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Destroyer of worlds
Seventy-five years ago the world’s first atomic bomb detonated across the arid expanse of the Jornada del Muerto Desert in New Mexico. Upon witnessing the otherworldly power he had unleashed physicist Robert Oppenheimer considered a line from Hindu scripture. “I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” said the god Krishna. A reflective Oppenheimer quoted…
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Lessons from travel ball
My parents hover near the periphery of memories of organized childhood activities. Oh, they were there. I just didn’t notice them much. Looking out the bus window of my recollections I see my dad patrolling the school parking lot in his work clothes. He smokes a Winston cigarette while sometimes emitting just a hint of…
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Driving it home
When you bring your first child home from the hospital it’s like juggling a grenade with the pin pulled out. Fate entrusts this tiny, fragile creature to two dopes who will learn everything they know about parenting from experimentation on this baby. Maybe that’s why there’s such emphasis on getting the car seat installed properly.…
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Latest Power podcast episode connects desert car chase with Minnesota mines
The second episode of our podcast “Power in the Wilderness” dropped over the weekend. You can listen online now if you missed it. The episode is entitled “El Pulpo,” Spanish for “The Octopus.” Our show is a special production of KAXE-Northern Community Radio. It’s funded in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.…
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Media mergers in northern Minnesota and beyond
By now you may have seen the last column I wrote for the Hibbing Daily Tribune and the first that I penned for the newly merged Mesabi Tribune. Then last Friday I did a couple interviews about the merger of the Hibbing Daily Tribune and Mesabi Daily News. First I went on the KAXE Morning…
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A new age on the Iron Range
There’s really not much to Iron Range history, at least in terms of quantity. Each of our small towns tolls not more than 120 years. The Ojibwe reservations are only a little older than that. And before that a complex array of Native American communities and dense forests that few today know anything about. Our…
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125 years of iron ore from Hibbing’s Mahoning mine
At sunrise on Friday, July 3 workers raised a 44-star American flag at the edge of the the Hull Rust Mahoning Pit in Hibbing. The historic flag commemorated the day in 1895 when the first shovel lifted iron ore from the Mahoning Pit. “That open pit of course started with a single scoop of ore…
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Same letters, new words
In June of 1998 I covered Legion baseball games for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. One hot summer night some kid threw a no hitter. The kid was my age but I pretended to be a grownup to interview him. Afterward, I typed up the story in the newsroom. All of a sudden Christina Hiatt, one…
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2020 Iron Range Fourth of July schedule battered, not beaten
As you might know, each year I enjoy sharing the schedule of Iron Range Fourth of July parades, street dances and fireworks displays. July 4 is a American holiday that holds special meaning here in the immigrant communities of northern Minnesota. This year we enter the Fourth of July holiday week with much more uncertainty…
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The haunting truth of human nature
For the past couple years I’ve been reading old Hibbing newspapers for my book. I find that reading every paper from every year is exhausting but still the best way to research. This method provides context about everything going on in the community, including the national and international news that shaped people’s attitudes. So I’ve…
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IRRR commissioner OKs contested water tower project in Brookston
On Thursday afternoon Commissioner Mark Phillips of the Minnesota Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation announced the approval of a contested $250,000 grant for a water tower in Brookston. The decision concludes a growing controversy over the project’s exclusion from a collection of public works projects funded by the unique state agency. The small…
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IRRR must adapt or be smashed to pieces
Amid a global pandemic and watershed moment in social justice it seems mundane to raise a parochial political concern like the Minnesota Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation (nee IRRRB). Over the years the IRRRB has been involved in many important, boring, and sometimes questionable investments in public works and economic development under administrations…
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Regaining a lost year
The year 2020 will go down as the strangest of my life so far. But I have something to compare it to. For younger people these strange times will provide the experiences they’ll draw upon the rest of their lives. That’s why decisions they’re making right now will profoundly influence times yet to come. The…
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Redhead Mountain Bike Park looks wild
The manufactured landscape of the Iron Range looks like nothing else. It’s a cyborg. Half natural, half unnatural. Steep cliffs made by shovels, trucks, and explosives overlook deep, clear lakes that are not lakes. They’re pits dug through generations, reclaimed by a water table that once existed underground. Nature always stands ready to reclaim what…
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CD8 race to test GOP trend in northern Minnesota
The 8th Congressional District race, which drew so much attention two years ago, begins with a dynamic unseen since the 1920s: a Republican incumbent clearly favored. U.S. Rep. Pete Stauber won the high-priced MN-8 donnybrook of 2018. He enters 2020 joined at the hip with President Donald Trump as both seek re-election. With Trump’s approval…