Jane Yolen awarded Sophie Brody Medal for 2022

Duluth’s Holy Cow! Press author Jane Yolen, author of Kaddish: Before the Holocaust and After, has been awarded the Sophie Brody Medal for 2022.

Lake Superior Writers taking over NEMBA

The Northeastern Minnesota Book Awards have a new organizing body, Lake Superior Writers. As a fan of NEMBA, the University of Minnesota Duluth and LSW, I think this is good news for all.

Matchbooks from Superior-area Restaurants and Bars

One year ago Perfect Duluth Day published a collection of “Matchbooks from Duluth Restaurants and Bars.” Now we honor the neighboring city of Superior, and the rest of northwestern Wisconsin, with a collection of matchbooks from Superior-area restaurants and bars.

Postcard from a Typical Lumber Camp in Northern Minnesota

This postcard was mailed 110 years ago today — Jan. 18, 1912. It depicts a “typical lumber camp in northern Minnesota.”

Cloud Cult – “One Way Out of a Hole”

Cloud Cult released the first music video today from its new album Metamorphosis, due out March 4. The video is directed by Jeff D. Johnson.

The band kicks off its tour with a performance at Papa Charlie’s in Lutsen on Feb. 12 and hits Duluth on April 20 with a show at the NorShor Theatre.

Heely Tricks with JamesG: December 2021

Here it is, the last of the 2021 wheeled-sneaker stunts by former Duluthian James Geisler, also known as the hip-hop artist JamesG.

PDD Quiz: 2022 Coming Attractions

Glensheen – Minnesota History Theatre

This week’s quiz looks ahead to new things coming (or returning) to the Duluth area in 2022. As with everything these days, all future events and shenanigans are subject to change; quiz on to test your knowledge of things to get cautiously excited about!

The next PDD quiz, heading your way on Jan. 30, will cover January 2022 headlines. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at [email protected] by Jan. 26.

The SuperiorLab-Marquette Disaster

Deep-sea explorer Ecclesia Hummingbird, August 23, 2001 on PBS: “I live and work here in SuperiorLab, a hyperbaric underwater habitat 950 feet deep, by a drowned petrified forest. Welcome to science’s first permanent presence at the bottom of Lake Superior, with our partners: the University of Minnesota, NASA, and our corporate sponsors. We are offshore between Two Harbors and Silver Bay, in a quarter-mile-wide underwater canyon whose sides slope hundreds of feet down. This scar cuts for thirty miles getting deeper and deeper. The lake’s canyons divide the bedrock like cracking skin, and this crack is one of its deepest, Bible black like space.

“SuperiorLab is manned by a rotating crew of divers and astronauts-in-training who live here for months at a time. Because of budget cuts, that is currently a crew of two. There’s myself, and there’s my half-sister Persephone Marrow, a geologist developing protocols for future Mars missions. We are the so-called ‘genius daughters’ of the university’s Professor Joseph Marrow.

Two new Nat Harvie songs: “Longbody” and “Every Woman”

Lyric video for “Every Woman” below.

Woodblind – “Watched Pot”

Veikko Lepisto and Jason Wussow of Duluth band Woodblind make soup in this new music video. Cory Coffman adds percussion to the track.

Woodblind performs Jan. 29 at Wussow’s Concert Cafe as part of the Soup & a Song showcase.

From the Dizzo Archives: Last Place on Earth

Aside from being an occasional radio show host, I’ve always fancied myself a bit of an archivist. Some will say hoarder, but I’ll keep saying archivist. I attended the Last Place on Earth auction in Superior last weekend hoping to find some local treasures. I’m mostly a music and clothes collector so I was excited to see there was plenty of both.

Video: Five wolf pups emerging from a cedar tree den

The Voyageurs Wolf Project has released more trail camera footage from last summer of pups from the Paradise pack of wolves at Voyageurs National Park, about 110 miles north of Duluth. The den is under the roots of an ancient cedar tree.

Postcard from the Duluth Yacht Club

The Duluth Yacht Club was organized in 1890 and incorporated 1905. It’s facilities were on Minnesota Point at South 14th Street.

Minnesota Point Lighthouse Painting

This painting by the late Sylvia S. Reasor was sitting among the Pink Floyd lighters, Bob Marley patches, bongs, sex toys and whatnot at the Last Place on Earth liquidation auction this past weekend.

Condemned Esmond building gutted by fire

The Duluth Fire Department tweeted this photo at 7:55 a.m. noting a heavy fire on the second floor of the Esmond building.

The former Seaway Hotel, more recently known as the Esmond building, burned for seven hours today while fire fighters struggled in sub-arctic temperatures to extinguish it. The condemned structure at 2001 W. Superior St. in Duluth’s Lincoln Park neighborhood has been vacant since 2020 with future plans for demolition and redevelopment.