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Adding value where it counts
We hear it all the time. The abundant rocks and dirt found on the edges of our Mesabi Range towns became the steel that powered modern American manufacturing and infrastructure. And they still do! We also hear that all of the modern technology and conveniences we’ve come to enjoy also come from mined minerals. We…
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Season finale? Great Northern Radio Show broadcasts Nov. 9 at Hibbing
Hi all — some rather big news buried in the press release for my Nov. 9 Great Northern Radio Show at the Hibbing High School auditorium. If you haven’t seen the Great Northern yet, this may be your last chance for a long while. Anywhere from two years to forever. More to come on the…
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Late but great, hear the most recent Great Northern Radio Show
I don’t know what it is about summer, but it always seems to delay the release of our Great Northern Radio Show online audio. At long last you can hear Sarah Morris, Thomas X, Katie and the Occasionals, the Great Northern Radio Players and yours truly in the show we broadcast June 22 at the…
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Michigan’s U.P. offers glimpse at past & future of Mesabi Range
A couple weeks ago I traveled to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for research on my book about Victor Power. Power was born in Calumet, Michigan, and raised in Escanaba before moving to Hibbing, Minnesota, as a young man. He became a consequential figure here on the Mesabi Iron Range. More on that to come. But the…
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Labor faces unresolved peril in new mine deals
It’s Labor Day weekend on the Mesabi Iron Range. So let’s talk about labor. You might have noticed a burst of media attention for a project labor agreement between the proposed Twin Metals mine in Ely and local construction trade unions. It was a front page story in this and most regional newspapers and a…
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Nothing but open road on route to MN-8 DFL nod
Last year I made a lot of hay out of the race for Congress in Minnesota’s Eighth District. The end result ended up less climactic and influential than we all thought. U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber (R-MN8) ended up winning by just over five points, becoming one of few Republicans to win open seats in an…
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Northwest Wisconsin congressman Duffy to resign
Some news from the other side of the Twin Ports harbor. Politico reports that U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI7) will resign from Congress at the end of September. Duffy told supporters in a Facebook post that he was leaving to focus on his family, including a new baby with health complications. He writes: With much…
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Inspiring Mesabi Range running back featured on ESPN
Taquarius Wair dons the green and gold of the Mesabi Range Norseman football team. A freshman running back from Minneapolis, he joins many on his team in following dreams of playing college football to the Iron Range. But his story resembles no other. Burned in a terrible house fire when he was a small child,…
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Nothing like an original
There’s nothing quite like going to the movies. I know people watch more films through television and streaming services now. But the shared experience of gathering around a big screen for an all-new experience still excites me long after I spent the summer of 1997 seeing every movie that came to town. This summer, for…
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Look for influences, not adoration, in Dylan’s hometown
Can’t Bob Dylan just answer a straight question? Why must his rare public utterances be so cryptic? Why can’t he sing the way they they teach at Hibbing High School? Gosh darn it, why did he say he was from New Mexico when he went on Ed Sullivan? And why can’t Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing,…
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Zebra mussels in Range mine pit raise questions
Northern Minnesota has been standing sentinel against zebra mussels for a number of years. We worry our freshwater lakes could be overrun by this invasive species. Typically, however, we imagine the pests arriving on the hulls of traveling boats and trailers. That doesn’t seem to explain why they showed up in an Iron Range mine…
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Festival of Sail enters Duluth harbor
Tens of thousands of people pile along the lakeshore as the 2019 Duluth Festival of Sail returns with vintage ships and an enormous rubber duck. Here’s some video from today’s parade of sails as vintage replica ships like the U.S.S. Niagara enter the Duluth-Superior Harbor: The family and I took in the Tall Ships festival…
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Emblematic of his era, Iron Range lawmaker Joe Begich dies
I met Joe Begich in the late 1990s, five years after he had retired from the state legislature. He was a senior statesman of sorts, an uncle at the Iron Range DFL reunion who could offer either useful context or long-winded tangents. Begich was, of course, a dedicated laborite and fierce Iron Range advocate. He…
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Then and now: lessons from the forgotten past
Please excuse me. I’m suffering from the adverse effects of time travel. Disoriented and distracted, I wonder what small action 100 years ago might have created our present condition. For the past couple years, more intensely of late, I’ve researched the Hibbing of a century ago for a book. Methodically reading the newspapers of another…
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Confessions of an assistant coach
The movie, “The Bad News Bears,” really set unreasonable expectations for under-qualified little league baseball coaches. For one thing, letting the children smoke and drink beer is even more taboo now than it was in 1976. For another, teaching children how to do anything requires extraordinary patience. Teaching them to lean into a pitch that,…