Stories from our multi-cultural iron range world

I am a seventeen-year admirer of Barton and Ross Sutter, as very creative brothers who call Minnesota the center of their artistic lives. I have read everything Bart has published, and I give away his book about Duluth - Cold Comfort, (UM Press, 1998) - to everyone I meet who wants to know the divine truth about Duluth and Lake Superior.
The velvety baritone voice of Ross is one I always want to hear again and again. And I will! For early-bird recipients of The Reader Duluth, you can catch these brothers at the West Duluth Library at 59th and Grand, starting at 6pm on Thursday, September 15.
I went to the Two Harbors Public Library presentation last week, and enjoyed the poetry and song, and I laughed at the characters and stories they shared about northeastern MN. We met Lefty, Sofi, Dorothea on the roof-top, as well as the ‘peat box king of Koochiking. We visited Isabella and Finland, and we shared a ‘post-interment-basement-lunch’ with the neighborhood. From Ross we learned that ‘dreamers never win and doers never fail.’  
Bart shared from his many collections of poetry, and Ross used his dulcimer, guitar, and button-box to accompany his many songs. This treat was shared about a dozen times around the Iron Range and Northshore. I hope you were in the audience.

Dante (Lindsay Swan) looking for light Photo © Maria Baranova-Suzuki, Imperial Imagery, and Ben Tobin

The Wastelands, a traveling folk opera based on Dante’s wandering

This past Saturday (and Sunday) an opera with seven stopping points took place in the maze professionally known as the Duluth Timber Company, right in the armpit of the Duluth harbor, just minutes across the water from the rising and falling lift bridge. No joke!
Children of the Wild, an opera company based in the Twin Cities, has created The Wastelands, an operatic event bringing the language of Dante’s Purgatorio to some of the environmental issues of the great lakes. The seven Cantos of this opera focused on darkness, filthy water, filthy air, stones for lunch, hardness of emotions, and coldness as a replacement for love.
Excerpts from Dante’s poem were sung in Italian, with all the music composed by Walken Schweigert, who sang while playing several instruments, all the time dressed as a skeleton image of the poet Virgil, guiding Dante through the experience of Purgatory. Lindsay Swan, as Dante, played cello, and attempted to understand the hinterlands of this environmental purgatory. Michael Hulburt was dressed in black, played trombone, and exchanged burning torches with Katie Burgess, as two souls caught in purgatory, longing for someone’s prayers to release them.
Without question, this was one of most enigmatic performances I have ever attended. Burgess kept succumbing, then reviving, while Hulburt challenged her and Swan (Dante) to come to some understanding about this life that was neither hell nor heaven. Redemption seemed to elude everyone except Virgil.
The most exciting Canto was V, ‘Where Only Coldness Remains.’ Amore was at the center, and Burgess and Hulburt threw eight burning torches back and forth to each other until all the flames of amore were extinguished. Ultimately, Dante and Virgil came nose to nose as they shared a final ‘L’animo ‘e creato ad amar’ (The soul is created to love).
All four of these performers are amazing athletes, musicians, and communicators. The broken boats, engines, lumber, and waves of Lake Superior added to the haunting effect of the evening. The music was somewhat monotonous at times, but that went along with the narrow ledge separating love and despair throughout the evening. A few dozen people walked this journey through purgatory and went away more aware of some issues concerning water, earth, wind, and growth that should be of concern to all of us in 2016 and forward.
Thanks to Children of the Wild for sharing an image of The Wastelands with us in Duluth.