Recently inspired to look into trains in Duluth, I found this video. It’s a bit older than some of the videos I’m posting, but it’s still more or less contemporary.
I love the practice of model trains. My grandpa helped me set one up in my basement, and it was wonderful, but being in my basement made the tracks tarnish, hindering the current that made the train run. So I eventually just used the track board as a table.
Model railroaders have incredible imaginations. This person has established an imaginary rail company carrying materials from the range to Duluth and from Duluth to Minneapolis.
There are a ton of videos of the train ride from Downtown Duluth to Two Harbors. The one above is from the engine.
I attended Bay Days to table with Wilderness Health and the North Shore Mental Health Group. It is an active group of citizens committed to increasing awareness of and access to mental health resources up the shore.
For the past three decades, the Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards have recognized books that substantially represent the history, culture, heritage and lifestyle of northeastern Minnesota. In 2021, longtime award coordinators at the Kathryn A. Martin Library at the University of Minnesota Duluth announced that due to staffing changes, the university library would no longer organize the awards. In early 2022, Twin Ports-based nonprofit, the Lake Superior Writers, announced that it would be the new NEMBA coordinators.
It was a busy weekend in Duluth, despite the rain that postponed the Fourth of July events.
Saturday I missed the Rhizomes, who played in Two Harbors. Crankily, I have decided that I will only be indoors in places with cavernous, flowing air, until the pandemic has subsided. (For more information about the pandemic that is still going on, no matter how many people you see walking around without masks, visit the Minnesota Dashboard. We’re doing okay — COVID hospitalizations are definitely flat, but variants are increasingly resistant to the vaccine.)
The new campaign to increase tourism for Duluth had, I guess, a “soft open” this week, covered in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune and on Fox 21.
I attended the wolf event at Lake Superior College. It was awesome, a blending of art, science, and indigenous cultures, with representatives from the International Wolf Center, the Wildlife Science Center, Timber Wolf Alliance, Wildwoods, and the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission.
The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council is accepting applications for the position of executive director. This position shapes arts and culture in Duluth and the Arrowhead, so they should want the best possible pool of applicants.
Every year, for a week, Super One Foods sells pączki, pronounced poonch-key, a specialty Polish donut. But they never do my favorite flavor, prune.
What does a man have to do to get a prune donut in time for Mardi Gras?
Students at Mater Dei open house.
I recently attended the open house at Mater Dei Apostolate in the Lincoln Park neighborhood.
The Lake Superior Freethinkers hosted Shane Courtland for a talk at the College of St. Scholastica. Courtland is a Superior native who completed an undergraduate degree at UMD, a PhD at Tulane, and now serves as a leader in the Institute for Humane Studies at George Mason University.
To the angel who prepaid several people’s coffee at a mall-area coffee shop on Sunday — thank you. I appreciate the kindness.
A reader has sent some information about Helen Futter, the subject (I think) of some thoughts I’ve had about record collections, midcentury media, and pop culture. (See here, here, here, here, and here.) Generally, reflecting on what (I think) was Helen’s record collection, donated by her estate to Gabriel’s Books in Lakeside, I treated her like a “typical teen,” listening to records on her “Victrola.”
Duluth’s Holy Cow! Press author Jane Yolen, author of Kaddish: Before the Holocaust and After, has been awarded the Sophie Brody Medal for 2022.
