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Authentic Finnish music at the B’nai Abraham
This week, the B’nai Abraham Cultural Center and Museum will host a Finnish Music Festival Wednesday, July 22 at 7 p.m. Kanteleen Soittajat, a group of 18 enthusiastic American-Finns from Duluth and surrounding area perform on the kantele, an ancient instrument that originated two thousand years ago and is now Finland’s national musical instrument. Since…
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The woods and us
I smile to see the midnight fireflies from my darkened bedroom in the woods. The fireflies of my youth in the Sax-Zim Bog twinkled like stars. We see fewer today, but still enough to inspire wonder. Suddenly my smile drained away. What if my boys remember a few fireflies when there are none? We read…
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Ely adventurers to spend year in BWCA
Dave and Amy Freeman, who split time between Ely and Grand Marais in far northern Minnesota, are adventurers in every sense of the world. It’s their job, their hobby, and their way of life. I’ve written about their adventures in my column and here on my blog. Amy appeared on my radio show when Dave was kayaking Rio Roosevelt in…
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Free dental clinic in Duluth swamped; our state’s dental denial
Yesterday hundreds of low income or underinsured people flowed into the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center to lay on folding tables to receive free dental care from the nonprofit Minnesota Mission of Mercy. John Lundy describes the event, which continues today, in Saturday’s Duluth News Tribune. One way of looking at a story like this is to say that it’s good…
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Some miners called back to work, but not for mining
The Mesabi Daily News reported yesterday that a number of laid off miners at Minntac were called back to work this week to perform scheduled maintenance projects. In this case, the miners are replacing outside contractors who otherwise would have been hired for the work. The so-called word on the street always was that idled workers at U.S. Steel’s…
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National TV Taco Night in Taconite?
It’s entirely possible I learned about “taconite,” the iron laden rock processed into pellets to make steel, before I grasped the notion of “taco night,” a night in which one eats tacos. And I’m probably not the only kid from Northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range who can say that. My family never served Mexican food and I…
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Un da’ Raynch: Revisiting Iron Range’s unique dialect
This time of year many people who grew up on the Iron Range come home to see family, friends and the summer splendor of Northern Minnesota. For these prodigal children, just a few minutes at the cafe, gas station or local street dance quickly reminds them that this isn’t the King’s English; it’s Iron Range…
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‘Fargo’ coming back in September (and so are my reviews)
UPDATE: The full Fargo Season 2 trailer is here! Last year, I stumbled into writing a popular series of blog posts about the FX series “Fargo,” based on the famous Coen Brothers film of the same name. My posts started with a tongue-in-cheek review of the accuracy of the Minnesota details in the show, only to…
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The haircut heard ’round the Eighth
Stewart Mills, the 2014 GOP nominee in Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District, hasn’t announced officially whether he plans to run for the office again in 2016. But his famous hair seems to be leaning that way. Mills, scion of the well-known Fleet Farm family, lost to Democratic U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan by a little over one percentage…
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Steelworkers negotiations underway in Pittsburgh
After a spring and early summer in which Iron Range mine owners tightened belts, idled workers and sought relief from taxes and environmental regulations, now we come to a new phase of the region’s simmering crisis. This week in Pittsburgh, the United Steelworkers, the union that represents most Iron Range miners, opened negotiations with ArcelorMittal…
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Smoke Week
Here in Northern Minnesota, we’ve been dealing with a thick haze of smoke from Canadian wildfires for more than a week. Just this week the smoke finally dipped further south, blanketing the Twin Cities and Southern Minnesota. Yesterday, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency recorded air quality indexes as high as 200 in the Twin Cities,…
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Researcher to revisit Iron Range dialect
Though probably not surprising to visitors and natives alike, the Iron Range region of Northern Minnesota is home to its own researched and defined dialect. I‘ve written about this before, but the topic takes on new relevance as linguist Dr. Sara Schmelzer Loss of Oklahoma State University (and a Hibbing native) returns to her hometown…
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‘Everything just fits together naturally’
When settlers came to Northern Minnesota they found timber so tall and plentiful that they built Chicago with it. When Chicago burned down they built it again. New prospectors found iron ore so rich they could shovel it straight into eastern blast furnaces to make the steel that built a growing nation, supplying two world…
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Lessons from a decade of parenting (I’ve learned nothing)
“What size shirt does George wear?” my mom asked a few days before my son’s birthday. “I don’t know,” I said. “Kinda big. He’s bigger than Doug (his twin brother). But not taller. Doug is taller. They’re both kinda tall. They wear shirts. Sometimes I pay for the shirts, but not always. I don’t know…
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Nolan running again in 2016; no opponent yet
In a fiery speech at his annual barbecue fundraiser, U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN8) announced he would seek another term in Congress in 2016. Nolan represents Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District, a large region that includes Northeastern and Central Minnesota. MN-8 has been considered a swing district since 2010, when Rep. Jim Oberstar was surprisingly defeated…