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Better off Red
The Mesaba Co-op Park near Cherry holds its 80th annual Midsummer Festival starting tonight and running through this weekend. Related posts: No related posts.
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Legendary socialist lair to hold 80th anniversay with picnic, lectures
You know what you don’t see much of these days? Cooperative recreational parks in which membership is based on shared maintenance of the grounds. The Mesaba Co-op Park between Cherry and Hibbing is legendary on the Iron Range and beyond. Of course, part of that might have more to do with its reputation as a…
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Grover’s Corners Revisited
I must give a strong recommendation of Frank Rich’s column (“Some Things Don’t Change in Grover’s Corners”) in the Sunday New York Times. He compares the conditions today to the conditions under which Thornton Wilder wrote his famous play “Our Town.” He cites Wilder’s nephew and literary executor as saying that the play is being…
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Cherry readies for a fight
A defiant school board member Darrell Bjerklie speaks out in defense of my alma mater: Cherry High School. The community is girding for a fight as the St. Louis County schools look for big cuts amid a financial crisis. Cherry isn’t any worse off than the other schools; it’s just close enough to other schools…
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Bobby Aro Highway
The St. Louis County Board is taking up a measure to rename Co. Hwy 7 after the late, great polka star Bobby Aro, who wrote and performed the 1957 hit “Highway 7.” Speaking as someone who grew up on Highway 7 not that far from the Aros, I think that’s a pretty good idea. Maybe…
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The things we learn in a decade
This is my weekly column for the Sunday, June 22, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune. The things we learn in a decadeBy Aaron J. Brown I’m finally starting to pick up on the patterns of nature out where I live. I grew up in the country around the edges of the Mesabi Iron Range, but I…
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A decade later…
Today is my 10-year high school reunion. Yeah, baby! Cherry High School Class of 1998! As class president, I got stuck with organizing the reunion. My main job was to pick the meats for the three-meat buffet. Here’s what I went with: baron of beef roasted turkey lasagna I hope people like it. I’m really…
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A busy week …
Quietly, it’s been a very busy week on the Iron Range. There were developments in Mesabi Nugget, Minnesota Steel, Polymet, Taconite Ridge, iron magnetization, flood mitigation for the Canisteo mine pit, my favorite boondoggle (Mesaba Energy Project) and more. I can’t keep up with it all. I hope to have several posts up later today…
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Go Tigers!
Indulge some nostalgia here. My alma mater, Cherry High School, is making its first appearance at the state baseball tournament since 1997 when I was still a student there. Cherry is a tiny township tucked away along the Mesabi Iron Range, known mostly as the place where all the Finns went after being blacklisted from…
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Life is short
Rick Weegman from the Duluth News-Tribune writes a column today about a young woman from my hometown of Cherry, Minn., who was killed in a car wreck. It’s about the everyday reality of mortality, something that hits home for me since I crossed that same intersection thousands of times when I was in high school.…