Selective Focus: #perfectduluthday
This week, another selection of Instagram photos marked with #perfectduluthday. (more…)
Emily Haavik & the 35s – “Candle” and “Good Heart”
A pair of music videos by Duluth band Emily Haavik & the 35s. Above is “Candle,” recorded at Scratch Studios in Duluth on Jan. 12. Video by Michelle Truax with help from Sarah Feyder. Audio by Aaron Boothe. (more…)
Duluth Trivia Deck Sampler #8
Below are more questions from a Duluth Trivia Deck I found at Savers. I’m not using all the questions in this deck in my series of posts, by the way. Some are clearly dated., e.g. “How many banks are in Duluth?” The answer will no longer be accurate. Also, some are clearly designed to promote a business.
1. How long is the Blatnik Bridge?
2. Who was John A. Blatnik?
3. The actor Tom Price portrayed a popular role in 1985 in Duluth. What part did he play?
4. How many branch libraries are there in Duluth — at the time this card deck was produced?
5. Due to a power failure, who was stuck in the Holiday Center glass elevator for one-half hour on October 23, 1985?
6. Name the person who has been mayor of Duluth, director of the Western Lake Superior Sanitary District, and in the state legislature?
7. What Duluth mayor came to prominence over a confrontation with a gasoline distribution company?
8. What was the first name of the Duluth Junior League organization? (more…)
Mystery Photos #61 and #62: Posing with Car
Not much is known about these two photos, other than that the car has Minnesota plates that appear to show the year 1925 or 1935. Is this a scene from Duluth? Is it possible to pin this photo on any map? Obviously bonus points for identifying people in the photo.
Don’t be fooled by how the building at right appears to look a little bit like the Chromaline/Ikonics building in West Duluth. It is not.
Writer Reads … in Ashland and on the Radio
Duluth authors Avesa Rockwell, Lucie Amundsen and other Duluthians I don’t know all read in the annual “Writer’s Read” event at Northland College on Jan. 26.
Avesa’s memoir, Children of the Earth, was selected by judges for its relevance to this year’s theme of “gut instinct.” Her story describes a disturbing incident from her adolescence in New Mexico and the tension between acquiring wisdom and maintaining innocence. (more…)
A polka break … because we all need it
Put your troubles on hold and enjoy the 1983 album Polka with the Duluth Accordionaires. Side A above, side B below. (more…)
Don’t thank him; just write
If you fling a certain line at Air Force veteran Eric Chandler, expect a pleasant smile masking irritation. He might nod in recognition. And if that’s all you got, the conversation is over.
“Thank you for your service.”
“Who are you thanking?” he asked earlier this year when talking about the growing gap of understanding of the U.S. military experience with that of civilians.
“We’re all complicit,” Chandler says with a serious tone. He could go on for hours on this topic, he says. There’s a deal made in a constitutional republic: Citizens ask for protection with a standing army and some answer the call by enlisting. But it’s not a service contract, Chandler says. “It’s not like the cable guy.”
“It should feel more invested” all around, Chandler says. “Thank you for your service” rings as hollow as any other jingoistic notion of the military’s role in American society. When people don’t know what it is you do or have done, platitudes mean nothing, he says. People are less interested in “who is in the military” over just passing along jingoistic notions of it, he says. (more…)
Some Duluth Jobbers (Curlers) History
This handsome photo of the 1913 curling club off London Road comes from the Duluth Commercial Club annual report from 1918.
Yeah, we didn’t get our paper this morning either. What to read? (I like to pretend the internet doesn’t exist on snow days.) So as we bask in curling gold from South Korea, enjoy a little history of one of Duluth’s most ancient organized sports. (more…)
PDD Quiz: February 2018 in Review
Go for the gold with this month’s PDD Quiz and test your knowledge of local current events.
The next PDD quiz, on extreme weather, will be published on March 11. Email question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by March 8. (more…)
Duluth Curling Club team takes Olympic gold
Guns
We all know the joke, and you can fill in your own punchline: it’s harder to ________ (vote, fish legally, join Girl Scouts) than it is to get an assault rifle in the United States. It’s funny because it’s so true.
Or at least it was funny until kids — so many kids — started getting killed. It’s February, at the time of this essay, and there have been seven school shootings in 2018 so far. In total, there have been seventeen firearms incidents in schools in the same timeframe, when you include suicides on school grounds, and the accidental discharge of a weapon in school. To teachers, parents, and kids, this means that every couple of days — three times a week — there is another incident where school is interrupted by gunfire.
Teachers and administrators are running drills in their classrooms as though we were in WWII England, listening for bomb raids. So, in addition to hearing news every few days of another firearms incident in schools, kids are reminded every couple of months that someone might come into their school and kill them and all of their friends. (more…)
Selective Focus: Matt Kania
Matt Kania is an artist who has won awards for his plein air paintings that capture the light, the feeling and the experience of being in a place. His work brings life to scenes that most of us would walk past without noticing.
MK: I am a professional oil painter and an original printmaker. With most of my artistry coming in recent years in the form of plein air painting (that’s French for ‘in open air’ or ‘on location’). (more…)
Duluthians go for Gold
UMD Bulldog and Team USA goalie Maddie Rooney sported the Aerial Lift Bridge on the back of her helmet as Team USA took gold last night. There were a total of five UMD Bulldogs in the quest for the gold medal: Rooney and defenseman Sidney Morin for team USA, and forward Haley Irwin, defensemen Jocelyne Larocque and Brigette Lacquette were playing for Canada. Also, the U.S. team was coached by Duluth native Robb Stauber.
Poems for Chance
Chance: Poems
Tuesday night I attended the publication party and reading for “Chance: Poems,” an anthology of poems edited by Kathleen Roberts in honor of the art installation currently at the Tweed Museum. (more…)
HERE COMES DIGGINS!!! Chad Salmela does it again!!!
Above: Duluth’s Chad Salmela delivers another outstanding performance as an announcer at the 2018 Winter Olympics. (more…)
Duluth Album Releases in 2018
Superior Siren
Self titled
(Jan. 12)
Sadkin
Reimagined
(Jan. 12)
Àlamode
Swell
(Jan. 13)
The Documentary
Daggers & Discord
(Feb. 13)
Available on Bandcamp
Ingeborg Von Agassiz
O Giver of Dreams
(March 15)
Available on ingeborgvonagassiz.com
Oakhold Farmhouse Brewery “will not become a reality”
A planned brewery in Midway Township outside Duluth will apparently not come to fruition. Equipment from a disreputable manufacturer could be partially to blame, but there has been no official statement from the owners regarding what ultimately brought the project to a halt. (more…)
Trailer for “Audiophilia,” a comedy shot in Duluth
Check out this trailer for a short comedy recently shot in Duluth by UMD grad Keegan Burckhard.
Donut lovers have hope in Duluth’s Lakeside
Cases were loaded with pastry and shelves decorated with cookie jars at Johnson’s Lakeside Bakery in this 2015 photo.
Eastside donut and cookie lovers will lose a longtime sweet supplier this spring but a potential plan is in the works to install another bakery at the same address which has fed the neighborhood for more than six decades. (more…)
Bad Student
‘Cause I survived the ’80s one time already
And I don’t recall it all that fondly
— Craig Finn
The bemulleted boy in that senior portrait over there came very close to not graduating with his Rochester John Marshall high school class of 1989 mates. One semester more and the rage that had fueled his self-destructive approach to school since 1983 would have elicited an anticlimactic letter explaining why he couldn’t walk in the ceremony and what he’d have to do if he wanted a diploma.
His K-6 career had suggested potential. Then a few months into seventh grade his interest in caring or trying seemed to evaporate. He embodied adolescent apathy. He also transcended it in ways that made very little sense to himself or anyone else. One example: he so bitterly resented being placed into advanced science and English classes (for reasons he could articulate no further than, “I just want to be in the normal classes”), that he intentionally got crummy grades on assignments until people who made such decisions had no choice but to bust him down to non-advanced sections.
At least that’s how I think I remember it. I know he was pissed — furious — about school in general, and still pretty far away from having vocabulary or perspective required to process what he was feeling or why. I know he self-sabotaged, sometimes so willingly it seemed wanton, and sometimes while watching it happen and wishing he knew how to stop it. In those situations, the latter often presented as the former. I also know it’s possible he got kicked out of those advanced sections because he just wasn’t equipped to stay in them. It’s not taking shots at him to say he might just not have been smart enough in ways the classes required students to be. (more…)
Then and Now: Grand Avenue at Knowlton Creek
The image above shows Grand Avenue at Knowlton Creek, looking from Duluth’s Norton Park neighborhood toward the Riverside neighborhood. It’s dated Feb. 16, 1918. At the time, Grand Avenue was named Third Street. What does it look like today? (more…)
Selective Focus: Carli Vergamini
Carli Vergamini takes old jackets and other items and re-purposes them into a wild variety of accessories. A quote on her website reads “the best fashions are fringey & up-cycling is cool.” In this week’s Selective Focus, we get an introduction to what she’s doing. It’s worth a deeper dive into her blog, where she frequently makes updates about what she’s working on, and she highlights other businesses that she admires in a series she calls “Biz Crush.”
CV: My main medium of choice is leather. Specifically, re-purposed from vintage leather jackets. It happened as a mistake — I was fresh out of college and didn’t know what I was doing with my life. All I knew is that I wanted to make stuff, but I didn’t know where to buy the materials I needed to make the stuff I wanted to make. So I did what I typically do and got resourceful. I bought the first leather coat I could find at Goodwill, took it home and cut that baby up to smithereens. (more…)
Guide to Duluth-related Blogs in 2018
As far as blogs go, obviously Perfect Duluth Day isn’t the only show in town. And it must be noted the line where a blog crosses over from one person’s musings into becoming an online magazine is a fuzzy one. In spite of the inherent problems associated with labeling anything, below is PDD’s updated list of Duluth-area community blogs — an every-couple-of-year salute/guide to the individuals and small groups who crank out content like it’s 2007 instead of (or in addition to) just Facebooking, Instagramming and whateverelseing. (more…)
Duluth Trivia Deck Sampler #7
More from the deck found at Savers …
1. In what year did the U.S. Commerce Dept, designate the Port of Duluth a Foreign Trade Zone?
2. In what year was the $8.5 million Duluth International Airport passenger terminal and industrial park complex completed?
3. In what year was Northland Country Club built?
4. In what year was Wade Stadium dedicated?
5. Who was Sid Peterson?
6. Who were the 1961 Minnesota State High School basketball champions?
7. Who was Bruce Bennett?
8. Who was “Heat Wave” Richard Berler?
9. What was the White City on Park Point? (more…)