Instagram is aglow with northern lights photos from last night, thanks to a little solar storm activity. It was less than a month ago when Perfect Duluth Day previously featured auroras in “Selective Focus,” but the show last night brought out practically every sky photographer in the region.
How can you tell your Pepperkakebyen from your Mannheim Steamroller without the PDD Calendar? You can’t. You just can’t. That’s why we reach out each month 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.
West Duluth was the scene of windmill experiments a century ago, according to a story in the Oct. 31, 1921 Duluth Herald. Albert Herman Heyroth was hard at work at 55th Avenue West and Raleigh Street attempting to generate electricity for home energy use.
And now, a little something for the ladies. The St. Louis Hotel was Duluth’s premier lodging establishment in the 1880s. It stood where the Medical Arts Building is today.
Keeping Duluth’s shipping channels open requires occasional dredging. This undated postcard offers a look at the process in the early 20th century.
Here’s a look at a pair of East Fourth Street buildings — one soon to be demolished, another already lost to history. The photos on the left in the side-by-sides above are from Oct. 22, 2011. The ones on the right are from Oct. 22, 2021.
Duluth-born troubadour David Dondero performed at Wussow’s Concert Cafe on Tuesday. One of his new songs mentions the Zenith City and a variety of Minnesota locations. The song was penned in 2019 and hasn’t appeared on any official releases, but the demo track linked here was posted to Patreon.
Here they are, Berger and Hilda Ekstrom, in their wedding duds. We know their names thanks to the scribbling on the back of the photo. And we know from the cardboard frame that the photographer is Lars Linden, the fiery Swede who had a studio at 1619 W. Superior St. in Duluth. What’s the mystery? Well, everything else. What became of ol’ Berger and Hilda?
Because, well, everything gets its day, Oct. 15 is National Mushroom Day. And, as naturalist Larry Weber noted a few weeks back, there’s been a “shroom boom” this year, so we’ve selected a few images of local fungal growths via Instagram to highlight here.
A geomagnetic storm brought vibrant auroras across Minnesota and beyond last night and early this morning. Collected here are images via Instagram of northern lights across the region.
Remember the Pettersen gals photo on Point of Rocks? Well, they’ve turned up in another old Duluth pic, this time on the beach at Minnesota Point.
Geeks will help out in the comments, but it appears what we have here is a QSL card — a postcard mailed to confirm receipt of a ham or citizens-band radio transmission. The CM 76 presumably means it was a calling card of Duluth ham radio operator Charles F. Makowski circa 1976.
In addition to all the spooky Halloween stuff, the hunchbacks at Perfect Duluth Day are busy as usual updating the PDD Calendar with Duluth-area happenings — from concerts and Oktoberfests to kayak adventures and book launches. 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.
