From the Duluth Trivia deck I found in a game at Savers.

1. How long has Duluth had a Symphony Orchestra?
2. The DSSO produced opera annually for 26 years. Which conductor began this tradition and in what year?
3. Where does the “concertmaster” of the DSSO sit?
4. What year did “Fitger’s on the Lake” open?
5. What year did the Fitger’s Brewery close?
6. How many years was the old brewery in continuous operation?
7. Who was Margaret Culkin Banning?
8. Who said that “The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in Duluth”?
9. Where in Duluth is the important collection of Eastman Johnson paintings housed?
10. What was the Hjemkomst?

On Dec. 4 I heard a reading of Suzannah Weiss‘s The Gay Agenda on the UMD campus.

The work is intended as a web series. When I was a student, creative writing students held ambitions to be seen by a dozen people in a one-act play on campus. Today, new media gives everyone with a talent for words an opportunity to be seen by thousands. As a result, talented young people can be alive with an ambition that I never saw as a student.

Over the course of a week, I celebrated my birthday, Duluth-style. In sharing the story with you, I celebrate the things about Duluth I like.

Last week, my ex-wife and I planned to get rid of her old car, still stored in my garage for the four years since she moved out. She bought a new car, I bought a new car, her 2002 Hyundai Accent still remained there.

The goal was to donate it to Community Action Duluth to let her get the tax deduction. But because it’s a donation, it needed to go when the towing company could fit the pickup in its schedule. Eventually it arrived.