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All about that bass
He didn’t go fishing often. He lived near a lake, so that wasn’t the issue. He owned a fishing pole, so that wasn’t it either. He just realized that when grandpa took the kids fishing, he could watch old movies and no one would bother him. So he didn’t go fishing often. One day, the…
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Hear the Grand Marais Great Northern Radio Show
You can now hear the podcast for the most recent Great Northern Radio Show we did up in Grand Marais on June 13. The show went well: great audience, sketch material and guests were strong on this one and the music fit the place like a glove. In addition to being a free download, you…
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Northern MN art teacher crowned Miss Minnesota
A Northern Minnesota high school art teacher was crowned Miss Minnesota last Saturday and will now use her campaign for the Miss America crown to highlight education issues. Rachel Latuff is the art teacher at North Woods High School serving Cook and Orr. You can catch the whole story in this Tom Klein article from the hometown…
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A short version of the longest day
Of all the birds in the forest, crows are the most likely to wake you up. Leave the window open on the morning of a summer solstice and they call from the tall dead tree. Don’t miss this! Don’t miss this! This is the longest day of the year. Some coffee drinkers might disagree, but…
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Metsa’s Cats Under the Stars to reunite on the Iron Range
Paul Metsa, the Minnesota folk/rock troubadour, will reunite his signature band from the 1980s, Cats Under the Stars,” for a reunion concert in the Iron Range town where they formed 40 years ago. Cats Under the Stars will perform 7 p.m., Thursday, June 18, at the Lyric Center for the Arts at 510 Chestnut Street…
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The waste of doom and gloom
“Come on, children You’re acting like children Every generation thinks It’s the end of the world “All you fat followers Get fit fast Every generation Thinks it’s the last Thinks it’s the end of the world” ~ “You Never Know” by the band Wilco If you are reading this, you are going to die. Now…
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Bakk whips votes to save session, career
I’ll be stepping away from the blog for a few days, but it is clear at this hour that the special session to resolve the 2015 legislative business is still a rocky proposition. At this point, the delay is fixed entirely on the DFL Senate, where Majority Leader Tom Bakk (DFL-Cook) still doesn’t have the…
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Great Northern Radio Show live Saturday from Grand Marais
(To the tune of “Do You Know the Way to San Jose“) Do you know the way to Grand Marais? I’ve been away so long. I may go wrong and lose my way. Do you know the way to Grand Marais? I’m going back up the North Shore to Grand Marais. 61 is a great…
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Minnesota’s self-induced legislative crisis nears end
Gov. Mark Dayton, House Speaker Kurt Daudt and Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk have reached a tentative compromise on the bills vetoed by the governor, paving the way for an imminent special legislative session. Having already abandoned his demand for universal voluntary early childhood programs, and more recently the repeal of (probably unconstitutional) provisions that…
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On Graduation Day
Graduation Day is so much cliché, so much Pomp and Circumstance that they even named the song for it. You dress your best — new tie and dad’s clip, blue dress and subtle flash of white camisole — only to cover all with a plastic table cloth from the dollar store, topping your round head…
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The night Jesse Ventura ‘shocked the world’
Nate Silver’s popular polling aggregator and statistical analysis website FiveThirtyEight.com, now housed with ESPN, is doing a series of short documentaries about situations where polling shaped the news. The one posted this week features the 1998 election of Gov. Jesse Ventura (I-Minn.), one of the most compelling political stories in state history. Well worth a watch:…
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Whatever gets you through the night
As a teenager l slept in the basement on a mildewed, brown-speckled mattress in the same room as a sump pump that rattled to life every time it rained. No, this isn’t the start of a long lost Dickens novel set on the Iron Range. I slept here by choice, giving my sister my warm,…
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On shapes and letters, sound and fury
Today, the Minnesota’s legislative leaders and Gov. Mark Dayton remain in a standoff over education funding. GOP House Speaker and DFL Senate Majority Leader Tom Bakk announced a comprehensive budget agreement in principle late last week, but they neglected to ensure that DFL Gov. Mark Dayton would sign the deal. That prospect is now in doubt. Dayton’s well-quoted…
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MN sulfate rule compromise treads water
While the economy will be the bigger story on the Iron Range this summer, we have a development in the ongoing saga of Minnesota’s wild rice sulfate standard and the industries and communities it affects. Earlier this spring, the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency proposed adjusting the 10 mg per liter sulfate standard designed to preserve the…
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The emperor has no bandwidth
As I prepare to embark upon another summer of media production and online teaching from my rural Northern Minnesota home, my thoughts again turn to broadband. We already wrote about the blasé outcome for broadband projects in this year’s legislative session. Of course, the technology costs money — a sizable investment for private companies or government to build…