Duluth native Emily Haavik released an original holiday song and music video today. A group of her friends recorded segments to help put the video together. Haavik performs the song with Phil Miller on cello and Dave Mehling on bass and guitar. The mix is by Mehling and the mastering by Eric Martin. Proceeds from downloads go to help Haavik’s friend Sonya Goins fight breast cancer.
Plans are in place for the Duluth Armory at 1305 London Road to “serve as an economic, cultural and entertainment hub for northeastern Minnesota,” according to a news release from the Armory Arts and Music Center. The organization announced a partnership on Monday with Minneapolis-based Sherman Associates to rehabilitate and develop the armory building, targeting an opening in 2024.
The Wilbert Café was founded in 1922. This postcard bears the year 1961. The modern day version of the Wilbert is located at 9105 Highway 53 in Cotton — about 30 miles northwest of Duluth.
The Duluth News Tribune profiled the Wilbert in 2018, noting it “gets its name from its original owners, combining the first names of William Lyman and Bert Robinson. In 1941, John (Tobie) Lackner took over management after William Lyman’s death, and Tobie and his wife, Ann, went on to establish the famed Tobies Restaurant and Bakery in Hinckley, Minn. … The current Wilbert was rebuilt in 1991, and it was purchased in 2004 by longtime employee Sandy Simek and her husband, Steve.”
Videographer Adam Jagunich flies his Yuneec Typhoon H Plus hexacopter over Bayfront Park in Duluth during the Bentleyville Christmas light display while the bulk carrier Drawsko sails under the Aerial Lift Bridge and into the Duluth Harbor.
For ghosts of Christmas’ past, check out “A Perfect Duluth Christmas: PDD’s Holiday Video Showcase.”
Assembled here for your holiday listening pleasure, a sampling of Christmas or “Christmasish” tunes by artists in the Duluth music scene. It’s not even close to a comprehensive collection of local holiday music, just a sampling of a few tunes available on Bandcamp.
Never before has one author landed more than two works on Perfect Duluth Day’s list of the top-five most read Saturday Essays. And now, like some literary Muhammad Ali, Jim Richardson landed not three, not four, but all five. Total domination. He also had the sixth-most-read essay of the year, just to rub his popularity in the noses of every other writer in town.
How did he do it? Well, for starters he wrote more essays than everyone else. But ultimately it was the quality of the goods that made him PDD’s click hog in 2021. Many of his works fell into a genre we might describe as “Duluth fan fiction,” but at least one in the top five is about something that really happened. And another one could be fact based, but we can’t prove whether the author wants to see naked women or not.
This photo of Duluth’s Lyceum Theatre is dated Dec. 17, 1961, and credited to Clarence Sager. It shows just a portion of the large building at 423-431 W. Superior St., which was demolished in 1966.
After a one-year absence, the Banff Mountain Film Festival World Tour returns to Duluth on Jan. 7-8 at DECC Symphony Hall. This stop on the tour is hosted by the Duluth Cross Country Ski Club, and proceeds from the event benefit local community ski projects. For more details on the event visit the PDD Calendar entry.
Yesterday was a “snow day,” meaning things were open, but my Kia Soul was not equipped to get me there while the snow fell on the ice. So I took a break from grading some excellent papers by my students to go over my next stack of records from Gabriels’s Used Bookstore in Lakeside.
Artist Emily Koch paints portraits focused on the surreal and abnormal.
In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.
This short documentary, written and produced by Dale Bluestein for the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest‘s series It Happened Here, delves into the early history of Jews in the Duluth area, starting with the arrival of newlyweds Bernard and Nettie Silberstein in 1870.
Duluth-based electro-folk artist Ingeborg von Agassiz shot this video in rural northwestern Minnesota while driving home for Thanksgiving. She does not recommended shooting video while driving, but sacrifices must be made for slow-motion Christmas-light art.
The song is from the artist’s new album of “original dark holiday tunes inspired by Victorian ghost stories and the winter blues.” Coventry Carols is available online at ingeborgvonagassiz.com/shoppe and various music sites.
This postcard was mailed on Dec. 14, 1971 — 50 years ago today. Mrs. W. A. Gramley of Wheaton, Ill. was the recipient. The sender’s name looks something like Evie.
Nancy XiáoRong Valentine‘s exhibition, “The Audacity to be Asian in Rural America: We Owe You No Apologies,” is on display on the second floor of the Kathryn A. Martin Library at the University of Minnesota Duluth and in Lake Superior College’s Erickson Library until Dec. 17. The exhibit is a series of 12 watercolor and Chinese ink scroll paintings on rice paper that visually tells the story of the Hao family’s Chinese American immigrant experience in rural western Minnesota.
In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.
