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The hidden importance of Tuesday’s precinct caucuses
With the Super Bowl in the state’s collective rear view mirror, Tuesday night brings the biennial tradition of Minnesota’s precinct caucuses. And while it might seem a precipitous drop-off in excitement, this year’s caucuses offer real world implications. Precinct caucuses are a strange quirk of this moralistic state that once placed tremendous value on grassroots…
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Resiliency: the skill we all need to survive
Every living thing around us knows resilience. The snow-speckled maple out our window went dormant for the long cold winter, ready to release sap and resume life come spring. The chickadee stands on thin, nearly bloodless legs, all so these spritely little birds may flit among the branches no matter how cold the air. The…
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200 miles north of the Super Bowl
The fighter jets patrolling the skies above Super Bowl LII also maneuver above my home 200 miles north of Minneapolis. Roaring ghosts chasing the horizon. I think this is where they turn around or refuel. Safe. Remote. Nothing down here but trees, lakes and us. In this way living 200 miles from the Super Bowl…
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Duluth gains sharp new arts venue, promise of another
After several years and $18 million in renovation, downtown Duluth’s NorShor Theater reopened this week with a local production of “Mamma Mia,” the ABBA musical. That show is sold out for two weeks. And while ABBA is great, most folks in the Zenith City are just excited for the addition of a dazzling new downtown…
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West Side Story: the high stakes Mesabi mining show
A proposed new mine near the western Mesabi Iron Range town of Nashwauk has proven to be a challenge to explain. Every time I go to write one piece, something new pops up, changing the story. I don’t even know what to call it. This thing is a folk story now. So let’s start from…
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Enrollment decline poses new challenge to state colleges
Trying to read trends is difficult. You have to figure out what’s part of a normal cycle and what might be indicative of change. And then, if it is real change, you have to determine what’s causing the change. Is it inevitable or malleable? Are you causing it or is it something else? That’s the…
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Mesabi Iron Range takes action on mountain bike trails
Last week brought a very busy Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board meeting. In addition to discussions of reform and school funding, the board also green-lighted the commissioner’s plan to fund three mountain bike trails on the Mesabi Iron Range. The almost $5 million grant package helps volunteer-based organizations and Giants Ridge develop three distinct…
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America: self-made, but more
No U.S. president knew mining better than Herbert Hoover. The man made a generational fortune as a mining engineer using his remarkable ability to assess and improve the productivity of mines all over the world. Presidential historian Feather Schwartz Foster writes that Hoover bragged he could smell a successful mine the moment he entered it.…
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IRRRB backs off plan for private trust
On Wednesday, the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board agreed with Commissioner Mark Phillips that plans to create a private trust for a large agency fund aren’t ready yet. The agency will take the idea back to the drawing board. I wrote about the challenges of balancing the public interest with politics just yesterday. John…
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Getting politics out of IRRRB? Not so easy
With another legislative session approaching, we see new attention paid to the ever changing Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB). The IRRRB now finds itself enveloped in the recently renamed Minnesota Department of Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation. Earlier this week, a southern Minnesota Republican raised concerns about the creation of a new trust…
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New model of journalism won’t happen on Facebook
Lately I’ve been contemplating the difference between how I felt about being on Facebook after signing up a decade ago and how I feel logging on now. It’s a world of difference. In a way, this change explains the reason Facebook is abandoning efforts to curate journalism, and why that probably won’t work either. Looking…
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Hate and power on the Iron Range
As the holiday commemorating the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. drew to a close last week, we were reminded that the hate he fought remains among us. In the Mesabi Iron Range city of Virginia, someone distributed flyers touting messages of white supremacy and racial resentment. The leaflets appeared in Britt…
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This Week in Vikings Playoff Anxiety, Vol. 2 Miracle Edition
When I began this series I had no firm belief it would be a series at all. Generations of bad luck, boneheaded plays and inexplicable mental collapse conditioned me for the seemingly inevitable disappointment of any Minnesota Vikings trip to the playoffs. Indeed, that was the joke. And while I certainly wanted the Vikings to…
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L.L. Bean ‘Bootmobile’ headed to the Iron Range
Growing up in the rural environs just off the Mesabi iron formation, I became accustomed to the machinations of the bookmobile. Well, now Iron Range residents can expect a new arrival: the Bootmobile. L.L. Bean, purveyor of fine boots and outdoor clothing and accessories, turned a pickup truck into a giant boot. Now they tour…
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On the Cuyuna Range, the culmination of a plan
Last fall I had to go to Brainerd for a speaking engagement. My fellow presenter and I were chatting on the way down. We decided it might be fun to drive through Crosby and Ironton instead of bypassing them the way many motorists have for decades. Why? Well, there’s stuff going on in Crosby now.…