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When the thundering noise hits home
It’s been a momentous couple of weeks on the Mesabi Iron Range, notably marred by a major layoff at two mines. But let’s be honest, it’s been a momentous year for the country. Our world is changing. American political institutions are falling apart. People disagree about whether this is good or not, but it’s happening…
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Solving high costs, low availability of child care
My latest column for the Minnesota Star Tribune is out today: “Child care is expensive, but no one is getting rich from it.” Monday is “Day Without Child Care” in Minnesota. Child care providers, families and employers will raise awareness and lobby for policies that reduce the cost and improve the availability of child care…
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All good things end
This will be my last column in the Mesabi Tribune. No sense in burying the lede. But to end something, you really should start from the beginning. My first professional byline was in the erstwhile Hibbing Daily Tribune shortly after I graduated high school. I met my wife Christina in the newsroom. In June 2001,…
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A note to historical researchers, 100 years hence
For about three years, I spent much of my free time reading century-old Hibbing newspapers on a microfilm machine in my basement. Please don’t throw your undies, ladies; it’s not as sexy as it sounds. My book research took on added meaning as I slowly absorbed the sensibilities of the 1910s and ‘20s. After a…
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The U.S. Steel deal is dead; long live uncertainty
When it comes to the U.S. Steel/Nippon merger, it’s all over but the crying. And there will be quite a lot of expensive crying in federal courtrooms over coming months and years. But that doesn’t mean the story is over. We’re going to learn a lot. This is the start of something, not the end.…
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‘A Complete Unknown’ in Bob’s hometown
What were you doing two years after you graduated from high school? Going to college? Raising kids? Turning a wrench? Perhaps you were fighting a war in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. Or maybe you were fighting one of 22 wars in the Call of Duty video game franchise. Me? I was commuting from Hibbing, Minnesota,…
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100 years later, still waiting on the Prince of Wales
With rain pouring from gray autumn skies, about 10,000 men, women and children swarmed the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis & Omaha rail depot on West Fifth Avenue in Duluth. The unexpectedly massive crowd spilled across the tracks to greet the Prince of Wales. It was Sunday, Oct. 12, 1924 — 100 years ago today. Anticipation…
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Stuck in the middle with you: life in the ‘sandwich generation’
My latest column for the Minnesota Star Tribune, “In the quick of time — a dispatch from the ‘sandwich generation’ years,” is out now. Readers here might remember the jolt my family took when my mom suffered a stroke in 2022. In one terrible turn of events, a relatively healthy child care provider in her…
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Clock ticking for Hibbing city hall restoration
One plot point in the 1985 movie classic “Back to the Future” involves the town’s clock tower. With the clock broken, preservationists raise funds to restore the timepiece and keep the building from being torn down. The situation in the Iron Range town of Hibbing bears some similarity. I mean, no, Hibbing’s city hall clock…
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Counting on sheep to reduce carbon hoof print
The dog days of August might seem a strange time to think about sweaters and stew, but I’ve been reading about sheep lately. Sheep seem like greatly underrated livestock. They give us wool and mutton (sweaters and stew). You can even turn a sheep’s hide into traditional southern Italian bagpipe called a zampogna. I’m not…
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Replanting the seeds of public education
The tradition of Iron Range public education excellence once required no explanation. Most local kids attended grand, palatial high schools with theaters, pools, cutting-edge science labs and vocational training facilities. Range superintendents recruited the best college education graduates in the state to teach the sons and daughters of miners. The children learned about boundless opportunities…
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Lecture will detail 1920s Klan activity on the Iron Range
Public lectures were once a hot ticket on the Iron Range. Before TV, streaming services and YouTube, you had to see someone talk at the local auditorium if you wanted to go down an informational rabbit hole. Well, these days, some of us try to keep the tradition alive. I’ll be giving a free public…
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Hate and hope on the Iron Range
A century ago, Iron Rangers cheered, fretted and fought the rise of the Ku Klux Klan across the Mesabi. The hate and hope of this time remain with us today. Word of the Klan arrived much earlier. A hit movie, “The Birth of a Nation,’ played in Duluth and Iron Range theaters in 1915 and…
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Heart du coeur del corazón
Years ago, my wife and I experienced magical moments when we heard our babies’ heartbeats for the first time in the ultrasound room. Even though a flickering pulse sounds like an old dishwasher through a walkie-talkie, we were moved by the hopeful cadence of new life. However, when I sat in the same room almost…
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An ode to Pops
If you’re in your 40s and still have grandparents, you’re pretty lucky. I certainly am. In a couple days my grandfather turns 90, one of those big, round impossible numbers you hear about sometimes. Nonagenarians sometimes dole out advice, such as following a strict regimen of diet and exercise, avoiding all vices. But that certainly…