Just A Peck 0054 // Smoke, Celluloid, Shakespeare
JOURNAL
Kaylee and I went to Legally Blonde at the Playhouse last Sunday and then attended the Director's Circle discussion afterwards. We had fun and our friends in the show crushed it.
The smoke from raging fires in northern Minnesota and Canada has made Duluth dangerously smoky this week. On a scale of 0–500 (where 300–500 is considered a hazardous emergency), we hit 750 on Wednesday then 1100 on Thursday! Literally off the charts. We had to mask when stepping outside even for a few minutes.
On Thursday, our local independent cinema had the first screening on their newly restored 35mm projector! Because of the ability to project on film, the Zinema was allowed to show The Odyssey one night before everyone else. I attended with my friend Jason (and a sold-out crowd). We got a commemorative strip of 35mm film and snuck into the projection booth after the movie to peek at the platters.
On Friday, Jody and I made our annual trip to Winona to attend the Great River Shakespeare Festival, and this year we took our friends, Tom and Brandy. This is GRSF's first year at their new home: The ARC (a Masonic temple converted by the City of Winona into an arts center). We saw Pericles and Midsummer, and the Midsummer production made excellent use of some of the theater's stunning, 100-plus-year-old, hand-painted backdrops. We also played some games (including Grachtenpand—a new one that Brandy and Tom picked up in the Netherlands), visited the Marine Art Museum, strolled along the river, and walked to some shops and restaurants downtown. The weather was almost as perfect as the company.
WHAT I WATCHED THIS WEEK
WHAT I READ THIS WEEK
In Progress:
- How Plays Work, Edgar
- Gödel, Escher, Bach, Hofstadter
- Hollywood: The Oral History, Basinger, Wasson
- Gilead, Robinson
BOOKS I PURCHASED
- Some RPG source books and modules for Mothership, Alice is Missing, Pigeons Eleven, Rebel Scum, and Paranoia
- Motorman, Ohle
- Visionary in Residence, Sterling
- Interior Chinatown, Yu
MEMORIES
Five Years Ago:We were on the first of our annual pilgrimages to American Players Theatre. Many of us had been going individually for years, but starting after the pandemic we decided to make it an annual group trip. The number of participants has grown significantly since then, and not everyone can attend every season, but the trip is still a cornerstone of our summer schedule and one of my favorite things every single year.
Ten Years Ago:
The kids were all home for a visit and we spent part of a long weekend exploring the North Shore. That was the trip where we saw this astonishingly vibrant rainbow.
Fifteen Years Ago:
The Peck Fam took a road trip to DC and NYC. We saw lots of monuments and museums, a Broadway show, and the Statue of Liberty where we snapped a photo of a park ranger with a memorable mustache and made him part of our Christmas cards for years to come. We have some family quotes from this trip that still get referenced today.
QUICK LINKS
- An incredible digital edition of William Jardine's 40-volume series on natural history, including more than 1,300 restored hand-drawn illustrations of birds, mammals, insects, and fish.
- The Blues Brothers, live at Winterland (1978)
- The best of the 2026 Aerial Photographer of the Year
- An XKCD tour of Earth's deepest holes
- Make collages from the Internet Archive's magazines
- An incomplete list of people reading The Catcher in the Rye in movies
- Shortverse: the universe of short film
- A beautiful hand-drawn guide to The Legend of Zelda
- Jurassic Park's computers in excruciating detail
- A chronological list of cyberpunk comics, manga, and graphic novels.
- Dito! wins the 2026 Spiel des Jahres
- A collection of digital clock designs
- This kid
WHAT I'M EXCITED ABOUT
This week I start a six-week online playwriting class with Amy Berryman! I'm very excited.
On Thursday, Jody and I will head out for another Shakespeare festival. This time to Oregon—our first time at OSF. Bonus: we'll get to see Kelsey for a bit while we're out there too! (She's attending grad school at Southern Oregon University.)
I backed this fantastical, ornate "GM-full" TTRPG called Seven-Part Pact. Now I just need to find six or seven hardcore RPG players to commit to a long weekend this winter so they can play it with me…
MY FAVORITE QUOTE OF THE WEEK
"What an oddly disjointed attitude to history we have, how we slice it up and put into separate boxes and seal it carefully away from all the other bits! The past is not another country, the past happened right here, and kept on happening, and segues into the present. Greek history did not stop with Alexander the Great but is still going on. Periods and centuries and borders are entirely artificial. And people in history did not know what was going to happen next, any more than we do."
— Jo Walton
That's it for this week. Stay safe, friends. Thanks for reading!