Honking Tree case remains a mystery 10 years later
Left: July 2001 photo of the Honking Tree from the Two Harbors Forum website. Right: The modern remains of the Honking Tree stump between Larsmont Road and Isaacson Road southwest of Two Harbors. Photo by Mike Creger.
I asked Lake County Sheriff Carey Johnson this month if there was anything new in the now 10-year-old Honking Tree case.
“You mean the white pine murder investigation?” he said straightaway. (more…)
Selective Focus: Homegrown 2019 Craft District Night
Images from the second night of the Homegrown Music Festival. (more…)
Selective Focus: Homegrown 2019 Opening Ceremonies
Select Instagram photos from opening day of the Homegrown Music Festival. (more…)
Homegrown Music Festival 2019 Primer
Duluth’s 21st annual Homegrown Music Festival is upon us, spanning April 28 to May 5. There is a 100-page Homegrown Field Guide available at locations all over town with the details. Updates and peripheral tidbits can be found below. (more…)
PDD Quiz: April 2019 in Review
Photo by Jim Rosvold
Put your current affairs knowledge to the test with this edition of the PDD Quiz.
The next quiz, scheduled for May 12, will explore Duluth parks. Please email question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by May 7. (more…)
Tweed director Ken Bloom to retire in June
Ken Bloom, director of the Tweed Museum of Art at the University of Minnesota Duluth since 2004, will retire in June. UMD’s School of Fine Arts made the announcement Friday afternoon, noting there will be a nationwide search for a new director.
Bloom will return to his lifelong photography career and continue to offer his accumulated museum and artistic expertise as a freelance curator and consultant. (more…)
“Rule 15” by Ryan Vine
Best Practices
— a loose companion to a previous essay about teaching —
“The truth knocks on the door and you say, ‘Go away, I’m looking for the truth,’ and so it goes away. Puzzling.”
— Robert M. Pirsig, from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values
I understand why a lot of teachers lust after “best practices.” I get why so many of us grasp at supposedly foolproof methods for making students do exactly what we want them to do. A lot of us have been taught that assigning work then rewarding or punishing students according to how they do it is the gist of teaching. (A lot of students, understandably and heartbreakingly, believe those rewards and punishments are the gist and evidence of learning.) From a certain perspective it makes sense for us to seek information about how to reward and punish as effectively as possible. It also, in some ways, makes sense for administrators to dictate practices they believe will create consistent punishments and rewards throughout a particular course, major, college unit, school, district, or state. The actual of process helping fellow human beings learn — as opposed to the process of meaningless, faux-rigorous punishing and rewarding — is a task of privilege that’s incredibly difficult to do well. I know my own version of feeling desperate for some method or approach that just works. (more…)
Duluth-area beer production nearly tripled from 2014 to 2018
A bevy of craft breweries and brewpubs have found the Arrowhead region of northeastern Minnesota and northwest Wisconsin to be fertile ground for growth. Five years ago, area craft breweries produced almost 20,000 barrels of beer. By 2018 that number nearly tripled to roughly 57,000 barrels. (more…)
Duluth Band Profile: Bryan Gatten
Bryan Gatten’s The Blue Hour combines new-age soundscapes with virtuoso guitar solos. He explains how the album is a love letter to his new home. Click on the image above to hear the podcast.
Video: Logan Moniot dances it up in the Greysolon Ballroom
Dancer Logan Moniot is featured in this video shot in Duluth’s Greysolon Ballroom by Jasper Meddock Productions. The song is “Bruises,” by Lewis Capaldi.
Homegrown photo banners
Once again, we’re looking for Homegrown Music Festival photo banners to rotate at the top of pages on Perfect Duluth Day. Photos of bands, friends, events or general shenanigans. Keep in mind, the photos get cropped to extreme horizontal proportions. If you want to crop ’em yourself (1135 pixels wide by 197 pixels high) and send them, super dooper. Or you can send them uncropped and I’ll do my best to make them fit.
Click here for complete submission guidelines, but the basics are: 1135 pixels wide by 197 pixels high, e-mail them to [email protected]. We’ll get them in the rotation during the Homegrown Music Festival, starting this weekend. (more…)
Lutsen b roll
[arve url=”https://youtu.be/m6rcSwrtkZ0″]
Brianna Hall-Nelson and 10 of her friends gathered for hygge, music, snowshoeing, and general merry making on the North Shore this January. It’s almost enough to make one nostalgic for winter. Almost. Videography by Sam Tuthill.
National Bank Notes of Duluth
There are still a few national currency bank notes with Duluth bank names floating around, mostly held by collectors. This type of currency was eliminated in the 1930s. The note above is from Northern National Bank of Duluth and was issued in 1908. In the portrait is U.S. Treasury Secretary Hugh McCulloch, who also named the streets in Duluth’s Lakeside neighborhood, including one after himself. (More on McCulloch in the comments.) (more…)
Duluth Band Profile: Charlotte Montgomery
Charlotte Montgomery wrote a somber coming-of-age story with Lonesome Ghost of Me. During a frustrating period, she found strength in unlikely places. Click on the image above to hear the podcast.
Upcoming gigs:
May 3 at Legacy Glassworks during Homegrown Music Festival
June 21 at Lake Superior Brewing Company
Mystery Photo #90: Duluth Photo Engraving Company
This old photo is from the Duluth Photo Engraving Company. Is that stage recognizable? Is this the cast of a play? What’s the deal with this image?
Duluth Superior Film Festival 2019 Trailer
Here’s the official trailer for the 2019 Duluth Superior Film Festival. May 29 to June 2 with a kick-off at the NorShor featuring Mike Scholtz’s hilarious new documentary Riplist.
We still need volunteers, so if you’d like to help out, please e-mail Marin Molander at marin.molander @ gmail.com. Volunteers get a bunch of cool stuff for helping out (four hours minimum).
Mousecanceheimer’s
Tig Notaro famously did a stand-up routine in which she announced she had cancer. It was lauded as one of the most incredible moments in stand-up history, and she was extolled as a pioneer in comedy for really working the fine edge of the tragedy + time = comedy equation many comics venerate as the best method of joke construction. I’ve listened to the routine — it’s as good as it’s rumored to be. Better, maybe, because of Notaro somehow putting into the fewest possible words the absurdity of human life in an undeniable way. A laser cut around the heart, but in the shape of a fart.
In this magnificent routine, Notaro jokes that people always say that “God never gives you more than you can handle,” and then goes on to imagine the angels watching God handing down Notaro’s few months of life, questioning God’s sobriety: in just a few months, Notaro almost died from an intestinal infection, her mother died in a household accident, and then she was diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in both breasts. The space between these events was long enough for her to make the phone calls necessary to tell anyone that one of the things had just happened. It’s preposterous. And inexplicably shitty. (more…)
Francis Chapin at the Art Institute of Chicago
Railroad Yard, Duluth, 1918–1965
There are a few works by Francis Chapin at the Art Institute of Chicago. More info about Chapin can be found on Wikipedia. (more…)
The Slice: Astronaut John Harrington
John B. Herrington, the first member of a federally recognized tribe – Chickasaw – to travel to space, was in the Twin Ports last month as part of the UW-Superior Distinguished Diversity Lecture and Art Series. In this clip he talks about his work on the International Space Station.
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.
Coal Depot, Duluth Harbor
Coal Depot, Duluth Harbor, Stuart David Klipper
The Art Institute of Chicago has many cool works of art with a Duluth connection available online. (more…)
Duluth Band Profile: The Great Unwilling
The Great Unwilling blends fuzzy guitar tones with heavy distortion. Band members explain how EP was a chance to rediscover themselves. Click on the image above to hear the podcast.
Upcoming gig:
May 4 at Pizza Lucé during Homegrown Music Festival
Video: Duluth State of the City Address 2019
Duluth Mayor Emily Larson gives her fourth State of the City Address in the gymnasium at Myers-Wilkins Elementary School.
Eric T. Anderson of Duluth
This photo of Eric T. Anderson, age 56 circa 1963, born in Duluth, is part of the collection at the Art Institute of Chicago. It was taken by Danny Lyon.
I don’t know the story or the man. Do you?
The Saturday Evening Post’s Duluth of 1949
Seventy years ago — April 16, 1949 — Duluth was featured in The Saturday Evening Post as part of the magazine’s series on “America’s most colorful cities.” The lengthy article by Arthur W. Baum was the 65th in the series, and features photographs by Frank Ross.
The intro text reads: “Once a bleakly unpromising village, this now great grain and ore center has survived many a stunning setback — thereby making her smart-aleck detractors look foolish. The cheif hazard of life here is this: You never know when a wild bear will drop in for breakfast.”
(more…)