-
2,000 attend Iron Range ‘Save Our Steel’ Jobs rally
Going into Monday’s “Save Our Steel (SOS) Jobs” Rally outside the Miner’s Memorial Building in Virginia, Minnesota, I was unsure how well people would turn out given the nice weather and otherwise healthy taconite production the Range. Well, about 2,000 people showed, according to media estimates. That exceeded what I expected. This was a well-coordinated…
-
Iron Range ‘Save our Steel Jobs’ rally Monday
United Steelworkers and U.S. Steel are joining forces to protest the dumping of foreign steel on the American market. Among many events around the country, a major “Save Our Steel Jobs” rally on northern Minnesota’s Iron Range will be held Monday, June 23 at 10 a.m. at the Miner’s Memorial Building in Virginia, Minnesota. Among…
-
Summer shows at Range’s Jewish heritage center
The B’nai Abraham Cultural Center in Virginia, Minnesota, announces its summer concert series. Stressing strong musicianship with Iron Range roots, the schedule allows you to experience the arts in the Iron Range’s last Jewish cultural heritage center. There’s a lot of history in this building. The first show lets you see one of Minnesota’s best…
-
Shared Iron Range high school plan falling apart
A major effort to build a shared high school for three Iron Range school districts is on the ropes after two of the three affected community school boards backed out of the plan in separate votes last night. Virginia and Eveleth-Gilbert school boards voted to end their involvement in the co-location of a new school…
-
Enjoy Easter weekend with the Great Northern podcast
At long last the Virginia show podcast from my Great Northern Radio Show is online, ready for download and distribution. Right click and download this link, loading the MP3 into your iTunes or whatever system you use to listen to such things. A side note, I am well aware of how annoying it is to…
-
‘Green Envy’ for Iron Range botanical garden
This Saturday, April 12, from 4:30-8 p.m., the Friends of the Greenhouse in Virginia, Minnesota, will hold its second annual “Green Envy” fundraiser for the Olcott Park Botanical Gardens. The greenhouse and gardens at Olcott Park are holdovers to a time when many Range towns poured effort into beautifying their public spaces. Virginia has held…
-
Hear the Virginia, MN, Great Northern Radio Show
You can hear our most recent episode of the Great Northern Radio Show this Saturday, April 5, from 10 a.m.-noon on Northern Community Radio. Later you’ll be able to download the podcast, allowing everyone to hear the broadcast we did in front of an audience at Mesabi Range College on March 22. We filled the…
-
The unexpected poetry of northern Minnesota
April is National Poetry Month, and while I don’t normally remark on the passing of these chronological marketing designations, I do feel inclined to mention poetry here in Northern Minnesota. Most of my instruction regarding poetry came in college from my professor Barton Sutter, a working poet and author in Duluth. If you’re going to…
-
East Range shared school plan having bumpy roll-out
One of the biggest stories on the Mesabi Iron Range this year has been the proposal to build a new co-located high school in Mountain Iron that would serve students in the Virginia, Eveleth-Gilbert and Mountain Iron-Buhl school districts. Jana Hollingsworth of the Duluth News Tribune penned a Sunday feature on the shared high school…
-
Range newspaper joins call for rural broadband
I often find myself out of step with the editorial page of the Iron Range’s largest newspaper, the Mesabi Daily News, particularly as it relates to economic priorities. So today I’m glad to report that the Mesabi Daily News has made a strong, compelling case for something we agree about entirely: expansion of Minnesota’s rural…
-
Great Northern Radio Show is Saturday night
It’s an exciting day: the live broadcast of my Great Northern Radio Show on Northern Community Radio is Saturday night, beaming out from the Mesabi Range College theater in Virginia, Minnesota. The Great Northern Radio Show broadcasts from small towns and offbeat theaters around northern Minnesota, telling the story of the place and its people,…
-
Iron Range officials fear dangers of Hwy 53 reroute
New problems arising from the much anticipated reroute of the Iron Range’s primary north-south highway might require more funding, officials now say. Highway 53 has to be rerouted between Virginia and Eveleth next year to accommodate mining by Cliffs Natural Resources at United Taconite. One version of the Hwy 53 reroute would dramatically reshape the…
-
Great Northern Radio Show in Virginia, MN on 3/22
My next Great Northern Radio Show will broadcast live from Mesabi Range College in Virginia, Minnesota, at 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 22, 2014. Our traveling radio variety show doesn’t have a home theater; so being on the Iron Range is as close to home as we get. For this and several other reasons, I’m…
-
Eveleth-Gilbert joins shared Iron Range school talks
After a meeting last Thursday, Eveleth-Gilbert schools have agreed to join districts in Virginia and Mountain Iron-Buhl in talking about a shared Iron Range school on the east central Mesabi Iron Range. We discussed the Virginia/MI-B cooperation concept last week. The first public hearing on this shared high school issue will take place tomorrow night…
-
Virginia and Mt. Iron-Buhl mull combined high school
Two school districts on the east central Mesabi Iron Range are considering a landmark deal to build a shared high school. School officials in Virginia and Mt. Iron-Buhl are planning two public hearings on the idea next week. The first is Tuesday, Jan. 28, at Parkview in Virginia at 6 p.m.; the second is Wednesday, Jan.…