Abort Scene – “Born Pinned to the Duluth Wheel”
Perhaps the least-known Duluth song is by the Champaign, Ill.-based band Abort Scene. “Born Pinned to the Duluth Wheel” was released on the album Seeds of the Real Alternative (Waterloo Records, June 3, 2008). The track also appeared on the band’s 2013 compilation Rational Hardcore. (more…)
Free Range Trials of Cecilia Ramon and Kathy McTavish
“In farming terms, field trials are an opportunity to determine effectiveness of experimental techniques in agriculture.”
On Sunday I went to the Free Range Trials at the Food Farm in Wrenshall. Free Range Trials is a lab for artistic process and creative experimentation through the exhibition of work by Kathy McTavish and Cecila Ramon. The lab will be open daily between 2 and 5 p.m. through Sept. 3. To learn about Ramon, you can listen to KUMD here. (more…)
Remembering Don LaFontaine, king of movie trailers
Yesterday was the 78th birthday of the “Voice of God,” Don LaFontaine. The famed movie-trailer voice-over star was born in Duluth on Aug. 26, 1940. He died on Sept. 1, 2008.
CBS Sunday Morning ran a tribute to LaFontaine yesterday; click on the GIF above to watch the video, which starts after a commercial.
PDD Quiz: August 2018 in Review
Which headlines caught your eye this month? Which escaped your attention? Mourn the waning summer and the inexorable march of time with this month’s PDD Quiz!
The next quiz, on bygone community events and festivals, will be published on Sept. 16. Please email question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Sept. 12. (more…)
23-27 W. First St. Building History
What is now Joseph Nease Gallery started as Max Bloom Furniture in 1916 until the 1930s, was the Covenant Club 1960 to about 1964, was a Norge Industrial Laundry about 1967, became Arthur’s Formal Wear and Horton’s Boxing until 2008, then was the infamous 50 Below IT firm until about 2013. I am trying to fill in some of the blanks and find any existing photos from the various time periods if anyone has any suggestions. Thanks!
Ripped at Little Angie’s in 2008
[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve pulled out another relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. In this adventure, Slim gets ripped at Little Angie’s Cantina & Grill for an article that was originally published in the July 28, 2008 issue of the Transistor.]
Walking through Canal Park, I feel totally out of my element. There are teenagers everywhere. A few of them are skateboarding aimlessly, weaving in and out of groups of other teenagers who are standing around together talking on their cell phones. Apparently, they are making calls to find out where else in town teenagers are standing around doing nothing. The whole thing is way too wholesome and family-oriented for me. The only way I like to spend time around people under 21 is when I’m ordering from a pregnant bartender in South Range.
As I approach Little Angie’s Cantina & Grill, however, all I can see and hear is an old, fat woman on the deck who is colossally inebriated. “I feel like I’m drunk,” she says to a group of young women who appear to be her daughters. “We’re leaving without paying.”
Now this, dear readers, is my element. (more…)
Slacklining at Palisade Head
The big topic on Perfect Duluth Day’s Facebook page over the past two days is whether the above photo showing a slackliner at Palisade Head is legit or a carefully edited hoax. (more…)
Selective Focus: Marissa Saurer
Marissa Saurer is an artist blending photography and painting with digital tools, focusing the camera on food, nature and the environment.
MS: I am a photographer who sometimes tries to walk the line between photography and painting. I do this by bringing my images into Corel Painter®, and digitally painting over them using my own brush strokes.
I have been a food photographer for a few years now working in the restaurant and craft beer industry. While I love food, I have recently expanded into landscape photography due to my love for nature and the outdoors. Some of my work has been specifically to help environmental causes.
(more…)
Conflicted Feelings: Moose Lake
Moose Lake is close enough to Duluth, I feel like I should have an opinion about the recent court decision that lets the Minnesota Sex Offender Program continue operating as it has been, despite the fact that as of two years ago, “nobody has ever been fully released. More than 40 have died while in commitment. The oldest man here is 94, and several are older than 70” [via PBS].
I don’t know anyone in the facility. I don’t know anyone who works for the facility. I believe in rehabilitation but I might be naive. I believe life sentences should be part of the court’s sentencing, not a civil commitment after, but that might be splitting hairs.
I don’t want to imagine that someone in the government could decide I could never walk free again without recourse to a trial by my peers. But I would not commit the kind of crime these men have.
I could stand some help thinking this through.
Duluth’s Madam Butterfly
Rena Vivian Smith as Madam Butterfly, Cosmopolitan Magazine, February 1907
The latest “Forgotten Duluthian” posting by David Ouse at the Duluth Public Library’s Vintage Duluth blog is about Duluth’s Madame Butterfly, Rena Vivian Smith.
Select Images from the 1948 Denfeld Oracle
The Denfeld class of 1948 held its 70th reunion last week. Marking that occasion and the upcoming return to school, we present select images from the 1948 Denfeld Oracle, the school’s annual yearbook. (more…)
Ice Cream Delicacy in West Duluth by Denfeld
I tasted T-Icy Roll Ice Cream yesterday at 4602 Grand Ave., next to an old favorite, Zhong Hua. (more…)
“The Glen” at Garfield Park in Duluth
This 1897 issue of Duluth’s Labor World shows the waterfall and cauldron of “the Glen” in Chester Park. From 1894 to 1902 the area was named Garfield Park. (more…)
Park Point Cabin, revisited
While out hiking with The Big E and our daughter this weekend he reminded us both there used to be cabins on Park Point. Does anyone know when they were torn down?
Exploring remains of an abandoned commercial fishing camp
YouTube user “MNduro USA” brought a scuba tank to an old commercial fishing operation just north of the French River on Lake Superior. “I found a couple of nice lures from modern times and an old underwater pulley system with giant winch on the hill above,” he writes on the YouTube video description. “Cable was strewn across the bottom from the day it snapped!”
Bob Dylan – “Something There is About You”
Consider this the third post in the “Ruth Trilogy.”
Part One: Shuggy Ray Smith – “Ruth from Duluth”
Part Two: Ruth Hart: “Baby Ruth from Duluth” (more…)
Mary Scott Bywater – “America’ll Win the War”
One century ago, as “The War to End All Wars” raged on, Mary Scott Bywater of Duluth wrote and published a forgotten anthem.
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Heat and Humidity, Fences and Dogs
Shilo is lethargic in this Duluth heat. Curiosity that once jetted her off the ground at the potential of capturing what made the random noise in the brush has quelled. She has become a passive witness. Her eyes dart in interest, maybe a quick turn of the head, but nothing is important enough to coax her legs into a sprint. Not on August days when temperatures are 80 to 90 degrees and she can only expire heat while sweating through paw pads or panting.
I brush her almost daily. Removing at least a little of her hair layer may help some trapped heat escape. She has taken to lying on the cement slab in the garage, two large doors remain open letting what exists of the midday breeze wave in, a welcomed visitor.
The other loyal companion, Bear, aka Mr. Bearington, a newfoundland mixed with lab, is still on constant guard. Heat does not deter him from his mission. He remains focused on what happens on the other side of the fence. He must protect us from intruders that might sneak through the boundary. Most of the time it’s another dog, sometimes it’s a skater, a horse, a biker, or the most ferocious intruder this summer, a snapping turtle so small it could fit in the palm of my hand. Still, a snapper is a snapper. Once I realized we were being invaded by such a fearsome beast, I scooped it into a bucket and escorted it to the pond on the back 15. (more…)
Selective Focus: Joseph Nease Gallery
This week we hear from Amanda Hunter, manager at Joseph Nease Gallery, about the gallery’s first year in business in Downtown Duluth and what’s ahead.
AH: As background on our history, Joe Nease, the gallery owner and his partner, the painter Karen Owsley Nease, moved to Duluth from Kansas City about five years ago after falling in love with Duluth, the North Shore and Lake Superior during many years of vacationing here. Previously, Joe ran a successful gallery for 5 years in the thriving contemporary art scene of Kansas City, MO. The first Joseph Nease Gallery carried most of the best artists in that town, many who have gone on to prestigious careers and have won important awards in the art world such as the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award. Shows from that gallery were reviewed four times in a major national magazine. (more…)
R.I.P. Carter Hotel
The Duluth News Tribune reports the vacant Carter Hotel building at 17 N. Second Ave. E. will be torn down. The Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa will replace it with a surface parking lot for its Fond-du-Lac Casino. (more…)
Ruth Hart: “Baby Ruth from Duluth”
The recent PDD posting about the 1960s song “Ruth from Duluth” has led to a potentially related historical sidebar. It turns out that in the 1940s there was a carnival performer promoted as the 750-pound “Ruth from Duluth.”
Very few details are available in the five periodical clippings unearthed so far.
The Billboard, June 30, 1945:
