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Great Northern Radio Show in Duluth
Come celebrate the 10 year anniversary of MinnesotaBrown.com with the Duluth debut of my Great Northern Radio Show on Saturday, Nov. 12. In 2011, the Great Northern Radio Show gave me the creative outlet I needed to be able to continue mining the depths of Northern Minnesota politics and economics here at the site. I…
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Trampled by Turtles retreat into shell
When you think about the Northern Minnesota music scene, one band stands out like a banjo at a rock ‘n’ roll show. They go by the name Trampled by Turtles. The Duluth- and Minneapolis-based Americana band brings a hard-charging bluegrass sound. TBT basically put the Duluth scene on the map. They were working local musicians who remade…
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Joe Biden to campaign in Duluth this Friday
Vice President Joe Biden will campaign for the Democratic ticket in Duluth this Friday, Oct. 28. Biden appears in Duluth to support former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who leads Donald Trump for president in Minnesota but trails Trump here in the Northeast. Biden also will drum up support for U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN8), locked in a tight…
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Bob Dylan wins Nobel Prize for Literature
Bob Dylan, born in Duluth and raised in the Mesabi Iron Range mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota, has won the 2016 Nobel Prize for Literature. Though Dylan made several short lists for the prize in recent years, few thought the most prestigious writing award in the world would go to an artist whose primary medium was songwriting. This…
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Sanders, Nolan to campaign in Duluth Tuesday
Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) will campaign with U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN8) in Duluth on Tuesday evening. The pair will also make their pitch for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to Northern Minnesotans. Sanders carried Minnesota and Nolan’s district handily at last March’s Minnesota caucuses in his unsuccessful run for the Democratic nomination. Sanders, who has since…
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Nolan, Mills clash in MN-8’s only 2016 debate
Today, U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN8) debated Republican challenger Stewart Mills in a Duluth News Tribune/Duluth Chamber of Commerce forum. You can see the debate at my previous post. This was a good debate. In about one hour, significant and substantive policy differences found their way into the discussion. Neither candidate necessarily “won,” but both…
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Radio consolidation swells in Northern Minnesota
Back in high school in the 1990s, two radio stations impacted my life. The first was the one I listened to: KQDS out of Duluth. Classic rock ‘n’ roll, something I preferred to pop. You couldn’t always get KQ on the Iron Range, but you could on the jacked-up antennae my dad put on our roof…
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Teeming masses for Duluth Tall Ships
On Friday, the family and I made the trek down to Duluth for the 2016 Tall Ships Festival, which runs through Sunday. I love history. I love ships. Good times. I won’t lie, this event was considerably more crowded than the previous Tall Ships events we had attended. In fact, we attended our first Tall Ships by mistake. We…
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Help on the way for St. Louis County workers
County government is probably the most overlooked part of our democracy, and yet in Minnesota it’s the point of contact for the people who need the most help. This includes the messy work of law enforcement, child protection and family welfare, social services and the very apparatus of humane treatment of our citizens. When county government…
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Masterful navigation brings in ship amid Duluth storm
Here’s an exciting display of the power of the Thursday morning storm that has many in Duluth still without power three days later. Dennis O’Hara posted this YouTube video of the 729-foot Algoma Guardian entering the Port of Duluth through the canal. This Lisa Kaczke story in the Duluth News Tribune tells the story, but…
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Nothing stops viking mauraders, except red tape
By now, many of you may have heard of the woes facing the Norwegian replica longship (aka, viking ship) Draken Harald Hårfagre as it makes its way into the Great Lakes. This ship sails around the world doing exhibitions, and now sails the Great Lakes as part of a tour of historical tall masted sailing ships.…
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The hot, wet violence of Minnesota’s summer
They call it a high pressure dome, hot electric atmosphere more vapor than air, parked over Minnesota like a Ouija board. We get these once or twice a summer, about as often as we get deep freezes in the dead of winter. Days like this remind us that 150 degrees Fahrenheit separate our typical annual…
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Duluth looking to remodel, not replace library
Last year it seemed the city of Duluth was barreling toward the demolition of its distinctive library building along Superior and Michigan avenues in favor of a new $35 million building. At the time, the consultant hired by the city was saying that it would cost $31 million to perform necessary repairs and remodeling to the…
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Duluth Superior Film Festival launches June 1
The Duluth Superior Film Festival opens June 1-5, 2016 in venues across the Twin Ports and even up in the big city of Cook, Minnesota. According to festival organizers, this year’s festival will have a distinctly local vibe: Because of the outstanding rebate and tax incentive program in MN and on The Iron Range, much of…
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Dylan Fest 2016 coming to Duluth, Hibbing
Fun Fact: The IRRRB, the Blandin Foundation, M&Ms and Bob Dylan all turn 75 this year. This is the kind of information that passes through my mind on a lovely May day in Northern Minnesota. It’s been a few years since we closed up shop at Dylan Days in Hibbing. I’ve now totally expunged from…