A Way to Help Support the Hibbing Dylan Project and a Glance Back in Time

The Hibbing Dylan Project has been meeting for quite some time to create a tribute to Bob Dylan, who graduated from Hibbing High School and went on to not just dream about changing the world, but to some extent actually making that dream happen. 

His fingerprints are all over popular culture. His lyrics still resonate more than a half century later, and will undoubtedly continue through generations.

Currently the locals are fund raising in Hibbing, to complete this project designed to honor Bob, by selling T-Shirts and hoodies. You can read the details about the original vision here.

The Facebook group, Hibbing Trivia and Lore has organized this fund raiser supporting the Hibbing Dylan Project. If you purchase a T-shirt and/or a hoodie you will help them achieve their goals.

I made a purchase yesterday. Payment is easy with either a credit card or PayPal. (I like PayPal. In fact, if you ever see artwork on my site that interests you, PayPal is my favorite method of payment.)

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This past week I was at our local library doing some research and I discovered that the library not only has microfilm of the local and national newspapers back through time, they've also made it possible to capture images on their computers which can be mailed to you at home.

I decided to check our the front page of the Duluth News Tribune to see what stories were featured on May 24, 1941. What I found was conflicts, and a ramping up for World War II. One major story featured the battle for Crete. A second had to do with a significant naval battle. The centerpiece of the British Navy, the battleship HMS Hood, was sunk by Germany's largest battleship, the Bismarck. The battle took place Northeast of Iceland, with 1500 British seamen losing their lives.

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FWIW, Duluth Dylan Fest is fast approaching and the schedule has firmed up significantly since the beginning of the year. It's another rich lineup with a several new events assembled including Joan Osborne playing a full evening of Dylan tunes on the eve of Bob's 78th birthday. Tickets are selling fairly quickly, so don't wait till the last minute to get yours. BUY TICKETS HERE.

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Stay current with what is happening by bookmarking BobDylanWay.com or for an outline of our 2019 events print out the Full Schedule Here.

May you stay forever young.

Throwback Thursday: The Day After Bob Dylan's 69th Birthday + An Announcement from the Hibbing Dylan Project

ORIGINALLY POSTED MAY 25, 2010

So Bob Dylan is 69 plus one day today. I mention this only because, because... because I wanted to.

I missed the party last night. I was busy out in my studio finishing the first of two or three compositions I'm devising for the Bob Dylan Way Manhole Cover Art Contest. I did get a few more details. You can submit more than one design. Also, these will be regular manhole covers, one color, embossed, not mini-murals. These are practical manhole covers, to be cast in iron.

Speaking of Dylan, this morning I remembered the first time I saw one of his albums. Ed Hilliker, whom I rode school bus with in junior high school, had The Freelwheelin' Bob Dylan with that iconic image of young Dylan walking through the streets of New York, head tilted forward against the wind, with a smiling woman in a green coat (Suze Rotolo, I would later learn) tightly clutching his arm. The liner notes were by Nat Hentoff, who followed the music scene and wrote for the Village Voice. Hentoff's fame stemmed from his intimate portraits of obscure jazz greats who were producing incredible sounds during the fertile fifties and sixties, before jazz filtered into the masses.

Hentoff's Liner Notes begin like this...

Of all the precipitously emergent singers of folk songs in the continuing renascence of that self-assertive tradition, none has equaled Bob Dylan singularity of impact. As Harry Jackson, a cowboy singer and a painter, has exclaimed: "He's so goddamned real it's unbelievable!" The irrepressible reality of Bob Dylan is a compound of spontaneity, candor, slicing wit and an uncommonly perceptive eye and ear for the way many of us constrict our capacity for living while a few of us don't.

Not yet twenty-two at the time of this album's release, Dylan is growing at a swift, experience-hungry rate. In these performances, there is already a marked change from his first album ("Bob Dylan," Columbia CL 1779/CS 8579), and there will surely be many further dimensions of Dylan to come. What makes this collection particularly arresting is that it consists in large part of Dylan's own compositions The resurgence of topical folk songs has become a pervasive part of the folk movement among city singers, but few of the young bards so far have demonstrated a knowledge of the difference between well-intentioned pamphleteering and the creation of a valid musical experience. Dylan has. As the highly critical editors of "Little Sandy Review" have noted, "...right now, he is certainly our finest contemporary folk song writer. Nobody else really even comes close."

The highlighted observation above proved to be dead on as far a prescience goes. Who would have thunk it? Dylan has appeared in more forms than a Hindu god.

This memorable album cover actually becomes a scene in the eternally recurring happy dream gone awry of Tom Cruise in the film Vanilla Sky. What's interesting to me is that the song which Cameron Crowe chooses to play while these Dylan-in-love copycat images are being displayed is not from Freewheelin', but rather is the song Fourth Time Around from Blonde On Blonde. Fourth Time Around implies "over and over again." Very interesting, and it's about something good gone bad.

Well, we're taking Dylan back to the streets again here in Duluth with a few new manhole covers for Bob Dylan Way. Deadline is just around the corner.

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FAST FORWARD TO 2017

TWO CALLS FOR ART

1) The Hibbing Dylan Project just announced that they are looking for artists who can create temporary Dylan murals in downtown storefronts. As I read the news today, oh boy, it seemed much like the Phantom Galleries that Superior artists generated for several years. Except this is Hibbing, and the good friends of the Dylan legacy want to celebrate his recent Nobel Prize. Here are the details regarding this current project.

2) The Duluth Dylan Fest is planning a Dylan-themed art exhibition during this year's Dylan Festival here. There will be a reception held on Monday May 22.  Bob Dylan has not only been a literary and performing artist, but he's also been a lifetime visual artist.
Submission Requirements:
1. Artist's statement
2. Brief bio (2-3 sentences)
3. One to three pieces (must send sample PDF or JPG format less than 1 MB each)
4. Description of piece (Title, medium, dimensions, price)
5. Send email to: ennyman (AT) northlc (DOT) com.   SUBJECT LINE: DYLAN ART

Countdown to Saturday: Nobel Prize Stirs Northland Dylan Fans

One thing Dylan's Nobel Prize selection has done is provide alternative subject matter to the recent election pyrotechnics. First there was ink spilled regarding the selection itself, which included stories about purportedly "worthier" candidates. Then there were all the stories (nearly 2 weeks' worth) questioning why Mr. Dylan did not respond immediately. This was followed by analysis of his cryptic response once he did reply, stating he "would be there... if able." This past week the word on the street is that Patti Smith will be the one to receive the award on his behalf and will read his acceptance speech. She will also sing "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall," one of the great songs of all time. (EdNote: I did not say, "one of the great Dylan songs of all time." This is, I believe, one of the greatest songs ever written. Period. No hyperbole, which I tend to be fond of on occasion.)

In the Northland, the big event that regional Dylan fans are looking forward to is a December 10 gathering of the Hibbing Dylan Project at the Androy Hotel in Hibbing, where young Robert Zimmerman famously came of age, so to speak. What originally began as a discussion about how to raise money to build a statue to honor the hometown boy who made good has evolved. When Craig Hattam and the organizers learned from Dylan's management team that Bob wouldn't want a statue it was quickly nixed. He'd rather have any money raised go to helping people in some way.

A meeting was then announced for his Saturday, the day the prize will be awarded, to discuss what the local community might be able to do. But even this is evolving. Governor Mark Dayton is using the occasion to declare December 10 "Bob Dylan Day" in Minnesota. I cannot attest to the depth of Governor Dayton's fandom, but I will say that his handlers are wise to encourage his participation here this weekend.

Today I saw a pair of stories on Flipboard pertaining to Dyan's influence. The first, an article from Rolling Stone in which Stephen King defended the Nobel Prize committee's selection. Kudos to King, who said rather pointedly,"People complaining about his Nobel either don't understand or it's just a plain old case of sour grapes." The second, was an article in which former vice president Al Gore cited Dylan's influence on his own social consciousness.

A friend from Chicago sent me a link to this weekend's Chicago Tribune story about Dylan's roots in northern Minnesota. The article includes a nice photo of the tip of Lake Superior kissing the Duluth shoreline with our skyline as a backdrop.  And speaking of Duluth, the News Tribune did a nice tribute on its editorial page this Sunday.

Then there's the Wall Street Journal story by Gabriel Rubin, a Chicago-based WSJ journalist, who made the trek up here early in the week before to feel the pulse as we proceed toward the day.

And then there's this piece from the Minneapolis Star Tribune. I think the photo at the top says it all. Dylan's having fun, here, and whatever happens this really is a very special moment for the man.

Whether you're planning to attend or following from afar, the best way to stay current is to tap into The Hibbing Dylan Project on Facebook.

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How big is a Nobel Prize? No question it's a tremendous honor that is bestowed with gravity and acknowledged by many to be "the biggest award on earth." That's why as a young writer I made the Prize a facet of the story "Liz Mills," which appears in my volume of short stories Newmanesque.

Meantime, life goes on.... all around you. Will I see you in Hibbing?

Nobel Echoes: Bob Dylan Is Second Writer From Duluth to Receive Nobel Prize in Literature

Gabe Rubin in front of Dylan's boyhood home in Duluth.

This week a journalist from the Wall Street Journal flew into town to gather material for a story on Bob Dylan's home town's, to appear next week on the day the Prize is to be officially awarded, December 10. Dylan fans come from all walks of life, from knighted university professors to Pulitzer Prize winning authors so it should not have been a surprise to find WSJ's Gabriel Rubin to be so thoroughly enthused by the assignment he acquired, to do a first-hand research on Dylan's roots here in the Northland.

Before heading to Hibbing, Mr. Rubin met with several members of the Duluth Dylan Fest committee and long-time Duluthians Steve Goldfine and Craig Grau. The latter two shared several stories and insights I'd not heard before, so I took notes and did a lot of listening. Afterward, we gave Mr. Rubin a tour of the various points of interest related to our theme.

One of the items that came from the encounter was a new realization about a Sinclair Lewis-Bob Dylan connection I'd never recognized before. It's only natural that I'd not previously had this thought because up until this fall Bob Dylan had not yet been honored with a Nobel Prize.

What Mr. Grau highlighted for our guest was that Duluth was not only the home town for Bob Dylan for a season, but was also home town for another Nobel Prize winner, Sinclair Lewis, who lived here in the mid-1940s. Once you recall that Dylan was born in Duluth in 1941, it doesn't take much figgerin' to notice that Lewis -- the first American to win a Nobel Prize for Literature -- was here in the Zenith City at the very same time.

When Sinclair Lewis won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1930, he was the first American ever to do so, the award mainly a result of his novel "Babbitt" (1922) set in the fictional city of Zenith, which happens to be a popular nickname of our Northland home town.*

Lewis was born in Sauk Centre, Minnesota in 1885. He received his accolades from the Nobel Prize committee in 1930 at the age of 45. Many people are unaware that in his fifties Lewis moved to Duluth and lived here at 26th Avenue East and 2nd Street for a few years in the 1940s. The book he wrote while living here, Kingsblood Royal, happened to be a book about race.

A book about race while living in Duluth in the 1940s? Only 25 years earlier Duluthians broke into the jail and lynched three black workers from a travelling circus that was in town that summer. This incident, is re-painted in Dylan's haunting Desolation Row's opening lines, "They're selling post cards of the hanging.... the circus is in town." Anyone else hearing an echo?

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The Wikipedia entry on Sinclair Lewis begins...

Harry Sinclair Lewis (/ˈluːɪs/; February 7, 1885 – January 10, 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, which was awarded "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." His works are known for their insightful and critical views of American capitalism and materialism between the wars. He is also respected for his strong characterizations of modern working women. H. L. Mencken wrote of him,"[If] there was ever a novelist among us with an authentic call to the trade ... it is this red-haired tornado from the Minnesota wilds."

A little further down Wikipedia describes the nature of Lewis' writings.

In 1930, Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature, the first writer from the United States to receive the award, after he had been nominated by Henrik Schück, member of the Swedish Academy. In the Academy's presentation speech, special attention was paid to Babbitt. In his Nobel Lecture, Lewis praised Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and other contemporaries, but also lamented that "in America most of us—not readers alone, but even writers—are still afraid of any literature which is not a glorification of everything American, a glorification of our faults as well as our virtues," and that America is "the most contradictory, the most depressing, the most stirring, of any land in the world today."

And in this description of the novelist I hear echoes of Dylan's "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" and other songs, which is why so many disenfranchised young people of the Sixties so resonated with Dylan's music.

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Dylan tribute on the elevator doors in the lobby of the downtown Holiday Inn.

History is about people, times and places. The people in this instance are Nobel Prize winners from Duluth who shared this town for a brief space of time. The houses where they lived remain, even if the now famous residents have moved on.

If you're taking notes, be sure to review them next May before Duluth Dylan Fest. At least one detail here will be the answer to a question in our Trivia Contest on the first evening of the week.

EdNote: The Hibbing Dylan Project wants everyone to know that Will Call tickets are still available for the December 10 Nobel Laureate Reception at the Androy Hotel. Details here.

EdNote 2: Be sure to pick up a Wall Street Journal, December 10. It might make for a good collectible if you're a Dylan fan.

EdNote 3: Breaking News. The info in EdNote 2 is incorrect. Due to a schedule change, the article will go online tonight and appear in print in tomorrow's Wall Street Journal.

Meantime, life goes on all around you.

*A silly aside: Whether you look at history backward or forward, these two American Nobel Prize for Literature winners are first and last to receive it, and both from Duluth.