When I lived in Russia I liked to call it the Land of Dark. The winters were overcast and the sun only came up briefly. Now that I am in Minnesota, I am thinking, land of dark. I have had every light in the house on for days. It is depressing. I read an article in the New York Times this morning by Mary Pipher called Finding Light in Winter. It was lyrical and hopeful. She has a book out called Life in Light: Meditations on Impermanence. I am totally going to read it. She lives in Nebraska so also is experiencing dark days. But she finds light in nature, family, friends, young children, poetry, music, a painting by Monet, and memories of people no longer present.

A friend of mine needed to go to Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota for some tests, so I went along. It was a nice break. Rochester is a fairly small city (population 122,000), and is the home of Mayo Clinic. Apparently 1.3 million patients go to Mayo every year, from all 50 states and 140 countries. There are like 20 Mayo facilities in Rochester. Plus Rochester has a branch of the University of Minnesota and a State Community College. For such a small town, it has a lot going on.

We stayed right downtown and were able to walk to everyplace we needed to go. Some interesting old buildings were among the glittering new ones. There was a warren of underground tunnels throughout the Mayo complex downtown so you could spend your day in spacious beautiful new buildings and never go outside. The cafeteria even had robots working to deliver food.

Besides being light and airy, the buildings were full of interesting artwork.

On the way back to the Twin Cities, we stopped at Frontenac State Park overlooking Lake Pepin. It started out kind of gloomy but amazingly, it cleared up to be a beautiful day. Light!!