August 2021 Posts

SubSuperior: Day 1


 

Beta-test/proof of concept/first annual; video to come. Making music underwater and projecting it on land with hydrophones.

Heely Tricks with JamesG: July 2021

Here’s the hot midsummer installment of wheeled sneaker stunts by former Duluthian James Geisler, also known as the hip-hop artist JamesG.

Duluth Cup Race of 1911

It was 110 years ago today — Aug. 12, 1911 — that the Minnetonka reached the amazing speed of 30 miles per hour and won the Duluth Cup.

Glenn Miller & the Modernaires – “Elmer’s Tune”

“Elmer’s Tune” was the first hit for Duluth songwriter Sammy Gallop. Glenn Miller & the Modernaires recorded this version 80 years ago today — Aug. 11, 1941.

Duluth Primary Election Results 2021

With 34 of 34 precincts reporting …

Duluth At-large City Councilor
Top four candidates advance to General Election
Azrin Awal | 2,946
Terese Tomanek | 2,893
Joe Macor | 2,589
Timothy L. Meyer | 989
Ashlie Castaldo | 988
Scott Jenkins | 703
Dezuwon “Pez” Davila | 594
Nancy Stam | 508

Duluth Second District City Councilor
Top two candidates advance to General Election
Mike Mayou | 954
Dave Zbaracki | 289
Andrew C. Jarocki | 254
Andrew Hilfers | 24

Duluth Fourth District City Councilor
Top two candidates advance to General Election
Renee K. Van Nett | 653
Howie Hanson | 524
Nathaniel Rankin | 118

The Slice: Honoring Missing Indigenous Women

Kevin Pendleton of Zenith City Piercing and Tattoo brought attention to the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women crisis through a viral photo of a tattoo.

In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.

Guide to Duluth-area Podcasts in 2021

About half of Duluth-area podcasts are a repackaging of radio content, but there are still plenty of independent programs covering everything from politics, history and sports to paranormal encounters and general geekery.

Video Archive: Tamburitzans in Lake Nebagamon

The Tamburitzans, the longest-running multicultural song and dance company in the United States, has rehearsed in Lake Nebagamon for its national tour since 1947. Mary Ellen Miller had the story for KBJR-TV in 1978 when the Tammies invaded the Lake Nebagamon Village Auditorium.

Time of Waiting

I remember her waiting up for my father
To come home from God knows where
In a yellow cab at 2:00 A.M.
And waiting for me in the school parking lot
In our old blue station wagon
When whatever it was I was practicing for
Ran late …

And I remember her waiting for me
At the airport when I got back from Japan,
Waiting for everything to be all right,
Waiting for her biopsy results.
Waiting.

— George Bilgere, “Waiting”
 

Waiting for Cancer

In 1956, in On the Origin of Cancer Cells, Otto Warburg tried to pin down the causes for the “mysterious latency period of the production of cancer.” Fifty years later, in Genetic Progression and the Waiting Time to Cancer, Niko Beerenwinkel, Tibor Antal, David Dingli, Arne Traulsen, Kenneth W Kinzler, Victor E Velculescu, Bert Vogelstein, and Martin A Nowak replace the “mysterious latency period” with talk about a waiting period: they set out to “derive an analytical formula for the expected waiting time for the progression from benign to malignant tumor.” They started with a “normal” cell and predicted the number of mutations the cell will undergo. Based on the number of mutations, they could calculate how long it will take for a normal cell to produce a benign tumor and how long before those mutations produce a tumor that becomes malignant.

Astrophotography on Observation Hill and Lake Superior

Astronomer and photographer Kyle Johnson spent three weeks on Observation Hill in Duluth and shares the wonders of the cosmos in cinematic fashion in the video above.

In a second video, below, he treks along the North Shore of Lake Superior — visiting the Temperance River, Oberg Mountain Trail and Grand Marais — shooting the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus.

Postcard from Third Avenue in Hibbing, 1921

This postcard was mailed 100 years ago today — Aug. 6, 1921. The image shows Third Avenue in Hibbing looking north, including the Oliver Hotel at 422 Third Avenue. The card was published by T. C. Congdon.

Artificially Perfect Duluth Day: The Microsoft Flight Simulator

Microsoft’s Flight Simulator came out on the Xbox last week and allows players to fly anywhere in the world, including Duluth. It combines information from Bing maps with an algorithm that builds 3D representations of the landscape, creating shapes and textures when data is missing or incomplete.

The video below shows a simulated flight over Park Point.

Rafe Carlson – “Lost and Found”

[This post originally contained an embedded video that is no longer available at its source.]

Hermantown’s Rafe Carlson has a debut single out titled “Lost and Found.” He was profiled on WDIO-TV yesterday.

Straight Outta Congdon

A caller identifying as “Jebadiah from Duluth, Minn.” made it onto the Aug. 4 episode of the podcast Yo, is this Racist? The show, hosted by Andrew Ti and Tawny Newsome, answers questions from listeners about whether given subjects are an example of racism or not.

Monthly Grovel: August 2021

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August is a busy month at the Perfect Duluth Day Global Headquarters in West Duluth. Our team of cruise directors are hard at work updating the PDD Calendar with Duluth-area happenings — from concerts and community festivals to beer gardens and sauna experiences. Each month we reach out with one beggarly blog post to remind everyone that human beings and not machines are at work editing and publishing calendar events. So if you appreciate it, drop a few bucks in the PayPal account.