An Iron Range Prospectus, or two

I bet if you try, you can remember when you were learning the fundamentals of writing a Compare and Contrast essay. Today, we're going to try something similar, but include a few shortcuts in the form of hyperlinks. The topic is "Which Kind of Future for Minnesota's Iron Range Is Most likely To Lead to Sustainable Employment?" Example number one is a recent story about the turmoil in the Cliffs Natural Resources Board.

“Cliffs has taken measures to reduce our cost structure, reduce our operational footprint and consolidate where it makes sense,” spokeswoman Patricia Persico said in a statement.

Example number two describes the setbacks in financing a taconite processing plant that may create 350 jobs at some future time. It's unclear when and if the final(?) part of the financing package will be put together.

Struggling Essar Steel Minnesota has failed to secure the equity financing needed to save a critical bond deal to complete construction of a $1.8 billion taconite plant in Nashwauk, Minn.

Now, local officials worry that the project and 350 future jobs are up in the air.

northern Minnesota trail marker

Photo by J. Harrington

Example number three comes from South Dakota via an Iron Ranger. Somehow Aaron Brown was allowed to take a vacation away from The Range. He has a fascinating report on the economic development progress being experienced in Mitchell, SD, home of the Corn Palace. At first I thought my computer had led me astray and I was reading The Onion. Here's why: about Mitchell, Mr. Brown writes that:

this city has quietly reinvented itself as an economic center for technology, marketing and manufacturing. The nation’s leading supplier of rural telecommunication services developed itself right here, and billboards for miles around tout new high-paying jobs in Mitchell.

... investments in existing companies and tech infrastructure allowed hometown entrepreneurs to build an international communication software company in Mitchell. That brought more than 500 high-paid software developers and communication professionals to town.

So, we can compare 350 jobs on hold due to problems financing a taconite plant, plus turmoil on the board of a long established Iron Range stakeholder that is now focused on cost cutting, plus a promise of maybe 360 "high-paying" jobs, offset by hundreds of years of environmental risk --  if Minnesota permits copper-nickel mining to proceed with the PolyMet project -- and contrast that  with 500 high-paying jobs that weren't there a decade ago in MItchell, SD, that don't threaten the local environment and that depend, to some extent, on the quality of life in Mitchell, SD, which has corn but, to my knowledge, no mines.

If you were to look at the Iron Range as if it were a startup company and you were an angel investor considering your options, which strategy would you support, mining or high tech? Here's that Blandin on Broadband info, in case it helps. Remember, we need to choose what we want. We can't have it all, no matter how American we are.

The True-Blue American

By Delmore Schwartz 

Jeremiah Dickson was a true-blue American,

For he was a little boy who understood America, for he felt that he must

Think about everything; because that’s all there is to think about,   

Knowing immediately the intimacy of truth and comedy,   

Knowing intuitively how a sense of humor was a necessity   

For one and for all who live in America. Thus, natively, and   

Naturally when on an April Sunday in an ice cream parlor Jeremiah   

Was requested to choose between a chocolate sundae and a banana split

He answered unhesitatingly, having no need to think of it

Being a true-blue American, determined to continue as he began:   

Rejecting the either-or of Kierkegaard, and many another European;   

Refusing to accept alternatives, refusing to believe the choice of between;

Rejecting selection; denying dilemma; electing absolute affirmation: knowing

         in his breast

                  The infinite and the gold

                  Of the endless frontier, the deathless West.

“Both: I will have them both!” declared this true-blue American   

In Cambridge, Massachusetts, on an April Sunday, instructed

         By the great department stores, by the Five-and-Ten,

Taught by Christmas, by the circus, by the vulgarity and grandeur of

         Niagara Falls and the Grand Canyon,

Tutored by the grandeur, vulgarity, and infinite appetite gratified and   

         Shining in the darkness, of the light

On Saturdays at the double bills of the moon pictures,

The consummation of the advertisements of the imagination of the light

Which is as it was—the infinite belief in infinite hope—of Columbus,   

         Barnum, Edison, and Jeremiah Dickson.

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Mother Nature bats last

Earlier today I reread -- for the fifth or sixth time -- Aldo Leopold's Thinking Like a Mountain, from his wonder full A Sand County Almanac. It made me wonder if we, with our mountain top removal coal mining and the mess we make of the environment in our haste to reap the profits of copper-nickel and gold mining, have become the equivalent of the deer on the mountain. Then I started to wonder if our obdurate refusal to seriously respond to climate change might make Anthropocene Climate Disruption our 21st century wolf pack. When you get a second, read Leopold's essay and see what you think. Just remember, Mother Nature always bats last. It wouldn't be all that hard for her to erase our footprints.

foot prints in Superior's sand

Photo by J. Harrington

My perspective on how all of this may, or may not, work has been shifted since I recently started to read The Great Lakes, The Natural History of a Changing Region. To be honest, I have to admit that a time span of 4.5 billion years, the age of the earth, is beyond my comprehension. Neither am I doing well with the implications of the idea that the land under the Great Lakes was at the equator.  I'm still dealing with the idea that the line from Joni Mitchell's lyrics to Woodstock -- "we are star dust" -- isn't just a metaphor. My Better Half often tries to persuade me that we may be at greater risk from an eruption of the Yellowstone volcano super eruption than we are from Anthropocene Climate Disruption. She may be correct. She usually is. I remain troubled by the idea that geologic, astrologic and man-induced disasters, as measured in human terms, aren't mutually exclusive and may in fact be additive. This all reminds me of the saying about not annoying a dragon, because we are crunchy and go well with ketchup. Meanwhile, we need to figure out how to balance the recent Audubon report about climate change having a devastating impact on bird habitats and the State of the Birds report from the North American Bird Conservation Initiative U.S. committee.

Today, we have the science, technology, and knowledge to prevent extinctions. Conservation works. When we have the will to conserve, we can make a better future: for birds, for ecosystems, for everyone.

So, is the cup half full, or half empty? Can we muster the Magnitudes of political will needed to conserve energy as well as we are learning to conserve habitats?

Magnitudes

By Howard Nemerov 

Earth’s Wrath at our assaults is slow to come

But relentless when it does. It has to do

With catastrophic change, and with the limit

At which one order more of Magnitude

Will bring us to a qualitative change

And disasters drastically different

From those we daily have to know about.

As with the speed of light, where speed itself

Becomes a limit and an absolute;

As with the splitting of the atom

And a little later of the nucleus;

As with the millions rising into billions—

The piker’s kind in terms of money, yes,

But a million² in terms of time and space

As the universe grew vast while the earth

Our habitat diminished to the size

Of a billiard ball, both relative

To the cosmos and to the numbers of ourselves,

The doubling numbers, the earth could accommodate.

We stand now in the place and limit of time

Where hardest knowledge is turning into dream,

And nightmares still contained in sleeping dark

Seem on the point of bringing into day

The sweating panic that starts the sleeper up.

One or another nightmare may come true,

And what to do then? What in the world to do?

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Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.