in the company of miners

I know many beautiful songs from your home county,...and I hitchhiked through there and stayed in the homes of miners. Pete Seeger

Have camera, will wander. . .last weekend to the Lake Vermillion area of the Iron Range in northeast Minnesota west of Duluth for Dave and Audrey to descend into the Soudan Underground Mine (and me to wander above ground). As our luck would have it, an electrical storm had just that morning rendered the mine's 'cage' and rail cars inoperable. As this had only happened one other time in the state park's history, we couldn't help reminding each other that, once again, we could write a chapter of our own in the "Stupid's" series. We used to read these books when Audrey and Erica were preschoolers and even though they're a tiny bit un-p.c. twenty years later, we had fun. . .and unfortunately we've been able to identify with 'these good natured dummkopfs' ever since. So, the area was mined for iron as well as available nickel, lead, gold, silver, and zinc ores and several open pits remain with the red iron rock protruding at many angles above ground. Autumn always arrives early in the northwoods as does the cold weather.

"On Spaceship Earth there are no passengers; everybody is a member of the crew. We have moved into an age in which everybody's activities affect everybody else."-Marshall McLuhan