St. Michael's Church, Suttons Bay, Michigan

The steeple of St. Michael the Archangel Catholic Church in Suttons Bay, Michigan

Mississippi River Voyageurs

Big River Magazine, http://www.big-river.com, has a page listing the known current and recent trips down the Mississippi River on foot or small craft. Please check out:

http://www.big-river.com/rivertrips.html

There is someone walking down the river bank, and also someone paddling a houseboat.

Church Steeple

This blog is still here. However, new posts come very slowly. Like this one I took of a nice old church steeple.

Congregational Fellowship Hall

A couple of weeks ago, my pastor was mentioning that for the most part, churches don't have much in the way of a fellowship hall. When I mentioned this, I recalled the fellowship hall at First Congregational in Winona. It was quite the place: two story, with a huge fireplace, skylights, and a balcony that encircled most of it.

In my current church, what passes for one is the place you pass through to hang your coats, and I've seen this in a lot of places.

So, what does your church now have in the way of a fellowship hall?

Over on another blog

Nothing really from me this time. Just make sure to check out the real cool thing Balou did with leftover easter egg dye over at Born a Girl.

Comments here about Easter decorating might be nice, but in all fairness they probably belong under her post instead of mine. Just look at those colors!

The Okapi

Here is an Okapi from the San Diego Wildlife Park. I understand that when the first specimen was brought back by an explorer, it was believed to be a hoax, patched together out of pieces of other animals. (I got the idea from the Born-a-Girl blog and the Okapi poem there).

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Winona

Here's another one of Winona's many ornate stone/brick churchs: St. Paul's Episcopal. I don't know much about it except that it was built prior to 1900.

First Congregational Church, Winona

This is the exterior of the church with the ornate interior seen in one of the other blog entries further down. It's just one of Winona's many ornate brick and stone churches.

The house to the right is "The Manse", which is owned by the church and (at least a long time ago) was used for activites such as youth group.

From 1880 to 1882, this church was built of dolomitic limestone quarried from Winona with trimmings of Fond du Lac sandstone, carved capitals at the door-corners from Frontenac and front steps from Kasota. The church congregation started in 185.

TV Still Watched - Update

This is an update of the 2/25/2007 entry about how few TV shows I watch regularly. The list is smaller now, because two shows just ended their seasons (Battlestar Galactica and Prison Break). The list was at an all-time low before. It is even lower now:

1. Lost
2. Smallville
3. "24"

I'll likely add 2 or so soon. "Stargate: SG1" starts a new season next month, probably in or near the Galactica time slot, so I will watch that.

First Flowers of Spring

I just snapped this photo a few minutes ago. I just noticed these unbloomed crocuses this morning on the way to church. A sure sign of spring. I hope the sight of these flowers will give some uplift to anyone who is having a bad day today.

The sermon today was inspired by Morgan Spurlock's "Supersize Me". That is where the pastor got the idea to try to log and figure out where his time went for the past couple of weeks. He was disappointed that prayer and reading the Bible was not among the top 5 or so things he spends his time on.

This Is Holland (2006 Italy Trip Part 2)

This is one of a few from a defunct blog that I am going to be "rerunning" here. These are from a series concerning a trip to Italy in June 2006. The previous comments will be summarized in the first comment)

Not really interesting, but yes, this is the only picture of Holland. It's officially called "The Netherlands", but, really, who uses that name? It's kind of hard to see anything coming in and out of the clouds, so this is the only pic I managed.

It is a very long flight to get there, but at least the seat backs have wonderful new devices that enable you to watch any from a fairly decent selection of movies, or even get addicted to "Bejeweled" if you wish. Once you land, you get to experience Amsterdam Schipol Airport, which is unpleasantly smoky but filled with interesting shops,. It is also filled with those cattle-processing-lines to take care of security screening and customs and the like for the travellers passing through.

And yes, in case you were wondering (and who doesn't wonder about Dutch pizza), you can get great pizza at this airport.

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In reference specifically to the photograph, it was taken at dawn. The only moderately interesting things are the orange buildings, which are not really orange, but are some sort of really huge translucent structures lit up from the inside.

This isn't Holland (2006 Italy Trip Part 1)

This is one of a few from a defunct blog that I am going to be "rerunning" here. These are from a series concerning a trip to Italy in June 2006. The previous comments will be summarized in the first comment)

This isn't Holland. Nor it is Italy. However, it is Detroit. Surely both places are not very high on the list of vacation destinations. Downtown is to the left: if you like Gotham City from the first Batman film, you might like it. It's even better than Flint.

The largest, tallest, dark building in the skyscraper cluster is the Renaissance Center. It is a must-see for afficionados of Cardassian architecture. The inside is somewhat like the promenade of "Terok Nor".

The industrylands of the Ford Motor Company are seen on the right. The view is looking east and somewhat southward, which brings up the moderately interesting fact that Canada is south of Detroit. Canada (the much smaller city of Windsor) takes up the upper one-third of the photo.

Click on the image to see a much larger one. You will see Belle Isle (home of free-roaming white deer: perhaps to be seen in future photos) in the river on the left, and you will also see the Ambassador Bridge crossing to Canada.

(In the sequence, the are only 2 or 3 more until Italy).

Have you driven a Ford lately? Has anyone?