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The Great Iron Range Keystone Light Caper
A recent crime story in Hibbing, Minnesota, has nabbed a lot of attention and plenty of social media shares in my circles. Early in the morning on Wednesday, Jan. 28, a man broke through the door of the Some Beach Liquor Store on the southern side of the Beltline near the Eastern European performance art…
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Nolan says 3 Range mines have deal on haze standard
U.S. Rep. Rick Nolan (D-MN8) announced yesterday that three Iron Range taconite mines have struck a deal with federal regulators to comply with Northern Minnesota’s haze standards. Federal haze standards relate to special air quality rules that apply to areas near national parks and wildernesses, of which there are several in the Upper Great Lakes…
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Duluth airport gets Oberstar name; Hibbing gets plaque or something
The new Duluth International Airport terminal will be named for the late Rep. Jim Oberstar, a transportation and aviation titan during his 36 years in Congress. Duluth had been in competition with the Range Regional Airport in Hibbing for the rights to name their new terminal after Oberstar. Oberstar was instrumental in the development of…
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Bob Dylan speaks of Hibbing, grandma & his dream career
Robert A. Zimmerman of Hibbing, Minnesota, didn’t know he’d become Bob Dylan when he left for Dinkytown, Minneapolis in 1959. But now that he is, Northern Minnesota’s most famous son is looking back with some nostalgia and reverence for the Iron Range town where he first dabbled with poetry and guitars. Known for his guarded reclusiveness with the…
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Rhythmic Circus fancy-dances way through Hibbing
On Thursday evening at 7, the off-Broadway performers of Rhythmic Circus “Feet Don’t Fail Me Now” will perform at the historic Hibbing High School auditorium. Part of the Hibbing Community College Music Series (disclosure: HCC is my employer) and underwritten by the Hibbing Foundation, the show promises a “dynamic tap and music performance mixing high-energy percussive…
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NPR debuts new Bob Dylan Sinatra cover album
Today, NPR debuted a single from Bob Dylan’s newest album “Shadows in the Night,” a collection of new interpretations of songs made famous by the great crooner Frank Sinatra. Here it is, “Stay With Me,” for your listening consideration. When it was announced that this would be Dylan’s next project, I responded with a notable amount…
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Walk-through inflatable body in Hibbing
This Saturday, Jan. 17, the 2015 Fairview Range Health Expo will be held at the Hibbing Community College gymnasium. A wide variety of medical organizations and services will display their work and doings, but that’s not why you clicked on this link and it’s not why you’ll drive over to the college this weekend. The…
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Minnesota DNR to sell CL-215 water bombers
One summer afternoon my boys and I walked down the hill to the lake. I heard a low rumble out of sight. The sound grew louder. Soon enough I could feel the vibrations as well as I could hear them. Then I saw one of my life’s truly memorable scenes: a twin-engine CL-215 “scooper” plane used to fight…
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Hibbing ‘New Year Baby’ descendent of Hatfield-McCoy feud
To prove the world is a small, strange place, the first baby born at the Fairview Range Medical Center in Hibbing in 2015 is the ninth generation descendent of a world-famous family feud from the Appalachian region of Kentucky and West Virginia. Kelly Grinsteinner of the Hibbing Daily Tribune reported the story last weekend. Conner Hatfield…
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Hibbing’s Dylan Days committee disbands
I bring some long awaited, sadly official news tonight. Dylan Days, the arts and literary event held every May in Bob Dylan’s hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota, will be going on indefinite hiatus. The three-member steering committee (of which I was a founding member) voted to disband this fall. In the time since we’ve been working…
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Rock and a hard place, change coming to the Iron Range
Some of life’s biggest myths are that 30 years is a long time, that today doesn’t matter, and that anything is permanent. Here on Northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range, the lessons of change that come from digging out the ground beneath our very feet have been hard learned. But what’s learned is so easily forgotten after those paltry 30 years.…
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‘Night Before Christmas’ dances onto iconic Hibbing stage
A Hibbing High School alumnus will bring her dance company to the school’s historic auditorium stage this Saturday, Dec. 20, at 7 p.m. for a free holiday show based on the classic poem “The Night Before Christmas.” Danielle Ricci founded the award-winning Borealis Dance company in 2008 in Austin, Texas, before moving it to Minneapolis last year. This…
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Hibbing among medical cannabis dispensary sites
When Gov. Mark Dayton signed a medical marijuana bill into law after last year’s legislative session, it was not without controversy. Not only does a step toward more lenient cannabis laws ruffle some conservatives and law enforcement groups, but many legalization advocates found the bill far too restrictive to be useful. Nevertheless, many families are…
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Answers like dust: miners’ health study closes with questions
Yesterday, researchers unveiled results of a $5 million University of Minnesota study exploring the connection between iron mining and the rare lung disease mesothelioma. What was billed as the final public forum about the study was held last night at the Hibbing Memorial Building. John Myers of the Duluth News Tribune had the story in…
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Hibbing native pens Thanksgiving immigrant tale in NY Times
Marie Myung-Ok Lee, a Korean-American writer from Hibbing, had a Thanksgiving memoir of her family’s time in the Iron Range city published in the New York Times today. Her story is touching and real. The town simultaneous fought to help her father, at one time the town’s only anesthetist, stay in the country, but she and…