The Tamburitzans, the longest-running multicultural song and dance company in the United States, has rehearsed in Lake Nebagamon for its national tour since 1947. Mary Ellen Miller had the story for KBJR-TV in 1978 when the Tammies invaded the Lake Nebagamon Village Auditorium.
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.
Astronomer and photographer Kyle Johnson spent three weeks on Observation Hill in Duluth and shares the wonders of the cosmos in cinematic fashion in the video above.
In a second video, below, he treks along the North Shore of Lake Superior — visiting the Temperance River, Oberg Mountain Trail and Grand Marais — shooting the North America Nebula in the constellation Cygnus.
This postcard was mailed 100 years ago today — Aug. 6, 1921. The image shows Third Avenue in Hibbing looking north, including the Oliver Hotel at 422 Third Avenue. The card was published by T. C. Congdon.
Microsoft’s Flight Simulator came out on the Xbox last week and allows players to fly anywhere in the world, including Duluth. It combines information from Bing maps with an algorithm that builds 3D representations of the landscape, creating shapes and textures when data is missing or incomplete.
The video below shows a simulated flight over Park Point.
[This post originally contained an embedded video that is no longer available at its source.]
Hermantown’s Rafe Carlson has a debut single out titled “Lost and Found.” He was profiled on WDIO-TV yesterday.
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.
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.
The Cactus Blossoms performing on the Sacred Heart Music Center altar stage in 2019. (Photo by Michael K. Anderson)
After an 18-month pandemic closure, Sacred Heart Music Center will welcome live audiences back to a full concert schedule beginning in September.
Cameron Mathews of the Duluth band Life Parade performs a cover of the Beatles song “Something” from the 1969 album Abbey Road.
Andrew Remer has been working with glass since 2016. After taking a class in Minneapolis, he began experimenting with the medium along with some friends. The group rented hourly studio time at Potekglass and later built a garage studio in Shakopee. Remer moved to Duluth in 2019 and began working at Lake Superior Art Glass. He branched out on his own into a full-time artistic career during the COVID-19 pandemic, completing commissions and attending several festivals to share his art.
The League of Women Voters held this candidate forum for At-large Duluth City Council candidates on July 28. Mary Faulkner is the moderator.
Most Duluthians will see a ballot that looks like the sample above when they vote in the Primary Election on Aug. 10. There are two other city council races that will appear on ballots in specific parts of the city.
The U.S. food truck industry is now a $1.2 billion market. Duluth-area food truck options have grown steadily since the city’s first mobile restaurants hit the streets in 2012. That summer there were four mobile eateries. Now there are at least 15.
Tischer Creek: I saw this dying 7-inch fish under a foot of water or so, seemingly pinned to a rock by a stick. I moved the stick so it could swim away if it wanted, but it did not want to; I only interrupted the dignity of its final breaths. So I left it to die in peace.
