April 2017

Homegrown Music Festival 2017 Primer

If this isn’t your 19th time attending the Homegrown Music Festival, here are some links that might be helpful:

Homegrown website
Homegrown schedule
PDD Chicken App schedule for smartphones
Homegrown Facebook page
Homegrown Twitter page
Seasons 1-4 of Seth Langreck’s Duluth Band Profiles

Admission wristbands are $30 for the full eight days of music, but there are also many free-admission events.

There are 199 bands on the schedule. A 100-page Field Guide is available to help navigate the festival. Pick one up at any Homegrown venue or various random locations.

The hashtag for this year is #hgmf17. The same hashtag applies for Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.

This is the first Homegrown in which a ridesharing service is available. The Lyft app has been functioning in Duluth since April 27.

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PDD Quiz: April 2017

Another perfect Duluth April is in the books. Take the quiz to see how much you remember about this month’s happenings!

The next PDD Quiz, on zoo history, will be published on May 14. E-mail question suggestions to Alison Klawiter at aklawite@d.umn.edu by May 11.

Duluth is the best something or other of 2014 or ever

Remember back in 2014 when Outside magazine named Duluth the “Best Town Ever”? It’s referenced in a new story in the Minneapolis Star Tribune:

“How Duluth became the outdoor capital of the Midwest”

But what exactly was Duluth named by Outside magazine? The headline of the 2014 article calls Duluth the “Best Town in America.” But then the subhead calls it the “Best Town Ever.”

The online poll referred to the contest as ““Best Towns 2014.” Outside also published a countdown article of “The 16 Best Places to Live in the U.S.: 2014,” listing Duluth as #1.

Destination Duluth often referred to the online poll as “Best Outside City,” while at the same time using a graphic referring to it as the “Best Place to Live.” Both MPR News and the Star Tribune reported in 2014 that Duluth won the “Best Outdoors Town” poll.

The only conclusion one can draw from all this is that Duluth is the Best Outside or Outdoors City or Town to Live in or in General Throughout the Midwest and America or the World in 2014 and Forever.

The Large Hadron Collider, or, I Have Never Met Father John Misty, Irrespective of What This Essay Might Imply

I’ve had a rough couple of years. My dad got sick, then my husband got sick, and I became a lot more curious about the nature of being than I was before. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about the Large Hadron Collider. In case you are not also wedged firmly between a rock and a firm location, devouring particle physics literature like a Kardashian hoarding Us Weekly, the Large Hadron Collider is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator. It’s the largest single machine in existence, built in collaboration with more than 10,000 scientists and engineers from around the world.

Maybe I have felt, over the past two years or so, a little sympathetic to the lead electron at the nose of that high-speed electron beam, roaring around an accelerator ring at nearly light speed, every lap incrementally nudging closer to a head-on collision with an opposing electron beam, traveling at equal speed. But, less dramatically, I’ve been thinking more about what scientists have found.

The intent of the Large Hadron Collider is to investigate the structure of the atomic nucleus. (I copied that from the LHC website). But it’s been doing more than that. Like any scientific investigation of the unknown, it has the potential to change everything by altering our perception of the nature of stuff. If, for example, the LHC reveals that energy becomes matter in describable and predictable circumstances, or becomes matter by describable and predictable mechanisms, it would radically change how we see the universe. It’s literally an infinitesimally tiny change, but it would be a boundless change, philosophically. …

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