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The human story in every place
Most every Iron Ranger knows an old timer’s story about living off the land, harvesting timber to build the home where the children would be raised, the names of traditional foods and songs. Sure, some of us are Italian, some Slovenian, others Norwegian, Finn, Swede or Ojibwa, but the cold fact is that these stories…
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The politics of the ‘walleye session’
Today Gov. Mark Dayton holds a public forum on the hardships facing business owners on Mille Lacs after the DNR warned that it may have to suspend walleye fishing on the big lake in August. Earlier this week, the governor’s spokesman Linden Zakula made this statement: “Governor Dayton spoke today with both Senate Majority Leader…
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Range-area lawmaker Dill faces serious cancer
Rep. David Dill (DFL-Crane Lake) is gravely ill and receiving cancer treatment at the Mayo Clinic. The Tower Timberjay reported the news first, followed by the Duluth News Tribune and other media outlets. Dill and his family have not yet released a public statement explaining the situation, but several area officials have confirmed the serious…
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Another restrictive deer hunt in Minnesota
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources announced the regulations for the 2015 deer hunting season. Like last year, it’s a more restrictive approach. For the rifle season, most of the state will have a lottery for antlerless permits. However, several zones in the Northeast (including my family’s shack) will be bucks only. The primary rifle season…
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Broadband push just first part of new economy
Universal access to affordable broadband isn’t just about getting more people on the internet, it’s about giving more people in more places the opportunity to generate a sustainable balance of labor and wealth in their communities. Over the past 10 years I’ve written many pieces about the importance of high speed internet infrastructure throughout Minnesota and the potential…
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What’s ahead for the Great Northern Radio Show
Since October 2011 I’ve produced, written and hosted a radio variety program called the Great Northern Radio Show on Northern Community Radio based in Grand Rapids and Bemidji, Minnesota. We’ve been fortunate enough to air on independent public stations around the state and even on the cable access channel in the Northeast suburbs of the Twin…
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Building s’more character
My youthful excursions to Cub Scout and Boy Scout camps run together in a blur. Tents. Fires. Tripping on tree roots. One thing I do remember is that my dad was there, especially for my first camping trip as a Webelos Scout. He could only stay one night and his snoring shook the tent flaps…
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The woods and us
I smile to see the midnight fireflies from my darkened bedroom in the woods. The fireflies of my youth in the Sax-Zim Bog twinkled like stars. We see fewer today, but still enough to inspire wonder. Suddenly my smile drained away. What if my boys remember a few fireflies when there are none? We read…
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The haircut heard ’round the Eighth
Stewart Mills, the 2014 GOP nominee in Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District, hasn’t announced officially whether he plans to run for the office again in 2016. But his famous hair seems to be leaning that way. Mills, scion of the well-known Fleet Farm family, lost to Democratic U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan by a little over one percentage…
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Smoke Week
Here in Northern Minnesota, we’ve been dealing with a thick haze of smoke from Canadian wildfires for more than a week. Just this week the smoke finally dipped further south, blanketing the Twin Cities and Southern Minnesota. Yesterday, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency recorded air quality indexes as high as 200 in the Twin Cities,…
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‘Everything just fits together naturally’
When settlers came to Northern Minnesota they found timber so tall and plentiful that they built Chicago with it. When Chicago burned down they built it again. New prospectors found iron ore so rich they could shovel it straight into eastern blast furnaces to make the steel that built a growing nation, supplying two world…
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Lessons from a decade of parenting (I’ve learned nothing)
“What size shirt does George wear?” my mom asked a few days before my son’s birthday. “I don’t know,” I said. “Kinda big. He’s bigger than Doug (his twin brother). But not taller. Doug is taller. They’re both kinda tall. They wear shirts. Sometimes I pay for the shirts, but not always. I don’t know…
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Nolan running again in 2016; no opponent yet
In a fiery speech at his annual barbecue fundraiser, U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN8) announced he would seek another term in Congress in 2016. Nolan represents Minnesota’s Eighth Congressional District, a large region that includes Northeastern and Central Minnesota. MN-8 has been considered a swing district since 2010, when Rep. Jim Oberstar was surprisingly defeated…
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Chris Pratt was born on the Iron Range
Last week, I joined the legions of Summer 2015 movie-goers to see “Jurassic World” starring everyman action hero Chris Pratt. I also delighted in a little known connection between this film and the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota. And no, it’s not this: Guy who unsuccessfully weaponized velociraptors in #JurassicWorld looks like MN Senate leader Tom Bakk…
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Summer of trials and tribulations on the Iron Range
The last few months of Iron Range politics and economics have been discouraging. That’s as polite as I can be in describing what’s happened: the repetitive, lazy assumptions of local media, the underreported stories of inside dealings, the overstatement of future economic growth from new kinds of mining and the understatement of the tremendous market pressures…