While any given perfect Duluth day is chockablock with events, there are a number of festivals, carnivals, and other shenanigans that are no longer celebrated. This quiz looks back at these festivities of yesteryear, perhaps begging the question: should we bring some of them back?
The next quiz, on this month’s headlines, will be published on Sept. 30. Please email question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Sept. 27.
What follows is an incomplete list of words and phrases I dislike. There is no real rhyme or reason to them; some are things I’ve encountered in my school or work circles, while others are just things I’ve stumbled across here or there. I list them in rough order of hatred, beginning with the most repulsive and concluding with the merely annoying.
Resiliency. This is an awful word devised by someone who deserves to be expelled from the urban planning field. The perfectly good “resilience” says the exact same thing in one less syllable. Even that is overused to the point of emptiness, but at least it doesn’t sound like an invented piece of jargon designed to make one sound intelligent. Which is exactly what it is.
Any scandal ending in “-gate.” This construction stopped being amusing circa 1974. Now it just shows a lack of creativity.
Outstate. This is a Minnesota word invented by Twin Cities people to refer to people who are not like them. It implies that people not in the Twin Cities are somehow out of the state, and plays into the conceit that Duluth, Worthington, Moorhead, Grand Marais, and Little Falls all share something other than the misfortune of not being the cool big city. Attempting to use it innocently with a resident of Greater Minnesota (an acceptable alternative) is a good way to lose any credibility you might have aspired to.
Low‘s new album Double Negative is out today on Sub Pop Records. The new music video, “Rome” is directed by Aaron Anderson and Eric Timothy Carlson.
Erin Welch is an illustrator, painter and … pyrographer or woodburner. She creates game boards inspired by Duluth and Minnesota. She’ll be at Earth Rider Brewery’s one-year anniversary events Sept. 14 and 15 as part of the Art on Tap series.
Although I love to work in a variety of mediums if the inspiration calls, pyrography (wood burning) is the medium that is the main aesthetic of North Country Craft. I’ve always loved trying out new mediums and somewhat fell into working with wood and making custom wood burned cribbage boards by accident. I realized I didn’t have a cribbage board in my apartment and made one for myself one night. That spun into family and friends asking about custom boards and eventually led to launching an Etsy site which took off and launched my custom cribbage business.
In a letter to the University of Minnesota Board of Regents, leaders of two faculty organizations on the Duluth campus call the compensation package of the outgoing system president “excessive” and a “golden parachute.”
University of Minnesota President Eric Kaler announced in July his intention to step down from his position in 2019, saying in a statement that his seven years as president exceeds the national average and the university will benefit from a fresh perspective.
“Quite simply, it is time,” he said, noting he intends to work as president emeritus for one year to continue momentum on the university’s $4 billion “Driven” campaign. The fundraising effort is seeking to raise $1 billion for students, $2 billion for faculty and research, and $1 billion for university initiatives and outreach.
Duluth Reader publisher and West Theater owner Robert Boone has purchased 321 N. Central Ave., next to his West Theater renovation project. The building, constructed in 1913, is the former Alhambra Theater and most recently housed Interior Tomato, a hydroponic gardening store.
An alternative weekly newspaper publisher currently renovating a West Duluth movie theater has purchased a second historic but mostly forgotten theater adjacent to his current project.
Ben Hugus, Mark Hugus and Andrew Scrignoli – Photo by Lissa Maki
Duluth’s Lincoln Park Craft District will gain a third brewery by the month’s end. Ursa Minor Brewing, a five-barrel brewery that will also serve wood-fired pizzas, has announced it’s opening Sept. 26.
Left: 2018 crash at 2332 W. Third St. (Duluth News Tribune photo by Steve Kuchera)
Right: 1965 crash at same location. (Duluth News Tribune staff photo)
It happens at least once every 53 years or so. A motor vehicle smashes into the storefront on the corner of 24th Avenue West and Third Street.
Sept. 11, 2018 | Bus crashes into runaway SUV in Lincoln Park
Aug. 12, 1965 | Freak crash sends auto inside store
With federal, state, county and judicial races on the ballot — and a triad of Duluth School Board questions — there’s plenty for voters to sort through this fall.
The countdown is on with eight weeks left to study up; the General Election will be held on Nov. 6. Below are the races that will appear on ballots in Duluth. Only one of the three Minnesota State Representative races affecting Duluth will appear on individual ballots. See the note on each for a description of which geographic areas apply.
I spent part of Friday at Make Canal Park Pop! and Saturday at 2001: A Space Odyssey. The events felt oddly similar, and my experience of both was disjointed if not entirely cynical.
Coldsnap
John Gregor of Coldsnap Photography takes a picture. I melt.
Among the students in the Nettleton Elementary School first-grade class of 1962 is famed street photographer Wing Young Huie, seated in the middle of the second row. In August Huie was selected as the McKnight Foundation’s 2018 Distinguished Artist. He is the first photographer to receive the honor.
This postcard of Duluth’s “municipal zoo,” now known as Lake Superior Zoo, was mailed 70 years ago today — Sept. 8, 1948.
The Kmart store in my neighborhood closed last weekend. Now there’s a giant empty space in the Spirit Valley Mall in West Duluth, with a faded area above the doors where a sign once read: “Big Kmart.”
It took more than 30 years for the store to run itself out of business, and I’d probably need a degree in finance and a long look inside the books of parent company Sears Holdings Corporation to ever understand. How does a neighborhood’s only department store — a place that’s known for always having lines at the cash registers — go out of business?
The answer to that question might be that retail stores are struggling in general, and any store with massive overhead costs that provides a lousy shopping experience doesn’t stand a chance. And the West Duluth Kmart was a lousy shopping experience.
The lines at Kmart perhaps weren’t due to the high volume of traffic, but instead the understaffing at the store. Target or Wal-Mart might have a dozen checkouts open at once; Kmart seldom had more than two.
