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Modern Times: still moving for mines, destination uncertain
The ethos of Minnesota’s Iron Range is change even if its peoples’ reputation is one of stubbornness. The ups and downs of the mining industry and cultural melding trained a whole region to eye warily that which rolls around the bend, even though we know that water, minerals and even mountains can be moved, whether…
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Eat, love, spray? Summer of the Skeeter
We all know that northern Minnesota’s summer was a little late this year. If you don’t recall the wailing and gnashing of teeth over that miserable second winter masquerading as spring, you’d only be blocking an important emotional crossroads we all faced together. As far as I’m concerned, no matter how hot this summer gets…
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Bringing aria to area: Northern Lights fest illuminates Range
Iron Range residents are often presented a simplified interpretation of the past: many of our ancestors came from overseas to mine the ore that built a nation. What is often missed in this description is why. Save for a handful of Cornish mining jacks, these men didn’t come here because they liked to mine heavy…
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Why the turtle crossed the road
In “The Grapes of Wrath,” John Steinbeck dedicates an entire chapter to an old turtle crossing the road. Though the passage confuses the heck out of high school students, (pro tip) the turtle chapter pretty much summarizes the entire book through symbolism. Some years back my family and I settled in the woods of Itasca…
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Finding Minnesota in ‘Fargo’
When Joel and Ethan Coen’s film “Fargo” came out in 1996 I used my brand-new drivers license to trek from the Iron Range to Duluth to see opening night. Everyone was hopped up over the fact that a pretty big movie was set right here in northern Minnesota. But the excitement quickly turned. “Aw, jeez.…
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No time for desperation on the Iron Range
It was my freshman year of high school and I was running for re-election as class president. As a power-hungry nerd, you can imagine the stakes. I had come to school that day prepared to fend off challenges. I was ready for everything, except one thing: fate. As a joke, my friends decided to nominate…
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To the Nether and back
Summer vacation is well underway, and not more than a few days into the annual ritual the boys had trod well-worn digital paths across the pretend universe of the video game Minecraft. They are obsessed with finding virtual ore to make tools, houses and various contraptions. Though the geology of Minecraft is a bit suspect…
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‘Sometimes a Great Notion’
Come look: Where the big pile of uncracked books rises up against the ocean of my bed, see the wide river of reading failure flow down to the ocean, ebbing back up with the tide of unfinished scripts and banal blog posts. But I did finish reading one book, one big, rickety book that came…
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‘A hundred years went by’
Last week the leaves popped and it became summer on the Iron Range. Once again we fly the colors of our flag — birch green, sky blue and iron ore red. Our haunted northern Minnesota spring, which revealed all that the snow had covered, dissolves into a comfortable summer — the woods obscured by woods,…
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Oh ya, Yooper is a word now
Last Monday, the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary officially enshrined the word “Yooper” in its lexicon. The charming regional entry came with the dictionary’s annual introduction of new words that also included fracking, catfishing and poutine. If you don’t know what a Yooper is, here is the official Merriam-Webster definition: Yoop·er noun \ˈyu̇-ər\ : a native or…
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Times a’ Changin’ in Bob Dylan’s hometown
When Robert Zimmerman left Hibbing in 1959, it’s unlikely he or his hometown would predict these facts: That a “space theatre” named for a prominent local grocer would be constructed a few blocks from the Zimmerman home … because, you know, men walked on the moon; That the Zimmerman home would one day be on…
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Jim Oberstar: a memory held up by union steel
My Sunday newspaper column for May 11, 2014 was excerpted from the post I wrote after the passing of Jim Oberstar on Saturday, May 3. I am republishing that post today. Early Saturday morning former Congressman Jim Oberstar died peacefully in his sleep at his Maryland home at the age of 79. The news of…
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The forest for the trees
“If trees could scream, would we be so cavalier about cutting them down? We might, if they screamed all the time, for no good reason.” ~ Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts (Saturday Night Live) Never mind the TV or the Internet. Trees report the real news in northern Minnesota. Is the maple sap running? Are the…
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Antlers for fighting; ain’t easy being a baby bird
I live in a forest. Growing up just outside the red-stained cities of the Iron Range I never considered that I’d one day live even further away from stoplights and pizza delivery than I already did. But here I am in the woods of Itasca County. The deer stroll by out front, more like neighbors…
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The Easter Bunny’s Terrible Mistake
Morning light washes over a pastoral meadow view, bespeckled with budding flowers and flickering sun-touched dew drops. A small grey rabbit tentatively hops into view, sniffing her way toward a long, narrow clearing. She labors to lift a ball peen hammer over her tiny, furry head to pound two heavy iron stakes into the soft,…