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Road construction blitz mars Iron Range travel
Just as spring turns to summer, and summer gently fades to fall, so too will road crews hustle hard when the temperatures drop. The old joke goes, “Minnesota only has two seasons, winter and road construction.” Since road construction is limited by weather, the end of the season is often a mad dash against time.…
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Politics of power: PUC OKs industrial rate cut
This week, in a 3-2 split decision, the Minnesota Public Utilities approved a five percent rate cut for large industrial power customers, a deal targeted to help taconite mines in Northern Minnesota. Last February, the PUC rejected Minnesota Power’s proposed rate deal, saying the utility had not adequately proven it needed to raise rates on residents while…
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Great Northern Radio Show to broadcast from Tower
On Saturday, Sept. 24, I’ll bring my Great Northern Radio Show to Fortune Bay Resort and Casino near Tower, Minnesota. It’s exciting to start another new season (our sixth!) and to announce some changes. The Great Northern will remain a music and comedy variety show featuring the same talents as before. Instead of broadcasting one live…
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The Iron Range and Donald Trump
The Star Tribune led its Sunday political coverage with this Patrick Condon story about the perceived popularity of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump in the vaunted DFL stronghold of the Mesabi Iron Range. Northern Minnesota’s Iron Range has voted for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party since WWII, typically by massive margins. (The DFL is Minnesota’s unique version of the Democratic…
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Northern MN co-op to further expand fiber network
As I pointed out in July, Paul Bunyan Communication continues working on its Central Itasca Fiber Project. In fact, this week they’ve been laying cable on the little dirt road that leads to MinnesotaBrown World Headquarters in Balsam Township. Readers know that I’ve long advocated for ubiquitous high speed internet as a means of economic diversification for…
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N. Minn., Canada share deep economic ties
The other day I got a note from a longtime reader saying something I wrote “sounded positively Canadian.” And while I’m a proud citizen of the U. S. of A., it’s true that my beloved homeland here in Northern Minnesota is very near (and rather influenced by) Canada. A Northern Minnesota accent sounds more like a Canadian accent than…
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MinnesotaBrown, KAXE at the State Fair
I’ve seen the numbers. Even though this is the only independent blog wholly dedicated to “Modern Life in Northern Minnesota,” nearly half of you live or work in the Twin Cities metro area. That’s fine. We’re cool. But it means we never get to have awkward exchanges at the grocery store, or silently wonder what’s…
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Radio consolidation swells in Northern Minnesota
Back in high school in the 1990s, two radio stations impacted my life. The first was the one I listened to: KQDS out of Duluth. Classic rock ‘n’ roll, something I preferred to pop. You couldn’t always get KQ on the Iron Range, but you could on the jacked-up antennae my dad put on our roof…
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Magnetation facing potential Sept. 30 shutdown
Magnetation, LLC, announced today it would prepare for a potential Sept. 30 shutdown of its Plant 4 scram mining operation in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, and its processing plant in Reynolds, Indiana. Magnetation is an iron ore mining and processing company based in Grand Rapids. The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notice (WARN) of a potential shutdown relates to an effort to…
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Essar owes $1.1 billion in bankrupcy
Bankruptcy proceedings began recently for Essar Steel Minnesota, the struggling subsidiary of the Indian company Essar Steel, which seeks to build a new iron mine in Northern Minnesota. The story draws rapt attention from residents and leaders on the Mesabi Iron Range. For good reason. The outcome of this case will determine if hundreds of new…
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Bonding spat ends in election season splat
Last week, Minnesota legislative leaders and Gov. Mark Dayton abandoned hope of a special session this year. That means that the legislature’s failure to pass a bonding bill, and Gov. Dayton’s veto of the tax bill, will stand through this November’s election. This sort of thing can happen with divided government. Gov. Dayton is a…
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Teeming masses for Duluth Tall Ships
On Friday, the family and I made the trek down to Duluth for the 2016 Tall Ships Festival, which runs through Sunday. I love history. I love ships. Good times. I won’t lie, this event was considerably more crowded than the previous Tall Ships events we had attended. In fact, we attended our first Tall Ships by mistake. We…
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Chisholm council ruffled by criticism over failed studio
Looks like MinnesotaBrown.com made the paper. At the Aug. 11 Chisholm City Council meeting, Mayor Mike Jugovich and other city councilors criticized council candidate Brandan Fiedler for sharing on Facebook a blog post I wrote several weeks ago. Marie Tolonen of the Chisholm Tribune Press wrote a story about this exchange that also ran in the Hibbing Daily Tribune on…
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For most, a mind is a terrible thing to change
Lately, logging onto Facebook has been a little like making a daily visit to the hospital to watch someone’s condition deteriorate. No, I’m not talking about cat videos. Even the insipid game requests hearken to a more bygone era of wasting time on the internet. No, I’m talking about the art of politics as performed by…
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Sandstede wins House 6A DFL primary
As we reported last night, music teacher and union leader Julie Sandstede (DFL-Hibbing) advances to the Nov. 8 general election in Minnesota House District 6A. She’ll face Republican special education teacher Rob Farnsworth of Hibbing and active write-in candidate and union equipment operator Steven Hakly of Cherry. Sandstede’s win surprised many, including me. But looking at the…