Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree…
We are looking to get our first Christmas Tree, but need some advice on where to go for a good deal. Any suggestions?
We are looking to get our first Christmas Tree, but need some advice on where to go for a good deal. Any suggestions?
Just wondering if anyone else remembers the big snowstorm of ’83? It actually hit the night before Thanksgiving. I was working at what was called the Duluth Arena then and we got snowed in. I got to pull my car inside and sleep in the auditorium mezzanine. It was pretty sweet. We took an Arena ice truck and tried to get to Superior for some beer, but had to turn back. We did manage to walk down in the middle of the blizzard and eat at Godfather’s on London Road, right before they closed up shop. I remember we even managed to throw a snowball or two at Jack McKenna’s weather window on Michigan Street.
Good times.
The coolest thing about this monster blizzard was the thunder and lighting. That was the first time I had ever seen that, and I don’t think it’s happened since.
Allow me to once again lead the PDD Thanksgiving prayer. I’ll go ahead and take friends, family and food for granted as usual.
This year I’m most thankful for dentists, particularly the one who is finally going to fix my cavity next week.
I’m also thankful for Minnesota Care and Delta Dental, which aren’t necessarily the best friends of dentists, but are a big help to me.
I’m also thankful for people who won’t turn the comments to this post into a bitter debate about health care, even though I kind of provoked them.
There. Now what are you thankful for?
(Here’s what we were thankful for in 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2004 and 2003.)
So I guess there’s a Plaid Friday thing in San Francisco to encourage shopping locally rather than in the big box stores on the evil Black Friday. I’m not much of a Christmas shopper myself, and don’t even plan to leave the house Friday, but I suppose most people are.
We’ve got this old Hoover vacuum cleaner taking up space in the basement. It kind of still works, but mostly it just makes a bunch of noise and reorganizes the dirt on the floor. It was replaced with a new Hoover about two years ago.
I haven’t looked into whether the garbage man will take it or if it needs to be brought to a materials recovery center or what. In the meantime, here’s what I’m wondering:
If I were a creative or moderately handy person, what kind of reuses for this vacuum could there be? Could Tim Kaiser make a musical instrument out of it? Would the brush roll make a good dog brush? Can I donate the hose to Last Place on Earth as drug paraphernilia or maybe a sex toy?
This vacuum was built to clean up the world, so help me resist the urge to just toss it into a landfull. Or at least help me come up with a bunch of entertaining and impractical ideas for reuse before I just go ahead and throw it out anyway.
Whatever you do, don’t try to explain to me how it can be fixed. The ship already sailed on that when it was replaced. If you want it fixed, I’ll glady give it to you and you can fix it all you want.
How much do you love the guy at Taco Bell with the fake British accent / Thurston Howell III voice?
The Rez, The Feelin’ Band and Pistol Whippin’ Party Pengins will be playing at the Orpheum Duluth (downstairs NorShor) on Friday Nov. 20 at 8PM – $7 – Get there early and catch all the music!
Light and Love and Healing to you all,
-Patrick Arden McNally
Duluth’s own Turbo Rathvon will be performing at Beaner’s Central with James O’Neal and Skinny Longfeet. The show is Saturday, Nov. 21 at 8 p.m. Cover $5.
Just when PDD had gone a full month without a post specifically targeting the local daily newspaper, Business North coughs this up for us to share:
The Duluth Art Office is my proposal to make Duluth artists, musicians, actors, directors, dancers, unicyclists, squirrel trainers, cartoonists, writers, publishers, gallery owners, and etc. rich(er) and happy(ier). I’m proposing to set up shop as an advocate for Duluth’s arts workers here and in the larger world, linking them with potential clients using a database of their work, connecting them with small business assistance to set up business plans and accounting systems, helping them with grants info and writing, and doing a host of other things. Read the proposal on the Duluth Art Office blog, and please comment–I need to know what you need in order to design this thing.
Also, if anyone feels that I would be duplicating what you do– that is not my intention at all! This is meant to be a liaison service, connecting artists and arts orgs, as well. Please help me with constructive criticism.
Thanks!
Ann Klefstad
We’re (in)famous [1]:
Barry Saunders, “Junket Doesn’t Help Kids” Raleigh News & Observer, 12 November 2009.
Why is it that these indispensible conferences that state employees are always jetting to never take place in cities such as Duluth, Minn., in January or Gary, Ind., anytime?”
[1] [For definitions of “infamy” extending to well-worn stereotypes cited by minor newspapers.]
Is there anywhere in Duluth/Superior/Proctor/Hermantown that sells western wear? Not so much the Wranglers and Levis, but the western-style collared, button/snap front shirts?
I thought I read in the Tribune that there may be a wine bar moving in downtown? Does anyone know about this? That would be awesome if it did. The wine crowd in Duluth seems to be regulated to the Gitch wine club and a few fellow wine drinkers. If anyone knows anything about this, I would be interested.
I’d be interested in hearing PDDs thoughts on this discussion about KBJR from one of my twitter pals, media insider gossip muckraker Red and Nater:
Last week, they had to pull a story about murderer Donald Blom after a Facebook protest. Then they claimed the promo they had aired about the story was wrong.
Tonight (Tuesday), they had to do a live four-minute interview with a Cirrus executive off the top of their 10:00 news to make up for a story they ran at 5 in which they claimed the company was “in crisis.” Their 5:00 report was based on the fact that Cirrus hasn’t paid rent for using a city-owned facility, but that had been widely reported by other media a month or more ago.
This is on top of the the constant day-behind news and bad video. When will Granite (or NBC or CBS) realize what’s going on in Duluth?
view in context at Red and Nater blog
Patrick Coyle, director and writer of Into Temptation, was in Duluth to discuss his Minnesota-made movie last night at the Zinema, our town’s great new independent movie theater. At the start of the sold-out movie, the director sat on the aisle steps awaiting the audience’s reaction to his film. Unfortunately, the movie was a choppy version of the original. The disc kept skipping like a bad movie night in your living room. Coyle ran out to see what was happening and then returned apologizing and saying he would pop over to his car and get another disc. A director who has an extra movie at the ready seemed handy and kinda weird.
Then after a few minutes of disc 2, skip, … skip,… skip, and no director appeared to apologize. The audience sat for about 20 more minutes before starting to file out of the theater. We got our money back but wondered what the deal was. It’s too bad too since the 30-40 minutes of the movie I saw (parts from the beginning, middle, and end, by the way) was pretty good. Jeremy Sisto (of Law and Order and Six Feet Under) plays a gentle Catholic priest who tries to help a woman who has confessed that she plans to kill herself. But what actually happened at the Zinema last night? Who knows? It was kinda fun afterward when we tried to fill in the holes by imagining what happened.
