V. O. Hammon Publishing Company of Chicago put out this postcard in the early 1900s. The image does not necessarily reflect a Duluth scene; the company also put out a “Having a Bully Time in Minneapolis” postcard with the same art … and there are probably others.
Mary Netta Abe tagged Perfect Duluth Day on Facebook with this image. She was born in Duluth, but her family moved away.
“I still have dreams with the old, familiar images of my childhood,” she writes. “I have flying dreams, which are my favorite; I can feel the amazing sensation of being airborne. In one dream, I soared over the Aerial Bridge! As an artist, I used that dream as an inspiration for this drawing! I will always love Duluth!”
Jason Vincent
After one last New Year’s Eve celebration, Midi shuttered its doors for good. But the prime location the restaurant occupied in the lower level of the historic Fitger’s Brewery Complex, with its patio and unparalleled lake view, won’t be dormant for long.
Renovations are already underway for the Boat Club Restaurant & Bar, a fine dining establishment set to open in Midi’s old space Valentine’s Day weekend.
The Cable Natural History Museum in Cable, Wis., is seeking a graphic designer to complete artwork for its upcoming exhibit. Find out the details at cablemuseum.org.
The list of oddball Minnesota hockey rinks is growing. In December Liftoff Aerials showed off PDD’s pond hockey rink shaped like the North Star State. Now, Gopher Aerial presents Shawn Carlon’s backyard rink in Maple Grove, which uses LED lights for added nighttime fun.
Posted without comment:
1.1 A bill for an act
1.2 relating to education; establishing the Student Physical Privacy Act; proposing
1.3 coding for new law in Minnesota Statutes, chapter 121A.
1.4 BE IT ENACTED BY THE LEGISLATURE OF THE STATE OF MINNESOTA:
1.5 Section 1. [121A.35] STUDENT PHYSICAL PRIVACY ACT.
Aqua Kids, a nationally syndicated television series created to educate young people about “ecology, wildlife, science and how it all relates to them,” shot several episodes in the Duluth area last summer. In this edition, the Aqua Kids get an up-close look at how Superior handles storm-water runoff. From retention ponds to engineered wetlands, the Aqua Kids don waders and headlamps to climb into the storm drains of Duluth to help divert toxic road runoff from entering a trout stream.
If you’ve followed Perfect Duluth Day for any length of time you know one of the more prolific commenters is “Helmut Flaag,” who for a five-year stretch went under the handle “Herzog.” I’m often curious about whether people enjoy his contributions or find them annoying.
Personally, and as one of the moderators of PDD, I have mixed feelings. I often find Helmut/Herzog’s remarks to be well crafted and amusing, but they occasionally consist of a flurry of antagonistic threadjacks about how lumbersexuals are destroying rock and roll with their old-time banjo music.
So it’s time to start a thread specifically dedicated to our mysterious opinionated friend.
… at least it wasn’t a T-shirt.
Aurora, the Iron Range city about an hour north of Duluth, was home to Francine York. “From the 60s and into the 70s, she was a guest-star on dozens of series, with some of her most remembered roles from Batman, Lost In Space, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, and The Streets of San Francisco.”
Bleeding Cool has the obituary for this Northland celebrity.
I think about September 11th a lot. More, lately.
I was working at Duluth’s now-defunct Ripsaw newspaper at the time, and we were confounded for the first hours. Do you remember the world in which an attack on U.S. shores was impossible? The idle impenetrability of the United States? We invaded. The world was our bully pulpit. But that day, the paradigm shifted as surely and as immediately as that of a new mother, who, in the second her child leaves her body finds her heart, her worst fears, vulnerable and exposed to the worst the world has to offer. You could almost hear it, the snap of collective consciousness as the reality became apparent, over the day. One hour at a time, our perceived security, the luxury of our superiority, rolled away like so many layers of fog.
My sister came and picked me up. We drove around, listening to the soundtrack from the Coen Brothers’ masterpiece, O Brother, Where Art Thou? and tuning in to the news for updates. We smoked a million American Spirit cigarettes. We felt scared.
Later, I stood on the balcony of my third-floor apartment, on the phone with my best friend. “We’re going to war,” he said.
“Definitely,” I replied.
Woot for the local artist, internationally recognized. In the Contrabass Conversations podcast from Prague, Duluth bassist Adam Booker is interviewed about …
As seen on the Twitters.
For the first Selective Focus of 2017, we start off with Kristina Estell’s sculpture and installations which depend on form and material but are also defined by their locations around the world.
K.E.: I studied sculpture in undergrad at Herron School of Art and in graduate school at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Very early in my art education, I knew I was interested in making serial sculptural work that interacted with architectural and outdoor spaces as opposed to singular traditional forms that lived on pedestals. In recent years, I have become primarily an installation artist who creates dimensional work with a variety of materials, processes and spaces. My work is often site-specific or site-responsive … making projects that consider a particular location and/or context. Silicone molding rubber, natural stones, fabric, live plants and gold leaf are a few of my favorite mediums. In between larger projects, I love taking up the process of watercolor painting and have an ongoing series based on bubble wrap packaging material.
