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Lake Superior Magazine

The Legend of Minnesota

Kathy-jo Wargin, born in Tower, Minnesota, is an archivist of northern tales, revisiting them in her earlier books The Legend of Sleeping Bear, The Legend of the Loon and The Legend of the Lady’s Slipper.

With The Legend of Minnesota, she questions the origin of the state’s name, long believed to come from the Dakota language for “sky-tinted water” or “smoky water.” Kathy-jo discovered a story, published in 1893, about “Mah-nu-sa-tia,” which means “balsam poplar” in the Ojibway language and often referred to the land west of Lake Superior. Is it the real origin of “Minnesota”?

Research and the detail and glow of the art of first-time children’s book illustrator David Geister makes this more than a picture book. The tone of the pictures, which stand by themselves, reminds one of firelight and gives authenticity to a tale set in a time of evening campfires.

The familiar story of forbidden friendship between a young woman and young man from warring peoples is between the Ojibway and the Dakota. It is a story well worth relating, and a moral tale in times when it’s easy to create the “us” and “them” of cultural divisions.

– KLM

Back of Beyond, A Memoir from the North Woods

This is not so much a book as a time capsule filled with days from a pleasant past that we can relive in the sharing, even though the memories are not our own.

Back of Beyond condenses 14 years when the Kobe family built, owned and operated the Buena Vista Resort on Bear Island Lake near Ely, Minnesota. The writing is simple and straightforward, as if you were reading from the journal of young Anna Marie as we follow her, her sister, Jean, and their parents, Jack and Marie, during their time at the resort.

There is no overriding plot or conclusion. The book is, like life, a collection of pearls strung together to create a completed necklace. The memoir takes a beautiful visit into the 1940s and an unabashedly idyllic revisit of the author’s happy childhood. It is comfortable here, within the pages and beside the shores of Bear Island Lake. The children have the small adventures that the north woods can offer. Among their chores, done begrudgingly but warmly together, the girls catch a few frogs, row a few boats and build their own “Slanty Shanty” on a small island with their cousins and resort friends.

The family is active and loving, which is hardly a surprise because Jack and Marie came together based on love and the joy of loading up the canoe for treks into the woods.

Eliminated from the book are the complexities of real life; it only follows the family during the seasons when they are on the lake and not their everyday months back in Duluth. But that is not a criticism; it is instead exactly what you want because you, like the guests at the resort, go there – by way of Susanne’s story – to get away from the real world into the rarified adventure of vacation. This book shows that it doesn’t take a drama or a trauma to make a good tale worth reading. Simple and good times are worth saving and savoring.

– KLM

So Cold a Sky, Upper Michigan Weather Stories

Karl Bohnak, of WLUC-TV in Marquette, Michigan, was basically born a weather nerd. Without embarrassment, he admits that as a child he figured out weather patterns that would bring satisfying (to him) snowstorms into his home city of Milwaukee. Alas, Milwaukee’s weather patterns often left it – and Karl – on the outskirts of really good blows, which explains why Karl found himself blown to the Upper Peninsula where the weather really matters and people gladly talk about it.

Karl eagerly writes for those like him (and us). So when Karl reviews our history, he doesn’t just want to know where Frederic Baraga, the snowshoe priest, went and what he did. Karl wants to know how much snow he snowshoed on (so to speak).

This fresh view of history, weaving in the landscape and weatherscapes, makes a good read for those with a bent toward both. He has the scoop on regional fires, floods, heat waves, droughts, snowstorms and lightning strikes. The well-researched book is packed with details to satisfy the trivia buff in us all. Weather maps and old photographs amply illustrate the tales.

Especially after what has been a painfully mild and dry winter for parts of Lake Superior, this book can satiate that craving for a good weather tale with a bit of mayhem and snow, beautiful snow, up to here.

– KLM

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