Cached Oct. 22, 2005, from NewsMax.com

Where the Rivers Run North, Part I

Diane Alden
Saturday, June 21, 2003

For the last 10 months I have been living in a small town in a region of Minnesota known as the Iron Range. The area is home to one of the largest open pit mines in the world and dozens of others, which have returned to nature as deep pools of fresh, clean water filled the manmade craters left after the iron and the will to mine it played out.

Many of the hills in the region are covered with young trees, some quite tall now – a testament to nature's regenerative powers. The hills in question are the towering piles of dirt scooped out of the iron pits over a century. However, since the '70s, iron mining in the region has left for South America or elsewhere as steel mills and heavy industry have also relocated to other parts of the world.

Often times competing against subsidized foreign steel dumped on any country willing to take it hasn't helped as things have gone badly on the Range. Some industry still exists, but tourism has become one of the major economic endeavors. It has done little to help most of the small towns that boomed because of mining, however.

Through two world wars the Iron Range did well by America and the postwar booms that followed. In 1951 the Range was providing 82 percent of U.S. iron ore to the smelters in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Iron mining gave rise to boom times after the timber industry departed for the West Coast in the early 1900s.

Old-timers tell me the timber wasn't just overcut by the logging industry; disease brought down thousands of acres, which then succumbed to fires that also destroyed the towns of Chisholm and Hinkley in the early 1900s.

Remnant industries in timber and mining remain. However, economic doldrums and declining school enrollments have replaced the boom times on the Iron Range. An aging population, transfer payments and not a little desperation.

While more than a few young people cling tenaciously to the land and the sense of place they don't find anywhere else, many have been forced south to the Twin Cities or Chicago in search of employment. Some few who remain find that diversifying is one way to stay on the Range.

A former miner said that after he was laid off from two mining jobs, he "got" the big picture. So he and his wife started a tree-trimming business and then a porta potty company, which is doing quite well. John provides up to 2,000 porta potties on the Range per month. I am trying to figure out how that many toilets and septic systems can go berserk, but apparently they do.

There are also what are known as the "stay the winter" people. Many of them have opened up combination operations that cater to the thousands of tourists that come north during the summer and, more often these days, in the winter as well. Businesses include bait and tackle shops, which may be combined with convenience stores or bed and breakfast operations or gift shops.

Although a handful of new companies have moved into the area, none of them offer the pay or benefits that the mines and timber offered a vast number of immigrants who flooded the area from 1890 to 1910. This part of the state is still highly ethnic, and ethnic infighting still takes place. Even intermarriage hasn't changed the situation all that much.

Up until it was turned into a local museum, the town of Virginia, Minn., sported two Catholic churches on the same block, separated by a Catholic school that my mother attended. One church was the Polish church, the other was the Irish church. The Poles, Czechs, Slovenians and Croats usually attended the Polish church, and everyone else the Irish church. The Irish Church won the battle of the ethnics and is still maintained.

A few years ago, Northwest Airlines had its arm twisted by Minnesota politicians and established one of its reservation hubs in Chisholm. What Northwest discovered was an invaluable work ethic and an educated stable populace that seemed to be representative of the area.

Of course, a Wal-Mart has opened up in Hibbing, just five miles down highway 169, and employs increasing numbers of laid-off miners and schoolteachers and workers who used to have jobs in mining-related business or in the school systems, which are downsizing due to loss of population and fewer taxes paid by the decline of mining.

But Wal-Mart wages and benefits don't even come close to the 30,000 lost jobs, along with benefits and tax base, that has left the Range since 1979. To many folks on the Range it stings, and that includes my Republican father and stepmother. They hate it that the Iron Gate Mall right next to Wal-Mart is almost empty of shops. Progress, I suppose.

As U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick stated not long ago: "The U.S. steel industry has been affected by a 50-year legacy of foreign government intervention in the market and direct financial support of their steel industries. The result has been significant excess capacity, inefficient production, and a glut of steel on world markets."

Notwithstanding, it is unfortunate that Minnesota is one of the top five high-tax states. Over a period of years, the Democrats controlled politics and the state legislature. Therefore, the nanny-state types held sway over the ideological direction of the state and high taxes became the norm.

Much of Minnesota is becoming more conservative, but I suspect that happenstance is still decades away on the Range. In last November's election, the Range still went 70 percent Democrat and 30 percent Republican while much of the rest of the state voted Republican.

On the Range the attitude remains that you give people whatever they want in the way of services no matter how costly it becomes, no matter how high taxes or regulations contribute to negative growth, because they deserve it and it is the job of the state to provide.

During my latest stay on the Range, one of the last mines in the region, EVTAC, declared bankruptcy and closed, taking 450 jobs with it. There was no way around it. Cheap imports and cheaper ways of doing business can be found in Canada, South America, Africa or Asia, and increasingly in Russia, Poland and China.

The "taconite tax" that was imposed on every ton of ore mined from the Mesabi area paid for the schools and infrastructure of the area and allowed property taxes to remain low. Local politicians have been fighting tooth and nail against dropping the tax or cutting it in half. Even when mines close, there is no compromise on things like taxes for the region's democratic leadership.

The new conservative governor, Tim Pawlenty, has made more trips to the Range than any Minnesota governor in decades. Having instituted a "rapid response" economic team to such hard-pressed areas, Gov. Pawlenty is one of the major cheerleaders for tax-free zones in Minnesota and has been pressing Range politicians to give it a try.

Given the anti-Republican attitude on the Range, it is amazing he should care at all. However, he does seem to care and that is one reason he is one of the better state governors in memory. Not to mention that he signed a concealed-carry permit law, a task that Jesse Ventura didn't seem able to accomplish, and he has reformed or dumped the gosh-awful "Profiles in Learning" educational disaster favored by the "let's dumb down America" bunch.

Meanwhile, he is dealing with a $4.5 billion budget deficit. Although the sad fact is the Democrats and certain leftist cities like Duluth have gutted concealed carry and fight to maintain the illusion that business will come to the region no matter how anti-business the region remains.

Brave efforts by companies like Northstar Aviation and Ceres Aviation to begin a regional aviation stronghold is fighting an uphill battle. One thing Minnesota still has is a trained and educated manufacturing/engineering/CNC computer high-tech base. Minnesotans have produced some of the best machine and manufacturing companies in the world, many of which are now headed to China, Mexico, Russia or wherever labor is cheap and educated.

Shortly after Pawlenty took office, local Range politicians sued him because he felt forced to take a hefty chunk of state-endowed monies for the IRRB (Iron Range Rehabilitation Board) and use it to help pay the $4.5 billion state deficit.

The money was meant to attract business and help business set up on the Range, but not much was being done with it. It just sat there as politicians were holding onto it for some future mining effort that doesn't seem any closer to actualization than when the monies were first accumulated.

It is becoming more apparent that Iron Range Democrat arm-twisting of politicians and corporate boards no longer seems to work. And Range politicians continue to think in the mining box rather than in specializing or diversifying in some particular area like high-tech machine tooling or production.

They also don't seem to be very careful about the kinds of business they have provided funds for. In one case they offered a company the sun, moon, stars, infrastructure, land and building plus money to set up shop in Eveleth, Minn. The company folded when its single customer took his business away. Now the company owns the land given to them by the Range authority, but no jobs exist.

There are too many other options for corporations and politicians to be attracted by monies that offer only a short-term lift. Tax-free zones work elsewhere, like in Michigan and Pennsylvania, but Range politicians wear blinders and continue as though Hubert Humphrey was still alive and the mines were producing full tilt and the unions could actually get things done.

The only salvation on the Range may lie in regional economics and cottage industries, diversification in one small effort at a time.

Northern Minnesota has always been a highly unionized area that is one of the last die-hard regions that cling to the populist and nanny-state philosophy proposed by men like Hubert Humphrey and FDR. Even now, to many Rangers, FDR is an American icon who loved the "working people."

No one can convince them that the old Democratic Party is long dead and an urban radical elitist left party has taken its place. That a recent list of what has become known on Capitol Hill as the Indian Caucus is comprised of 3/4 Democrats. The Indian Caucus encourages the interests of Indian – people from India – economic interests at the expense of American workers and industries.

Nor can Rangers be convinced that the national Democratic Party doesn't care about the concerns of miners, loggers, ranchers or farmers, for that matter. Republicans are not a whole lot better, having bought into the globaloney one-world-fits-all of the establishment elite, who defy party labels and the self-interest of the United States.

The local Democratic reps like Thomassini and Rukavina and Oberstar talk the talk of old-time Democrats, in other words it's "us against them." For Democrats that means Republicans only care about big business and socking it to the "little guy," while Democrats are still the party of FDR, Truman, Humphrey and JFK and live, breathe and exist to advance the "little guy."

Frankly, I don't think either party cares diddlysquat about the "little guy." In fact, the loss of mining jobs and resource industries began with JFK, and most Republicans are so much into one-way "free" trade they refuse to acknowledge the obvious. .

The Range is the birthplace of Gus Hall, deceased head of the U.S. Communist Party, and Judy Garland, as well as Bob Dylan and the Greyhound Bus Company. It is where the "Seven Iron Men" began to utilize the millions of tons of red gold, iron ore, buried deep in the earth that glaciers rolled over 10,000 years ago. It is where J.D. Rockefeller developed the notion of controlling the supply line, the resource and the production of resources as an industrial system.

A couple of years ago the LTV mine closed, leaving thousands out of work and houses by the dozen for sale. Some are still for sale and even more will be for sale now that EVTAC is gone. On the Range, it is not unusual to be able to buy a decent house for less than $50,000. Some retirees come back, and that is what they do as they return to a way of life and a pace that doesn't seem to exist in more urbanized areas of the U.S.

The Range is home to one of the best small-town papers in America, the Mesabi Daily News. My folks gave up on the Duluth News Tribune because it was as leftist as the Minneapolis "Red Star." But Mesabi Daily News in Virginia, Minn., is published by an Iron Ranger and an admitted Democrat named Bill Hanna.

It is one of the best-written most evenhanded papers I have ever read. It deserves the numerous awards it has received. That is why my folks take it and support it.

My other favorite paper is run in logging country, the Northome Record. I meant to visit the people who run it because they often run abbreviated columns of mine. Maybe next time.

The Best Years of Our Lives

The northeastern quadrant of Minnesota is part of the Laurentian Plateau, one of the oldest landmasses on earth. Two miles north of Chisholm, the rivers run north toward Hudson Bay. Outcropping of basalt and granite and hematite give testimony to the rich geologic history of the area.

The rivers and lakes are reminders of the great inland sea that once covered the upper Midwest after the glaciers melted. It isn't odd to find lakes that have numbers rather than names, there are so many of them.

Some areas are hilly and covered with birch, spruce and pine and on the Western edge of the Mesabi Range near Grand Rapids. Grand Rapids is at the headwaters of the Mississippi, and large oaks and maples predominate. Other areas on the Range are little more than swampy areas home to moose, eagles and stunted tamarack.

Along the North Shore of Lake Superior, towering cliffs and a vast inland sea are associated with names like Grand Portage, Grand Marais, Baptism River, French River, Two Harbors, Split Rock Lighthouse and Gooseberry Falls.

The French discovered Minnesota about the same time that the Pilgrims were landing at Plymouth Rock. Etienne Brule is credited with the European discovery of Lake Superior before 1620. The names of counties and streets and towns reflect that discovery. Radisson, Hennepin and Duluth are but a few Gallic names that may be found.

At that time the Lakota or Sioux tribe controlled most of Minnesota and northern Wisconsin before being driven out by the Ojibwe in 1745. The Sioux or Lakota left for the plains and the Dakotas while the Objibwe or Chippewa still reside in that part of the state. The Red Lake band of Ojibwe is the only American Indian tribe that has never signed a peace treaty with the U.S.

The northern part of the state saw white men even before Lewis and Clark left the East to map the Louisiana Purchase. Northern Minnesota was the hub of fur trading from the early 1600s until it died out in the 1840s.

Then that part of the state became a prime location for hunting minerals, gold, copper, nickel and finally iron ore. Timbering brought many immigrants to the area, but logging petered out when disease and over-cutting devastated the forests of the upper Midwest.

At the center of it all was Grand Portage, at the upper end of Lake Superior on the U.S. side. That was where fur traders met to cross the great inland seas of the Great Lakes, more particularly Gitchigoomee, "the big sea waters," better known as Lake Superior.

Voyagers and Indians alike paid homage by leaving gifts to the spirit of Manitou at an ancient tree dubbed the "Witch Tree" because it looks like a woman with her hands reaching toward the heavens, gnarled and twisted and spooky-looking.

During the '90s, I attempted to travel to view the tree and take some pictures because it figured in a mystery story I was writing at the time. Four years in a row my dad, my stepmother, Connie, and I made one vain attempt after another to see Witch Tree, driving cross-country 40 miles on a gravel road on dad's shortcut to Isabella and then up the North Shore.

The first couple of times I wasn't allowed to view the tree because the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources considered the trail leading to Hat Point, where the tree is located, to be unstable for foot traffic. Then I talked to a resort owner on the North Shore who told me that other resort owners and businesses had collected $250,000 to buy the property where the tree stands and gave it back to the Indians. Then they were shut out.

These days, in order to get to see Witch Tree, one must listen to a long lecture given by an Ojibwe elder at the casino. Taking pictures of the famous tree is totally out of the question. I was told that would amount to stealing the spirit of the tree.

I have another theory, however. American Indian casinos are a big deal on the Iron Range and in St. Louis and Arrowhead counties. The one at Fortune Bay, Lake Vermilion, employs a significant number of former miners and loggers in $10-$15 an hour jobs as blackjack dealers or kitchen or security help. The one at Grand Portage attracts seniors and tourists from Canada and the U.S.

Last time we went to Grand Portage, the folks and I stayed at the Indian casino hotel and peered at the Witch Tree through binoculars. Dad handed me the binoculars and said, "Here, this is as close to that damned tree as you are ever going to get." Although I did win $150 in quarters at the slots and that almost covered the cost of the gas to drive to Grand Portage four years in a row. Not to worry, that was the first, last and only time I have gambled using a mechanical device. I cannot afford to morph into a high roller like Bill Bennett.

Where the Rivers Run North, Part II

Diane Alden
Thursday, June 26, 2003

Seven Iron Men

The iron ore that made the Range a boom area was "discovered" for all intents and purposes in the late 1800s. It was a group of brothers better known as the "Seven Iron Men" who in 1888 actually made the mining industry come alive on the Mesabi.

The seven Merritt brothers of Duluth, Minn., traveled the length and breadth of the Range charting it and recording areas in which magnetic attraction was strongest.

Knowing a good thing when they saw it, the Merritts bought up the mineral lands and mapped out 500 square miles of Itasca, Cook, Lake and St. Louis counties. On Nov. 16, 1890, their crew discovered the first body of soft ore on the Mesabi Range at present Mountain Iron. In a speech John Merritt gave at the 40th anniversary of the discovery of Mountain Iron, he said:

"I remember just how beautiful that ore was, glinting blue there under the deep green of the pines. But I am unable to describe to you just what this number-one pit meant to us. It was a dream come true, the fulfillment of a hope long deferred, an urge to greater effort, a satisfying fact that nature had yielded to us the great secret she had guarded through all the ages."

Around that same time a man named Frank Hibbing found rich ore west of Mountain Iron and it became the Lake Superior Iron Company. Eventually it combined the Hull, Rust, Mahoning, Burt and Sellers mines, and exists today mostly as a museum near Hibbing. But for years Hibbing was know as the "Iron Capitol of the World." The Oliver Mine followed into the area but closed sometime in the '60s.

In an attempt to keep the chain of production in Merritt control, they borrowed money from J.D. Rockefeller in order to establish a rail line from the port of Duluth to the Range, as well as build the largest loading dock on the Great Lakes. Things started to come apart for the Merritts, however, as they stretched themselves too thin in a depressed economy.

Things went well until the Panic of 1893. To stay afloat, the Merritts approached Rockefeller for more capital and were given a $2 million loan. But the Depression got worse and the Merritts couldn't raise sufficient capital to stave off their creditors. They went to Rockefeller after trying other capitalists and J.D. bought them out for $900,000.

Many people think Rockefeller was the bad guy in this scenario. Actually, Minnesota creditors who forced the Merritts to sell out were the bad guys. Nevertheless, Merritt properties were worth approximately $335 million. Business was business and Rockefeller was well funded and understood the value of controlling the supply chain, and the Merritts just simply lost out in the great depression of the era.

As happens in business, eventually JP Morgan got control of what became the merged Carnegie and Rockefeller steel and mining operations. In addition, Morgan also controlled Federal Steel, National Steel, American Bridge, American Sheet Steel, American Steel Hoop, American Steel & Wire, American Tin Plate, National Tube, and the Oliver Iron Mining Company.

Morgan's holdings, or what became known as the "Steel Trust," controlled three-fifths of the nation's steel business. If you remember your American history, J.P. Morgan was Teddy Roosevelt's least-favorite tycoon. The monopolies and trusts of that era appeared to allow pillar American industries and businesses to be held in fewer and fewer hands. This disturbed Roosevelt and others, which in turn led to the era of 'trust busting' and eventually the Sherman Anti-Trust Act.

The dissolution of many of the large holdings of those we now fondly call "robber barons" discouraged the formation of large monopolies up until the 1980s, when mergers and acquisitions and foreign buyouts of American companies became popular and accepted.

In Minnesota, the richest ore petered out in the mid-1950s. Luckily in 1913, a University of Minnesota professor of mining, Edward Davis, patented a process to extract iron from taconite pellets. By 1965, processed taconite constituted one-fourth of the iron ore used in the U.S. and Canada.

Regular high-grade ore became less economical to mine and ship. In 1967, taconite shipments surpassed those of natural ores. The last good years for taconite production were at about the same time that manufacturing peaked in the U.S., 1979.

After '79, things rapidly went downhill for the Range, from several dozen mining operations to a handful. Meanwhile, low-tech manufacturing was being shipped to Mexico, China, Japan and India. For the last 12, years high-tech manufacturing has followed the outward trend, and that includes manufacturing required in mining, oil exploration and other "dirty" hard industries that make essential components required in the kind of manufacturing that actually builds infrastructure and real wealth.

Fighting Over a Field of Dreams

As far as Minnesota mines go, there are about three left in the area and those are not doing too well. In the '80s, ore extraction and production left for Canada and South America. Lower taxes, cheaper labor and production costs and fewer problems with demanding unions, high state taxes, and environmental demands that just didn't make it worthwhile to continue.

The Iron Range began a long, slow decline even as it became a Mecca for tourists. The greens discovered the area and decided to make the prettiest parts of the Range their own. Locals occasionally refer to them as the "take a wolf to lunch and hug a tree bunch."

The BWCA, Boundary Waters Canoe Area, was designated a wilderness area in the '60s, followed by other areas including Voyageurs National Park and Quetico Preserve. Superior National Forest has been around for decades and it surrounds and encompasses most Range towns. It is one of the largest wilderness areas in the U.S.

The entire area has become a playground for what residents refer to as the "paddle only" crowd. These are folks who don't allow motors of any sort on "their" lakes in the Boundary Waters. They even fought against allowing the disabled or old folks with a couple-horsepower motor impinging on their solitude. If one is not fit and hardy, one is simply out of luck.

For a fee, one must also have the required permits and guides. There is no peeing in the lake or defecating in the woods without bringing it out in a container. I heard of one camper tracked down through some snitch who saw him cut twigs off one of the zillion trees so his kids could roast marshmallows. He was fined by the state, but as I recall he still hasn't paid the fine. Those pesky Minnesota rebels just won't conform.

Of course if you are a bear, moose or wolf, your toilet habits in the woods are you own concern and you are allowed to break twigs for your personal use. The bears don't mind stealing apples out of my parents' orchard; wish the government bureaucracies were as accommodating with Americans who pay government bills.

I could never figure out why the defenders of nature wouldn't allow retrieval of blow-down timber in the BWCA, which has created a tinderbox in this era of drought. Nor do I understand why the use of snowmobiles in "their" wilderness is forbidden. Snowmobiling and winter sports tourism is what they hyped when they began to shut down the area to logging and pulpwood production. Go figure.

Then, of course, millionaires bought up lake property once owned by miners on the big lake known as Vermilion. Cottages and cabins that used to sell for under $10,000 now command prices in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. New homes being built are sometimes priced in the millions.

Yet in the towns of Virginia, Gilbert, Biwabik, Hoyt Lakes, Hibbing, Eveleth, Chisholm, Aurora or Tower, you can still get a nice house, well built, for less than $50,000. A nice four-lane road has gone up, making it easier for tourists to whiz by Range towns as they head for the lakes.

As refugees from big cities attempt to change the area or impose their political agendas, it is becoming just too much even for the old-school Democrats who live on the Range. Recently, when the Ely City Council was badgered into passing an anti-war Iraq resolution back in March, the locals claimed it was a bunch of women who "aren't from around here" who were responsible. Apparently, the latte and Patagonia brigade have established a presence in the lake country.

The council found itself under assault as 300 angry residents told them at the next meeting that the Ely City Council had overstepped their boundaries, because they felt an anti-war resolution was not in the purview of a city council.

Most residents agreed and the resolution was rescinded. But not before the media had told the story all over the U.S. That led to numerous canceled bookings at Ely area resorts and lodges by angry tourists from around America.

My advice: Go to Ely, paddle canoes, walk in the woods, buy junk at gift shops, see the museums in Chisholm and Hullrust, the open pit at Hibbing, the Greyhound Bus Museum and the cute Bavarian village of Biwabik, and drive the North Shore along Lake Superior.

In Ely, which is on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area, do go see the wolf center, enjoy the bars and restaurants and the kind hospitality of the area. Buy stuff and if you are lucky you might get a view of the Northern Lights on some warm July night. Ride or walk the bike trail that will extend from Grand Rapids to Ely.

Meanwhile, ignore the SUV-driving yuppies, the Sierra Club crowd, the girls in hippie skirts, college kids in Dockers and hiking boots, and the male mountain bikers wearing tight spandex and blue helmets. Hardly anyone pays them much attention except to be invariably civil and polite.

It is too bad so many come to the North Country armed with a political or radical environmental agenda. It seems they just can't enjoy the big woods and lakes without taking the joy out of it for everyone else. According to an old-timer and mainstay chronicler of the Range and BWCA, Ely resident Bob Cary, the Indian elders say they don't understand the Sierra Club, the outsiders or the yuppies from the Twin Cities, Connecticut or California.

They don't know why these people have the audacity to call this place "wilderness" which must be "experienced." Cary maintains the Indian elders have always called it by its real name – forest home. As do most of the people who have come back to it after "experiencing" the wider world.

Home on the Range

During my last day on the Range, the weather couldn't have been better. It was in the low 70s and dry, and the sun was shining. I sat on the bench that the folks had built out of slabs of rehabilitated concrete sidewalks. It is set up between two large boulders they didn't have the power or equipment to remove. Dad says its roots go all the way to Minneapolis.

A couple of old guys were fishing in small boats on the lake and kids were trying their luck on the public dock. The trees were leafing out and that rustling sound accompanied the haunting wail of a loon pair living on the little island in the middle of the lake. Two older ladies and a small child walked along the 2-1/2-mile circumference of Lake Longyear. Addie, my Silkie/Yorkie terrier mix, sat on the boulder like the queen she thinks she is as she perused the passing scene.

I couldn't help wondering what will happen to this area. What in fact will happen to this country as both political parties continue not to "get it." Neither of them seem to care as we are being reshaped and remade and inundated with unrestricted immigration, much of it illegal, which places immense burdens on our civil, political and social well-being and cohesion.

Along with that comes a complicated mess of high taxes and a Byzantine tax system, too many regulations, an increasingly lousy education system, reliance on international organizations at the expense of our own self-interest, federal agencies out of control, and the loss of our identity as Americans through political correctness.

What irks most is the profound failure to understand our own history. America is in dire need of re-establishing its independence and sovereignty and its right to survive as a Western nation based on Western ideas, traditions and religion.

I also have to ask where will the jobs come now that so many ostensible American companies are exporting jobs and technology to China, India, Russia and the four winds. I suppose they will come from where they always have: individual Americans who don't seem willing to give up on this country.

How disconnected politicians and monied elites have become. How far they have strayed from the people and philosophy that created America. They don't give a damn that America is a unique and special place worth saving for itself. I am at a loss to explain how they forgot that our wealth evolved out of that unique character of faith, hard work and diligence, and belief in the Almighty and the inspired philosophy of the Founders.

I have to remind myself about the good things God gave this country and this area of Minnesota called the Iron Range. His providence provided the upper Midwest with five of the world's largest lakes, the Great Lakes, which contain two-thirds of the world's surface fresh water.

As senior scientist John Jansen of the University of Wisconsin's Water Institute relates, "Fresh water is becoming increasingly scarce."

The waters of Minnesota drain into three great watersheds; north to the Red River and Hudson Bay, east to Lake Superior and the Atlantic Ocean, and south to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River. What Minnesota has is lots and lots of water.

Walleyes abound in the central and northern regions, large-mouth bass, northern pike or pickerel, and panfish almost anywhere. The lake trout inhabits the deep, cold waters of Lake Superior and the lakes along the Canadian border. Fourteen state fish hatcheries, seven in year-round operation, produce fish fry and fingerlings that run annually into the hundreds of millions.

Until some wacko environmentalists protested the effort, several Range towns stocked some of the former open-mine pits with salmon in an attempt to build a fish farm industry. Oddly enough, the water in the pits is about as clear and pristine as the most northern lake in Canada.

Then there is Red Lake, which covers 274,994 acres, the largest fresh-water body within a single state. Lake of the Woods, part of which lies within Canada, has more than 200 square miles of surface; its 14,000 islands assure an almost constant sight of land from every point.

Meanwhile, China, where all the jobs and investment from large transnational corporations are headed, finds that its desert has grown so much that it now makes up almost 30 percent of the country's landmass. China State Forestry survey shows that 2.7 million square kilometers of land was desert by the end of 1999 and is still growing.

Industrialization has dried up rivers, wells and springs, affecting the supply of clean drinking water and the irrigation of farmlands. It is estimated that around 700 million people out of China's 1.2 billion drink contaminated water.

Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, in a speech on China's five-year economic plan last year, said the water shortage could have "serious implications" for the country's economic and social development.

While Xinhua, the Chinese news agency, reported that some cities in Northern China are rationing their water supply, low water levels are also leading to electricity shortages in Hubei and Hunan provinces.

As of April 1, 2003, the Liujiaxia Hydropower Station, northwest China's major hydropower plant, is in danger of water shortage.

According to the People's Daily Online, the water reserve in the Liujiaxia Reservoir was only 2.6 billion cubic meters at the end of March, less than half of the its capacity, said Gu Minglin, who is in charge of water information of the upper reaches for the Yellow River Water Resources Committee.

Leading water engineers have predicted that China's water consumption will continue to rise until 2030, leading to serious shortages. Water shortage also affects the water quality.

Not only China but Asia in general is having water problems. According to the Indian Strait Times, Delhi is the No. 1 Indian city for doing business and it is reeling from power cuts and water shortages that are leaving people and organizations frustrated in the summer heat.

The report states, " 'A consumer who pays his bills and draws only the power that he is authorized will continue to suffer power cuts while influential power thieves, including politically linked industrialists, may continue to enjoy special treatment,' an official of Tata Power, one of the private distribution companies, was quoted as saying by The Times of India newspaper."

The transnationals continue the exodus from the U.S. anyway.

Meanwhile, over the next few years more mines on the Range will close, more high-paid manufacturing jobs in the Twin Cities and Chicago and Wisconsin will be exported as well, and now many jobs in the services, computer and financial sector are also leaving.

Part of me wants to say don't let the door hit you on your corporate fanny on the way out. I know there are enough Americans left to make up the difference if government will get out of the way and Washington stops acting like a seat of colonial taxing and regulating power for America's hinterlands.

Passing the END of the death tax would help small businesses to survive and allow them to be passed on to those who will help America grow and prosper.

Where Seldom Is Heard

The natural bounties and beauty of areas like the Iron Range, and of America as a whole, have offered millions of people a better, more productive life. We have resources and we have the people and many of us have the will. If we are lucky, perhaps somehow our politicians will allow this nation the opportunity to get back on its cultural, moral, economic, ethical and political feet again.

I am not holding my breath. So we count on our communities, states and regions to do what must be done regardless of what happens in D.C.

In any event, no matter what, the grass still grows and the winds still blow and the sound of the loon makes it magic. Nature and America heal themselves. Tired hearts and minds of those who appreciate them, love them in all their moods and colors, may still discover peace and hope in the finer things that are free for the taking.

I had to leave Minnesota and return to Georgia. The Range, my folks and countless relatives and friends, plus the beauty of it all will be greatly missed. I arrived here 10 months ago burned out and I leave reinvented and hopeful and confident in the promise that is America.

Sitting with the dog on my lap watching a gull skim the surface of the lake on that last afternoon I recalled my maternal grandmother's favorite song.

Where the air is so pure, the zephyrs so free,
The breezes so balmy and light,
That I would not exchange my home on the range
For all the cities so bright.

How often at night when the heavens are bright
With the light of the glittering stars,
Have I stood here amazed and asked as I gazed
If their glory exceeds that of ours.

Home, home on the range,
Where the deer and the antelope play,
Where seldom is heard a discouraging word,
And the skies are not cloudy all day.

Check out www.aldenchronicles.com and write Diane at dianealden7@bellsouth.net