Monday, March 30, 2009

Cairns of Springtime


Late March, along the beach at Park Point, the first cairn I have ever seen made of ice.


One week later, nature brought us some glass sculptures in the sand.


And the St. Louis River gushing through Jay Cooke State Park, the surest sign that spring is coming...right after the foot of snow expected tomorrow.

Sunday, March 22, 2009

Film Premiere: Walking Into the Unknown

One of my first reporting assignments in the Northwoods was for a profile of Dr. Arne Vainio for New World Finn.

Dr. Vainio, half Ojibwe and half Finnish, is one very interesting guy. Besides being a husband, father, and a family physician, he writes about healthcare (you can read his articles at News from Indian Country), and has converted his own car engine to run on used French fry oil - which he gathers from local restaurants and processes in his garage.

As a physician, Dr. Vainio was frustrated that the hardest patients to reach were people who never came into his clinic - middle-aged Native American men. In other words - him. As he approached his 50th birthday, Dr. Vainio decided to face his fears of being on the other end of the stethoscope and become a patient in the doctor's office. To share his journey and inspire those hard-to-reach patients to take care of their own health, he brought along a film camera.

The result is the documentary "Walking Into the Unknown", which traces his journey through the healthcare system as he gains a deeper understanding of himself and the health risks he faces - including the cultural risks such as diabetes, heart disease, stroke, suicide, and alcoholism.

The film will premiere this Monday, March 23, at the University of Minnesota-Duluth's Marshall Performing Arts Center at 7:00 p.m. The premiere is free and open to the public.