Things usually reserved for gods.

James Lileks is a daily read for me. His sense of whimsy and comforting babble are a great compliment to his expansive interest in the debris of our past and culture. His website is a treasure trove of images of old matchbooks, bygone motels, horrid food, insidious adds.

It's a place where someone with the right inclination can loose hours browsing around looking at what once was. The rambling site design means a lot of stuff can be quite the surprise to find.

His post today is fun, it contrasts Obama's gloomy, yet hopeful?, rhetoric about the condition of Minneapolis with the... actual state of the city. It also deals with the bits of his life.

That's not what struck me.

At the end of the post he mentions an update to his project of documenting old Minneapolis buildings. Specifically Rand Tower

And there's this: a carving you might find in a museum in 2600 years.

Link.

Like the ancient civilizations, we had our mythological figures, too - except we actually figured out how to do the things usually reserved for gods.

That really says it all for me.

Rand Tower Page
Bigger image of the carving