JIM HEFFERNAN'S BLOG

Travel travails of a registered dreamer from Duluth

2026-08-01T14:59:19.805-05:00

Written by Jim Heffernan/DulthNewsTribune/08-01-2026

So, President Trump is putting his portrait on American passports now, according to media reports. Sorry Donald J., I beat you to it. I have my picture on one passport — mine. And like every picture of me ever taken, it’s not very good. Cameras hate me.

Traffic cops recoil in horror as they look at my driver’s license photo when I get picked up for speeding or other crimes and misdemeanors. But let’s move on.

I have had several interesting experiences with my passport over the years, including the first time I applied for it, a process I described here many years ago but bears repeating — just for laughs.

We were planning our first trip to Europe so I went to the Duluth Post Office to go through the passport paces.

Most importantly, you must prove that you are who you say you are. At the time they seemed to prefer birth certificates, so I had to go to the St. Louis County Courthouse here in Duluth to get mine.

So up to the Civic Center courthouse I dashed, found my way to the proper desk and asked for a copy of my birth certificate. No problem; the friendly clerk located it and made a copy.

But looking it over, my birth was registered without my first name. It said Baby Boy Heffernan. I had always thought my parents, should they get a boy, were going to name me James the whole time they were expecting me. It’s an old family given name, including that of my paternal grandfather. It’s in the Bible. It’s the NAME of the English version of the Bible.

Nope, “Baby Boy” on my birth certificate. That’s in the Bible too, in Bethlehem, but not good enough for the passport people, although it could come in handy at the Pearly Gates. I had to prove I was me in some other way, they told me. Old school report cards would be okay, they suggested.

Well, I dug some up in the family archives. I found a couple from my elementary school years at Lincoln School in what was then called the West End.

I brought the report card to the passport police and it was sufficient to qualify me for a United States passport, although it was humiliating at the same time. On the old report card, in notes to my parents, the teacher had written that I was a “dreamer” and stared out the window when I should have been buckling down. No wonder I never mastered the multiplication table.

Still, I qualified for the passport in spite of being a dreamer, and off we went to Europe a while later on a trip to see it.

Most of the border stops were routine, with officials in uniform glancing at the passport, stamping it and signaling to move on. I have been to Europe a few more times since then, always with my passport in my pocket and experiencing different reactions in different countries. Border agents in St. Petersburg, Russia, seemed awfully stern. I must look like a spy, too.

After all of that travel across the pond, my most challenging experience with my passport was on a trip to Canada a few years ago — before the recent difficulties between the U.S. and Canada. We had shot up to International Falls on a brief car trip and decided to go over to Fort Frances, Ontario.

We had brought our passports for the trip to cross an international border and routinely passed into Canada. It was on the way back to Minnesota that we encountered the most difficult border crossing I had ever experienced, including in Russia and other European destinations.

Rolling back into Minnesota, U.S. border agents ordered us out of the car as we proffered our passports. Then they ordered us to open the car’s trunk so they could inspect our luggage. Finding nothing suspicious, they let us back into our home state., a state we had lived in all our lives.

Maybe if we’d had Trump’s picture on the passport, we’d have fared better. Trouble is he wasn’t president at the time, so it was Biden’s fault. Hmm…that has a familiar ring to it.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Local Satire: Trump eyes Isle Royale for defense, monuments...

2026-07-24T14:14:14.475-05:00

Written By Jim Heffernan as local satire, appearing on the opinion page of TheDuluthNewsTribune/7-24-26

I was feeling drowsy as I leaned back in the recliner watching CNN news as a serious-looking correspondent announced that President Trump has renewed his drive for the United States to take over the island of Greenland.

The newscast was going on and on about the issue as I slipped into a slumber, right there in the recliner with the TV blaring about Trump, Greenland and Denmark…zzz…zzz.

As I dozed, I had an unusual dream (they’re all unusual). I dreamt that, along with wanting Greenland, Trump was seeking to take over Isle Royale in Lake Superior, although it is already part of America.

“Isle Royale is too close to Canada to avoid invasion from that hostile country,” the president declared, referring to our northern neighbor that was once our closest ally, and adding that the U.S. must arm Isle Royale.

Trump also pointed out that Isle Royale is actually part of Michigan, “which makes no sense at all.” He said Michiganders don’t appreciate Isle Royale as much as they should with “that goofy gander governor Gretchen.” He was referring to Gov. Gretchen Wittmer, a Democrat.

My dream went on with Trump declaring that, “We’ve got to change the name of Isle Royale. What’s with this Royale business? We’re not a kingdom with royalty running the country, although we probably should with me as king.” He did not suggest a new name although aides indicated he might favor Redland.

In my dream — even as CNN continued with real news in the background — Trump asserted that “we should build a bridge connecting the island to Minnesota. Now people have to get there by boat. We need to build a bridge so people can drive over there and see the wolves and moose in action,” he went on. “They have ducks and geese too, don’t they?

“At the end of the bridge, which would only cost several hundred million dollars, we should build an arch to greet visitors,” the president continued. He suggested it be shaped like a huge tree but taller — around 200 feet high. “It would have a wide opening at the bottom visitors could drive their cars through like those redwoods in California.”

He suggested it should be called the Arc de Treetop. “Or maybe Trumptop.”

Asked if the huge bridge and monument might diminish the wilderness nature of the island, Trump retorted with a question: “Where’s the money in wilderness?”

He suggested that a huge hotel be built on the island to accommodate visitors who “don’t want to sleep on the ground in tents. Who does that anyway? A bunch of democrat environmental cases,” he remarked, answering his own question.

As I slept on, more news unfolded on the TV that I somehow absorbed even though I was slumbering but started to regain wakefulness. They were reporting something about the new Air Force One and in my dream, I was on the plane with members of the news media who always travel with the president.

A reporter asked him about acquiring Greenland and he said that, yes, the United States had to have Greenland to protect the country from China and Russia, but that we also must arm Isle Royale to protect the nation from Canada.

“We’ll build an airport up there well stocked with fighter aircraft,” he asserted.

“What about the moose and wolves?” asked a reporter.

“I don’t know about moose, but I’m very familiar with wolves,” he said. “Ever hear of Jeffrey Epstein?”

Then suddenly I was awakened by the sound of thunder outside the house, with tornado-like wind, rain pouring down flooding a nearby creek and tennis ball size hail bouncing off the roof. What a relief.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org.

Happy B-day America; let’s not blow it (up)...

2026-07-04T13:36:35.876-05:00

Photo source: MPR/ Remembering
Dululth's Infamous 1988 fireworks explosion/07-04-18

Written By Jim Heffernan for the DuluthNewsTribune/7-4-26

So, we’re 250 years old today. America, that is. Pretty old by American standards, not very old by European standards and those of some other civilizations.

And not really very old by MY standards. Here’s why:

My paternal grandfather — pay attention here — MY (there goes that upper case again) grandfather was 21 years old when America celebrated its centennial in 1876. He was born in 1855. There were people around then whose lives overlapped with George Washington’s (he died in 1799), and that grandfather lived long enough to see me as a baby. Yes, I was once a baby like so many others.

My other grandparents were a bit younger, all born in Europe around the time of America’s 100th birthday. Their countries of origin — Sweden and Germany (that older grandfather was an Irishman from Canada) — had been around for a millennium or so, but these immigrants ended up in the United States, and Duluth, when the country was just over a century old. Ancient history? Not very. Greece has ancient history.

Of course, I’m no kid. America was only 163 years old when I was born in Duluth on the cusp of World War II. You can count on your fingers to figure out my age, but you’ll need a lot of fingers.

So we’re a young-old country.

Like so many other Americans, over the years my family celebrated the Fourth of July with appropriate exuberance. Flag hanging on the porch, picnic food prepared in the kitchen and placed in a wicker basket, gathering with relatives for a feast, a parade (Moose Lake, near our family cabin, always had one), kids’ rides at their carnival in the park, fireworks after sundown. America a year older.

Not a lot of talk about the birth of a nation, which is why we all had gathered. Oh, we held all those truths of the founders to be self-evident and got on with feasting and having fun on the Fourth.

This year is different, of course. America is two and a half centuries old and deserves to be honored despite certain shortcomings in our society that also are self-evident. Most of us know what they are.

Whew, sounds like I’m getting serious. Well, try this.

One Fourth of July celebration in Duluth stands out from all the rest. Ever since Duluth started hosting fireworks displays on its Bayfront, our family has attended. The tradition was started by the late Mayor Ben Boo in the late 1960s or early ‘70s and it has lasted all these years — Boo’s enduring legacy. Before then Duluth was a nothingburger on July 4.

We always went to the fireworks as our children were growing up, year after year, throughout their early childhoods, teen and college years, extending into early adulthood before they married and started families and developed their own traditions here and elsewhere.

After so many years viewing fireworks at Bayfront shortly after sundown on Independence Day, they tend to run together in one’s memory. Spectacular displays of sprays of lights flashing high in the dark sky above our heads, the sounds of explosions on the ground as the rockets are catapulted into the firmament, huge crowds of onlookers.

We always watched from the same place, a grassy hillside not far from The Depot. Great spot, no longer there.

But one Fourth display does not blend in the memory with the rest: The year the whole kit and caboodle exploded on the ground almost immediately after the display started. It was July 4, 1988. The explosion was deafening, the conflagration on the ground as the fireworks all went off at once, spectacular, yet frightening for most viewers, especially those up close.

Hundreds of viewers close to the explosion fled. My family largely stayed put — we were far enough away. But we wondered if we should flee.

After the explosion everything went dark and ominously quiet for a few moments before the wail of emergency vehicle sirens pierced the air. No one knew the extent of the damage or if viewers were injured or even killed. What about the workers who’d set them off? How could anybody up that close survive?

Fortunately, everyone did. There were no serious injuries or burns. A few viewers complained about small burning fragments drifting in the air, but no serious damage resulted from that.

Some 10,000 spectators, give or take, left the greater Bayfront area that night 38 years ago with an eternal memory of that spectacular, if ominous, fireworks explosion. As with me, it will never be forgotten.

Now here we are again celebrating Independence Day, this time on its 250th anniversary. Let’s hope it’s a safe one.

Happy Semiquincentennial America! Whew…long word. Absolutely supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.

Jim Heffernan is a former Duluth News Tribune news and opinion writer and continues as a columnist. He can be reached at jimheffernan@jimheffernan.org and maintains a blog at www.jimheffernan.org