Category: writing

  • The night Ali lit the torch in Gilbert

    The night Ali lit the torch in Gilbert

    I spent most of the summer of 1996 nocturnal. Even though I couldn’t tell you much about those days, the nights seemed hotter and more humid than average. This was Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range, a place where winter cold gets more press than the deceptive heat of summer. I was 16. It was my first summer with a driver’s license,…

  • Daniel Berrigan, radical priest & Range native

    Daniel Berrigan, radical priest & Range native

    On Saturday, April 30, peace activist and Jesuit Catholic priest Daniel Berrigan died at the age of 94. Berrigan was probably best known for his high profile protests of the Vietnam War, including multiple arrests for anti-war demonstrations. Most notably, Berrigan and fellow protesters seized draft records from an office in Maryland and burned them…

  • On Letters of Hope

    On Letters of Hope

    “Plant a nut, get a nut,” someone once told me about my son Doug’s antics. Approaching 9 years old, he has somehow outpaced my childhood obsession with historical trivia and the macabre. Last year, he wandered down to my home office and extracted a ten-pound American history textbook left over from my college days. “Can…

  • Mud for our modern world

    Mud for our modern world

    Thus ends the afternoon meeting. You can hear him now, the co-worker who’d rather be fishing. He slaps open the conference room door as though exiting an outhouse. Then comes the husky voiced lady from the department that has no name, the one who smokes reds on the loading dock without blinking. “Clear as mud,”…

  • ‘If you want to predict the future, listen to the future’

    ‘If you want to predict the future, listen to the future’

    Last week, students delivered informative speeches in my class at Hibbing Community College. One student spoke of the generational divide in how we communicate. He referred to Generation X, those of us born between 1965 and 1985, and said, “You know, like our parents.” Now, Gen Xers have been parents for some time. I’m 36.…

  • 70-pound carp lashes back at Dayton over speech

    70-pound carp lashes back at Dayton over speech

    When Gov. Mark Dayton delivered his State of the State address on Wednesday, many would rightly have focused on the policies or political nuance. I am unable to let go of one section of Dayton’s speech: Minnesota has a proud history of tackling environmental problems and finding effective solutions. When I was a boy in the…

  • Lost Mittens: A Love Story

    Lost Mittens: A Love Story

    It’s fitting that Valentine’s Day, a holiday celebrating romantic love, comes in the thick of Northern Minnesota’s sprawling winter. Just as many people have lost love over the years, so it goes for our gloves and hats after months of regular use. By now, gloves have been removed and placed in pockets more times than…

  • Talkin’ middle school parking lot blues

    Talkin’ middle school parking lot blues

    Let me be clear. I do not plan to murder anyone. But if I did the crime would almost certainly take place in the parking lot of my son’s middle school. Winter parking in Northern Minnesota is hard enough. Ice and snow cover the yellow lines. Every slight maneuver involves spinning tires and the risk…

  • Fit, just a bit

    Fit, just a bit

    I recently went to the thrift store to buy “surrender pants.” This is the periodic occasion where I acknowledge that, yes, most of the pants in my house no longer fit. Nevertheless, I am not willing to pay normal prices for new pants. What a waste! Or rather, waist. Both, I guess. Why not? Because,…

  • A nod to Iron Range roots on every Greyhound Bus

    A nod to Iron Range roots on every Greyhound Bus

    A century ago, a pair of iron miners in Hibbing, Minnesota, began charging 15 cents for a ride on a seven-passenger Hupmobile from Hibbing to Alice Location. Alice, then a bedroom community for miners and their families, would later become the new townsite when Hibbing was moved to access the ore beneath the ground. From this inauspicious beginning, a…

  • Ya, I guess I do have an accent then

    Ya, I guess I do have an accent then

    Folks, it’s been brought to my attention that I have a Minnesota accent. It’s true. I didn’t believe it either. But last month I toured with a Swedish journalist researching mining in Northern Minnesota. In English better than most of my relatives, he concluded by saying he just had to ask me about my accent.…

  • Veda Ponikvar: America’s Iron Lady

    Veda Ponikvar: America’s Iron Lady

    Veda Ponikvar, founder and publisher of two Chisholm newspapers, esteemed American civilian military leader, and arguably the most powerful person in Iron Range politics of the latter 20th Century, died Tuesday in Chisholm at the age of 96. One could remark that Ponikvar was the most consequential women in the male-dominated industrial history of the Iron Range.…

  • Twilight for the unlovable chair

    Twilight for the unlovable chair

    NOTE: Today’s column is a condensed version of a monologue I did in the Sept. 19, 2015 Great Northern Radio Show which re-airs today at 11 a.m. on Northern Community Radio and will be made available as a podcast in coming days. *** My wife and I have a term for the decorating style of our…

  • Somebody in the crowd

    Somebody in the crowd

    People get a certain look on their faces as they shuffle about events like this weekend’s St. Louis County Fair. They abruptly look up from their phones or fried snack with sudden optimism, a hopeful gaze that pierces even dark sunglasses. They’re looking for something or someone: a change agent to liven their world. Most…

  • A more fashionable future for the Iron Range

    A more fashionable future for the Iron Range

    Fashion has never been my forte. I often dress in the dark by feeling for the most comfortable fabrics in the closet. Last semester, an art major sitting in the front row of my class informed me that my old grey shirt was, in fact, green. Time finally taught me why my father wears one…