It’s back.

Yesterday I was out at The Princess Bride with a couple of goslings and other uberfans at the Zinema for their excellent Saturday-morning-movies-for-the-whole-family series. That would have been awesome enough, but they threw in free juice boxes for the kids, but it got even better. In the place where we expected the opening previews, or maybe a video short to roll we were treated to this 2006 video, by Duluth’s Willie the Warlock

Willie the Warlock Youtube video

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After sitting around a fire in the dark with my band mates last night instead of running through our Homegrown set because we needed to flail, celebrate, berate, challenge and lock arms, I got to thinking about bands as vehicles for journeys. How communal music can be. With Homegrown coming on quickly, it’s an opportune moment to reflect on the power of collective music making, in a band and a “scene.” How it can weave together lives and a community.

Eight months or so ago I woke from my first nights stay in Duluth and slipped quietly down to the sand beach of Minnesota Point. Coffee in hand, sun gently coming up, and that now-familiar hum of the city in the background, I was excited to begin learning about my new hometown. And there in the wet sand, was etched “Is this Heaven?”

As a matter of fact I do earnestly believe in divine intervention and communication, and I took this message to me as a personal directive to find the answer to that question.

Eight months later I am still working on it. My heaven is not perfect, but it is generally a kind and gentle place. It is concerned for the weakest of inhabitants, and also for the Earth that we all share. For the most part it is clean and respectful and welcomes all.

I continue my quest to answer that question by joining the PDD community for what I believe to be some of the most important research of Duluth to date. Thanks for having me.

Coyote is hard at work on a new album. Our goal is to record our latest batch of original tunes before Marc hits the road in June! We’re taking the leap and have set-up a Kickstarter page with rewards / “pre-sales” of the upcoming CD and such.

We made a little movie to tell you all about it. Check it out…

Coyote CD Project on Kickstarter

The Kickstarter campaign goes until the end of April. Please join us and spread the word!

Thanks!
Jerree Small, Marc Gartman, and Matt Mobley

Photo by Rich Narum
Video by Ryan Dahlberg

Miss Abigail Schoenecker, editor of the PDD Calendar since September, is leaving at the end of March to pursue opportunities in the Twin Cities. The Perfect Duluth Day family wishes her well and will miss her talents — so much so that we will resist the urge to make disparaging comments about the Twin Cities to reinforce our Duluth exceptionalism.

Abby’s departure, of course, means there’s a job opening. If you are interested, follow the link and the instructions therein. Don’t fear the potential rejection; we’re pretty nice about it.

I just got back from Canal Park, where it was too darn cold and too darn wet to take any photos of the waves crashing over the breakwater, or of the chunks of ice in the spray flying at our heads.

My three year old, who according to Garrison Keillor is truly a Duluthian, loved every minute of the wind whipping, the slush slushing and the hoots and hollers emitted by her non-Duluthian transplant parents. I was reminded of another night on the Lakewalk, six or seven months ago, when we walked with this same girl on a beautiful summer night and watched the full moon create sparkles on the lake. (Oddly, there was no ice flying at us–must have been the direction of the wind.) I remember thinking to myself that my family and I were so blessed to live in this city. And I felt that way again today, as we watched the Big Lake crash: We are so blessed to call this beautiful place home. And home it has become–Keillorian and unwritten codes of citizenship notwithstanding.

So, I ask you, transplants (and homers, if you like)–when did you know that Duluth was home?

Here’s a photo from last year, and a poem I wrote as I meditated on the picture:

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I have a foggy memory of visiting the North Shore as a child. I remember the smell – a sweet and earthy aroma. Many years later as a young adult, I’d drive up from Minneapolis in the late spring or early summer, and pitch a tent in some random ditch, and I’d smell the same enticing thing – something like sweet maple combined with loamy pine and a hint of deer and/or skunk.

It’s that aroma that drew me to take up residence here (that, and the The Lake, of course). In the past three days, that same aroma has been drifting down from the forest to the north and northeast, into Duluth. What is that smell? What makes it so sweet?

Yesterday, my job brought me flying above Ely at 7000 feet just below some billowing and building clouds. The blooming trees below were fluorescent green, the forest was splattered with sun and cloud-shadow, the air was unbelievably clear, the lakes seemed so clear and clean.

My thoughts were, “My God, this place is so beautiful. I am so lucky to live here. If heaven is real, it would look like this.”

This feeling will last until September 29th, at which time I will curse this place as a wintery and gray hell-zone habitable only for wolves and ravens, who shall feed on the corpses of silly humans such a me.