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Celebrating my Kirby Puckett birthday
It was my birthday this weekend. Nothing special. Let’s not get all worked up about it. My new age doesn’t end in a zero or a five. The year is indistinct: one of those years after I’m young, before I’m old, while I’m still alive. At least, that’s what I’d say if I weren’t raised…
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Failure is the theme in top words of 2013
Language tells all there is to know about people. Death of a language is the death of a culture. Complex languages denote complex people. Languages change, so do we. If this is to be believed, our times shall be designated as the error message one gets when clicking on something that isn’t really there. To…
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In anticipation of life’s improbable joys
The news wiled around the internet like whispers in the night. Did you hear about the comet? The brightest comet EVER? The one that will shine 15 times more brilliantly than the moon? It was called Comet ISON and, like most comets, it had been around a lot longer than the likes of us. Comets…
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Goodnight Loon: Minnesota twist on kids’ classic
“Goodnight loon … Goodnight ox jumping over the loon … Goodnight lamp and the hungry raccoon … Goodnight walleyes, goodnight pies …” So go the words of a new Minnesota children’s book, “Goodnight Loon,” that is one part satire, one part Minnesota whimsy, and yet still endearing for the ears of kids who still grow…
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Yule never believe these holiday creeps
It doesn’t surprise me that my children start talking about Christmas three months early. Kids don’t have any money (thanks a lot, child labor laws), so one understands why the arrival of Santa Claus would seem to them like Cold War air drops of life-sustaining supplies over the Berlin Wall. That is, of course, assuming…
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When it comes to recycling, yes we ‘can’
I’ve always had an intimate relationship with scrap metal, having been raised on a salvage yard out in Zim, a swampy lowland scrub-brush township just off northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range. My family indexed junk into piles of refuse so large as to function as my childhood landscape. Some people remember seeing the mountains as…
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The Iron Ranger who would not hunt
In honor of the 2013 Minnesota deer hunting season opener (rifles, of course), happy hunting to all those participating. I dedicate this column to all the non-hunters struggling with day-to-day conversation this time of year. I live in northern Minnesota. I’ve lived here all my life. I don’t hunt. Yes, I eat meat. And the…
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A new world behind the trees
On a cold November morning, trucks rattle along an old dirt road behind a stand of timber across from our home in the woods of Itasca County. The chains rattle against the trailers in the crisp, clear air. Sound carries. Two miles, maybe three? This land has been logged several times over in the past…
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Earth’s surly bonds stretch thin
Northern Minnesota’s iron ranges hold special distinction in American history, but for reasons more than ore. I was down in Crosby preparing for a show last week. There I learned America’s Space Race, the technological marathon that spurred developments like computers and the Internet, got its unassuming start in a Cuyuna Range mine pit The…
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Now entering the Minnesota century
Minnesotans experience spring, summer, autumn and, of course, winter the way God intended: entirely, each season accompanied by a unique wardrobe and emotional self-defense strategy. In the dead of another frigid winter or the mires of an ambiguous spring it can be hard to argue for the virtues of this cycle. Further, Minnesota’s place in…
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Federal government shutdown bears down
As the federal government shutdown wore on this past week the effects were felt everywhere. Nowhere was this more true than in our national parks, where the shutdown turned away visitors and left the animals therein to fend for themselves. This is their story. FOX ANNOUNCER: Thank you for watching ACTUAL FOX News continuing coverage…
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The art of building an Iron Range economy
One finds resistance discussing the diversification of northern Minnesota’s economy into areas outside natural resources. Convincing local leaders that real economic growth can come from abstract concepts like art and design is often as difficult as extracting 100 long tons of iron ore from the earth. I mean, you can’t even use dynamite, which would…
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Fall: Love it or leaf it
High up an old oak tree on a rolling hill just outside Hibbing, Minnesota, two talking leaves dangle by hardening stems. Fall has arrived. LEAFY: Lefty, you ever get the sense that things are changing? LEFTY: Everythin’ changes, Leafy. No point worryin.’ LEAFY: But, I mean, *really* changing. I don’t know how to tell…
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Comfort food for the dieter’s soul
My name is Aaron and it has been four months since my last Holiday gas station cookie. This, of course, refers to the third cookie I ate that night, because they cost less if you buy three, and why wouldn’t you want to eat three? They are the greatest cookies ever made. Sure, your mom’s…
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No hope on the Iron Range, but for hope we create
To drive the Iron Range spine of Highway 169 is to see a sleeping giant not unlike the region’s namesake, Missabe — the Dakota and Ojibwe “big man” resting on the divide between all that is north and south. Missabe’s body is not like that of a man. Its fluids are water. Its bones are timbers.…