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Springtime in the Port of Duluth
Spring has sprung! The first ship of the season, Mesabi Miner, departs the Port of Duluth Friday morning. Duluth, Minn., USA—Maritime traffic for the 2012 shipping season is set to get underway this week in the Port of Duluth-Superior with the anticipated departure of the Mesabi Miner in the early morning hours of Friday, March…
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Faster permitting amendment offered to aid Magnetation
Rep. Tom Anzelc has proposed an amendment hastening the permitting process for scram mining operations like Magnetation in a state House bill. There was a not-too-small recent hullabaloo over where Magnetation might locate their proposed processing plant, which would turn their iron concentrate salvaged from area mine waste dumps into traditional taconite pellets. Magnetation extracts…
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Range historian warms to former Ironworld
Hometown Focus, an Iron Range weekly newspaper, profiles the changes at the Minnesota Discovery Center in the last year. The MDC is the former Ironworld which famously closed down in 2009 after mismanagement occurred during its spinoff from state-run cultural site to a nonprofit. Among the controversial occurrences was the renaming of the facility with…
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Hug a Ranger? That’s what they’re saying, anyway
St. Louis County, the giant northeastern Minnesota principality that includes Duluth and about 75 percent of the Iron Range is trying out a new marketing campaign: “Hug a Ranger.” Let me break this down for you cityfolks, since you are supposedly the target market. We still mine here. Did you know that? That mining produces…
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MN-8 DFLers on Almanac portend delicate chess match
Last Friday night the DFL candidates seeking to run against U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8) appeared on TPT’s Almanac, the vaunted statewide public TV news magazine show.View the Almanac segment featuring MN-8 DFL candidates. The interview by hosts Cathy Wurzer and Eric Eskola began with a heavy focus on last week’s somewhat unsurprising announcement that…
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COLUMN: Saving time, a chronological challenge
This is my Sunday column for the March 11, 2012 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. A version of this piece aired recently on KAXE’s Between You and Me. Saving time, a chronological challengeBy Aaron J. Brown Time is money. Well, sort of. Time is the soil from which sprouts our mortal life. You can…
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Cliffs predict stability at Minnesota mine properities
For all the drama about mining over in Wisconsin, Cliffs Natural Resources predicts stability and prosperity at its Minnesota iron ore properties for the next 2-3 years. Related posts: No related posts.
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A Twitter chat about Modern Life on the Iron Range
This Sunday afternoon I’ll be discussing my book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” on Twitter. (@minnesotabrown) “Overburden,” a humor/historical work of creative nonfiction, attempts to understand our unusual rust belt region as it crosses into a new era. The Twitter chat will occur from 2-4 p.m. Sunday on the hashtag #LPBooks. The talk…
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Brown on the Air: SAVING TIME!
Daylight savings time is upon us. Clocks spring forward this Sunday morning, ushering in the annual period of unnatural light adjustment indicative of modern life. All I know is that I’ve spent the last several weeks trying to explain how days get longer in the spring to my first grader and now when we go…
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Do not ask the past about the future
I have more thoughts on my post from last night about Gogebic Taconite ending its plans to open an iron mine and processing plant in northern Wisconsin. Before any of that happened, I planned to write about this letter in the Wisconsin State Journal. A letter-writer had asked people who support mining in northern Wisconsin…
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Gogebic Taconite cancels northern Wisconsin project
Citing dissatisfaction with a bill that would loosen environmental permitting, officials for Gogebic Taconite announced the cancellation of their plans to mine taconite near Ashland, Wisconsin. Gogebic Taconite CEO Bill Williams offered this brief statement: Senate rejection of the mining reforms in Assembly Bill 426 sends a clear message that Wisconsin will not welcome iron…
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Cravaack reveals some surprises in Gilbert forum
Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8) was on the Iron Range late last week and Saturday. He did a town hall forum in Gilbert Saturday morning, the account of which was recorded in a Sunday story in the Mesabi Daily News. It would appear that the forum was a mostly genial affair, owing in part to the…
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COLUMN: The evolution of dogship
This is my Sunday column for the March 4, 2012 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. A version of this piece aired a couple weeks ago on 91.7 KAXE. The evolution of dogshipBy Aaron J. Brown In a recent Time Magazine cover story, researchers found that friendship endures even among the beasts. That is to…
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Minnesota spelling champ hails from the Range
Mesabi East 7th grader Emma Greenlee won the Minnesota Spelling Bee and will represent the state at the Scripps Howard National Spelling Bee in Washington, D.C. (the one they air on ESPN). The Mesabi Daily News has the story and will have more in tomorrow’s edition. Related posts: No related posts.
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New Lyric exhibit shares blue collar Range images, more
The Lyric Center for the Arts in Virginia, Minnesota, opens a new exhibit with a Saturday reception from noon to 2:30 p.m.”Paintings and Sketches by the Pros: Albin Zaverl and Bob Maki” shares the work of the venerable painter Zaverl and the sketch artist Maki. Both have worked most of their careers on the Iron…