Politics and Culture in Duluth, Minnesota
Starring: The Duluth Police Department
Scene: The squad room. Four cops are sitting at their desks, two in the front of the room and two in the back, shuffling papers. A fan turns slowly in the corner.
COP 1: [yawns and stretches] I’m hungry.
COP 2: Me too.
COP 1: How do you feel about pizza?
COP 2: Pizza’s good. Why do you ask? (more…)
Sigh.
__________________________________
June 14, 2011
Sam Black
Director
Arrowhead Regional Arts Council
Dear Sam,
I can’t help writing. It comes out of me, slowly but surely, like water from a slow spring. To hear my work denounced as “trite” and “ridiculous” (as well as “juvenile”) by one or two board members—and to see such clearly biased assertions pass without challenge—was very enlightening to me. In every other instance during that long, long meeting when a board member expressed a strong view about a certain artist or submission, each was asked to prove their assertion with evidence from the submission. Not so in my case. Alas, I realized that nobody was going to say a word about it.
On April 17, 2011, while haphazardly maintaining my blog, I stumbled across a draft of a post that someone going by the name of “jff” (hereafter referred to as Jiff) had left on The Cheerleader’s WordPress account eight days earlier. Titled “Timber Twister,” Jiff’s post presented an interesting question.
Can somebody check my math?
The Timber Twister’s grand opening was July 1, 2010. It was open for operation seven days a week for nine hours each day until Labor Day.The Fall, Winter, and Spring hours of operation are Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, for nine hours each day.
I get a total of 158 days of operation, nine hours each day.Renee Mattson, Spirit Mountain’s director, is quoted today in the Duluth News Tribune as saying that “about 116,000 riders have climbed aboard the coaster”.
Wouldn’t that require someone to have gone down the coaster every 45 seconds?
[Duluth City Forester Kelly Fleissner] said he’s surprised at how many deer live in Duluth despite the high numbers harvested by the Arrowhead Bowhunt Alliance.
In 2010’s fall hunt, 339 hunters harvested 602 deer, the most taken since the bowhunt began six years ago, according to ABA statistics.
“It’s extraordinary how successful the bowhunt is, and, despite that success, we’re not quickly shrinking the deer population like we thought we would,” Fleissner said.
Duluth News Tribune, April 9, 2011