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West Range Itasca County race takes shape
Last week I reported a vacancy on the Itasca County Board after Mark Mandich resigned his District 5 seat on the western Mesabi Iron Range. Two candidates emerged over the past few days. Ben DeNucci Nashwauk Mayor Ben DeNucci said he was running for the Itasca County Board. DeNucci owns a bar in Nashwauk and…
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Itasca County commissioner resigns
Commissioner Mark Mandich resigned his seat on the Itasca County Board this week. The board accepted Mandich’s resignation at their meeting Tuesday. My sources tell me that Mandich cites health problems as his reason for stepping down. The Itasca County Board authorized a vacancy, instructing the county auditor to prepare a special election. Details on…
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Power poles like fingers to the sky
They’re putting in new power poles along the county highway near our dirt road in Balsam Township. The old poles, faded grey, lean askew like the bright orange temporary fence that tries and fails to prevent people taking a short cut to the portable toilets at a tractor show. The new poles lay alongside the…
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MinnesotaBrown’s Top Posts of 2016
Goodbye, 2016. Hello, 2017. As we mark this turn of the calendar page, let’s look back at the year that was at MinnesotaBrown.com. This year I celebrated 10 years of blogging at MinnesotaBrown.com. Fifteen years of writing a column in the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Twenty years of work in Iron Range media, dating back to…
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They say snow; it ain’t gonna snow hard
[One half of a composite of several recent conversations] They say it’s gonna snow hard. It ain’t gonna snow hard. You know how I know? The deer ain’t movin.’ Them deer know when a blizzard is comin.’ You see ‘em movin’ all over hell an’ back. It ain’t gonna snow hard. You remember that guy…
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Celebrating 10 years at MinnesotaBrown
Polls just opened here amid the pine forests of Northern Minnesota and across the whole technicolor landscape of the United States of America. In this pause before the flurry of tonight’s election results, let me remark on 10 years of blogging. It was on this day in 2006, the day after the election, that I started posting original…
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Top 5 races to watch in Northern Minnesota
Election Day 2016 arrives tomorrow. As in, within 24 hours of this post. It’s really going to happen. It’s really going to be over. You’ve got a lot of places to read speculation on the presidential race, but only one place to read speculation on Northern Minnesota’s closest down-ballot races. I’d love to diagram every seat…
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Hunting for the heart of Northern MN
The firearms deer hunting season in Minnesota opens Saturday morning, kicking off a venerated November tradition in Northern Minnesota. This year’s season runs Nov. 5-20. How firmly entrenched is Minnesota’s deer hunting tradition? Behold this e-mail sent out to parents in my son’s 6th Grade class this morning: Attention Deer Hunters! If you are so fortunate to bag a deer…
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The quarterlife crisis of the Information Age
Like most “kids these days” I keep my cell phone with me at all times. I post etherial tidbits to social media and turn to Google to find the lyrics to a song or the location of a restaurant. I’m writing this column in the “cloud.” Nevertheless, I’m conscious of the fact that I taught…
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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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Breaking Broadband: progress in rural Minnesota
“If I were the hugging kind, I would hug you.” “OK, then.” I had clearly unnerved the surveyor on my township road, but I knew why he was there. He was mapping the route for new fiber optic cables near my home. You can see the little flags all over the Itasca County countryside.…
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Hooking up: Broadband in Minnesota
On Saturday, a postcard arrived in the U.S. Mail. Perhaps ironically, this small piece of snail mail told us that MinnesotaBrown World Headquarters in Balsam Township, Minnesota, would be connected to high speed fiber optic internet access later this year. It’s official. Paul Bunyan Communication’s Central Itasca Fiber project currently includes my rural neighborhood. You can see the company’s final…
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Mud for our modern world
Thus ends the afternoon meeting. You can hear him now, the co-worker who’d rather be fishing. He slaps open the conference room door as though exiting an outhouse. Then comes the husky voiced lady from the department that has no name, the one who smokes reds on the loading dock without blinking. “Clear as mud,”…
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IRRRB OKs major Itasca broadband project
Today, the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board approved a $1.25 million matching grant for the Paul Bunyan Communication broadband project in Itasca County. The funding secures a project that will connect 1,250 households, 3,500 people and up to 100 small businesses with service as fast as 1GB/second. The IRRRB vote was 7-1, with Sen.…
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Golden opportunity for broadband on the Iron Range
Many people reading this have access to reliable high-speed internet access for less than $60 a month. You use this bountiful bandwidth to work from home, communicate with family, attend college, or help kids with homework. But for people who live in rural townships throughout the Iron Range this service isn’t available. They pay twice…