Month: November 2016
Poll: Best Bakery in the Duluth Area
With your help, we’ve compiled a list of swoon-worthy bakeries in the Duluth area.
It’s a highly subjective exercise. It may be that a fruit tart warms your heart or a cake donut pleases your gut. Whatever the case, it’s time to make a show of support for your favorite purveyor of sweet and glutenous treats.
The nominations are in. Now it’s time to vote and have a say. What’s the Perfect Duluth-area bakery?
This is a runoff poll, which means options will be whittled down over time. We started with 14 nominees; it’s now down to the Final Four: Duluth’s Best Bread, Johnson’s Bakery, Lake Superior Bakehouse and Zenith Bread Project.
This poll is now closed. The results were:
Duluth’s Best Bread – 38 percent
Zenith Bread Project – 27 percent
Johnson’s Bakery – 20 percent
Lake Superior Bakehouse – 15 percent
DTA Passenger Entrance Music
While riding a Duluth Transit Authority bus last night and listening to my head phones, I came up with a very simple way of amusing myself. Whenever the bus stopped to pick up a new passenger, I clicked my mp3 player forward to the next random track and imagined it was the chosen entrance music or “theme song” for that person. Try it out sometime. It’s my gift to you.
Russell Prather’s “Rope” takes Arrowhead Regional Biennial prize
Russell Prather’s “Rope.” Photo by Tim White.
Russell Prather’s “Rope,” a hanging piece made with acrylic on layers of polyester film, took the $1,000 first-place prize at the Duluth Art Institute’s 61st Arrowhead Regional Biennial last week. Prather is a professor at Northern Michigan University who teaches British literary and visual culture of the 18th through 20th centuries. (more…)
Positive Post-its at Denfeld
This is how Denfeld responds to hate #PostThePositive #TakeBackOurWalls ❤️ pic.twitter.com/k9OMUiyuuW
— Johanna Unden (@johannaunden) November 15, 2016
Last week racist graffiti referencing U.S. President-elect Donald Trump was found in a female restroom stall at Denfeld High School. The student body responded this week, posting inspiring messages throughout the school. The movement was led by Denfeld’s student executive board and the video was posted on Twitter by Johanna Unden, the exec board’s student school board representative.
What is the best Duluth-area bakery?
The decline of the corner bakery in modern America could be considered one of the greatest food-related tragedies of our time. An 85 percent decrease in standalone retail bakeries occurred in the United States over the past 40 years, according to Retail Bakers of America.
With this in mind, it seems important to show our local bakeries some love. That’s why our latest poll will decide the perfect Duluth bakery.
Nominate your favorite by commenting on this post. It will be a purely subjective poll, of course. Comparing an old-school institution stocked with traditional sweets like Long Johns and Bismarcks and a newfangled shop specializing in artisan breads and delicate pastries is a bit like comparing apples to oranges, but the idea is to choose an overall favorite.
Feel free to nominate bakeries that double as coffee shops and serve food or the supermarket variety, if you’re so inclined.
After much geographical consideration, we’ve determined any bakery within 16 miles of the Aerial Lift Bridge is eligible for nomination. That means establishments in Superior, Hermantown, Proctor and the many bordering townships qualify for nomination, but more distant places like Two Harbors and Cloquet do not.
Once we have a good pool of nominees, the poll will commence.
PDD Holiday Socks
We’re going to try something, offering some PDD Holiday swag for you to sport at your holiday gatherings. You can pre-order some Warhol-ish funky socks with the PDD smokin’ reindeer on them.
If 20 or more people order them, the order goes through, and everyone receives socks in about 4 weeks. If less than 20 people order, they don’t get made. So spread the news, we’ve only got 7 days.
Click here to order:
bakdrop.com/products/perfectduluthday
Climbing Palisade Head
GoPro video by Lucas Huibregtse.
PDD Quiz: Novembeard
The month associated with facial hair is upon us! How well do you know Duluth denizens by their beards? Let’s find out!
The next quiz will be an end of month review of November 2016. Send your question ideas to lawrence @ perfectduluthday.com by Wednesday, November 23.
Edmund Fitzgerald
[arve url=”https://youtu.be/0M9b8zZtoPQ”]
I missed posting this by two days, but it’s still worth a look.
Customized Alphabet Letter Wall Art
Words From Nature is a new business created for an entrepreneurship project at the University of Minnesota Duluth. Our business allows customers to customize their home decor by creating their own alphabet letter art. Our large collection of letters are pictures from the outdoors and illustrate the beauty of nature. All of our pictures were taken by us, and only offered by us. (more…)
Message to a White Boy Who in Some Ways Reminds Me of Me
Dear Russell:
I want to tell you some things that might not make sense. I wish an adult would have seen me clearly enough to know I needed to hear similar things when I was 18. Do you know what I mean when I invoke the impact of being seen?
You’re a sharp kid. Like a lot of sharp kids, especially ones in their first semester of college, you know both way more and way less than you realize. I was the same way. So was—so is—every other adult, including every other teacher, you’ve known and will know.
You should accept nothing from us as truth before vetting it against your own inquiry. We do probably know more than you and your peers know about some things. We also tend to indoctrinate young people instead of helping them become autonomous thinkers. Please heed Walt Whitman and “re-examine all you have been told in school or church or in any book, and dismiss whatever insults your own soul.”
By “inquiry” I mean deep, active curiosity that includes interrogating your own thinking at least as much as you interrogate the thinking of people you disagree with or consider stupid. It’s very hard work. It’s not just navel-gazing. You will find few examples of how to do it well. Even after doing it for years—after it has helped you learn to discern valid insight from self-serving magical thinking—it will lead you to many inaccurate conclusions because all perception is distorted and opinions can definitely be wrong. (more…)
Selective Focus: Scott Lunt
No doubt, if you live in Duluth, you’ve been exposed to the work of Scott Lunt, aka Starfire; founder of the Homegrown Music Festival, co-founder of Father Hennepin and Perfect Duluth Day, radio host on KUMD, the list goes on. His latest endeavor is St1tch:::red, a quilt show at the Red Herring, opening Saturday November 12. He tells us how he got involved in the craft.
S.L.: I cut up perfectly good fabric and sew it back together again. I made my first quilt about twenty years ago and another five years after that. At the time I knew nothing about quilting and had to enlist my mother to help me finish. Then about a year-and-a-half ago Karen McTavish opened a quilting studio in Duluth, I took my mom to visit since she is a long time quilter and something clicked. Two weeks later a sewing machine showed up at my door (thanks Mom!) and I have been making about a quilt a month since.
(more…)
Awkward Duluth School Board Moment #5,109: A Point of Order
This clip features three-and-a-half productive minutes from the Nov. 9 Duluth Public Schools Human Resources and Business Committee Meeting.
Ian Alexy – “Misfits in Love”
A song from Ian Alexy‘s new album Deserters, scheduled for release Dec. 16.
DNR will close French River Hatchery
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources announced in a news release today it will close a 1970s-era fish hatchery in Duluth Township.
The French River Cold Water Hatchery, located on Lake Superior two miles north of Duluth, needs $8 million in capital investment to address failing equipment, according to the DNR. It also consumes 10 percent of the energy used by the agency statewide.
A hatchery was first established at the location in 1919, originally known as the Lake Superior State Fish Hatchery. The French River Cold Water Hatchery was built in 1975 to conduct the majority of fish propagation. Since 1962, the DNR and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service have planted about 300,000 six-inch lake trout along the North Shore each year, resulting in a 250 percent increase in lake trout netted during surveys, according to the DNR. (more…)
Coolerator: Acclaimed in Hollywood, built in Duluth
The Coolerator Company manufactured refrigerators and sold them in every state and 74 foreign nations. It began in 1908 as the Duluth Showcase Company, a manufacturer of store fixtures in Downtown Duluth. Operations moved to 50th Avenue West and Wadena Street in 1921. The focus switched to iceboxes in 1928 and the business was renamed Duluth Refrigerator Company. It became the Coolerator Company in 1932 and opened a manufacturing plant in New Duluth in 1935. (more…)
Over a Pint Interview with Brian Schanzenbach
In this interview segment, the Duluth Experience sits down with Blacklist Artisan Ales Head Brewer Brian Schanzenbach at the location of the new brewery and taproom set to open in Downtown Duluth this month.
Duluth 2016 General Election Results
Donald Trump wins the presidency nationwide. Hillary Clinton takes Minnesota, barely; in Duluth she nearly doubles Trump’s vote total.
Rick Nolan holds his congressional seat by just over 1,000 votes. Democrats and incumbents fare well in Duluth overall.
With 4,120 of 4,120 Minnesota precincts reporting, below are the unofficial statewide results in races relevant to Duluth.
President and Vice President of the United States
Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine – 1,363,704 | 46.41%
Donald J. Trump and Michael R. Pence – 1,320,895 | 44.96%
Gary Johnson and William Weld – 112,767 | 3.84%
Evan McMullin and Nathan Johnson – 53,021 | 1.8%
Jill Stein and Howie Hawkins – 36,916 | 1.26%
Write in – 27,095 | 0.92%
Dan R. Vacek and Mark Elworth, Jr. – 11,275 | 0.38%
Darrell Castle and Scott Bradley – 9,454 | 0.32%
Alyson Kennedy and Osborne Hart – 1,668 | 0.06%
“Rocky” Roque De La Fuente and Mic – 1,428 | 0.05% (more…)
Listen: Gaelynn Lea’s album Deepest Darkness, Brightest Dawn
Classically trained violinist and songwriter Gaelynn Lea‘s holiday album Deepest Darkness, Brightest Dawn will be released Friday, Nov. 11, and she performs Saturday at Beaner’s Central with the Brothers Burn Mountain. Click above to hear the full album. (more…)
Woven into the tapestry of an old home
Recently a reporter came a calling, and we had to prepare our house for a photojournalist in just four short days. In the process I achieved a lifelong goal of being clutter-free, and became a better steward of our century-old home that has had only four owners over a breathtaking sweep of history. This place has housed a U.S. Senator, and also Richard Gastler, the beloved Denfeld teacher.
When we moved in we bought the eyesore on the block, because it was all we could afford, and have grown to cherish it as we make a large portion of our living between these four walls. I jotted down some thoughts over at Ed’s Big Adventure, and you can take a look-see at Christa Lawler’s marvelous column here about my daydreaming wife, who is cranking out another amazing painting at this very moment.
Downtown Duluth – Looking east on Superior Street
Readable business signs: Boyce Drugs, (?)ornser Hats, Bagley Jewelers, City National Bank and Miller’s Cafeteria.