Dan Butterfass's blog

Though our backyard is now almost all grass, the snow quinzee my kids and I built last weekend is still standing.

A quinzee, or snow mound hut with a hollowed-out interior, is basically a combination between an igloo and a snow cave. It's a survival or recreational snow shelter made by heaping snow into a big, domed-shaped pile, then waiting a couple hours for the snow to harden before you start hollowing out the shelter.

When building a quinzee, it's important not to pack the snow, as packing reduces the loft, or insulating effect, of the snow.

The morning after last Thursday’s (March 16) snowstorm, I observed a large flock of March robins raiding berries from an ornamental tree located at the corner of 14th Ave SW and 6th St SW.

With the ground still frozen and covered by several inches of new snow, and no earthworms to be had, this flock of early-arriving robins must have been searching for any alternative food source it could find. They hit the jackpot with the thousands of berries still clinging to this tree from last fall.

Members of this flock, estimated at about fifty birds, were taking turns swooping in from the cover of some nearby arbor vitae trees.

Imagine Fenway Park called "Boston Baked Beans" park? Then again, a good sponsor for Wrigley Field would be the Wrigley Gum Company, wouldn't it? Just think, the ball club could sieze the money while preserving its heritage at the same time!

All kidding aside, I think the name "Mayo" Civic Center is so helplessly synonomous with the Clinic that we as citizens have lost sight of the fact that Charlie Mayo, as private citizen and philanthropist, generously donated the land for "Mayo Park", as well as what in today's dollars would be a fortune to build the Civic Center. Without his generosity, these two public spaces would likely not exist today.

Just got back from a Sunday run around the trails at Silver Lake where I and several other people out walking or running spotted a mature bald eagle perched on the upper limb of a tree on the point of the island on the north side of Silver Lake.

As I jogged past, a couple people stood admiring the eagle from the small paddle-boat pier and boat-hut that sits directly across the lake from the island. The eagle appeared to have been perched on this limb for several hours, without moving.

After several weeks of unseasonably warm weather, Silver Lake is now completely free of ice, and I imagine the eagle was there today because the fish-scavenging conditions across the open water are very good. Ducks and geese are not typically of much interest to bald eagles unless they happen to be crippled, yet even then it's much easier for a bald eagle to expend energy taloning a dead fish than chasing down injured waterfowl.

With Silver Lake ice-free, the incoming and outgoing flights of Canada geese have also been spectacular of late, especially when the big flocks return from their daily feeding forays to outlying farm fields during the hour before dusk.

This was my first in-town eagle-sighting so far this winter. In past winters I've spotted an eagle or two flying above the Zumbro River corridor, along West River Parkway, on the north side of Rochester, just down stream of the Silver Lake damn.

One evening this winter, while paused at a stoplight in downtown Rochester, my six year old daughter and I heard, muffled though my car windows, the same thing dozens of other drivers likley heard - the faint chiming of carillon bells. It suddenly occured to me that in the dozen years I've lived in Rochester, I had yet to stop and listen to a carillon concert in its entirety.

So not only did I roll down the window to let the music in, but after the stoplight turned color I pulled the car into a parking place on 1st Street SW and we got out to listen. As is true on most winter evenings in downtown, there were very few people walking along downtown's streets. Along several city blocks, we were the only two souls on the sidewalks listening to the chiming of the carillon's bells.

That familiar face you see pictured above is none other than Bill Boyne, the Post Bulletin's retired publisher and editor, who's been busy putting his eloquent voice and prolific pen back to work as one of RVoices charter bloggers.

Boyne, who served as the PB's main editorial writer for over two decades, was one of about twenty civic leaders who attended a hands-on blog training session that RVoices sponsored back in late November. Though Bill, myself and almost everyone else who attended the training session are still mere rookies as bloggers, Bill is a veteran journalist with over fifty years of experience as a newspaper reporter, editor and publisher under his belt.

I've often daydreamed about what it would have felt like to gaze out across the wind-swept seas of grass that my forebears saw when they first arrived by covered wagon to Minnesota in 1860. I do not know for certain what time of year it was when they arrived in Minnesota but, since they were making their way here to find land to farm, I've always assumed they arrived in early spring, in time to plant a first crop during Minnesota's short growing season.

If they did arrive in spring, they would have, while camping out on April nights, likely marveled at the luminous orange glow of a distant prairie fire, and perhaps worried some about how fast, and in what direction, the spring winds were driving that fire. They would have heard the howl of gray wolves on moonlit nights.