St. Louis River Story: Sheila Packa
People in the St. Louis River watershed shared their connection to the river with WDSE-TV during the opening reception for The St. Louis River: Diverse Connections at the Duluth Art Institute. In this installment, Sheila Packa shares her poem “St. Louis River Route.”
Midnight Movies at 7 – New Film Series at Zinema 2
In August Zeitgeist Arts Cafe and the Duluth Film Collective are launching a new film series: Midnight Movies at 7. The series will focus on cult classics, genre favorites, and films that are so bad they’re great.
First up in the series is Miami Connection, a 1980s tale of ninjas, rock ‘n’ roll, and taekwondo. The film will screen for one night only: Tuesday, August 9 at 7 p.m.
This Week: worms, wildflowers, whippersnappers and more
Here’s a bit of what you’ll find in this week’s PDD Calendar:
There’s a public meeting on the Can of Worms reconstruction plans, people can learn how to use a hand plane at Duluth MakerSpace, the folks behind the upcoming WDSE documentary Lost Superior are looking for stories, the Trans+ support group is holding its biweekly meeting on Tuesday, Teague Alexy plays the first show of the 34th Chester Creek Concert Series and it’s again time for the monthly Minecraft event at the Duluth Public Library.
Wednesday is “no kids allowed” night at World of Wheels Skate Center in Superior, the Duluth Art Institute is saying “thank you” to its members via the annual Art Night Out, Bagley Nature Center is the place to be if you like hiking and/or wildflowers, and it’s Grandma’s Marathon Weekend — which is a great time to get your young whippersnapper involved in racing, or to see a bunch of local and national music acts.
Denfeld Senior Graduation Video 2016
A shot-by-shot re-make of Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feelin’!” produced by Denfeld High School’s graduating class of 2016.
PDD Quiz: Happy Birthday to Us!
June 29 will be PDD’s 13th birthday. How much do you know about our 13 glorious years of being Duluth’s Duluthiest website? Take the quiz to find out.
And join us at Vikre Distillery on June 29 for PDDXIII: Perfect Duluth Day’s 13th Birthday Party. Here’s a link to the Facebook invite.
The next quiz will be out on July 3 and will be a review of June 2016. Send your questions and answers in to lawrence @ perfectduluthday.com by noon on Wednesday, June 29 to get them included.
Superior Siren – “Trying Too Hard”
Superior Siren performing “Trying Too Hard” at KUMD last month promoting the Homegrown Music Festival. Listen to the interview at kumd.org.
Down Town
“I’m from New Jersey, I don’t expect too much
If the world ended today I would adjust.”
–John Gorka
New York, New Jersey. San Francisco, Oakland. Duluth and Soup Town. The Deep North, top of the map, and shallow end of the gene pool. Ugly sister-city. Can you feel the gravitational pull of the swamp it was built on? This force that bends us, slouching like the lowland willows. That drives water, beer and whiskey to seek the lower ground. Rains and fortunes falling, down and down. The banker’s son becomes a biker. The executive’s boy delivers pizza and sells dope well into adulthood. Sociologists call this “regression toward the mean.” Or maybe the swamp is pulling them. Down.
Of course the place tosses off an astronaut or Nobel winner once in a while. But folks mostly seem to understand they were born in second-place, and second place, as we know, is first loser. You get used to it. It helps to have negative role-models. Don’t do what he did. Look out for that. Rest in peace. (more…)
Walt Whitman’s Poem About Duluth?
There’s a new posting at the Reference@Duluth blog that involves a little literary detective work:
The Duluth Daily News of March 30, 1892, printed a letter offering an unpublished poem by Walt Whitman. The letter writer claims that Whitman had visited Duluth for his health the previous summer and had been so impressed with the Zenith City that he wrote a poem in praise of Duluth and had sent it to a friend in town.
Quiet (Singles) Night at the Depot
Duluth Singles Night at the Depot
I spent Wednesday night at the Depot.
It was singles night, a weekly event in June. The event included $1 Castle Danger beers and entertainment from DJ Trivia. The event included free tickets to local events from KQDS and some locally owned restaurants and some tickets to Tribute Fest (I won three — anyone want to go? I feel no desire to pay tribute to any of the bands being covered.). The highlight of the event: a package to Las Vegas. (more…)
Selective Focus: Nate Lindstrom
“Awaiting”, Sunrise along the North Shore
You may have seen Nate Lindstrom’s photography at art festivals or through his annual calendar. For this week’s Selective Focus, Nate tells us about his landscape photography.
NL: It felt like it took a lot of experimenting, some minor frustrations and a heap of learning to make landscapes my photographic focus, but in hindsight that interest developed a long time ago. I’ve always had a love of nature and being outdoors and moving to a very outdoor-centered area of Minnesota helped me look at my surroundings in a different way. I was spending more time on trails, on the shore, sleeping in our many state parks, living through the hottest 10 days of our summer and diabolical winters. All of these things inspire what I look for in a subject or composition, and shape my overall style. (more…)
Tennis courts by MacArthur School coming along
Seven tennis courts and a discus/shotput-throwing area look to be almost ready at 725 N. Central Ave. The new courts and field will be used by tennis and track teams from Denfeld, as well as physical education students and other community members.
Cheng-Khee Chee profiled on The PlayList
Last week’s episode of WDSE-TV’s The PlayList profiled renowned watercolor painter Cheng-Khee Chee. Colleagues and friends share their perspective on his work and his legacy.
Perfect Duluth Day Outdoor Summer Concert Primer 2016
Those who prefer the safe confines of walls and a sturdy roof can check out Kiss or the Beach Boys this summer at Amsoil Arena or David Liebe Hart at the Red Herring Lounge, but ’tis the season for music under canopies or wide open to the elements.
Bayfront Festival Park and Big Top Chautauqua are hosting the usual slew of major acts throughout the summer, along with local music being showcased through smaller concert series, such as the Chester Creek Concert Series and Bayside Sounds at Barker’s Island Pavilion. With multiple shows scheduled every week throughout the summer, it’s hard to choose which ones to make time for. Here’s a look at some 2016 outdoor concert highlights.
June 14
Teague Alexy
Chester Bowl Park
The Chester Creek Concert Series launches its 34th season with a performance by poetic rock musician Teague Alexy.
June 17
Grandma’s Marathon Big Top Opening Night
Canal Park
Multi-platinum rock band Smash Mouth headlines this year’s opening night to Grandma’s Marathon weekend.
June 18
Brandi Carlile
Big Top Chautauqua
Singer-songwriter Brandi Carlile makes her way back for another year at the Big Top stage.
Woodblind – “Jubilee”
The ska duo of Veikko Lepisto and Jason Wussow perform “Jubilee” in KUMD’s Studio A.
Upcoming Woodblind gigs: June 9 at Beaner’s Central and June 27 at Thirsty Pagan Brewing.
J.M. Gidding & Co. | Gidding’s Millinery Duluth
The post “Duluth, the City of Electric Lights,” led me to wonder what the deal was with the Gidding’s building. A quick search of the internet produced the photo at left, which depicts the Knox Five and Dime fire of June 10, 1910, and shows the Gidding’s building at left. (more…)
This Week: baseball, breastfeeding, Blitzen Trapper and more
Here’s a bit of what you’ll find in this week’s PDD Calendar:
Painter Moira Villard’s work gets a show and an opening reception at the Zeitgeist Arts Building, the Duluth Huskies baseball club faces off against St. Cloud at Wade Stadium, La Leche League International holds its monthly evening discussion about breastfeeding, Duluth Mayor Emily Larson and City Councilor Em Westerlund invite the public to a community listening session, Pete Fest 2016 kicks off five nights of music with an open mic and roast and Blitzen Trapper returns to Duluth with a show at the Red Herring.
The Tweed Museum of Art holds a grand reopening celebration, the fifth-annual Bash for Boobies softball tournament takes place, a film in which Colin Farrell tries to avoid becoming a crustacean opens at the Zinema, guitarist Darin Bergsven performs, the Red Herring Lounge celebrates two years in operation with two nights stuffed full of music, people are encouraged to Take a Kid Fishing this weekend and Big Top Chautauqua celebrates 30 years of existence.
The Old Riverside Store & Auditorium
The large, weathered building on the corner of Industrial Avenue and Spring Street in Duluth’s Riverside neighborhood is a bit of a curiosity. Does someone live there? Is it basically a storage building? What was it constructed for?
The “One River, Many Stories” community journalism project in April seemed like a good excuse to track down some answers. The owner of the building, Douglas J. McEneany, did not respond to requests for an interview, but searches at the Duluth Public Library for historical data were fruitful. (more…)
Kat Fox – “Kat Calling”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlOvlLttWUo
Kat Fox is makin’ it on her own; just give her the microphone.
Recent Interview: Conversations on Misogyny and the Music Scene, Pt. 1
Upcoming gig: June 10 at Red Herring Lounge.
Robin Droppings
When my boys were young, they found a baby robin in our backyard. That little bird ruled our world for a few days, but more remarkably, it brought me to my spiritual knees. My place in things — motherhood, nature, humanness — all came into question. A decade later, I am still pirouetting with the lessons, the most resonant being my wonderment at the place I hold among animals, which I find to be rather startling. The writer Wendell Berry said in one of my favorite poems, “I come into the peace of wild things.” What I learned was not — and is still not — entirely peaceful. But in being gobsmacked by a few ounces of feathers, I have been able to see the elegance and intelligence of things I didn’t see before. The skills and abilities we are given for our particular deed. It just comes to us. We are so lucky, so blessed, so capable — even while we find the limits of our own animalness.
The robin my boys found was clearly too young to be on her own. She had enough wing feathers to get herself safely out of a tree without a deadly landing, but her landing strip was a backyard ruled by boys and curious dogs. Her appearance at ground level was, of course, a breathless, wide-eyed event for my elementary-aged boys, who instantly and frantically began saving her. I was swearing silently while directing an evacuation of the backyard, contending with that horrible gut heaviness that comes when you know your heart is about to be split open. I peered hopefully out the window with the boys many times before dinner, watching to see if the robin parents would somehow come for her. That was my irrational hope. (more…)
Tanks a lot
Anybody know who might remove an old pretty-much-empty oil tank from my basement?
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.
Selective Focus: Moira Villiard
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. (more…)
Slow TV: Moving Chickens at the Food Farm
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.