MinnPost Picks: on Dylan’s roots, strange TSA confiscations, and taking America’s train system seriously

“Positively Main Street,” the Village Voice In a 1969 Village Voice piece recently posted online, a New York reporter wanders Hibbing (and Minneapolis) looking for Bob Dylan's roots, no doubt trying to peel back some layers on a musician obsessed with keeping himself a mystery. He finds there's not much Dylan in the music store in Hibbing, where "people don't like his voice." Bob's high school girlfriend was sure "Girl From the North Country" was about her (wasn't it about a woman in New York?), and there was lots of polka on the radio. — Greta Kaul, data reporter “The 10 strangest confiscations TSA has posted on Instagram, ranked,” The Washington Post I did not know the airport security agency TSA had an (apparently popular) Instagram account. The Washington Post dove through their posts to find the best and strangest things people have tried to bring on airplanes through carry-on and checked luggage. — Walker Orenstein, environment and workforce reporter “Indigenous People Are Already Working ‘Green Jobs’ — but They’re Unrecognized and Unpaid,” The Intercept Nick Estes writes about the ongoing labor of ecological stewardship, especially as indigenous people do it, and the ways this work is not seen as productive but as worthy of repression. — Jonathan Stegall, user experience engineer "Amtrak state of mind: What if America took its train system seriously?" Crosscut In this story, Crosscut writer Katie Wilson details the train trip she took between Seattle and St. Paul this summer, a journey that left her wondering how a high-speed rail system would change the country. — Peter Callaghan, state government reporter “Who speaks for Crazy Horse?” The New Yorker The massive sculpture in South Dakota ostensibly dedicated to Tasunke Witko, the Oglala Lakota warrior better known as Crazy Horse, has been 70 years in the making, and it’s still nowhere close to being done. In this piece, Brooke Jarvis captures just how truly bizarre the whole enterprise is: from the (non-native) family that controls the monument to the controversy surrounding its location to the fact that Tasunke Witko was, famously, not someone who would have wanted a mountain carved in his likeness. — Andrew Putz, editor

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MinnPost Picks: on Dylan’s roots, strange TSA confiscations, and taking America’s train system seriously

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MinnPost Picks: on Dylan’s roots, strange TSA confiscations, and taking America’s train system seriously