Secrets of the City

Minnesota Brown calls out KSTP for a report they did on Ironworld, and on the Iron Range in general: The first problem with the story was the one I pointed out last week when I heard they were working on this. KSTP makes it sound like the state taxpayers are paying for Ironworld when that is just not true. Mining taxes pay for Ironworld and these taxes are paid by the mining companies in lieu of local property taxes. These funds are funneled through a state agency, Iron Range Resources, but the money belongs to the region, not the state. So the people who have the right to be angry about Ironworld are the residents of Iron Range cities, and most of them recognize the unique role Ironworld plays in preserving and sharing Iron Range culture.

“1st lynching in St. Louis County,” reads the sign, sporting a cartoon-like drawing of a paper scroll with the Mesabi Trail logo. It goes on to describe the 1893 killing of a “white male jailed for alleged raping of two white girls.”

“Should we have put it up? Shouldn’t we have? Right now I’m asking that question.”

“Prosodic Strengthening of Consonants in Iron Range English.” Rolling right off the tongue, this doctoral dissertation by Matthew Bauer at Georgetown examines the “dying dialect” of Iron Range English. The detailed PiPress story contains gems like “He struck linguistic gold at a bakery in Chisholm” and the details about “devoicing of fricatives” and “post-nasal hardening.” The linguist says older Iron Rangers have a tendency to pronounce “buzz” and “bus” — which makes you wonder how often old Iron Rangers are using the word buzz. If you care to read it yourself, all 250 pages of href="http://www.linguistics.ubc.ca/People/Bauer_Dissertation.pdf" target="_blank">his the dissertation (pdf) are on his website.

North County opened this weekend in several theaters around the region. Metacritic has around 20 (mostly favorable) reviews, and Ebert and Roeper are talking about Oscar nods. If anyone makes it to the film this weekend, leave a short review inside.

After much discussion, soul-searching, and finally a contest, the name of Niki Caro’s new Iron Range-based film has been changed from The Untitled Niki Caro Project to the forgettable North Country. The set was a hot topic of conversation for Duluth-area folks this past winter with Charlize Theron, Sissy Spacek, and Woody Harrelson taking up residence. Considering how much these actors make, couldn’t Warner Bros. shell out more than $1,000 in contest prize money for someone to actually name the film?