102

Today would have been my grandmother's 102nd birthday.

I was blessed with growing up four blocks from my grandmother, Bea Berg, 'til age 17. She was the classic Scandinavian grandma - the best cook ever (sorry, Mom, you're a close second), and struck a perfect balance between spoiling and teaching all of her son's kids.

There was a lot more to her, though; she ran a photography studio for the better part of 30 years, much of it by herself after her husband and my grandfather, Oscar, died in the early forties, leaving just her and Dad. Photography was her trade - as I've noted elsewhere, Grandma was involved in producing this upper-midwestern institution in her youth.

I was in my mid-teens before I knew that Grandma had had something to do with the photograph which hung in nearly every household I grew up around, and is indeed Minnesota's State Painting (a misnomer; it's a hand-colored photo).