I spent most of the summer of 1996 nocturnal. Even though I couldn’t tell you much about those days, the nights seemed hotter and more humid than average. This was Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range, a place where winter cold gets more press than the deceptive heat of summer. I was 16. It was my first summer with a driver’s license,… Read More →
The Iron Range soda boss who beat Coke
June 7, 2016 by Leave a Comment
A few years back I traveled to Atlanta as the arm candy of my wife, who was attending a conference there. I spent time as a tourist in a town seemingly run by the Coca-Cola company. Coke was all you could drink. All pop (yes, pop; I’m from Minnesota) was called Coke, even if it wasn’t… Read More →
Junkyard Politics in Northern Minnesota
May 19, 2016 by 7 Comments
Another election year has arrived in Northern Minnesota, though this is hardly news. In our country it’s difficult to tell when there isn’t an election. American society has built up a politics tolerance that would require a rigorous treatment program if it were, say, whiskey. Thus my approach to the 2016 election, so far, has… Read More →
On Letters of Hope
May 1, 2016 by 1 Comment
“Plant a nut, get a nut,” someone once told me about my son Doug’s antics. Approaching 9 years old, he has somehow outpaced my childhood obsession with historical trivia and the macabre. Last year, he wandered down to my home office and extracted a ten-pound American history textbook left over from my college days. “Can… Read More →
Mud for our modern world
April 24, 2016 by 1 Comment
Thus ends the afternoon meeting. You can hear him now, the co-worker who’d rather be fishing. He slaps open the conference room door as though exiting an outhouse. Then comes the husky voiced lady from the department that has no name, the one who smokes reds on the loading dock without blinking. “Clear as mud,”… Read More →
Talkin’ middle school parking lot blues
January 24, 2016 by 3 Comments
Let me be clear. I do not plan to murder anyone. But if I did the crime would almost certainly take place in the parking lot of my son’s middle school. Winter parking in Northern Minnesota is hard enough. Ice and snow cover the yellow lines. Every slight maneuver involves spinning tires and the risk… Read More →
Fit, just a bit
January 17, 2016 by 1 Comment
I recently went to the thrift store to buy “surrender pants.” This is the periodic occasion where I acknowledge that, yes, most of the pants in my house no longer fit. Nevertheless, I am not willing to pay normal prices for new pants. What a waste! Or rather, waist. Both, I guess. Why not? Because,… Read More →
Cold war bombs in the bogs of Northern MN
January 4, 2016 by 3 Comments
I came across a fascinating piece of Northern Minnesota history in this Doug Easthouse article “Bombing the Big Bog” in the Minnesota DNR publication, Minnesota Conservation Volunteer. Northern Minnesota gets a lot of attention for its timber and minerals, but it’s also home to many thousand of acres of rich peat bogs. Some of these… Read More →
A nod to Iron Range roots on every Greyhound Bus
December 13, 2015 by 2 Comments
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… Read More →
Veda Ponikvar: America’s Iron Lady
October 13, 2015 by 8 Comments
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…. Read More →
