Along the Shore

Nature enthusiasts of all ages can enjoy the Sonju Trail. | PENNY SEEBER

The Sonju Trail: Off the beaten path

By Michelle Miller

TWO HARBORS—The North Shore is an annual destination to see the changing leaves through the many trail systems the area has to offer. Visitors with limited time can enjoy the magic of the fall season on the Sonju Trail system that wanders along Lake Superior’s Agate and Burlington Bays in Two Harbors. The trails offer a variety of landscapes ranging from an almost sandy beach at Burlington Bay to rocky cliffs along the foot paths.

When entering the trail at Burlington Bay on 1st Street, it is a paved surface that meanders along the shore of Lake Superior, suitable for all levels of hikers and wheeled equipment. It then breaks into two different trails, giving walkers the option of following a foot path following the shoreline, not suitable for bikes, or veering off towards the historic lighthouse parking lot to remain on pavement. Both lead to the U.S. Coast Guard breakwall, which provides a grand view of the active ore docks in Agate Bay. A foot path then continues along the shore, ending the 1-mile trip near Van Hoven Park on Waterfront Drive behind the Lake County Historical Depot Museum.

Depot Museum employee Cheril Benvie has enjoyed 13 seasons of welcoming visitors using the Sonju Trail. Travelers have come from throughout the state, as well as abroad, including Finland, China, France and Germany. What sticks out to Benvie, when visiting with guests, is how surprised people are that Two Harbors has access to the majestic Lake Superior, gorgeous trails and such rich history. She is also proud of the local residents who enjoy the trails and their respectfulness in picking up trash and keeping it safe. New to the area, Two Harbors resident Hannah Weishaar says, “I pinch myself daily knowing I get to live here.”

Along the trails are memorial benches to relax on, sculptures and other signage explaining historical facts relevant to the area. The section of trail near the water treatment plant, connecting a portion leading to Burlington Bay, welcomes sightseers with a Two Harbors American Legion Post 109 Veterans Forest memorial. A family from the St. Cloud area enjoys this section of trail every year when they stay at the Burlington Campground. “We just love it,” they all said in unison. The trails are maintained primarily by volunteers and the City Park and Recreation Department and is not part of the Superior Hiking Trail system. Hikers wanting a longer experience, including the Superior Hiking Trail, can check out a map by the Depot Museum Train Display, which shows other trails connecting with the Sonju system.

The trails do pass by three historic sites along the route. The lighthouse, caretakers house museum and the aforementioned Depot Museum. The lighthouse, built in 1892 to accommodate the nearly 400 ships each season, is a year-round Bed and Breakfast, giving guests a breathtaking view of the harbor. The Depot is also open year-round with varying hours throughout the seasons. More information can be found at: lakecounty-chamber.com.

The city of Two Harbors, which is the seat of Lake County, was a village since 1888 and then incorporated in 1907. Sonju Trail enthusiasts can also enjoy a walking tour of the Historic Waterfront District through downtown Two Harbors. This eight block tour highlights businesses and private homes that were key in developing the city and several are on the National Historic Register. One of the stops is the Thomas Owens Residence—Owens was on the first train of ore brought down from the Iron Range. Other stops include the Scandinavian Co-operative Mercantile Store and the Two Harbors Carnegie Library. The Mercantile was established in 1893 and became the largest commercial building in the city; it is now housing for a local non-profit organization. The Two Harbors Public Library, built in 1909 with a gift from the Carnegie Foundation, is one of the only three original Carnegie buildings still operating as a library today throughout Minnesota.

Maps of the 27 sites to see on the walking tour are available at the Lake County Chamber’s visitor center on the north end of town off of Highway 61.

Although autumn is a poplar time of year to visit the area, the trails of Two Harbors offer amazing scenes unique to each season and worth more than one trip.

Mood Indigo: Cool jazz in the heat

By Peter Fergus-Moore

THUNDER BAY—It’s a busy time at Thunder Bay’s Anchor and Ore restaurant in the waterfront Delta Hotel come Friday evening dinner hour. Wait staff and bar staff are rushing to take and fill orders, while nearby concierge staff register incoming guests. Busy is a happy sound for a hotel, but around 6 p.m., it is about to get a lot happier, with the stylings of jazz combo Mood Indigo.

The trio set up in a small alcove in plain sight of the guests. Glenn Jennings, on keyboards and bass pedal, hits a chord, then launches into an upbeat jazz standard, while tenor saxophonist Mark Thibert gently riffs a soulful melody line. Anna Torontow, moving with the beat, belts out some opening vocalese before bringing her powerful voice seamlessly into the trio’s blend of cool jazz music for a hot summer evening.

“It’s a great atmosphere!” enthuses Jennings between numbers. “The Delta is pretty happy with us. Our music is suited to the crowd here.”

Thunder Bay jazz trio Mood Indigo includes Glenn Jennings on keyboards and bass pedal. | PETER FERGUS-MOORE

Torontow brings it down after some high energy tunes, with My Funny Valentine, so that the well-known standard rises above yet settles comfortably with the dining room ambience. That juxtaposition of blending with, yet standing out from, is just what Mood Indigo members are trying to achieve. How the combo achieves that is a matter of paying attention—to their own feelings and the audience in front of them.

“We connect with the audience,” says Torontow, “We’re not just singing flatly words from a page or notes from a chart. We’re really putting ourselves into it and emoting it.”

“Our music has always been very personal between the three of us,” Thibert agrees. “It’s always been an emotional experience where we have bonded with our audience. We’ve come into various audiences where it’s different mixtures of people and we’ll change up our set list so that our music facilitates the moods and the emotion of the audience that we’re playing to.”

“We are very respectful of one another— we listen; be creative with one another,” Jennings chimes in. “When I play a song, I might change up the tempo, or add colouration to the melody. Every time we play a song, we play it differently.”

Anna Torontow is the vocalist for Mood Indigo. | PETER FERGUS-MOORE

“Jazz is very improvisational,” Torontow agrees. “I hardly ever see Glenn or Mark play with a chart in front of them. They play solos in every song and I think you have to be really attuned to the people you play with, communicate with non-verbally in the middle of a song. They’ve made it so easy!”

Members of Mood Indigo are emphatic that they are playing as much as friends as musical colleagues. The present form of the combo, formed originally by Thibert in the 1990s, has been around since 2019, when Torontow joined as vocalist. Prior to that, each one came from another part of the province, bringing their own experience and passions into the mix.

Parry Sound-born Jennings came to the Lakehead in 1978 as an elementary school teacher of instrumental music, while Torontow moved north in 2010. Windsor-born Thibert came as a plastic surgeon, a discipline he still practices, and which, despite his time management skills, occasionally impacts Mood Indigo.

“He’s had to leave for an emergency if he’s on call in the middle of a gig,” says Torontow. “But it’s hardly ever, thankfully.”

Mood Indigo's tenor saxophonist Mark Thibert. | PETER FERGUS-MOORE

Each, especially Torontow, reflects that the Lakehead presents a unique opportunity for making music. “I think we’re very lucky to have found each other as a band,” she says. “We have a lot of drive to make ourselves better and it works really well. And also, there aren’t too many people saturating the market with jazz here. There are a few other bands, but we each do our own thing in a unique way.”

Mood Indigo members have had a busy summer, having applied for as many festivals and gigs as they could possibly play, only to be accepted for all of them. The band has played Live on the Waterfront, the Waverly Park Monday night concert series, and Chippewa Park, to name but three, in a single month alone. The Delta Friday evenings will also continue though October.

As the applause dies down, Jennings brings the energy back up with the brisk-tempo Ellington number, Take the A Train, a somewhat gutsy move as the tune is normally associated with a full jazz orchestra. Heads bob and toes tap in time to the tune as Mood Indigo is on the job, doing work they love.

The Duluth Folk School

Hands on in Lincoln Park

By Chris Pascone

DULUTH—Have you ever wished you could do woodworking repairs around the house, or sew up a worn-out garment? As inflation continues to shoot through the roof, people are considering how to re-use and re-purpose existing items, instead of paying inflated prices for brand new ones. But how do you pick up these home economics skills in your adult years?

Enter the Duluth Folk School, centrally located at 1917 Superior Street, in Duluth’s vibrant Lincoln Park Craft District. According to Bryan French, co-founder and Folk School executive director, the idea for the Duluth Folk School was born in May 2015. French’s idea was for Duluthians to get access to craft programming and abundant local educators without having to go to far-away folk schools.

The Folk School went on to hold its first classes in May 2016, but it wasn’t all easy.

“At first we thought it would be a great idea if we were nomadic,” French explains. “We didn’t want to have a home base. We wanted to serve the entire length of Duluth from Lester Park to Chambers Grove. But being nomadic turned out to be a terrible idea, because everybody wants to know ‘Where do I go to find you?’ And there was never a place to find us. My car was just full of tote bins all the time.”

French and his team eventually settled on a permanent home at their current location in Lincoln Park, “smack dab in the middle of town, and right on the bus lines.” But when they made an offer on the building, they knew there was a lot of reconstruction work ahead.

The Duluth Folk School offered a community rug felting project in 2019. The rug now hangs on the walls of the West Duluth branch of the Duluth Public Library. | SUBMITTED

“There was water damage in the building,” said French. “A firefighter was here for an event once, and he said ‘Oh, I was here when the sprinklers went off.’ He said it was like swimming in the basement to get to the water shut off valve. The building was in terrible condition.”

That’s where the true values of a “folk” school came into play.

“We got the Folk School community together, and people volunteered to come down and help us,” French recounts. “Folks were scraping glue off the floor. The dovetail cabin (housed within the Folk School building) was a community project. We collected the wood, milled it, brought it here and hand hewed everything, and cut the dovetails. We stacked the logs and built the whole cabin inside the school building.”

French takes pride in how the Folk School building itself is representative of the school’s purpose, saying “A lot of what we’ve done here is a demonstration of people learning how to build.” This community approach is alive and well to this day.

The Folk School has 108 teachers on its 2022 roster. One of them is educator and entrepreneur Cindy Hale, who is co-owner of Clover Valley Farms. Hale has taught vinegar-making, cooking, natural history, and orcharding classes through the Folk School. One of her favorite Folk School experiences was the Community Rug Felting Project in 2019, led by Mary Sannerud of Otlak Felt Studio in Grand Marais. Hale highlights the creative energy at the community rug events that were housed at the Folk School.

“We held multiple workshops where we recruited individuals to come up with design elements for the community rug, then people made some of the prefelts and did a final three-day event at the Folk School, where we laid out the rug,” says Hale.

Hale was enraptured by the community process.

“The actual felting of the rug involves literally dancing on it, rubbing it, and rolling it,” says Hale. “It was a three-day process and dozens of people of every age came and participated. Musicians played music. People were dancing on the rug. It was uber fun. That to me really epitomizes the potential of the Folk School. Bringing community together to learn about and actively participate in something they may not have heard of before, like community rug felting.”

Today the rug hangs on the walls of the West Duluth branch of the Duluth Public Library.

Another person who has been influenced by the Folk School in multiple ways is Kyle James, co-owner of Voyageur Tattoo. With a studio on the upstairs floor of the Folk School, James and his wife Charlie work in the Folk School space daily. James first got to know the Folk School when he took classes in how to use a circular saw, hand planing wood, and kayak rolling. James explains that having a personal teacher was key to the classes he took in the Folk School.

The Duluth Folk School has 108 teachers on its roster this year, offering a wide variety of classes. | SUBMITTED

“It’s so hard to ask a question, like a very specific question, to the Internet. A lot of the times you can’t find that answer without scouring and scouring. It’s just a lot easier to ask someone who has experience,” says James.

James, who is a tattoo artist, recalls that he was later checking out the Folk School newsletter (“because I’m always looking for that next thing that I can learn”), and saw a unique opportunity.

“They posted that they had a studio available for rent in the Folk School,” he says. “The space is so cool that I couldn’t say no. I spoke with Bryan French on the phone and met with him to lock down the space that night, because I didn’t want it to disappear.”

Today, Voyageur Tattoo has a five-star rating from 60 Google reviews, something James credits in part to the Folk School atmosphere.

“I’d say almost every customer has made some kind of comment about how cool the space is,” says James. “About how nice it is to be above the [Dovetail] Café here. It’s such a relaxed and intimate space, you can really get to know your clients, and they don’t have to worry about what getting a tattoo in front of an entire studio of people is going to be like.”

James and Hale both come back to the community feel of the space that French has worked so hard to cultivate. James defines it like this: “I’ve found that there’s a lot of openness in this space. There are so many like-minded people in Lincoln Park, and at the Folk School in particular.”

Today the Folk School is an open, collaborative space with a main classroom, a large café, and six studio spaces for rent. A listing of current class offerings can be found on the classes tab of the Duluth Folk School website (duluthfolkschool.com). French calls the Folk School’s range of courses as “generalist,” and says the school responds to local needs.

“We’re trying to contextualize what we do within our region. Folk schools are ‘putting their hand on the ground and feeling what the region needs,’” he says.

There is something to learn here for everyone with a desire to get back to hands on, “shoulder to shoulder” learning, as French calls it. Classes provide people the skills to build or re-purpose their own possessions, putting art and creativity into their lives, rather than just grabbing items off the Target shelves.