John Prine sang the grief of losing places like mine

John Prine died Tuesday from complications of COVID-19. He had been critically ill with the disease for days following years of battling cancer. The singer-songwriter with his high gravelly voice was best known for brilliant working class lyrics brimming with pathos, humor, and sometimes uncomfortable honesty. As the New York Times pointed out, Bob Dylan… Read More →

Iron Range epidemics and the greater good

NOTE: This article also appears in the Hibbing Daily Tribune. It’s part of a new expanded partnership between this blog and the newspaper that runs my column. Frank Hibbing could sense iron nearby when he and his team camped beneath a grove of towering white pines on the western Mesaba Iron Range. Indeed, they would discover… Read More →

Who’s a Ranger?

Hi, my name is Aaron. I’m an Iron Ranger. I say that with some confidence. I was born here in Hibbing, the largest city on the Mesabi Iron Range. My parents took me home from the hospital to Keewatin. That’s on the Iron Range. We moved to Nashwauk, same deal. Then we moved to a… Read More →

Look for influences, not adoration, in Dylan’s hometown

Can’t Bob Dylan just answer a straight question? Why must his rare public utterances be so cryptic? Why can’t he sing the way they they teach at Hibbing High School? Gosh darn it, why did he say he was from New Mexico when he went on Ed Sullivan? And why can’t Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing,… Read More →

Then and now: lessons from the forgotten past

Please excuse me. I’m suffering from the adverse effects of time travel. Disoriented and distracted, I wonder what small action 100 years ago might have created our present condition. For the past couple years, more intensely of late, I’ve researched the Hibbing of a century ago for a book. Methodically reading the newspapers of another… Read More →

The true story of Minnesota Nice

Sometimes you hear a certain phrase in reference to Minnesotans. It’s particularly popular among visitors to our great state, but even locals use it once in a while. I’m talking about “Minnesota Nice.” On the surface, this sounds like a good thing. If you come to Minnesota you will meet nice people. Isn’t everyone nice?… Read More →

Can you be a man without a tow hitch?

I know what you’re thinking. You see my picture here and you’re saying there’s the very image of a man’s man. A paragon of virility and masculine strength. Hey, guilty as charged. But I’ve got a confession to make. I am one of a surprisingly large number of Minnesota men who carry a shameful secret… Read More →

When a boy becomes a snowman

One of the most obvious rules of parenting is not to put your baby in a snowbank. But what happens when your baby grows up to be a survivalist?

On cold times in cold places

We risk our bodies and minds to the effects of the deepest freeze of the year, a time when people sort themselves by coping language and poor decisions.

Whirling West on a metal bird

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” ~ Mark Twain, “The Innocents Abroad” I live in the woods of Northern… Read More →