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Rethinking labor as change accelerates
Like many from the Iron Range, I take pride in my family’s long history of hard work. My ancestors include mechanics, railroad engineers, truck drivers, underground miners and Old World wrench-turners. But isn’t this a cliche? No one says they come from seven generations of lazy grifters. Few family crests read, “It Is What It…
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Billions ain’t what they used to be
These last two weeks brought bittersweet poetry to business news. Relatives gathered around the bedside of our grandfather, U.S. Steel, after financial doctors warned he may not have much longer. Even his own board of directors said it might be time to pull the plug. Or perhaps you prefer mythology. The god Promethe-USX brought the…
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Thus ends summer, crying over the sink
The end of summer staggers into the house, sometimes drunk, sometimes just tired and sweaty. Summer drops its keys under the hook and doesn’t bother to pick them up. Maybe next year. It’s not fall yet. Fall is still upstairs trying on red, orange and yellow hoodies while the pumpkin spice coffee brews in the…
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The old roads still taken
Travelers from Duluth to the Iron Range learn the rhythm of concrete on Highway 53. Staccato thumps mark time and distance between homes and cabins, town and country, and the consequential journey of small town patients to Duluth’s big hospitals. I’ve known this road all my life, and yet it is only one version of…
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Local autonomous vehicles drive change
Someone has to be the first. In 1922, a Paris tailor named Franz Reichelt jumped off the Eifel Tower with a homemade parachute suit. He died, of course, but this was part of a process. A century later, adventurers scream through canyons in sleek wing suits while recording YouTube videos from their helmets. Better material.…
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Iron in the air, if we embrace renewables
More than a century ago, northeastern Minnesota emerged as a center for logging, iron mining and energy production. These three industries pollinated one another. Logs became the first commodity, shipped all over the country. Later, timber served as important infrastructure for the early iron ore mines while pulpwood became paper. Soon enough, the booming iron…
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Amid ‘disruption,’ the people deserve their share
Our language pulses with buzzwords, twists of phrase that sound substantial but can’t be defined. One such word is “disruption.” The last 10 years, it would seem, have been a time of disruption. Disruption, we are told, is really just an opportunity for the bold, the brilliant, and the worthy to seize success. LinkedIn, prosperity…
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Spitting bile won’t bring economic success
Last week, the Mesabi Tribune reported that Huber Engineered Woods will build its next plant in Mississippi. Months ago they opted not to build that plant at Cohasset in northern Minnesota. Huber pulled out after a legal challenge from the neighboring Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe required them to submit more detailed environmental paperwork. The…
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Finally, a prestige drama about millwrights
We’ve been watching “Silo” on Apple TV. This mysterious science fiction story depicts a 144-floor silo where people have been living so long that they can’t remember how they got there. It’s a good show, but what really caught my attention was the fact that the main character is a millwright. Most folks on the…
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Raise the blue flags of summer
“I am an old woman,” sings John Prine in his classic song “Angel from Montgomery.” She’s full of desire but has no way to leave. “The years just flow by like a broken down dam.” John Prine songs always relate to specific people and feelings. And lately, I relate to the idea that the years…
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A shapeless state
Like many Minnesotans, I’ve taken inordinate pride in the shape of my state. It’s a strange bird with an enormous beak that extends over Lake Superior and a club foot down by Mankato. The jaunty little Northwest Angle sticks out like a feather on its head, a symbol of our quirky personality and incompetent cartographers.…
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Rare success story for bird social services
Nature is tragedy. So it was the day an eastern phoebe nest fell 30 feet from the top of a security light on my father-in-law’s garage. Four chicks tumbled, three to their death. But one little bird stayed in the nest and survived the landing. My wife received an urgent call for us to come…
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I am lord of beans
Now that recreational marijuana is legal in Minnesota, will grow lights become less expensive or more expensive? My query has nothing to do with pot. Age 43 seems like a bad time to start doing pot. But it’s a great time to get really excited about growing beans, which is where I’m at these days.…
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Sheet cake and handshakes; it’s grad party season
Is there anything quite like an American graduation party? A funeral, I suppose, but that hardly seems appropriate. After all, in one the subject ascends to bigger and better things. In the other, people ask, “What are your college plans?” over and over again. Like funerals, grad parties include elaborate photo displays, awkward mingling and…
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To be someone, do something
Everybody wants to be somebody. That’s the premise behind shows like “American Idol” and most campaigns for the state legislature. This quest for “being” is a tough road, though. Once you are something, you realize you want to be something else. Then you get older and you used to be something. Eventually, you “were.” And…