Beverly Godfrey Posts

PDD Gift Guide 2023

Welcome to the 2023 PDD Holiday Gift Guide, an annual tradition that highlights products made in Duluth and the surrounding area. You’ll find 16 gift ideas here, but the comment area is open for suggestions.

Harry Welty raises the flag with latest snow sculpture

Harry Welty lit up his latest snow sculpture on Wednesday, an homage to Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s image of U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945. You can read more about the famed photograph at pulitzer.org. If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say the artistic statement being made is that America has been through a difficult time, yet the country, its people and flag endure.

The sculpture is clearly visible driving up 21st Avenue East, at 2101 E. Fourth St. Welty spoke with Perfect Duluth Day in 2016 and KDLH-TV the next winter about his ephemeral artwork.

PDD Gift Guide 2022

Welcome to the 2022 PDD Holiday Gift Guide, highlighting products made in the Duluth area that one might wrap in paper and put under a tree. It features 15 items, as usual, but the comment area is open for limitless other suggestions. Or email the editors at info @ perfectduluthday.com.

YouTube reviewer does not like Duluth Trading Co. boots

Boots sold by Duluth Trading Co. are the latest to be featured on the YouTube channel Rose Anvil. One trademark of the channel is that the reviewer (whose name I did not find online) cuts boots in half to show his 544,000 subscribers how they’re constructed. The nearly 22-minute review, featuring three styles of boots and titled “Embarrassing truth about Duluth,” is not a positive one. “We buy $500 worth of boots to see if Duluth makes stupid boots,” the reviewer says, “and they do.”

Duluth Trading Co. is not based in Duluth anymore but still bears the city’s name and operates a retail store at 300 E. Superior St. The company shares some of its history at duluthtrading.com.

PDD Gift Guide 2021

The 2021 PDD Holiday Gift Guide carries on the tradition of highlighting items with a local connection. What’s new is this year’s curator, as Duluth writer Beverly Godfrey takes a stab at finding those Duluthy treasures we love so much. She had a delightful time getting out to stores in person and encourages you to do the same.

Our list features 15 items, as usual, but the comment area is open for limitless other suggestions. Or email us at info @ perfectduluthday.com.

Drying out

Compared to many people, our house wasn’t hit too bad by the flood. But our living room was flooded, the floor messed up, and more than 100 children’s books, some of which I’m quite sentimental about, were soaked. Today, I’m hopeful that they’ll dry out enough to keep. As we looked through them, I saw this one in the mix. Hopefully, it will dry out, too.

This will be so great to see gone

Long-neglected house to be razed as Duluth ramps up fight on blight

I saw the above headline on the DNT website and thought, “I hope it’s that house on Mesaba.” Turns out, it is the house I was thinking of. Glory be!

Thanks to Mayor Ness and anyone else involved in getting this property cleaned up. If Duluth were some kind of Sims game, I’d say my happiness rating goes down just a little every time I drive by this house.

Political leanings

I don’t recall ever seeing a car covered in bumper stickers that wasn’t expressing a liberal-leaning point of view.

And I don’t recall ever seeing a sheet-of-plywood sign painted in block letters posted outside someone’s home that wasn’t expressing a conservative-leaning point of view.

Feel free to share your own examples and offer theories on why this is or is not true.

Not so sweet

To bank tellers, store clerks and post-office-counter workers:

Don’t ask my children if they want candy. And while you’re at it, and even though it’s far more appropriate, don’t ask me, in front of the children, whether they may have candy.

If it were 1931 and candy were a rare treat I couldn’t afford, it might be cool to get free candy. But candy is cheap, and my children don’t need more.

My children are not deprived of sweets. We have baskets full of Easter candy, stockings full at Christmas, Valentine’s candy, birthday treats, and fat pillowcases at Halloween. I realize that another lollipop isn’t going to tip the scales. But the 13 grams of sugar and Red No. 40 aren’t the only issues; it’s also about the message it sends.

When my 6-year-old daughter slammed the minivan door on her fingers, and I took her to urgent care, I thanked the receptionist who asked me whether she could have a lollipop, and I gladly accepted. But when the children’s only accomplishment is standing in line to watch their mother buy stamps, they don’t need a treat for that. I don’t want them thinking that candy is something you eat all the time. I don’t want them eating treats that, seconds ago, they were fine without, but now that it has fallen in their laps, they suddenly want.

Candy-givers, I know you mean well. But you risk taking well-behaved, happy children and turning them into crabby children on a sugar rush, or discontented children who feel like they’re missing out because mom said no to the free sugar.

The ubiquitous candy bowls and offers of treats are wearing on me. Please, make it stop.

Google map update

I just noticed that a new satellite image of my neighborhood is on google maps. The area used to be fuzzy and green; it was hard to see the houses clearly. Now we can tell that two people were getting out of my minivan when the image of my house was taken. It was taken sometime this summer.

The photo posted here is the Hartley Nature Center parking lot, not far away. The screen-grab doesn’t look as clear as it does originally. Maybe your house has been updated, too?

“Robin Hood” at the Duluth Playhouse

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A cast of 47 children takes over the Duluth Playhouse for two weekends in “Robin Hood.”

Baby genius

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Overheard in Target, 10 p.m. Dec. 22 amid Christmas shoppers. I probably wouldn’t have thought this was so funny before I had kids.
Indignant college-age woman to second indignant college-age woman:
“It’s just so, like, what a freakin’ 6-month-old would say!”

Y2K is so nine years ago

I am looking forward to the movie “2012” coming out next month. I’m glad they didn’t wait until 2012 to release the movie, cause, you know.
Someone has compiled a list of 22 possible ways for the earth to end in a couple years. My favorites are “Rise of the Machines” and “Time Travel Error.”

giraffe

While watching the trailer for the movie, I noticed they’re not forgetting to save the giraffes, not something I would have put on my short list to save.
I invite you to consider:
1. What do you think is the most likely way for earth to meet its end in two years?
2. What stupid thing would you try to save if you got a seat on a secret government ship?

Ah, September

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I’d like to welcome the best month in Duluth.

Duluth on AOL

The Duluth housing market is being featured on the AOL homepage right now. It’s time to buy a house, according to this headline.

Do NOT follow this link or you will be banned from the site!