Pinback button with illustration of Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox used to promote “Minnesota Kick Butts Day,” an event held to support people quitting smoking. Manufactured for the Minnesota Smoke-Free Coalition, 1999.
Peterson wrote this poem from a hospital in Arizona for his mother while she was gravely ill in Minnesota in hopes that she would see it in the Chicago Tribune. She didn’t live to see “Memory Quilt;” it was coincidentally published on the day of her funeral. Moe, Lawrence. “The Poetry of Colorado Pete.” Shevlin, MN: Clearwater County Historical Society, 2008.
Gene Ritchie Monahan’s oil-on-canvas painting of Norval Morrisseau, an Anishinaabe artist known as the “Picasso of the North.” Oil on canvas, 1969. 20 x 16. Used with the permission of Jean E. Monahan Kelly.
Originally published in March of 1930, “Nothing Will Matter” displays Peterson’s frequent themes of lost love and melancholy. Moe, Lawrence. “The Poetry of Colorado Pete.” Shevlin, MN: Clearwater County Historical Society, 2008.
A flyer advertising a rally held on September 4, 2008, at the Minnesota State Capitol and sponsored by the Anti-War Committee. The rally took place during the 2008 Republican National Convention, held in St. Paul at the Xcel Energy Center, at a time of elevated conflict in Iraq.
A soldier in Bravo Co., Second Battalion, 136 Infantry Regiment (2-136) surveys the area in Al Naumyah, Al Anbar province, Iraq during operation Sledgehammer, December 2006. Photograph by the Minnesota National Guard.