DULUTH! Its Dulcet Syllables Ravish My Delighted Ear!
A Double-Length Worthy Reads for February 2026
Welcome to Worthy Reads, where I share some links that I think are worth your time. Everyone gets the first half. The second half is paywalled. The paylisters keep me writing, though, and this is their special treat. If you want all-in, subscribing is cheap.
“Walking Duluth,” by Chris Arnade:
When I asked him his backstory (born and raised in Duluth, worked at the hospital) and if he thought of moving, he looked at me like I was a crazy person, asking a crazy question. Move? What do you mean? Why? The weather? You mean to someplace where I couldn’t go out on the ice and catch fish? Where I couldn’t go hunting in the afternoon? Where I couldn’t have dinner with my parents at night? Where I couldn’t hang with my buddies at Roscoe’s?
Place still matters to Americans, and few places place as hard as Duluth does.
For nearly ten years now, I’ve enjoyed Chris Arnade’s travelogues from far-flung places. He strikes me as having a talent for finding the soul of a place. Place is a vanishing thing in this hyperconnected world, but Arnade susses it out everywhere he goes. Of course, since I’ve never been to most of those places, I didn’t have any way to validate what he wrote.
But, this time, he came to my backyard to write about my people.1
I love this piece for lots of reasons, though, and only most of them are parochial.
I think a place matters a great deal. I’m not sure I can articulate why, except to refer you to my favorite work of G.K. Chesterton’s: his pre-conversion novel The Napoleon of Notting Hill. In this peculiar, remarkable book, Chesterton frankly admits that to care intensely about one particular patch of streets and dirt—to elevate one dreary London suburb above every other London suburb—just because it happens to be yours… is utterly absurd. Then he turns around and insists that it is sacred anyway:
“Only feeling, sire,” answered the Provost. “I was born, like other men, in a spot of the earth which I loved because I had played boys’ games there, and fallen in love, and talked with my friends through nights that were nights of the gods. And I feel the riddle. These little gardens where we told our loves. These streets where we brought out our dead. Why should they be commonplace? Why should they be absurd? Why should it be grotesque to say that a pillar-box is poetic when for a year I could not see a red pillar-box against the yellow evening in a certain street without being wracked with something of which God keeps the secret, but which is stronger than sorrow or joy? Why should any one be able to raise a laugh by saying ‘the Cause of Notting Hill’?—Notting Hill where thousands of immortal spirits blaze with alternate hope and fear.”
So long as the loons cry out over the frozen lakes, so long as men say “you bet” while shoveling their neighbors sidewalks, there is a part of me always ready to man the battlements at Fort Snelling, tho’ it be ringed about by all the armies of Wisconsin, and die for Minnesota. This seems good and healthy and normal to me.
It seems that many Minnesotans feel something like this, somewhere inside them. Contrary to popular belief, we are not a nation of movers, racing all over the country to find the best opportunities. That’s the impression we sometimes get from the media. It’s part of our national story, and it’s very typical of the rich and powerful. Nevertheless, according to the Census, two-thirds of Americans currently reside in the state where they were born. In Minnesota, that figure rises to just shy of three-quarters. An overwhelming majority of Americans live less than an hour from their mothers; a solid third of Americans live within 30 miles of all their adult children and parents. We are a rooted people! The human species puts down roots!
Of course, a lot of this is about wealth. The rich and powerful leave their homes, in part, because they have enough money or social capital to do so. For the rest of us, much of our wealth is in our homelands: the plumber who’s a friend of the family who will do you a favor if you promise to return it later on. The old friends who pitch in to help you move when you get out of the apartment. The parents willing to contribute enough free child care to make your two-income household actually make economic sense. This is all literal monetary GDP-style wealth. Many of us couldn’t financially afford to live apart from our roots, even if someone paid all the costs of moving across the country.
On the other hand, many of us don’t want to move anyway. Our places are thick with the intangibles that make life actually worth living. My evenings with my parents eating free food are economically rational, sure… but also something I look forward to every week, because my parents are delightful. I wouldn’t give up Thursday night burgers for a million bucks.2 Nor would I give up sledding days, or the autumn leaves, or the frantic rush to enjoy summer while it lasts, even if it meant I never had to rev up my snowblower again.
You feel all this in Arnade’s piece. It is a good piece. Go enjoy a few minutes in Duluth.
When you are finished, perhaps you may also enjoy Rep. Proctor Knott (D-KY)’s famous 1871 ode to Duluth. Knott was being sarcastic (see also: these background details), but Minnesotans, with the passive-aggressive cheerfulness for which we are justly famous, refused to recognize the sarcasm, and have celebrated the speech ever since:
Duluth! The word fell upon my ear with peculiar and indescribable charm, like the gentle murmur of a low fountain stealing forth in the midst of roses, or the soft, sweet accents of an angel’s whisper in the bright, joyous dream of sleeping innocence. Duluth! ‘Twas the name for which my soul had panted for years, as the hart panteth for the water-brooks.
Of course, given ICE activity in my actual neighborhood over the past few weeks, I can’t help reading all this back to myself and turning my thoughts to the immigrant. Given how much most normal people value their place, how much must it hurt to leave that place, especially for an entirely new country? My great-great-grandmother left one of the most beautiful counties in Ireland in 1873 for Ellis Island. She never saw Ireland again. She did that for us. It cost her dearly. This is why exile was once the worst penalty that a criminal could face, short of execution. We may reasonably assume, then, that, whatever their legality, most immigrants do not come to America lightly. For the same reason, deportation is an awful punishment—even though generally lawful and often necessary—which we should inflict only with great sobriety and sorrow, especially on those who have been here long enough to put down roots.
Similarly, our civil war is going to hurt. Indeed, it’s already hurting. I know people who have left their Minnesota homeland simply so they can live in a red state. I know people who have moved to Minnesota from that same red state simply so they could live in a blue state. We all know others like this. Given the tribes’ sharply divergent visions of the Good, I think political relocation is an entirely defensible choice. But the cost is sharp, the fact they are willing to pay it to be with their own tribe is alarming, and it’s only going to get worse as polarization deepens toward violence. My nightmare is finding myself at the final battle for Minnesota after all… but as part of the invading army.
A Recording of “Raissa” from Invisible Cities, by Lydia Laurenson:
Raissa
In Raissa, life is not happy. People wring their hands as they walk in the streets, curse the crying children, lean on the railings over the river and press their fists to their temples. In the morning you wake from one bad dream and another begins. At the workbenches where, every moment, you hit your finger with a hammer or prick it with a needle, or over the columns of figures all awry in the ledgers of merchants and bankers, or at the rows of empty glasses on the zinc counters of the wineshops, the bent heads at least conceal the general grim gaze. Inside the houses it is worse, and you do not have to enter to learn this: in the summer the windows resound with quarrels and broken dishes.
And yet, in Raissa, at every moment there is a child in a window who laughs seeing a dog that has jumped on a shed to bite into a piece of polenta dropped by a stonemason who has shouted from the top of the scaffolding, “Darling, let me dip into it,” to a young serving-maid who holds up a dish of ragout under the pergola, happy to serve it to the umbrella-maker who is celebrating a successful transaction, a white lace parasol bought to display at the races by a great lady in love with an officer who has smiled at her taking the last jump, happy man, and still happier his horse, flying over the obstacles, seeing a francolin flying in the sky, happy bird freed from its cage by a painter happy at having painted it feather by feather, speckled with red and yellow in the illumination of that page in the volume where the philosopher says: “Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment, then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city contains a happy city unaware of its own existence.”
It seems like every smart, cool person read Invisible Cities years before I ever even heard of it.3 I remain very grateful to the friend of mine who gave it to me as a Christmas present.
It’s a very strange book. It isn’t a story. It’s a series of short prose-poems, like the one above about Raissa (which I have reprinted in its entirety). Each prose-poem describes a different city. Every city described is completely imaginary, often outright fantastical. Yet every city has something special that is at once unique and universal.
I limited myself to reading one city per night, so as to enjoy them each to the full. The book is not long, only 55 cities in total, none longer than a few pages. Laurenson’s page has several of them, which gives you a nice taste of the book. (The recording itself is better on speakers than headphones.)
“A Partial Explanation of Zoomer Girl Derangement,” by Zinnia:
Girlhood ends when the world looks at you. One day, you wake up and you’re a sex object. This is terrifying. Men want you and they are bigger than you and stronger than you. They do not see you, they just like what they see. Hungry eyes: how do you keep rabid animals at bay? But if you are of a certain disposition, you may feel a certain kind of thrill, walking into a room and having all eyes on you. Men may be bigger and stronger, but you are smarter. If you bat your eyes at the man from across the bar, he’ll buy you a drink; if you cry when the police officer pulls you over, he’ll let you off easy.
As you come of age, you must confront a paradox: your greatest source of power, your desirability, is your greatest source of vulnerability. Girls react to this paradox in various ways: some girls retreat into themselves, despising the male gaze; others embrace it, perhaps out of insecurity, perhaps out of ambition. Whatever the case may be, as you come of age, you come to terms with it. You accept your desirability, but you do not let it define you; you pursue other things, hobbies, interests, passions. You do not resent the male gaze, but you do not hunger for it either. This is the healthiest way to come to terms with your newfound status as “sex-object.”
Unlike the author of this article, I have never been a Zoomer girl. I welcome Zoomers and/or girls to tell me if this article is right. As a Millennial boy, however, this one rings true. Girls start out as just a somewhat confounding species of people, and then, gradually, you find that a cute girl’s laugh makes you weak in the knees, and a well-endowed girl teaches you that hypnosis isn’t just something they made up for Saturday morning cartoons.
This is terrifying. For a man, adolescence begins when he finds himself carried away by a powerful beast, galloping faster than he previously imagined possible, completely out of control. It ends when he bridles that beast. (Some never do.) However, at least we’re riding the beast! Women are stuck standing in front of it! That must be terrifying!
I like this piece because it goes through several seemingly unconnected disorders common to modern women and, with admirable economy, suggests that they are all simply disordered responses to awareness of the male gaze. Of course, the truth is rarely so monocausal. Reality is much too complicated. However, there are a lot of weird things going on in male-female relations right now, and it would be a lot less weird if they were all at least connected by some common explanation.
Curiously, the author wrote this piece to launch her Substack almost two years ago. It went moderately viral, successful far beyond anything I’ve ever published… and then she never published anything again. Tweets a lot, though, so I guess she’s okay—or, at least, as okay as anyone who tweets a lot ever is.
“My Childhood Friend, Renee Good,” by Jane Clark Scharl:
Here’s what I remember about Renee: she was gentle and thoughtful, very much so. She was, even as a teenager, a remarkably careful listener. Even during high school – years when many of us turn inward and become self-obsessed – Renee persisted in looking out for others. She had beautiful light-blue eyes, and the rare ability to look directly into another’s eyes while they spoke.
She had a beautiful voice, too, both singing and speaking. Her speaking voice was a little husky, but when she sang, it was clear and sweet. I have a distinct memory of standing in our newly completed youth group room one Sunday evening – it must have been winter because it was dark outside – singing praise and worship songs. We were Presbyterian, so we weren’t particularly good at singing praise and worship, but I remember Renee’s voice coming through, confident and lovely, carrying the rest of us.
This article is a simple enough plea to remember the human. It breaks no new theoretical ground. It will not change your mind about Policy or Justice or any other capital-p Principles. But the world is not fundamentally about capital-p Principles, any more than the world is fundamentally about capital-p Physics. The world is about us. All the capital-I Intangibles exist for us.
I belong to the camp that tends to view4 Good’s killing as tragic, caused by stupid decisions on all sides, but (despite that) legally justified and morally acceptable. However, even for those of us who think there was no crime in her killing—perhaps especially for us—it is important to look at her life and remember that she was a person, infinitely loved and terribly, terribly necessary.
Here arrives the paywall. In the rest of this installment, subscribers get to read about “Luigism,” my surprising-to-me hesitation about free speech, some opposition to the word “priors,” the debt ceiling and the looming fiscal crises, and the squalidity (that’s a word, right?) of American cities. All this plus the three5 videos of the month! Not bad for $4.17 a month!
