"Come Home Bob" gets attention

Iron Range Tourism's "Come Home Bob" campaign to bring Bob Dylan back to his home region is getting attention. The video, which includes a bulbous, strange-looking version of yours truly, is spanning the internet. More and more people are becoming fans and signing the petition to get Bob to come home.

Minnesota Public Radio has the AP story which spread quickly off the Duluth News Tribune story. Wednesday's Duluth News Tribune and Hibbing Daily Tribune will have stories, and we'll just see what happens from there.

In all this we learn that Bob Dylan is currently in Japan. That's far away, but the good people at Iron Range Tourism, upon consulting numerous resources and a handy Japanese-to-English translation guide, stand ready to help Bob figure out the flight configurations that could bring him to the Range Regional Airport or another nearby airstrip impervious to the relentless flashbulbs of our local paparazzi. Stay tuned.

Come Home, Bob!

You might know that in addition to writing, teaching and whatever it is you want to call doing this blog I am one of the organizers of Dylan Days in Hibbing, Minnesota. This year the Iron Range Convention and Visitors Bureau is going all in to get Bob Dylan back to the Iron Range. They're using a series of (satirical?) videos to woe the folk bard former known as Robert Zimmerman back to his old stomping grounds. Yours truly was tapped to write and host the films. Good times.



And the best is yet to come! Check out the website where they've stashed the first video! Share with your friends and follow the whole works on You Tube or on Twitter @comehomebob.

Sounding off on sound

I've been getting a great response to my humor commentary about "Sound" that was broadcast on 91.7 KAXE last Saturday. It features the first professional voice work by young George and Doug Brown (don't worry about the budget; they work for Goldfish crackers). If you'd like to know what my radio work sounds like, take a listen. Every week "Between You and Me" covers a different, sometimes VERY different topic and I write to suit.

Find out more about KAXE, a great independent public station, and its diverse programming for and about the people of northern Minnesota.

Tour the Scenic Range, explore the issues of our times

Last week I began an exciting new endeavor that marries this fancy, 21st century blog with a small town weekly newspaper. (Or, as the kids say, we're going to hook up somewhat regularly for the foreseeable future). Electrons and ink! Quaint small town meeting notices and snark from around the globe! Every month I'll be writing news analysis pieces for the Scenic Range News Forum, a growing weekly paper that covers the swath of western Iron Range towns from Coleraine to Keewatin -- essentially the Itasca County portion of the Range. The "Scenic" is the only source of news about the fast-growing rural townships just north of the iron formation where I live.

What does "news analysis" mean? Well, that's to say that it won't be a column and it won't be a straight news story either. Ask the Associated Press. They've been running this game for decades. I've been given free reign to identify issues that affect people on the Iron Range and explore them, not necessarily to form conclusions but to get people thinking and working to solve problems. I am not without my conflicts of interest but I am nonetheless in a unique position to gather and share information. I aim to do so responsibly.

My first piece, "Wanted: Young People," ran Thursday, March 11, 2010, and focused on demographic change on the Iron Range. For instance, you might be surprised to know that the population of the Iron Range, particularly in Itasca County, is actually growing. School enrollment, however, is shrinking at a dangerous rate. The changing demographics of the region actually cause most of the major political and social problems Iron Rangers have complained about since the 1980s. Read more.

Meantime, I'll still be writing original weekly columns for the Hibbing Daily Tribune and commentary for KAXE-Northern Community Radio. My burgeoning, deeply unprofitable media empire will soon be somewhat less stoppable.

Wanted: Young People

The following is part of my news analysis series for the Thursday, March 11, 2010 edition of the Scenic Range News Forum of Itasca County, Minn.:

For the Iron Range, demographic change is the challenge
By Aaron J. Brown

The demographics on Minnesota’s Iron Range, trending toward an older society with fewer young families, may have turned an Olympic gold medal to silver.

“It’s the reason the United States lost that hockey game to Canada,” said state demographer Tom Gillaspy. “There weren’t enough Iron Rangers up there to play.”

Gillaspy is kidding about the 2010 Olympic Hockey Final in Vancouver, but not really. The loss of young families explains not just fewer Iron Range youth taking part in the sport that made the region famous, but also declines to school enrollment, political clout and employment. In short, nearly all of the region’s problems can be summed up by looking at a sheet of Census data.

On the central and eastern Iron Range in St. Louis County people are leaving. A composite of U.S. Census data shows most east Range towns losing about 26 percent of their population since 1980. Here in Itasca County, on the western Iron Range, the population has grown. But people arrive in different ways and to different places compared to when immigrant miners and loggers arrived 100 years ago.

It’s a mistake, however, to assume that the region’s prospects are solely related to population. In fact, Itasca County defies conventional wisdom about the Iron Range having gained 24 percent in population since 1970, including an increase each of the past ten years according to U.S. Census estimates. The change, according to Gillaspy, comes in the kind of households being established in the county. Itasca County has become older and more rural.

Gillaspy said that while many focus on population as the most important indicator of a region’s demographic health, the better indicators are the number of households and the people per household.

For instance, consider that the largest Range towns have lost 10 percent of their households since 1970.

“When you lose 10 percent of households that means vacant housing and lower housing prices,” said Gillaspy. “Vacant houses get torn down and then you have a vacant lot. You have less human activity and more social and health care needs for older households.

“When I see a number like that I see all sorts of things happening,” said Gillaspy. “It suggests whether or not lawns are being maintained. It indicates the income and attitudes of the people living there. It’s sometimes hard to convince local officials that I can see all that in the numbers, but I can.”

In another example, Keewatin declined from 2.55 persons per household in 1980 to 2.14 in 2008. Bovey fell from 2.45 persons per household in 1980 to 2.12 in 2008. These represent 10-12 percent declines. Meantime, the school districts that serve these two towns – Greenway and Nashwauk-Keewatin –both report an approximate 40 percent enrollment decline in that time, an astounding correlation.

Mark Adams, the superintendent of both the Greenway and N-K districts, deals with the effects of these numbers every day.

“The population growth we’ve seen hasn’t been in new families,” said Adams. “People often aren’t bringing children with them so it doesn’t change the dynamic. The question we face every day is how do we raise the academic bar in a model that won’t include new revenue for the foreseeable future?”

Indeed, local schools have faced a combination of challenges recently. School bond referendums are harder to pass in communities with older residents and fewer children. Budget cuts and funding formula changes have reduced state allocations. And the economy just endured its worst year since the Great Range Recession of 1982.

“This is not a short run event,” said Gillaspy. “It’s not like the Iron Range fell on hard times just this year. What you’re seeing now is a different event, the long term outcome of an aging society with not enough young folks to build a population.

“There will be jobs,” said Gillaspy. “There will be economic development that will stabilize things. It’s going to create several dozen jobs for every hundred lost, though. You don’t need nearly as many people to mine the same amount of ore. It used to take hundreds to run a steel mill, now it’s not quite dozens in some cases. Productivity has changed everything.”

Indeed the story of today’s Iron Range has been building since the steel recession of the early 1980s. Older residents pass away after long, full lives of working the mines, raising families and propelling the commerce of our towns. Unlike previous declines in the Range economy, families are smaller and the economic recoveries include fewer jobs. Young people leave for jobs, for lovers, for lack of excitement or simply in frustration. Meantime, people moving to Itasca County often seek a quiet, unchanging, inexpensive retirement destination.

Thus, the challenges facing schools, towns and the economy may only be solved by adjusting to the reality of these numbers. Only then can the region’s leaders begin the arduous task of reversing them.

“We have to redefine our communities on broader scales,” said Adams. “Our expectations need to include everything it takes to get young people ready for college and the economy.

“This might be an opportunity in disguise,” Adams said. “By working across the county we might still be able cut costs and provide 21st century classrooms. But we have to reorganize.”

Aaron J. Brown is an Iron Range writer and college communication instructor. His book is “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range.”

COLUMN: "Where ignorance comes natural"

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, March 14, 2010 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Where ignorance comes natural
By Aaron J. Brown

When the seasons change, skilled naturalists “strut their stuff,” a phrase often associated with certain mating rituals that nature experts customarily abandon when they finally identify all varieties of North American pine. These days, plants and animals kick off an elaborate stage play that ends the same way every year but that many people watch anyway, just like “It’s a Wonderful Life” at Christmastime. While I respect the people who have figured out this clockwork, something prevents me from accumulating the same knowledge. It’s probably Google’s fault.

So spring has sprung, except not really. You know and I know that there’s going to be some random winter storm this month or next that buries us under two feet of wet, white sludge and then laughs by melting that mess into your basement (That’s right, I’m talking to you, reader, about YOUR basement). Nevertheless, we have tasted spring this past week and that means we want more. But we aren’t the only ones that want more spring; nature wants it too.

In nature, spring expunges life on the landscape. Spring populates the wilderness and brings new purpose to the humans who build and destroy the natural world in the name of feeling superior to people who live in dense urban areas. For those like me, the woodland residents with no knowledge of woodlands, here are my most recent nature journal entries:

March 8; 3:30 p.m.
When I was playing outside with the boys our dog Molly caught some kind of critter in the back yard. I know it was a rodent because of its little rodent teeth but it was all messed up. I got a shovel and threw it into the part of the woods where we throw all the dead things and also where the tennis balls land when they fly over the garage roof. Note to self: wash tennis balls.

March 9; 11:46 a.m.
I saw a bald eagle eating a dead deer in the ditch. When the eagle saw me coming it leaped into the air and soared majestically as though to say, “Don’t judge me. That dead deer was an enemy of freedom.”

March 10; 10:26 a.m.
Man, did you see that bird? That bird was brown. That bird was fast. Was that a partridge? No way. That bird was way too fast. I think it was brown. Do you think the mail is here yet?

March 10; 3:12 p.m.
Out-of-state Facebook friend to me: “Are the loons back yet?”

Me to out-of-state Facebook friend: “No, the ice is still on the lakes and the loons won’t be here for a few weeks, unless you count the human versions.”

Ha-ha-ha! I know nothing about loons! They are the state bird!

March 11; 2:21 p.m.
A few days ago I saw another road kill deer on the side of the highway. A day later there were birds. The birds only picked at part of the upper haunch and then there were no birds for a few days. Then, more birds. Then I realized that this is exactly how people buy produce. Except that these carrion birds got their food for FREE.

There are a lot of birds in this world. They are as strange to me as people. People, as Doors fans know best, are strange. Perhaps the mere fact that I’m aware of my lack of outdoors knowledge is the first step toward actually learning the difference between species of bird, tree or fur-bearing mammal. Maybe in paying my ignorant attention to these types of details I’ll become the wily outdoorsy mountain man (person) who lives in my mind, mocking me for being a newspaper columnist. In my mind this person can also fix cars and maintain household appliances without professional assistance. I can hope.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Read more at his blog MinnesotaBrown.com or in his book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range.”

Brown on the Air: SOUNDS!

What's your favorite sound? What's your least favorite sound? My weekly contribution to the Saturday morning call-in/music show "Between You and Me" on 91.7 KAXE joins the unique program's rotating topic of "sounds." I share both good sounds and bad in an essay that I originally titled "The Sound and the Furry" because I thought I was going to record the many adorable and grating sounds of Molly dog. Instead, I ended up capturing the good and bad sounds of my children, particularly our younger twin boys George and Doug. So now I don't know what I'm calling it, even though this one turned out pretty good. I will try to share the piece when the audio is ready next week.

"Between You and Me" airs from 10 a.m. to noon every Saturday on 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota or streaming live online all over the world at www.kaxe.org. Thanks to the Minnesota Arts and Culture fund, "Between You and Me" is shared with radio stations all over the country through the public radio service PRX. The show features host Heidi Holtan, a cast of contributors including me, and the voices of the people of northern Minnesota. Tune in!