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A View from Montreal Pier: The R/V Blue Heron
Not long after I disembarked from the research vessel Blue Heron in June, it was announced that a new form of life had been discovered inside the propeller shaft. A life form, hidden inside the extreme environment of the engine, cold and dark — it feels like how the Venom movies started. It feels maybe a little Lovecraftian, maybe, this shapeless life form, in the black goo.
My colleagues laugh at me for thinking in such melodramatic terms. But really, ever since that ride, I just keep learning how cripplingly limited my understanding of Lake Superior, and of our relationship to it, really was. I’m still trying to wrap my brain around it.
Finding the Blue Heron
The Blue Heron is docked in Superior on Montreal Pier, a research facility maintained by the University of Wisconsin-Superior. The site itself is a weird mishmash of history. The Montreal Pier, Quebec Pier and Allouez Bay are all a reminder of the deep affect French Jesuits and fur traders had on the Superior region.
By the early twentieth century, these piers were incredible sites of commerce. Superior was in competition with the Minneapolis area as the center of wheat and grain production, and several major companies built grain elevators and mills on the piers — Lake Superior Mills, Anchor, Listman, Cargill, and Belt Line. Most of these structures were destroyed in fires. (more…)
Ripped in Toronto in 2000
[Editor’s note: For this week’s essay we’ve once again pulled out a relic from the archive of Slim Goodbuzz, who served as Duluth’s “booze connoisseur” from 1999 to 2009. Twenty-five years ago the Sultan of Sot hit the road for a visit to Toronto, Canada, and composed this article for the July 12, 2000 edition of the Ripsaw newspaper.]
“Nobody helps you with your cup
No one could ever fill it up.”
—The Sadies
Prelude: Detroit Metro
It was 11:15 a.m. and I was sitting in one of the many cafes at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, waiting for my connecting flight to Toronto. Everybody else drank coffee and ate pastries. My flight had been delayed two hours. I needed whiskey.
The Price is Right was on the TV above the espresso machine. Bob Barker put his arm around a gaunt middle-aged woman while they watched a cardboard mountain climber ascend a cardboard mountain, singing:
Laaa dee doody
Laaa dee doody
Laaa dee doody dooooo … (more…)
One more contribution to the literary history of Duluth
My students were busy over the past two years. Tales of Migration is the second of their book projects, a collection of migration tales that include submissions from the students, from Duluth, and from around the world.
I am looking for themes for the spring 2026 project. I am oscillating between calling for an anthology, like this, or for calling for chapbooks and short essays and comics that could be published by my students, chapbook style.
North Country Cadence in the literary history of the Duluth
For some reason, the Duluth Public Library decided to deaccession some of its reference Minnesota collection. (more…)
Duluth in the novel ‘The Horn’
John Clellon Holmes’ 1953 beat jazz novel The Horn contains a couple references to Duluth. In the 1988 edition by Thunder’s Mouth Press, the first mention occurs on page 131. I cite it below with a couple paragraphs for context, which make it clear “Duluth” is used synonymously with “some out-of-the-way city on the road.” (more…)
Selective Focus: Reverie with Kathryne Ford
Utilizing a variety of different mediums, including mirrors, projection, paint and a mold made for her actual teeth, Kathryne Ford curated “Reverie,” an installation exploring “thoughts and visions that rattle through my mind at 2 a.m.” The exhibit, containing images and objects nostalgic to childhood, are intended to make the audience feel both “lost and found,” said Ford, as “surreal moments are in a real medium.” To learn more about the Reverie art installation, open at Prøve Art Gallery through June 21, check out the interview with Ford below. (more…)
Rag Mag: More Duluth Literary History Hunting
This post, also looking for resources and connections for my fall 2025 course in Minnesota Writers, has two asks. (more…)
‘Cottage Core’ tea at the Loch
I recently attended an afternoon tea at the Loch. It was a joyful experience. (more…)
PDD Quiz: Father’s Day Edition
Celebrate Father’s Day with a dad-adjacent PDD quiz!
A PDD quiz reviewing headlines from June 2025 will be published on June 29. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at alisonlinnaemoffat@gmail.com by June 24. (more…)
Discovering Colleen Baldrica’s ‘Tree Spirited Woman’
In “Minnesota Writers Spotlight on Colleen Baldrica,” Kaelyn Hvidsten writes about discovering Baldrica’s Tree Spirited Woman tucked away in a Canal Park art shop.
Writing Communities: The Writing Group at Sara’s Table
Calyx Books was a significant creative force in shaping poetic life in Duluth. These two pages, from a Calyx Press book discussed in the Duluth Budgeteer, are a kind of evidence of that impact, creating and manifesting literary community. (more…)
Minnesota Authors: Reading Like a Writer (Margaret D. Kennedy and Winnifred Elliott)
This Fall, I’m teaching Minnesota Authors: Reading Like a Writer (a subtitle I stole from my colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Superior). The goal of the class is to read like a writer, which is to say to be less interested in “what a text means” (that’s reading like a reader), but instead “how a text works” (that’s reading like a writer).
We also look at the mechanics of writing and publishing. The works of Michael Fedo are a gift in this. He has written extensively about being a writer. (more…)
The Buckthorn Crusader of Lakeview Park
The eastern stretches of Lakeview Park with an abundant mature buckthorn jungle.
After an hour or two of relentlessly battling buckthorn, you may sit to rest and close your eyes for a moment. If you do this, you’re likely to see pokey spear-like shapes in your closed-eye vision.
In my eight-year quest to de-buckthorn a particular unknown Duluth park, I have come to know this particular plant quite well. And in my obsessive need to destroy it, I believe it has come to know me. I even joined a city-organized and backed volunteer group dedicated to destroying every last seed and stem of non-native explosive-growth monster plants. (more…)
Selective Focus: Run, Smelt, Run! Parade 2025
https://www.instagram.com/p/DKF-8sipZaA/
Select Instagram images from Magic Smelt Puppet Troupe‘s annual smelt-themed second-line parade. (more…)
Disturbing lack of ‘ope’ etiquette roils Duluth community
https://babylonbee.com/news/midwesterner-arrested-for-squeezing-past-someone-without-saying-ope/
Duluth has once again popped up as a dateline in The Babylon Bee, a satirical news website. The story reports that “Dave Netters was arrested for squeezing past someone at a grocery store without saying the obligatory ‘Ope!'” The story concludes by noting “Netters had pleaded not guilty on account of being from Missouri.”
Kill the Spider
When I stepped into the shower, I didn’t see the spider. Once the water was running, I looked down and there it was at my feet, floating near the drain.
They don’t struggle when they’re fully soaked. Instead, they ball up and wait for the tide to take them to a surface they can latch on to.
There will be no escape for this spider, however, because I won’t let it happen. This spider is in my shower, and that kind of disrespect demands an execution.
There are plenty of spider sanctuaries — the utility room, the garage, the shed, the attic — where I’ll look the other way. I don’t enjoy killing them, and would rather not, so I let them be when they know their place.
Although spiders are creepy, they have some positive attributes. Most notably, they eat a lot of insects. It’s probably not intelligent for me to kill something that’s doing so much killing on my behalf. (more…)
What About Today?
Today is the day. The day to do something. To do anything. Because there is no better day than today.
This is the day you think about more than yourself. You think about your family, neighbors, friends, others around the city, and the vulnerable populations who are struggling with such challenges as poverty and being homeless.
And no matter what time it is when you read this, it’s the right moment to respond and get physical. To stand up. To step up. To speak up. If you wait for another time or day, it will be too late.
Too many of us have never felt a greater sense of angst and urgency. With all the disturbing news, it would be very easy and understandable to distance ourselves, to distract ourselves, to even disconnect ourselves from the harsh reality which surrounds us. But we can’t keep closing the door behind us and walking away from what’s happening out there.
This is not just a bad dream or nightmare. It’s definitely more than that. It’s real. It’s painful. It’s inevitable. (more…)
Duluth Deep Dive #3: Bob Dylan and the Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub
Bob Dylan’s father leads a dance in Duluth, The Duluth Herald, October 28, 1931.
The free, open access, online Minnesota Digital Newspaper Hub, supported by recently cut grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, lets you do your own deep dives into genealogy, the history of a home or business, or just about anything that has happened in Duluth or throughout Minnesota. This month’s deep dive shows you how the site works by using Bob Dylan’s Duluth family history as an example. (more…)
Fun with Google AI Overview
Google search results are now summarized by an “AI Overview.” I tested it with three questions. (more…)
PDD Quiz: March 2025
Test your memory of this month’s headlines with this edition of the PDD Quiz.
A Homegrown Music Festival quiz struts your way on April 13. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at alisonlinnaemoffat @ gmail.com by April 10. (more…)
The FBI Paid for My Co-op Membership: Minnesota Food War 1975
Transcript of interview with former co-op volunteer / FBI confidential informant
Interviewer: How did you become an FBI informant during the Minnesota food co-op wars of 1975?
Name redacted: Well, when co-ops started forming in the late ‘60s, the FBI thought it was a communist plot. That theory got a lot of traction because many early co-op’ers were actual, literal Communists, mimeographing typewritten Leninist newsletters. You would’ve thought downtown Minneapolis was the Red Square. So it was a case of “let’s just keep an eye on these people.” But since there was a cooperative warehouse in Wisconsin serving as a distribution hub, when co-op-related violence broke out, it crossed state lines. So the FBI went from passive surveillance to active infiltration. When the Minneapolis co-op wars spread to the North Shore in ’75, I was on the short list to infiltrate the Duluth one. A native Duluthian, I had worked undercover before, and I was already a Co-op shopper. I was not a member, but knew some of the early Co-op’ers from church. I wasn’t on the anarcho-communist continuum, and I wasn’t a hippie — I just wanted better food. This made my handlers a little nervous. They started thinking I was a pinko. But I told them, “You couldn’t find a loaf of whole wheat bread in Duluth until the Co-op opened in 1970.” They were eating Wonder Bread baloney sandwiches with mayonnaise, but that convinced them. So the FBI paid for my Co-op membership. Then I signed up for member volunteer work shifts to get on the inside. I stirred buckets of nut butter with a drill attachment, but I heard stuff. I wasn’t the only one, the Feds had an informant in Grand Marais too, and some as far south as Iowa. Minneapolis was the hub, of course; the co-ops down there were popping off like popcorn. (more…)
Alan Sparhawk – “Stranger”
Alan Sparhawk‘s second solo album is not so solo. The title, With Trampled by Turtles, explains that. It releases May 30 on Sub Pop Records.
PDD Quiz: St. Patrick’s Day
Press your luck and celebrate the season with this week’s (vaguely) Irish-themed PDD quiz!
The next PDD quiz, coming your way on March 30, will review the month in headlines. Please submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at alisonlinnaemoffat @ gmail.com by March 26. (more…)
Bobcat Goldthwait Live in Duluth at Junk Food Film Festival
The second annual Junk Food Film Festival is fast approaching and badges are more than halfway sold out. The special guest this year is filmmaker and comedian Bobcat Goldthwait, who will be screening his cult classic Windy City Heat. Following the film, Bobcat will be sticking around for both a Q&A and pictures/autographs. (more…)