See how many of this month’s headlines and happenings you remember with this week’s current events quiz!
The next PDD Quiz, scheduled for June 16, will test your knowledge of the Superior Hiking Trail. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by June 11.
Left: Private John Matthew McGillis, photo courtesy of Jasper van Kampen. Right: His burial place (Photo by Matthew James)
John Matthew McGillis, known to his family on Duluth’s Park Point as Jack, died on Christmas Day 1944, one day before the end of major fighting in the final German offensive of World War II. He wasn’t a combat soldier.
Duluth native Rachael Kilgour visited The Current studio for a session hosted by Radio Heartland’s Mike Pengra. She played three songs from her 2023 album My Father Loved Me, including the track featured here, “Heart on Fire.”
Bob: I’m ready to accept you, Lord.
Jesus: Not so fast there Bob. I need you to do something first.
Bob: Name it Lord.
Jesus: I need you to rub out Jimmy Gravante.
Bob (stunned): The hitman?
Jesus: Your successor in the Duluth family, after you got out and became — this (gestures around). You know Jimmy — the sniper who blew you off your motorcycle in 1966 in Woodstock.
Bob: He hit the bike, man, not me. Sniper my ass.
Jesus: I’m going to need you to check your tone.
Bob: I’m sorry Lord. It’s just that he wasn’t even at 200 yards. He’s more like a potshot expert than a sniper. And my divorce is killing me. I just got off a world tour and my adrenal glands feel squeezed dry like little raisins. Think I’m coming down with something (sniffles).
“More Fire in More Places” is the fourth release from the new Dirty Knobs album, Songs About Everything Dying Around Us, Including Us.
Run, Smelt, Run! Parade photo via Magic Smelt Puppet Troupe Facebook page.
Dressing up as a silver fish in late spring could become weird again. After eleven years of marches normalizing smelt fashion on the Lake Superior boardwalk, the annual Run, Smelt, Run! Parade could be making its final march on May 26.
Cameron Mathews explains how the bands Life Parade and Deep Fake Five got their names.
In its series The Slice, PBS North 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.
Judy Gibbs introduced me to The Will and the Way series of books about the creation of a number of Duluth institutions.
This undated postcard, published by the E.C. Kropp Company, shows Passage Island Lighthouse and the rugged shore at Isle Royale on Lake Superior.
Sarah Seidelman in her studio.
Sarah Seidelmann is one of the four Arrowhead regional artists selected for the Grand Marais Art Colony Studio 21 Gallery this summer. She premiers her work at her exhibit, Making Love Visible beginning with the June 1 opening event. The show is on display through June 29.
Thunder Bay, Canada. Photo based on an interpretation of aerial imagery by Microsoft Flight Simulator.
The last of the sister cities in this series is the first. Thunder Bay was the original sister city of Duluth, a relationship that formally began in 1980. While the Twin Ports is the largest metropolitan area on Lake Superior, Thunder Bay is the largest city, with a population of 110,000.
Some Duluthians think Bob Dylan hates Duluth and Minnesota. What has Bob Dylan actually said?
I’d heard rumors Dylan was a Duluth hater, but then I read the liner notes to his 1974 album Planet Waves, where he wrote: “Duluth! Duluth — where Baudelaire Lived/& Goya cashed in his Chips, where Joshua brought/the house down!” These are not the words of someone who hates Duluth. These words lionize the city in terms of literature and mythology. A song on the album mentions Duluth too. From “Something There is About You“: “Thought I’d shaken the wonder/And the phantoms of my youth/Rainy days on the great lakes/Walkin’ the hills of old Duluth.” Duluth as a city of wonder and phantoms: who among us cannot relate?
Growing up in Hibbing, Dylan had family in Duluth and Superior. As a teen he went to Minneapolis more and more, and that became his jumping-off point to the world. But the Northland never left him. From his autobiography Chronicles, Volume One (2004 edition), one reads many references to Duluth, Hibbing, Minneapolis, and Minnesota as a whole.
This year was the third in row that I lugged my heavy camera around during the Homegrown Music Festival and attempted to be a photographer. Above are the 86 best photos I could muster.
“The Seal Cannot Be Past the Door” is the third release from the new Dirty Knobs album, Songs About Everything Dying Around Us, Including Us.
Siggy’s Musical Garden is presenting the third annual Make Music Day in Superior on June 21, the day of the year with the most daylight. The goal of the event is for “every kind of musician — young and old, amateur and professional, of every musical persuasion” to set up on “streets, parks, plazas and porches to share their music with friends, neighbors and strangers.” The open call application for musicians is online at makemusicday.org/superior.
Versions of Make Music Day take place all over the world. Last year Superior had about 40 musical acts performing mostly outdoors.
