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…)
Video Archive: WDIO-TV Halloween Weather Report
From the haunted film vault comes this 1970s clip featuring WDIO-TV weatherman Jack McKenna, two mice and Dracula. Also featured at the end are anchorman Dennis Anderson and sportscaster Bill Stefl.
Happy Halloween!
Zombie self defense at UMD
What better place to find big juicy brains to feast on than an institute of higher learning. UMD Chief Information Officer, Jason Davis, explains how to defend against a zombie attack using principles of Jujutsu.
The Slice: Haunted Ridge
The Haunted Shack has been bringing the scare to northern Minnesota for 26 years. The year’s spookenings are at Ru-Ridge Corn Maze in Carlton, about 10 miles southwestish of Duluth.
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.
Countdown to Halloween: Duluth Paranormal Society
The Duluth Paranormal Society has been featured in the Duluth News Tribune. Most interesting is its research into Sir Benedict’s Tavern on the Lake.
The DNT article includes links to other resources:
Happy Halloween. 🙂
Halloween Banners
Got a great costume this year, or been to a good Halloween party already? We want to see your creepy, comical, kooky Halloween photos. And we’d love to add them to the banner rotation — the long skinny photos at the top of the page when you view Perfect Duluth Day on a desktop computer. (There are no photo banners if you are on a smartphone.)
Keep in mind, the proportions are extremely horizontal, so not every photo works when cropped. Click here for complete submission guidelines, but the basics are: 1135 pixels wide by 197 pixels high, e-mail them to [email protected].
If you’re not able to crop and size them, send the full image and we’ll do our best to crop it into a banner.
Postcards from the Buena Vista Motel
This postcard of the Buena Vista Motel was published by Gallagher’s Studio of Photography and appears to be circa the early 1970s. (more…)
R.I.P. Xavier Bell, Family Freedom Center founder
A celebration of Xavier Bell’s life will be held on Saturday, Nov. 2, 3 p.m., at Peace United Church of Christ. Visitation is at 2 p.m. All are welcome.
Countdown to Halloween: Nopeming
https://www.travelchannel.com/videos/nopeming-sanatorium-preview-0229492
Nopeming has a special place in the paranormal of Duluth. The Travel Channel sent a team in 2015, as featured in the link above. The Duluth News Tribune covered its history in a 2017 article.
The Nopeming facility was in use until Nov. 25, 2002. Friends of mine have laughed that rooms and spaces shown on ghost hunting shows holding tormented souls were, in fact, the places they worked as food service workers in high school.
Duluth Trivia Deck Sampler #26
Another trivia card from a board game purchased at Savers. (more…)
Countdown to Halloween: Twin Ports Paranormal Society
The Twin Ports Paranormal Society will “investigate the paranormal for people in need of help at no charge. Confidentiality will be respected.” (more…)
Atmosphere – “Say Shh …”
Minneapolis-based hip-hop outfit Atmosphere name-drops Duluth in a hidden track on its 2003 studio album Seven’s Travels. (more…)
Countdown to Halloween: Lady Ocalat’s Paranormal Investigations
I’ve been to Lady Ocalat’s Emporium once, to buy some fake dove blood for purposes of writing with my new fountain pen. I don’t know entirely the relationship between the tarot reading services and the paranormal investigations, but Lady Ocalat’s website maintains a record of past paranormal activity, bigfoot sightings and UFO sightings.
PDD Quiz: October 2019 in Review
Another month of 2019 has nearly passed; how much of it do you remember? Take this quiz to test your knowledge of local headlines.
The next PDD quiz, on statues of people, will be published on Nov. 10. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Nov. 7. (more…)
Two Harbors Carmody 61 closed until further notice
The bar/restaurant once operated by Rick Boo, Carmody 61 in Two Harbors, closed this week for unspecified reasons. Boo died at age 60 in August and was also part of the management at Carmody Irish Pub and Brewing in Duluth.
Both Carmody establishments have been on and off recent lists from the Minnesota Department of Revenue for delinquent payment of taxes.
Ed Gleeson, a partner in the enterprises, said he is “duty bound” to not comment until Boo’s estate has been probated.
“That’s for the family’s sake,” he said. (more…)
Countdown to Halloween: International Paranormal Society
Gloria Doescher (left) shows Chris Julien (center) and Adrian Lee a photo of what her thermal imaging camera picked up during one of the vigils at Fairlawn Mansion and Museum in Superior. The three investigated the mansion along with other members of the International Paranormal Society, the first time in more than a dozen years that ghost hunters were allowed into the mansion. (Maria Lockwood / Superior Telegram)
The International Paranormal Society has visited Duluth multiple times. One of its visits included time on the SS William A. Irvin, another the mansion at Fairlawn. Adrian Lee, its founder, has a pretty unique gimmick — he talks about working at the intersection of history and paranormal science, spending time in archives to track historical records that help him make sense of the data his heat sensors and ghost boxes find. Triangulation yields truth, apparently. (more…)