Steve Fernlund and The Long Way Home

I guess I’ve always been skeptical. As a kid, I was sent to Sunday School, Daily Vacation Bible School, and three years of Confirmation classes. I learned the Lutheran truths, as much as a suburban kid could in Minnesota. Then, I started to think about religion and its powers in a new way. There are so many of them after all. I knew that not all of them could be right, and I am pretty sure they could all be wrong. Thus began my skepticism of power. When talking about politicians and others with power with my dad (he was a bit more trusting of bosses than I, but not much) he used to say, “They put their pants on one leg at a time, just like I do.” After high school, I decided to crush my mother’s dream that I’d enter the seminary and I began a career following in my dad’s footsteps in the freight business. After some schooling in transportation regulations and a handful of entry-level jobs, the owner of the company that I worked for in 1980 named me its president at the ripe old age of ...

My corporate overlord here at the Northshore Journal, Christine, has consented to publish a weekly column from me, The Long Way Home.  I sold the idea to her this way. “ I'm thinking of using a column to put out some smaller stories from here (Cook County). Maybe a cranky rant or two about the weather, or fishing, or spouses, or local politics, or?” “Bring it on,” she said. So here we go. In the fall of 2016, the first year we could collect Social Security, my wife Becky (referred to often as the Bohunk) and I came back to Cook County for our retirement. Earlier that year, while living in a suburb of St. Louis, she made what seemed an off-hand comment that she would like to return to the North Shore for our “golden years.” I asked her where I was going to go. “Well, you can come with me, I guess.” As often happens when an intention is expressed, things fell into place almost right away to bring us back to Grand Marais. We found a house in the Hovland suburb of Colvill that met the ...

Early in my mid-life career change to newspaper publishing, I was visited by a wise man--a former publisher of the same newspaper. Commenting on my editorials and columns, he bluntly told me to, "Take a stand, dammit." He said that people wanted to know what I believed, not what I thought that others believe. Until then, I tended to present all sides of an issue--on the one hand, and then on the other hand. Indecision wasn’t my problem, I just didn’t want to alienate anyone. Some call it Minnesota Nice I guess. Wanting everyone to like me. After some soul searching, I took the old man's advice and began writing what I believed to be true--often fearfully, but always definitely. An amazing thing happened. Yes, I pissed off some people--sometimes many people. But I saw more activity in our business. Subscriptions and renewals went up. Ad revenue went up--although occasionally an advertiser dropped us like a bad habit because of a stand I took. Most returned eventually, but ...

  The Long Way Home 3.11.22 Back in 2018, I struggled with a painful medical condition that seemed beyond the diagnostic ability of local doctors and specialists in Duluth. Frustrated and exhausted with the constant pain, I finally asked my local doctor to either help me get it diagnosed or get me a DIY euthanasia kit. Yep, that serious. She grabbed the bull by the horns and got my specialist in Duluth off his keester. He finally got part of it diagnosed and operated on me for that part. Since my remaining condition was beyond his capability he referred me to a specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. He was without much optimism they could help, if I’m honest. At Mayo, after a day of invasive tests, a surgeon young enough to be my son told me exactly what was wrong. And then he told me how he and a team that included orthopedic, plastic, and general surgery would try to fix me up. He said, “I’ve done five or six of these procedures and I think I can give you your quality of lif...