Upset Duluth: Brevator Township Edition
The Duluth News Tribune reports a proposed tire-recycling facility north of Cloquet has a few people upset. Photo by Steve Kuchera.
The Duluth News Tribune reports a proposed tire-recycling facility north of Cloquet has a few people upset. Photo by Steve Kuchera.
The final applause of the 2016 Homegrown Music Festival is now in the history books. Which band “won” the festival? Each year PDD polls its readership and asks that very question. Because art is useless if it isn’t vain and competitive, right?
How does one “win” a music festival? Is it about musicianship? Is it about showmanship and antics? Is it about pretty hairstyles and flamboyant fashions? Yes.
The poll is now closed. Here are the results:
Medical Underground – 16.8 percent
Red Mountain – 12.3 percent
The Social Disaster – 11.2 percent
Bratwurst – 10 percent
A Band Called Truman – 7.8 percent
Various other bands – 41.9 percent
It’s been 16 years since I first announced in print my idea to change the American electoral process. Since then, my negative voting movement has gained absolutely no momentum, while election results have only affirmed my position.
In the summer of 2000, anyone could see the country was headed down the crapper. George W. Bush and Albert A. Gore — two of the country’s most hated men — were the favorites to become president. No one else stood a chance. I didn’t know the outcome of that election would be as controversial as it was, but obviously the result wasn’t going to be popular whether it was Bush or Gore ascending to the White House. It was clear our voting process was backward. It was time for negative voting.
When I launched the negative voting movement in June of 2000, it was already too late to save that fall’s election, and today it’s too late to fix the 2016 campaign. The timing is perfect, however, to get on the right path for 2020. So allow me to explain the simple change that would fix our broken democracy.
A panorama view from high atop Skyline Drive overlooking Duluth. The Buena Vista Motel and its lounge and restaurant opened in 1962. Mr. & Mrs. Jerome J. LaPlante were the original owners. Bob Magie, Bob Nylen and Jerry Strum bought it in 1986 and oversaw a remodel in 1995. They operated the business for nearly 20 years before selling in 2005 to developer Tim Wiklund, who demolished the structure to create the 45-unit Superior Vista condominium complex.
If this isn’t your 18th time attending the Homegrown Music Festival, here are some links that might be helpful:
Homegrown website
Event schedule on Homegrown website
PDD Homegrown Chicken App (schedule optimized for smartphones)
Homegrown Facebook page
Homegrown Twitter page
Seasons 1, 2 and 3 of Seth Langreck’s Duluth Band Profiles
As the One River, Many Stories project draws to a close, PDD presents the remaining St. Louis River postcards from the dusty digital archive. See the recommended links at the end of this post to check out more St. Louis River postcards.
The text on the back of old-school Swinging Bridge postcards tends to read the same no matter what the image: “This unique Swing Bridge spans the St. Louis River in Jay Cooke State Park, 4,000 acres of rugged picturesque beauty along the rapids of the St. Louis River, extending from Carlton, Minn., to Fond du Lac, a suburb of Duluth.”
In and Out of Context
Photography by Tim White
With excerpts from 21 northland writers
inandoutofcontextbook.blogspot.com
(Jan. 21)
The Duluth Grill Cookbook II
Written by Robert Lillegard
Photography by Rolf Hagberg
duluthgrill.com/cookbooks
(Feb. 29)
This postcard, sent from Hibbing on Sept. 9, 1907, to Miss Hanna Backman of Ironwood, Mich., depicts, a “scene on the St. Louis River” in Duluth’s Fond du Lac neighborhood, “where the Hudson Bay Co. established a trading post about the year 1640.”
The Hudson’s Bay Company in general, however, wasn’t founded until 1670, so, as usual, take postcard caption information for what it is worth.
Ten years ago today Starfire posted this handmade flier he found while walking his dog.
On April 20, 1986, the American Wrestling Association held what may have been its largest show, WrestleRock, at the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis. More than anything that happened on the mat, the event is most remembered for the gloriously cheesy promo video, “WrestleRock Rumble,” which blatantly stole from the Chicago Bears’ “The Super Bowl Schuffle.”
Duluth WrestleRock connection: Central High School graduates Scott and Bill Irwin, wrestling as the Long Ryders, lost an AWA World Tag Team Championship match to Curt Hennig and “Big” Scott Hall. It would be the Long Ryders’ final match. Scott Irwin died from a brain tumor on Sept. 5, 1987.
The new design of the PDD Calendar launched today. There are still a few elements to it that we will be cleaning up over the next few weeks, but it’s time to just let it rip and put it into service.
Why did we switch? When we launched the previous version of the PDD Calendar in 2011 there weren’t any good WordPress plugins for the type of event calendar we wanted. So we built our own. As the years went on, WordPress plugins surpassed our ability to innovate — or at least find the time to innovate — and our calendar was also in need of a design change to match the responsive design of our blog, adjusting to various screensizes for optimal viewing on iPhones and tablets. We decided to make this change over a year ago; finally got around to it now.
Feel free to begin complaining or complimenting the new calendar in the comments, or call/email. Mention problems if you see them, and we’ll either fix them or explain why what you think is broken is really just the best we can do.
We anticipate you will think the new calendar can’t do things the old calendar did, but once you get used to the new navigation you will see that it does. Pretty much every feature the old calendar had the new calendar has, except for the one thing we are working on and the one thing we haven’t thought of. Please tell us about that thing we haven’t thought of.
The 2016 Homegrown Music Festival Field Guide is off the presses, with 20,000 free copies piled up at various shops across the Twin Ports. This year’s cover art is by Carolyn Sue Olson.
So far there are two changes to the Homegrown schedule that happened after the Field Guide went to press:
This 1950’s-era postcard depicts American Fur Company’s trading post at Fond du Lac, now a neighborhood of Duluth. German-born John Jacob Astor founded the company more than 200 years ago — precisely April 8, 1808. His post on the St. Louis River sought to capitalize on Ojibwe fur trappers in the area, but the Ojibwe preferred to trade with the French and British, so the venture was a bust in the beginning. After the War of 1812, the United States passed a law excluding foreign traders from operating on U.S. territory, which freed the American Fur Company from its biggest competitors. By 1830, Astor’s company dominated the U.S. fur trade.
“Dear Ed and Edith,” begins the message on this postcard, mailed July 31, 1907. The penmenship gets funky in places, but the rest goes something like this: “Arrived here last night — fine trip up — leave in a few minutes for Minneapolis, where we remain until Saturday. Everything has been grand. Yes, even the weather. Trust you are full of ??? Lake like-?ess. We would be if we could get a ??? in it. Lovingly, ??? and ???”
