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On wormholes and fantasy football
In the movie “Napoleon Dynamite,” caretaker Uncle Rico can’t escape past mistakes. “If I had a time machine,” he said, “you’d better believe things would be different.” He was referring to a football game in which he didn’t even play, but also life. So, too, go the folk mantras of many among us this week…
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Celebrating Labor Day the Iron Range way
For those looking to celebrate Labor Day in true Iron Range fashion, the Iron Range Labor Assembly will hold its annual “Day Before Labor Day” picnic Sunday 1-5 p.m. at Olcott Park in Virginia, Minnesota. The event is held then to accommodate northern Minnesota’s largest labor events in Duluth and Cloquet. Additionally, Bovey’s “Farmers’ Day”…
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I can’t believe we never saw the signs
About 100 acres of forest fires have burned this week in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. They are now mostly contained (though fire danger remains high in the BWCA) and weren’t especially bad given how dry the region has been lately. However, they have prompted the daily airing of this corresponding BWCA forest fires graphic…
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Video of northern Minnesota tornado near Remer
“Tornado Bob,” the contributing meteorologist at Northern Community Radio, chased the storms passing through our area last night and got video of something that’s actually pretty rare: a tornado in northern Minnesota. The northern Minnesota tornado was sighted near Highway 200 between Remer and Hill City. It’s unclear the extent of damage, though it appears…
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Ira Glass brings tour to Northland this weekend
LaReesa Sandretsky scored the “public radio nerd” coup of the week by getting this Aug. 29 Duluth News Tribune interview with Ira Glass of NPR’s “This American Life.” Glass will be appearing at Big Top Chautauqua this Saturday, Aug. 31, in Bayfield, Wisconsin, the Lake Superior tourist town where the live tent radio show of…
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Lake Vermilion State Park grows slowly
The Mesabi Daily News, via the Associated Press, recently published a story on the progress at Lake Vermilion State Park, Minnesota’s first new state park in 30 years and one that grew out of an odd set of political considerations. The project emerged from the administration of Gov. Tim Pawlenty without the request of local…
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How to Talk Minnesotan again, you know, if you want
Much of contemporary Minnesota humor owes something to Howard Mohr’s seminal 1987 work “How to Talk Minnesotan: A Visitor’s Guide.” While there remain regional and ethnic differences within Minnesota, particularly in the more eastern European, louder Iron Range dialect, Mohr’s observations about Minnesota language are not only funny, they’re often dead accurate. I was pleasantly…
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Bears bearing collars bear burden beyond bearkind
With fall comes the annual DNR request for hunters not to shoot their research bears. The research bears wear reflective collars and distinctive yellow ear tags. These bears help researchers understand the movements, actions and reproduction of bears, so that they can recommend shooting more or fewer of them the following year. Kind of a…
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King’s speech, from the prodigious dumps of the Iron Range
I’m sitting in my office at the college and I look up to a poster that’s been there a while. It’s the text of the “I Have a Dream” speech by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s the 50th anniversary of the delivery of King’s speech during the March on Washington in 1963, something…
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148th Fighter Wing loses alert status at Duluth base
Duluth’s 148th Fighter Wing has lost its 24-hour alert status, according to the U.S. Department of Defense. The Air National Guard base had been one of the units ready to deploy action-ready air defense capabilities at a moments notice. The base remains open and will continue operating as a part of air defense. Nevertheless, this…
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Rare wolf attack near Lake Winnibigoshish
Wolves don’t normally do this, but a wolf emerged from the woods at the West Winnie Campground in northern Minnesota over the weekend and attacked a human, latching on to a boy’s head and causing lacerations. The 16-year-old was laying on the ground near a tent and was taken by surprise in a 4 a.m.…
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St. Louis County might avert major strike
St. Louis County has offered concessions to its AFSCME workforce which might avert a nearing strike. The sticking point was over the accumulation of sick leave hours and payment for those hours upon retirement. The County had hoped to cap those hours for new workers, but the union didn’t want different benefits for different aged…
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Farewell, Highway 53 western route plan
Land speculators in Iron Junction were saddened to learn yesterday that the Minnesota Department of Transportation has now, finally and forever, cancelled the remote possibility that Highway 53 could be routed west of Eveleth and Virginia. Highway 53 is the aorta of Minnesota’s Iron Range and it has to be re-routed between Eveleth and Virginia…
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Iron Range mines in Rust Belt rumble over CAT deal
In the global economy, sometimes your friends are your enemies. That seems to be the case with a federal loan project to help sell American-made mining equipment to a new iron mining venture in western Australia. John Myers at the Duluth News Tribune wrote about the deal, including the obligatory reference to our “mates” Down…
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Hot debate over cold Farmers Almanac forecast
OK, so like I said it’s really hot in northern Minnesota today, something that might amuse people from many of the states where the governors wear tank tops to their inaugurations (or will … in the future). We had intermittent air conditioning at the college today, cool in my office but sauna-like in the classrooms…