The Cold War
CBS News’ Bill Geist travels to Embarrass, Minnesota.
(This post originally contained a video embed that is no longer available. The clip can be viewed on the Internet Archive in six short segments. Follow the link and view the popped out video, scroll right and watch the next minute, repeat.)
I didn’t watch much of it to know if it’s any good, but the Weather Channel also featured the “cold war” on a new show Sunday night. Two national shows feasturing Embarrass, Tower and International Falls on the same day!
https://fox21online.com/news/cold-war
Here’s a link to the Weather Channel piece:
Icebox of the Nation
It’s in four short parts, unfortunately with the same Priceline commercial at the start of each part.
The 1996 “cold war” was one of the biggest stories I ever covered in my short-lived radio news career. It was very dramatic for me since I had been away from MN for several year, most recently in Central America so that was a very rough winter temperature and storm-wise. One thing no one mentions is that there was so much media on the scene that some people feel the TV lights interfered with the weather instruments. If not for the lights and warm bodies huddled around the thermometer, they might have gotten even colder readings. Which lends some credence to the theory that it was actually colder than 60 below, as people got readings on unofficial thermometers away from the hullabaloo as low as -64.
This was an actual story, folks. Yes. KAXE-FM. Northern Community Radio. That was our beat. Heavy emphasis on the COMMUNITY.
Very neat and gratifying to see it covered on CBS. They caught the spirit and the tone of it pitch-perfect. So many reporters covering Northern Minnesota life get lazy, or take cheap shots, and while they are at it, try to rip off the Coen brothers’ “Fargo” by playing on the accents and the they-must-be-crazy-to-live-there vibe of that (excellent) film.
Whenever I get around to archiving my reels and cassettes to digital I bet there are some interviews from that ’96 cold snap in there. Would be fun for me and my old friends at KAXE to listen to, if no one else.
From a year ago in the DNT Attic (the original DNT front page with this story can be glimpsed in the CBS video):
https://areavoices.com/attic/?blog=41715
The attic blog was/is a real treasure.
Ezra and I like to stream WELY on the weekends… 🙂
We like the classifieds. “Hey, Earl needs some help getting his ice shack on the lake. Show up around 10am.” “Mrs Dooley has some extra jam. Call her and she’ll drop it off to you.” It is really great! 🙂
KAXE is a real gem of a radio station. It’s pretty much all I listen to when I am on the range at the cabin.
When I was living at the yurt in ’02 for awhile, WELY was my only contact with other humans. I actually got a couple “Hi” messages from friends over the radio.
YURT (deconstructed): https://2026.perfectduluthday.com/2009/07/26/yurt-deconstructed/