My King Manor - Buy a Basket poster for the first half of 2020, first draft

I hope my poster can persuade more residents to purchase healthy food for themselves and for those that they love.

Bentleyville "Tour of Lights" 2019 - Part Six

I saw this cute angel on the west side of the Bayfront Festival Park Lois Paulucci Music Pavilion.  I consider myself to be very lucky to live in a city that invests so much into our public parks.

This angel is reflected on the water of the asphalt pavement west of the Lois Paulucci Music Pavilion.  I really love reflections on water and look for these whenever I travel outside my apartment.  Because this photo is slightly fuzzy, I should buy a good-quality tripod for my nighttime photography.

Bentleyville "Tour of Lights" 2019 - Part Five

This is entrance of the western tunnel of light, looking south.  This is the biggest red bow that I have ever seen.

I love how the lights of Bentleyville are reflected in the windows of the Pier B Resort Hotel.

Bentleyville "Tour of Lights" 2019 - Part Four

Can you blame a brony for including a picture of three really cute ponies?

Every year these two horses are walking toward Noah's Ark.  Yet, these horses must be disappointed that they can never get on the Ark.

Bentleyville "Tour of Lights" 2019 - Part Three

Santa’s Big Show circus has arrived in Duluth, Minnesota!

I saw many cute and adorable animals performing their best tricks for us audience members.

Bentleyville "Tour of Lights" 2019 - Part Two

Next to the eastern entrance is the display that celebrates the UMD Duluth Bulldogs 2019 National Champions, looking west!  I’m sure that a display for the UMD Bulldogs is in the United States Hockey Hall of Fame located at 801 Hat Trick Avenue, Eveleth, Minnesota.

This is the eastern entrance to the world famous Bentleyville "Tour of Lights", looking west.

Bentleyville "Tour of Lights" 2019 - Part One

I took my photo on the skywalk between the Duluth Transportation Center and the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center, long south.

I took this photo in the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center parking ramp, looking west.

President Barb asked me to create this King Manor Dining Room poster.

President Barb intends for our King Manor residents’ parties to be social events, not a free grab and go market.

I found a cool Lakewalk photo I took for a journalism class article.

Here is the picture I used for my journalism class article, “Bike ride into the past: Duluth’s Lakewalk”.  While article images were dropped from the page, yet the text is intact. 

Here is the link to my Lakewalk article.

 

http://www.theumdstatesman.com/blog/2010/05/06/bike-ride-into-the-past-duluths-lakewalk?rq=lakewalk

I have posted my blog article text I wrote for you here.

Chapter One:  One citizen's viewpoint

"When I see an adult on a bicycle, I do not despair for the future of the human race." - H.G. Wells

Nearly every day from March until November, I make an honest effort to bicycle or walk on the Duluth Lakewalk. I prefer off-road, paved trails. Here, there is little chance of becoming road kill by an inattentive motorist. The Lakewalk has no steep hills to bike up or ride my brakes down. Unlike city streets, there are no recycling boxes or trash cans to avoid, no bike-eating potholes to avoid, and no possibility of running into someone's mailbox. I don’t have to dodge parked cars, or get my eardrums blasted by someone's thunderous car stereo.

Before each bike ride, I check the weather, inspect my Trek 800 Antelope bicycle, and fill up my bike's water bottle. I double-check to make sure that I have some money just in case I get a flat tire and need to take the city bus back home, and lastly do some warm-up stretching. Sometimes, I eat two containers of Dole-mandarins or orange gel. These tasty treats are rich in vitamin C and appear to give me about a 2 or 3 mile-per-hour increase in my overall speed for 20 to 30 minutes after I eat these.

What is it like to start a bike trek about noon from Lake Place Park and bike five miles to East 47th Avenue? I got really hungry and decided to eat lunch at Sammy's Pizza. You might say that my lunch was one of the best pizzas I have ever eaten.

Over the years, I've encountered many friendly people on the Lakewalk. Once, my bicycle chain slipped while I was shifting gears. While I was attempting to get the chain back on the gears, another bicyclist stopped and offered to help me. This man stayed with me until I had gotten my chain back on the gears and was able to pedal away.

Being a lifelong Duluthian, I have seen what the Lakewalk has become. I also knew what was before the Lakewalk was constructed.

Chapter Two:  Let's take an imaginary bicycle ride into the past, before the Lakewalk was real world asphalt, concrete, and wood.

"Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world. It gives women a feeling of freedom and self--reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel . . . the picture of free, untrammeled womanhood." - Susan B. Anthony

Before the construction of the Lakewalk, there were few public access points for people to enjoy Duluth's lakeshore. The shore could be accessed from four points: the Ship Canal, Leif Erikson Park, Lester River, and Brighton Beach. Ever since the 1970s, walking and bicycle advocates alike dreamt about a cross-town bike path. Unfortunately, their dreams only went as far as written proposals and lines wishfully drawn on city maps.

Walkers and bicycle riders made their own "informal foot paths" along the railroad tracks between Canal Park and Brighton Beach. The term "informal foot path" was coined by my father, a professional outdoor writer, to describe footpaths created by walkers and bicyclists where no official footpaths or bike paths exist.

However, the walkers or off-road bicyclists who used these informal paths were trespassing on private property. The private property was owned by railroads, small scale industry, warehouses, junkyards, and filled-in areas created by dumping the debris and rubble from demolished buildings. As a child, I saw this section of the lakeshore was littered with bits of carved stone, piles of broken bricks, and iron plumbing pipes. Where Lake Place Park now stands was a flat stretch of land, for a railroad yard and abandoned warehouses.

These informal paths were narrow and uneven. They were often muddy, and you had to pass through thick underbrush. Residents and tourists often walked along the active railroad tracks — which was dangerous and not to mention illegal. Only the brave and the bold chose to trespass across private property in order to reach the lakeshore for daytime fishing, swimming, and rock collecting. At night, these areas would transform into dark stretches of land that attracted lovers, underage drinking, graffiti artists, and drug dealers.  With the limited public access far fewer people visited the lakeshore than they do today.

During the 1970s, Canal Park was a declining industrial area and Grandma's Restaurant was the only popular destination in Canal Park for local citizens. The block-long parking lot between Canal Park Drive and South Lake Avenue used to be a major junkyard surrounded by an ugly fence and connected by a railroad spur. Canal Park was only a destination people drove through — not drove to.

Amy Norris, employed by the Duluth Parks and Recreation Department, told me that in the 1980s the first phase of the Lakewalk was the stretch on the lakeside shore of Canal Park to East 27th Avenue. It was constructed along with Interstate 35. Before the construction of the highway, the area was occupied by a railroad yard, warehouses, junkyards, and a few low-income homes.

In the 1980s, communities of all sizes and all over the world were rediscovering their waterfronts. Abandoned or underused industrial land was transformed into parks, restaurants, retail shops, and hotels. Following this worldwide trend, Duluth city planners revised a 100-year-old plan to create a world class park on Canal Park's lakeshore side. This park plan appears similar to today's Leif Erickson Park's Rose Garden.

In the end, the city never had enough money to construct the park as this plan proposed. City planners applied for and obtained federal grant money to build this project as a part of the 1986 Downtown Duluth Waterfront Plan. This plan proposed the Lakewalk, along with a number of other enhancements, to improve the quality of life for Duluth citizens. In 1992 and again in 1994, Lake Place Park won the Federal Highway Administration’s "Excellence in Highway Design" award.

The federal grant money was used to get waste rock to greatly extend the lakeshore and create the first phase of the Lakewalk. Without the waste rock, the city couldn’t have afforded to extend the lakeshore and build the Lakewalk on the expanded shoreline.

The Lakewalk’s official southern end is at Bayfront Festival Park, according to the Duluth Parks and Recreation webpage. The trail from Bayfront Festival Park to Canal Park is on existing concrete sidewalks. However, some city park maps show the southern end as the intersection of Morse Street and Canal Park Drive.The first section of the Lakewalk was constructed from Canal Park to East 21st Avenue. Later the trail extended to East 27th Avenue. The Lakewalk now actually ends 20 blocks. However, interesting to note, many websites have not been updated and still show the trail's northern end at 27th Ave. East.

The technical terms used by architects and city planners to describe the Lakewalk is a greenway or a linear park. These are parks are longer than they are wide, They were designed for recreational use and non-motorized transit. Such long and narrow parks are common throughout the world — the most famous being the Promenade Plantée in Paris, France; the High Line in New York City, and the Midtown Greenway in Minneapolis.

However, the Canal Park section of the Lakewalk is unique in the world in having three trails constructed along the same corridor. The first trail is a 7-foot wide boardwalk that is intended for pedestrians, which starts at Canal Park and ends the Fitger’s Inn pedestrian bridge. The second trail is a 10-foot-wide asphalt trail, intended for bicyclists and roller-bladers. The third trail is a 12-foot wide gravel path for carriage rides that extend from the corner of the Lake Park to Morse Street.

The Lakewalk attracts more than one million visitors each year, according to Tom Kasper,  the Duluth city gardener. The Lakewalk has become a world class showcase, a world away from what was not so long ago underused industrial property. It has become a signature for the city of Duluth. It plays an important role in keeping Duluth citizens healthy, while giving them a safe path to bicycle or walk to downtown employment. Currently, this section of the trail is now 6.2 miles long.

Think of the Lakewalk as part city sidewalk, part scenic drive. For people walking along some parts of London Road, the Lakewalk is the only direct way to go from one avenue to another. On East Superior Street, it provides a much needed second sidewalk. Compared to city sidewalks, the Lakewalk offers a shorter and safer route connecting major Duluth parks, hotels, restaurants, and shops.

Chapter Three: Bicycle into the future

"For instance, the bicycle is the most efficient machine ever created: Converting calories into gas, a bicycle gets the equivalent of three thousand miles per gallon." - Bill Strickland

This year, city planners hope to extend the Lakewalk to East 60th Avenue. In 2011, the city has plans for an extension of the Willard-Munger Trail. The trail will run from West 75th Avenue to Canal Park, linking up with the Lakewalk.  In 2012, the fourth Lakewalk phase will connect East 60th Avenue to Highway 61. I suspect that longtime walking and bicycle advocates will be very happy that their vision of a paved, off-road, cross-town trail will finally be complete on the day the fourth and last section of Duluth's Lakewalk officially opens.

Albert Einstein once wrote, "Life is like riding a bicycle in order to keep your balance, you must keep moving."

Duluth must keep on moving forwards into the future and keep building bicycle pathways to connect all Duluth neighborhoods into one bicycle network.

Within a few years, I can imagine that Duluth will become a cycling utopia.

Chapter Four:  Dairy Queen delight

"Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride." - John F. Kennedy

After I get back to Canal Park, I usually reward myself with a large ice cream cone at Dairy Queen. I bicycle uphill to my apartment, and carry my bike into the building and into my apartment. I park my bike besides my window overlooking the Canal Park. I drink some water or orange juice and do a little stretching.

While I write these words, I can see both my bike in the foreground and the Lakewalk in the background. Unlike some bicyclists, I do not have a pet name for my bicycle. Yet, when I'm maintaining my bike, sometimes I talk to it about our next bike ride.

Vision Northland construction continues in December 2019

Even during a Minnesota winter, construction on the Vision Northland tower continues.

This three year construction project will give me many opportunities for great pictures.

Adas Israel Congregation Synagogue building demolition continues

According to my friends, workers from Construction Services, Inc. plan to clean up the remains of the Adas Israel Congregation Synagogue before the New Year.

These ruins were a huge pile of splintered wood, and therefore were a risk to public safety and a potential fire hazard.  The Construction Services, Inc. cleanup crew is almost done hauling away the building debris.

More discounted food that I bought at UMD Stores Duluth

I’m basing my food intake on MyPlate a graphic image that depicts a place setting with a plate and a glass.  By following these guidelines, I’m eating more grains, fruits, and vegetables than I did in the past for a healthier me.

What I bought yesterday at Build-A-Bear Workshop® at Miller Hill Mall.

After eating the tasty 3 piece Pub Fish Fry for my dinner at Lucky's 13 Pub, I bought a very cute, Songbird Serenade plush pony.  I had believed that all these limited edition plush ponies had been sold out by now.  Yet, I bought the last one that this store had on the display shelves.

I revised my poster for the King Manor Residents’ Club Christmas party.

Due to an unexpected scheduling conflict that Club President Barb told me about yesterday, the King Manor Residents’ Club Christmas party will be postponed one week.  My apologies for any confusion and disappointment you might experience.  Also, professionals in advertising get all kinds of last minute requests for changes in their advertising pitches.  Thus, this revision is excellent experience to obtain the type of jobs I’m looking for.

I created another poster for the King Manor Residents’ Club.

Upon request of President Barb, I crafted the words for this King Manor club poster to persuade residents and guests to attend our fun Christmas Party.

I found another delicious brand of coffee creamer.

I save much money shopping at the discounted goods shelves at Super One and at UMD Duluth Stores.

I got my King Manor Co-op fruit and vegetable baskets

This fruit basket gives me this much fruit for five dollars!

This vegetable basket gives me this much fruit for five dollars!

I found fifty percent discounted food at UMD Duluth Stores.

While remembering that discounted items does not mean these items are free, I only bought the amount that I could afford to purchase.

I will have three meals from these three packages of noodles.  I had first written means for meals, but corrected it before I posted my blog post.

I often purchase discounted food at UMD Stores Duluth, Minnesota

With careful expenditures of my limited money, I eat healthy food without running out of money before the end of every month.

Upon request from Club President Barb, I made two, King Manor kitchen posters.

My poster is to keep residents from using this club oven.  Barb told me that several King Manor residents are too lazy to clean their ovens after they use them to cook their food.  Thus, these residents use this oven instead of their apartment ovens.

My poster is to keep residents from using this club food warmer to cook their food.  Barb told me that a King Manor resident has mistaken our club food warmer as a “pizza maker”.

I have a very special free food offer from the King Manor, Buy a Basket Co-op.

Because of a Monday snowstorm, taking orders for fruit and vegetable baskets has been pushed back until Tuesday.  Also, on my revised Co-op poster I have corrected “Dinging Room” to “Dining Room”.

A perplexing public notice on King Manor’s fifth floor bulletin board.

I imagine that someone lost a bus card in clothes dryer number eight and the card will be given to the building’s ground floor Housing and Redevelopment Authority office workers on Monday morning.  As I have written before, there are many topics to blog about near you, if you take the time to look for these topics.

An image of a Duluth Minnesota sunset

My close friends tell me that they love the pictures of the harbor views I take from my apartment.

These are the very best pot pies that I have ever eaten.

What more can I say about these yummy pot pies?  This image also gives me an opportunity to practice my page layout skill set.

I have a very special free food offer from the King Manor, Buy a Basket Co-op.

Because of last month’s free food offer, the King Manor Buy a Basket Co-op got a total food basket order of $205 dollars in November 2019.  That was the biggest amount of money that was ever spent to buy our good for your health food baskets.  I hope we can obtain an even larger amount of orders for December 2019.

Question: What are your biggest personality quarks?

I am a perfectionist and overachiever.  Because of that, my love for academic research sometimes rivals that of Twilight Sparkle.  Herein is an example that resulted in a happy outcome while I was writing Vast Brewing Company a D&D supplement for Polyhedron Magazine.  I spent two days reading a lengthy book on brewing in the medieval period.  I then wrote one paragraph on using specialty brewed beer as tonic medicine.  However, I had never seen beer healing tonic in any prior D&D adventure or supplement.  Thus, it was a wise investment of my time to add this little-known trivia to archived, D&D campaign ideas.

To overcome my weakness on spending too much of my time researching any one project, I currently ask my editors what my desired world count is before I write my manuscript.  I then write that amount of words, plus ten percent more.  I then send my completed manuscript to my editors for their evaluation.  These extra words give my editors some leeway to craft the final form of my manuscript, while giving them a sufficient number of words for their publication.

A thought for your consideration:  “Stay strong, as the future is bright.”

Note:  A friend of mine told me that I sometimes have “research euphoria”, when my research into a topic gives me an emotional high.

For my dinner, I ate an Applebee's Big Tex Chicken Taco Salad

It was a great meal and I will look forward to eating another one very soon.

My apartment’s postal worker sometimes gives me other resident’s mail

I’m going to hand this letter to Craig Stein, as this appears to be an important letter.  I wish that my apartment postal worker would pay more attention to when he or she is distributing our apartment’s mail.

The Rainbow Community Center is closed this Tuesday

I wonder what the reason is to close the Rainbow Community Center this Tuesday.

Light and reflections at King Manor’s fifth floor

I have posted an artsy photograph to start your morning with a smile worthy of All Might from the television series, My Hero Academia.  While I was taking out a stack of old newspapers to my apartment recycling bins to get my apartment ready for inspection this fine morning, I saw this wonderful image of light and reflections.

I’m cleaning my apartment for a Monday inspection

It took me much scrubbing to get all the stains off my kitchen floor.

A historic winter blizzard blankets my city with snow.

This picture of downtown Duluth was taken during the worst of the blizzard.

This picture was taken a few hours later, as visibility has started to increase.

King Manor’s fourth floor bulletin board on November 28, 2019

It is fun to observe these posted messages on King Manor’s fourth floor bulletin board slowly change from month to month, and from year to year.

My free tour of the Great Lakes Aquarium

I got a free ticket to the Great Lakes Aquarium with my free DECC Thanksgiving meal.  I created a funny message with the shipwreck poetry word building blocks.

Thanksgiving at the Duluth Entertainment Convention Center (DECC)

This is my first DECC meal and I loved every bite of it!

This is my second DECC meal, that was well worth the effort to travel to the DECC a second time to eat my Thanksgiving feast!

Thanksgiving snowstorm in Duluth, Minnesota

This is a view on the north side of Superior Street, between North First Avenue East in the background and North Second Avenue East behind this image.

Minnesota Coaches in Duluth, Minnesota

I saw this coach let off what I think is a boys’ hockey team in front of the Sheraton Duluth Hotel.  It then parked on First Street, between North Third Avenue East and North Fourth Avenue East.

Vision Northland construction continues for November 23, 2019, Part Two

I found much graffiti painted on this concrete pad-mounted, electrical transformer box that’s located north of Superior Street and south of the Essentia Health-Duluth Clinic First Street Building.

I wonder why this backhoe engine was idling, while these lights were turned on during the daytime.

I’m standing on the south side of Superior Street, while looking up at North Fourth Avenue East.  Vision Northland will bring big changes to this area in the next three years.