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Loans, taconite and forbearances, oh my! (UPDATE)
The Iron Range Resources Board met Thursday on a variety of topics, summarized here in a post by Lee Bloomquist at the agency’s blog Rangeviews. News stacking is always a judgment issue, so I’ll note that the non-agency WDIO TV (Duluth’s ABC affiliate) led its 6 p.m. Thursday news with Minorca Mine announcing it had…
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Screenings for miners’ health case to begin soon; meeting tonight
Janna Goerdt at the Duluth News Tribune reports today about a meeting tonight in Mountain Iron to detail plans to screen miners who might have been exposed to fibers from the taconite process. The University of Minnesota was funded to run a study on mesothelioma, a rare cancer, that has been appearing in disproportionate levels…
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Coming to America
I found this by way of Andrew Sullivan. This is an animated graph from Ian Stevenson showing global immigration trends to the United States since 1820. Each dot is 100 people. Look at how many people have come to the U.S. from all over the world. As Sullivan says, no other country attracts people the…
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GOP’s LaHood, not Oberstar, leading SecTrans field
Hey, here’s a message for everyone preparing a campaign in the event Jim Oberstar gets called up to be Secretary of Transportation: Crack a cold one and enjoy the status quo. Obama’s team is vetting a congressman, but not ours and not even a Democrat. The Hill, which I found through PoliticalWire, reports that Rep.…
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OMG! Pat Buchanen knows about the Iron Range
Check out this transcript from a recent broadcast of the MSNBC program “Morning Joe” featuring host Joe Scarborough and commentator Pat Buchanen, both conservatives, along with other commentators and co-hosts of various ideologies and affiliations. I used to watch “Morning Joe” regularly but gave it up for the same reason some people give up vodka.…
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Opportunites to use word "enema" in economic headline so few; thus, I leap
Here is a widely circulated op/ed from Iron Range/Duluth entrepreneur Jeno Paulucci, whose family’s tiny former Hibbing grocery store I once lived across from. This piece ran in Duluth and across the Iron Range this week. Paulucci says the economy needs “an enema.” And suddenly, he has our attention. His idea: as in the depression,…
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Rukavina proposes Perpich program as possible cure for economic ills
State Rep. Tom Rukavina (DFL-Virginia) hearkens a Rudy Perpich job creation program from the 1980s as one potential way to address job losses and the bad economy in this Mesabi Daily News letter to the editor from a few days ago. Related posts: No related posts.
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Shoe mashups grow stronger with each passing day
This concept started showing up on Twitter shortly after the “Bush vs. Shoes” incident in Iraq. I went to You Tube to see if anyone followed through and, sure enough, here’s a 25 second clip that makes the magic happen. I also found a mashup of the incident over the strains of MC Hammer’s “U…
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Finish your holiday shopping: ‘Overburden’ signing this Saturday
The first two months of release for my new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” have gone very well. We’ve gone into a second printing and are now mapping efforts to reach into the Twin Cities market in 2009. But for those who live up north, my last book signing for 2008 will…
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Report: Star Tribune shaking up columnist roster
David Brauer at MinnPost posted this story yesterday about the Star Tribune’s efforts to offer buyouts to some of its high profile talent. According to Brauer’s report, columnists Nick Coleman, Katherine Kersten, cartoonist Steve Sack and others might be included among those offered buyouts. Here is a follow up that includes the memo. And he…
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Snow and paper
Today, northern Minnesota is buried in snow drifts as a quasi-blizzard blew through Sunday. Inside the house I’m buried in 100 papers (on the same topic) to grade. Shoveling. Grading. It’s all about moving white things from one pile to another. So, let’s just call this a snow day. I’ll post under the following conditions:…
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The meaning of lost
This is my weekly column for the Sunday, Dec. 14, 2008 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. This is based on another piece I recorded for KAXE this year. The meaning of lostBy Aaron J. Brown We modern folks tend to look at getting lost the way ancient folks looked at the universe. While we…
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India and the Iron Range: the start of a beautiful friendship?
In the early days of the Iron Range immigrants from more than 50 countries came to area for mining, logging and support industries. India was not then among those countries. This past week India took center stage for a special regional conference and cultural program called “Focus on India” at Hibbing Community College. This comes…
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Brown on the Air: Hot Stove League
This week, the Saturday morning 91.7 KAXE call-in and music show “Between You and Me” explores “hot stove league,” or, in layman’s terms, sports talk in the winter. Scott Hall and Fred Friedman will guest host the 10 a.m. to noon program. Their sports expertise is second to none; both can cite statistics for 1950s…
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The fed haze standard and the Iron Range
The EPA has backed off its efforts to eliminate two laws that developers say discourage clean-coal power plants. One of them has huge implications here in Northern Minnesota. Pro-coal EPA officials were trying to undo the federal haze standard that limits pollution near national parks before President-elect Obama takes office. Essentially, there is only so…