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Remembering Duluth journalist Larry Fortner
Former Duluth News Tribune editor and longtime Northern Minnesota journalist Larry Fortner died early Wednesday from cancer. The Duluth News Tribune remembers Fortner in a Peter Passi front page story today. After work in Florida and Kentucky, Fortner found his way to Duluth, Minnesota in 1979. He would become editor of the DNT, going on…
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‘Rogue’ baby born in family van on Hwy. 38
Most babies are born the typical way, popped out in a hospital surrounded by medical personnel. But sometimes, babies quite literally “go rogue.” Last Saturday, Feb. 13, a Minnesota woman went into labor in the remote northern Itasca County logging town of Bigfork. While Bigfork has a hospital, it does not have an obstetrics unit,…
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DFLer Mike Thompson joins crowded 6A race
Mike Thompson, a DFLer from Cherry, announced in today’s Hibbing Daily Tribune that he will run for the House 6A seat being vacated by State Rep. Carly Melin (DFL-Hibbing) this fall. Thompson is a car salesman who works at the Hibbing Chrysler Center. Though it’s not clear how many candidates plan to honor the DFL…
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Hear the Aurora Great Northern Radio Show today
Last Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016, I hosted another live broadcast of my Great Northern Radio Show from the Mesabi East Auditorium in Aurora, Minnesota. We were there to help celebrate the Laskiainen Finnish Sliding Festival in nearby Palo and “the beginning of the end of winter.” You can hear the rebroadcast of this episode today…
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PUC rejects lower power rates for mines
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission dismissed the Minnesota Power petition to allow lower rates for its industrial customers, most notably Iron Range taconite mines, while raising rates for residential customers. The request by Minnesota Power came after a new law passed the state legislature allowing the mines to seek lower rates. Minnesota’s iron mines are reeling amid…
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Super Bowl done, now for superb owls at Sax-Zim Bog
The 9th Annual Sax-Zim Bog Birding Festival starts Friday, Feb. 12 and runs through Sunday, Feb. 14, 2016. It provides serious and casual birders alike a unique opportunity to see great gray owls, northern owls, pine grosbeaks and many other wintering species. The IRRRB’s Lee Bloomquist published an article on the Sax-Zim Bog Birding Festival…
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One River, Many Stories
Before the road. Before the rails. Before the timber cruisers or even the original people. All that connected what we now call the Mesabi Iron Range to the place we now call Duluth at the head of Lake Superior was a little southbound crick called the St. Louis River. It gets bigger than a crick, of course, but never all…
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Uncertain fate for Soudan underground physics lab
I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that advanced physics research takes place a half mile beneath the earth at the retired Soudan Underground Mine on the Minnesota Iron Range. True, what they do there can be explained. (Mostly it’s research related to isolating the neutrino, a sub-atomic particle believed to be critical to understanding the universe). Yet it…
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Economic salvation is local
Duluth, Minnesota, is among several cities featured in a James Fallows story in the March 2016 edition of “The Atlantic,” entitled “How America is putting itself back together.” The Duluth angle is what got my attention, but the rest of the story is what I’d like to talk about today. Fallows lists Duluth alongside his story’s…
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Molten iron in the sky
In China, people are wrapping up the celebration of the lunar new year. With a country as big and economically diverse as China you find many different traditions. I saw this next one on ABC News this morning. In the old steel town of Dunhuang, blacksmiths have an annual New Year tradition of melting scrap…
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Bakk explains failed bid for Range special session
We can now agree that Gov. Mark Dayton’s effort to call a special session to address pressing economic issues has been undone. The casualties include, most notably, expiring unemployment benefits of Iron Range miners caught in the gears of international commerce. Dayton cited Republican resistance to agree to terms for a special session, while Republicans seemed to blame Dayton for not calling one…
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How many economic collapses will it take?
I drove to work this morning past more evidence of our zombie economy. There’s an electronic billboard along the Highway 169 as you go through Hibbing. It’s one of those low res, pixelated types, not as sharp as the ones you see along Twin Cities highways. Kind of like the difference between a 60-inch rear…
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See film of President Calvin Coolidge in Hibbing
The Mitchell Yards Project has put together a truly wonderful step back in time. I first saw this on Perfect Duluth Day. I’m not above link-jacking about a topic so close to my wheelhouse. Below is film footage of President Calvin Coolidge’s famous 1928 visit to Hibbing. We see the famously concise Republican president touring…
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Slide on up to Aurora for Saturday’s show!
In a short time I’ll be making my way across the Mesabi Iron Range to Aurora and Palo as I prepare for this Saturday’s Great Northern Radio Show. If you’d like to see the show live, perhaps after a day of Laskiainen fun in Palo, you need to be seated at the auditorium in Aurora…
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Nashwauk mayor Ben DeNucci enters 6A race
Nashwauk Mayor Ben DeNucci announced his candidacy for the DFL nomination for House of Representatives in District 6A on the central Iron Range. DeNucci is the owner of DeNucci’s Saloon in downtown Nashwauk and Keewatin Auto Repair in nearby Keewatin, where he also works. DeNucci made his announcement in a Crystal Dey story in the Hibbing Daily Tribune.…