I’ve had my regrets in life. But I don’t regret getting so excited about the fourth anniversary of the 20-ft. pencil sharpening at Lake of the Isles, yesterday on June 7, which took place on the front lawn of the home of Amy and John Higgins. (I would like to meet them!)

It was the coolest event I’ve attended since moving to Minneapolis nearly four years ago.

Why a 20-ft. pencil? I never knew until yesterday, when my son, my two young grandchildren, and I strolled alongside cyclists, kayakers, dogs, canoeists, and children of all ages — some who held giant plastic pencils in the air, or others who wore pointy-pencil hats — to join the steady stream of people who made up the crowd of more than 2,000 in front of the Higgins’s house (we had to park on a side street five blocks away).

https://www.mprnews.org/story/2025/06/07/why-a-minneapolis-neighborhood-sharpens-a-giant-pencil-every-year

Everybody uses pencils. As John Higgins, our host said, the annual pencil sharpening event can serve as “a time of renewal.”

Pencil closeup photo

Prince's birthday

Prince's birthday

We’re all in this together. With such community levity, how could anyone dwell on the horrors going on around our country?

And for true Minneapolitans, it was a chance to celebrate Prince, the city’s musical icon, on what would have been his 67th birthday. Unfortunately, we missed the purple pencils handed out in his memory. Instead, we finished our celebration with homemade ice cream at Sebastian Joe’s. It was a very happy day.