I have a lot more confidence in the St. Anthony Falls Bridge than I in old number 9340. Look at these massive monuments to modernism! True blue in every way. It’s very peaceful under here too, there’s barely any traffic noise and the bridge doesn’t make a sound. St. Anthony proudly carries the life-blood of the city and looks good doing it.
Can you believe that it’s been a whole year already? The new St. Anthony Bridge opened Sept 18th last year. Now a magical ribbon spans the mighty Mississippi, casting it’s cool blue light in contrast to all that surrounds it.
A terribly symmetric image for me, but I liked the effect.
Along the Minnehaha Creek bike trail, where it crosses Portland Avenue, there is a large bronze rabbit. It showed up in the past few years and I have no idea what his story is. I was biking past him while talking to my dad (yes, on a mobile phone, yes I know). I mentioned the rabbit, which is kind of hard to explain, so here is a pic. Also, the cottonwood trees have been dumping their cotton for the past few weeks, you can see that I managed to get a fluf in the photo: see that white spot at the base of the tree behind the rabbit? It’s an out-of-focus cottonwood seed blowing by.
The Spoonbridge proudly shows off it’s shiny new Cherry, just back from Earl Scheib with a fresh coat of Cherry Red. This Minneapolis landmark was sadly separated over the late winter while the Walker Art Center had the Cherry repainted. It’s a much deeper red than it was before, either it had faded and this is the original color or they decided to make it less “pop” and more cherry. None the less, I’m happy it’s back and doing it’s job: the two ladies in the picture later asked me to take their picture with it behind them.
Oh, by the way, see the duck family in the pond? They’re the stars from the last few days.
As the sun sets, the St. Paul Cathedral watches over the city.
By Rob Stein – Washington Post
Happiness is contagious, spreading among friends, neighbors, siblings and spouses like the flu, according to a large study that for the first time shows how emotion can ripple through clusters of people who may not even know each other.
The study of more than 4,700 people who were followed over 20 years found that people who are happy or become happy boost the chances that someone they know will be happy. The power of happiness, moreover, can span another degree of separation, elevating the mood of that person’s husband, wife, brother, sister, friend or next-door neighbor.
“You would think that your emotional state would depend on your own choices and actions and experience,” said Nicholas A. Christakis, a medical sociologist at Harvard University who helped conduct the study published online today by BMJ, a British medical journal. “But it also depends on the choices and actions and experiences of other people, including people to whom you are not directly connected. Happiness is contagious.”
One person’s happiness can affect another’s for as much as a year, the researchers found, and while unhappiness can also spread from person to person, the “infectiousness” of that emotion appears to be far weaker.
Previous studies have documented the common experience that one person’s emotions can influence another’s — laughter can trigger guffaws in others; seeing someone smile can momentarily lift one’s spirits. But the new study is the first to find that happiness can spread across groups for an extended period.
When one person in the network became happy, the chances that a friend, sibling, spouse or next-door neighbor would become happy increased between 8 percent and 34 percent, the researchers found. The effect continued through three degrees of separation, although it dropped progressively from about 15 percent to 10 percent to about 6 percent before disappearing.
The research follows previous work by Christakis and co-author James H. Fowler that found that obesity also appears to spread from person to person, as does the likelihood of quitting smoking. The researchers have been using detailed records originally collected by the Framingham Heart Study, a long-running project that has explored a host of health issues, to construct and analyze detailed maps of social networks.
The findings, Christakis and others said, provide striking new evidence of the power of social networks, which could have implications for public policy. Happy people tend to be better off in myriad ways, being more creative, productive and healthier.
Read the rest of the story at the Washington Post: Happiness Can Spread Among People Like a Contagion, Study Indicates
The exciting new W Hotel in the Foshay Tower. I’ll be heading up there again on Saturday with my crew.
Also, I’ve finally gotten around to making some changes to the blog, click on the photo for an enlargement!
Flamingo stabile by Alexander Calder in Mies van der Rohe’s Federal Plaza.
On top of the world I stood, looking for miles.
The tallest building in the world until Taipei 101 (2004), Shanghai World Financial Center (2008)* were recently finished, this glorious monument to 1960s minimalism has always been a part of my family’s trips to the windy city. It is quintessential Chicago: elevators, standing in line, over-cleaned tired carpet and low ceilings; but totally worth it, for both the view and the over-heard conversations.
Looking North to Wisconsin.
I thought these views were lost forever. My sister Sharon and I traipsed all over the big city and I was shooting the whole way, she’s so patient with me. Anyhow, when we stopped at Millennium Park I went to check the time on the camera and reflexively formatted the Flash Card. !!! After a small freak-out, I swapped cards and kept shooting. I thought the only record of the trip was a hand-full of twilight photos including the ones from the last two days. Sharon was totally cool about it, she cheered me up and helped me quickly take some photos of the bean and other buildings. Yesterday my friend Chris found a program that can recover erased images from a SanDisk Card. Obviously it worked!
* I don’t consider the Petronas Towers taller than the Sears. A hat does not make me taller. Petronas Towers are very cool, the bridge is awesome, but highest occupied floor is what counts in my book. Especially when the Sears is wearing a hat too. Check out this cool skyscraper site.
