Duluth Traverse Bike Ride Time Lapse
Lane Ellis presents this GoPro 10 time-lapse video showing most of his recent 43-mile west-to-east mountain bike ride on the Duluth Traverse, ending at Lester Park during the Lester River Rendezvous.
Lane Ellis presents this GoPro 10 time-lapse video showing most of his recent 43-mile west-to-east mountain bike ride on the Duluth Traverse, ending at Lester Park during the Lester River Rendezvous.
How to make Lane Ellis’ time-tested vegan chili.
Duluth features prominently in this segment from the latest episode of Great Lakes Now, a monthly program focused on developments affecting the lakes. The show is produced by Detroit PBS in partnership with a network of PBS affiliates around the region.
Letters exchanged between Father Louis Hennepin and Daniel Greysolon, Sir Duluth. From a special collection at Northern Illinois University, translated from the French by Peter S. Svenson.
To: Daniel Greysolon, Sir Duluth
Montreal, New France
From: Father Louis Hennepin
Rome
Date: August 23, 1701
Dear Duluth,
Remember our exchange when you rescued me from my kidnappers? I asked you, “Do you have to look so much like a French musketeer?” And you replied, “Do you have to look so much like Friar Tuck?” Forgive me. An old man on my deathbed, let me put things right. I anticipate my reward but I cannot help but look back at the many enemies I made. I hope you were not one of them. I only spent a short while in New France. And we did not know each other well. But we tore it up, didn’t we? I should think they will name a city after you someday. Myself, I will be contented with a street or two named after me, perhaps a bridge. One doesn’t wish to be prideful. But you deserve your glories.
One thing bothers me. Please tell me what you remember of our time on Lake Superior, on our final full day together. My memories of the event are confused. We caught no fish yet we were out there for hours.
Yours,
Louis
A fun local architecture channel to be aware of, Arches and Columns. The latest video is about the pump house.
“The safest way to heaven is to be eaten by beautiful dogs.”
— Kamchatka proverb
My family had a pair of little dogs like on the Black and White scotch whiskey label: a black Scottish Terrier and a West Highland White Terrier. My folks got the Scottish Terrier first, when I was in fourth grade. Being English teachers, they thought it was hilarious to name her Macduff, after the character who kills Macbeth in “the Scottish Play.” Four years later we gave Dad the white Westie for Christmas. He named the dog Budger. Dad died that summer.
Three years passed. It was the summer after eleventh grade. My brother and I ate some LSD after Mom and our sister left the house for the day. This was my first acid trip. We walked to the ice cream shop until we started feeling weird. Returning home we flopped down on the living room carpet and let the dogs come to us. We lay there laughing while Macduff and Budger licked our faces and wagged their tails and sniffed in our ears. I had what felt like a genetic memory of people playing with their dogs back down through the stone age and into deep time. The black and the white dog symbolized more than themselves, and I did too.
A recent push to place a memorial to the Edmund Fitzgerald on Barker’s Island got me thinking about the local oft-forgotten wreck of the Thomas Wilson. My 1995 edition of the book Shipwrecks of Lake Superior (edited by James R. Marshall) calls the Wilson “Duluth’s doorstep shipwreck.” The author of the Wilson chapter is legendary local scuba diver Paul von Goertz, who says on page 75 that “The Thomas Wilson ‘sails the bottom’ less than a mile from the ship canal.” A 308-foot whaleback steamer loaded with ore, the Wilson got T-boned in 1902 and sank within three minutes.
What bothers me about the wreck is that it may hold the remains of seven crew members:
“Of the 20 men that comprised the Wilson’s crew, nine were lost. Only two of the nine bodies were recovered. The remaining seven are entombed to this day in the hull of the Wilson … [the wreck] remains in pretty good shape …. To the best of my knowledge, entry has not been gained into the turret housing the boiler room. A safe guess would be that the men entombed in the wreck might be found in the boiler room, as this was the compartment nearest the actual point of collision. The preservation qualities of ice cold Lake Superior have protected the old wreck well … On one dive, I examined some wooden planking near the stern. The wood was not in the least rotted and even the putty in the seams was intact … One could safely speculate that the cold water would also preserve the remains of the seven sailors entombed in her belly.” (Lake Superior Shipwrecks, pp. 76-77)
Testimony of Mary Nettleton, from the 1898 Annual Report of the United States Life-Saving Service, chapter heading “Log of the Park Point, Duluth Station” (Lake Superior Maritime Museum archives):
I sailed for a year aboard a sunken ship, the wooden schooner-barge Ophelia. She sank on October 15, 1897 in Canadian waters, downbound for Duluth from Thunder Bay. I was finally rescued from the air pocket in her drowned saloon on October 12, 1898, having drifted 150 miles underwater to Duluth. The Ophelia arrived a year behind schedule, crossing the open border between the living and the dead. As to my miraculous survival, doctors and scientists set upon me to solve it. I have become an object of curiosity; fear also.
Sinking
I first encountered the Ophelia on a dock in Buffalo where I signed to be the ship’s cook. I was the only woman aboard. Originally a passenger ship, she couldn’t compete against steam power, so her owners ripped out the passenger suites in favor of three large cargo holds. The windjammer-turned-barge retained classy touches like her oversized saloon. We sailed three of the five Great Lakes in tow of the wooden steamer Harlow, who rode heavy before the gale that snapped the towline and drove us apart. The blow ripped away what rigging could be raised and then downed both our masts. But it wasn’t the mountainous seas that sank us. It was a spar snapped off the deck of the Harlow that staved a hole in our bow. The pumps couldn’t keep up.
Song from the Nat Harvie album New Virginity. Video shot and edited by Nik Nerburn.
On April 29, 1909, the Adella Shores was bound for Duluth with a cargo of 9,200 barrels of salt. The ship never arrived. Disappearing in a gale off Whitefish Point, Michigan, the location of the 195-foot wreck remained one of the lake’s unsolved mysteries. But the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum has found it.
This video ran on a loop at the Duluth Art Institute’s “Water Works” show June 20 to Aug. 25, 2013. It hadn’t made it to the internet yet.
The latest video from Dollhouse City.
This is the new Richardson brothers project, a Youtube channel devoted to the dollhouse city we built with our lifelong toy collection. The channel is just getting started but we’ve already got a ton of Dollhouse City content on Allen’s Instagram @blackobelisk. Here is how we describe it on Youtube:
For real, I think there needs to be more serious discussion about a Duluth Bob Dylan statue. He’s the (checks notes) greatest songwriter in the world (the Nobel Prize people compared him to Homer and Blake), and Duluth is his (checks notes again) literal birthplace. Where did I read — perhaps buried in the epic comments of this PDD Facebook post — that local/regional Dylan relatives disfavor statues, as opposed to a nice plaque or something? An MPR article cites “a Dylan family member” who states a preference for educational work instead. I get it. But Dylan must have dozens of relatives, did we ask them all? Do we have to ask any of them, since Dylan belongs to the world?
I also get that statues are falling out of favor and may become problematic. The meaning of a statue can change. Maybe it would be better to just name a street, or a music center, or erect a plaque — something you can quietly change up or take down in a hurry if history reverses on you. But respectfully, I worry that plaques and manhole covers are simply too boring to honor the greatest songwriter in the world besides Taylor Swift.
You think Taylor Swift will only get some nice manhole covers? You think they won’t build a statue in her hometown by the time she’s Dylan’s current age of 82?
Bob: I’m ready to accept you, Lord.
Jesus: Not so fast there Bob. I need you to do something first.
Bob: Name it Lord.
Jesus: I need you to rub out Jimmy Gravante.
Bob (stunned): The hitman?
Jesus: Your successor in the Duluth family, after you got out and became — this (gestures around). You know Jimmy — the sniper who blew you off your motorcycle in 1966 in Woodstock.
Bob: He hit the bike, man, not me. Sniper my ass.
Jesus: I’m going to need you to check your tone.
Bob: I’m sorry Lord. It’s just that he wasn’t even at 200 yards. He’s more like a potshot expert than a sniper. And my divorce is killing me. I just got off a world tour and my adrenal glands feel squeezed dry like little raisins. Think I’m coming down with something (sniffles).
