Human Fabric of Duluth
Trudy Vrieze has started a fascinating project documenting what it means to live in Duluth, who we are and why we are here. The Human Fabric of Duluth is a street-photography and storytelling project.
Trudy Vrieze has started a fascinating project documenting what it means to live in Duluth, who we are and why we are here. The Human Fabric of Duluth is a street-photography and storytelling project.
Last week I bicycled to Duluth’s Lakeside neighborhood with a friend — to Amity Coffee and BEER?
Today is the one-year anniversary since the law was revised. The Duluth City Council repealed a more than 125-year-old Lakeside liquor ban on June 27, 2016. Amity Coffee became the neighborhood’s first seller of alcoholic beverages four months later.
The most diverse workplace I have ever known was a nursing home kitchen with workers from age 18 to 82 of many races and genders.
Kitchens breed a complex affection. We saw each other every day, taking two or more meals together. I developed favorite coworkers — the washers who will plow through the dishes quickly, not the washers who realize they are paid the same no matter how many plates they wash in an hour. We celebrated each other’s joys. The cook might bake a small cake to celebrate a staff wedding, or streamers might appear outside the dietitian’s office on her birthday. On Friday we might go drinking — it was a special challenge to pressure the people working the dinner shift on Friday and the breakfast shift on Saturday to do a “turn and burn.”
It was on one of those Fridays that my coworker Erin told us she was pregnant, that it was unplanned and unwanted, and that she didn’t know what to do. She was likely, she said, to have an abortion.
On another Friday, in my home, maybe a week or so later, I had friends over — friends from both the kitchen and from college. I was 21, I was broke, and I was teased mercilessly for serving Milwaukee’s Best beer. Erin drank three of them in an hour, which I know wouldn’t make a koala bear tipsy. Nonetheless, I was young, I was stupid, and so I said to her: “You’re drinking?” I wasn’t sure she was 21 even, but I was sure she was pregnant.
I’m preparing to teach a class that integrates literature and games about Vietnam into writing, and my excellent colleague Carl introduced me to Veterans Memorial Hall …
Veterans Memorial Hall is a joint program of the St. Louis County Historical Society and the United States Military service veterans of northeastern Minnesota, with a mission to gather, preserve, interpret, and promote the rich and diverse human experiences of veterans, their families, and communities through museum, archival, and educational programs
Veterans Memorial Hall has moved to the St. Louis County Heritage & Arts Center (the Depot) and is maintained by the St. Louis County Historical Society and the military service veterans from the Arrowhead region. The speakers at the original dedication ceremony promised, “Your services to the country will be remembered so long as liberty is prized and the patriotic valor is remembered.”
Veterans Memorial Hall aims to honor that statement. We have collected more than 1,500 artifacts and 6,000 veteran stories. Today, we have one of the largest collections of military items and veterans’ stories in the state of Minnesota.
Stories can be found here. If you know more local resources about Veterans, I’d love to hear them.
This is a small salute to the artists who created the art on the walls of what used to be a coffee shop in the St. Louis County Courthouse, now a vending machine area with beautiful walls.
If the creators of these clever paintings want to take a bow by offering their names, please do.
I had no idea there was land in Duluth that was (kind of) not part of the United States.
The comic book Threadbare, collecting comics from truth-out.org, talks about Foreign Trade Zones in the garment industry. But many industries use FTZs. According to mnftz.com:
Products moving through U.S. FTZs include electronics, computers, petroleum, pharmaceuticals, food products, office equipment, sporting goods, manufacturing components and more. Manufacturers, distributors and suppliers are all candidates for FTZ Subzones.
Peter Pestalozzi lived outside Ely, but his art was often seen in the Duluth Art Institute and in local galleries. Peter passed away, and I lost someone who was distant but important to me.
Savers is a wonderful thing. For $1.99, I picked up a Duluth Trivia board game.
Some doozies:
1. What was on the roof of the former Goldfines building on Garfield Avenue?
2. What business is located there now? (It’s still there, I think.)
3. What movie starring Patty Duke was filmed at Glensheen?
4. For many years, the Duluth Zoo had the only living specimen in the US of one animal. Name that animal.
“Let’s head over there. There’s a spectacular view from that bench.”
(David moves to bench. Squints. Not very much view. Takes photo from bench, straight ahead.)
Where were we?
I forget how lucky we are to have the locally operated Zinema, especially on its $5 days. Last night I saw Colossal, a movie starring and co-produced by Anne Hathaway. (Spoilers)
I’ve seen nearly every Godzilla movie, so the idea that every morning, when Gloria (Hathaway) is hung over, a Kaiju Monster attacks Seoul seemed interesting — a metaphor for the unintended consequences of alcoholism, I figured. Pretty straightforward, low-brain energy attempt to be deep, but with Kaiju!
The opening scene shows Gloria’s boyfriend throwing her out, telling her he can’t be with her when she’s out of control like this. It’s designed to communicate to the audience: Gloria’s addiction is the problem.
While at GlitchCon, a gaming convention bringing experts in video game design, educational theory, and inclusivity, I ran into one of Duluth’s video game designers. Charles McGregor runs Tribe Games, and as Charles says on his website …
I am the programmer, musician, and artist for the all of in house games. I am also the guy in charge of the social media and marketing. I have always wanted to make games and feel like I can express myself the most through this medium. I have loved games since the first time that I played them.
I want to make games that I personally would play and feel passionate about. I have been given the opportunity to work with very talented people in the past and hope that I can continue collaborating with others as well as work on my own creations.
The con was at the Soap Factory, a long-standing vacant hulk of a building used for art and alternative culture events in Minneapolis. It was cool to be 175 miles away and still see one of Duluth’s own represented.
Today is Tim Broman’s 30th anniversary at Collector’s Connection. In honor of this anniversary, a number of local small businesspeople and professionals nominated the shop for a Labovitz Award, in the “mature entrepreneur” category. I tease him so hard about the category. But really, what Tim does is more that sell things, more than run a business.
A few snapshots from Sunday’s event at Peace United Church. Jim Perlman of Holy Cow Press organized the poetry reading, which featured Crystal Gibbins, author of Now/Here, and Gary Boelhower, author of Naming Rites. The event included musical interludes by Sara Thomsen.
The Minnesota Undergraduate Linguistics Symposium was a reminder of the ways today’s young people are preparing for the world. Undergraduates from all over the state came together to share their research and learn about the research of faculty at UMD and CSS.
