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Researchers list ideas for Range economic resilience
Economic diversification on Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range has been a hot topic ever since I learned how to spell those words, and surely long before that. The darnedest thing about the subject is that most folks will support the concept of diversification, but fewer will accept a role in making it happen. This is only amplified by what is,…
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‘Today Show’ highlights BWCA, mining debate
The debate over copper/nickel mining in Northern Minnesota reached national news this morning. The weekend edition of NBC’s “Today Show” profiled Dave and Amy Freeman. This Ely and Grand Marais couple have been living in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness for more than 300 days. The Freemans started their year in the BWCA to…
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New bike park planned for Itasca County
A long, long time ago, humans arrived in Northern Minnesota on narrow, bumpy paths that wound through trees and around walls of ancient rock. It’s the future now. People look forward to the next big thing. In the future, what we want is … a narrow, bumpy path wound through trees and around walls of…
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Range mines catch a Super Mario star
If Iron Range mines were Super Mario, they’d be blinking while knocking off Goombas left and right. More on that below. This week brought quarterly earnings reports from the two biggest mining companies on Minnesota’s Iron Range, U.S. Steel and Cliffs Natural Resources. Both companies show significant improvement from a dismal 2015. Cliffs posted a profit…
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Ely’s State Theater to relight iconic marquee
The towns of the Iron Range stretch along a 135 mile line, each at one time a shining beacon of what a bustling industrial city would look like if it were instead a network of small towns. Like the fortunes of a Rust Belt city, the small towns of the Iron Range have mostly suffered…
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Hibbing disc golf course will survive mine expansion
When Hibbing Taconite announced it was expanding its mining footprint in May, most were relieved. Here was an Iron Range mine that, in the short run anyway, would avoid a shutdown. But there was a cost. The iconic North Hibbing mine view and Hibbing Disc Golf course would be blown to smithereens. The attractions will…
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Inside fundraising in House 6A Range DFL primary
Last week at the blog we dove into a debate over who funds Iron Range campaigns. At the time we didn’t have access to the first major campaign finance reports. Well, the Campaign Finance Board released those reports Tuesday morning. You can view them for yourself here. So let’s explore the fundraising for Northern Minnesota’s…
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Loggers, classic cars and blueberries, oh my!
We now wind into the “flurry of activity before we realize the leaves are already changing” part of our Northern Minnesota summer. It’s hot and time moves fast. On the western Mesabi, Grand Rapids holds its annual Weekend of Wheels car show and swap meet, an event I always find preferable to the county fairs. My…
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Sister Hazel headlines Merritt Days 2016
In recent years, the Iron Range city of Mountain Iron booked some hot act from the 1990s to headline its Merritt Days festival. This year is no exception, as the announced Aug. 13 act will be Sister Hazel. Now, Sister Hazel didn’t leap off the screen at me, either, until I looked them up and…
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Grand Rapids mall to keep indy bookstore open
Here’s some first hand perspective on book stores in Northern Minnesota. My book, “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range, was published in 2008 by a small house, Red Step Press, based in Duluth. As a local book from a new press we had a good run. Without getting into numbers that might embarrass me in…
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T-bone fever: Tales from a meat raffle
Though humans evolved as omnivores, many people on earth do not eat meat. Early vegetarianism could be found in ancient Greece. Abstinence from animal flesh has been part of Hinduism and Buddhism since the 7th Century BC. One finds vegetarians in many parts of modern society, many swearing by the health benefits and moral authority…
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Masterful navigation brings in ship amid Duluth storm
Here’s an exciting display of the power of the Thursday morning storm that has many in Duluth still without power three days later. Dennis O’Hara posted this YouTube video of the 729-foot Algoma Guardian entering the Port of Duluth through the canal. This Lisa Kaczke story in the Duluth News Tribune tells the story, but…
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Nothing stops viking mauraders, except red tape
By now, many of you may have heard of the woes facing the Norwegian replica longship (aka, viking ship) Draken Harald Hårfagre as it makes its way into the Great Lakes. This ship sails around the world doing exhibitions, and now sails the Great Lakes as part of a tour of historical tall masted sailing ships.…
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The hot, wet violence of Minnesota’s summer
They call it a high pressure dome, hot electric atmosphere more vapor than air, parked over Minnesota like a Ouija board. We get these once or twice a summer, about as often as we get deep freezes in the dead of winter. Days like this remind us that 150 degrees Fahrenheit separate our typical annual…
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Iron Range backyard chickens to cluck stuff up
One-hundred years ago debating whether chickens should be allowed in Iron Range back yards would have been like debating whether or not people should breathe air. Chickens were part of the landscape, along with pigs, goats and even cows. First- and second-generation immigrants had no desire to keep livestock the way dad or grandma did.…