Aurora isn’t a very big town, but it’s a sweet little place on the eastern Mesabi Iron Range. It was among the towns most brutally hit by the closure of LTV Steel 14 years ago. While Aurora has carried on since it has also seen the gradual decay of its economy and population, as have most Iron Range… Read More →
What’s ahead for the Great Northern Radio Show
July 27, 2015 by Leave a Comment
Since October 2011 I’ve produced, written and hosted a radio variety program called the Great Northern Radio Show on Northern Community Radio based in Grand Rapids and Bemidji, Minnesota. We’ve been fortunate enough to air on independent public stations around the state and even on the cable access channel in the Northeast suburbs of the Twin… Read More →
Northern Lights Music Festival brings classics back to Range
June 30, 2015 by Leave a Comment
The Northern Lights Music Festival is returning to the Iron Range this summer with its annual classical music and opera tour across the region. Last summer, I spoke with Veda Zupancic, the accomplished musician and director from Aurora who founded the event. This year, the Northern Lights festival kicks off today and includes events that run through July 20…. Read More →
Range business, gov’t leaders call for summit
June 29, 2015 by 48 Comments
In Sunday’s paper, the Mesabi Daily News published a story about the fact that Minnesota Power (Allete) executive Al Hodnick, former State Sen. Doug Johnson and IRRRB Commissioner Mark Phillips were joining to call for an Iron Range economic summit. From the Bill Hanna story: Hodnik wants an Iron Range economic summit soon to provide… Read More →
Laskiainen Finnish Sliding Festival in Palo this weekend
February 4, 2015 by 2 Comments
This is an older post about Laskiainen. Click here for the 2016 information. This weekend, Feb. 7-8, the 78th Annual Laskiainen Finnish Sliding Festival will be held near the Loon Lake Community Center in downtown Palo, Minnesota. This annual Iron Range winter tradition originated with Finnish immigrants who settled places like Palo after they were… Read More →
Bringing aria to area: Northern Lights fest illuminates Range
July 13, 2014 by Leave a Comment
Iron Range residents are often presented a simplified interpretation of the past: many of our ancestors came from overseas to mine the ore that built a nation. What is often missed in this description is why. Save for a handful of Cornish mining jacks, these men didn’t come here because they liked to mine heavy… Read More →
Northern Lights Music Festival in full swing
July 8, 2014 by Leave a Comment
“You can’t love the opera if you never see it.” That’s what Aurora native, concert pianist, and founder of the Northern Lights Music Festival Veda Zupancic told me when I interviewed her this week for my Sunday column. Indeed, the Northern Lights Music Festival combines an educational component for beginning and advanced music students and… Read More →
PolyMet hearings highlight our misdirected passion
January 26, 2014 by 29 Comments
The purpose of the meeting was to parse the language of a 2,000-page tome of geology, hydrology, chemistry and economics. That’s a tough sell. Even offered free donuts, average humans would duck a meeting of that description. But this particular meeting on Jan. 16, 2014 — first of three hearings for the PolyMet Mining environmental… Read More →
School levies prevail across northern Minnesota
November 6, 2013 by 11 Comments
Yesterday’s election didn’t provide many surprises here in northern Minnesota, and my hypothesis that schools would face a more difficult time passing referendums proved incorrect. Voters in Duluth, Hermantown and Hibbing all approved their levy referendums. Only Hermantown and the second Duluth question were remotely close, and even then not really in doubt. (Duluth’s second… Read More →
Northern Lights Music Festival starts today
July 1, 2013 by Leave a Comment
A scene from ‘Gianni Schicchi,’ the Northern Lights Opera Production in July 2011 Tonight you can catch a gala opening night concert for the Northern Lights Music Festival, a midsummer celebration of opera and classical music in the heart of northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. Tonight’s concert is at 7 p.m. in the Mesabi East auditorium… Read More →
