Another Down, 27 To Go

You might recall from my posts about our visit to Juneau in March during our honeymoon, I have a geek's lust for state capitol buildings and plan in my life to visit all of them. So I finished my business in Minneapolis today with enough time to scoop up my college friend, Melissa,who lives in Chicago and coincidentally is here on business, and go on a field trip to St. Paul. (OK, we sort of coordinated it, but it was a coincidence that we both needed to be up here around now.)

It was an unexpectedly thrilling visit and here above to your right is the money shot. Unlike the lackluster Juneau building, this one was absolutely an amazing piece of art and history and governmental symbolism. It was quite large, has a huge and beautiful rotunda and was designed by the same fellow who designed, among other structures, the U.S. Supreme Court. Every inch of it was carefully thought out, from the moulding to the stonework to the way that visitors are greeted by a fellow in a black tailed tuxedo and top hat. Yes, really.

We got an earful from a lovely volunteer named Margaret who knew a zillion interesting -- and, truth be told a few uninteresting -- anecdotes about the building, the state's history and even about its comparisons to certain other statehouses. They had info sheets with histories of all the famous quotations on the walls and about each of the form of rock. I got Melissa to pose with Jesse Ventura which is good considering that Jesse's too shiny for you to really see.

So you may be thinking, 'What a dork.' And I do plead guilty. But before you condemn me, just look at some of these photos. And then check out this blog I just discovered where a couple somehow hitchhiked to 50 capitals in 50 days. I'm not quite sure how that's possible -- hitching to Hawaii??? -- but I'll take some time when I'm not running low on laptop battery and read further.

Doing it for money

As most freelancers do, I take and pitch all sorts of odd assignments to pay the mortgage. It's one of the neat parts of the lifestyle, that I can ask to write about anything that interests me and sometimes they even let me. And often they come at me with stories I wouldn't ever have gotten to do and they turn out to be really interesting.

To wit, here's two random bits to check out if you care:

* Some University of Chicago business profs did a really intense study of the costs of the U.S. having not invaded Iraq versus the various outcomes of the fact that we did. It's really fascinating -- they seem to think that financially, it's something of a draw, if not a bargain, that we did, even in the worst-case scenario.

* The folks at Brigham Young University, of all places, have loosened up their policy on gays on campus. I wrote about it for Newsweek. They're now allowed to say they're gay so long as they don't ever do anything and as long as they never suggest that it's morally acceptable. And that's progress.

Otherwise, just another busy day writing the plan for tonight's "The Strip," posting the latest episode of "The Petcast" on which Emily and I had quite a fun squabble, writing up my Vegas mag piece on The Killers and putting some finishing touches on the forthcoming gay guidebook.