some awesome cherry chocolate chip ice cream and a really rough cherry cobbler
27. Billed as the music of Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, and Tones on Tail, Poptone cranked everything well beyond 11 (image below)
28. I’m happy to be able to help MNHS through grant reviews this summer and fall
29. I sat in on two webinars: one was mostly uninformative and the other was extremely interesting, reinforcing my desire to provide better lifelong learning opportunities to the heritage industry
30. We started our new adventure traveling to Iowa for healthcare. How is this a good thing? Well, 1) Café Beaudelaire’s Bauru, 2) Welch Avenue Station always has good memories, and 3) spending time with Iowa peeps makes the adventure worthwhile!
31. My paper has been accepted for the Society of Architectural Historians annual conference in Saint Paul next year!
32. Grant review deadline met. Yeah, it’s a highpoint. I finished 34 reviews with a few hours to spare!
33. I keep looking for a pleasantry, but this week was a tough one because I was reminded far too often of how much we carry those who have moved on to their next journey
34. Birthday week for Marv, so chocolate zucchini whisky cake is on the menu. Every. Single. Day.
35. Campout! Love staying in Pioneertown! (image below)
36. Campout continues! Not much more to say; my heart and soul is full of Crumb <3. Additional images here.
37. First run-though of “Yes You Can!”
38. We checked out a restaurant with haggis on their menu; it was missing my famous whisky sauce
39. Friends from Wisconsin in town
40. Submitted three session proposals to two different conferences
41. Thankful for the small big things today. Good health news and successfully chaired the HPC on Tuesday with about 30 minutes notice and only one or two glitches. Also canned salsa! (image below)
42. In a last gasp of warmth for 2017, we reached 78° on October 20
43. Stopped at Dominguez Family Restaurant on the way home from picking Marv up at the airport. Holy mole!
44. 50 trick or treaters for Halloween and beautiful measurable snow on Friday, November 3 (image below)
45. I survived the week; does that count?
46. Presented at the AIA Convention in Minneapolis
47. Ikesgiving at First Avenue and visits from the first-born cousins on both sides of my family
48. Our tree is up and most of our decorations are strewn about in appropriate places (image below). Cèilidh has yet to knock down the tree or the ornaments, so that is a plus.
49. Presentation accepted for the MALHM annual meeting and conference and blessed to watch my beautiful and talented niece perform her annual winter concert
50. New horizons possibly; more to come in 2018
51. With cookies off to the Valley and a final gift for Marv from our favorite watering hole, I can finally say my shopping is done
52. Cyclones win the Liberty Bowl in Memphis!

Well, it’s been a year. Wishing all of you love, peace, and happiness for 2018.

 

Photos taken by Barbara A.M. and Marvin E. Howard in 2017. All rights reserved.