Camping at Bear Head Lake State Park
Pranam Gurung put together this short clip of his first camping trip of the season to Bear Head Lake State Park near Ely. Day photos shot on an iPhone 6s Plus; night photos shot on a Canon 6D.
Pranam Gurung put together this short clip of his first camping trip of the season to Bear Head Lake State Park near Ely. Day photos shot on an iPhone 6s Plus; night photos shot on a Canon 6D.
This week’s Selective Focus subject has a solo show opening next Monday, June 6, at Zeitgeist Arts in the Atrium. Moira Villiard talks about her paintings and the physical toll her work has taken on her.
MV: People are often surprised when I tell them I haven’t been a painter for very long. I’ve always been involved in the arts, but my skills didn’t mature all that much until I got out of high school and spent my first few post-secondary years sketching portraits I found in old National Geographic magazines. Prior to that, I used to draw doodles in my class notes and took pride in calling myself a “surrealist,” though everything I’d done had been on notebook paper.
Slow TV documents ordinary events over long periods of time in delightful detail. This particular example features live animals, an on-camera introduction and a few seconds of fast-motion!
But don’t get used to these exciting innovations. Our next video could just as easily be 12 straight hours of grass growing.
This mystery photo comes from the folks at UMD’s Kathryn A. Martin Library. The majorette featured front and center is June Feick, leading her fellow majorettes and the UMD Marching Band during the 1952 Homecoming Parade on Superior Street in Duluth.
The mystery? “June doesn’t appear to have enrolled at UMD for the 1953-54 (school year),” reads the caption on the Kathryn A. Martin Library Facebook page. “We are curious about what happened in her life after she left UMD. Can anyone help us find more information?”
WDSE-TV’s The PlayList shot last summer’s Trampled by Turtles concert at Bayfront Festival Park. The band returns July 9 for another Bayfront show.
Who are they? W.M. Matheny, A.F. Vance and J.W.A. Abb. When were they leaving Duluth? One hundred years ago — June 2, 1916, at 1:45 p.m. Did they plan to return? Yes. Two days later. It’s all written in pencil on the back of the postcard.
My brother Allen and I are releasing three interrelated novellas set in Duluth, on Kindle. The first one is available now, Menno Zwonk: Amish Outlaw. Here’s the blurb we wrote for it: “A savage dystopian satire featuring Menno Zwonk, a larger-than-life Amish outlaw and big game hunter. Zwonk is locked in perpetual struggle with a closet-zoophiliac vegan animal rights activist, and an underground lesbian separatist organic farm. Meanwhile biotech has run amok and the fate of the world might be decided in Zwonk’s roadhouse restaurant outside Duluth, Minnesota. Ultraviolent, dirty, and hilarious, this book is as much a diabolical foodie novel as it is outrageous action tale.” Not for the faint of heart. Yes this work has been excerpted in the Transistor over many years. Stay tuned for pt 2 “Novelty Theater,” and pt 3 “The Guys Who Never Stop Fighting.” These books are action/adventure-science/fantasy with literary pretensions. But more than anything they may be seen as love letters to Duluth MN, where these ideas and characters gestated. Social Media: Menno Zwonk Facebook page, The Richardson Bros Facebook page.
Walter Haugen stood inside an old corner pharmacy his father operated for close to 70 years on Superior’s East End. A junk pile was pushed near the plate glass front windows. Empty shelving units displayed old merchandise tags. A pungent mercurochrome smell filled the dusty store.
He pointed through a hole in some foam panels overhead. The hole exposed a tin ceiling most likely installed when the building was constructed in 1878. Dozens of silver, square tin tiles decorated the ceiling.
Haugen said someone could be hired to take down the tin, which could be sold for a hefty price to antique dealers or architectural salvage specialists. But it won’t be done.
“It would be like gutting a relative,” he said. “It would be like if you had a pet deer that you raised and someone asked you to chop it up and sell them the meat. You just wouldn’t do it.”
The East End Drug Store, on the corner of Fifth Street and 22nd Avenue, anchors a collection of storefront buildings in the oldest business district in Superior. The 19th Century buildings are expected to meet the wrecking ball in the coming weeks, opening a prime corner to commercial redevelopment.
The Lifetime movie Girl Missing features scenes shot in Duluth by drone operator Josh Kunze, including aerial footage of Glensheen Mansion and a limo driving along Lake Superior’s North Shore.
Here’s a bit of what you’ll find in this week’s PDD Calendar:
It’s Memorial Day, and the annual West Duluth parade is happening (as is the Gary-New Duluth Veterans’ Memorial Ceremony), James Taylor comes to town on Wednesday to do his chilled-out thing, the five-day Duluth-Superior Film Festival gets underway, former Minneapolis mayor R.T. Rybak stops at Fitger’s to discuss and sign his new book, the play Annapurna opens at the Duluth Playhouse and Neil Young tribute act Tired Eyes is out there jamming the classics.
The 18th annual Arrowhead Arts Awards take place in Grand Marais, Renegade Improv is the place for on-the-spot laffs, local anglers are raising money for ALS, the Duluth and Barker’s Island farmer’s markets are in full effect, Animal Allies holds its Walk for Animals 2016 event and the Underground is the place for Music for All.
Clip from an advertising supplement in the May 29, 1984 Duluth News Tribune, referring to the classic “Duluth, who loves ya baby?” TV spot.
May 2016 isn’t quite over, but it’s over enough to quiz you over it. Here are some questions to see if you’ve been paying attention.