Some might remember the night my friend and podcasting partner Karl Jacob and I co-hosted a Roaring ’20s 100th birthday party for the Hibbing High School auditorium last month. It was a lovely evening of storytelling, sketch comedy, jazz and old time music in one of the great cathedrals of Iron Range education. What you… Read More →
FARGO, Season 5, Episode 1: ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’
November 21, 2023 by 1 Comment
Northern Minnesota author Aaron J. Brown reviews each episode of “Fargo” with an eye for unique details from the place where the show is set. The ratings range from INTERESTING (bad), to COULD BE WORSE (not so good) to PRETTY GOOD (not so bad), and OH, YA! (real good then). Beware the spoilers. ‘The Tragedy… Read More →
Paint the town red
November 18, 2023 by 1 Comment
Nothing good happens when a middle aged man from the Iron Range gets a Doja Cat song stuck in his head. Plump, scruffy, festooned in plaid with a Stormy Kromer cap on my head, now is not the time for me to mouth “B****, I said what I said” at a fellow motorist. And yet,… Read More →
Where the wild deer are
November 11, 2023 by 1 Comment
Hunters harvested fewer deer in northern Minnesota during the rifle opener this year. Experts cite several theories to explain the downswing, including habitat, climate, predation and fewer hunters. But the real answer will shock you. [INT. well furnished library of a palatial mansion. DOE sips tea while gazing out a picture window. BUCK sits in… Read More →
Humor comes home to ‘This Small Town’
November 4, 2023 by 1 Comment
November brings homecoming season to small towns across America. No, not high school homecomings or summer reunions. People choose to go to those. I’m talking about good old fashioned family holiday visits, the kind borne of obligation, ritual and guilt. And love! Of course! Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range knows all about homecomings. For a century,… Read More →
Ironweed
October 31, 2023 by 1 Comment
Today the Minnesota Reformer published my latest essay about about the new $68 million cannabis facility proposed for a shuttered Grand Rapids factory. The short version is that I’m skeptical. The long version gets to the root of that issue. The title of this post refers to the notion of commercial weed on the Iron… Read More →
Woods and waters, cheese and beer
October 28, 2023 by 2 Comments
What is the difference between Minnesota and Wisconsin? A foreign journalist asked me this question a few years ago. I prepared to extol the supremacy of my native Minnesota, only to emit a series of clicks, ums and ers. The journalist couldn’t tell the difference. My delay in responding only seemed to prove her point…. Read More →
The here and now of a sci-fi future
October 21, 2023 by 1 Comment
As daily news comes to resemble science fiction, I imbibe in more science fiction. No matter how fantastical the genre becomes, or how far it reaches into the future, science fiction reflects the present better than political science. Sci-fi speaks without inhibition about what we want, what we fear, and how we feel about ourselves…. Read More →
Canned squid and the damage done
October 14, 2023 by 1 Comment
The little yellow box on the clearance shelf caught my eye. Its vibrant art deco motif suggested the product might have been packaged anytime between 1929 and present day. But this was no antique shop. This was the Hibbing Walmart. A chorus of computerized beeps sang from the registers while this strange box marked “Vigo”… Read More →
1920s roar back to life
October 7, 2023 by Leave a Comment
The 1920s earned the nickname, “the Roaring ‘20s,” from economic exuberance and social change. Farm kids moved to town. Women started having fun in public. Social experiments like Prohibition became more complicated than originally planned. Despite all that, it was a politically conservative era, electing Harding, Coolidge and Hoover as presidents. The economy boomed for… Read More →
