Month: November 2019
Views from Duluth’s Point of Rocks circa 1898
The six photos in this post are all from Detroit Publishing Company, and appear to have been shot on the same date — unless someone with a keen eye can call out evidence to the contrary. They are generally labeled as scenes from “the Bluffs,” which is an area of Duluth that later became known as the Point of Rocks. These photos appear to have been shot in a part of Point of Rocks that is known as Central Park, at the eastern-most part of the Lincoln Park neighborhood. (more…)
Monthly Grovel: November 2019 Edition
In the past year — from November 2018 through October 2019 — the PDD Calendar published 7,960 Duluth-area events. Each one was edited by a human being before the “publish” button was pushed.
It’s a tremendous amount of work to keep up with all the submissions from the more than 1,000 organizations that have sent us info about their concerts, plays, bunco tournaments and lutefisk dinners. That’s why once a month we set our dignity aside and remind readers how much we appreciate their financial support. (more…)
Trampled by Turtles – “Fake Plastic Trees”
Trampled by Turtles tackle a Radiohead cover.
From Sigourney Fever, a Trampled by Turtles EP of covers, available Dec. 6.
Track list:
1. “Pocahontas” (Neil Young)
2. “Ooh La La” (Faces)
3. “Our Town” (Iris DeMent)
4. “Keep Me in Your Heart” (Warren Zevon)
5. “Fake Plastic Trees” (Radiohead)
LibraryCon at LSC
I was all-out nerd at Lake Superior College today, where the Erickson Library hosted LibraryCon. (more…)
The Slice: Grand Portage Trail
Karl Koster, park ranger at Grand Portage National Monument, explains how the Grand Portage Trail connected people and commerce during the fur trading era.
In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.
Duluth 2019 General Election Results
Emily Larson will serve a second term as Duluth Mayor. There will be three new city councilors: Derek Medved, Roz Randorf and Janet Kennedy. Paul Sandholm is new to the school board.
Duluth Mayor
Emily Larson – 13,340 | 63.65%
David Nolle – 7,509 | 35.83%
Write in – 110 | 0.52% (more…)
Duluth Trivia Deck Sampler #27: Gas and Water Edition
Another trivia card from a board game purchased at Savers. (more…)
Darling Drive – “At a Loss”
Darling Drive, the solo acoustic music project of Enrique Aguilar, released the song “At a Loss” on the 2014 album Shipwrecked. The song mentions Duluth, and depending on how one interprets it there might also be a reference to the city of Superior or Lake Superior. (more…)
Wild, a spoken-word musical tribute to weasels, inspired by an encounter in Chester Park
A celebration of the weasel family (mustelids) inspired by an encounter I had with a least weasel in the deep woods portions of Chester Park Ravine, which led to a re-reading of Annie Dillard’s essay, “Living Like Weasels.” (more…)
The Richardson Brothers Podcast: New Episode
This week: “SuperDuluth, the Living City,” a hallucinatory vision of the city awakening in a dream of light and water.
Breaking the Law
All names in this story have been changed. You know, just in case.
In my hometown of Petersburg, Alaska, there is one road that stretches from one end of town to the other, traversing but not circumnavigating the island on which my hometown is located. I think generally people tend to think of islands as little round circles of land in the ocean, which one might conceivably drive around and around forever, like a brass ball in a roulette wheel. But that’s not how things are, and islands are often shaped inconveniently, or pockmarked with gigantic mountains or bodies of water or even volcanoes, which can make logical traffic accommodations wacky. Anyway. In Petersburg, the road goes from one end of the long, arrow-shaped island to the other. This straight-line trajectory has even led locals to refer to driving toward the rural end of the island as “going out the road.” Interestingly, the city limits do not extend to the end of the road, but rather, end some several miles earlier. This means that the city police cannot legally enforce the law beyond those city limits, creating a kind of rogue, lawless wilderness on one end of the island.
This is, as you can likely imagine, terrific news for teenagers. (more…)
R.I.P. Merritt Park Recreation Center Building
This week the field house at Merritt Park joined the growing list of historic West Duluth buildings demolished in recent years. The 2,016-square foot building was constructed in 1939. (more…)
Selective Focus: Lance T. Karasti
Lance Karasti has been making independent films for several years, experimenting with techniques for shooting, writing and different ways of approaching the entire filmmaking process. He’s an active enthusiast in the arts in town, and he’s preparing for another variation in style and process for his current project. This week he tells us about his films, and his fundraising campaign.
LTK: I am an independent feature filmmaker. I am currently developing a style of filmmaking called “hypernaturalism.”
I started developing this style halfway through shooting my 2016 project Artificial. Artificial was being shot with a traditional process but I found myself rewriting the scenes every morning before shooting. By the halfway point I just told the actors to stop worrying about the scripts and be prepared to come up with stuff on the spot. While a part of this was due to realizing a lot of my written dialogue was amateur, it was mostly because it had become necessary for the authenticity of the narrative. As written, the film was about stuff I didn’t know and hadn’t experienced. The process of shooting it was like adapting it into something honest and reflective. Rewriting the scenes everyday had caused me to change the course of the film so much that completely improvising was the only way to adapt to the thematic shifts. (more…)