MPR News did a series of stories on John Vachon earlier this year, which was noted at the time on PDD along with a Duluth Milk Company photo. Today we present the rest of the Duluth Milk Company photos and a link to the lot of 61 Duluth images Vachon shot in August of 1941, from the collection of 170,000 photographs from 1935 to 1945 created by the United States Farm Security Administration and Office of War Information.
Should be an easy one, I’m guessing.
“Chester Park is popular both in summer and winter,” according to old postcard propaganda. “In it is located one of America’s highest ski jumps and also Chester Creek, one of several flowing thru the city in which trout may be caught. Duluth is the only city in the United States where trout fishing is possible within city limits.”
Well, we know the famous ski jumps came down in 2014, but there seems to be another fact in there worth examining. Was Duluth at one time really the only city with trout fishing? Prove it or debunk it, dear reader.
In the meantime, here are more snappy postcards …
Tamara Jones, “Full moon over the Lake”
There is no way to comprehensively describe Duluth with an inane little photo feature, but I do think this week’s image’s alternations between grandeur and ruin say something about this place; what we value, what we’ve let moulder. Duluth is a place where our failures aren’t hidden. Its broken roads and crumbling industries, all set on that capricious gem of a lake impress the psychic landscape, and inform our present strivings.
Ashley L. Behrens, “The Joys of Color”
Even though we might not feel a part of it, or intentionally cast ourselves to the margins, we live- without choice- within communities. What we do to broaden, to expand that meaning defines us; how many and of what sort we’ll include. Let’s celebrate here the pulling together, the belonging, and the recognition that no one, as was said, is an island.
This little gem is postmarked Sept. 18, 1905. Hopefully Ermina B. Smith of Menominee, Mich., believed it. It’s still true 110 years later.
Jason Linus, untitled
Where’d we be without the square pegs, the odd ducks, and the outliers? Blaine, probably. Feels like I’ve landed somewhere that not only appreciates, but cultivates individuality. Not eccentricity for its own sake or ostentatious outrageousness; still, there is a climate of mutual support here, and a community that values unconventional ways of approaching life, accommodating people and schemes that yield weird, unanticipated, often gratifying things.
Annie Dugan, untitled
Harvest is the time to reap what we’ve sewn, and to stow our goods for the difficult days ahead. It’s the time to decide what merits entry into our sod huts, and what is left to the elements. Often this is based on a degree of conformity to norms, on a willingness to fit in, and to play along. We decide what’s suitable to sustain us, cede diversity to the predictable, and leave the rest to wither on the vine.
Photographer Peter Lik, who has shot some of the world’s most incredible landscapes, was on the North Shore of Lake Superior this week.
Ann Klefstad, untitled
A recent New York Times article noted how difficult the end of Summer can be, especially for people “of a certain age” who focus on what’s left in the hourglass, and rue the many things undone that likely will remain so. But it ends on a hopeful note, in finding solace in the smaller things we managed; I had my 1st swim in Superior, I’ve been working steadily on my first book with numerous local colleagues, and I’ve eaten several Rustic Inn pies. Hardly a squandered season.
Aaron Reichow, untitled
Last week’s steep drop in temperatures had me thinking, overeagerly, of Fall. It has always been my favorite season for its paradoxical combination of things reaching fruition, then brilliantly flaming out. With luck we’ll see a harvest, survive the Winter on what we’ve stowed, and celebrate another Spring. Without luck, well, we’ll have joined the grand circle.
Hattie Peterson, untitled
I would rather see a photograph of pencil shavings than a high resolution Hubble space telescope image of some distant star cluster. Maybe that’s because I am already profoundly aware of my own insignificance, and therefore hold the inconsequential beauty of ordinary things closely. Reality doesn’t require hypermediation, and I would dearly miss all that’s sensual in what is close at hand if I were somehow, someday deprived of it.
