A post on photographer Dan Turner’s Substreet website takes a peek at Superior’s old East End Milling District.
“Daisy was the last of the flour mills to close in the Twin Ports,” Turner writes. “It closed in the 1970s when Peavey moved its durum operations to a new mill in Hastings, Minnesota. Today the mill is unused, though a company uses the silos.”
Duluth Photo Engraving Company holiday postcard circa 1915.
The craft beer craze is finally permeating Minnesota’s Iron Range. Before the year’s end, the area will support two new breweries: Klockow Brewing Company in Grand Rapids and BoomTown Brewery & Woodfire Grill in Hibbing. Another, Rapids Brewing Company, is in the works.
Perfect Duluth Day’s “Saturday Essay” series concluded its second season last week. At the end of each year we take a look back at some of the favorites — like the literary version of a 1980’s-era TV sitcom flashback episode. This week is part one, highlighting the essays that were read the most times in the past year according to the folks at Google Analytics.
Before digging into the 2017 countdown, here’s a brief paragraph to spell out for the uninitiated how the “Saturday Essay” feature works:
PDD publishes an essay every Saturday. Yours truly, Paul Lundgren, is the editor. A small group of writers are featured somewhat regularly, but anyone is welcome and encouraged to submit a piece for consideration. Shoot an email to paul @ perfectduluthday.com to inquire.
And now, the champions of Duluth literature …
Edward L. Simon captured the view from inside the big tank at the Great Lakes Aquarium when he went diving with Santa.
Market Day started as a Downtown Duluth Pop Up Shop in 2016, and moved into a twisty, multi-level space at 15 N. Third Ave. W. last spring. It’s filled with a variety of local art, crafts and workspace for classes. Director Lanae Rhoads tells us about some of the activities going on in the space.
LR: We are a shop that desires to celebrate the Farmer’s Market vibe all year long. In fact, we started as a Farmers Market at UMD in 1999. The University decided to make Market 2016 the last season. With that decision we needed to find other ways to showcase our local artisans. And through that loss Market Day was born. We received one of the holiday 2016 Pop-Up shop program spaces. It was a wonderful success and we decided to continue together in a permanent location that opened this past March.
On Dec. 4 I heard a reading of Suzannah Weiss‘s The Gay Agenda on the UMD campus.
The work is intended as a web series. When I was a student, creative writing students held ambitions to be seen by a dozen people in a one-act play on campus. Today, new media gives everyone with a talent for words an opportunity to be seen by thousands. As a result, talented young people can be alive with an ambition that I never saw as a student.
The clip was featured on PDD once before, just a year ago, when actress Carrie Fisher died. Today we roll it out again to mark the 40th anniversary of the day the original Star Wars movie closed in Duluth — Dec. 22, 1977. It was screened 459 times during a 191-day run.
Ten years ago today — Dec. 21, 2007 — Duluth band Low rehearsed for a holiday concert with choir members Marc Gartman, Greg Cougar Conley, Jerree Small, Jennifer Jones and Amy Abts.
For more archival holiday video joy, check out A Perfect Duluth Christmas: PDD’s Holiday Video Showcase.
The 2017 Duluth Yacht Club Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to former DYC Commodore Nelson Thomas.
Video by Frederick Dudderar.
I left Duluth for Bluefin Bay in the late afternoon, after dropping off my mail at the UMD post office (where the lines are shorter than the Mount Royal office by a lot).
The Loaves & Fishes volunteer community in Duluth has formed a nonprofit branch to deal with upkeep on its houses and other properties that provide food and shelter for the homeless and other at-risk people.
The Happy Time concession wagon purportedly was “the first mail truck in Duluth.” It’s a 1929 Model A Ford truck that obviously was converted to a popcorn wagon. It’s shown here parked in the former Super One parking lot on the 2200 block of East Fifth Street in Superior’s East End neighborhood. It was marked for sale the day these photos were shot, Dec. 2.
