Fifty Words, History, Stories

Lego Ore Boat

76 Comments

Look at that massive block carrying masses of taconite. Efficient. Cost effective. Where is the curved grace of a classic ore boat?

ore-boat-3

Industry once designed for aesthetics as well as purpose.

Can a photographer discover poise and rhythm in industry today?

bridges

Wait until you see the Lego bank under construction near me (future blog).

What floats your boat this week?

76 thoughts on “Lego Ore Boat”

  1. the question of design and lack thereof is one that i look at often. i am amazed at how simple it is to make things beautiful and yet surprised how often it is overlooked.
    i feel like companies and countries ought to e held responsible for polluting the air and lakes and steams with toxic waste and i also feel that it should be a responsibility to avoid eyesores that are erected in plain view and affecting the people whose lives will be affected by them
    i was in chicago earlier this month and having coffee on michigan ave before a visit to one of the colleges my daughter is looking at an the building we were in housed the architecture association as well as the coffee house. there was a large model of the city layout with a lay ready with laser light pointer to point out the points of interest and tell the historical story of chicago architecture. it was wonderful.
    minneapolis skyline has improved form the 1960 foshay tower erection to the current cluster of stylish offerings but i do often wonder why the choice to make a 4 story square nothing is made when a more fun, interesting, appealing, innovative, memorable, valued offering could as easily have been selected. who chooses this stuff? we dont need to have architecture police but then a gain maybe we do. i dont know what is planned exactly for rochester with the new push to turn it into a destination city for the med community but i bet it will be good. all that is required is a thought to making it beautiful an striking. why wouldnt you?

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  2. Rise and Shine Baboons!

    This week I am thinking about art designs that I like, trying to get back to the art studio and some creating. Repeating patterns are pulling me in. I wonder what will happen with that?

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  3. I remember when they rebuilt the 35-W bridge they went for utilitarian because of speed and money. There was an outcry to make it something wonderful… At least they do different colored lights at night.

    This week is pretty full, but the one I’m looking forward to is a weekend full of Community Rights workshop, which will no doubt show up sometime in a blog. Also getting my mom settled in to a new room – just down the hall, but still…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  4. Anybody else watch the Oscars on Sunday night? I love the Oscars — the movie memories, the glamour, the fun, the surprises — and the major gaffe at the end. It was quite chaotic as Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway announced the wrong movie “La La Land” as winning Best Picture, when it was actually “Moonlight”. Such a brouhaha …
    Gotta love live TV … They got it fixed quickly, but not before the director gave a thank you speech, and then had to hand over the coveted Oscar to someone else. What a moment.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  5. Just bought tickets for the Munro light show at the Arb for Friday. Going up with daughter and family Friday evening. A nice boat floater.
    Other boat floater is keeping arm elevated, a tough trick. Turns out I do not have an infection in carpel tunnel surgery. The tendon at the incision is so swelled up that it is forcing fluids out from two of the stitch holes. I told Sandy on our daily trip to the mall I am going to walk around with my arm up in the air.
    My son in San Diego almost had his car floating 🙂 from the downpour yesterday. The freeways were locked up in the afternoon rush hour.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

  6. Actually I find the modern huge ore boats aesthetic in another way, although some do look like a pile of ego blocks. One of the modern boats does look like a classic ore boat, but at that size it still looks more chunky than graceful. These modern boats have bow and stern thrusters, which means they do not need the Edna G. tug anymore. Watching them turn around without moving forward or backward is amazing.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  7. I’ve been watching the strangely slow demolition of the old West Publishing building in downtown St. Paul. They’ve had it mostly knocked down for several months, but the last cube stands there still, with its innards leaking out. The view from Kellogg Boulevard is so changed by the absence of the building, and its former neighbor, the Ramsey County jail, that it feels completely unfamiliar. I’m curious to see what will become of the site. It would be nice to have a public plaza overlooking the river, but I imagine the real estate has too much value to escape development.

    Also coming down, apparently, is the Dayton’s building.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

    2. We’ve been watching that, also, Linda, and it’s remarkable how much it has changed that section of Kellogg Blvd. We were hoping that they would salvage the beautiful facade of polished stone from the Minnesota valley, but they just knocked the whole thing to smithereens. It’ll be interesting to see what goes in that space.

      Like

      Reply

      1. I don’t think the old Dayton’s building is any big loss, at least not architecturally. Funny that Linda should refer to it as Dayton’s, when it long since became Macy’s.

        Like

        Reply

        2. I still think of it as Dayton’s. That’s the name it had when I knew it for many years and shopped there. I was never in the place after it became Macy’s. Count me among the many Minnesotans who resented the change, perhaps irrationally.

          Liked by 2 people

        5. We frequently still slip up and call it Dayton’s, it was that a lot longer than anything else and we’re apparently too old to change with the times. I’ve also wondered if any of the Dayton family feels disoriented or inclined to wonder if they are still Daytons or some amalgam of Dayton/Marshal Fields/Macy. Governor Mark Dayfieldacy?

          Liked by 1 person

  8. Hmm. I feel at sea as I arrange for daughter to move to Tacoma in May. Mom’s are still necessary, I guess. Husband has lockjaw or Trismus, as a result of some dental work a couple of weeks ago, so all he needs to float his boat is to be able to open his mouth to get some food in.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  9. The thing that has been floating my boat the last week or so has been my work on the design for the cover of a friend’s second novel. I designed the cover of her first novel after she gave up on the publisher ever coming up with something appropriate and the result I gave her was pleasing to her and fun for me.
    It’s an interesting process, coming up with a graphic treatment that represents the contents not only with regard to subject matter but also in
    mood and atmosphere. Needless to say, it ought to convey just enough to compel the prospective reader to want to look inside, to know more.

    Liked by 5 people

    Reply

    1. I’d like to hear more about this when you finish the process. I believe most publishers reserve the right to choose a design with no input from the author. The last book I had published had a terrible design, but the publisher didn’t give me a vote on that. I’ve noticed that cover design affects the way I think of books. Now and then there is a book whose cover design is just wrong for the text.

      A set of cover designs I love is the whole Maisie Dobbs mystery series.

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

      1. The first book was published by Northstar Press and it was, as I understand, a frustrating experience. The covers offered by the publisher were tryly awful. It was clear the designer hadn’t read any part of the story. The publisher made it clear that any design we submitted was subject to their approval, but they not only approved the one we wanted but submitted it in the Minnesota Book Awards competition for that year (it didn’t win).

        Liked by 3 people

        Reply

    2. pen pals had a cover designer a couple years ago and it was fascinating and impressive. he is hot stuff and his mission to tie form and substance together is very cool.
      i can understand the fun prospect bill. enjoy. ill bet your good. can we see the first one? do a ditty on it will you?

      Like

      Reply

  10. I’m not sure freighter ships used to be pretty. The really old ones with sails were attractive. But the ships from that period extending from the later 19th to the middle of the 20th century? Not so pretty. Think of the whaleback ships. They were butt ugly.

    The lack of aesthetics that burns my toast is modern homes, the less expensive ones. A friend lived in a modern housing development in Rogers, just north of the freeway. Each home was a big block without the least attempt to look pretty or even somewhat interesting. Nothing was done with the shape or with ornamentation. They were just boxes. Big, ungainly boxes. Any effort to make the homes look nice was spent inside. There was zero sense of how the homes would look to anyone who wasn’t in one, which seemed to me to be a selfish disregard for any concept of neighborhood.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. There is a lot of housing built that turns to the street a couple of large garage doors, with little else showing from the front, as if the garage was the house’s reason for being, and the living space an afterthought.

      Liked by 3 people

      Reply

    2. We have one such box a couple of blocks down, right on the corner of Lyndale and the parkway. Just dreadful. What kind of statement are you trying to make when you build a house that is SO out of keeping with the surrounding neighborhood?

      Like

      Reply

  12. What has been floating my boat lately is YouTube. I spend whole afternoons YouTubeing. I was wondering how I might write a top of the page blog about this, but I’ll just mention it this way. The range of YouTube videos is nothing short of astonishing.

    You can guess which videos would be available and interesting. I started with videos of folk performers (Leo Kottke, Sierra Hull, First Aid Kit, Emmylou, etc). I’ve had fun playing videos of great rock guitar classics (Mark Knopfler plays with Eric Clapton).

    I love editing photos with a program called Lightroom. I can spend happy hours running videos of that.

    I’m helping my erstwife choose a new car. I can roll endless car review videos, including many for cars sold in Europe but not the US.

    Then there are all the surprises. I’ve been enjoying a series of videos from a young woman calling herself Hobo Ahle. She is a sparkling video performer who is smart, well spoken and pretty. Her topic is living in your car. Someone has a series of videos discussing the differences between German and American culture. Similar videos explain Japanese or Chinese culture. Some animal videos are moving and fun.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I found a YouTube video on releasing your dog’s anal glands. Tried it. Couldn’t do. I will watch again.

      Really, anything you want is there. I have never had the courage to search for interesting sexual practices, though. I keep thinking it would probably be Way Too Much Information for such an Old Lady.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

        2. I want to reinforce ljb’s comments. I used Google Chrome as my surfing app for several years before discovering it offered me the option of roaming the internet “incognito.” That is SO useful. I use the internet to research products I don’t intend to buy. If I do that while incognito, I don’t have products chasing me with ads for weeks afterward. I jump in and out of the incognito status several times a day.

          Like

      2. So then, today it must be in the air. First I posted the comment above about YouTube and sexual practices, then I arrived home, and looked at the mail to find yet ANOTHER old lady catalogue. I looked at it, finding the usual clothing, pain relievers, cushioned shoe soles. And then I arrive at the middle of the catalogue at Old Lady Sexual Devices. This is a new kind of Old Lady catalogue.

        So WHO signed me up for this?

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

      3. unfortunately i know how to do that one. the old basset needed it.
        you get a different sort of virus searching for sex on the internet than on the street. one requires malwarebytes and the other requires penicillin

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

  13. What is floating my boat the last few days is the thought of how healthy I USUALLY am. Unfortunately since I’m not sick often, my body seems to think it needs to make up for it when illness does coming knocking. Walking pneumonia, which I knew nothing about until yesterday. Seriously gross – I hope none of you ever have to experience this. Apparently my oxygen levels were one point off being hospitalized. Who knew. And also apparently very contagious; they made me wear a mask from the clinic to the pharmacy (50 steps)! Two days of antibiotics so I’m “legally” able to go to work tomorrow, but based on how I feel, I’m pretty sure I won’t last the day. Trying desperately to appreciate how often I DON’T feel like this!

    Like

    Reply

    2. Sorry to hear you’re unwell vs! Follow the doctor’s and your body’s advice and don’t push yourself too hard. Allow yourself the time it takes to get over it. Get better!

      Like

      Reply

      3. The cowardly SOB hints that the bungled raid in Yemen was planned by Obama’s people and pushed by “the generals.” Has he ever accepted moral responsibility for a mistake once in his life?

        Like

        Reply

  15. What floats my boat? This week it is an admittedly boring project of organizing some digital photos. The photos from 2015 and part of 2016 are a big, fat mess. It’s too boring to explain it all, but to summarize I had photos on a few flash drives and one or two external hard drives, plus files in the trash of each of those. Then there’s the overlap of the photos I took for class vs. what I shot for myself (some shots for class I don’t care about and others I want to be part of my permanent collection). Because of needing to keep school photos separate from other photos while I was in school, I had many, many different folders and way too many catalogs in Lightroom. It’s a slow, laborious process, making sure that what’s in the trash really belongs there and figuring out what can be combined and getting it all organized in a standard way.

    It’s pretty boring to talk about, but in a way it’s satisfying to make progress on it.

    Liked by 2 people

    Reply

      1. Lightroom is, and I quote from Wikipedia, “a photo processor and image organizer developed by Adobe Systems for Windows and macOS. It allows viewing, organizing and retouching large numbers of digital images. Lightroom’s edits are non-destructive.”

        My teacher said that Lightroom can do 90% of what Photoshop can do.

        What sets LR apart from other other photo processing software, in my opinion, is the ability it gives you to organize your digital images. I learned a system of organizing the images in my Intro to Software class, and it’s a good system. My current challenge now is to go back to photos that I didn’t organize according to the system and get them organized the correct way – plus get all the different folders and catalogs I have from the various classes and put it all together without unnecessary duplication and making it simpler overall. And make sure I only delete things that are duplicates. It sure would have been easier if I had done it the right way from the beginning.

        Like

        Reply

  16. You’re talking my language here. First year Wm. A. Irvin tour guide and then for five summers (as part of my 10 years with the DECC). 10am-7pm. Heat of summer to practically the end of fall in those early days. 9 tours a day. Sun, rain, wind, snow, sometimes a combo of all the above. But it was still the most fun I’ve ever had as a job. Mostly because of the crew we had. Some of us still get together.

    I’m just trying to figure out which boat that is from the 60s or early 70s sitting light in the Two Harbors docks. It ~looks~ like the Benjamin F. Fairless…some of my boat friends would bust my chops for not knowing for sure…

    And, yes, the new ‘stern winder’ lakers look like motorized barges…no style at all in my opinion. Thank goodness that the pride of Manitowoc Shipbuilding hasn’t been scrapped yet. The Edward L. Ryerson is, for now, still sitting idle next to Harvest States grain elevators in Superior.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. TH picture is ca 1955, taken by my mother. At full size cannot quite read the name. Could be Fairless. She took a few of ore boats, including the CL Austin coming into to Duluth loaded with trucks.

      Like

      Reply

      1. Cool! I never get tired of those shots of cars being brought up on boats. There’s shots of cars being driven down a gangplank from the deck of some boat. One actually sank with a load of cars on the deck. It sank in shallow water (none of the crew hurt) but you can see a load of old Packards sitting just under the surface and it looks like an underwater parking lot.

        Liked by 1 person

        Reply

        1. My mother took slides. 50 years later I scanned them, so they are fuzzy. If you want copies, I will be glad to share them. Send me you email address if you wan them. There are about a dozen, some taken over the TH breakwater when it was still just stones. birkholzclyde@gmail.com

          Like

      2. One of my fellow ‘boat people’ (as we used to call ourselves) says that it’s either the Fairless or the Enders M. Voorhees. Same class (1942 AA Class) of 5 sisters. Name is too blurry to be sure.

        Like

        Reply

        2. One of the original boat folks was a Two Harbors boat loader too. We just lost him to a long fight with lung cancer.

          Like

Leave a comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.