Postcards: Steve Solkela
Steve Solkela is a comedian, and the only member of his one-man band, which includes accordion and cymbals among other instruments. Solkela finds joy in his music and his heritage, showcasing his talent and sense of humor to audiences all over the world.
This video is a segment from the southwestern Minnesota Pioneer PBS series Postcards. The May 2 episode focused on Finnish musician and artists. The Solkela segment is edited by Mike Scholtz.
The Slice: Pelicans!
PDD Geoguessr Challenge #17: Duluth’s Sister Cities – Petrozavodsk, Russia
Petrozavodsk, Russia. Photo based on an interpretation of aerial imagery by Microsoft Flight Simulator.
Petrozavodsk, Russia became a sister city of Duluth in 1987. With a population of 250,000, its Duluth’s largest sister city. Petrozavodsk is the capitol of the Republic of Karelia and located on the western shore of Lake Onega. Like Duluth, Petrozavodsk has a lakewalk that features art from its sister cities. In 1991, artist Rafael Consuegra won a national competition to represent Duluth in a sister cities sculpture exchange with Petrozavodsk. Below is a picture of his sculpture, The Fisherman, that I took with a disposable camera during my brief visit to the city nearly 20 years ago. (more…)
Mystery Photo: Little Rufus Milne in 1894
This cabinet card photo is marked “Rec’d May 5, 1894.” It’s not entirely clear what received might specifically refer to here, but with some confidence we can say this photo is at least 130 years old and someone received it precisely 130 years ago. (more…)
Remember Watson
Goob, Fozz, and I hiked down around another switchback in the trail. We saw a family that passed us higher up on the mountain. A dad, his three kids, and a dog. I saw the dad standing there, blocking the trail. His son sat on a rock with his two sisters standing beside him.
As we got closer Dad said, “He’s not doing so good.” I assumed he meant his son.
I walked up and then saw the dog. Their golden retriever was lying on its side in the trail and panting. I thought: We’re part of this now.
Dad said, “His stomach is super hard, too.” I reached down and felt the dog’s stomach which had swollen up bigger than his ribcage. It was firm.
The Dad explained that the dog chased something and got all riled up. I can’t remember if he said it was a squirrel or another dog. But it was after the dog’s frantic chase and barking that he started to swell up.
“I think his stomach has flipped over,” I said. (more…)
Selective Focus: Homegrown 2024 (The First Five Days)
Select images via Instagram from the first five days of the Homegrown Music Festival. (more…)
Dirty Knobs – “Sticks on Skins”
Duluth’s auditory atmospherist Zac Bentz has a new Dirty Knobs album, Songs About Everything Dying Around Us, Including Us, set for release on May 31. The first visualizer is for the track “Sticks on Skins.” Bentz says the “hypnotic, looping visuals are meant as an aid to clear the mind, at least for a few moments, even if the music conjures visions of doom.”
The Peoples Temple: A Unique Duluth Resource
My friend and colleague Elizabeth Nelson has donated some remarkable materials to the archives at the University of Minnesota Duluth.
The Elizabeth Nelson Peoples Temple Collection contains items relevant to the alternative religious organization founded by Jim Jones, best known for a mass suicide/murder in 1978 at its “Jonestown” settlement in Guyana. (more…)
DuluthiLeaks: Duluth Foghorn Facts
It’s been 100 years since Duluth’s original diaphone fog siren was installed at the Duluth Shipping Canal. That siren was decommissioned by the Coast Guard in 1968 and replaced by an electric whistle. In 1983 another old diaphone foghorn was acquired and installed. It was used on a ceremonial basis until 1995, then returned to regular service as a maritime aid to navigation. Community members immediately complained it was too loud. The controversy raged on until the horn was dismantled in 2006.
For the sixth edition of DuluthiLeaks — Perfect Duluth Day’s series in which public documents are presented as if they contain secret information leaked from an anonymous whistle blower — we present “Duluth Foghorn Facts,” a document and collection of images compiled by Jeffrey L. Laser of Bellville, Ohio. At some point after 1996, Laser put together the information below, delving into the nitty gritty of the diaphone foghorn that was housed in the Duluth South Breakwater Outer Light from 1983 to 2006. (more…)
Arrowhead Regional Arts Council 2024 Grant Recipients
The Arrowhead Regional Arts Council has announced its most recent grant recipients. (more…)
R. I. P. Florian Chmielewski
Florian Chmielewski, leader of the Chmielewski Funtime Band and a Minnesota state senator from 1971 to 1976, died last week at his home in Sturgeon Lake at the age of 97. (more…)
Duluth playwright to celebrate world premiere of ‘Two of Us’
Congratulations to my colleague, Mark Stanfield, on the forthcoming world premiere of his play, Two of Us. It will be performed Sept. 13-21 at the Watford Palace Theatre in England, with a transfer to Home Manchester, and then a national tour in 2025. The play dramatizes a last conversation between Paul McCartney and John Lennon.
More information about the play can be found at the Watford Palace Theatre site.
Homegrown Music Festival 2024 Primer
Every year the Homegrown Music Festival publishes a Field Guide with all the intricate details of the eight-day extravaganza. And every year Perfect Duluth Day kicks out a little rundown of updates, sidebar details and notes about peripheral, unsanctioned or otherwise-related items of interest at party time. This year there is just one official schedule change (so far), but plenty of sidebar updates. (more…)
PDD Quiz: April 2024
Test your knowledge of April 2024 headlines and happenings with this current affairs quiz.
You’ll be able to get your hands dirty with the next PDD quiz, which will focus on local gardens, on May 12. Submit question ideas to Alison Moffat aklawite@d.umn.edu by May 9. (more…)
Connection
There is no space up here. Ian needs some room to move, but he’s pulled his drums around him as close as he can. John’s bass tilts up a bit. Looks awkward, but he’ll make it work. Jim’s keyboard takes up a lot of real estate, but it is what it is: he doesn’t own a keytar and I’m not sure he’d use it even if he did. The horns, Dale, Jess and I, are in a line, backs to the side wall, which is a bummer because I love jumping around with my saxophone while we play. Leon’s in the middle of the nest, and though he’s in his fifties, he somehow also brings the energy of the newly hatched, his baby blue Gretsch 2127 an appendage. He taps one of the guitar pedals with the toe of his checkered shoe. His pedal board is a skateboard.
“I dunno,” he says to us, swinging his body around, back to the crowd. “Should we get going?”
“Not much else to do,” I volunteer, and though it’s a bad rejoinder, Leon crows.
“Okay then! ‘Go if You Wanna Go’?” It’s not a question, really. Ian counts us in, and we’re off again, a bunch of middle-aged friends making the people dance. (more…)
Adas Israel: A Talk and a Book
During the Twin Ports Festival of History, my friend Phil Sher gave a speech about the history of the Lithuanian Jewish community in Duluth. Phil is the author of a recent book, Adas Israel, available on Amazon, that was a product of a unique partnership between the University of Minnesota Duluth and the community. (more…)
Fur Trade Nation: Linking Continents
One of Carl Gawboy’s earliest memories is seeing a muskrat skin hanging on the wall in his house. “My father trapped animals and sold them to a fur buyer,” Gawboy said. “That’s when my fascination with trapping began.” Decades later, that interest became the subject of Gawboy’s latest book, Fur Trade Nation: An Ojibwe’s Graphic History, published by Animikii Mazina’iganan: Thunderbird Press. The release date is April 30. (more…)
Selective Focus: Aaron Reichow’s Duluth Music Scene Photos
Self portrait of Aaron Reichow, shot in a mirror at the Blush nightclub in 2022.
Aaron Reichow started taking photos of the Duluth music scene around 2014 when one of his favorite bands, Low, was doing a residency at Fitger’s Brewhouse. The band’s music got him through “a lot of periods of my life,” Reichow said. Low was set to play all of their songs in a random order across several Thursdays around the same time Reichow’s youngest child was starting to sleep through the night. “In my marriage, I did most of the child care, all the bedtimes,” he described. “And when they started to get older, I thought ‘well, I can go out again without feeling guilty.’” A practice in photography helped him reclaim the intention of going out again. And with time, his hobby turned into a professional art form. Read more about his work in the interview below. (more…)
Postcard from Superior Street at 15th Avenue West
This undated postcard, published by Odin Ebbesen, shows Superior Street in Duluth’s Lincoln Park neighborhood long before the neighborhood was called Lincoln Park. The church at right is, presumably, the Second Presbyterian Church of Duluth, according to text in an appendix of surveyed properties in the city of Duluth’s Historic Resources Inventory for the Lincoln Park Neighborhood. (more…)
NorShore?
Duluth’s NorShor Theatre is a bit of a copyeditor’s headache. People often misspell NorShor as “NorShore” or they fail to render the S as a capital letter. And since its proper name uses the British version of “theatre” and Americans prefer “theater,” we end up with numerous ways to screw up two words.
Apparently NorShor was being spelled wrong right from the start — or “NorShore” might have even been what was planned for the original spelling before someone decided to shorten it up — because an old sketch of the building, shown above, includes an E that never made it to the building’s tower or marquee. (more…)
Big Into – “Good as Gold”
From the shores of the Mississippi River, Iron Range natives Curtis Kraft Mattson and Jozef Conaway ask, “If a journey’s reward is the journey itself … then who pays?” Their band Big Into is releasing a music video every month for each new track off their upcoming EP. “Good as Gold” is the sixth in the series.
PDD Geoguessr Challenge #16: Homegrown 2024 Venues
Homegrown Music Festival starts next week with acts performing in venues across Duluth and Superior. You can read a detailed history of the festival on its website. And you can test your knowledge of this year’s festival by taking the PDD Quiz. And here you can test your knowledge of this year’s Homegrown venues by playing one of this week’s three Geoguessr challenges. (more…)
North Country Trail in Wisconsin: Backtracking
Seven years ago I began a quest to hike the North Country Trail across Wisconsin. Similar to my 20-year process of completing the Superior Hiking Trail in Minnesota, things are going slowly on the Sconnie side as well. In 2022 I completed just nine miles.
Despite my established reputation for tortoise-like hiking, I was determined to have a big year in 2023. Then I got busy with other things and ended up with exactly zero miles of NCT hiked that year.
I’ve already got one 2024 trek under my boots, but it kind of doesn’t count in terms of mileage. Which is why this chapter is titled “Backtracking.”
My only hike in 2022 began off Highway 53 on Holly Lucius Road, just south of Solon Springs. The previous chapter of my essay series concluded with a mistaken stroll on Highway 53, so I started my next hike by covering the path I should have taken at the end of my hike the year before. It wasn’t really backtracking, because I hadn’t walked this route yet, but it was a pause in my progression since it meant I would be arriving at Lucius Woods County Park for the second time. (more…)