Karen Diver discusses another court decision against Duluth
At risk of setting off an avalanche of flaming comments here on PDD I am going to post this interview that I worked on today.
At risk of setting off an avalanche of flaming comments here on PDD I am going to post this interview that I worked on today.
A nifty animation by Dave and Jean Kirwan set to a 1961 jingle about our fair city. This took first place in the 2013 Playground Short Shorts Film Festival this weekend.
University of Wisconsin-Superior professor John Munsell died on Tuesday. He taught at UWS from 1967 to 2001 and was one heck of a character.
Speaking of his characters, one of them in April 1997 was Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman, shown above.
Starting in the 1930s, Melton Barker traveled across the United States filming The Kidnappers Foil for the next 40 years. No, he did not take this long to film one movie, instead he filmed the same movie in every town that he visited, perhaps hundreds of times. I’m not sure if this was part of a “home movie” business plan, or if he was ripping people off with promises of fame, but nonetheless, it’s now part of movie history.
In 1938, he stopped by Duluth to film, and though the main film is missing, there are two scenes featuring Duluthians. Maybe you have a famous grandparent and never knew it?
The ragged building at 208 E. First St. in Downtown Duluth is being gutted of debris in preparation for renovation. Bob Monahan and his father, Robert H. R. Monahan, plan to open an “artist friendly” cafe/lounge on the main floor later this year, with a recording studio in the basement level. They have already replaced the roof on the 127-year-old building, which they are in the process of acquiring from Jack Arnold through a contract-for-deed agreement.
Today on PDD we present the 1962 gridders from the “Wisconsin State College Superior,” now known as the University of Wisconsin-Superior. Why? Well the fine folks at UWS’ Jim Dan Hill Library have digitized copies of the Gitchee Gumee, the college’s yearbook — from its inception in 1909 through 1972, when it ceased publication.
Scenes of Duluth start at the 1:37 mark in this 1948 documentary on Finnish-American life in Wisconsin, Minnesota and South Dakota. (Thanks to Dwight Swanson for the tip.)
It’s kind of a weird name, it’s something that I discovered while doing “armchair” history research, and it’s become a hobby of sorts. Wikimapia is sort of like Wikipedia + Google maps, or as they put it; “a multilingual open-content collaborative map, where anyone can create place tags and share their knowledge.”
So basically if you sign up, (which it’s free), you can draw polygons around locations like a building, park, or historical places and then add the information about it, add photos, tags and what have you. Once it’s saved, others can view it, comment on it, or even update it as well if they have something new to add. You can add lots of other information too, like roads or railroads.
I know that there are some people here who dig history and know a lot of facts about our area, so I just thought it’d be cool to share and hope that maybe they will share their knowledge on the site as well, or at the very least, simply just looking around it.
Here is something that I have been working on. A one-hour radio documentary collection of sounds and voices from the Jan. 11 Idle No More Jingle Dress Dance demonstration through the streets of Duluth. It airs at 11 a.m. today on 89.1 FM WGZS in Cloquet. In case you are like the other 100 million people who will be instead listening to and viewing the inauguration of President Obama at that time on this Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday I have posted it online for people to listen to anytime in the form of a YouTube video.
I am still unhappy with some of the mix, the narration and my writing, but I am happy with being able to share these voices talking about this remarkable, historic event.
I’ve got 61 degrees on the front porch. Any thoughts or memories from native Duluthians, what winter used to be like?
I was asked recently via e-mail what the name was of the pizza joint at 1830 E. Eighth St. before it was Vintage Italian Pizza (as seen in the modern photo above).
Since I spent no time at all in that neighborhood in my youth, I looked it up.
I had forgotten about the fenced-off houses at the end of Wisconsin Point for a few years, until seeing them again a couple days ago. I always figured they were somehow affiliated with the lighthouse … does anyone have any other information/stories about them?
According to the 1943 book Mineral Resources of Minnesota, edited by William H. Emmons and Frank F. Grout, “the Duluth Crushed Stone Company quarried gabbro at Duluth for road stone, railroad ballast, concrete aggregate, rubble for retaining walls, and riprap (large fragments for piers, breakwaters, etc.).”
I know we should all strive to shop as locally as possible for all of our holiday gifts but sometimes it just doesn’t work out that way. I was at the Miller Hill Mall yesterday and realized how much that place has changed in my lifetime. My biggest memory of the mall was the old movie theater and the McDonald’s right across the way. Not to mention going to Mr. Bulky’s to get candy to sneak in. What are your biggest Miller Hill Mall memories of stores that are no longer there?
Two questions:
First: I am working with a journalism student on a news article and in it, the student mentions that a person used to work at a sporting goods store named CZ Wilson. Does that ring any bells?
Second: My daughter is an artist and has created watercolor paintings on seasonal cards (this is not an ad, don’t worry). Now, she would like to take those cards and have them printed on nice stock paper or whatever I really mean to say. Are there good local printers who do that work that people would recommend?
Thank you.
