“I want death to find me planting my cabbages, but careless of death, and still more of my unfinished garden.”

 - Michel de Montaigne

Red Lake Nation Ojibwe artist Robert DesJarlait has a lot going on, but he really loves those words from Michel de Montaigne.

DesJarlait, a writer, artist, traditional dancer, and gardener is showing his recent watercolor/mixed media paintings in a virtual exhibition and at AICHO through September.

Dale Peacock of Red Hoof Farms thinks there's a good, sustainable, quality life to be made on the south shore of Lake Superior; for farmers and cattle.

Of course, when you raise beef cattle, the ethical questions get a little stickier.

But Dale is a person with a lot of interest in - and concern about - people's relationship to what some have called "the stepmothers of humanity."

Warm sun,  some actual rain - and Tom Kasper says, if we plan it right, we can get two or maybe even three harvests this season.

Plus the moral issues inherent in carrot-thinning, this week on Tips for Hardy Gardeners.

The Duluth Art Institute has reopened and they have some exhibits up.  Folks who come into the Depot are, of course, asked to wear masks and social-distance.

Kari Halker-Saathoff: Odysseus & Penelope: The Long Journey

She had a Singer treadle sewing machine and I was fascinated by the steady “click-click-click” of the needle going up and down. I watched her rock her foot to thread the bobbin, then slide back the cover to load the bobbin into the shuttle. I was always amazed when the sewing machine picked up the thread and could never figure out how it could get thread to link together on both sides of the fabric.

Vernal ponds are drying up.

June will go down as one of the top five driest Junes in 150 years.

And now ... big spiders.*

Perhaps this quote from Dorothy Molter, the "Root Beer Lady" sums up these days best:

  "When it gets to be July, I look forward to the long cold nights of November."

*A note about this photograph

Carolyn Holbrook’s life is peopled with ghosts—of the girl she was, the selves she shed and those who have caught up to her, the wounded and kind and malevolent spirits she’s encountered, and also the beloved souls she’s lost and those she never knew who beg to have their stories told. “Now don’t you go stirring things up,” one ghostly aunt counsels. Another smiles encouragingly: “Don’t hold back, child. Someone out there needs to hear what you have to say.”

Animal Allies Humane Society is temporarily closed to visitors. Interested adopters are encouraged to make an appointment to visit the pet of their interest if they would like to adopt.

Dullahan

Longtime environmental advocate and community organizer Sam Grant says he had about "two weeks of normal" after starting his new job as the executive director of MN350 at the end of February.

Then came COVID-19.

Duluth Police Chief Mike Tusken joins us in a candid and wide-ranging conversation about policing in these challenging times: the people they want to hire - and don't want to hire these days; the outrage, sorrow and embarassment of fellow police after the death of George Floyd, and the toll the unavoidable backlash takes on officers.

Plus he talks about the social workers already embedded within the department, the importance of School Resource Officers, and how a police union can work - and not work - for a police department and the community.