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Sweet summer’s last act, a pause
Sweet Summer’s Last Act Basswood leaves hang like dinner plates, flags drooping on the pole. The animals grow brazen now, I think that one’s a mole. Brown and white skinned road workers can no longer be distinguished. Last night’s maple log has yet to be extinguished. Biting flies rule the day; mosquitos rule the night.…
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Spend a summer night with Great Northern Radio Show
You might recall that the Great Northern Radio Show broadcast from the Reif Center last month. I write, host and produce the show for Northern Community Radio. We just released the podcast episodes this week. The first episode is titled “Nostalgia.” We put together a collection of music, comedy and stories exploring that fuzzy feeling about a…
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Campaign season means signs are all around us
Someone just posted a campaign sign down the road. Well, there goes the neighborhood. This sentiment now spreads across Northern Minnesota’s tumultuous political environment. A political cycle defined by white hot rage now enters a new phase: paranoia that the other side is messing with your signs. I’ve worked in journalism and I’ve managed political…
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R-O-C-K in the Co-op, eh?
The Mesaba Co-Op Park sits on the border between Cherry and Hibbing. You can’t escape this place as a key setting for Iron Range history. This refuge for mostly socialist Finnish immigrants became a playground and a proving ground for 20th Century leftist politics in Northern Minnesota. And it’s still here! While the place continues…
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Digging deeper into immigration debate
Immigration policy burns at the heart of the political and cultural battle presently tearing this nation asunder. So, it made for a great topic for our most recent podcast of “Dig Deep.” This radio/podcast hybrid features conservative commentator Chuck Marohn and myself, the liberal commentator. My friend Heidi Holtan produces the program for Northern Community…
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Canadian company gives solar second chance on Range
Next month, a Canadian company will reopen a solar panel manufacturing plant in Mountain Iron, hoping to shake off the bad juju of a previously failed project. Heliene opens in August with plans of hiring 130 people by September. They’ll produce commercial-scale solar panels for sale in the North American marketplace. They enjoy the aid…
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DFL candidates debate issues in Minnesota’s 8th District
In just three weeks voters decide which of five DFL candidates for Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District advances to a tough general election. Some candidates have more money than others, but relatively few ads have run on local television. I’ve analyzed the race. But I must also stress that this is a very fluid contest that…
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Cliffs wins Nashwauk land case, deals blow to Mesabi Metallics
To paraphrase “The Simpsons” Episode #222: Everything’s coming up Lourenco Goncalves. It’s been a very good week for Goncalves and Cleveland-Cliffs. The company declared strong earnings. Netting $165 million in the second quarter, Cliffs is selling iron ore pellets at $112 per ton. That’s a dramatic increase from the doldrums of 2015 and 2016. Industry…
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Niskanen brings Stanley Cup home on the Range
I was talking to a friend this weekend. He told me that he watched a hockey game earlier that day. Hockey, I said. It’s July. But I caught myself. Of course they’re playing hockey in July. It’s Minnesota. Right now thousands of minivans criss-cross our verdant summer landscape. Each vessel aims for a parking lot…
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Good money versus bad money in Range development
It’s been dizzying to follow developments in the Mesabi Metallics iron ore project near Nashwauk this week. Last week we learned that billionaire Tom Clarke and his Chippewa Capital Partners won back state mineral leases for the former Butler Taconite property. But that came with the news that Clarke’s other company ERP Iron Ore, which…
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Harassment scandal roils governor, MN-8 races
Yesterday, MinnPost published a bombshell story by Sam Brodey about a top Rick Nolan staffer accused of harassing women who worked in Nolan’s office. Several women told Brodey that Nolan’s D.C. office legislative director Jim Swidirski harassed and groped them. Swidirski was allowed to resign quietly in 2015. Nolan then retained Swidirski as a campaign…
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Steelworkers contract talks test strong market
This month contract negotiations opened between the United Steelworkers of America and two big steelmakers, U.S. Steel and ArcelorMittal. Already, the union says the two sides are far apart. Workers hope for a better outcome than the last labor negotiations in 2015. That contract froze pay and added costs to retirees. However, it also held…
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Calculating Minnesota’s 8th District DFL primary
As a hot, wet Northern Minnesota summer slogs into its dog days, so too does the DFL primary in the Eighth Congressional District. Less than a month away, the Aug. 14 primary election will send a new DFL nominee to face a well-financed Republican challenger backed vociferously by President Trump. That challenger, Pete Stauber of…
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Science can solve mining risks, but only if we demand it
As a nerd who grew up on an Iron Range junkyard, I appreciate anything that combines groundbreaking science with homemade contraptions. That’s why I’m fascinated by a daisy chain of unobtrusive barrels floating in an old Erie Mining pit outside Babbitt, Minnesota. They may save our world. Jeff Hanson put them there. Hanson is an…
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Another chance for western Mesabi mine
Billionaire Tom Clarke and his Chippewa Capital Partners will have a chance to finish the $2 billion Mesabi Metallics iron mine and pig iron plant at the former Butler Taconite plant in Nashwauk. On Wednesday, Gov. Mark Dayton announced that the state will restore mineral leases withheld from the project after the bankruptcy of its…