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How low can iron ore go? We’ll find out
To paraphrase an old cliche, do you want the good news or the bad news? Well, the bad news is that a recent commodities forecast by BMI Research predicts iron ore prices will find their floor in 2016, with prices falling further from their current lows through next fall. Iron ore is expected to trade at $35/ton on…
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MI-B seeks collaboration funds for new school
Following legislative action in 2014, the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board created a school collaboration fund from local taconite production and occupation taxes. The broad goal was to encourage fiscally challenged Iron Range school districts to share resources, curriculum and staff, or even consolidate. But in practical, baldly political terms, this fund was created…
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On golden pond hockey
Tomorrow morning, the puck will drop at 8 for the first game of a new pond hockey tournament on McKinney Lake in the storied hockey town of Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The North Woods Pond Hockey Tournament is modeled after the famous U.S. Pond Hockey Championship held annually at Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis. The tournament begins at…
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Remembering Duluth journalist Larry Fortner
Former Duluth News Tribune editor and longtime Northern Minnesota journalist Larry Fortner died early Wednesday from cancer. The Duluth News Tribune remembers Fortner in a Peter Passi front page story today. After work in Florida and Kentucky, Fortner found his way to Duluth, Minnesota in 1979. He would become editor of the DNT, going on…
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‘Rogue’ baby born in family van on Hwy. 38
Most babies are born the typical way, popped out in a hospital surrounded by medical personnel. But sometimes, babies quite literally “go rogue.” Last Saturday, Feb. 13, a Minnesota woman went into labor in the remote northern Itasca County logging town of Bigfork. While Bigfork has a hospital, it does not have an obstetrics unit,…
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DFLer Mike Thompson joins crowded 6A race
Mike Thompson, a DFLer from Cherry, announced in today’s Hibbing Daily Tribune that he will run for the House 6A seat being vacated by State Rep. Carly Melin (DFL-Hibbing) this fall. Thompson is a car salesman who works at the Hibbing Chrysler Center. Though it’s not clear how many candidates plan to honor the DFL…
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Lost Mittens: A Love Story
It’s fitting that Valentine’s Day, a holiday celebrating romantic love, comes in the thick of Northern Minnesota’s sprawling winter. Just as many people have lost love over the years, so it goes for our gloves and hats after months of regular use. By now, gloves have been removed and placed in pockets more times than…
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Hear the Aurora Great Northern Radio Show today
Last Saturday, Feb. 6, 2016, I hosted another live broadcast of my Great Northern Radio Show from the Mesabi East Auditorium in Aurora, Minnesota. We were there to help celebrate the Laskiainen Finnish Sliding Festival in nearby Palo and “the beginning of the end of winter.” You can hear the rebroadcast of this episode today…
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PUC rejects lower power rates for mines
The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission dismissed the Minnesota Power petition to allow lower rates for its industrial customers, most notably Iron Range taconite mines, while raising rates for residential customers. The request by Minnesota Power came after a new law passed the state legislature allowing the mines to seek lower rates. Minnesota’s iron mines are reeling amid…
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Super Bowl done, now for superb owls at Sax-Zim Bog
The 9th Annual Sax-Zim Bog Birding Festival starts Friday, Feb. 12 and runs through Sunday, Feb. 14, 2016. It provides serious and casual birders alike a unique opportunity to see great gray owls, northern owls, pine grosbeaks and many other wintering species. The IRRRB’s Lee Bloomquist published an article on the Sax-Zim Bog Birding Festival…
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One River, Many Stories
Before the road. Before the rails. Before the timber cruisers or even the original people. All that connected what we now call the Mesabi Iron Range to the place we now call Duluth at the head of Lake Superior was a little southbound crick called the St. Louis River. It gets bigger than a crick, of course, but never all…
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Uncertain fate for Soudan underground physics lab
I’ve always been fascinated by the fact that advanced physics research takes place a half mile beneath the earth at the retired Soudan Underground Mine on the Minnesota Iron Range. True, what they do there can be explained. (Mostly it’s research related to isolating the neutrino, a sub-atomic particle believed to be critical to understanding the universe). Yet it…
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Economic salvation is local
Duluth, Minnesota, is among several cities featured in a James Fallows story in the March 2016 edition of “The Atlantic,” entitled “How America is putting itself back together.” The Duluth angle is what got my attention, but the rest of the story is what I’d like to talk about today. Fallows lists Duluth alongside his story’s…
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Molten iron in the sky
In China, people are wrapping up the celebration of the lunar new year. With a country as big and economically diverse as China you find many different traditions. I saw this next one on ABC News this morning. In the old steel town of Dunhuang, blacksmiths have an annual New Year tradition of melting scrap…
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Bakk explains failed bid for Range special session
We can now agree that Gov. Mark Dayton’s effort to call a special session to address pressing economic issues has been undone. The casualties include, most notably, expiring unemployment benefits of Iron Range miners caught in the gears of international commerce. Dayton cited Republican resistance to agree to terms for a special session, while Republicans seemed to blame Dayton for not calling one…