I’ve been working on a medical humanities project. Some Duluthians are part of it, including poet Zomi Bloom.
“After the endoscopy … while living in limbo, every attempt to eat led to unbearable burning and the inevitable blowing up of the balloon on my right side. I drifted in and out of waking dream‐state such that dreams became nightmares and shifted back into dreams of fantastic sweetness.”
Read the poem at repository.stcloudstate.edu.
It was 25 years ago today — January 16, 1994 — when Duluth’s iconic Chinese Lantern restaurant was destroyed by fire. The video clip above is from the Asian Flavors documentary co-produced by the Minnesota Historical Society Press and Twin Cities Public Television in 2013. The full 28-minute documentary is below.
I reviewed Ryan Vine’s book of poetry. It’s good! Check the review out here.
Shoe company Vans brings its branded content team to Duluth, and the locals show them some of the winter surf “hot” spots.
About a year ago, Samantha Nielsen was subject of a Selective Focus on Perfect Duluth Day. She’s one of the Duluth artists in the Brooklyn Art Library.
Whitney & Kelby Sundquist – Photo by Lissa Maki
A little blue sauna on a trailer began popping up around Duluth late last year. The Hiki Hut has licensing similar to a food truck, but instead of food it’s serving up nourishing doses of heat and steam. Owners Whitney and Kelby Sundquist aim to encourage sauna appreciation as well as cultivate community.
Test your art smarts with this quiz, which explores the murals of Superior. Murals in Duluth were explored in an earlier quiz, which can be found here.
The next PDD quiz, reviewing headlines from January 2019, will be published on Jan. 27. Please email question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Jan. 24.
I.
Some winter evenings I stand on a lake’s edge under bright-black Iron Range sky wondering about walking across that ice, over the train tracks along the far shore, into those woods, and away. What if I wandered until weary, laid down under a pine tree, then breathed easy until one by one my atoms drifted off into moonlight and air? Could I become birch smoke? Would a resting black bear or hunting fox know me among everything else it inhales? Most often on those nights I just look at the outside from inside, through my mother-in-law’s living room window after everyone else has gone to bed. When the TV and lights are off I can see down her back yard and past the dock we pulled out of Colby Lake in October and will push back into it come late May or early June. Snow on lake ice glows blue-gray under black pine silhouettes. Sky glows black. Abashed by comfort and warmth, I tell myself to get dressed and ski out the eastern end of Colby into the Partridge River. Or ride fat tires across Whitewater Lake or along the Bird Lake Trail or up and down the Moose Line Road. Then I admit my lack of will. Then I stand there for a couple more minutes, trying to make sure I can remember what that outside looks and feels like so my brain can reproduce the sensation long after the last time I’ve seen it. Then I go to bed and struggle to sleep.
In the sixth episode of the “Duluth to Montgomery Reflections,” the Duluth NAACP welcomes an advocate, coordinator, and mentor from the Duluth community. Sandra Oyinloye is no stranger to facing issues of racial justice head-on, yet this trip to the National Memorial for Peace and Justice brought her into new challenges.
Amber Burns is a true advocate for the arts. She has worked as a dancer, choreographer, painter, teacher and is now Artistic Director of the Duluth Playhouse Family Theatre. This week she talks about her love of many types of expression, and how she builds the work of other people as well as the many disciplines of her own.
AB: When I think about my medium I more like to think about what I love to create, which is visual movement, whether it is through my choreography, directing, through sculpture or on a canvas. Sometimes my medium is paint and sometimes it is physical bodies. I am a dancer, actor, director, choreographer, and visual artist. When I was just three years old I started dancing at a studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota and when people asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I said, “I already am a dancer!” As I got older I developed passions for many other things, including drawing and painting. When it was time to pick a career and go to college I decided to b become an art teacher, and graduated from UMD in 2011 with a BFA in Art Education, all the while I was still dancing and teaching dance classes. At UMD I also received a minor in dance, and this is where I was introduced to the theater world.
Brooklyn Art Library claims to hold the largest collection of sketchbooks in the world with more than 41,000 sketchbooks on shelves and more than 20,000 in a digital library. Some of them reference Duluth.
This cityscape photo of Minnesota Point, shot from Duluth’s hillside, is from the Detroit Publishing Company, copyright 1904.
U.S. Steel’s Duluth Works plant in Morgan Park had more than 50 buildings when production began in 1915. This undated postcard highlights the machine shop and power house.
Joe Esenther of Excelsior posts videos of his travel adventures on YouTube under the moniker “Wild by Nature.” His most recent travelogue shows him exploring the North Shore of Lake Superior with friends.
