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Heads of state named ‘Justin’ nearing reality
UPDATE: Justin Trudeau and the Liberals won a majority government in Monday’s election. It was an unexpected rout. I’ve long foreseen a world in which heads of state — including one day a U.S. President — might be named “Justin.” Lots of kids are named Justin now. And once the Justins take over, then come…
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Creative space the next frontier for libraries?
This is a follow-up on my Oct. 11 column “Thinkers, tinkers, and 3-D printers,” which explores 3-D printing and efforts to support local innovation and ideas in Iron Range economic development. After that piece went to print, I learned more about how maker spaces are becoming the vogue. For one thing, I was not aware that Duluth,…
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Range War: Essar, Cliffs clash shows Mesabi at crossroads
~ ~ ~ Speculation can be ignored, but one must reckon with concrete. Here along Northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range one finds many messy versions of the truth surrounding Essar Minnesota’s new taconite mine under construction near Nashwauk. While controversial, actual activity at Essar shows that new mining will happen on the grounds of the…
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Cliffs CEO threatens to close mine
UPDATE: Cliffs Natural Resources spent most of Monday trying to walk back Goncalves’s comments about closing an Iron Range mine. ### Lourenco Goncalves, CEO of Cliffs Natural Resources, is threatening to close one of Cliffs’ Iron Range mines in the event Essar Steel opens its new mine near Nashwauk. This is Bill Hanna’s front page story of today’s…
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FARGO REVIEW: Episode 1, ‘Waiting for Dutch’
The success of the first season of “Fargo” on FX was one of the best surprises of television last year. The 10-episode short-run series was ambitious, daring, heartfelt and yet still true to the spirit of the original acclaimed movie (without being too derivative). After the early reviews of the second season, which debuted last night,…
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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.…
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Gov. Dayton, officials meet with Essar to negotiate repayment
On Monday, Gov. Mark Dayton and Iron Range lawmakers, along with officials from the state Department of Employment and Economic Development, met with representatives of Essar Minnesota. Essar is building a new taconite mine on the western Mesabi Iron Range, but scuttled initial plans to build a value-added steel mill on the site, all while…
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A Minnesota guide to ‘Fargo, Season 2’
UPDATE: Read my Minnesota-centric “Fargo” reviews for Seasons 1 and 2 at my “Fargo” review page. Tonight at 9 p.m. CST (Fargo universal time) the sophomore season premiere of “Fargo” airs on FX. Noah Hawley’s macabre Midwestern series, inspired by the acclaimed Coen Brothers movie of the same name, will bring an entirely new story, cast…
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How mean is Lake Superior?
Last week, Lake Superior Magazine ran an interesting infographic story titled “How Big is Lake Superior?” (Big). The centerpiece was a news graphic showing the outline of Lake Superior placed over the eastern sea board, a span stretching from Baltimore to Boston. The rest of the story talked about how much water was in Lake Superior.…
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Thinkers, tinkers and 3-D printers
Growing up, my dad was a leather whip of a man who chain-smoked Winston cigarettes and spent nearly all his free time tinkering with an invention in his garage. When they first taught us how to use this new thing called “the internet” at my high school, my inaugural search was about patent law, seeking…
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Looking down on the Laurentian Divide
As we see the autumn leaves of the Iron Range reach peak colors, already beginning to fall in my corner of Itasca County, enjoy this recent video by Above the Range, a YouTube channel dedicated to aerial footage of Northern Minnesota scenery. See it here: The Laurentian Divide is the geographical “rock” (no pun intended) of…
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Neutrinos in the news
Two scientists, one Japanese and the other Canadian, are sharing this year’s Nobel Prize for Physics. Their combined research helped confirm that neutrinos — the tiny, invisible particles that abound throughout the universe — have mass. From the Reuters report: Takaaki Kajita and Arthur McDonald’s breakthrough was the discovery of a phenomenon called neutrino oscillation that…
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Seeing indigenous history on the Iron Range
For many reasons, the stories of native Northern Minnesota and the Northern Minnesota that formed after European and American settlement are often considered entirely separate matters in most history classes and casual conversation. The latter, written by the ancestors of most people who live here, tends to get much more attention. If kids learn about the prior, it’s usually…
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Broadband issue fills rural halls, demands action in 2016
My neighbor John Kannas set up extra folding chairs in the Balsam Township Hall but even those wouldn’t be enough. Last month, John told me that Paul Bunyan Communication was preparing to apply for a grant to expand fiber optic internet lines in parts of Balsam, Lawrence and Wabana, a block of rural townships in…
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‘End is Near’ for Iron Range mine view
With peak fall colors upon us, this weekend offers a historic opportunity for travelers to Northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range. “Mineview in the Sky” is a scenic overlook situated upon a mine dump between Eveleth and Virginia. Due to proposed new mining by Cliffs’ United Taconite plant which is forcing the relocation of Highway 53, “Mineview in the Sky” will…