June 2017 Posts

Summer 2017 Duluth-area Beer Festival Primer

There’s nothing quite like kicking back to quaff a cold beer in the summertime. The warmest season ushers in plenty of chances for those craving craft brews to get outside, sit back and sample suds. We’ve done the legwork for you and compiled a list of some of the top tasting events and beer festivals in the Twin Ports area.

Video Archive: 2007 Fire at True North Cedar on Duluth Harbor

At around 8 a.m. on June 22, 2007, a fire started in a waste conveyor machine at True North Cedar‘s manufacturing building on the Duluth Harbor. Employees attempted to fight the fire, but it was fed by sawdust and spread quickly. The warehouse, several boats and various equipment was quickly consumed in a huge smokey blaze.

Firefighters arrived at 8:17 a.m., but were unable to get hoses going until 8:50. It took a little more than an hour to put the fire out once water was available.

Lyte Source: Todd Luffa

In the pilot episode of a new “musical series aiming to explore sources of inspiration and intrigue,” Minneapolis-based soft-noise artist Todd Luffa performs on the beach at Minnesota Point in Duluth.

The Lyte Source series was created by director Gordon Byrd and producer Aubree Miller of Minneapolis, who “aim to bring performances to settings too intimate or bizarre for audiences to normally inhabit. To capture a sensory experience and transform it into a unique collaboration.”

Lost incline stairway pushed as historic trail

A group of history hikers follow the old incline railway stairs down Observation Hill.

A hidden stairway, once connected to a long-gone incline rail service between Downtown Duluth and its hilltop neighborhoods, is being celebrated by an organization that would like to see it designated a historic walking trail.

The Duluth Preservation Alliance led an Observation Hill history walk on May 31 over remnants of the 126-year-old incline stairs. More than 50 people attended the event and made the steep, downhill jaunt from Skyline Drive to Superior Street.

Postcards from Duluth’s Incline Railway

The Incline Plane Railway, a tram system operated by the Duluth Street Railway Company, began service in 1891. It carried passengers from a housing development at the top of the hillside into the downtown along Seventh Avenue West.

“Colder than the surface of Mars”

Poet Dora Malech gets all Duluthy in a poem published in the May 29 issue of The New Yorker. It’s more that a reference — the poem is basically set in Duluth.

The text of “I Now Pronounce You” is available online, along with an audio track of the poet reading it.

Malech grew up in Bethesda, Md., and now lives in Baltimore. Her connection to Duluth is unknown, unless it’s as simple as the first line of the poem: “Our friends are getting married in Duluth.”

Soul Brothers: Big Wave Dave and the Ripples

WDSE-TV‘s The Playlist has released it’s 2016 documentary on Big Wave Dave and the Ripples for internet viewing. Here it is: 49 minutes and 34 seconds of funk, soul, rhythm and blues.

Reflection, refraction, dispersion: Duluth rainbow pics

Sun showers produced a Father’s Day rainbow in Duluth. Click the thumbnails to view the images at full size.

Photographers: Jamie Merideth (Duluth Harbor), Eric Dubnicka (Old Central High School), Tim Mlodozyniec (Denfeld clock tower) and Erin Anderson (Lake Superior).

Bob Monahan Naked

Well, it was a thing for a day, but now the privates are private. Apparently this video was a limited-time Father’s Day offering.

Antique photos: Denfeld High School under construction

Jay Sonnenburg found this photo in his grandfather’s collection. It shows Denfeld High School under construction on the lower edge, which puts the year of the image around 1926. The groundbreaking ceremony for the building was held March 6, 1925; it opened for classes on Sept. 8, 1926.

The Only Right that is too Often Exercised Alone

The most diverse workplace I have ever known was a nursing home kitchen with workers from age 18 to 82 of many races and genders.

Kitchens breed a complex affection. We saw each other every day, taking two or more meals together. I developed favorite coworkers — the washers who will plow through the dishes quickly, not the washers who realize they are paid the same no matter how many plates they wash in an hour.  We celebrated each other’s joys. The cook might bake a small cake to celebrate a staff wedding, or streamers might appear outside the dietitian’s office on her birthday. On Friday we might go drinking — it was a special challenge to pressure the people working the dinner shift on Friday and the breakfast shift on Saturday to do a “turn and burn.”

It was on one of those Fridays that my coworker Erin told us she was pregnant, that it was unplanned and unwanted, and that she didn’t know what to do. She was likely, she said, to have an abortion.

On another Friday, in my home, maybe a week or so later, I had friends over — friends from both the kitchen and from college. I was 21, I was broke, and I was teased mercilessly for serving Milwaukee’s Best beer. Erin drank three of them in an hour, which I know wouldn’t make a koala bear tipsy. Nonetheless, I was young, I was stupid, and so I said to her: “You’re drinking?” I wasn’t sure she was 21 even, but I was sure she was pregnant.

Selective Focus: Patricia Canelake

Patricia Canelake is a painter and teacher who creates large, colorful paintings that combine figurative drawing with the spontaneous drips, layers and other effects of paint.

P.C.: My aesthetic is an aesthetic of attraction — both obvious and mysterious. Simple figurative, and animal subjects, leashed and unleashed, are the subjects of my work. That push and pull are recognizable experiences. My painting style is a fine balance between storytelling and the rough elegance of form, line and color.

Exploring Madeline Island’s Rocky Shore

Wading/rock-hopping up Madeline Island’s beautiful bay shore of sandstone boulders. My little love letter to the island.

Duluth artist Russell Gran dead at 81

Russell V. Gran, a Duluth native best known for his acrylic paintings and role as the unofficial “patriarch” of the Washington Studios Artist Cooperative, died June 14 of an apparent heart attack. He was 81.

“Endlessly curious and driven to create, his curmudgeonly exterior was merely a facade for a wonderfully humorous, sensitive and loving being,” fellow artist and friend Eric Dubnicka wrote on Facebook.

The Ballad of Clayton, Jackson and McGhie

Local musician Bill Nash produced this music video in May, recalling the June 15, 1920 lynching of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie.

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