Climate>Duluth: Shodo Spring
Climate>Duluth host Tone Lanzillo interviews Shodo Spring, author of Open Reality: Meeting the Polycrisis Together With All Beings.” The program was recorded in the Duluth Public Access Community Television studio.
Climate>Duluth host Tone Lanzillo interviews Shodo Spring, author of Open Reality: Meeting the Polycrisis Together With All Beings.” The program was recorded in the Duluth Public Access Community Television studio.
Not much is known about the six postcards featured here, but they all have appeared in recent eBay sales by LL Vintage Antiques of St. Paul. They are collected in this post simply because they are of a similar style and are cards that haven’t appeared on Perfect Duluth Day before.
Amanda Agamaite, left, and Ben Hugus of Ursa Minor Brewing stand in front of the future home of Bean & Bear Bagels. The Lincoln Park brewery is remodeling the north end of its production facility at 202 S. 26th Ave. W. A deck will be built in the current parking lot. (Photo by Mark Nicklawske)
A Lincoln Park brewery famous for its beer and wood-fired pizza combination is opening a new restaurant space that will specialize in made-from-scratch bagels for the breakfast and lunch crowd.
Ursa Minor Brewing will open Bean & Bear Bagels, a grab-and-go bagel shop, on the north end of its brewery and warehouse facility at 202 S. 26th Ave. W. this spring. The new location will feature fresh bagels, bagel sandwiches and specialty coffee.
Visual artist Catherine Meier shares her journey from hauling cattle across the Great Plains to creating deeply immersive animations and drawings on Minnesota’s North Shore.
Making it Up North is a PBS North series that explores stories of creative artists, artisans and entrepreneurs engaged in honing their skills, following their passion and realizing their dreams.
The new song and video from Cloud Cult “feels like the prelude birthing of a new album,” according to bandleader Craig Minowa’s description on YouTube. “The ground this new musical nursery stands on was Ho Chunk. The Kickapoo River hugs this recording studio on three sides and is considered by some geologists to be one of the oldest in the world — 2 million years. There is spirit here, and it has stories to tell.”
Germany’s Osten-Hemmoor Bridge with a postcard of Duluth’s transporter bridge in the foreground. (Photo by Matthew James; postcard from the University of Minnesota Duluth, Kathryn A. Martin Library, University Archives)
Growing up in Duluth, I often heard that the lift bridge was the only bridge of its type in the world. I later learned that the world is full of lift bridges. Wikipedia lists 137 of them. But that doesn’t mean the claim isn’t true. The lift bridge was once a transporter bridge, a far more rare type of bridge. Aside from various hand-cranked bridges that basically amount to art projects, fewer than two dozen transporter bridges have ever been built anywhere in the world. Only eight of those are still in use. And the world only has one converted transporter bridge in operation: Duluth’s Aerial Lift Bridge. This Duluth Deep Dive takes a closer look at what Duluth’s bridge was like before its conversion by recounting my visit to two of the world’s remaining transporter bridges. One is the closest surviving counterpart to Duluth’s original canal bridge. The other gives a sense what the Duluth bridge might have looked like if the city had modernized the gondola instead of making the conversion to a lift bridge.
Found at a thrift store in Webster: a packet of 50 paper placemats promoting tours of the SS Meteor in Superior.
From starting a makeshift weather update during a forest fire to becoming a daily staple for locals and tourists alike, Java Moose is more than just a coffee shop, it’s a community hub.
Making it Up North is a PBS North series that explores stories of creative artists, artisans and entrepreneurs engaged in honing their skills, following their passion and realizing their dreams.
Some harsh criticism from a postcard sender 120 years ago.
This compilation shows various animation projects Duluth artist Jonathan Thunder has worked on in the past decade, including his own projects, collaborations and works for hire.
This postcard was mailed Feb. 23, 1916 — 110 years ago today. It shows the beginnings of the Duluth Civic Center, with the old Duluth Post Office at the center.
Arrowhead Community Garden has a 35-year history of growing fresh vegetables and building community by providing space for gardeners to grow food on land in Duluth’s Kenwood neighborhood. Openings are available for the 2026 season, so the group is seeking new members.
Illustration by Carl Gawboy.
Two fine-art exhibitions and the music of a Minneapolis recording artist are featured at the Duluth Art Institute in shows running through April 3. A reception for the artists is on March 26 from 5:30 to 8 p.m.
Introduction
Historic hotels worldwide falsely claim the globe-spanning author Joseph Conrad was a former guest. However, it should come as no surprise that, while struggling with the untitled manuscript that would become Heart of Darkness, Conrad stayed the winter of 1898-1899 in a top-floor suite of Duluth’s Spalding Hotel. It was a suite he destroyed with Mark Twain after the two writers met in the gilt-muraled hotel bar and things got out of hand. The incident might have been forgotten but for the young Duluth Herald reporter on the scene who wrote an article about it.
Conrad, 41, the Polish exile living in England, was stranded in Duluth because he’d missed the departure of his cruise ship. He’d dashed into town to get a tooth pulled and it simply took too long. He was going to catch the next steamer out, but the freighter Marchande wrecked at the mouth of the canal. Then winter arrived and shut down the shipping season anyway — and he was only interested in traveling by ship. So although he missed his wife of two years back in England, he decided to winter in the Spalding, dreaming up ideas for his manuscript, and hopefully, a title.
The Nimrods, five-time champions of the six-man American Birkebeiner Giant Ski Race in Hayward, recently attempted to conquer their biggest challenge yet: giant skiing across Lake Superior* as part of the Book Across the Bay race from Washburn to Ashland.
*a very small portion of Lake Superior
