How Minnesota Are You?

Check Out the Minneapolis Institute of Art’s Asian Collection
The local arts powerhouse that gets the least hype, the MIA houses one of the largest Asian collections between New York City and San Francisco, spectacular period rooms, great European and twentieth-century American paintings, and the best traveling exhibitions to come to town. 2400 3rd Ave. S., Mpls., 612-870-3000

Experience Prairie Home Companion, While You Still Have the Chance
Garrison Keillor has been broadcasting his Saturday-night variety program from a St. Paul stage since 1974. As Keillor’s celebrity and ubiquity have grown, the program celebrating/tweaking the smugness, rigidity, and humor of a now-fading white, Lutheran Minnesota has veered to polite, wry humor that public radio devotees laugh at. It is a period piece set in a period piece, but when it’s gone in a few years, it’s what Keillor will be remembered for. Since it’s a radio show, we’d say it’s best experienced by a radio. But if you must see it to believe it, head for the Fitzgerald Theater. 10 E. Exchange St., St. Paul, 651-290-1221; 5 p.m., Saturdays, Minnesota Public Radio

Ring in the Season at Dayton’s Holiday Display
Some people still call it Macy’s. Nov.–Dec., 700 Nicollet Mall, Mpls., 612-375-2200

Ride Out a November Gale in Duluth
Gordon Lightfoot wasn’t kidding. Few natural phenomena in our part of the world are more powerful than the storms of November on Lake Superior. If you’re madly adventurous, a slog along Park Point during a Force 10 gale may be your cup of tea, though we prefer a lake-view window seat with a pint of Witchtree ESB at Fitger’s. Cross the suspension bridge when you come to it—but skip the ore boat. Fitger’s, 600 E. Superior St., Duluth, 218-722-8826

Snowmobile Superior Forest
There’s something heroic about roaring through the deep northwoods, watching white pine blur into a green whirl—evocative of the individual’s will in the face of immense silence. The Polaris snowmobile was invented by a couple of Roseau engineers in 1956 and the sled is our Harley–Davidson. Superior National Forest holds some of the nation’s finest snowmobiling trails—more than 700 miles of interconnected pathways.

Walk in the Steps of the Earliest Minnesotans
Ancient pipe carvers from tribes across North America traveled to the sacred prairie known as Coteau des Prairies (now Pipestone National Monument) to quarry red pipestone. According to Sioux legend, the Great Spirit took the red stone, formed it into a pipe, and told his red children they were made from the red stone, which belonged to all the tribes and must be used for nothing but pipes. Today only quarrying by Native Americans is permitted, but visitors can watch demonstrations. 507-825-5464

Get Lost in the Skyways
Critics say our skyways have sucked the blood out of downtown street life. Fans say the ubiquitous, sometimes bewildering network—eight miles’ worth in Minneapolis alone—is the greatest cold-climate innovation since woolen mittens. Buy a taco, do some banking, view some art. There’s no debate that skyways are forever changing the way we live, work, and navigate the downtowns that, for better or worse, they now symbolize. 

Ride the 21 Bus to St. Paul, Take the 16 Back
Old-timers will recall the car lots, lunch counters, movie theaters, and drive-ins of Lake Street and University Avenue that defined working-class Minneapolis and St. Paul. Today a ramble along the twelve-mile corridors—with stops at the burgeoning Hispanic and Somali markets on East Lake and University Avenue’s engaging Southeast Asian hub—offers a scenic and savory take on the Twin Cities’ immigrant experience circa 2007.

Compare and Contrast our City Halls
Architecturally, the city halls of Minneapolis and St. Paul seem stuck in the wrong city. Old, conservative, (comparatively) frumpy St. Paul claims Holabird and Root’s sleek art deco “skyscraper”; its younger and (comparatively) more progressive “twin” has Long and Kees’s nineteenth-century granite fortress. Each is a spectacular representative of its era and kind, and both are among the most distinguished municipal buildings in America. If you’re not on jury duty or paying a fine, find a way to visit and linger awhile. 350 S. 5th St., Mpls.; 15 Kellogg Blvd. W., St. Paul 

Tour the Capitol during the Session (If You Dare)
A stroll through the lavish marble corridors of state power when our 201 legislators are on the premises is as enlightening—and usually not quite as depressing—as a walk down the Midway at the state fair. On view are our public proxies at their best and worst, in high voice and low comedy, charting our state’s course. In any season, Cass Gilbert’s breathtaking century-old landmark merits an appreciative exploration. 75 Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., St. Paul,

Camp Out in a Nicollet Mall Skyway for Holidazzle
A big electric parade downtown celebrating the holiday season? We can do that! Nov. 28–Dec. 23

Wend Your Way through Bluff Country
Minnesota’s other grand natural landscape, Bluff Country, draws its moniker and much of its awesome beauty from the dolomite cliffs that anchor the state’s southeast corner. There are also meandering canoe creeks, bike trails, and country lanes through hardwood forest and picturesque villages—such as deservedly popular Lanesboro—in a remarkable topography quite unlike any other in the state.  

Read Louise Erdrich
In her wildly imagined, exquisitely crafted tales, novelist Erdrich (The Painted Drum, Love Medicine . . .) gives as vivid and varied a look at our region’s Native American culture as you’ll find on the printed page. The daughter of Ojibwe and German parents, the widely honored author lives in Kenwood and owns a bookstore nearby. Buy her latest, and, if she’s there, ask her to sign it. Birchbark Books and Native Arts, 2115 W. 21st St., Mpls., 612-374-4023

Reread Fitzgerald, Lewis, and Rolvaag
These three early twentieth-century literary lions helped shape our understanding of the region’s past and character. Luckily, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and Ole Rolvaag have become more interesting since you read them in high school and deserve a reprise. Begin immediately—life is short—with the unsurpassed Great Gatsby, maybe the greatest American novel of all.

Savor Sundown at Harriet
If our lakes are the palpable essence of Minneapolis, hanging out at Lake Harriet is the city’s quintessential outdoor experience. Life is good at Lake Harriet anytime, but the hour before sunset is golden. W. 44th St. and Queen Ave. S., Mpls.

Go Coatless in the Cold
The media may focus on the first shorts on a fifty-degree day, but it’s a different kind of cold weather machismo that manifests our winter hardiness. It’s the coatless jaunt across Nicollet Mall on a below-zero lunch hour. Grabbing the newspaper on the porch in bare feet after a snowfall. We may treat snowstorms like the second coming, but the cold is just a fact of life. Layers are for wimps.

Fish the Opener
Though it falls annually on Mother’s Day weekend, Mom still wants to wake at 2 a.m. and sit in the boat with you.  May 12, 2007