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Enjoying some Duluth delights

The city of Duluth demands only the best. It wasn’t good enough for the town to be located on a Great Lake; it also insisted on being on the shores of the one named Superior. Striving for the best has enabled Duluth to hold their biennial Festival of Sail. My wife and I are enchanted by the romance and adventure of old-fashioned sailing ships, so we motored to Duluth to swash some buckle. The tall sailboats looked like prickly caterpillars when they were moored with their sails stowed. But when they were on the harbor under full sail, they were butterflies, floating gracefully and ...

Crazy Days: Annual tradition for Marshall area residents

Every year in late July on a Thursday Marshall gets a little crazy. The city hosts an annual Crazy Days celebration, a day filled with bargains at local businesses. It begins bright and early at 7 a.m. and continues until late afternoon. We had a good Crazy Days this year. The weather was perfect. It wasn’t raining. It wasn’t too hot. It was perfect for getting people out for shopping. Crazy Days warms my heart. It’s a day that gives business owners a connection with many shoppers. They’re right in the middle of the action. The owners talk to customers. They ring up ...

July is National Mental Health Awareness month

July 2025 marks the 16th annual National Minority Mental Health Awareness Month, also known as BIPOC Mental Health Month. This observance was established in 2008 when congress officially recognized July in honor of author and health advocate Bebe Moore Cambell. Cambell (1950-2006) co-founded a NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) chapter to support Black families affected by mental illness. Through storytelling and advocacy, she worked to break the silence and stigma surrounding mental health in communities of color. Her efforts led to the national designation of this month to ...

Answering patient questions about measles

As multiple outbreaks of the measles have popped up across the United States, so too have the number of internet searches about the measles virus. When it comes to your health and the health of your loved ones, it’s important to separate fact from fiction. Here are a few frequently asked questions about the measles, with answers from Avera experts: How contagious is measles? Measles is one of the most contagious of any known viral infection. It is more contagious than smallpox, tuberculosis or Ebola. It has an attack rate of 90%, meaning about nine out of 10 susceptible people can ...

A festival of sail

My wife and I knew we were in the right place because embossed on our hotel room’s throw pillows were the words, “I like big boats and cannot lie.” As if to drive that message home, a mighty air horn blared outside our hotel. Even though it was a quarter of a mile away, the horn was loud enough to loosen your toenails. I watched in awe as a 1,000-foot-long ore boat slid beneath the aerial lift bridge at a speed that could be nautically described as “super-duper slow.” Big boats indeed! And that was just an appetizer. We were in Duluth, Minnesota recently for the city’s ...

‘The centre cannot hold’

I have friends who say they try not to pay attention to the news, for their own sanity. I am a news addict, so I can’t do that. Somedays I enjoy being informed. Then there are days that are overwhelming and make me want to crawl in a hole. June 14 was one of those. We were months into the chaos fueled by the election of a man who relishes disruption and anger. The military had been called to confront American citizens in Los Angeles, a step fraught with dangerous precedent. Masked agents were abducting people off the streets in something that felt more like 1930s Germany than ...