No one’s saying a banner’s coming soon — heck, we’d settle for a .500 record and a home win over Iowa. But watch closely. You’ll see something forming here, underneath the dust and the growing pains. A plan. A pulse. A program.
This isn’t science fiction; it’s how rural medicine is already evolving. Duluth could simply be the first to turn it into curriculum — a digital rural residency, training doctors to serve wider geographies with smarter tools.
We headed down to the bridge for what we called a “feasibility study.” Translation: three guys staring at the water with thermoses. “Looks cold enough to me,” Dale said. “Yep,” Roger nodded. “Perfect for servers.”
You can’t police despair. You can shuffle people from doorway to doorway, but that’s optics, not safety. The folks drifting between shelters and liquor stores aren’t statistics.
It’s civic theater, and everyone knows their lines. The officials announce. The media nod. The television anchors beam. The advertisers clap. And the citizens — the actual audience — sit at home wondering if they’ve accidentally tuned into satire.
The old fellas at the café won’t need a study to understand it. They’ve seen this dance too many times before. They’ll sip their burnt coffee, shake their heads, and say what they always say when the next “big thing” blows through town: “Should’ve just built another rink.”
Duluth has a plan. The question now is whether it has the guts — and the will — to knock down the roadblocks standing in the way.
At the 1948 Democratic National Convention, when many in his party wanted to avoid alienating Southern segregationists, Humphrey, 37, strode to the podium and declared it was time to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.
Plenty of mayors cut ribbons. Ness cut liabilities. He took on the most challenging problems and proved that authentic leadership isn’t about comfort but courage.
That’s Vikings football. Never boring, rarely logical, always exhausting. The highs, the lows, the quarterback merry-go-round, the running game that doesn’t exist, the offensive line held together with medical tape — it’s the same play, different actors.
Howie's column is powered by Lyric Kitchen · Bar Hermantown spent the first month of the season feeling a little out of sorts, like a team searching for itself. Flash one week, finesse the next, but not that old Hermantown brand that used to make opponents wince. On Friday
Howie's column is powered by Lyric Kitchen · Bar The hardest part about living in Minnesota isn’t the weather, it’s pretending we don’t care who’s the most important. Of course we care. We argue about it in deer stands, at hockey rinks, on fishing boats,
In 2025, for instance, they raised the levy by 1.85 percent but declared it a “0 percent” year for current taxpayers because new development supposedly absorbed the increase. But that’s a shell game. The levy still grew by nearly $800,000.
The DTA’s union contract, signed in 2022, runs through 2026 and requires $2.5 million a year in pension contributions. That wasn’t fine print. That was bold type. They knew it, signed it, and now pitch it like an act of God.
Respect the game? That would mean staying home, keeping the shield where it belongs, and remembering that football is supposed to be a sport, not a traveling carnival. But the owners can’t hear you. They’re too busy counting the money.
And the only voices that still carry weight are the hyper-locals, the independents, the ones who refuse to let their towns go silent. That’s where the future is. That’s where the trust is. That’s where the eyeballs and ears are. And no rebrand, paywall, or quarterly reorg will ever change that.
