-
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…
-
Curtailing power of professional influence in Minnesota
My latest column for the Minnesota Reformer, “Democracy for sale or rent,” is out today. It’s about lobbying, specifically how the power-dynamic of our elected government is shaped by agents with an unfair advantage. Lobbying has been part of American politics from the beginning. In the colonial days, an elected delegate strolling the town square…
-
The West rises on the Mesabi Range
A flurry of new exploration and extraction could shape the next few decades of iron mining on the Mesabi Range. The exact outcome, however, seems as uncertain as a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. Local communities should read closely before turning the page. The general public just learned that the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources…
-
Big promises cost small towns valuable time and energy
My latest essay for the Minnesota Reformer just went live. Remember in January when someone proposed building a space port in Hoyt Lakes? You’d be excused for forgetting. News turns over quick these days. But it happened. And while it’s technically possible that a multi-billion dollar space port will be constructed on the Iron Range,…
-
Hopeful future combines STEM and humanities
Have you talked to a teenager lately? I see teenagers at work and home, so I talk to them plenty. It seems harder to choose a path in life than I remember at the same age. For one thing, careers have changed. Automation and new technology created enormous specialization across the economy these last 20…
-
Mixed Blood theater spotlights Iron Range culture
Sometimes I hear folks here say they don’t have a culture. Other people have cultures — people on TV, people from someplace else. But us? We’re just … regular. Iron Range history demonstrates that a collision of many cultures produced a local culture so unique we share a distinct dialect studied by linguists. Outsiders talk…
-
Solar winds of change in U.S. industrial policy
Tell me if you’ve heard this one before. China invests untold billions into an industry before selling the product overseas at less than cost. That lets China capture global markets while driving competition out of business. You might think I’m talking about iron and steel, but today I’m talking about technology and renewable energy, fast-growing…
-
De’myth’tifying Minnesota
A couple weeks ago I reviewed a new novel reframing the Paul Bunyan myth that still prevails in Minnesota tourism and culture. Today, I share a new essay for the Minnesota Reformer entitled “Paul Bunyan and the weight of myth.” This piece digs deeper into the Bunyan story and how it shaped the cultural perception…
-
Only local birds
I live on a quiet little hill above a swamp at the end of a long dirt road in the woods. The nearest stoplight stands some 27 miles away. Out here, it’s easy to feel lonely. Or at least it seemed that way when we moved from town almost 20 years ago. Time, however, revealed…
-
When a small town wins big
One of the best breaks I ever got was growing up in the tight-knit, hard-working community of Cherry, Minnesota. It’s not that Cherry is anything special to look at. The township is composed of scrub brush, trees and hayfields. The people work as miners, nurses and truck drivers — similar to a lot of folks…
-
How to cover politics in northern Minnesota, and other quandaries
One of my life’s most interesting relationships has been with the word, “journalism.” I’ve always considered myself a journalist, even after leaving daily newspapers 21 years ago. But the nature of that relationship changed with time and trends. In college during the late 1990s, our journalism professor bemoaned “citizen journalism,” a reference to the idea…
-
New book reimagines America’s folk history
What causes the sun to rise and the rain to fall? If you didn’t know, you might worry that these life-giving events could suddenly stop. That’s why many ancient myths formed, and why humans keep making myths in modern times. The amount we don’t know only grows as we open new realms of knowledge. Myths…
-
Companies crowd to mine newly viable West Range iron ore
Last week, I met someone who knew my writing and he was shocked to see that I was “young.” I put “young” in quotation marks because it’s a relative term. I think in this case he was really saying that he was surprised that I wasn’t old, because he figured I would be. It’s true,…
-
To build and rebuild
When I was young, I could spend a whole afternoon building a city of blocks, filling its streets with Matchbox cars. But if my mom asked me to spend one hour cleaning my room, I’d declare bankruptcy. I don’t have time for THAT! We like to build things, or have them built for us, but…
-
What’s black and white and gray all over? New cars
Prince sang about a little red Corvette. Bruce Springsteen told of a pink Cadillac. It’s hard to picture a ’57 Chevy that isn’t that perfect shade of blue. Chances are, the car of your dreams rolls through your mind in living color. Nobody fantasizes about a white Toyota Camry, even though — statistically speaking —…