Tag: Minnesota

Wild Rice Is Life

Nat Geo 3/35, Finlay Photograph by Clifton Adams

Four incredibly color-coordinated pale faces chat about patterns with Chippewa Chief Big Bear in Itasca Park, Minnesota back in 1935. His tribesman sold many items to visitors, including beaded bags, baskets, toy birch-bark canoes, and other handicrafts. They also held husking parties, such as these, with the intent to supply rice for sportsmen’s game banquets.

Asabel Curtis

While other tribes chose corn as their main crop, the Chippewa lived in a “place where there is food upon the water” surrounding the Great Lakes region. Wild rice, or “manoomin” in the Ojibwe language, was integral to their diets as well as their entire way of life. Wisconsin Chippewans have harvested manoomin for centuries.

https://www.sierraclub.org/

In 2018, Chippewa Indians from Turtle Lake, Wisconsin continued to gather in the name of rice, hosting their 45th annual Wild Rice Festival. The pow-wow was the showstopper.

https://www.hometownsource.com/

While rice beds have been diminishing, threatened by climate issues, pipelines, and mines, Chippewans struggle to protect the crop by reseeding lakes and waterways, hoping to meet the needs of their communities as well as pass on the culture to younger generations.

https://www.sierraclub.org/

Who knew wild rice was such a big deal? To most of us, it’s just a side option at restaurants.

Or a delectable holiday dish, such as this cranberry squash wild rice pilaf.

https://carlsbadcravings.com/

Seriously, I could eat that right now.

Check and see if your state celebrates wild rice as well. Why, we even have a Texas Wild Rice Festival in San Marcos! There’s the mayor floating the river in the middle of the festival.

thevoiceboxmedia.org

Prices seem fair in most places, even if you don’t get a pow-wow or float down a river.

And don’t forget to dress up!

Deer River Rice Festival, Grand Rapids Herald Review by Don Batista
Amazon

New North

Nat Geo Aug ’47

Back when this photo was taken in the summer of 1947, Penasse, Minnesota was the most northerly post office in the US. Nowadays, it’s Barrow, Alaska. I’m pretty sure we’re done acquiring new states, so Barrow will probably retain the title.

The man  who looks like The Skipper from “Gilligan’s Island” is actually Captain Young, a veteran skipper of the mailboat Resolute (not the S.S. Minnow), which had just arrived on the 50-acre island from Warroad, just shy of Canada. The poor-postured woman with her pelvis tucked beneath her is postmistress Mrs. Fran Cole. The two men beside her, one of which appears to be leering menacingly, are Chippewa Indian fishing guides for summer visitors.

Bills Are Rising, And So Is My Mailbox

Clifton Adams 1935

This Little Fork, Minnesota farmer was tired of state road plows burying his mailbox beneath 10 foot drifts. So he used his noggin and attached the mailbox to a log boom, resembling an old-fashioned well sweep.

“Kerbey, what’s a well sweep?” you may be asking.

Per http://galleryatwellsweep.com,

A well sweep is a device used to bring water up from a well. The term “sweep” refers to the long pole which is lowered until the bucket on the end goes down into the well and fills with water. Because the pole is anchored in the middle on another pole, creating a fulcrum, it can be counter balanced, thus making it easy to raise the pole, and lift the bucket from the well.

And never confuse a fulcrum with a philtrum–that groove above your lip that Millennials pierce.

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