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"Five best days of summer" kick start Wednesday on the Iron Range
The St. Louis County Fair (NORTH!) runs Wednesday through Sunday at the fairgrounds in Chisholm, across Highway 169 from the city, next to the Minnesota Discovery Center (nee Ironworld). Just follow the giant chicken. Dubbed “The five greatest days of summer” by fair organizers, this is another of those classic Iron Range summer events where…
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COLUMN: Iron Range 1969
This is my weekly column for the Sunday, July 25, 2010 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Thanks to Bill Lah for connecting me with the report mentioned in this column. Iron Range 1969By Aaron J. Brown (Chorus) Back in Summer of ’69 Man we were killin’ time.We were young and restless.We needed to unwind.I…
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We’re going underground again (in theory)
The Star Tribune reports on a big financing break for copper mining on the eastern Iron Range. This is not Polymet, but rather a newly formed company, (Twin Metals Minnesota LLC, if you need the name) that believes it can mine underground and produce 40,000 tons of copper a day. All this tells me is…
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Squirrels, again!
Now that the Hibbing Public Utilities Commission settled its labor problems, union and management forces turn their steely eyes to the real enemy: Squirrels. Two electrocuted-squirrel-oriented power outages have hit Hibbing in just two days. I try to clip and and save all the newspaper reports of squirrel-induced power outages. There are quite a few.…
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Understanding the (parameters of the discussion of the) true nature of the universe, featuring dark matter Powerpoint
Fans of this blog know that I’m a sucker for underground mines and dark matter. It’s like peanut butter and chocolate. Here’s the press release for an upcoming event related to both at the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm. Get to the bottom of Soudan lab experiments On Wednesday, July 21 and Thursday, August 5,…
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Art in the Park returns Thursday
Art in the Park continues tonight, July 15, at the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm. They’re building a great northern Minnesota music event, despite the challenges of operating a cultural center and historical site in the midst of a recession, which I detailed early in the week. The event runs from 5-9 p.m. and will…
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The trials, tribulations of Range papers, mine salvage operations
A couple of interesting items to point out from Business North this week. This Beth Bily story from explains the “growing pains” of Magnetation, the new company producing iron ore products from salvaged iron ore dumps piled up years ago. The company continues to expand, but the story shows how close it came to collapsing…
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Free local music Thursday nights an early hit at big, familiar Chisholm venue
“Art in the Park,” the Thursday night free local music event at the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm is a hit, according to sources at the center. More than 350 people attended last week’s event, filling the new main parking lot, and now that people are finding out about it this might become the cool…
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Thank you, Britt!
Thanks to the Britt Community Historical Society and all the wonderful people I met last night at the group’s annual dinner held in the Sandy Town Hall. I was honored to give the keynote speech and share more of my theories about Range past, present and future, the roots of which are in my book…
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COLUMN: Age may be inevitable, but the future is ageless
This is my weekly column for the Sunday, July 11, 2010 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Age may be inevitable, but the future is agelessBy Aaron J. Brown I’ve been a parent for just over five years but I’ve finally reached the parent stage where you’re expected to sit some place with the other…
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Britt History and Iron Range Future talk today
Join me later today in Britt, Minnesota for my keynote at the Britt Community Historical Society annual dinner! The event is at the Sandy Town Hall at 4 and there is a ticket cost. Either way, have a great summer Sunday afternoon. If you’re interested in the kinds of things I talk about at events…
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Jubilee fever hits Hibbing this weekend
Saturday brings the Hibbing Jubilee parade and street dance to the Iron Range calendar. This event is notable as one in which I’ve marched in the parade many times for various political candidates and in which I hit it off with my wife Christina at the street dance back in 1998. We are not street…
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What/where is Britt? Find that and more Sunday
I never signed up to be a historian (an historian? See, I don’t even know) but write a book that tangentially involves history and BAM you be one. The bar is low, but I aim high. That’s why I’ll be the keynote speaker at the Britt Community Historical Society Annual Dinner on Sunday, July 11…
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What was the word on the street?
We didn’t take in any of the Iron Range parades, street dances or fireworks this year. Little kids, including two with a shared birthday in the weekend mix, kept us busy with a different sort of fun — mostly involving family and barbecued meat products. What was the economic, political and social vibe and/or gossip…
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Why the Range 4th of July is so different
The folks make a big deal of northern Minnesota’s Iron Range Fourth of July rituals. In searching online about the topic I found this Ruth Olson interview with Mary Lou Nemanic, author of One Day for Democracy: Independence Day and the Americanization of Iron Range Immigrants (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2007). This is from…