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The steel wheels of fortune spin again
Strange clouds hovered over Hibbing recently. From a distance, they looked like smoke or haze, but the phenomenon was actually dust blown off the dumps and tailings dams of Hibbing Taconite. Normally, mitigation prevents this from happening. But it was too cold to water anything and there was no snow to suppress the dust like…
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Range housing woes hit home
My kids aren’t kids anymore. In just a few years they’ll move out on their own. I remember the excitement of that time of life, but as a parent I’m struck by the enormous financial burdens they’ll face. In 1999, our first apartment rent in Hibbing was a little over $300 a month. You can’t…
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Loss of Nashwauk ambulance would affect huge area
If you drop a wheel off the side of a county road, you realize how easy it would be to roll into the ditch. That chest pain you feel is probably just indigestion, but what if it was a heart attack? Cutting a fallen tree. Changing your car’s oil. Climbing a ladder to retrieve holiday…
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Paint the town red
Nothing good happens when a middle aged man from the Iron Range gets a Doja Cat song stuck in his head. Plump, scruffy, festooned in plaid with a Stormy Kromer cap on my head, now is not the time for me to mouth “B****, I said what I said” at a fellow motorist. And yet,…
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Where the wild deer are
Hunters harvested fewer deer in northern Minnesota during the rifle opener this year. Experts cite several theories to explain the downswing, including habitat, climate, predation and fewer hunters. But the real answer will shock you. [INT. well furnished library of a palatial mansion. DOE sips tea while gazing out a picture window. BUCK sits in…
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Humor comes home to ‘This Small Town’
November brings homecoming season to small towns across America. No, not high school homecomings or summer reunions. People choose to go to those. I’m talking about good old fashioned family holiday visits, the kind borne of obligation, ritual and guilt. And love! Of course! Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range knows all about homecomings. For a century,…
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Woods and waters, cheese and beer
What is the difference between Minnesota and Wisconsin? A foreign journalist asked me this question a few years ago. I prepared to extol the supremacy of my native Minnesota, only to emit a series of clicks, ums and ers. The journalist couldn’t tell the difference. My delay in responding only seemed to prove her point.…
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The here and now of a sci-fi future
As daily news comes to resemble science fiction, I imbibe in more science fiction. No matter how fantastical the genre becomes, or how far it reaches into the future, science fiction reflects the present better than political science. Sci-fi speaks without inhibition about what we want, what we fear, and how we feel about ourselves.…
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Canned squid and the damage done
The little yellow box on the clearance shelf caught my eye. Its vibrant art deco motif suggested the product might have been packaged anytime between 1929 and present day. But this was no antique shop. This was the Hibbing Walmart. A chorus of computerized beeps sang from the registers while this strange box marked “Vigo”…
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1920s roar back to life
The 1920s earned the nickname, “the Roaring ‘20s,” from economic exuberance and social change. Farm kids moved to town. Women started having fun in public. Social experiments like Prohibition became more complicated than originally planned. Despite all that, it was a politically conservative era, electing Harding, Coolidge and Hoover as presidents. The economy boomed for…
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New car smells like the future
How exciting to own a brand new car. I mean, it’s a minivan, but still. Look at all the features on this thing! “Hello, I am your vehicle.” You talk? “Yes. I am here to help you fully enjoy your driving experience.” Great, well, how does this thing work? “It’s simple. Just enter the vehicle…
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The affordability we can’t afford
Americans like to argue, but seem to agree that we don’t have enough money. The median household income in St. Louis County runs just below $58,000 a year, about $30,000 for individuals. Half make less, and these folks certainly know how hard it is to cover rising expenses. Nevertheless, candidates who support publicly funded health…
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Offal, perhaps, but still good for something
Every fall I think about the time my phone dinged at an important work meeting. It was an e-mail from one of my son’s teachers asking for deer hearts. Though perhaps uncommon, my son’s teacher wasn’t the only one asking for the assorted viscera of recently deceased deer. I learned that other local schools run…
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‘The Wolf’s Trail’ crosses our path
If a wolf could talk, what would it say? Would it have a religion? A folk tradition? What are the values of a wolf? And would they be any different than our own? Author Thomas Peacock aims to answer these questions in his novel, “The Wolf’s Trail” (Holy Cow! Press, 2020). Here we meet Zhi-shay,…
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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…