Everything goes back to Duluth

The bridal veil bush across the street is in full bloom, its white branches cascading like a waterfall. After ten straight days of cold and rain and clouds, weather that could be Minnesota in April, in early November, in March, any time at all--very much Duluth weather--the clouds have lifted, the sky has turned blue, the sun has come out, and it is, again, spring. So lovely. It puts everyone in a cheery state of mind.

I'm listening to RTE radio right now, a link my old friend Tiernan sent me last week. I knew him in Duluth, where he lived for a while, and we corresponded for many years after he went back to Ireland. Doug and I visited him in Galway once, but that was a long time ago. I hadn't heard from him in ten years, I bet, and then out of the blue, an email with a link: he's interviewed on an RTE program out of Galway about music--Bob Dylan, in particular, but also Joe Henry and Wilco and Paul Brady and others.

Here's the link for those who might be interested. (And, man, is there anything more beautiful and mournful than Paul Brady singing "The Lakes of Ponchartrain"?)

The Duluth connections. They're everywhere! Here's another one:

Bill Hicks is a fiddle player in North Carolina, a member of the old Red Clay Ramblers, who I listened to back in Duluth. The winter I lived in North Carolina and met novelist Lee Smith, it turned out that she knew the Ramblers and they were helping her with her research into country music for her novel "The Devil's Dream." What a fun connection that was--she was surprised to find that a girl from northern Minnesota knew about this North Carolina old-time music country band.

And then Bill Hicks happened to find my blog a while back, and sent me an email, and now he has a blog, and man I love the way life folds back on itself over and over, layer upon layer, connections made with times and places and people that you thought were gone forever.

Last weekend Bill wrote a beautiful, thoughtful blog post about building a chimney on an old cabin (he is a stonemason as well as a musician). It's filled with wise observations about history and hard work and his connection with the land. It's here.

And one last connection: Nancy Pate, who was for many years the books editor at the Orlando Sentinel in Florida. I was the books editor at the Duluth paper at the same time, but for me it was a very part-time job, squeezed in among a hundred other duties, a labor of love, really. I saw her reviews on the wires every week and always loved the books she read, and the way she wrote about them, so I ran a lot of her reviews in my paper.

Last year, we became Facebook friends, though we have never met face to face. And she knew about me, sort of--because she once went to a conference, where she met someone from Minnesota, who looked at her name badge and said, "Nancy Pate! You're big in Duluth!"

Her new books blog is here.

So, with that--gifts of flowers, music, books and stories, as well as an old Toby-in-Duluth photo--I leave you for a while. We're off to hike. Back soon.