Minnesota Brown

I’m working on a theory of small town/regional politics that I’ll probably write about in future. We are living in the era of “Government by Facebook Group.” Now, I know that Facebook is not the social media choice of everyone, nor are the communication changes we’ve seen done changing. But for rural Boomers, Gen Xers…

What if our fate were determined by a handful of 27-sided dice. If that was so, my life was heavily shaped when one of those die landing on me winning a trip to Washington, D.C., when I was 8. It’s not that the prize was all that life-changing. Rather, the experience of leaving our family’s…

If you want to know why I ghosted out of a stable life as an academic for the grind of daily newspaper deadlines, today’s column (gift link) is my answer. I now have both time and reason to spend a day on a very smelly island with the state’s most annoying bird. That might sound…

Today’s column (gift link) explores a somewhat rare phenomenon in northern Minnesota, something called a storage drought. We’ve all seen droughts before. No rain. Grass dries out and turns brown. Farmers lament a less productive harvest. We’re experiencing some of that this year, but something deeper is going on. Specifically, we’re losing our groundwater because…

When Amy Klobuchar ran for president in 2020, I wrote a blog post about her political skills. In today’s column (gift link), I revisit those observations in the context of Klobuchar’s run for governor. I’ve long noted Klobuchar’s deft use of her dad’s quintessential Iron Range story. Jim Klobuchar was a celebrated newspaper columnist for…

Today’s column (gift link) is about the economics of generational transition. I’ve always had a funny relationship with my generation. Officially, I’m a member of Generation X, the cohort born between 1965 and 1980. But I’m on the young side of that equation (’79, a Carter Baby), and relate closely with my elder millennial friends.…

For several years I’ve been observing a rapidly accelerating crisis in higher education. Twenty-one years of teaching and serving in leadership roles at a college gave me one side of the story. Having three kids in college at the same time gave me the other. It’s much harder to go to college than it was…

What do you see when you look up at the night sky? For an increasing number of people, that view includes the dull glowing haze of light pollution from within the atmosphere and without. Today’s column (gift link) looks at the price of progress. Humans undoubtedly benefit from technology and satellites. The words on this…

In 2001, I was working at the Hibbing Daily Tribune when LTV Steel closed its Hoyt Lakes taconite mine. In 25 years, the wound to the Iron Range has yet to heal. But it wasn’t the first. In today’s column (gift link), I quantify just how much the iron and steel industry has changed in…

The internet is doing some funny things to time, space and relationships. Our perspective is warped. We feel close to faraway things and far from nearby things. But the world — the real world — is bringing us closer together whether we like it or not. Smoke from Canadian fires is again turning Minnesota air…

Today’s column (gift link) takes you along on my first trip to the wild rice stand at the Rice Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Aitkin County. I went there to meet with leaders from the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, whose reservation borders the federal reserve. Rice Lake is one of the state’s most bountiful…