The Dream

This is from my daughter's blog back in Dec. She is a private person, so I will not include a link. It is one of those things I tend to go back to when I miss her. Warning, the video is over an hour long, but worth it sometime when you need a little perspective.

"Thanks to my parents' careful guidance, I have never been one for pop-culture. In fact, as soon as I hear the phrase "pop-sensation" I tend to discredit whatever bit of media or "art" is being described. Fortunately for me, there is one pop-sensation that I did not dismiss, though, I think I caught on quite late. Two weeks ago I spent a Saturday afternoon in a local internet cafe, surrounded by children blowing each other up online, watching Randy Pausch's, "Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams". I am sure everyone who decides to read this knows all about Randy Pausch, so I will not waste any time describing him or the content of his lecture. Though I will say that it made a huge impact on my Bangkok hardened soul.

I left the internet cafe in tears and realized that I am currently achieving my childhood dream of being a teacher in a foreign country. This realization or remembrance is deeply satisfying. It is possibly the most satisfying feeling of my life. I feel happier now that ever before, too bad this dream has to come to actualization away from my family."

Random Duluth Images

Cold. Fog. Lift bridge.Cold. Moto Guzzi. Downtown. Mist. Central High School. Fog. Lorna.Cold.

Wooden Canoes

We have a couple of wooden boats. I love them. I took these photos at a boat show at the North House Folk School last week, a simply wonderful institution. You can sign up for everything from timber framing to fabric arts to all manner of boat building. And a hundred other craft classes. At the end of your boat building class you have a new boat to take home. I took as many pics of traditional sailboats and row boats as canoes, but even with just the canoes it's hard to narrow the scope, so I am just posting a few of different types. The first one, the white canvas over cedar, is by Alex Comb of Steward River Boatworks. He gets top billing because I own the first canoe he ever made, 30 years ago. Click and enlarge the pics. Some of them are beautiful.

Jim Crow Blues

My high school Humanities teacher, Nicholas Cords, introduced me to "Lead Belly", Huddie Ledbetter, when I was 16 years old. He was the first person I knew who put a value on true folk music and race music equal to European classical music, which made the music teachers cringe. He was right; they were wrong. He opened a door for me. Nick is old now, but still alive and kicking. The first line of his son's bio on the Yo-Yo Ma website states, "Violist Nicholas Cords is strongly committed to the advocacy and performance of music from a very broad historical and geographical spectrum."  I wonder where he got that from?

- Thanks Nick for what you gave to me too.

I just received an email from Cheri Register, a friend who comments offline:
"Just catching up with your blog after a busy couple of weeks embroiled in politics at the Minnesota Historical Society.  Nick Cords isn't THAT old.  He's still in his 70s, I think.  He was pretty young yet when he was our teacher.  I did a paper on the history of jazz in humanities class, and Nick steered me to sources I never would have found otherwise.  When I watched Ken Burns's documentary on jazz on PBS, I was astonished to discover that I knew all that stuff already, thanks to Nick."

Weather

While we were up north bad things happened to our community. Fortunately there has been only one death so far, with a couple of other people badly injured. We are fine, but some of the rural people to the west really took in the teeth. 

Winter and summer, out here on the northern plains we have BIG weather. It can make a person feel small, weak and naked. It is not something to be trifled with.

...And Now For Some Real Food

The fritters or patties are interesting. They are flaked walleye with enough flour and egg to bind them and then pan fried. Typical local blue-collar breakfast, although I don't know how the FFs happened rather than hashbrowns. I assume it was my error rather then the waitresses. Pizza is pizza. Or should be. Chez Jude offered a wood-fired duck pizza, but I couldn't adjust my thinking enough to try it. Duck? Pizza? I went for something more exotic, like a fish that was killed as it was being cut up and then grilled on a birch plank. Standard fare.

Naniboujou Parking Lot

There was a British sportscar rally in Thunder Bay over the weekend and the roads were populated by MG-TCs, Triumphs and Healys moving north ... rather the road shoulders and flatbed trucks were. Group failure at inopportune times and places. I saw a matched set of cream TCs that would be worth the probability of misfortune. His and Her MGs!

I talked to the feet of the guy underneath the Lotus Europa for a while (one fine automobile). He was hoping it would make it to Thunder Bay. He said he's been fighting to keep British sportscars running for 30 years and is just about fed up and ready to move on. I sympathized with him, as I too had gone down that dark road (that's a joke, guys) with an Austin-Healy.

Tomorrow: Where we stayed, trail and lake pictures, and lots of wooden boats!

Naniboujou Lodge

This place has been owned for over 30 years by the sister of Lorna's first boyfriend. It was built in the 1920's and is simply spectacular. The food is very good. The downer is there is no alcohol. No beer, no wine. Because of this we no longer stay there, but usually stop by for lunch.

It's hard to capture the scale of this room. For instance, the opening of the fireplace is about five feet high. The ceiling is ... it's  ... it's really high. The light fixtures are paper. They've been refurbished, but they're all original and the paint is original. It's a jewel on the lake. Now if they'd just serve wine. (sigh) 

The Angry Trout

This is my favorite. Nice simple decor, great location next door to the fishermen bringing in the catch and consistently wonderful food.

Grilled whitefish. Grilled lake trout with a side of trout chowder. The general catches are lake trout, whitefish and herring (cisco).  Because the lake is so cold and clear, it doesn't produce huge numbers of fish, but what it does are wonderful. Just a quick word about the Lake Superior Oatmeal Stout. The best I've ever tasted. Worth building a meal around.

Northern Lights

Day two: We left Duluth and headed north (Actually on a map it more east than north, but in my mind it's all north and south.) Just past the Split Rock Lighthouse we stopped at the Northern Lights for a late breakfast. Tim, the one-time lighthouse keeper, doesn't like it because "the owner is an asshole". I'm just passing through, and the asshole lays out a nice breakfast. By this point we're starting to get into the local cuisine which is heavy on wild rice, fruit and berries, and the catch of the day from Superior. Not a bad way to die.

Here we have a mix of miscellaneous for Lorna - a nice fruit soup. And a wild rice quiche, lake trout-wild rice soup and a little piece of grilled walleye for me, all arranged to look like a bizarre bunny. Starting the wine a little early in the day.

Grandma's on Miller Hill

We're back from our vacation, mostly an eating binge with hiking and loving to burn off the calories. I thought I'd take pictures Jonny Hamachi type pictures of every meal, but I got wrapped up in the eating and forgot a lot.

The first time I ever ate at what I believe became Grandma's in Duluth was years ago fishing with my Ol' Man, Don Wayne and Chuck Nelson. The restaurant was a local hangout down on the docks, servicing sailors and warehouse workers. Good food. "Grandma" was supposedly a madame, though I cannot verify this. Over the years the warehouse district disappeared, replaced by Canal Park, comprised of four big hotels and a tourist shops all revolving around a bevy of Grandma's restaurants to handle the growing hungry crowds. The food is still wonderful, but it's a little touristy and takes a long time to get served, so we go the Grandma's up on Miller Hill, which is smaller and more of a local restaurant. (About three miles away and 800 feet higher - for J.G. who says there are no hills in Minnesota) My favorite entrée is the Wild Cajun Chicken. This starts out as a spicy Italian sausage meal, but adds mushrooms, red onions, grilled chicken and substitutes wild rice for the pasta. Then they add enough hot cajun spices to require a dark beer or two to cool it down.

Lorna with mushrooms stuffed with wild rice and cheese. A big bowel of wild cajun chicken. Tastes better than it looks. Maybe my favorite meal in the world ... so far.