Twin Ports Tonight: Zenith City On Tap and Gaelynn Lea @ the DAI

Life would be a whole lot simpler if we didn't have so many choices to make. I'm thinking it has to be a drag sometimes to live in a big city where there is so much happening you don't know how to choose, between this show and that performance and this talk and that art opening. Take a peek at the first few pages of The New Yorker each week and it makes your head spin.

I say all that because as small as the Twin Ports scene seems in comparison, there's still so much happening here once you're aware of it... and it's a challenge to choose between this event and that.

Tonight is one more evening where having a clone of oneself would be helpful. First, there's a Gaelynn Lea performance at the Duluth Art Institute from 6-8 p.m.. It's something akin to a closing reception for Tim White's "In and Out of Context," the summer show in the Steffl Gallery featuring photography by Tim White and excerpts from local poets. The event will not be at the Depot, but rather in the DAI's Lincoln Building at 2229 West 2nd Street. Here's a clue as to what a treat this free concert will be. I dropped by Beaners on the way home one evening and it was packed wall to wall, hardly any breathing room. All the tables had been removed and the ticket price to get in was twenty bucks. I said, "Wow, that's pretty steep for a typical Friday." "No, Gaelynn is performing tonight."

It's been a very special year for Gaelynn Lea, who gained national recognition for her music. Paul Whyte of the Reader assembled this story about her new album The Songs We Sing Along the Way.

Tonight's free performance is featured this a.m. in the DNT's Best Bests section. Tell your friends you're attending by noting this event on Facebook.


ZENITH CITY ON TAP: THE 1915 DULUTH ARMORY, PAST & FUTURE

Last year was a big year for the Duluth Armory. The historic building turned 100 this past year. Tonight from 6:45 till 9:00 p.m. Glensheen Mansion is hosting a TED Talk-style presentation with two speakers who will shine a light on the Duluth Armory, Tony Dierckens and Mark Poirer.

Dierckens is a local author, publisher, entrepreneur and historian who has been our keeper of the flame as regards local Duluth history. His talk regarding the Armory's history will undoubtedly be eye-opening and leave you wanting to hear more. Mark Poirer, executive director for the Armory Arts and Music Center (AAMC) board, will share what has been happening at the Armory these past ten years as well as its plans for future use. Slated for demolition, the building was saved by the AAMC in 2004—but its renovation has been a struggle.

If you decide to go, be sure to enter through the mansion’s front door. There will also be beer and wine available for purchase.

I've written a number of times about the Historic Duluth Armory. Here are a couple posts from recent years:
Items of note regarding the Armory
Making a case for preserving the Armory

Gaelynn Lea has performed during the annual Duluth Dylan Fest fund-raiser concert for the AAMC. Tonights's events are tied together in a sense.

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REMINDER #DQCP

This is week three of Kathy McTavish's Duluth Quantum Computing Project, which can be found at The 3 West Building on Superior Street. This week's theme is intriguingly titled alice in wonderland ::: hypermedia ::: the cross-sensory house of mirrors

Drop in anytime Thursdays 3-9, Fridays 12-6, Saturdays 3-9 during the next 6 weeks.

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For a more complete list of things to see and do, check The Reader, the Transistor and the DNT.... and the bulletin boards around town where all our local arts happenings get promoted, like Beaners, Pizza Luce, the Electric Fetus... and Facebook.

Meantime, life goes on all around you. Just keep breathing and open your eyes.

Michael Fedo Talks About Writing and His Book The Lynchings In Duluth

This year marks the 94th anniversary of that tragedy that ended the lives of Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie, three young African American men who were falsely accused, taken by a mob from the old Duluth jail on East Superior Street, and lynched at the intersection where the CJM Memorial now stands. Monday June 16 will be a special Day of Remembrance. This is the 11th year since the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial’s dedication.

Michael Fedo, cousin of Duluth’s former mayor, is a lifelong writer and the author of 9 books including a short novel. His book The Lynchings In Duluth, has received recognition for its significant contribution to understanding the events of what many consider the Northland’s darkest day. His most recent book Zenith City is getting attention as well for its honesty and his storytelling skills.

EN: What was your career path from youth to career author?

Michael Fedo: I was not an English major, but did minor in it, taking a few writing courses but made only average grades in those classes. I really do blame this on the professors, whose paradigms on good writing, or at least writing for the general population were extremely limited. I wrote a piece about this several years back for the old Loft magazine, but I think it's archived at MinnPost.com under the title "You Were Wrong, Prof. Colllins." Again, I became something of an accidental writer.

EN: What prompted you to take up the story of the lynchings in Duluth?

MF: I never intended to write the lynching story. Back in 1970 or thereabouts, I attempted to write a novel set in post-World War 1 northern Minnesota. I remembered my mother telling me when I was 9 or 10 that some black men had been lynched in Duluth about a mile from where she grew up. I don't recall a context for her telling me this, but I thought I'd include the incident as a chapter in my novel, my main character being a witness to it. To be accurate in my depiction of the lynchings, I sought the book I assumed had been written about it 50 years earlier, but discovered there was no such book. Nor was there much information on the topic in Duluth at all. Collective amnesia was the norm in the city. However, I found court transcripts and newspaper coverage in the State Historical Society archives. After filling a spiral notebook with data over two Saturdays spent in the archives, I abandoned the novel and documented the lynching story instead.

EN: What surprised you most as you wrote this story?

MF: What mostly surprised me about this story was learning that a former employer of mine during my undergraduate days at UMD had been arrested for participating in the crime. Charges were dismissed, but when I called him for an interview he declined and hoped I'd be like most good Duluth citizens, and forget about it. We never communicated again.

EN: What was the hardest part about researching this project?

MF: Researching the subject was difficult only in Duluth, where I was stonewalled, and where files didn't exist. In St. Paul I read papers and court records, and was able to interview folks from Duluth who were knowledgeable because they either knew or were related to people who witnessed the lynchings.

EN: Which do you prefer, fiction or non-fiction and why?

MF: In present day literature I prefer nonfiction because much contemporary so-called mainstream fiction isn't about anything. I can't read a 300 page novel in which we're exposed to what a middle-aged woman (for example) is feeling on a spring day in Albuquerque, or where ever. Back when I was in elementary school and we were made to stand in front of class and give book reports, we had no literary sophistication, so what we told the class was what the story was about--a boy who wanted to become a jockey, and how he loved horses and his struggles in finally winning the blue ribbon at the state fair, or some such. In much contemporary novels, one would be hard pressed to tell anybody what the story was about, or to say something that would elicit interest. This is why the perennially popular novels are genre works--detective, espionage, romance, sci-fi, etc. Genre writers still write stories that are about something beyond thoughts and feelings. Not that I'm a big fan of genre fiction, but stories are inevitable in those formats. T'ain't necessarily so in the mainstream market.

EN: Of your other books do you have a personal favorite?

MF: Until publishing the new book, Zenith City: Stories from Duluth, my favorite of my books was One Shining Season, the story about 11 major league baseball's one-year wonders. Great fun to do; the ballplayers were storytellers and I got to put those stories on the page. My wife's favorite is my short novel, Indians in the Arborvitae, though for her, too, it's now replaced by Zenith City.

EN: Any advice you would give to young people who wish to become writers?

MF: First of all, most of us in this trade can't not write; it's like breathing. I don't know any writers who are not compulsive and disciplined. The old cliche says that everyone has a book deep within. This is probably true, and some people do record and publish memoirs or their account of a famous war battle, but they aren't in for the long haul. The most important thing for aspiring writers is to be a reader, and more than that, read everything, including what you think is beneath you. Read it all. You'll develop not only taste, but discernment so you can self-edit. Next to reading, write. Write daily if possible. Set word or page limits and try to adhere to that. I have taught writing at the Loft and at workshops and have encountered students whose talents exceeded my own. Few of them ever published though, because they either didn't need to, or felt the process required too much effort. I publish because I'm serious about the work and stay with it.

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Final resting place for Elias Clayton, Elmer Jackson and Isaac McGhie

One Hundred Years Ago Today in the Zenith City

Behind the Oldenburg House in Carlton

"Historical knowledge is no more and no less than carefully and critically constructed collective memory." ~American Historical Association

One reason I can't totally disparage television is because The History Channel is there, single-handedly redeeming the medium. History is something that seems to fascinate everyone in one way or another. Learning about history somehow gives meaning to our lives as we see our connectedness to everything that went before. I myself have derived much inspiration from my own history, having dug back into my genealogical roots two to three centuries and more.

Going back in time to see how life was lived in other periods gives us a great appreciation for the advances of technology and innovation that have made our lives easier in many levels. We no longer fear polio, scarlet fever and many other maladies that once tore our families' hearts. Plumbing, heating and reliable electricity are things most Americans take for granted, but this has not always been the case.

Every discipline has its history, often bleeding across into other disciplines. The history of philosophy, the history of art, the history of literature, of cities, of countries, of cultures, of psychology, of religion, of ethics and morals, of law, of entertainment... and of man's inhumanity to man. It's all been documented, can be explored and examined.

Since people for much of history were illiterate, the books and stories about the past have often been written from the point of view of the wealthy and important. In more recent times the stories of common people have been getting additional attention as efforts to unearth the extra-ordinariness of the ordinary. A visit to Ellis Island is a moving experience because of the incredibly diverse stories of immigrant peoples who arrived on our shores, stories which have been preserved for us there.

The Kitchi Gammi Club is a story.

Every city has a story as well. And just as there seems to be one or two people in most families who has dug in to preserve the family traditions, we find that the hard work of a few helps to bring benefit to the many, which seems to be one of the functions of museums and historical societies everywhere, our Northland being no exception.

Yesterday I came across a story about the opening in Morgan Park of a new blast furnace that was opened one hundred years ago in Morgan Park, a community in the western part of Duluth. This simple story ties to so much other history here, the expansion of the Iron Range, the manner in which the Twin Ports became the largest inland port in the world, how the steel mills provided jobs and the city grew to over 126,000 people during the boom that followed.

One hundred years ago today, prohibitionist William E. "Pussyfoot" Johnson arrived in the Northland to help clean up some of the saloons in Chisholm and Hibbing. I know this because I am reading it on Tony Dierckens' Remembering Our (Duluth) History website at Zenith City Online. It's both an entertaining and informative resource. Even though we have a relatively brief time frame (two hundred years ago there were only the local native cultures and a few fur trappers) the region is rich with tales and lore.

It's interesting to think about how everything that is was at one time not. That is, everything has a starting point before which it did not exist, including human history, and our personal histories, and the communities we live in.

Make the most of your day. Maybe one hundred years from now someone will read about it on the next iteration of the Internet. On Mars.

There is always more to discover, tho' not everything has been preserved.

Spotlight on Author/Publisher Tony Dierckins

I'm not sure of when I'd first become aware of Tony Dierckins. I'd heard of his first best seller The Duct Tape Book through the media years ago, but the names of the authors didn't register at the time. But this past year his name came up on more than one occasion as a local publisher who made good and lived here in the Northland. While doing Christmas shopping I noticed his book Lost Duluth prominently displayed on an endcap and made up my mind to see if I could reach him for an interview. He's a man with ample advice who understands what's involved in today's publishing world. My only regret is that I didn't snap his picture when we met.

EN: How did you first get into publishing?

Tony D: I went to work for a small publisher located in the western suburbs of Minneapolis in 1988, right after finishing undergraduate school. The owner was a petty, abusive little man. When I started publishing books, he was my role model for how not to run a publishing house.

EN: Tell me the story again of how Who Packed Your Parachute? came to be?

TD: Long before that became a book, co-author Danny Naslund and I attended graduate school together. He has a very absurdist sense of humor. We had a running gag going about “working on our résumés.” You know, “I’m working on my résumé—are you supposed to capitalize ‘larceny’?” Stuff like that. Later, when Tim Nyberg and I started Bad Dog Press, which often parodied self-help books, I realized Danny and I had in our heads a rough draft for a parody of What Color is Your Parachute?

EN: Were you surprised when your Duct Tape book achieved national acclaim? What were the keys that made this book a stand-out? Have any of your other humor books reached this kind stature?

House ad from ZenithCity.com

TD: Well, Tim Nyberg (co-creator) and I both believed that the basic joke—you know, essentially “instead of doing it right, do it with duct tape—was already an inside joke to most Americans, so the success of that book we half expected. We did not expect that we would end up putting out a half dozen books and about ten years of Page-A-Day calendars. I basically ended up writing the same joke about 2,000 times. The key to that book, I think, is the “one-joke-per-page” format along with the simple fact that it was the ideal gift book for a man of just about any age. As far as “stature,” the Duct Tape projects very much eclipsed our other humor efforts. And remember, that was the 1990s, when the internet was in its infancy. A lot of the stuff we put between pages then would end up as a website today. There aren’t many humor books similar to those we did 15 years ago being published today.

EN: You stated that a lot of writers (and wanna-be writers) have unrealistic expectations when they come to you for advice. Where do these ideas come from and what are the biggest misconceptions they have?

TD: The basic misconception is this: all you have to do is publish a book and it will magically sell millions of copies and allow you to quit your job and write full time—that is, if you have time to write with your new glamourous lifestyle and celebrity friends. A lot of it comes from the media. People read, for example, that a former president got a $20 million advance for a book deal and assume that all book deals come with a huge cash advance. They don’t understand it’s all about marketing and publicity and distribution—no matter how good a book is, it won’t sell if no one knows it exists. I have actually had potential self-publishing clients ask me what color clothes they should wear on “Oprah” and when they should “expect” to see their book on the New York Times’ bestseller list. No one seems to understand that writing is just plain hard work, and publishing a profitable book in this day and age is even harder.

EN: You also write serious books about regional history. When did local history become a passion for you? Who or what were your chief influences?

TD: I was pretty tired of the humor thing by the late 90s. When I left a teaching job at the University of Minnesota Duluth in 2001, I dusted off an idea for a regional guidebook focused on all things locally owned or free. It was called True North and I added some things I had discovered about Duluth that I thought reflected the idea of “true north.” Some of those tidbits were history related, like the fact that the lift bridge didn’t lift at all for the first 25 years it existed, and that sparked an interest. Soon after that, I stumbled across the lithographic postcard collection of Duluthian Jerry Paulson, which gave me the idea for Zenith: A Postcard Perspective of Historic Duluth—a full color history book. I had help researching by Maryanne Norton, whose own passion for Duluth’s history was contagious. The research for that project pulled me deeper into Duluth history, and I found myself endlessly fascinated by the stories—and felt compelled to share them with others. Today, besides helping others self publish, my work life is pretty much consumed by this region’s history, and I’m never bored by it.

EN: Do you still collaborate with Tim Nyberg? What are the benefits of collaboration?

TD: No, Tim and I dissolved our partnership in the late 1990s—but it was a very friendly split and we remain in contact. He still does the Duct Tape thing (Tim and his brother-in-law Jim Berg are “Jim & Tim, the Duct Tape Guys”), but has many other interests and is a fine visual artist—who has a hard time keeping his sense of humor out of his art! I find collaborating difficult, likely because I am a writer first, and to me that’s very much a solo endeavor (and why I stopped writing plays.) It was much easier with the humor books, because those were made up of brief bits that had their own “schtick” to follow. So that was fun, and it wasn’t just working with Tim but also with Danny Naslund and Scott Pearson (Rubber Chickens for the Soul). But Danny’s real love is teaching and songwriting and Scott is a fantastic science fiction writer and copy editor. Humor was not something we aspired to professionally, so working on those books with friends that shared a sense of humor was very fun.

EN: Where can readers find out more about your books and follow what you are up to?

TD: At Zenith City Online [http://www.zenithcity.com]. Zenith City is an online publication celebrating historic Duluth, Western Lake Superior, and Minnesota’s Arrowhead. We publish about 10-15 stories a month, plus each day I write a “This Day in Duluth History” piece. The site includes a fully researchable history archive with ten categories and approaching 1,000 topics and histry-related resources for readers. There you will also find Zenith City Press, which publishes regional books with a historic emphasis written by myself and others. Our latest book, Lost Duluth, was written by myself and Maryanne Norton and released this past May; in the spring of 2013 we will release Tall Ships in the Zenith City.