The University of Minnesota Duluth’s Alumni Association sent out an email featuring eleven old photos. The organization is collecting UMD memories for the upcoming Bridge magazine and is requesting help identifying memories and people from these heritage photographs.
Ones and Sixes, the new album by Duluth band Low, is scheduled for worldwide release on Sept. 11.
Stereogum previews the album:
A Low Profile: Alan Sparhawk & Mimi Parker on their new album Ones And Sixes
By Brian Barber
It’s fairly rare that the aurora borealis is this visible in Duluth. Solar eruptions triggered a severe geomagnetic storm over the weekend, causing brilliant colors last night that kept photographers and sky gazers up into the morning. Gathered here are a few images from the PDD Facebook page and other social media.
Jitters Lake Superior Coffee & Tea House is no more. New sister-brother owners Katina and Pauly Petsoulis took over in February and launched a name change last weekend. The new Lake Superior Bakehouse at 102 W. Superior St. promises “small-batch baked goods all from scratch and small-batch house-roasted coffees.”
Although the look of the space is changing and the variety of baked goods and other foods expanding, Katina notes one thing will stay the same.
“A lot of Jitters regulars were loyal to the coffee,” she said. “We have the same roaster, Jesse Bamford.”
A new billboard has popped up on Grand Avenue in West Duluth with fighting words issued from St. Paul. Duluth, many will recall, claimed the title of “Craft Beer Capital of Minnesota” back in February 2013.
.. and then the woman with the green hair appears.
A recent news release from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources reports that “foresters are seeing many silver maples and some elms with stunted or no leaves and an abundance of seeds this spring. These trees are not dead and will rebound over the next couple of years.”
The image above is of a tree I planted last fall that hasn’t produced leaves this spring. I can’t remember what kind of tree it is, but I think it’s a northern pin oak. The DNR lists elms, maples, ashes and oaks as potential stunted bloomers.
The Duluth News Tribune reported on Monday that rates have changed at three parking lots in Canal Park. Two examples are the Northwest Iron lot (between Grandma’s Saloon and the DeWitt-Seitz Marketplace) and the Lighthouse lot (near the lighthouse pier). The minimum rate is now $3 for three hours, up from last year’s $2 for two hours.
The DNT notes:
Parking Operations Specialist Mark Bauer said the city decided to make the changes to streamline the parking process.
“Instead of trying to interpret and guess how much time you’re going to be there, we thought it would be easier to just simply pay for this three-hour block of time,” Bauer said. “It simply covers you up to that three-hour limit.”
There has been no word yet on whether hotels in the area will be streamlining their processes by invoking a three-night minimum stay or whether bars will enforce a three-drink minimum for customer convenience.
Forest fires burning across Saskatchewan are making for a rather psychedelic afternoon.
With graduation ceremonies taking place this week, we look back 85 years ago to see what the Denfeld class of 1930 looked like. That year the school’s Oracle strove to inspire students “with a steadfast purpose to build well upon the foundations of the past,” and was dedicated to “the spirit of industry and progress which has existed in the hearts and minds of the citizens of Western Duluth.” The inside folds of the book feature a “Decorative Map of Western Duluth, with which we begin this post.
The senior class held two successful paper sales, a Christmas card sale and a class play to fund the yearbook in 1930. The organizations that typically funded the Oracle instead gave money to the pipe organ fund; Denfeld’s pipe organ had been purchased in 1926 for $25,000.
Youa Vang has the story for City Pages: Rich Mattson & the Northstars channel Iron Range on new LP
Here is the iTunes link and the CD Baby link for the album.
Duluth release party is Friday, June 5, at the Red Herring.
Here is the link to PDD’s list of local albums released in 2015.
If all the existing trails, trails under construction and trails in the planning phases in Duluth aren’t quite enough, here’s a rather ambitious plan that would upset a few local backyards. The Detroit Free Press reports of a plan for the “Great Lakes Trail” — a 10,900-mile trail spanning at least eight states and two Canadian provinces, following the shores of the five Great Lakes.
World’s longest marked trail proposed around Great Lakes
As the Great Lakes states were admitted into the Union, the federal government granted them the lake beds and waters of the Great Lakes up to the ordinary high-water mark — from the point on the bank or shore where continuous wave action has made a distinct mark, to the water.
This was affirmed by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 1894, in the Shively v. Bowlby case. The justices found that lands below the high-water mark were “for the benefit of the whole people.” (This may come as news to owners of $750,000 lakefront homes whose deed tells them the shoreline is theirs.)
Duluth’s Spirit Mountain is one of three locations in the running for the $100,000 prize offered by Bell Helmets to fund a trail-building project. Voting in the nationwide contest is being conducted on bellhelmets.com and will continue through June 4.
Cyclists of Gitchee Gumee Shores is the nonprofit organization leading Duluth’s effort. Spirit Mountain is competing for the 2015 Bell Built grand prize against projects in La Grange, Calif. and Knoxville, Tenn.
