Duluth Trivia Deck Sampler #18
Here’s another card from the Duluth Trivia game. (more…)
Postcard from the West End of Duluth
This postcard was mailed Sept. 2, 1939, to Donna Buhler of Toledo, Ohio. Her parents had just arrived in Duluth. (more…)
Denfeld High School Football Team of 1944
Here’s a peek at what the Denfeld Hunters gridiron crew looked like 75 years ago, in the fall of 1944. That’s legendary coach Walt Hunting up top and center. (more…)
Lake Superior Aquaman’s Duluth
https://drive.google.com/open?id=13xUzaotRXCX4Q5tX_01IiJbDvUmJEYW5&usp=sharing
I first launched this sort-of virtual tour of the area in January 2018. I just updated it with more than 30 new features, including more than 130 new photos, several video links, links to news articles, the paths of my various “skate patrols” and “flamingo patrols,” The People’s Free Skate, a greater spread through the region, and all my latest activities. Enjoy.
Mind your Business
On my way to see Burning, the Korean movie adaptation of a Haruki Murakami short story, playing at Zeitgeist Zinema in January, I heard a woman yell “Somebody help me!” from the bus stop. I couldn’t see her well; she had made herself small, the way a rabbit might make itself small for fear of a predator who has entered the garden, too.
A man was looming over her while she cowered against the wall of the Greysolon Plaza. From behind, I couldn’t see much of him, either. He wore a jacket that looked not-quite warm enough; his agitated movements were likely keeping him warm. I felt my city instincts kick in.
I’ve lived in a city all my life: Milwaukee until I was 22, St. Paul until I was 32. Duluth is the smallest community I have ever lived in, and most days, it barely feels like a city. In the quarters of a city where poor people live, anytime someone calls “help,” I think, we check it out. We need each other.
Someone called for help. I needed to check it out. I started to cross the street, putting on my most booming voice.
“What’s going on over there?” (more…)
Superior Entry Lighthouse on Wisconsin Point sold
Wisconsin’s Superior Lighthouse sold for $159,000 - Duluth News Tribune | News, weather, and sports from Duluth, Minnesota
After more than a month of bidding, the lighthouse was sold.
superiortelegram.com
The century-old Superior Entry Lighthouse on Wisconsin Point sold for $159,000 to Steven Broudy of San Francisco, Calif. The new owner will have to maintain it. (more…)
Selective Focus: Quinn Montgomery
This week, we feature the youngest Selective Focus artist so far, Quinn Montgomery. She has been drawing caricatures of celebrities. Many are from shows that she most likely can’t watch for quite awhile. We get some background info from her dad, Derek Montgomery (previously featured in Selective Focus). For now, you can keep up with Quinn’s art career via her dad’s Instagram Feed. Be sure to check the second picture in each Instagram post to see the reference material with the finished drawing.
DM: I started documenting our daughter Quinn’s drawings as just a way to remember some of the things she was doing at her age, which is four years old. I found her style of drawing–large head with The Nightmare Before Christmas’ Jack Skellington-length arms and legs–as really humorous and fun. She’s always been very perceptive and expressive and the drawings are just an extension of that. I work from home and Quinn would bring me drawings every day of stuff she saw around the house or outside to cheer me up because apparently I needed that? I don’t know, but I always appreciated seeing her take on the world out here in Lakeside.
(more…)
Then and Now: Blue Crab Bar / OMC Smokehouse
The above photo was shot on Aug. 29, 2009 at the Blue Crab Bar, 1909 W. Superior St. Today it is the location of OMC Smokehouse. The photo below, shot Aug. 29, 2019, attempts to replicate the scene. (more…)
Miss you Rick Boo.
Feel free to share your Rick stories in the comments.
Postcards from the Clarkson Coal & Dock Co.
This undated postcard, published by the Duluth Photo and Engraving Company, shows the Clarkson Coal & Dock Company on Duluth’s waterfront. (more…)
Latinos in Duluth
Luisa Pierce and Teresa Dawson reflect on Latino presence and contributions in Duluth.
The Slice: Edward H. Ojard
Two Harbors-based composer Edward H. Ojard has published two music CDs with a third in the works. He is 10 years old.
In its series The Slice, WDSE-TV 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.
Duluth Trivia Deck Sampler #17
Another card from the Duluth Trivia game. (more…)
White Iron Band – “Drunk in Duluth”
Ely-formed and Twin Cities-based White Iron Band released a Duluth ditty on its 2005 outlaw country album Take it off the Top. (more…)
PDD Quiz: August 2019
August is drawing to a close; how many of this month’s headlines do you recall? Quiz on to find out!
The next PDD quiz, on Duluth in literature, will be published on Sept. 15. Submit question suggestions to Alison Moffat at aklawite@d.umn.edu by Sept. 8. (more…)
Book Cover: Entrance to East High School, Spring 1963
The setting for this fictional book is Duluth. The main characters attended East High School. The author grew up on Arrowhead Road.
A thoroughly Duluth-centric book. Read a sample at Amazon. The download version is 99 cents.
Be forewarned; this isn’t another high school reunion puff-piece.
Selective Focus: Graham Burnett
Graham Burnett operates Graflex Parts, a business that restores and repairs antique cameras. Film isn’t dead, and there are a number of people who still take on the challenges of photography without a phone or SD card. He works on medium and large format cameras that shoot one sheet of film at a time, and definitely don’t fall into the “point and shoot” category. It can take months to do the repairs, custom-build parts and fine-tune the mechanics.
GB: I do repair and modification work to antique cameras, with a specialty in a several types of high-end professional cameras dating from 1900-1950. I’m a sort of “custom design shop” but for 100-year-old cameras. The kind I work on are all considered “Large Format” and produce images that can be up to 8 inches by 10 inches wide. I found my way to this niche of photography and cameras through my own progression as a photographer. I had a few specific preferences for what kind of cameras I liked and what sort of image I was trying to create with it; inevitably it lead me to antique cameras. Every artist has tools and my clients are mainly working professionals with a distinct goal in mind, using their cameras for anything from fine art to wedding photography. I often do conversions of cameras allowing them to accept accessories or lenses meant for entirely different camera systems. (more…)
Duluth Shipping Canal in 1899
This photo from Detroit Publishing Company shows the view looking west from the end of the south pier of Duluth’s shipping canal before there was an Aerial Bridge. William Henry Jackson is credited as the photographer.
The Library of Congress dates the image as “between 1890 and 1910,” but research by Mark Ryan for the story “W. H. Jackson’s Photographs of Duluth” for Zenith City Press puts the time of Jackson’s visit to Duluth as the summer of 1899.
Postcard from Two Harbors, where the trout bite
Sure, it’s a cute little piece of art, but the verse on the backside of this undated postcard puts it over the top. (more…)