January 2013 Posts

Gage Salyards’ Healing Journey

Duluth photographer Gage Salyards is battling papillary thyroid cancer, but he still has plans to study with one of the most famous and renowned travel photographers on the planet, Trey Ratcliff, in New Zealand. Obviously all of his financial resources of late have been invested into regaining his health, so he’s doing what all the artsy folks are doing these days and reaching out to the Internet for help.

See his gofundme.com campaign to make a donation, and check out his portfolio and more information about his photography at eyeamgage.com.

His workshop begins on Feb 6, so the clock is ticking. As of this posting he is 3/4 of the way to his $10,000 goal.

Cold weather experiments at Great Lakes Aquarium

We’ve been conducting a variety of cold weather experiments at Great Lakes Aquarium this week. The location is just about perfect for it; right on the waterfront in Duluth with a door connecting our classroom lab to the outside.

This video should serve as a reminder to make sure your hair and your clothes are completely dry before heading out.

Ordering baby chicks anyone?!

I am looking to order baby chicks from a hatchery in February and I only want 10, but the minimum order during these cold months is usually at least 15 to 25.  I am wanting to order some rare breed chickens such as Silkies, Polish, and some other Bantams. If you are interested in ordering some as well and want to go in on an order please let me know or if you know anyone locally that has these breeds I would be interested in that as well!

mcmurrayhatchery.com

Duluth Album Releases in 2013

Breanne Marie
Six Strings of Peace & Sanity

(Jan. 1)
Available on Bandcamp
Recorded, mixed and mastered by Eric Swanson at Sacred Heart Studios

Duck Duck Punch
Human Chemistry

Truth No. (Jan. 15)
Available on Amazon

Dave Mehling
Broke Heart Songs (EP)

(Jan. 19)
Produced by Dave Mehling and Michael Morris; recorded at the Barn in Northfield

Wildlife Rehab Report, 2012

We report the numbers of animals rehabilitated to the state every year at Wildwoods Rehab.

Children’s Entertainers

Does anyone know of any fun children’s entertainers in the Duluth area? Balloon animal artists, magicians, uni-cyclists — anything will do!

Muslim Journeys Bookshelf

FYI. Harold P. Erickson Library at Lake Superior College is among the 842 libraries and state humanities councils selected to receive the Muslim Journeys Bookshelf, a project of the National Endowment for the Humanities Bridging Cultures initiative. The twenty-five books and three films have arrived at the library. ALA will ship additional materials, including bookmarks, bookplates, and posters, in mid-February.

A glimpse of Duluth in 1948

Scenes of Duluth start at the 1:37 mark in this 1948 documentary on Finnish-American life in Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota. (Thanks to Dwight Swanson for the tip.)

Women’s Words on KUMD

I love this new(ish) show on KUMD. Check out recordings from past shows here [Jill Hinners, Deborah Cooper, Cheryl Reitan, Sheila Packa, Gail Trowbridge, Meredith Cornett (total self-promotion, please forgive me), and many others!]. “Women’s Words” airs at ~1:30 and 3:30 p.m. on Sundays as part of the Women’s Music Show. If you are a (woman) writer willing to do a short reading from your work, they want to hear from you!

Cold weather experiments

I don’t want to see our area children suffer from a lack of knowledge today with no school and am hoping parents or day care workers send them outside for cold weather experiments and share them on PDD. But be careful.

Jambox – 01.18

When is the Friday night 2AM Jambox snowboard video in the Central Hillside going to get posted? Six people pulling a snowboarder back on a bungie to go off a makeshift ramp onto a dumpster, over a wall, and down to the old Daugherty Hardware parking lot. Awesome. Props to the snow removal guy in the Bobcat that freaked them all out until he explained he wanted to help them move snow for a better landing.

Wikimapia

It’s kind of a weird name, it’s something that I discovered while doing “armchair” history research, and it’s become a hobby of sorts. Wikimapia is sort of like Wikipedia + Google maps, or as they put it; “a multilingual open-content collaborative map, where anyone can create place tags and share their knowledge.”

So basically if you sign up, (which it’s free), you can draw polygons around locations like a building, park, or historical places and then add the information about it, add photos, tags and what have you. Once it’s saved, others can view it, comment on it, or even update it as well if they have something new to add. You can add lots of other information too, like roads or railroads.

I know that there are some people here who dig history and know a lot of facts about our area, so I just thought it’d be cool to share and hope that maybe they will share their knowledge on the site as well, or at the very least, simply just looking around it.

Wikimapia

Sax-Zim Bog in New York Times

“Welcome to the Sax-Zim Bog,” said our guide, Steve Weston. “Tonight we’ll be going through the towns of Sax and Zim, population nothing.” Moments later we drove by a snow-dusted, abandoned trailer, the front door hanging off one hinge. This was downtown Sax. Zim, a few miles to the north, wasn’t much more. Both are remnants of failed attempts to farm the bog that date back to the early 20th century. Now they are ghost towns surrounded by 200 square miles of wetlands.

In a Minnesota bog, a festival of birds

Idle No More Jingle Dress Dance Event in Duluth, Radio Documentary

Here is something that I have been working on. A one-hour radio documentary collection of sounds and voices from the Jan. 11 Idle No More Jingle Dress Dance demonstration through the streets of Duluth. It airs at 11 a.m. today on 89.1 FM WGZS in Cloquet. In case you are like the other 100 million people who will be instead listening to and viewing the inauguration of President Obama at that time on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday I have posted it online for people to listen to anytime in the form of a YouTube video.

I am still unhappy with some of the mix, the narration and my writing, but I am happy with being able to share these voices talking about this remarkable, historic event.

This week: a parade, a long kayak trip and a journey down a rabbit hole

  

Here’s a sampling of what you have to look forward to this week on the PDD Calendar.

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and a parade is happening this morning downtown. Stay warm, paraders!

Lucas Will will talk about his 97 day kayaking trip around Lake Superior at Duluth Pack on Tuesday.

The Duluth Playhouse Children’s Theatre opens Alice in Wonderland at the Marshall School Auditorium on Thursday and it runs through Sunday.

There’s a variety show for the benefit of local theater legend Liz Larson in Lincoln Park on Saturday.

The Fusion Belly Dance Show on Saturday at Teatro Zuccone features a variety of styles – steampunk, Bollywood, gothic, tribal, and more.

Playwright John Patrick Shanely will be speaking at St. Scholastica on Sunday.

So what are you doing this week? Can we tag along? Any upcoming events that you want to promote? Let us know!

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