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COLUMN: Keep it interesting, Minnesota
This is my weekly column for the Sunday, Oct. 3, 2010 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Keep it interesting, MinnesotaBy Aaron J. Brown I’ve been trying to quit, but it’s so hard. Temptation is all around and it’s only going to get worse. I wish I never started. I’m talking about politics, not pills.…
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Join me today in Chisholm
Join me today at 2 p.m. at the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm for a new lecture on Iron Range politics. An open, probably lively discussion will no doubt ensue. Find out more at mndiscoverycenter.com. Related posts: No related posts.
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Broadband projects suggest great potential in northern Minnesota
Google Twin Ports, the group of interests trying to attract the internet giant’s experimental fiber project to Duluth, Minnesota, and Superior, Wisconsin, touts recent broadband developments as signs that the region might place high on Google’s list. Check out the message sent to the Google Twin Port’s e-mail list. One of the interesting thing about…
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Awesome lecture to be dropped like hot on Saturday
“Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.” ~Abraham Lincoln “The richest village in the world.”~Hibbing’s reputation during the tenure of 10-time village president Victor Power “The Iron Range will never, never, never be the same.”~Gov. Rudy Perpich, after the iron mining collapse of 1982. “Don’t call it a comeback.…
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Iron ore + innovation = corvettes (also jobs?)
An Iron Range mining project has been featured in The Street, a Wall Street business publication. Here’s the lede: Keith Busse, the CEO and one of the founders of Steel Dynamics, owns the world’s second largest collection of corvettes. In fact, Busse set up his corvette garage, which contains 60 of the classic Chevrolet sports…
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Can Bob ditch after the White House gig? Yes he can.
I enjoyed this quote from the recent Rolling Stone interview with President Obama regarding the president’s one very brief interaction with Duluth native and Iron Range-raised American icon Bob Dylan: “Here’s what I love about Dylan: He was exactly as you’d expect he would be. He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys…
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Frankly speaking about food, faces and other F words on the Range
After I announced that Jeff Manuel would be writing some thoughtful, historically-minded guest posts for MinnesotaBrown, a UW-Superior classmate and fellow former Promethean editor wrote me. Frank Haataja is from the Cloquet area south of the Range, southwest of Duluth, and offers this, an entertaining and considerably less academic outside view of the Iron Range.…
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GUEST POST: Taconite Roads: what’s old is new
The following is part of an occasional series of guest posts from historian Jeff Manuel. Thanks, Jeff! File this one under everything old is new again. Aaron’s recent post about a company hoping to use overburden and tailings as road construction material reminded me of several old efforts to use mining byproducts in road construction.…
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Ten million Benjamins lined up for Essar’s new Range mine?
If it’s Friday afternoon on the Iron Range, some distant corporation must be quietly releasing an extremely important piece of news in a highly controlled manner. Folks ’round here just call this Miller Time. The Hibbing Daily Tribune reports today that “foreign media outlets” are reporting that Essar Steel Minnesota has secured $1 billion in…
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(Fe)eeling good about this upcoming (Fe)st
The Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm is doing a big fall shindig to celebrate some of the popular local bands from the summer “Art in the Park” series. Anyone looking for some Sunday evening fun on the Iron Range should check out IronFest. See what they did there. Iron, with “fest.” My suggestion would have…
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Click on this airport post to increase your enreadments
Headline: “Enplanements keep rising.” This is from a Hibbing Daily Tribune story about how one (!) additional passenger flew out of Hibbing’s Range Regional Airport in August compared to July. Now, the news itself is unremarkable, maybe even good in these economic times. But feel free to let your mind work over the wordplay for…
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Saint Louie, Louie
The Duluth News Tribune has been doing some investigative journalism lately. I’m just going to let that linger on the screen for a second. Nice. OK, so the DNT ran some good stuff Monday about the St. Louis County Board and its travel reimbursements for its seven county commissioners. The smoking gun scandal is not…
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Open house aims to win support for Range planetarium
The Paulucci Space Theatre in Hibbing, a (literally!) star-spangled beacon of astronomical knowledge on the Iron Range, faces its own existential threat this year. The destructive gravitational forces in this case are provided by the state budget crisis. The planetarium’s operator, Hibbing Community College, cannot afford to operate the facility at a loss, which it…
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Lyric Center for the Arts needs help
Unfortunately, this is the first of a couple “save this Iron Range arts and/or culture institution” posts I’ll be dropping this week. The Lyric Center for the Arts is the group restoring the old Lyric Opera House in downtown Virginia, Minnesota. They’ve opened the First Stage performing hall, where music, literary and visual arts events…
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Notable Range history, culture center names new CEO
Lisa Vesel, former communications official for the Hibbing hospital, was named the permanent CEO of the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm last Friday. She replaces Paul Dwyer who had been the interim CEO after the facility re-opened this year from its embarrassing shutdown last year. It’s been good to see the place open, fulfilling its…