Independent Bookstore Day at Foxes & Fireflies

Saturday, April 25th 2026

Independent Bookstore Day at Foxes & Fireflies

Today is Independent Bookstore Day and when Christine and I hiked over to Foxes & Fireflies, we found the place was packed with bookish folks. It was actually a bit too crowded for relaxed browsing, but it is certainly good to see the store doing well. Maria and Dave, the store's owners, confirmed to me that this is their busiest day of the year. In the year and half since the store opened, they've expanded their inventory and their open hours and soon they may outgrow their current, very cool space.

Foxes & Fireflies is a Superior success story. Our small city still has a local paper (Christine & I subscribe to the electronic version) and Maria Lockwood is a reporter there. A couple of years ago she was doing a story on Superior's small business incubator program which is based out of an ornate old building on Tower Avenue that used to be the local post office. The incubator provides space and mentorship to folks who want to start a business. Uffda Kombucha started in the basement of the old post office and has since moved to a larger space a few blocks north on Tower.

In the course of doing her story, Maria enrolled in the program and she, Dave, and their daughters decided to pursue the dream that became the Foxes & Fireflies bookstore. The store is currently housed in what had been the lobby of the old post office. Maria and Dave still have their "real" jobs but somehow between the two of them and their daughters they now manage to be open 7 days a week.

Foxes & Fireflies has both new and used books for sale and some of the used books are books I've traded in. Today, I traded three in, bought a book of poetry, got an amazing book of old maps for free, and also bought a sticker for Christine which really sums up our lives. The sticker reads "I don't have my ducks in a row... I have squirrels and they are everywhere."

The map book contains pictures of the antique map collection of retired journalist Willy Stern, who lives in a cabin on the shores of Lake Nebagamon. Stern provided wonderful, wry commentary on each of the maps. I read the book this afternoon and I learned and laughed a lot. A lot of the old map makers invented islands in Lake Superior to please their sponsors and many of the map makers copied each other so some fictions got propagated for centuries. And then there are the interesting omissions. As an ex-Duluthian and recently minted Superior chauvinist I was amused by a pair of 1899 coffee trading cards that on maps of both Wisconsin and Minnesota named Superior but not Duluth.