I had a great visit today at Magers and Quinn, an independent bookstore in Uptown in Minneapolis. They have accepted three books of mine -- Highpointing for Tibet, Adventure Relativity, and Mountain Dreams -- to include in their store and on their web site. I'm happy to see those books included there.
0 Comments
The History Press, a division of Arcadia Press, has announced that my book Historic Disasters in Southeast Minnesota will be released April 11. It is an account of three serious events in the region, including the wreck of the Sea Wing, the Armistice Day Blizzard, and the Mississippi River flood of 1965. All three were devastating and cost significant lives and money. I was able to get good photos from area historical societies to illustrate the events. I'll post a link to the book's page in here in the near future.
Big River Magazine published an article I wrote about wing dams in the Mississippi River. They were used to force the current of the river into the center to scour the channel deeper as boats grew in size and navigation on the river became more important to agriculture and business. It's a good magazine and I am happy to see my article included there.
The Red Wing Republican Eagle, where I was a reporter for three years, just ran a very nice article about my new book Mountain Dreams. It captures the essence of the book very well, and also includes several photos. Here is a link to the article.
In 1922, Ralph Samuelson experimented with different types of boards and different angles until he finally rose out of the water on Lake Pepin near Lake City and created the sport of water skiing. This summer is the 100th anniversary of that event, the 50th anniversary of Water Ski Days, and the 150th anniversary of the founding of Lake City. An article I wrote about Ralph and his accomplishments is in the January/February issue of Big River Magazine.
Since retiring from working at the newspaper, I have been writing a book about the first decade of my climbing experiences -- about the people I met and learned from, and the places we went for climbing. It has been fun to reconnect with those people, remember the exciting climbs we made, and try to assemble them in a book. The book includes 30 photos of these early experiences as well as accounts of the process of learning all the many important aspects of climbing on rock, ice, and mountains. Read more in the publications section of this website or check out the link on Amazon.
Earlier I wrote about an article I completed for Big River magazine about the invention of water skiing in Lake City. That is still scheduled for the January issue. I followed up on that with an article about the history of wing dams in the Mississippi River. These were rock and brush dams that were designed to funnel the water into the center of the river to make it deeper and help create a better channel for navigation. That article will be in a spring edition of Big River. More on this later.
In January 2019, we launched a series in the RiverTown newspapers called 101 Things To Do In RiverTown. It was a look at all the interesting and fun activities and places that this region offers. This project was one of my focus assignments, and I spent many days driving around Minnesota and Wisconsin to talk with people and photograph their venues. We started by publishing one each week, alternating between the two states. All was well until COVID hit. Then, many of the locations were either closed or unsafe for us to recommend people to travel there, so we started publishing one every three or four weeks, using only the topics that were outdoors or otherwise safe to visit during the pandemic. Slowing down meant the project would take longer than its intended two-year cycle. In fact, it added on one year, as we published the final installment last Saturday. When I retired in March, I made sure that the articles and photos were in order. It's been interesting to be retired, yet still see my articles being published. With Stop Number 101, a cuckoo clock museum in Minneapolis in print, the project is finished. It was a great assignment for me, and I am happy that we were able to finish it in spite of the virus. Nice to see it completed.
Water skiing was born in Lake City, Minnesota, in 1922, when Ralph Samuelson strapped two boards, each eight feet long to his feet, and after many attempts, finally skimmed along the surface of Lake Pepin. This July will be the 100th anniversary of that event, so I wrote an article about his exploits. It has been accepted by Big River Magazine and is slated for their January 2022 issue.
I was saddened today to learn of the passing of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the Hungarian-American psychologist who is the father of Flow theory. I heard him speak in 1996, and he influenced every class I taught for the next twenty years. I wrote several articles which included pieces of his work, and his theory formed a large part of the theoretical framework for my dissertation. He changed my teaching and the way I view life. He leaves behind a significant legacy.
|
Photo by John Jancik
AuthorDr. Steve Gardiner is the author of nine books and over 1,000 articles. |