Steve Fernlund and The Long Way Home

Historian Heather Cox Richardson’s daily missive, Letters From an American, keeps my perspective on current events grounded in American history. Reading her newsletter today inspired this column. Honoring the September 17 anniversary of our Constitution, it began with this quotation from the late Benjamin Franklin. He said, “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.” At 81, Franklin was the oldest delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He valued wisdom over certainty, and saw compromise as a virtue. He openly admits that age, new facts, and clearer thinking repeatedly shattered the absolute certainty he felt as a younger man. When I was a Bloomington taxpayer, and Governor Perpich and some Canadians decided a huge mall should replace my beloved Metropolitan Stadium, I thought the whole idea was ridiculo...

In the early nineties of the last millennium, we purchased a small townhome at what was once Lockport, now part of Lutsen. It was the site of an operation to get logs on the water to be rafted up and sailed to the civilization rising south and east. When the water was calm and the sun just right, you could plant your behind on the ground and see the remains of the pilings and rails that made things work, and sit in awe of the skill and hard work of previous generations. The first year of owning our piece of the shore, we made 26 trips from suburban Bloomington. Between raising teenagers and running a business, I always carried stress in my shoulders and neck as we began the five-hour drive into 35W traffic. Once we crested Thompson Hill and saw Duluth and the big lake ahead, I could feel the stress leave my body. I’m certain many others have the same experience. As much as the beauty and serenity of the scenery soothed my capitalist-addled mind, getting to know the people who lived on ...

Perspective.  The muckety-mucks who opine on issues of concern tell us that our perspective determines how we see and feel about things. The old saying that the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence supports that. An informal part of my life has been frequent, if irregular, reflection on how I see things. If something troubles me, I try to change my perspective and see where I was wrong or overreacting. Only on rare occasions did I find that changing my perspective didn’t help resolve a dilemma. This practice has served me well in business, politics, and my personal life. With that in mind, here’s what happened last week. On Wednesday before the Labor Day Weekend, I was stricken with a wretched little virus. Its origin is unknown (maybe a curse from a Facebook follower). Chills, loss of appetite, body soreness, that kind of stuff. None bad enough to lay me too low, just an aggravation. So the next day, I curled up on the couch and watched a documentary on Netflix, ...

Have you ever wondered why customer service is so rotten these days? I’ve been thinking about that since having my “annual” visit with a new doctor at a new clinic in my new city yesterday. Actually, only the doctor was new, as the clinic is part of the conglomerate that owns St. Luke’s Hospital, where I was a patient eight years ago, and my doctors were part of St. Luke’s Urology.  I’ve concluded that being a patient in the consolidating corporate world of medicine today does not make me a customer. They like to make it sound that way in the unending stream of commercials and other propaganda, but I end up feeling like a bolt in a bin in an autofactory, not the guy driving the new car. First, I need to write about the problem with medical records. Now that records can be sent electronically, not as a pile of paper or a fax, transferring records to a new doc should be a seamless customer (patient) service delight. Not so for me. The morning after my “annual” with a new doctor, I as...