Steve Fernlund and The Long Way Home

People who run for public office usually have mixed motives: public service or issue advocacy often provides the stated reason, while political ambition, career advancement, financial gain, and the possibility of higher office also matter. This newspaper sent a four-part questionnaire to every candidate for local and county offices. We asked an important question: Why are you running for this specific office now?  Local candidates, especially for school boards, city councils and township boards, and county offices, are motivated by a specific issue, dissatisfaction with local government, community identity, or a need for representation. Your neighbors, co-workers, and friends. Community builders, not career builders--for the most part. In my “rock star” organizer days of Nevada party politics, the little organization under my admittedly weak leadership hosted community events where candidates sought voters. Candidates for non-partisan offices like school boards and judgeships often...

Like many a retired person, I have developed a significant number of habits. Among them are caffeine, tobacco, eating too much, and saying “WHAT?” when people are trying to talk to me. The Simon Cowell-created talent show, “America’s Got Talent,” has wormed its habit-forming ways into my other bad habits. After ten-plus years of “Make America Great Again” and “America First” rhetoric, I wondered how this talent show has escaped criticism from patriotic millionaires and billionaires everywhere. Slow to the uptake, I only started to notice in Season 21, and I’ve seen most seasons; I’m rather embarrassed to say how much America (Great and First) is in America’s Got Talent.  The show has four celebrity judges front and center in everything that goes on, from greeting contestants backstage to X-ing out any lousy talent they disapprove of.  You would think a show with America’s in its title would be judged by Americans. But no. Two are from the UK, one is from Canada, and the fourth...

Historian Heather Cox Richardson’s daily missive, Letters From an American, keeps my perspective on current events grounded in American history. Reading her newsletter today inspired this column. Honoring the September 17 anniversary of our Constitution, it began with this quotation from the late Benjamin Franklin. He said, “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.” At 81, Franklin was the oldest delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He valued wisdom over certainty, and saw compromise as a virtue. He openly admits that age, new facts, and clearer thinking repeatedly shattered the absolute certainty he felt as a younger man. When I was a Bloomington taxpayer, and Governor Perpich and some Canadians decided a huge mall should replace my beloved Metropolitan Stadium, I thought the whole idea was ridiculo...

In the early nineties of the last millennium, we purchased a small townhome at what was once Lockport, now part of Lutsen. It was the site of an operation to get logs on the water to be rafted up and sailed to the civilization rising south and east. When the water was calm and the sun just right, you could plant your behind on the ground and see the remains of the pilings and rails that made things work, and sit in awe of the skill and hard work of previous generations. The first year of owning our piece of the shore, we made 26 trips from suburban Bloomington. Between raising teenagers and running a business, I always carried stress in my shoulders and neck as we began the five-hour drive into 35W traffic. Once we crested Thompson Hill and saw Duluth and the big lake ahead, I could feel the stress leave my body. I’m certain many others have the same experience. As much as the beauty and serenity of the scenery soothed my capitalist-addled mind, getting to know the people who lived on ...