Here’s an exciting display of the power of the Thursday morning storm that has many in Duluth still without power three days later. Dennis O’Hara posted this YouTube video of the 729-foot Algoma Guardian entering the Port of Duluth through the canal. This Lisa Kaczke story in the Duluth News Tribune tells the story, but… Read More →

They call it a high pressure dome, hot electric atmosphere more vapor than air, parked over Minnesota like a Ouija board. We get these once or twice a summer, about as often as we get deep freezes in the dead of winter. Days like this remind us that 150 degrees Fahrenheit separate our typical annual… Read More →

Last year it seemed the city of Duluth was barreling toward the demolition of its distinctive library building along Superior and Michigan avenues in favor of a new $35 million building. At the time, the consultant hired by the city was saying that it would cost $31 million to perform necessary repairs and remodeling to the… Read More →

Some say we’re in the golden age of television, a time when the breakdown of the big networks’ monopoly on production creates new opportunities for smaller, independent artists with good ideas. That’s certainly the white-capped Lake Superior wave that producers of a new web series based in Duluth hope to catch. “Old Lifty” is based on a… Read More →

The Duluth Homegrown Music Festival opens today and runs through next Sunday. This week-long music extravaganza is the hallmark of the emerging Duluth music scene and boasts more live music in one week than some towns see all year long. Quite simply, Duluth Homegrown is back-to-back live music all week long at more than a… Read More →

Playground equipment used to be hellish industrial machinery. Kids would bust their arms just looking at the hand pump merry-go-round. The ground was just that: ground. Heck, you were lucky if it was dirt. It might have been pavement. In a quest to make things safer, many new playgrounds use rubber mulch, bouncy chunks reclaimed… Read More →

When I was writing daily newspaper editorials 15 years ago, I spent a lot of time extolling the virtues of passenger rail service. Looking back, it was a tailer-made issue for an editorialist. It cost money. It had statistics. There were maps. Plus, the opposition would have to go on the record against trains. Since trains are… Read More →

Today, the Port of Duluth welcomes its first ocean-going vessel of the 2016 shipping season. The Dutch-flagged Albanyborg just dropped off some wind turbine parts in Canada and is now set to load winter wheat bound for Italy. The first Great Lakes vessel arrived more than a week ago. Even though Northern Minnesota is firmly in… Read More →

This Thursday at 5:30 p.m., I’ll be one of three panelists leading a discussion entitled “PolyMet: Reporting on Tough Community Issues” at a venue in west Duluth. This panel is part of a series of community discussions centered around journalism and storytelling for the “One River, Many Stories” project along the St. Louis River in Northeastern Minnesota…. Read More →