Star Tribune
Iron Range’s mini Carnegie Hall hosts its last concert
DULUTH — When Goodman Auditorium opened at Virginia High School — decades before it was named for the school doctor and his arts aficionado wife — the 1,500-seat performance venue was celebrated for its genuine Hartford Saxony carpeting, the chandeliers with easy-to-replace bulbs, and its 50,000 cubic feet of fresh air.
“The decoration was done by artists in Chicago,” reads a program from the first concert held there in May 1920. “The colors are not gaudy but harmonious and in good taste.”
The venue that has been likened to a mini Carnegie Hall hosts its final concert “A Farewell to Goodman Auditorium” at 7 p.m. Saturday in Virginia, Minn. The performance will feature community vocal groups, alumni and student musicians and the world premiere of René Clausen’s four-movement symphony “Mesabi: The Sleeping Giant,” inspired by Iron Range history — from glaciers to immigration to mining.
Bassoon player Mary Peterson, who has played with the Mesabi Symphony Orchestra since it started in the 1970s — aside from a 5-year hiatus when she had a young child — can vouch for the power of the new piece based on rehearsals.
“The music moved me to tears,” she said.
Beyond Sheila Wilcox’s work as the district’s orchestra director, the space holds personal memories. Her sons are among the many musical theater students who have signed a wall backstage after a performance. But after 100 years, the sound is unpredictable, the lights don’t always work, there are obstructed sight lines and plumbing issues, she said.
“It will be closure for our community,” Wilcox said of the final performance. “We’re looking forward to the future.”
The future is Rock Ridge, a school district that merges students from Eveleth-Gilbert and Virginia into two new elementary schools, one that is active and another that will open in 2024. The students shift to the new high school at the start of the 2023-24 school year. Its new auditorium has features that surpass the aged Goodman. An acoustician was hired to consult on the project, Wilcox said.
Goodman Auditorium has been a home venue for countless student productions, the Mesabi Symphony Orchestra, Arrowhead Concert Association and more. World renowned American pianist Van Cliburn, violinist Isaac Stern, long-running Western singers Sons of Pioneers, the real von Trapp children, and bass-baritone Spiro Malas are among the acts that have performed on its stage.
The old high school, including Goodman Auditorium, are scheduled to be razed later this year. If Virginia High School alum Mark Eskola has his way, at least some of it will live on. The retired orchestra director, who worked briefly at his alma mater and finished his career at Duluth East, is part of a rehabilitation project at the Alhambra Theater, an old West Duluth vaudeville stage.
While playing cello at Goodman Auditorium recently, Eskola noticed the fruit and vine plaster around the proscenium stage. He’s hoping to include that in his construction project and has emailed the school district’s superintendent.
“I think it’s fun to keep the legacy of the Goodman Auditorium,” he said.
Twin Amur tigers born at Como Zoo in August now have names — Marisa and Maks.
Two long-time volunteers who have worked with zookeepers to care for and teach the public about the zoo’s big cats came up with the names, the first to be born at the St. Paul zoo in more than 40 years.
Marisa, a name that the volunteers found to mean “spirited and tenacious,” call that a perfect reflection of her personality. The name also carries special significance for the Como Zoo community, as it honors a retired zookeeper of the same name who was instrumental in the care of large cats during her 43 years at the zoo, Como Zoo and Conservatory Director Michelle Furrer said.
The male cub has been named Maks, which is associated with meanings like “the greatest” or “strength and leadership.” The volunteers felt this was an apt description of the male cub’s confident demeanor and growing sense of leadership, Furrer said.
“Marisa and Maks aren’t just names; they’re a fun reminder of the passion and care that keep us committed to protecting wildlife every day,” Furrer said.
The newborns and their first-time mother, 7-year-old Bernadette, remain off view to allow for more bonding time, zoo officials said. The cubs’ father, 11-year-old Tsar, has been a Como resident since February 2019 and remains on view.
Fewer than 500 Amur tigers — also known as Siberian tigers — remain in the wild as they face critical threats from habitat loss, poaching and human-wildlife conflict, the zoo said.
Much of the wood waste in the metro area is sent to a processing site near Pig’s Eye Lake in St. Paul, where it is stored before being burned to produce energy at the St. Paul Cogeneration plant downtown.
Cogeneration provides power to about half of downtown and was originally built to manage elm-tree waste in response to Dutch elm disease. The plant burns approximately 240,000 tons of wood each year, according to Michael Auger, senior vice president of District Energy in St. Paul.
Jim Calkins, a certified landscape horticulturalist who has been involved in discussions about the problem, said he thinks using wood for energy is the most logical solution.
“The issue is, we don’t have enough facilities to be able to handle that, at least in the Twin Cities,” Calkins said. “So there has to be dollars to support transportation to get the wood to those places, or in some cases, to upgrade some of those facilities such that they are able to burn wood.”
Plans are in place to convert Koda Energy in Shakopee to burn ash wood, which could potentially handle around 40,000 tons of wood waste, but that would take around two years to establish, according to Klapperich.
In some areas of the state, cities have resorted to burning excess wood waste because they felt they had no other option. Open burning wood releases a lot of carbon into the air, Klapperich said.
Weary from the rat race nature of practicing commercial law, Danielle Miller had long dreamed of starting a new professional life as a bookstore owner. When the Lincoln, Neb., resident saw a space at St. Paul’s Union Depot, she moved to make her dream a reality. She and her husband now call the Macalester-Groveland neighborhood home.
Eye On St. Paul recently visited with Miller in her sun-drenched store, Story Line Books, to talk about what spurred her to leave the law behind and lose herself in shelves of books. This interview was edited for length.
Q: So, you’ve opened a bookstore, in Lowertown. Are you a little crazy?
A: That’s been the reaction. There’s been a lot of “Really? Lowertown?” There’s been a lot of that. It’s a little unnerving.
Q: Why decide to just up and move to St. Paul?
A: We travel a lot; we travel all over the world. And we go to bookstores. We were here visiting [my husband’s] parents in Woodbury, and we drove down Randolph because we like to eat at Due Focacceria. And we saw this building that had “For Sale” on it. It was a 900-square-foot retail spot on the bottom and an apartment above. And I was like, that is the European bookstore dream, right? I looked it up online, but it got scooped up. A week later, I was looking again and this [Union Depot space] was the first post.
I was immediately in love. The next time we were up here, we made arrangements to come and see it. And I told my husband, “You should probably get a job in St Paul.”
Q: Back up a few steps. Why this compulsion to open a bookstore when you were a working attorney?
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