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The year Santa came early on the Iron Range
Every Christmas I’ve known occurred in the same place, in pretty much the same way. We spend Christmas Eve south of Eveleth with the Browns. Christmas is in Keewatin with the Johnsons. It’s been this way since before I can remember, all through childhood and long after I left home and got married. When my…
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Golden opportunity for broadband on the Iron Range
Many people reading this have access to reliable high-speed internet access for less than $60 a month. You use this bountiful bandwidth to work from home, communicate with family, attend college, or help kids with homework. But for people who live in rural townships throughout the Iron Range this service isn’t available. They pay twice…
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A nod to Iron Range roots on every Greyhound Bus
A century ago, a pair of iron miners in Hibbing, Minnesota, began charging 15 cents for a ride on a seven-passenger Hupmobile from Hibbing to Alice Location. Alice, then a bedroom community for miners and their families, would later become the new townsite when Hibbing was moved to access the ore beneath the ground. From this inauspicious beginning, a…
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Iron Range Makerspace: Making something new
In 2014, engineering student Andrew Hanegmon of Hibbing was walking through downtown Pittsburgh when something in a window caught his eye. It was a person working with a laser engraver. He went into the building to find an active maker space, a sensory smorgasbord of computers, electronic equipment, lathes, saws, 3-D printers and more. “I…
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Rich history, stark present, unknown future for iron and steel
From the beginning, humans forged a special relationship with iron. Ancient people knew the mineral before they had the ability to mine it, discovering slabs of pure iron that fell from the sky in meteorites. The Sumerians and Egyptians called it “heaven stone,” according to Brooke C. Stoddard’s in his new book “Steel.” The strength…
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Home for the holidays, as if we ever left
It’s fitting to talk about family reunions this time of year. Everyone’s coming home. First comes Thanksgiving. Then Hanukkah. Christmas. New Years. Car doors slam. Snow crunches on familiar sidewalks. Huggers hug, smokers smoke, the rest waive awkwardly before reaching for snacks. These early winter holidays center around families coming together to celebrate what matters…
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Stop it. Dot com. Dot … html.
Remember that cantankerous “60 Minutes” commentator Andy Rooney? Or the old Chicago metro columnist Mike Royko? Even the Duluth News Tribune had Jim Heffernan. They each had an opinion about everything. As a young writer I admired them more than would be considered normal. I remember one of them, Heffernan I think, wrote something about…
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Ya, I guess I do have an accent then
Folks, it’s been brought to my attention that I have a Minnesota accent. It’s true. I didn’t believe it either. But last month I toured with a Swedish journalist researching mining in Northern Minnesota. In English better than most of my relatives, he concluded by saying he just had to ask me about my accent.…
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Range native holds high hopes for ‘Cold November’
This week, hunters across Northern Minnesota will check sights, erect stands and procure truckloads of cheese curds and jerky before opening the rifle deer season next Saturday. Most hope for that perfect shot, the big trophy and a freezer full of venison, but that’s often not the most important detail. For some, it’s the first…
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Book serves Range food favorites to new generation
Every member of the Cherry High School band knew from Day 1 there would come a time where we would spend the entire night in the school cafeteria making pasties for the big annual fundraiser. It was as sure as the sunset or a freshman missing the high notes. When pasty night came, every kid…
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Range War: Essar, Cliffs clash shows Mesabi at crossroads
~ ~ ~ Speculation can be ignored, but one must reckon with concrete. Here along Northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range one finds many messy versions of the truth surrounding Essar Minnesota’s new taconite mine under construction near Nashwauk. While controversial, actual activity at Essar shows that new mining will happen on the grounds of the…
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Veda Ponikvar: America’s Iron Lady
Veda Ponikvar, founder and publisher of two Chisholm newspapers, esteemed American civilian military leader, and arguably the most powerful person in Iron Range politics of the latter 20th Century, died Tuesday in Chisholm at the age of 96. One could remark that Ponikvar was the most consequential women in the male-dominated industrial history of the Iron Range.…
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Thinkers, tinkers and 3-D printers
Growing up, my dad was a leather whip of a man who chain-smoked Winston cigarettes and spent nearly all his free time tinkering with an invention in his garage. When they first taught us how to use this new thing called “the internet” at my high school, my inaugural search was about patent law, seeking…
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Broadband issue fills rural halls, demands action in 2016
My neighbor John Kannas set up extra folding chairs in the Balsam Township Hall but even those wouldn’t be enough. Last month, John told me that Paul Bunyan Communication was preparing to apply for a grant to expand fiber optic internet lines in parts of Balsam, Lawrence and Wabana, a block of rural townships in…
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Twilight for the unlovable chair
NOTE: Today’s column is a condensed version of a monologue I did in the Sept. 19, 2015 Great Northern Radio Show which re-airs today at 11 a.m. on Northern Community Radio and will be made available as a podcast in coming days. *** My wife and I have a term for the decorating style of our…