With the opening of the popular Bentleyville USA Tour of Lights yesterday, Duluth has put on its Christmas hat yet again. With nearly three million lights illuminating dozens of displays, Bentleyville proclaims itself as the largest holiday light display in the Midwest. The panoramic image above of downtown Duluth, the waterfront, and the Bentleyville display is a previously unreleased image from 2009. A notable addition to the 2010 display is a 120-foot tall steel-fabricated Christmas tree adorned with 50,000 LED lights that jive in sync to the tunes of "Jingle Bell Rock" and other Christmas favorites.

Bentleyville 2010 Tour of Lights is open daily November 20 through December 26, weather permitting. More information can be found here: http://www.bentleyvilleusa.org.

On November 10 each year, the staff and visitors at Split Rock Lighthouse observe the tragic loss of the Edmund Fitzgerald and its 29 crew members aboard with a special beacon lighting ceremony. The 35 years that have passed since that fateful 1975 storm may seem like a long time, but the relative recency of its sinking has immortalized its place as one of the best known Great Lakes shipwrecks.

The ceremony also commemorates the loss of all vessels on the Great Lakes, a handful of which brought Split Rock Lighthouse into its very existence. Even as modern technology has obsoleted the lighthouse, it remains a symbol of the great efforts to ensure the safety of maritime travel.

This is the sixth consecutive year that I have photographed the beacon on November 10. The weather was mild compared with most years, but the wind was blowing hard and sent waves splashing over the rocky shore, some of those reaching my feet. That said, the agitated waters on this evening did not remotely resemble the stormy seas of November 10, 1975. We can only imagine . . .