Month: November 2022
Select Images from the 1941 Denfeld Oracle
The Internet Archive hosts the 1941 edition of the Denfeld Oracle. My friends’ grandparents — those are the folks I am looking for in here, I think. And a nod to “then and now.” (more…)
Climate>Duluth: Bruce Jennings of Vanderbilt University
Climate>Duluth host Tone Lanzillo interviews Bruce Jennings of Vanderbilt University. Jennings speaks to Health Policy and the Center for Biomedical Ethics and Society at VUMC, his former professor and mentor William Patrick Ophuls, Economics for the Anthropocene as well as the Centers for Humans and Nature.
Postcard from West Superior Street at Sixth Avenue East
Among the legible signs in this undated postcard: Hill Hotel, Hamm’s Beep, bus station, Holland Hotel, Lyceum Theatre, Spalding Hotel, Saratoga Hotel, Hotel Tavern, Dove Clothing Store.
One Book Northland 2023: The Wolf’s Trail
The Wolf’s Trail: An Ojibwe Story, Told by Wolves is the One Book Northland community read title for 2023. Written by Thomas D. Peacock and published by Duluth-based Holy Cow! Press, it’s about Ojibwe teaching and the truths of Ojibwe existence as seen through the words of a wolf elder as he “talks story” to wolf pups. (more…)
Local author counts down the days to book launch
Hi. I am an author from Duluth. I wrote two books that take place in Duluth. The second is coming out Dec. 1. It’s called Order From Chaos. (more…)
Standard Salt and Cement Company
The most amazing thing new Duluth residents don’t realize is what Canal Park looked like just 40 years ago.
Archive.org includes a catalog for Standard Salt and Cement Company, a business that used to be located in Canal Park. (more…)
PDD Quiz: November 2022
Shake off the post-Thanksgiving malaise with a little current events trivia!
A holiday-themed PDD quiz will come your way on Dec. 11. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Nov. 7. (more…)
A Psychogeographical Map of Duluth, 2004
I drew this conceptual map of Duluth’s arts-and-music-scene in 2004, then filed it away for 18 years. The details may only interest old-school scenester hipsters, but the broad strokes reflect my thinking on what makes Duluth cool, and the nature of scenes as social units. The word “psychogeographical” refers here to the artistic arrangement of my little sociological analysis.
Local rocker Nat Harvie once observed to me that old-school Duluthians gush about these bygone days with little provocation. True. I moved to Duluth in 1998 in what is widely regarded as its heyday, its coming-to-awareness-of-itself as a music-and-arts scene. This can be roughly correlated with the formation of the Ripsaw News, now long defunct. That storied rag began in opposition to the Reader as the premier alternative newsweekly and we were off to the races. I remember an early Ripsaw meeting with Brad Nelson and Cord Dada and a room of creatives, and the question was, “Who can do what?” I said, “I am a writer and cartoonist,” and I was in.
Duluth had everything I wanted in its vital percolations. I graphed the scene as I saw it, below: (more…)
NorShor Theatre in Movie Trade Magazines
Movie trade publications loved the NorShor Theatre and its milk bar. These features on the NorShor were taken from the Media History Digital Library. (more…)
Patrick-Duluth way up in the snow
I saw a ship a-sailing
From old Duluth one day,
And oh! it was all laden
With coats for boys, they say! (more…)
Vignettes of the Northwoods
The Voyageurs Wolf Project has been the source of some of northern Minnesota’s best trail-camera wildlife videos in recent years. The latest release is a montage of the very best.
Now That’s a Great Hat: Text Dispatches of a Twin Cities Coincidence
Friday
My best friend departs for the farmlands of Southern California, where she will join her family to celebrate her sister’s 50th birthday in their hometown. On their agenda: attending a local rodeo.
My husband and teen daughter drive to Twin Cities Con, where husband is excited to see G.I. Joe author Larry Hama, and teen daughter is on the hunt for merch of Squirrel Girl and other favorite superheroes. (more…)
Demolition of hilltop Central High School underway
Northern News Now reports demolition of the former Duluth Central High School on the top of the hill began this week. The 55-acre property was sold in August to Chester Creek View, a New York developer, for $8 million.
Explore Wisconsinbly w/ Mary Mack: Woodland Dance Troupe
Comedian Mary Mack chats with Becky Taylor, creator of the Woodland Dance Troupe in Hayward.
A novel set in a fictionalized Duluth/Superior
A colleague sent me a link to the novel False Negative by David B. Rusterholz, which is set in a fictional university in Superior/Duluth. The author lives in River Falls, a semi-rural, semi-suburb-of-the-Twin Cities community.
Has anyone read it?
Selective Focus: Murals and Art by Taylor Rose
Taylor Rose has attended more than 100 art festivals and his murals can be found spread out in the Duluth area, througuout the United States and in Brazil. Working with a variety of mediums, he has been creating pieces since he “was old enough to hold a pencil,” starting out by drawing Pokémon and cartoons in the flavor of Calvin and Hobbes. He can be reached at rose_oner98 @ gmail.com, with his art found at divergingrosedesigns.com, on Instgram at both @rose_oner and @divergingrose, and on TikTok @drosedesigns. Rose occasionally accepts commissions, continuously seeking to do work he finds “inspiring and lets me have creative freedom.” His clothing, prints, stickers, canvas and more can be found for sale on his website. Below are words from a recent interview with Rose and some of his work. (more…)
Summer Trips to the Northwest through Duluth, 1911
The Internet Archive hosts advertisements from transportation-themed magazines. This one features Duluth as the endpoint on a steamer trip to the Northwest, before joining the train to Seattle and points nearby in Canada and Oregon.
Bob Dylan’s Hibbing High School love letters sold for $670K
The Associated Press reports 42 handwritten love letters from Robert Zimmerman to his high school sweetheart, Barbara Ann Hewitt, were sold at auction to a Portuguese bookshop for nearly $670,000.
Jonathan Thunder on PBS
Duluth’s Jonathan Thunder is the subject of a new short film airing nationally on PBS. Jonathan Thunder: Good Mythology, directed by Sergio Mata’u Rapu, was selected by American Masters for national broadcast as part of the digital series In the Making. It will air in Duluth on WDSE-TV channel 8.1 on Tuesday, Nov. 22, following the broadcast of Buffy Sainte Marie: Carry it On. The programs occupy the 8 to 10 p.m. slot, so the Thunder feature will likely air after 9:30 p.m. (more…)
PDD Gift Guide 2022
Welcome to the 2022 PDD Holiday Gift Guide, highlighting products made in the Duluth area that one might wrap in paper and put under a tree. It features 15 items, as usual, but the comment area is open for limitless other suggestions. Or email the editors at info @ perfectduluthday.com. (more…)
Steamships from Buffalo to Duluth, 1901
This advert from Life magazine promotes trips from Buffalo through Chicago and Milwaukee to Duluth. I found it on the Internet Archive. (more…)
Lincoln Park Parking Park
In the category of “Best Name for a Parking Lot,” we have a winner.
Duluth’s Krummel family and their Maytag washing machine
Fifty years ago today Duluth’s Krummel family appeared in a Maytag washing machine advertisement. It was in the Nov. 17, 1972 issue of Life magazine. (more…)
Why Duluthians might be annoyed with Andrew Ti
For the second time in four months — and third time overall — Duluth has been mentioned on the podcast Yo, is this Racist? In the show’s opening banter, Andrew Ti mentions his fingers are cold. Co-host Tawny Newsome quickly points out how someone in Los Angeles complaining about cold fingers might be annoying to people in places like Buffalo, Fargo or Duluth.
Photos of an Empty Skywalk
The Duluth News Tribune recently published an article about the Downtown Task Force’s recommendations to improve conditions in downtown. This summer, I spent some time walking through the Skywalk system and was a bit shocked by how empty it was. The summer might not be the most popular time to use the Skywalk, but it wasn’t just the absence of people. So many of the shops that I remembered were gone. I didn’t intend to make a themed photo series about this, but I had my camera and kept turning a corner to find another impossibly long, completely empty hallway. (more…)