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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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Lines, roads and tracks CHECK! Now Essar can build
Construction of Essar Steel Minnesota’s major project northwest of Nashwauk continues to make spurts of progress. This week, Minnesota Power announced that the electrical infrastructure is now complete, meaning that we now have power lines, new roads and fresh railroad spurs leading to a big brown field adorned with massive concrete footings. Nearly all of…
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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…
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Iron Range original music on tap this Saturday
The Iron Range Original Music Association is an excellent example of a small grassroots effort that makes a big difference in the quality of life in a place like ours. This loose band of songwriters has helped cultivate a number of local bands that produce some true musical art and good times. They’ve got a…
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Iron Range Earth Fest 2013 is Saturday
Iron Range Earth Fest will be held this Saturday in Mt. Iron. They’ll have vendors, demonstrations and more. If you like growing things, eating grown things, making your own electricity, etc., they’ve got something for you. The flyer for the event is below the jump. (click headline) Related posts: No related posts.
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Duluth tall ship festival tickets on sale today
Tall ships docked at Duluth Harbor, 2010. Three tall masted ships will arrive in the Port of Duluth, Minnesota, this July. If you want a ride, tickets go on sale today and officials expect they will sell out by summer. The Tall Ships Festival is July 25-29 and if the 2010 event was any indication,…
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Ely, Minnesota, bans social media
It’s April Fools Day. Don’t worry, I won’t try anything. There’s always some bush leaguer saying they’ll shut down their blogs on April Fools Day. But they never do. My friend Paul Ryan, who succeeded me as editor of the UW-Superior student newspaper, did an April Fools joke back in 2001 in which he published…
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Getting to the bottom of the yoga ‘pants’emonium
This is my Sunday column for the March 31, 2013 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Getting to the bottom of the yoga ‘pants’emoniumBy Aaron J. Brown Allow me to state my qualifications to talk about yoga pants. I’ve done yoga a couple times on my Nintendo Wii. I really enjoy how yoga pants look…
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News of the Twins, riding by shadow and twilight
The Minnesota Twins open their 2013 season on Monday. This season’s opener is decidedly less optimistic than last year’s, which was the first season in quite a long time that there was no perceptible optimism whatsoever from anyone except people earning paychecks from the Minnesota Twins. And last year went terribly. So we’ve got this…
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First saltie slated to arrive in Duluth Friday
The saltie Federal Hunter arrives in Duluth Friday. With temperatures rising — and I mean ever so slightly — we are starting to feel like it really might be spring in northern Minnesota. The best indicators are found in unusual places. The chicks have arrived at area L & M Supply stores (Every year the…
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Charting a future for the Midwest beyond its past
“Does the Midwest matter?” That’s the question posed in an essay by Frank Bures in MinnPost today. Bures remembered his youth in Winona, Minnesota, this way: Growing up, I remember feeling like greatness was something that belonged far away, and that if I wanted to do anything worthwhile, my only choice was to leave. That…
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On sulfur and service on the Iron Range
I found this MPR story by Dan Kraker to be a very helpful scientific explanation of the minerals involved in new nonferrous mining proposals in northern Minnesota. Refreshingly informative. “Sulfur is the great collector of metals in nature,” [UM-Duluth geologist Jim Miller] said. “If it wasn’t for sulfur, there would be no economic quantities of…
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Iron Range has 53 problems, mostly a highway
Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN8) jumped into the debate over the new route for Highway 53, strongly opposing the western route proposal that resurfaced late last week. The Mesabi Daily News reports that Nolan called the proposal a “nonstarter.” The public meeting described in the story sounded like a good representation of the local opinion I’ve…