Just A Peck 0046 // Smelt, Stairs, Saws
Welcome to the latest issue of Just A Peck. I’m glad you’re here!
JOURNAL
Last Sunday was the annual Smelt Parade! We got all decked out in silver and joined some friends, giant puppets, a brass band, and stilt walkers to do a second-line parade down the Lakewalk. It’s one of our favorite, “Duluthiest” Duluth things, but this year it was a little rushed because there was a howling wind off the lake and we were getting hit by freezing spray off the whitecaps rolling in. Still awesome.
We got a surprise visit from our friend Tim, who was in town visiting his dad who is here for treatment. I’ve known Tim longer than almost anyone in the world, and even though we don’t see each other as often as we’d like anymore, we can still pick up our conversation like we’d just seen each other the day before.
I started replacing our rotten stairs this week. It turned out that not only is the wood rotten, the screws are all stripped, so it’s going way slower than I intended as I painfully extract each tread. (I could just rip them out, I suppose, but I’m trying not to damage the stringers too much, since I’d prefer to not replace everything.)
Now that I have lights and power in the garage, the next step in my Workshop build out is a miter saw! Hooray! (I used it this week to cut the new stair treads, and it’s lovely.) I also purchased my first pair of Crocs ever. I’ve been resisting them forever, but this seemed like a perfect solution for a slip-on pair of workshop shoes.
We spent a good chunk of Saturday with our friends Tom and Brandy playing board games. We played Elizabeth Hargrave’s lovely new game about collecting shells (Sanibel) and Cursed Court — two new games in our collection that we’re really enjoying.
Then we went to see a collaboration between Borealis Chamber Artists and local choreographer Kayla Schiltgen as they performed Sarah Kirkland Snider’s Mass for the Endangered at Mitchell Auditorium.
WHAT I WATCHED THIS WEEK
WHAT I READ THIS WEEK
Finished:
In Progress:
- Babel, Kuang
- Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hofstadter
- Hollywood: The Oral History, Basinger, Wasson
MEMORIES
Ten Years Ago:
Jody and I attended our first live Take It With You recording. We’ve been to many, many TIWY recordings since then, and we now consider many of these people our friends. How lovely to have the artists that you love also be your friends and neighbors.
QUICK LINKS
- A replica of the stellar navigation chart from Project Hail Mary
- Classic DOS games playable in your browser
- Still Night: a playable Van Gogh Starry Night
- This cat watching a murmuration
- Animate vs. inanimate nouns in Ojibwe
- A Blackout Poetry Maker
- The fake courtesy machine
- Statistical analysis of clichés
- What is the difference between compunctions and qualms?
- Typesetting races before the Linotype
- The Virtual OS Museum
WHAT I'M EXCITED ABOUT
Wow! American Players Theatre won the 2026 Regional Theatre Tony Award! So well deserved. Honestly, some of the best theater being produced anywhere. If you ever want to hear me evangelize for something at length, ask me about APT — the closest thing I have to a holy place.
The Duluth Playhouse’s Comedy of Errors opens this week, and the teaser looks fantastic. I can’t wait!
I got my pre-order for Ray Nayler’s new novel, Palaces of the Crow. Perfect timing since I just finished his previous novel.
I was thinking about Captain Carrot and his Amazing Zoo Crew this week and mourning the loss of my issues from the early 80s. Then I started wondering if they had ever been collected. Guess what? They have! I picked up this used collection on AbeBooks and was delighted by its condition. Huge nostalgia blast for me here.
MY FAVORITE QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"The book was in her lap; she had read no further. The power to change one's life comes from a paragraph, a lone remark. The lines that penetrate us are slender, like the flukes that live in river water and enter the bodies of swimmers. She was excited, filled with strength. The polished sentences had arrived, it seemed, like so many other things, at just the right time. How can we imagine what our lives should be without the illumination of the lives of others?"
— James Salter
That’s it for this week. Stay safe, friends. Thanks for reading!