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New model of journalism won’t happen on Facebook
Lately I’ve been contemplating the difference between how I felt about being on Facebook after signing up a decade ago and how I feel logging on now. It’s a world of difference. In a way, this change explains the reason Facebook is abandoning efforts to curate journalism, and why that probably won’t work either. Looking…
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Hate and power on the Iron Range
As the holiday commemorating the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. drew to a close last week, we were reminded that the hate he fought remains among us. In the Mesabi Iron Range city of Virginia, someone distributed flyers touting messages of white supremacy and racial resentment. The leaflets appeared in Britt…
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This Week in Vikings Playoff Anxiety, Vol. 2 Miracle Edition
When I began this series I had no firm belief it would be a series at all. Generations of bad luck, boneheaded plays and inexplicable mental collapse conditioned me for the seemingly inevitable disappointment of any Minnesota Vikings trip to the playoffs. Indeed, that was the joke. And while I certainly wanted the Vikings to…
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L.L. Bean ‘Bootmobile’ headed to the Iron Range
Growing up in the rural environs just off the Mesabi iron formation, I became accustomed to the machinations of the bookmobile. Well, now Iron Range residents can expect a new arrival: the Bootmobile. L.L. Bean, purveyor of fine boots and outdoor clothing and accessories, turned a pickup truck into a giant boot. Now they tour…
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On the Cuyuna Range, the culmination of a plan
Last fall I had to go to Brainerd for a speaking engagement. My fellow presenter and I were chatting on the way down. We decided it might be fun to drive through Crosby and Ironton instead of bypassing them the way many motorists have for decades. Why? Well, there’s stuff going on in Crosby now.…
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‘Making It Up North’ features Great Northern Radio Show
This year WDSE-WIRT Channel 8, the PBS station in Duluth, announced a new show. Karen Sunderman hosts and Steve Ash films the program called “Making It Up North.” They profile creative people across Northern Minnesota and Wisconsin. I was honored that they chose to highlight my Great Northern Radio Show in one of their early…
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Next generation ready for civility
Today’s high school students were born in the 21st Century. Like the millennials before them, they grow up with the internet. But not only that, smart phones, tablets and social media have been part of their lives for as long as they can remember. Anyone who communicates using social media knows the pros and the…
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This Week in Minnesota Vikings Playoff Anxiety
Picture, if you well, an envelope. It might have come in the mail. It might have been hand delivered by a Great Horned Owl. That is irrelevant. Inside the envelope is an answer to a question that has endured many generations. Will you forever be trapped in a repeating hell, or will you be eternally…
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Remembering Bill Ojala, radical conscience of the Iron Range
Bill Ojala, a former Iron Range legislator and later gadfly social justice activist, died last Saturday at the age of 92. John Lundy of the Duluth News Tribune penned a good obituary (“‘A true son of the Iron Range’: Lawyer, politician Bill Ojala dies at 92“) in yesterday’s paper. Ojala, descended from Finnish-American immigrants on…
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Iron innovation most vital mining challenge for Mesabi Range
I know, there’s plenty we could talk about regarding controversial copper-nickel mining projects in Northern Minnesota. PolyMet has a draft permit to mine. Ely’s Twin Metals got a symbolic boost from the Trump Administration. Persistent and largely meaningless slap fights between mining advocates and skeptics color the pages of the local press. But the truth…
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Oracle says future is mean in 2018
I dream of an old schoolhouse, a maze of stained oak trim and hardwood floors. Cavernous hallways and stairwells double back on themselves. I run the labyrinth. Not all footsteps are my own. I’m lost. Hissing bursts of steam punctuate a mechanized droning sound. I awaken in a small dark space. The dream ends, but…
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Minnesotans to world: Ope! Sneak right by ya’
If there’s one thing that’s definitively Minnesotan it’s our dialect. Studied by linguists and fodder for pop culture, the way we talk developed uniquely among our immigrant farmers and laborer ancestors on the cold prairies and forests of our lake-festooned northern land. Howard Mohr wrote the definitive text, “How To Talk Minnesotan,” which he also…
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Thoughts on improved Minn. population trends
For the first time in 15 years, more people moved to Minnesota from other parts of the U.S. than moved away. Added to immigration and a positive birth rate, Minnesota’s population is growing. Trends here are better than among our Midwestern neighbors. That’s the good news. The bad news is that all of this is…
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Duluth Lakers play zone outside harbor
Basketball fans sometimes wonder, what the heck is a Los Angeles Laker? The well informed might know that this once venerated (now down-on-its-luck) franchise used to be the Minneapolis Lakers, though that still doesn’t tell most what a Laker is. A laker is a ship or vessel confined to a freshwater lake or lake system.…
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Rural Broadband: An Oral History
If you get a chance, read “‘If it were easy it would have been done by now’: Why high-speed internet remains elusive for many in rural Minnesota” by Tim Gihring of MinnPost. It’s a good story about a topic we cover here at MinnesotaBrown, but it also includes an almost embarrassing amount of press for…