O Joy, and right (though vacated) in my alleyway. Long ago when Pyramids for Minnesota first appeared (was it late sixties or early seventies in Harpers?) I was grandly roused with images of mine dumps resurrected from versions of the step pyramid into clad structures gleaming with a new mission.

Actually, not a practical idea unless rock piles looking impressively pretty counts. I was young, so of course any essentially useless activity held immense charm, plus having grown among those manmade mountains I was tickled to contemplate their transformation. Students (yes, there were such unfortunates) thought me (among other things) strange for yearly trotting out the pyramid plan along with a short bit (maybe from Atlantic) about an old Alaskan trapper and a frozen moose.

Youthfully filled with youthfulness of their own design, my students shrugged off most of what academically came their way. But wager will I they remembered the crazily proposed Minnesotan pyramids.

So, what might go well with astonishing pyramids?

In an opposite direction, thinks I, to find myself going up-up yes for a proposed space port pyramid bookend. Better yet, in my world where coming to pass and things going in cycles, the proposal was before the City Parents of Hoyt Lakes, my place on da raintch. N

ow, of course, a spaceport on the Range is silly-preposterous, but so was sailing west from Spain to reach the east, China. Did folk at Kitty Hawk imagine in their wildest the volume of airborne persons we’ve currently overhead? Course not.

My view, if launches were scheduled for February they’d go some ways to warm the place up. I know, too close to the BWCAW, but again, ancient ways and modern are appropriate mates. Plus the Range would become a central (think o’ the prosperity) port for space alien migrants. We’ll be ready.

I bet the Twin Ports won’t and don’t want to be the intergalactic welcome wagon, but up where people dig dirty old mining holes, why not?

Before going on, pause.

Ridiculous as something seems at first, there is much that’s taken seriously and seldom doubted or questioned. Really, (I’ve said this before) who but the indoctrinated took seriously the dirty practice of putting virus traps on our faces and carrying them with us? Who? Makers and sellers of masks made out like bandits while the frightened public acted like willing robbery victims with hands up in a masked society.

The Range spaceport, however, doesn’t need gullibility or fear to prosper. It has, instead, realized science improved with my suggestions and improvements in practicality. Nasty emissions and all that can be done elsewhere, just enough to get a synchronous space platform above the Hoyt Lakes Intergalactic Spaceport.

Using outer space electromagnetic flow and reliable solar wind for power the ecofriendly platform uses matching tubes employing earth’s natural air pressure and the vacuum of space to send balanced cargoes of people and things safely and efficiently into the limitless future. Using the untapped manufacturing power of space, our transfer tubes are made of idiom-actualized recycled microfibers twisted into pro-dimensional strands of immensely futuristic strength.

I don’t have to make this project sound good because it is good. The pyramid and spaceport project is a winner needing nothing but vision and determination, and some money. In keeping with other projects I could tell you to look for economic, job, societal, spiritual and so forth benefits by embracing a futuristic spaceport in our backyard, more or less. I say this with faith and knowledge that project proposals seldom go wrong where jobs and benefits are promised.

Big jolly fisherman size deep sea and tropical aquariums, ski hills on south facing slopes and massive facilities for the repair and refurbishment of Air Busses are all evidences of accomplishment. A space port, mark my words, will put all previous projects to shame, especially when coupled to pyramids, colossal mining (underground and open pit, we have it all) projects and rows of memorials to popular or sometimes unsung causes. Why should space pioneers or miners be lauded when we leave out all manner of other, unrecorded trail blazers and heroes of the true people?

My space portal system does away with fancy astronauts and replaces them with elevator operators not for but to the stars. The Iron Range Space Facility would be a true people’s portal, and shouldn’t we be ready for aliens escaping foreign tyranny and importune global storms to welcome them to Minnesota summer and winter weather with wood ticks and mosquitoes (in season) as seasoning, so t’ speak, in otherwise quite quiet outer space. Range Spaceport a silly, impractical idea? Perhaps, but we’ve bitten hard on other impossibles.

Speaking of, the usual promise of jobs is especially appealing, a space port having by definition out of this world employment potential. I’ve seen, as you may have, proud proclamations of jobs created by production of films. Ten to fifteen thousand jobs often claimed. Really? I wonder, despite the claim made with assurance, of what they talk. Where are these jobs? Full time, as if the making of the film goes on after completion. What’s the equivalent of ten thousand part-time film jobs? Maybe 500 to a thousand full-time cooks and wait staff? If respected studios with well-paid staff can make claims why not we as well?

A full spaceport with pyramids and monuments and hotels, etc. would need a million workers providing more jobs and prosperity (can’t forget that) than the rest of the state. Big dream equals large result. So rather than a fanciful idea the reality is most impressive in present day scope and future potential by opening the Northland to limitless immigration by species, races, types, etc. than we can presently imagine. What’s more worthy than embracing the future?

Maybe doing so would prompt a touch about seriousness toward education so people won’t write things such as “both sides had 20,000 warriors.” Is that both as in total or both as in each? (The number spans a considerable 30,000.) Or did a newsreader mean littoral when they spoke repeatedly of the literal navy? Two very different things muddled together to nonsense large enough to make a Range Spaceport seem reasonable.

Plus if the Twin Ports join the Range Port we’ll be the Grand Triumvir Port dominating global and space development forever and beyond.