Steve Fernlund and The Long Way Home

"Whadda Ya mean 'cut the adverbs?'' For an old chronicler like me, deadline days sneak up. I try hard to get ahead of the game, but end up working under pressure to produce something readable. Sitting in silence, staring at a blank screen, considering a subject that commands more of my own heart than it might yours, I aim to examine the erosion of the English language in modern media. It has been many years since I first found that my doctors and dentists were all younger than me. Then the television newsreaders went the same way. Today, I look at the television journalists on local Duluth television and think, “Why are they hiring teenagers now?”  I recall barely scraping by in the high school English classes. I knew a tile layer in Las Vegas who swore his high school geometry classes were a total waste of time—even though he used angles and geometry every single day on the job. I felt the same way about English classes, not knowing that words would play a significant...

The outrage factory has been working overtime this year to keep Minnesota reeling. Vice President J.D. Vance recently wrote a referral letter to the U.S. Department of Justice, urging a criminal investigation into Minnesota’s Governor and Attorney General for failing to act on widespread fraud in Minnesota social-service programs. The outrage filtered to the bureaucrats and is now making life miserable for eligible Medicaid patients and the people providing health services. When Minnesota’s Department of Human Services (DHS) launched its “Revalidate 2026’ anti-fraud initiative, officials said they were protecting taxpayers. But in places like Two Harbors, MN, the crackdown has left healthcare providers unable to serve patients, unable to collect payments, and wondering whether they will survive. Intended to identify Medicaid fraud, DHS’s Revalidate 2026, a highly aggressive regulatory mandate launched at the beginning of the year, forced every Medicaid contractor to “revalidate” by Jun...

My good friend Paul always has wisdom to share with me. Today, he said that in interacting with people, he keeps his opinions about current events to himself. Unless he’s asked a question directly, at which point he doesn’t pull any punches. Writing a weekly column like this, I don’t have the luxury of keeping my thoughts to myself. So, here we go." Predicting the future isn’t a strong suit. If a major league baseball player bats 400 in a season, he’s a star. My prognosticating success average would make me a utility outfielder in the minor leagues.  Old age matters, though, because the more things change, the more they stay the same. “History may not repeat itself, but it echoes.” Over the past half-century, major financial crises have hit close to home and shaken the world. So maybe my opinions are relevant, if overly pessimistic. Recently, I saw that companies that are Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven are responsible for up to 80% of the growth in the S&P 500 over the la...

Before the last remnants of snowbanks melted, I started to see dandelions popping out in the neighborhood. Walking the dog on one of the rare sunny days, I wondered aloud, “How resilient are those yellow-flowered things?” We’ve just wrapped up a long, relatively brutal winter--at least to my mind and the aging body that houses it. Maybe we are the resilient ones of our species, the dandelions of the human race. Like my brown eyes, dandelions seem to have been with me forever. One of the joys of my young life, when school ended, was my solo visits to Crosslake and the time I spent with Clair and Mabel, my mom’s parents.  They lived in a small house that Grandpa built after they sold their resort on Rush Lake, which they named Everglades, without irony. The DIY house was situated behind the schoolhouse, just off the parking area for the Catholic Church, an imposing brick structure that I was never allowed to enter. The driveway encircled a small yard filled with oak trees, a picnic t...