CALUMET — There are certain things you assume without checking. You assume Lake Superior contains water. You assume somebody somewhere in the U.P. is currently complaining about a roundabout. And you assume that when the Upper Peninsula holds an event called Pasty Fest, somebody eventually picks up the phone and calls The Daily Pasty.
Apparently not.
Pasty Fest is underway in Calumet this weekend, with the main festivities taking over downtown Saturday afternoon. There will be pasties, people judging pasties, the Pasty Pull, Renaissance costumes and even rutabaga bowling. And somehow The Daily Pasty has absolutely nothing to do with any of it.
Nobody asked us to speak. Nobody offered us a booth. Nobody asked us to judge anything. Nobody even sent Pasty HQ one of those lanyards that makes you look important while accomplishing absolutely nothing. We don’t claim ownership of the pasty. We’re not monsters. Cornwall can have whatever historical paperwork it wants. But we did name the damn newspaper after one.
Pasty Fest, meanwhile, has assembled what amounts to the Upper Peninsula’s annual governing body on meat-and-potato affairs. Commercial bakers compete, home bakers compete, and festival visitors get to help determine which pasty deserves supremacy.
The judging system is beautiful. Participants sample anonymously identified pasties, with colored toothpicks distinguishing the entries. Once you’ve decided which one is best, you return the corresponding toothpick.
That’s democracy, and we’ve spent 250 years making it more complicated than necessary. There are no yard signs, robocalls or political consultants explaining that their candidate didn’t actually say the thing everyone watched their candidate say. Nobody spends $14 million convincing you the blue toothpick wants to take away your snowmobile. You eat the pasty, select the stick and civilization continues.
East Fork Pasty Co. comes into this year’s festivities with serious credentials after winning the festival’s Best Pasty title in both 2024 and 2025. Previous winners have included Slim’s Cafe, The Matador and Suomi Restaurant. These people are professionals, which makes The Daily Pasty’s exclusion from the proceedings even harder to understand.
Then there’s the Pasty Pull, an event apparently created when somebody looked at a pasty and thought, “This needs weight classes.”
Pasty Fest has also embraced a Renaissance theme, bringing knights, jesters and medieval spectacle to downtown Calumet. Nobody knows exactly what medieval Europe would have thought about a modern Upper Peninsula pasty festival, but knights wore forty pounds of steel while attempting to stab each other with enormous pieces of metal, so we’re comfortable assuming they wouldn’t have been frightened by a rutabaga.
Which brings us to rutabaga bowling.
That’s a real thing happening at the festival, and sometimes journalism means recognizing when reality has already written the joke and having the professional discipline to get out of its way.
Yet amid all this cultural significance, Pasty HQ remains on the outside. There are sponsors, vendors, organized competitions and official media involvement. There is an entire functioning pasty establishment, while the newspaper called The Daily Pasty is sitting hundreds of miles away learning about it like some guy who just discovered his family held Thanksgiving without him.
Management briefly considered dispatching the newsroom to Calumet before somebody checked the driving distance. We remain committed to journalism, just not that committed.
Instead, The Daily Pasty will monitor developments remotely while beginning the difficult diplomatic process of seeking formal recognition before Pasty Fest 2027. We’re not asking for much. A folding table would be fine. Maybe a press credential. Possibly authority over the toothpicks.
To be clear, we respect Pasty Fest, its organizers, its competitors, the Copper Country pasty tradition and every person willing to spend part of a Saturday rolling a rutabaga toward bowling pins. Those are our people. We merely ask that next year, before convening the Upper Peninsula’s highest council of crust, meat and potato, somebody remember to notify the institution that was stupid enough to build its entire brand around the same food.
Until then, enjoy Pasty Fest. Eat responsibly, vote carefully, and whatever happens in Calumet this weekend, please don’t settle the gravy question without us.
We’re not ready for that kind of civil war.
