One century ago the Miller Brothers opened Miller Music Company at 8 W. First St. in Duluth’s Spina Building. According to the Kathryn A. Martin Library’s Archives & Special Collections at the University of Minnesota Duluth, “Abe Miller was a violinist and the manager of the Duluth Symphony for 37 years beginning in 1932. Ben was an assistant manager of Northern Drug prior to launching the music store in 1922.”
As the Northland shifts into summer mode, see how many May 2023 headlines you remember with this week’s current events quiz!
Hartley Park will be the subject of the next PDD quiz, which comes your way on June 11. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by June 7.
Well, it looks like it’s finally going to be legal to smoke weed for funsies in Minnesota, which is terrific news for all of the people languishing in jail for smoking or dealing weed for funsies in Minnesota. Law is the ultimate example of the abject arbitrariness of reality: we have an entire system of rules and consequences established around the specious assertion that smoking weed, and all practices associated with it are, well, objectively bad. And not just rules and consequences, an elaborate — and until very recently, shared — ethos that avers a deep and persistent truth: using marijuana is dangerous and wrong. What a hoot.
Being a human is such absurdity, most of the time — how does anyone keep a straight face? Like so many of you, I have struggled with some of the more frittersome or idiosyncratic morae introduced as inalienable verities: men do this, women are that, and you’re either one or the other; these are the ways we cover our bodies with cloth, but these ways are terrible and wrong; these animals are great to eat, but these ones are friends … Sometimes, the whole world seems like a very elaborate game of make believe we’re all playing together. Through the right lens, even the houses we live in, with two sinks in the bathrooms, secret refrigerators, walk-in closets — it’s all like some fantastical fever dream.
The Duluth Public Library’s Nostalgic Newsstand Sale was a source of many things to write about. Here is another advert from my collection of now-recycled magazines.
Modern and fireproof, featuring the finest food and liquors, located at the center of everything and on the shore of beautiful Lake Superior, containing all possible comforts and conveniences, with lodging available for the whole family, they are the classic hotels and motels of Duluth.
This is the fourth in Perfect Duluth Day’s series of matchbook collection posts. As always, we remind everyone to please close the cover before striking.
Explore Minnesota’s love affair with smelt, the shimmering silver fish that’s easy to catch and fun to eat. Now that Lake Superior’s smelt population is in decline, an annual parade in downtown Duluth keeps that love alive.
Minnesota Historia is a PBS North web series dedicated to Minnesota’s quirky past. It is hosted by Hailey Eidenschink and produced/edited/written by Mike Scholtz.
This image is from a postcard mailed 115 years ago today — May 23, 1908 — available for sale on ebay. It’s been touched up a bit here for easier viewing. The obvious mystery is what organization the people in the photo belong to.
The item is listed on eBay as “1908 RPPC Duluth Minnesota College Club Vintage Postcard MN Land Point Idaho ID.” The “college club” part of that is clearly speculative. Many of the men have sashes and badges that suggest perhaps they are part of a fraternal club like the Odd Fellows.
Sportsman Magazine Ad
The Duluth Public Library’s Nostalgic Newsstand Sale was a source of many things to write about.
The Committee for Giant Colossal Statues of Bob Dylan, Duluth’s premier Bob Dylan monuments organization, remains hard at work designing giant colossal statues of Bob Dylan.
This roughly 80-year-old film features scenes at Trinity Lutheran Church, 1108 E. Eighth St. in Duluth’s East Hillside neighborhood. Also in the film are a nearby market, the Kenwood Community Club and a building under construction.
One of the cooler things about the adverts from the Duluth Public Library Nostalgic Newsstand Sale are the ads for travel on the train. Before planes, before interstates, the train was ubiquitous for travel. I love this ad for “To the Orient on Canadian Pacific.”
Select photos from Instagram spanning mid-April to mid-May 2023, all hashtagged with the name of a certain website. #perfectduluthday
Take a tour of Amsoil Arena, home of UMD Bulldogs hockey, via drone footage by Ethan Schultz of ShotxSchultz.
In 1962, a mongoose at the Duluth Zoo was sentenced to death by the federal government, but he’s not the only animal in Minnesota who finds himself at the wrong place at the wrong time.
Minnesota Historia is a PBS North web series dedicated to Minnesota’s quirky past. It is hosted by Hailey Eidenschink and produced/edited/written by Mike Scholtz.
It feels to me like there are organizations in Duluth well-poised for a project supported by the Herb Block Foundation. After all, we are home to the Civility Project. If there is an organization interested, I’m interested in helping — after all, it’s sponsored by a famous cartoonist.
