Happy Birthday, Wanda Gág
March 11 is Wanda Gág’s birthday. After Charles Schulz and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wanda Gag is my favorite Minnesota author.
March 11 is Wanda Gág’s birthday. After Charles Schulz and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Wanda Gag is my favorite Minnesota author.
I enjoyed the Rhizomes at Northern Waters Smokehaus last night. Every concert should start before 6 p.m.
NorthWords, the monthly publication of Lake Superior Writers, features a link to Joseph Bussey’s profile of local author Amy Jo Swing.
Photo from Console Room.
Duluthian Gaelynn Lea was recently celebrated as a Guest at Console Room, the Minnesota Doctor Who convention. The music performed was sublime, the programming inflected by music in ways that the convention rarely experiences. All weekend long, I felt her impact on the convention, just as, in Duluth, I regularly feel the impact on our community.
I love talking about the literary writing world here, but I rarely talk about academic writing. I’d like to, this time, because I just finished c0-editing a freshly published book with articles by some of your neighbors. They were intentionally written to be accessible to a broad readership.
The University of Minnesota Extension Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships are seeking proposals for projects related to sustainable agriculture and food systems, clean energy, natural resources and resilient communities.
I’m on the board for these proposals, and many of your neighbors throughout the region are, too. You don’t need to be a nonprofit — local businesses with community impact and individual citizens can apply, too!
Last semester, I taught a class in the writing major at the University of Minnesota Duluth called Minnesota Writers. It was a survey of a few “greatest hits” (Laura Ingalls Wilder and Wanda Gag; Upton Sinclair and F. Scott Fitzgerald; Tim O’Brien), but mostly, it was a tour through some of the writers alive and well and shaping Minnesota culture (Margi Preus, Chris Monroe, Julie Gard, Emily August, Michael Fedo, Lucie Amundsen, Kelly Florence, Meg Hafdahl, and contributors to the Pride Zine).
The Vintage Duluth Blog at the Duluth Public Library is back.
Art by Nelle Rhicard at reframeideas.com.
A group of University of Minnesota Duluth faculty, students, and community artists came together to explore strategies to communicate the stories of frontline workers in housing and food insecurity.
I snagged a ton of cassettes at Gabriel’s Used Bookstore. I wanted them because they were uniform in their design. They were, in other words, a “collection,” and I love being able to look over a collection.
If you have lived in Duluth a long time, you know (and maybe miss) the voice of Naomi Yeager. Naomi was an editor of the now-defunct Duluth Hillsider and also led the Budgeteer. It was under Naomi’s editorship that I got a lot of my non-PDD writing lessons — she was a great editor.
Naomi now maintains a SubStack. Link below if you want to hear her unique voice again.
Art by Nelle Rhicard at reframeideas.com.
Food insecurity, housing insecurity, poverty and social justice are intertwined, a knot of problems facing our community. Thirteen percent of Duluthians face food insecurity, and more than 54% of renter-households are rent burdened. Often these difficult social problems are addressed by nonprofit organizations that run food pantries or housing shelters. They build affordable housing and support people living on the street. While these workers are heroes, they are also human, and their stories are also intertwined with larger issues like poverty and social justice. These frontline workers are also often former college students who enter the job market with the consequential task of supporting those who others have left behind.
I spent two days this fall with the University of Minnesota Extension’s Northeast Regional Sustainable Development Partnerships, which brings community leadership to the table with the research and educational resources of the University of Minnesota. I’m the last half of that sentence, I guess.
Recently, in my “Minnesota Writers” class at the University of Minnesota Duluth, we spent a week discussing songwriting, and as an exercise in fun, students voted on their favorite songwriter. Then, to get a different perspective, I went to the Music Resource Center and had the same conversation. I thought I would share the results.
Art by Nelle Rhicard at reframeideas.com.
A group of University of Minnesota Duluth faculty, students, and community artists came together to explore strategies to communicate the stories of frontline workers in housing and food insecurity. For example, UMD students met Mary Baumgartner who worked at the Chum Food Shelf in Duluth.
