Howie: Duluth's billion-dollar hospitals — and the neighborhoods left behind
Duluth’s health care transformation didn’t come free. It was paid for with public subsidies, neighborhood sacrifice, and long-term tax invisibility. The systems at the center of it all proudly proclaim their commitment to the community — even as the community quietly disappears around them.
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Howie: Duluth's civic theatre at 6 and 10 p.m.
Unfortunately, the new currency of leadership is visibility. You’re judged not by budgets balanced or streets repaired, but by how many times your face appears on a feed. The ribbon-cutting is no longer the celebration of work done; it is the work.
Howie: Duluth needs summer more than ever
Duluth residents simply need this summer emotionally. They need concerts at Bayfront and families along the Lakewalk. They need baseball games, festivals and tourists asking directions. They need reminders that life cannot become an endless cycle of bills, politics, inflation, anxiety and survival.
Howie: Bayfront still may be Duluth’s best idea
Bayfront remains one of the few places where the city still functions the way a healthy city is supposed to function: as a shared public space where people continue gathering together because they genuinely want to be there. Every summer, Duluth remembers that again.
Howie: Jim Oberstar understood Washington better than anyone
Oberstar approached Congress differently. He understood it as machinery requiring relationships, technical credibility, negotiation and committee leverage rather than ideological performance.
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Howie: Hermantown football has the pieces. Now comes the hard part.
The question is whether the senior class can transform potential into production, close the gap on Grand Rapids and bring a Section 7, Class 4A championship trophy back to Centricity Stadium.
Howie: Duluth's civic theatre at 6 and 10 p.m.
Unfortunately, the new currency of leadership is visibility. You’re judged not by budgets balanced or streets repaired, but by how many times your face appears on a feed. The ribbon-cutting is no longer the celebration of work done; it is the work.
Howie: Jordan Sewell will drive the bus for Cloquet-Esko next season
Sewell has a chance to become one of the premier players in northeastern Minnesota, and the Lumberjacks have enough returning talent around him to remain a factor in Section 7A.
Howie: The 10 people who helped reinvent Duluth
The modern Duluth enjoyed by residents and visitors did not emerge by accident. It was built by people willing to invest their talent, resources and leadership in a city they believed could become more than its industrial past.