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Therapist with Hibbing roots highlighted for suicide prevention efforts
For the fourth straight year, human life expectancy in the United States declined. This has relatively little to do with longevity. After all, more people are living longer. But rather it has everything to do with how many people we lose to depression and addiction each year. The Huffington Post published a long form essay…
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Holiday spirit can be overinflated
It’s time for the holidays. Christmas, yes, and all that comes with it. It’s not really a holiday anymore so much as an economic and cultural event. Like the Roaring 20s, but for our credit card bill. Or like the Great Depression, but in reference to our actual depression. It’s not like the good old…
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Jim and Silent Bob pitch whiskey on Tonight Show
Bob Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, marks the changes in his sprawling career with bemused resignation. Nevertheless, some folks still wonder what the boy they knew as Robert Zimmerman is up to. Earlier this year Dylan announced his new whiskey label, dubbed Heaven’s Door. And while his “never-ending” concern tour keeps rolling, Dylan has adopted the…
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Architecture that holds up
Last night I hosted my radio show at the newly restored Hibbing High School auditorium. Workers spent months renovating this town’s “castle in the woods. Now it looks as resplendent as when it first opened nearly a century ago. I can assure you that words did the scene no justice. Some high school auditoriums are…
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Celebrate with the Great Northern Radio Show
It’s been a wild fall here at MinnesotaBrown. An unexpected research trip to San Francisco. Election coverage that culminated with a live appearance on National Public Radio. And now I’m getting ready for Saturday’s Great Northern Radio Show at the historic Hibbing High School auditorium. It’s been a banner year for this mid-level regional writer.…
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More smoke than fire: Election 2018 on the Iron Range
For much of 2018, we labored under the premise that Northern Minnesota’s 8th District might be the pivotal race in all of the nation. This would be the place that single-handedly decided whether Democrats or Republicans would control the U.S. House of Representatives. In visions of late night counting and recounting, the eyes of America…
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Oral history of this blog with notes
Earlier this week I appeared on the Duluth News Tribune Pressroom Podcast with co-hosts Christa Lawler and Brady Slater, produced by Samantha Erkkila. The podcast team and I had been trying for years to figure out when I’d be in Duluth on a weekday with time to spare. We finally found a moment after my appearance…
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Vote local; it matters most of all
Every day the children board the school bus. Begrudgingly, perhaps, but they go. We drive to work, quickly or slowly, depending on our enthusiasm and/or punctuality. People walk the streets, gathering in coffee shops and gas stations to jaw over the day’s news. At dusk, the parks and trails. By night we find the theaters,…
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Whirling West on a metal bird
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” ~ Mark Twain, “The Innocents Abroad” I live in the woods of Northern…
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Trivia battle offers game show thrills
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with game shows. On one hand, I like believing that I’m smarter than people on TV. That’s really the only bar to clear to stay happy in modern society. You just have to stay off those brainiac channels like PBS or Animal Planet. On the other hand, game shows…
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Steelworkers ratify contract with Cleveland-Cliffs
Members of the United Steelworkers of America voted to ratify a new labor contract with Cleveland-Cliffs this week. The new deal maintains their current benefits while increasing their pay. Cliffs operates United Taconite and, until next year, contracts to operate Hibbing Taconite. Their plant at Northshore Mining is nonunion. Negotiations with U.S. Steel and ArcelorMittal…
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Remembering George Perpich, special era of Range politics
On Sept. 26, former Iron Range State Sen. George Perpich died at age 85 in an Arden Hills, Minn., care center. He had suffered from Parkinson’s Disease for the past several years. Perpich was one of four brothers, sons of poor Croatian immigrants in Hibbing’s Carson Lake location. Rudy, Tony, Joe and George all became…
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Reading coded language of Iron Range landscape
The youngest parts of the Mesabi Iron Range are the century-old towns spotted along its back like so many pimples. The geology, the nature and even human occupation go back millennia. Nevertheless, most people who live here see “local history” as a mysterious narrative that begins suddenly during the Grover Cleveland Administration. It’s not hard…
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Real hope for rural broadband on the Iron Range
Growing up I always lived just outside the towns of the Iron Range. Back roads. Cracked pavement and dirt roads. My family ran small businesses. Some lasted a while. Some not so much. Such is the nature of small business. The ‘80s were bad. They were for a lot of people. School changed my life.…
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Great Northern Radio Show at Hibbing HS auditorium
I’m spinning headlong into an intense couple of months of work projects. I’m teaching full time and continue working on my book. Now I have something new to announce: An exciting Nov. 17 Great Northern Radio Show broadcast at the Hibbing High School auditorium. We’ve played Hibbing a couple times, but never this ornate 1,800-seat…