For five years, I traveled often to Minneapolis.  While my then-partner, Bob, was at work, I drove around the city and watched a life so different from life in Texas.  Even on the coldest and snowiest days, people loved to hike and ride bikes around the lakes, and I'd often walk around Lake Harriet and watch people.

The women I met there--mostly writers--invited me for lunches.  They teased me about my sandals and advised me about snow-wear. In the fall, the leaves changed colors and fringed the lake where Bob and I sailed. We spent the night of Y2K wondering what would happen at midnight.  Nothing happened.

Some days I'd drive over the bridge into St. Paul and visit a book store there.  At night, we had dinners in ethnic restaurants in downtown Minneapolis or St. Paul.  On one freezing weekend, we drove to International Falls and I dusted off my motorcycle skills and whizzed a snowmobile around the frozen lake around little ice fishing huts.

Many Minnesotans, like Bob, whose ancestors came from Norway, loved cooking Norwegian white food--especially fish and a paper-thin bread called lefse. During those years, most of the other travelers on my flights were Somalian immigrants, women dressed in colorful dresses and scarves,  adorable children and babies on their laps.

Minnesota was the land of Garrison Keillor's folky Prairie Home Companion and barbershop quartets, Lutheran churches and "Minnesota Nice."

I'm  thinking fondly of that sweet city and the people who befriended me there as I watch the horrifying news of this week, a city on fire.