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Failure is the theme in top words of 2013
Language tells all there is to know about people. Death of a language is the death of a culture. Complex languages denote complex people. Languages change, so do we. If this is to be believed, our times shall be designated as the error message one gets when clicking on something that isn’t really there. To…
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Great Northern Radio Show weekend is here
This “Straight Outta Compton” parody video by the Fosston-raised rapper turned big city comedian Bino White was our initial inspiration when we started working on tomorrow’s Great Northern Radio Show in Fosston, Minnesota. My radio variety program heads to this northwestern Minnesota farming town Saturday, Dec. 14 for a live broadcast 5-7 p.m. on Northern…
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Great Northern Radio Show, live from Fosston
For the last two years I’ve been producing, writing and hosting a live radio variety program called the Great Northern Radio Show. We’re a production of Northern Community Radio, where I’ve written and produced programming for many years, but this is the show I’ve been waiting my whole life to do. Yes, it’s a take…
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Great Northern Radio Show: Katie Wig
Brainerd-based Minnesota singer-songwriter Katie Wig was an early discovery on the Brainerd edition of my Great Northern Radio Show in 2012. She also performed in Bagley last spring. The 20-year-old recently announced she was going to focus full time on her music. That’s a bold move, and she’s starting on our December 14 show in…
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Great Northern Radio Show: Reina del Cid
On Saturday, Dec. 14, I bring my Great Northern Radio Show to the small farming community of Fosston, Minnesota, for our annual winter show. Our program brings music, comedy and storytelling to unique locations around northern Minnesota, exploring what it means to live a modern life off the beaten path. Each show is planned around…
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In anticipation of life’s improbable joys
The news wiled around the internet like whispers in the night. Did you hear about the comet? The brightest comet EVER? The one that will shine 15 times more brilliantly than the moon? It was called Comet ISON and, like most comets, it had been around a lot longer than the likes of us. Comets…
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Great Northern Radio Show in Fosston Dec. 14
I’ll be bringing my Great Northern Radio Show to Fosston, Minnesota, on Saturday, Dec. 14. The show airs live on Northern Community Radio from 5-7 p.m. We offer free seating at the Fosston Library Arts Center before 4:30 p.m. This will be our holiday/winter special and we have some surprises in store. The show seems…
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Goodnight Loon: Minnesota twist on kids’ classic
“Goodnight loon … Goodnight ox jumping over the loon … Goodnight lamp and the hungry raccoon … Goodnight walleyes, goodnight pies …” So go the words of a new Minnesota children’s book, “Goodnight Loon,” that is one part satire, one part Minnesota whimsy, and yet still endearing for the ears of kids who still grow…
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Interactive Dylan video ‘channels’ new art concept
Though it’s already been around the internet for a week or so, this new interactive Dylan video is a groundbreaking must watch. Bob Dylan’s classic song, “Like a Rolling Stone,” has been named by the magazine Rolling Stone as the most important rock ‘n’ roll song of all time (to be fair, the magazine drew…
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Yule never believe these holiday creeps
It doesn’t surprise me that my children start talking about Christmas three months early. Kids don’t have any money (thanks a lot, child labor laws), so one understands why the arrival of Santa Claus would seem to them like Cold War air drops of life-sustaining supplies over the Berlin Wall. That is, of course, assuming…
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Bob Dylan: ‘I’ve been around iron all my life’
(POST UPDATED 11/18/2013) — Bob Dylan was born Robert Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota, raised up north in Hibbing on the Mesabi Iron Range. Much is made of his relationship with his hometown. He, like many Iron Rangers in the 1950s, left and built a life elsewhere. Bob Dylan’s life so happens to include five…
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When it comes to recycling, yes we ‘can’
I’ve always had an intimate relationship with scrap metal, having been raised on a salvage yard out in Zim, a swampy lowland scrub-brush township just off northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range. My family indexed junk into piles of refuse so large as to function as my childhood landscape. Some people remember seeing the mountains as…
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Minnesota native Bob Dylan awarded Légion d’honneur
The nation of France awarded iconic singer/songwriter and northern Minnesota native Bob Dylan its highest distinction this week, the Légion d’honneur (Legion of Honor). According to the BBC, French cultural minister Aurelie Filippetti gave a glowing speech Nov. 13, 2013, citing Dylan’s influence by French poetry and how he inspired student uprisings in the 1960s,…
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The Iron Ranger who would not hunt
In honor of the 2013 Minnesota deer hunting season opener (rifles, of course), happy hunting to all those participating. I dedicate this column to all the non-hunters struggling with day-to-day conversation this time of year. I live in northern Minnesota. I’ve lived here all my life. I don’t hunt. Yes, I eat meat. And the…
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A new world behind the trees
On a cold November morning, trucks rattle along an old dirt road behind a stand of timber across from our home in the woods of Itasca County. The chains rattle against the trailers in the crisp, clear air. Sound carries. Two miles, maybe three? This land has been logged several times over in the past…