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Duluth’s Homegrown Music Festival opens today
Today brings the start of the Duluth Homegrown Music Festival, a week-long music extravaganza displaying the deep and growing music scene of northern Minnesota. Tomorrow night brings Trampled by Turtles, but really, you can find great music every night and day. If I were the kind of person who went to things, this is the…
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Paul Metsa to headline Range show May 3
Musician Paul Metsa, a singer and songwriter originally from Virginia, Minnesota, on the Iron Range, will perform Friday, May 3rd at The Loft @ Lyric Center for the Arts on Chestnut Street. The opening act is the The Hutter Bunch beginning at 6:30 p.m. Tickets are $10 at the door. The press release: Paul Metsa,…
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Dylan Days names 2013 B.J. Rolfzen writing contest winners
As many of you might recall, I am one of the co-organizers of Dylan Days in Hibbing, Minnesota. This arts and culture event celebrates Bob Dylan and the arts community of his Iron Range hometown. Dylan Days will be May 23-26, 2013. This year we’re celebrating Bob Dylan’s Presidential Medal of Freedom awarded last year…
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You could not axe for a better movie than this
Ladies and gentlemen. I don’t ask much of you. Today, I must ask one thing and one thing only. Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, go below the jump of this post to see a trailer for the independent horror film “Axe Giant: the Wrath of Paul Bunyan.” Really, just…
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From me, dialectically to you
David Frum recently blogged about the complexity of the English language in North America. He shared the graphic from a study on this topic. You can (and should) look at the larger, more detailed map here. Not unsurprisingly, many readers for this blog probably speak with the North Central and Western North dialects. But zoom…
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Booms and busts both change rural culture
Calumet, Minnesota (Aaron Brown, 1998) I’ve been looking to North Dakota a lot recently because the state is going through an oil boom and is getting fresh attention. People I know are moving there, in dribbles and drabs, to work the oil fields. And something about it reminds me a great deal of the mining…
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Group aims to re-engage Hibbing theater community
The cancellation of the award-winning theater program at Hibbing Community College amid the budget tumult of the past several years shook the Iron Range arts community. But there are green shoots here and there, notably with the foundation of a new community theater group called “Encore of Hibbing.” A group of actors and theater types…
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Weather coping with maps and travel guides
It’s snowing. As I sit here this evening we are being told up to nine inches of wet, heavy April snow for the Iron Range by Monday morning. I am depressed. I am not alone. In a move she probably regrets, my wife Christina — knowing my enthisiasm for maps — sent me this Hey…
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Too ‘Minnesota Nice’ to Brag
This is my Sunday column for the April 14, 2013 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. A version of this piece aired on yesterday’s episode of “Between You and Me” on Northern Community Radio. Too Minnesota Nice to BragBy Aaron J. Brown You never know what you’ll see when a “list post” circulates on the…
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Radio for the People
Lakeland Public Television closed their season of their arts and culture program “Common Grounds” with a profile of Northern Community Radio and my Great Northern Radio Show. This is a wonderful representation of the station for which I am so proud to write and produce material. You can watch the whole episode right here: Related…
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Take off that shirt, deer
This is a shirt with a deer on it. The actual incident involves a deer with a shirt on it. Five Wisconsin men are in trouble for putting a t-shirt on a deer. The DNR found out about this two ways: 1) the deer has been seen around the Oak Creek, Wisconsin, area wearing a…
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Hear the Great Northern Radio Show Bagley podcast!
If you’ve been waiting for the podcast of our March 9, 2013 edition of the Great Northern Radio Show, recorded from our live broadcast at the Bagley High School auditorium, well, today is a big day for you. You can now hear the full, remastered version of that show. This show went through some early…
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The Iron Range: Welding together a new future
People ask me, “What is the Iron Range?” It’s always some version of that question. Maybe it’s “What’s the deal with the Range?” or “I’d like to understand the Range so that I may perform some professional function there without being beaten with an old boot.” It all works out the same. Sometimes people call…
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A masker of life and death
What can we do to bring back life and death masks? Take a little trip through history and check out some famous figures from the ages as they actually appeared. Lincoln. Napoleon. How about real George Washington? All in there. I rather prefer the life masks, if only because they better represent what the person…
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Owl the King’s Men
Crows (Photo: Mary Bailey) Highway 169 runs up the heart of Minnesota, congesting near the cities, pumping trucks up and down the center of the state. But once you get to Grand Rapids, Highway 169 becomes something entirely different. It stains red and becomes the Official Road of the Iron Range, connecting the Mesabi and…