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Great Minds think aloud at Oct. 5 Quiz Bowl
If you were like me, and for the sake of your social life I hope you weren’t, you were part of your high school Knowledge Bowl team. It goes by different names in different places, but here in Minnesota we call it Knowledge Bowl. Being from the Iron Range, our knowledge bowl tournaments were held…
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Talking class division on ‘Dig Deep’
When I was 24 and attending grad school, I watched every episode of Donald Trump’s first season of “The Apprentice.” The show was on during one of the few nights of the week that my wife and I could watch TV together. We watched every episode in real time, pre-DVR. The act wore thin in…
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Former Magnetation brass buy Canadian iron mine
Tacora Resources, Inc., a newly formed mining company based in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, just acquired the assets to the Scully Mine in Wabush, Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada. Cliffs Natural Resources closed the Scully Mine in 2014. The company left behind unfunded pensions and considerable animosity among the rural population of this small town in Labrador.…
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Itasca County A-OK with ATVs along most county roads
Starting July 15, Itasca County will allow all-terrain vehicles (ATVs) to drive on the right-of-ways along county roads. The Grand Rapids Herald-Review reported the county board action in a June 28 story. The ordinance comes after a long debate within county government. Some see danger allowing ATVs so close to active traffic. Others see merits.…
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Community, cars, ticks highlight June 2017 Great Northern Radio Show
On June 17, 2017 my Great Northern Radio Show broadcast live from the Reif Center in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. We had more than 500 people packed into the Wilcox Theater to hear our brand of music, comedy and storytelling in what we dub the “big, big show from your hometown.” This show ended up sounding…
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Car wash confidential
For me, one of the big realizations of summer is that my car is filthy. I don’t just mean dirty. No, I mean that I can grow potatoes in my undercarriage. I live at the end of a long dirt road in Itasca County, a place where the miles of dirt road exceed the number…
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Top 10 Reasons to attend Great Northern Radio Show
Tomorrow, on June 17, my Great Northern Radio Show will broadcast live from the Reif Center in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. I wrote about the show a couple weeks ago. One of the reasons I developed such an interest in broadcasting and the variety show format was my early teenage love affair with late night shows. So, with…
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Great Northern Radio Show cruises home to Grand Rapids
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Mr. Rogers. If you’ve never heard of him, or seen his groundbreaking children’s show, that’d be reasonable. It’s getting a little old now. But some of you might have seen the recording of his testimony defending federal funding of public broadcasting back in 1969. Others might have seen the viral story…
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Itasca County shark? A mystery unsolved
Itasca County boasts plenty of critters that could eat you. Bears. Mosquitos. Turkey buzzards. But until now no one’s ever worried about a shark. The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported May 17 about a father and son duo who fished a tiger shark jaw out of the Mississippi River near Grand Rapids. Tiger sharks can only survive…
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Officials push new rails on the Iron Range to cut transport costs
Say, ladies and gents, the brass says someday an iron horse might reach across the whole Mesabi Iron Range. Ain’t that a corker! Wait until Mr. James J. Hill hears about this. Slang from the 1880s aside, local officials and elected leaders — at the behest of companies like Minnesota Power — are pushing for more…
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To build Iron Range economic hopes we must keep working
The steam cloud pouring out of the stack at Keewatin Taconite once again guides my daily commute from the wilds of Itasca County into Hibbing. For nearly two years, the eastern sky bore only the unforgiving blaze of the sun. Now fluffy white billows remind that hundreds of miners are back at work. Unfortunately, KeeTac’s…
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‘The Ballad of Newton Badger’ and the spark of community potential
Every semester I ask my Iron Range college students to identify a “community problem” and then argue for a solution to that problem. In recent years, without fail, the most common problem identified is “nothing for young people to do on the Iron Range.” The solutions, of course, all include some variant on “here’s something…
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‘Flowetry in Motion’ for 2017 MN State All Hockey Hair Team
Northern Minnesota continues to celebrate the exciting conclusion to the Minnesota State High School Boys Hockey Tournament. For the first time since 1998, two northern teams won the Class A and Class AA championships, respectively. But the real fun is only getting started. After the tournament, Game On! Minnesota released its 2017 Minnesota State High…
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‘All-218’ final for state high school boys hockey title
UPDATE: Hail, Hail the 218! Grand Rapids and Hermantown win the AA and A championships, respectively! The sun rises on a hockey holiday in the state of Minnesota. The class A and AA championship games take place today in St. Paul. Thrilling many here, no doubt, these showdowns feature three teams from our hardscrabble hockey-loving 218 area code…
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Culver’s to open in Grand Rapids, MN
A new Culver’s restaurant will open this year in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. The restaurant recently posted a “crew member” job for a new location at 1175 Pokegama Ave. South. That address is found between the McDonald’s and Jimmy Johns locations near the former Kmart building. The headhunting site Johnson Jobs lists July 3 as the posting date,…