Up North: Little Dolls and Big Feet

Two newish girlettes chose names for themselves on the way up north to Lake Superior for Marz's birthday:
Forager (in the yellow raincoat) and "Smoky" Kendall Duquette (in red coat--her name is from a roadside fish shop & bar where we bought sugar-cured smoked lake salmon).

The lake waters were choppy and green.

We stayed in the long narrow Skiff House (a skiff is a long, narrow boat) of the Two Harbors lighthouse airbnb. 

You can see the white stern of an ocean-going ore ship parked along the tall loading docks. Little train cars run along the dock tracks carrying ore (or grain and stuff) to dump into the ships. (I think.) Funny to think we could reach the Atlantic from here: the ships go through the other Great Lakes and out through the St. Lawrence Seaway.

They were fascinated:

Each night after midnight, an ore ship came into harbor, to the accompaniment of what sounded like car alarms going off.
Foolishly, though forewarned, I did not bring or buy earplugs.

But the main thing that disturbed my sleep was the book I was reading:
Not To the Lighthouse (below, under CANADA), which I got for a dollar at the Carnegie Library in town, like a sane person would read, but Max Brook's new book, Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre.

I should stick with the nice things, like the flowers, fruit, and books I got in town:

But, no. I had to read the book with the blurb from Davis Sedaris on the back that reads, "stuff-your-fist-in-your-mouth horror".

I'd thought Devolution would be smart creepy fun like Brooks's World War Z.
It's smart, yeah––(Sedaris again: "laugh-out-loud social satire")––
but it's not only scary, its human cruelty and failure is disturbing.
While WWZ reads like Studs Terkel's "The Good War": An Oral History of World War II, Devolution is like Safe Area  Goražde--a journalistic graphic (cartoon) book about the Bosnian War by Joe Sacco.

I lay awake the first night in the isolated Airbnb--there were no other guests. The book was so good, I finished it the second night,
so, for another night, it was me and the boat alarms and Big Foot and the criminal foolishness of humans––foolishness like not bringing or buying earplugs, but with FAR GREATER ramifications. 

I picked up Granta 141: CANADA (Autumn 2017) in a free book drop in Duluth. It has a great a photo spread by Doug Coupland (I've never read him--we have a couple of his books at work, I'll pick them up).
Coupland writes:

"In the year leading up to this I started collecting objects that, in some way, evoked a sense of Canadianness in me."
And... "They're evocative of the old 19th century still lives by William Harnett or [John F.] Peto. " --via Arts & Culture

This is his "Bacon":

I'm inspired: I have a pile of Minnesotan stuff at the thrift store--donated stuff I've set aside to photograph. I hadn't thought of setting up a tableau.
I'll do that!

The third night, the airbnb was booked, mercifully. We moved to my favorite motel on the edge of town. (No Sasquatches or ship alarms, but the room did smell of cigarette smoke.)

It rained all night. In the morning Forager got to tromp in the mud in her raincoat, while "Smoky" Kendall Duquette waiting in the doorway.

 

I caught up on sleep and came home refreshed and inspired... and forewarned: buy earplugs, and don't move to utopian enclaves.