Month: July 2013
Local(ish) author Roy C. Booth wins recognition
Novelist and playwright Roy. C. Booth is from Hibbing and still has family there, and he’s the special guest at the 21st annual Diversicon (held in St Paul, MN). Roy will share the stage with Jack McDevitt, Catherine Lundoff, and posthumous guests Cordwainer Smith and Peter Cushing.
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Help us with a theory
The other day, a friend and I were talking on Facebook about personality types according to Myers-Briggs and we noticed that, just in our circles of Duluth friends, there’s a huge proportion of one type of Myers-Briggs personality.
We then wondered if this was just coincidence or does Duluth have a larger-than-usual percentage of this relatively rare personality type.
So we’re turning to you all to help.
Please take this test (it’s free) and then post your results and the city in which you live. Thanks!
The test starts underneath the text box at the top of the page.
Changes to Arrowhead Regional Arts Grants
There are major changes coming in grant funding in the arts in our region. This notice will help explain some of them.
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Catnip: Egress to Oblivion?
This short film was one of the highlights of last weekend’s Free Range Film Festival in Wrenshall. Call this an encore presentation.
Bees!
Please help! We’re having a fence installed, and the workers were pounding a post near the garage when a steady stream of bumble bees started coming out of the ground. It’s fantastic! I’m thrilled to know that we are hosting these amazing little creatures. However, the fence workers want us to fumigate the hive before they continue working. We will not do this. So … any ideas? We won’t have the blood of a hundred bees on our hands.
Poll: Best Breakfast Restaurant
Through a recent poll about breakfast joints we have a disputable, yet official list of the five favorite places to seek ante-meridiem nourishment in the Duluth area. Now it’s time to determine which is number one, so again we ask the all-important question …
[poll id=”40″]
This poll is now closed. The results were …
Duluth Grill — 39.2 percent
Pizza Lucé — 21.6 percent
Uncle Loui’s — 17.5 percent
At Sara’s Table / Chester Creek Café — 15.4 percent
The Kitchen — 6.2 percent
Care Bears, Care Bears, Yeah – Live at Beaner’s
Someone tell us everything about this band, because we need to know right now.
OK, this is totally worth it. Trust me.
First, watch this real video about the 10 trips you have to take in your 20s.
Then, watch this spoof about the 10 trips you actually take in your 20s. Watch closely, particularly right after the JFK airport scene. It’s totally worth it.
Park Point Volunteer Surf Rescue
Help us raise funds to buy a rescue board! PPVSR T-shirts are $25 each, made in the USA, with a big logo on the back and a small logo on the front. Can be picked up or delivered — e-mail parkpointvsr @ gmail.com or post on our Facebook page. Thanks!
Ultimate Portrait: Mayor Edition
For inspiration in order to capture a “way out there” portrait, I posed the question to the Duluth Mayor Don Ness about the accomplishments he is most proud. This image is the result. See more of the story at photojournal.us.
This week: playgrounds, family trees and webslingers
Here’s a sampling of what you have to look forward to this week on the PDD Calendar.
After you wave goodbye to the last of the tall ships today you can go to the Grand Opening of the New Lester Park Playground tonight.
Revisit all the awkward hilarity of The Dating Game but with live Duluthians playing for love and big prizes at The Underground on Tuesday.
Spirit Valley Days starts up on Wednesday with music, a classic car show, and the Miss West Duluth Pageant and runs through Sunday with plenty of stuff happening every day.
Want to shake your family tree? There’s a free genealogy workshop at the Public Library on Thursday.
Every Friday during the summer (well, part of the summer anyway) there’re Movies in the Park at Leif Eriksen Park and this week’s movie is The Amazing Spiderman.
There are 34 events listed on Saturday and about half of them are free. You choose what you want to highlight, ’cause I can’t choose. Let us know in the comments.
So what are you doing this week? Can we tag along? Any upcoming events that you want to promote? Let us know.
The Deeps
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIVkUahcMLQ
Video Archive: Christopher Halverson – “Hollywood”
The intro song is Syd Straw’s “Future 40s (String of Pearls).” Then Halverson kicks into his original “Hollywood,” which was a mainstay over the years in his sets with bands such as the Mighty Shock Tower, Sloe Loris, Verona, A Band Called Truman, etc.
This one is from deep in the archives — recorded by UWS Studio II at R.T. Quinlan’s on Sept. 16, 1995. Produced by Brandon Leno. Edited by Brandon Leno and Margo Abramson. The one and only Eric Swanson was on the sound board. Production assistance by Renee Hudacek, Melissa Long, Paul Lundgren, Dinelli Seneviratne and Nathan Steigman.
StageNorth comes a wee bit South to Teatro Zuccone
Kate and I have often said that, if there were a suitable academic job there for both of us, we would move in a second to Washburn — halfway between Bayfield/Madeleine Island and Ashland, and so just close enough to wonderful things, but just far enough, away, too, to enjoy the quiet things: the best used bookstore north of Minneapolis and of Madison, one of the best bakeries (although there are so many great bakeries in northwestern Wisconsin, it is hard to choose), a cultural center with antique shops, local arts and crafts, and a gallery space that, among other things, hosted the awesome “No Reservations” exhibit last year. And a DQ. Every small town has a DQ.
Last night, I got a taste of the next best thing in Washburn: StageNorth Theater.
Mountain Biking at Spirit Mountain
By now you have probably heard that Spirit Mountain has been running chairlifts this summer for mountain bikers. There have been people here to ride from all over the country and even from Canada. These trails are getting some well-deserved attention and I want to let everyone know that if you have ever wanted to try mountain biking, now is the time to do it. With all of the other great areas to mountain bike in our beautiful city, such as Piedmont, Lester and Hartley, Duluth is making a name for itself across the country as a mountain-biking destination!
The above video by Higher Base Media is of the trail Candyland at Spirit Mountain.
What to do with extra garage door panels
If you really want to know why I have two extra garage door panels, go ahead and ask. For now, I’ll get to the point. What I find to be really annoying about having two perfectly good garage door panels is that it seems the best thing I can do is haul them to a junk yard and get them out of my way. Tell me if I’m wrong.
Is there anyone who warehouses stuff like this and sells them to contractors or the general public? A new panel costs $220 — that’s $440 for two — but the odds that someone who needs the exact size and color panels I have will search Craigslist and find out I have them for cheap are minimal. So these panels are likely to hit the dump by the time the snow falls, unless I get ambitious and recruit two friends to help me carefully feed them into the rafters so they can waste space up there for 20 years.
Godforsaken?
“Head up to Duluth along North Shore Scenic Drive which runs along Lake Superior. It’s Godforsaken country in the best sense of the term. I didn’t know beauty like that existed until I saw it.”
Jim Carlson: the drink
Rim a glass with an orange slice and sugar (designed to look like bath salts). Pour some Jim Beam high-proof bourbon in the glass. Light that badboy with a match to caramelize the sugar. Shake some “spice,” a.k.a. cinnamon, into the fire and watch the sparks fly. Add Kahlua, coffee and cream.
Lester River Swimming Hole
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BQIhvFyrkk
Is Duluth one of the “Cities where the most people have heart attacks”?
From USAToday:
Duluth, Minn.-Wisc.
> Pct. reporting heart attack: 6.2% (tied for 8th highest)
> Pct. obese: 26.9% (68th highest)
> Pct. who smoke: 19.6% (78th lowest)
> Median household income: $46,110
In many respects, people in Duluth were in better health than the country as a whole. For instance, the percentage of people with both high blood pressure and high cholesterol were below the national rate. However, nearly 27% of people surveyed were considered obese, higher than the 24.8% obesity rate across the country. Like most areas on this list, Duluth’s median household income was lower than the national median. In 2011, it was about $4,400 less than the U.S. median of $50,502. In addition, Duluth had a slightly higher poverty rate of 16.6% than the U.S. poverty rate of 15.9%.
USA Today Gets ‘Low’
The new Low documentary got a mention in USA Today‘s pop culture blog “Pop Candy” yesterday, written by uber-cool pop junkie Whitney Matheson.
‘Low Movie’: Indie band gets its own doc
Here’s the writeup:
Despite having been together for 20 years, the band Low has managed to remain pretty under the radar. This year the lo-fi Sub Pop artists are being celebrated in a documentary that looks as good as it sounds.
Low Movie (How to Quit Smoking) is directed by Phil Harder, who has been documenting the band for the last two decades with a 16mm camera. His film includes lots of never-before-seen footage from the band.
I admire Harder’s dedication to getting a good shot – which sometimes means persuading the band to get on frozen Lake Superior when there’s a 30-below wind chill.
Low’s latest record, The Invisible Way, was released earlier this year. Last week Pitchfork debuted a compelling performance video for the song “Clarence White.”
Low Movie screens July 29 in New York’s Film Society of Lincoln Center before showing in more than 20 cities, including San Francisco, Boston, Los Angeles and Portland, Ore. For screening info and more, head to the official site.