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Terry Carnation, fresh off the boat from Duluth

Aug 19, 2021 No Comments

The podcast Dark Air with Terry Carnation dropped a reference to Duluth in episode 9, titled “The Haunting of Emily’s Hair.”

Rainn Wilson plays the part of Terry Carnation, host of a fictional late-night AM radio talk show on the paranormal. In the episode he meets director Jason Reitman, who wants to make his screenplay, but ultimately Carnation ends up being “splooged in the face by the cynical abuse of shallow corrupt patriarchy that is show business.” You know, “like many a would-be ingénue fresh off the boat from Duluth, Minnesota.”


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PDD Quiz: Duluth Movie Mentions

Aug 15, 2021 No Comments

Calling all film buffs and trivia nerds: this quiz is for you! Test your knowledge of movies that name drop Duluth (a perusal of the PDD tag References to Duluth in Film/TV or Other Media might help you cheat study).

The next PDD quiz will review the month’s headlines; it will be published on Aug. 29. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Aug. 24.

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Lake Superior Sea Monster: Three Fatal Encounters

Aug 14, 2021 No Comments

Mouth of the Presque Isle River, Sept. 9, 1987

The cute falls and river here empty into Lake Superior like so many sites along the South Shore: sandy beach, smooth stones, jumbles of fallen half-drowned trees. Depth off shore reaches thirty feet with a sand floor, on the edge of a rock shelf plunging 200 feet.

Statement of first responder on presumed drowning death of Matthew Bruin, 19: “This is not the first drowning victim of the Presque Isle River. It’s important to remember while splashing around in this shallow area by the mouth, that the seabed quickly descends to a couple hundred feet. The warm river water flows over top of the colder lake water, but it’s a conveyor belt to the deep. As the river water cools it sinks, pulling people down. Sadly I think the victim’s body will never be recovered. People say, ‘It’s the Presque Isle monster’ or ‘it’s a sea serpent’, but it is the lake itself, a force of nature that does not care if we live or die.”

Victim’s friend and witness, J.R. Sandvik: “I’m telling you he was pulled under by a large animal… I miss him… I miss you buddy.”

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Guide to Duluth-area Podcasts in 2021

Aug 09, 2021 14 Comments

About half of Duluth-area podcasts are a repackaging of radio content, but there are still plenty of independent programs covering everything from politics, history and sports to paranormal encounters and general geekery.

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Time of Waiting

Aug 07, 2021 No Comments

I remember her waiting up for my father
To come home from God knows where
In a yellow cab at 2:00 A.M.
And waiting for me in the school parking lot
In our old blue station wagon
When whatever it was I was practicing for
Ran late …

And I remember her waiting for me
At the airport when I got back from Japan,
Waiting for everything to be all right,
Waiting for her biopsy results.
Waiting.
— George Bilgere, “Waiting”
 

Waiting for Cancer

In 1956, in On the Origin of Cancer Cells, Otto Warburg tried to pin down the causes for the “mysterious latency period of the production of cancer.” Fifty years later, in Genetic Progression and the Waiting Time to Cancer, Niko Beerenwinkel, Tibor Antal, David Dingli, Arne Traulsen, Kenneth W Kinzler, Victor E Velculescu, Bert Vogelstein, and Martin A Nowak replace the “mysterious latency period” with talk about a waiting period: they set out to “derive an analytical formula for the expected waiting time for the progression from benign to malignant tumor.” They started with a “normal” cell and predicted the number of mutations the cell will undergo. Based on the number of mutations, they could calculate how long it will take for a normal cell to produce a benign tumor and how long before those mutations produce a tumor that becomes malignant.

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Straight Outta Congdon

Aug 05, 2021 No Comments

A caller identifying as “Jebadiah from Duluth, Minn.” made it onto the Aug. 4 episode of the podcast Yo, is this Racist? The show, hosted by Andrew Ti and Tawny Newsome, answers questions from listeners about whether given subjects are an example of racism or not.

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Monthly Grovel: August 2021

Aug 05, 2021 No Comments
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August is a busy month at the Perfect Duluth Day Global Headquarters in West Duluth. Our team of cruise directors are hard at work updating the PDD Calendar with Duluth-area happenings — from concerts and community festivals to beer gardens and sauna experiences. 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.

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Ripped at the Rendezvous in 2001

Jul 31, 2021 No Comments

[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty years ago he filed a report from the Rendezvous Bar in Scanlon, roughly 10 miles west of Duluth. This article appeared in the July 25, 2001 issue of the Ripsaw newspaper.]

So, it starts with Sean the Locksmith and me barreling down the southbound lane of I-35, sober as a couple of appellate court judges. Sean is worried, and with good cause: The brakes on his newly purchased Delta 88 are suddenly … how shall I put this? … nonexistent.

The plan, and I’m not saying it’s a good one, is to sort of just not go any faster. Sean plans to take the momentum we have and ride it out, giving little nudges on the gas pedal to keep us going in an attempt to run out of speed precisely as we reach an off-ramp. Eventually, with a little practice, he actually does it, landing us in the heart of beautiful Scanlon. We immediately head to the Rendezvous Bar with its promise of wonderful, sweet booze to wet down our sizzling nerve ends.

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Postcard from the Alger-Smith Sawmill

Jul 29, 2021 1 Comment

This postcard was mailed July 29, 1911. By then the Alger-Smith Sawmill in West Duluth had been dismantled following a decade-long decline in the sawmilling industry.

Anyone with a century-old garage in West Duluth likely owns scraps of the Alger-Smith mill. “There must be 100 garages in West Duluth that have been built this summer out of lumber taken during the process of dismantling,” the company’s president told the Duluth Herald in a story that appeared in the Sept. 22, 1920 edition. “Every day or two some person inquires for the lumber, and when we ask him what it is for he says, ‘A garage.’ Our lumber must have built almost all of the garages in West Duluth this summer.”

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Red Flag Warning

Jul 24, 2021 No Comments

It’s almost suspicious how often I happen to be nearby when bodies are pulled out of the water. Am I a jinx or a murderer? No, I just like being by water. And it’s pretty well documented that water is a serial killer.

I’ve already written the essay “Lake Superior Wants to Kill You,” outlining just about everything I want to share on the subject of drowning. There’s one more warning worth putting forward, however, regarding the various ways you can lose your life in the water. So please keep this in mind:

I won’t try to stop you from putting yourself in danger, and it’s unlikely anyone else will, other than maybe your mommy.

Of course, you’ll probably get some general, impersonal warnings. This essay and my other essay, for starters. There are warnings in the media constantly. And then on Minnesota Point in Duluth we have those red flags and warning signs on the beach. But that’s all you get. And it’s not enough, obviously.

Telling someone about the dangers of rip currents is like warning about the potential for pregnancy. The risk vs. reward balance is quickly weighed and then it’s time to get wet.

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Duluth, Minnesota and the Lost Confederate Gold

Jul 10, 2021 No Comments

In 1861, Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey was in Washington D.C. when the Confederates started the Civil War. He was in the Oval Office when Lincoln received the fateful telegram detailing the attack on Fort Sumter in South Carolina — the most serious in a string of Southern aggressions, including the seizing of Federal armories across Dixie. Heeding Lincoln’s call for troops, Ramsey walked right up to the President and said, “Mr. President, let Minnesota be the first state to commit 1,000 volunteers to answer this latest outrage from the disloyal states.”

Ramsey’s commitment created the famous fighting force known as the Minnesota First Infantry Regiment. They were the Civil War’s earliest northern enlistees, and they saved the Union at Gettysburg as every Minnesota schoolchild knows. On the third day of that pivotal battle, after Pickett’s Charge, Pvt. Marshall Sherman of St. Paul emerged with the scarred battle flag of the 28th Virginia Infantry. Virginia whines about it to this day but we’re not giving it back neener neener neener.

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Monthly Grovel: July 2021

Jul 08, 2021 No Comments
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The PDD Calendar continues to be the faraway leader in listing Duluth-area happenings — from kayak tours and bingo nights to food markets and rodeos. 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.

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Having traveled I-35, writer tips one at Black Woods

Jul 06, 2021 No Comments

Texas-based writer Emily Gogolak drove the entirety of Interstate 35 from Laredo to Duluth for an essay in N+1 magazine.

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The Nemadji Review, Vol. 10

Jun 29, 2021 No Comments

The tenth issue of the Nemadji Review, the University of Wisconsin-Superior’s literary journal, was released in May and a new website was launched. The publication was previously available only in print, but the 2021 issue can be viewed and downloaded online as a PDF file.


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Ripped at R.T. Quinlan’s Saloon in 2001

Jun 26, 2021 No Comments

[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty years ago he filed a report from R.T. Quinlan’s Saloon in Downtown Duluth. The article appeared in the June 13, 2001 issue of the Ripsaw newspaper. The last paragraph refers to a poster that disappeared from Quinlan’s men’s room wall a few years later. The word on the street back then was: “someone stole it, and he is a fucker.”]

Holy Christ, the rear entrance of this basement hooch joint is lurid. It’s like a nasty Minneapolis strip club, with about four cheap multicolored bulbs attempting to light up beautiful Michigan Street. The Superior Street entrance is … well … it sort of blends into Mr. Nick’s charburger joint, so no one sees it or uses it. When you go to Quinlan’s, you gotta take that long walk down Michigan with all of its homeless teenagers and homicidal paint-huffers, just to get yourself in the mood.

Quinlan’s is the gathering place of 40-year-old men who don’t want to deal with any bullshit. They’re not looking to enjoy live music, score with chicks, get into a bar fight or be entertained in any way other than a regular conversation or a little TV. They want a direct, nonstop, one-way ticket to oblivion, and tonight as usual I’m right there with them.

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