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I Don’t Want to See Another Naked Woman as Long as I Live

Mar 20, 2021 4 Comments

“All you sweet girls with all of your sweet talk, you can all go take a walk” – The Velvet Underground, “Heroin”

I am not on heroin, I’m expressing freedom from love and sex. I’m celibate as a monk from here on out. Retire my jersey, I’m out of the game. You can leave your hat on — and all the rest of it too. Quoth the bard, “Love stinks.” If you ever wonder if I want to get in your pants: I don’t.

The title of this piece is an actual quote. I heard someone say it while they were having really remarkable romantic troubles. You can switch the genders up in this essay to suit your tastes. The sentiment works any which way. I am not advocating a lifestyle. This is not an aspirational document. It’s just that I’ve been thinking: I’ve approached love like the depraved addict in “Heroin.”

Love and sex have always been indistinguishable to me. I loved everyone I ever made it with, or I wanted to love them, or I tried to love them. Whatever it takes to pick up strangers and have casual sex, I never had it. My game was serial monogamy. I was good at that for many years, traipsing from relationship to relationship. But I started living like I needed a partner to make me whole. I am not a sex addict, but I behaved like a love addict. And isn’t that what addicts are supposed to do: quit?

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PDD on KUMD’s “The Local”

Mar 18, 2021 No Comments

KUMD’s DJ Marvin Themix interviews Perfect Duluth Day’s Paul Lundgren, talking about how PDD started and how the pandemic has affected it, and also discussing the evolution of the local music scene and previewing the Homegrown Music Festival.


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Frosted Flakes in Duluth

Mar 15, 2021 3 Comments

Duluth gets a quick and silly mention in the March 13 episode of Wait Wait … Don’t Tell Me!, a weekly radio show produced by WBEZ in Chicago and National Public Radio. At the tail end of the clip embedded above, the panel talks about the virtues of pizza for breakfast instead cereal and jokes that people never argue about which city has the best cereal, resulting in the crack, “You haven’t had Frosted Flakes until you’ve had Frosted Flakes in Duluth.”


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PDD Quiz: Irish Twin Ports

Mar 14, 2021 No Comments

In honor of St. Patrick’s Day, this week’s quiz will focus on Irish (and Irish-adjacent) things in the Twin Ports.

The next PDD quiz, which will review this month’s headlines, will be published on March 28. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by March 21.

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Duluth Book Releases in 2021

Mar 09, 2021 No Comments

Hands and Heart Together: Daily Meditations for Caregivers
Patricia Hoolihan
Jan. 19
Holy Cow! Press
Available at holycowpress.org

The Old West End
Nick Nerburn
February
Available at niknerburn.bigcartel.com

It Could be Worse: A Girlfriend’s Guide for Runners who Detest Running
Beth Probst
Feb. 1
Available at circletouradventures.com

Prax and the Hazardous Countdown
Matthew Francis
Feb. 17
Available at amazon.com

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Ripped in 2001: Mary’s Place vs. Terry’s Place

Mar 06, 2021 1 Comment

[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 visited two Duluth bars — Mary’s Place and Terry’s Place. Both would later change their names. Mary’s Place became Clubhouse Sports Bar in 2005, then closed in 2014. The building at 132 N. 34th Ave. W. is now home to Stadium Pawn. Terry’s Place became Bergey’s in 2006 and remains in operation. Goodbuzz documented his experiences at Mary’s and Terry’s places for the March 7, 2001 issue of the Ripsaw newspaper.]

“I haven’t had my sled out in a month,” complains the dude across the bar from me. “I worked 60 goddam hours this week.”

I tell him that I also worked 60 hours this week. I don’t mention that drinking is my job.

Then my new friend starts complaining about what a lousy game he just bowled. He seems cheery though. Complaining seems to make him happy; each self-deprecating remark inspiring a grin and a nod in my direction to indicate he knows that my life also sucks. All our lives suck. We’re at Mary’s Place / Stadium Lanes on Wednesday night.

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Essay series by Jim Richardson

Mar 05, 2021 No Comments

Art, literature, my relationship to Lake Superior, the secret history of Duluth, and other stuff. I keep this updated. New installments appear roughly monthly as part of PDD’s “Saturday Essay” feature, with more I post myself.

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Monthly Grovel: March 2021

Mar 05, 2021 No Comments
(Enter the amount of your choice.)

As the masked, online and distanced events drag on, the PDD Calendar continues to catalog the options. 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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Dreams and Themes

Feb 27, 2021 No Comments

Last week I had a series of interconnected dreams over three nights. I was first introduced to the idea of interconnected dreams by the book A Little Course in Dreams: A Basic Handbook of Jungian Dreamwork by Robert Bosnak. The book is pocket-sized which makes the title a self-referential joke. But the book has had an outsized influence on me. I don’t always agree with its interpretations — dream interpretation is a subjective crapshoot — but it helped.

I am blessed with the ability to easily remember and interpret many of my dreams. The revelatory insight from the book was the idea that dreams can come in clusters over many nights. I began noticing themes and symbols evolving over time. I frequently see this across spans of three or four nights. And some symbols have recurred over my entire life and continue working themselves out. As Bosnak writes, “Dreams often group themselves around specific themes that begin to unfold over time. Images go through a continual process of change, and such a process can sometimes be followed in a series of images that have presented themselves to someone as dreams. The insight that emerges when we study a series of dreams is that dream figures are in a constant state of development. Like any living organism, they come into being and decay.”

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Polar Vortex

Feb 20, 2021 1 Comment

Early morning winter cold floods in through the gaps between the sheet and mattress. The cold is so powerful, so penetrating, I imagine it to be as fluid as a rushing river with the ability to seep into minute cracks and crevices. In the chaos of adjusting the comforter and pulling the pillow into my impromptu cocoon, my sleep-hat has gone AWOL. An instinctual desire to escape the cold and fortify the barrier makes me abandon any pursuit of the lost headpiece.

A new form of low temperature has erupted in Minnesota, a reverse volcano maybe. Not a temperature so high it melts rock, but one so powerfully low it could probably fracture silk. This kind of cold, the kind that cracks house rafters, and spiderwebs the smallest chip in a windshield, has blown in from the north. Weather enthusiasts call it a Polar Vortex — something about the North Pole, and cold, and pressure. But at five o’clock in the morning in northern Minnesota, those technical, and normally interesting, scientific truths can crawl into a snowbank as far as I am concerned. Whether it’s a vortex, or cyclone, or Voldemort’s Dementors unleashed, the only truth that encapsulates this moment is something I learned years ago: “cold is the absence of heat.”

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Duluth area map challenges on Geoguessr

Feb 15, 2021 No Comments

Geoguessr is a website that features variations on a rather simple game: you are shown a location through a modified version of Google Streetview. You must guess where you are by marking the location on a map. The labels and location marker normally added by Google have been removed, so you must rely on a compass and clues from the environment. The closer your guess is to the correct location, the more points you get. Each game consists of five rounds. The tops scores appear on the main page for each map, with a tie going to the player who finishes the fastest.

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On the Recent Ice Angler Rescue

Feb 13, 2021 4 Comments

I have some comments and observations about the ice angler rescue on Tuesday, Feb. 9.

First off, I watch ice closely because I am nutty for skating the biggest lake in the world. No, not Lake Baikal, that piece of shit lake. I mean Lake Superior, the queen of the unsalted seas. Ice cover has been minimal this year so I have been sad, and nearly desperate in this COVID season for recreation and release.

But as my house has a decent lake view, I watched with some interest as ice plugged the outer harbor. It seemed too much to ask for that it should become safe enough to skate on — keeping in mind that ice is never safe. But whatever.

The sign I watch for is the appearance of ice houses. Once they appear, I grab my skates. My logic is this: those guys know what they’re doing. I figure the ice angler community is right on top of the Department of Natural Resources, and is tracking ice thickness so I don’t have to. If they feel safe, I feel safe.

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When Every Kid Was Free-Range

Feb 05, 2021 3 Comments

Gay Haubner goes through the Spanking Machine in this essay in the Saturday Evening Post about growing up in Duluth.


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Monthly Grovel: February 2021

Feb 04, 2021 No Comments
(Enter the amount of your choice.)

What kind of events happen in the Duluth area during a pandemic? Well, a rutabaga giveaway, virtual boat show, online winter biking workshop and the occasional ice bar, for just a few examples.

As the masked, online and distanced events drag on, the PDD Calendar continues to catalog the options. 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 Goodsports Bar & Grill in 2001

Jan 16, 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 visited Goodsports Bar & Grill at 2827 Oakes Ave. in Superior and penned this report for the Feb. 7, 2001 issue of the Ripsaw newspaper. The former Goodsports location became home to Ace’s on 29th in 2009.]

I’ve discovered something. I was afraid to mention it over the past month because I didn’t want you sorry sheep following me around. But now that the 2000–2001 Superior Boot Hockey League season is over, I think it’s safe to let you know: Goodsports Bar & Grill rocks.

You probably don’t believe me, and you shouldn’t. Goodsports? What can be good about another sports bar with a bazillion televisions and the same old burger menu and Viking/Packer décor?

Well, let me explain: While hockey players are definitely some of the most annoying people in the world, the sport of hockey is sweet. It’s fast, it’s violent and it involves incredible skill. Best of all, there’s no marching band at halftime and no seventh-inning sing-along. Between periods, some goober drives a big tank in circles.

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