Postcard from the Jorgensons on Minnesota Point
Remember the Pettersen gals photo on Point of Rocks? Well, they’ve turned up in another old Duluth pic, this time on the beach at Minnesota Point.
Remember the Pettersen gals photo on Point of Rocks? Well, they’ve turned up in another old Duluth pic, this time on the beach at Minnesota Point.
I woke up this morning and said to myself, “I’m going to Park Point to take pictures of mushrooms in sunbeams,” and indeed I did (some sunbeams not included). Along the way I saw many strange and wondrous things, it was like The Odyssey. Pics below the fold:
“Bob Dylan got away with murder.” —John Lennon
October 1960. Nineteen-year-old Bob Dylan takes the bus from Minneapolis to Duluth under a cloudless sun. With a head full of songs, he steps off the Greyhound carrying a backpack and two guitar cases. One case has a sticker saying “Ten O’clock Scholar Coffeehouse.” The other has blue words painted on it, “the Tombstone Blues.” A cab drops him at the Kozy, a desolate shithole even then. He rents a room. Placing the backpack and Ten O’clock Scholar on the bed, he leaves with the Tombstone Blues.
Bob walks a few blocks to his childhood home in the faded warmth of dim memories. Then he heads toward the Owls Club. He tries not to look at St. Mary’s Hospital, where he was born, as if he holds a grudge. Entering the club he walks past the bar to the pool room. Cigar smoke fills the air. He is greeted by the Scaletta family: Louie the King, Frankie Mineshaft, Mack the Finger, and Sammy Gaspipe. Several other made men and tough guys haunt the shadows. The King shakes his hand. “Good to see you, Bobby. After this, your debt is paid. But it’s too bad we gotta lose you. Sure we can’t convince you…?” Bob feels the menace of the question but he knows the King respects him — and maybe even fears him a little bit. “No thanks Louie, I got something else in mind for myself.” “Well I tell ya kid, it’s been a pleasure to watch you work.”
Time once again to look back on the previous month’s wheeled-sneaker stunts with former Duluthian James Geisler, also known as the hip-hop artist JamesG.
Duluth’s Alex Lewis covers the song “Rivers and Roads” in this video produced for Mentor North by DanSan Creatives. The song was composed by the Head and the Heart and appeared on the band’s self-titled album, released in 2011.
Geeks will help out in the comments, but it appears what we have here is a QSL card — a postcard mailed to confirm receipt of a ham or citizens-band radio transmission. The CM 76 presumably means it was a calling card of Duluth ham radio operator Charles F. Makowski circa 1976.
In addition to all the spooky Halloween stuff, the hunchbacks at Perfect Duluth Day are busy as usual updating the PDD Calendar with Duluth-area happenings — from concerts and Oktoberfests to kayak adventures and book launches. 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.
Strangely, or maybe not surprisingly, this Good Morning America feature feels more like a tourism commercial than a news package, but oh well. The opening scenes are in the Twin Cities, Duluth Pack is featured at the 3:03 mark and Split Rock Lighthouse gets some love at the end.
Forty-one years ago, WDIO-TV‘s Liz Wagner filed this report from the Bayfield Apple Festival.
One century ago the Duluth Street Railway Company — predecessor to the Duluth Transit Authority — was keeping a close eye on plans for adding trolley buses in Minneapolis. How long did it take for Duluth to get it’s first “trackless trolley”? Pretty much exactly ten more years.
According to Zenith City Online, Duluth’s first trolley buses ran on Oct. 4, 1931. The Duluth Herald reported about Duluth considering trolley buses in its Oct. 6, 1921 issue, one hundred years ago today.
In this scathing indictment of the product-photo industry, Duluth’s Kip Praslowicz shows how cribbage-board box covers and promo pics often fail to depict an actual situation that might occur under the rules of a cribbage game.
General Election Day for the city of Duluth and Independent School District #709 is Tuesday, Nov. 2. Early voting is already underway.
Stairway Portage is an 80-rod trail from Duncan Lake to Rose Lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness. It intersects with the Border Route Trail and offers views of Rose Lake and Canada.
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.
I successfully transplanted these phallus impudicus (“impudent phallus,” aka the common stinkhorn) from one end of town to another in my diabolical plan to expand the range of this deLIGHTful species.
