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Loans, taconite and forbearances, oh my! (UPDATE)
The Iron Range Resources Board met Thursday on a variety of topics, summarized here in a post by Lee Bloomquist at the agency’s blog Rangeviews. News stacking is always a judgment issue, so I’ll note that the non-agency WDIO TV (Duluth’s ABC affiliate) led its 6 p.m. Thursday news with Minorca Mine announcing it had…
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Screenings for miners’ health case to begin soon; meeting tonight
Janna Goerdt at the Duluth News Tribune reports today about a meeting tonight in Mountain Iron to detail plans to screen miners who might have been exposed to fibers from the taconite process. The University of Minnesota was funded to run a study on mesothelioma, a rare cancer, that has been appearing in disproportionate levels…
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Coming to America
I found this by way of Andrew Sullivan. This is an animated graph from Ian Stevenson showing global immigration trends to the United States since 1820. Each dot is 100 people. Look at how many people have come to the U.S. from all over the world. As Sullivan says, no other country attracts people the…
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GOP’s LaHood, not Oberstar, leading SecTrans field
Hey, here’s a message for everyone preparing a campaign in the event Jim Oberstar gets called up to be Secretary of Transportation: Crack a cold one and enjoy the status quo. Obama’s team is vetting a congressman, but not ours and not even a Democrat. The Hill, which I found through PoliticalWire, reports that Rep.…
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OMG! Pat Buchanen knows about the Iron Range
Check out this transcript from a recent broadcast of the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” featuring host Joe Scarborough and commentator Pat Buchanen, both conservatives, along with other commentators and co-hosts of various ideologies and affiliations. I used to watch “Morning Joe” regularly but gave it up for the same reason some people give up vodka.…
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Rukavina proposes Perpich program as possible cure for economic ills
State Rep. Tom Rukavina (DFL-Virginia) hearkens a Rudy Perpich job creation program from the 1980s as one potential way to address job losses and the bad economy in this Mesabi Daily News letter to the editor from a few days ago. Related posts: No related posts.
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Finish your holiday shopping: ‘Overburden’ signing this Saturday
The first two months of release for my new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” have gone very well. We’ve gone into a second printing and are now mapping efforts to reach into the Twin Cities market in 2009. But for those who live up north, my last book signing for 2008 will…
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Snow and paper
Today, northern Minnesota is buried in snow drifts as a quasi-blizzard blew through Sunday. Inside the house I’m buried in 100 papers (on the same topic) to grade. Shoveling. Grading. It’s all about moving white things from one pile to another. So, let’s just call this a snow day. I’ll post under the following conditions:…
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India and the Iron Range: the start of a beautiful friendship?
In the early days of the Iron Range immigrants from more than 50 countries came to area for mining, logging and support industries. India was not then among those countries. This past week India took center stage for a special regional conference and cultural program called “Focus on India” at Hibbing Community College. This comes…
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The fed haze standard and the Iron Range
The EPA has backed off its efforts to eliminate two laws that developers say discourage clean-coal power plants. One of them has huge implications here in Northern Minnesota. Pro-coal EPA officials were trying to undo the federal haze standard that limits pollution near national parks before President-elect Obama takes office. Essentially, there is only so…
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Google sees all, but not Minnesota’s Iron Range
This is a map of the areas currently seen on Google Streetview after the company recently doubled its U.S. coverage area. These are the areas you can zoom in on to see photographs at street level, a service simultaneously heralded as “cool” by some and lamented as a “crushing blow to privacy” by others. Notice…
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An opportunity for the Iron Range?
As I tour the Iron Range for my new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” one of the topics audiences and I keep revisiting is the boundary of the Iron Range. Where does it end and where does it begin? I argue in the book that Iron Ranger status is part genealogical and…
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Moving pictures: My first vLog goes national
I wrote last month about my invitation to join PurpleStates, a public policy project that is collecting viewpoints and reports about the national economy and sharing them in short video segments. They found a blogger from each of the 50 states and are running their vLogs over a 50-day period. I was selected as Minnesota’s…
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Blagojevich: Despite name, not an Iron Ranger
So maybe you’re wondering if disgraced Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich is a Serbian or a Croatian. He’s a Serbian. You know how I know? A reliable source called me to tell me that “Croatians don’t get mixed up in this sort of thing.” I love living on Minnesota’s Iron Range. Serbs and Croats are still…
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New Range manufacturing company nearly ready to open
Lee Bloomquist with the Iron Range Resources agency blog “RangeViews” reports on a new manufacturing company in Nashwauk called Midwest Manufacturing and Mechanical, Inc. The company is creating 10 jobs for now, up to 27 if their plans are successful. Related posts: No related posts.