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Build steel bridges, not steel cages
We’ve outlived our immigrant ancestors. Imprints of hungrier times remain etched on our communities, but they are easy to ignore. The fight for workplace safety and fair pay. The demand for free public education. The streets and amenities built to last beyond the mines on the edge of town. The shared humanity of the many…
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Hot times at the Great Northern Radio Show
We’ll be live with a summertime edition of the Great Northern Radio Show Saturday evening at 5 p.m. The show features music from the Holy Hootenanners and The Don’t Tell Darlings. Our all-star house band led by Katie Houg plans some great surprises. Beyond that, we do comedy and storytelling centered in Northern Minnesota but…
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German TV station explores Bob Dylan’s Hibbing roots
Last fall the German/French art network ARTE-TV visited Hibbing, Minnesota, as part of a “Bob Dylan’s America” series exploring the roots of the erstwhile Robert Zimmerman, Hibbing Class of 1959. Host Wolfgang Niedecken interviewed me for local color up at the former Hull Rust Mahoning Mine View in North Hibbing. You can view the episode…
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The Day After Duluth, comments about ‘trade policy’
A few days before U.S. Independence Day, our neighbors to the north hold their own national holiday, Canada Day. They throw a big party at the Canadian consulate in Minneapolis every year. I interviewed Canada’s governor-general in 2015, so they’re kind enough to send me invitations. Haven’t gone, but I half wonder how this year’s…
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Iron Range parades, street dances and fireworks
As a young kid I marched in the Keewatin Fourth of July parade as a patriotic penguin, Donald Duck, and other flag-festooned creatures. As an older kid I remember piling into a car with my friends, touring Range towns for street dances and fireworks. Before cell phones we would often try to anticipate where we…
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See all the trucks go by
Diesel fuel smells like home. It reminds me of the idling school bus and the pungent workshop at my family’s junkyard in 1986. Trucks leave deep treads on my memories. Big yellow mining trucks dot the landscape of the Mesabi Iron Range as they have for generations. I played with a Tonka Truck as a…
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Hear ‘Dig Deep’ drill into 2018 campaign
As I previewed a few days ago, we held a Dig Deep live event at KAXE studios in Grand Rapids this week. Moderator and producer Heidi Holtan led a conversation between conservative commentator Chuck Marohn and liberal commentator, yours truly. We analyzed Minnesota politics as it stands today. Specifically we explore the uncertain race for…
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Dig Deep goes live tonight to talk 2018 races
Tonight at 6 the podcast Dig Deep broadcasts a special live edition from KAXE studios in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. Dig Deep features moderator Heidi Holtan, conservative commentator Chuck Marohn and myself, the liberal commentator. You can join us to watch the event or listen on the radio. The event will later be released as a…
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President Trump to hold Duluth rally June 20
President Trump will hold a June 20 rally in Duluth, Minn., to sell his policies and stump for Republican candidates. The rally will be held at the Duluth Entertainment and Convention Center at 6:30 p.m. June 20. Doors will open at 3:30 p.m. UPDATE: The rally has been moved to AMSOIL Arena in the DECC…
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Growing opportunity in rocky economic soil
“He smiled and all his teeth were covered with tobacco stains He said, “It don’t do men no good to pray for peace and rain. Peace and rain is just a way to say prosperity, And buffalo chips is all it means to me. ~Tom T. Hall, “Faster Horses” We all say we want a…
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Summer 2018 brings color to Range communities
I drive through Nashwauk, Minnesota, most days. It’s a nice little town, but a little worn down. That’s not unusual for the cities of the western Mesabi Iron Range. These boom towns bloomed in a white pine wilderness a century ago, each at the mouth of a specific iron mine. Now that mining is more…
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Activist Sorensen joins Minnesota 8th District race
Yesterday, Minnesota media reported on numerous tales of political intrigue as the state and federal candidate filing period closed. Here in the North, we learned that we’d have an unexpected Republican primary in the Eighth Congressional District, but we also got another candidate in the crowded DFL primary. Progressive activist Soren C. Sorensen of Bemidji…
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Welty jumps in 8th District GOP race
Former Duluth School Board member Harry Welty jumped into the Eighth District race for Congress as a Republican Monday. Welty, who has run for office as a Republican and as an independent in the past, will compete with GOP-endorsed St. Louis County Commissioner Pete Stauber for the Republican nomination. The Eighth District represents one of…
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Wild conventions roil Minnesota governor’s race
The 2018 race for governor of Minnesota keeps unfolding like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, each flip of the page leading to some strange twist. The race was always going to hold some intrigue. Two term incumbent Gov. Mark Dayton, a popular if sometimes perplexing political figure, leaves office in January. The state’s Republican…
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History echoes through Iron Range politics
In 1887, the Merritt Brothers and a crew led by Capt. J.A. Nichols discovered rich hematite ore under 14 feet of mud near the future townsite of Mountain Iron. After three years of wading through stinking mosquito swamps, alternating with hellish winter conditions, these men turned hope of discovering the Mesabi Range into reality. Almost…