Tonight the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm closes its "Art in the Park" concert series at the amphitheater. Admission is free with live local music, food, beverage and fun for all. "Slapshot" will be the headliner at this show, which runs from 5-9 p.m. I'm sure there will be plenty of surprises.

As I said last week, the series has been a big hit and a great opportunity for the local music scene. We can hope that Art in the Park and ideas like it can build the MDC's audience base and make it the self-sufficient Iron Range cultural venue it needs to become.

Hello, traveler. You've located a blog about the Iron Range in northern Minnesota. Stay! Stay!

Peek inside the machinery. See the wonderful gears turn like fingers of the gods. It is magic, magic I say!

In olden days Iron Rangers lived and died never seeing the powerful pen flicks and filed papers that controlled their very livelihood. Now Google news alerts have pried up the rotten board, exposing the teeming masses of insects and grubs. This information was intended for others! What will happen next?

Today I am confronted with two alarming facts:

1. Minnesota is home to a roller derby league reviving the all-female rollerskating battle sport phenomenon from the 1970s.
2. The Iron Range DOES NOT have a team in this league.

Well, we DIDN'T until I discovered this, the recruitment page for the Iron Range Maidens. They need 20 women roller athletes and all manner of coaches, equipment managers and referees. These can be guys. Lucky guys. Or maybe not. I really don't know. It's exciting and terrifying at the same time!

They're running this on "flat track," as the inclined roller derby rinks of the old days are cumbersome and cost-prohibitive. The Maidens will operate out of Grand Rapids, it appears, but I'm sure they'll take team members from anywhere in the Taconite Tax Relief Area. Other teams in the league include Duluth/Superior, Bemidji, Fargo/Moorhead and two teams from Minneapolis.

Added bonus: Women who participate create an alternate persona for themselves. (eg: Missy Thumpskull).

Here's the explanatory video from the site. It is exactly what you would expect and yet you will still watch it.



Join today, ladies!

As a nerd engaged in a lifelong battle with body weight, an event called "Lunch and Learn" is a siren call to be heeded. Maybe for you too? Iron Range historian Pam Brunfelt will be the featured speaker at this Minnesota Humanities Center event Thursday, Sept. 9 at Valentini's in Chisholm. I'll be there. Join me! (RSVP) Here's the description:

What would U.S. history look like without Minnesota’s Iron Range? The discovery of vast iron ore deposits in Minnesota ensured that the United States would emerge as a world power in the Twentieth Century. It is no exaggeration to state that the history of the U.S. would be different without the iron ore produced by the people who lived and worked on the Iron Range of Minnesota. The Mesabi, Vermilion, and Cuyuna Iron Ranges produced billions of tons of high grade iron ore used to manufacture the steel that built America and resulted in victory in World War I and World War II. Iron Rangers have been at the center of the U.S. economy throughout most of the past century, and this Lunch and Learn program will illustrate why industrialization in the United States was largely the story of Minnesota’s Iron Range.

ABOUT THE PRESENTER

Ms. Pamela Brunfelt received her M.A. in History from Minnesota State University-Mankato and is currently a member of the faculty at Vermilion Community College in Ely, Minnesota, where she teaches courses in American History and Political Science. As a life-long Iron Ranger and historian, Ms. Brunfelt has the unique capability to blend her deep regional knowledge with her scholarship in American history.

Pam was a central source and important influence for my book "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range."

Readers of my book, "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range," might remember that I'm a fan of the myth and historical impact surrounding the Northwest Passage. Northern Minnesota's Iron Range was just one of many regions that early European explorers believed might have been part of the fabled "sea route to the Orient." The St. Louis River, Lake Vermilion and the mighty Mississippi, all of which originate in this area, enjoy the fame of having once been fervently traversed by spice-hungry mapmakers. Like many who wander the north woods, these explorers did not find their prize, but left behind clues of minerals and timber for future settlers. I know people who've drank beer while floating on inner tubes in all these local waterways. Progress!

The dream of a warm, year-round waterway that connected the Atlantic to the Pacific proved to be just a legend. However, there is a real Northwest Passage that runs through all those jagged little islands in northern Canada. Until recently, this passage was usually closed off by ice, but climate trends have opened it, quite possibly because of "global warming," (quotes used not to dismiss the theory, but to reflect that "warming" isn't always what happens in human influenced climate change).

One of my favorite blogs TYWKIWDBI ("Things you wouldn't know if we didn't blog it") shared an image and description of a climatological rarity -- the opening of the Northwest Passage and the lesser known Northeast Passage north of Russia. For the third time in recorded history you can sail around the world entirely within the Arctic. In keeping with my theme lately, I present this information not as being good or bad, just as being interesting.



Stan Rogers, "Northwest Passage"

When we first considered building our current house in the country, what struck me about the site was this tall white pine along the property line. The woods around northern Minnesota's Iron Range once teemed with some of the largest white pine in North America, a fact that literally put the place on the map as loggers, then miners, then tourists poured in from places with smaller trees. The biggest white pines were harvested away, building up many late 19th, early 20th century homes in Chicago and other Great Lakes cities. A combination of disease and habitat now limits the growth of most white pines from ever reaching the species' historic heights. But here on our land, a really big, pretty white pine towered above the collection of balsam, basswood, poplar, maple and other common Itasca County foliage. For me this was one of the signs that this was the right place for us.

Well, we cleared the scrubby growth up to the edge of this white pine, built our house and went about the business of producing and raising our three boys in its shadows. We started to notice the top of the tree die off a couple years ago and then the birds starting picking it apart from top to bottom this summer. As more branches began drying up and falling off we knew that the tree was dead and would be a risk to fall on our house.


Last week a tree service came and cut down the tree. I love this tree. I didn't want it to go, but it had to.


I had them cut four rounds out of the only marginally usable wood left on the tree. I'm going to make them into clocks, because lately I've been contemplating the steady passage of time.

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, Aug. 29, 2010 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. A version of this piece ran in Saturday's edition of "Between You and Me" on 91.7 KAXE.

School days spring fresh every fall
By Aaron J. Brown

You have to love the unbending reality of seasons. A mere human can’t change the weather and holds only minimal ability to survive any given time of year without help from clothes and technology. Hot is hot. Cold is cold. The exponential power of wind may prevent walking even the shortest distance when the wind chooses. Seasons remind us that it’s not all about us. It’s about the world in which we live.

This is why I’ve enjoyed working in education these past several years. The American school year may be a vestigial reminder of our agrarian roots, but it serves to provide every citizen with an internal clock that ticks away the seasons for the rest of our lives. Those in education are always reminded of this clock. The clock tolled again for me this past week with the start of fall classes at our community college. Not everyone gets a beginning and an end to a work year, or at least benchmarks more interesting than the filing of fiscal reports and sales figures. For some, like the postal worker Newman from “Seinfeld,” “the mail just keeps coming.” Students and educators enjoy a starting gun and finish line, and it’s a special privilege.

But this year the bell tolls for another member of our household as our oldest son Henry prepares for kindergarten next week. Prepare might be a strong word because other than occasional work with letter worksheets and whatever he gleans from TV Henry is by and large conducting his normal routine. He knows he’s going to kindergarten but thus far the discussion has mostly focused on whether he’ll eat hot lunch or bring “regular lunch” in a box.

And it occurs to me that Henry is now old enough where my pontificating about the significance of his childhood isn’t doing him any favors. So enough with that. In truth any parent who reads into this sort of thing is really playing out their own memories and insecurities about school. Added to that is the realization of mortality, that young parents become regular parents when their kids go to school, and we’re all going to die, just like all the old parents in the local obituaries. But there’s the seasons again. It’s good to know what you can and can’t control.

I used to think I could control my emotions at times like this. That was until OfficeMax began lobbing bombs at my tear ducts with a TV commercial tailor-made to force new kindergarten parents cry, smile, laugh and then buy reams of paper and enough colored pencils to fill a whisky barrel. Some touching song plays while a bunch of kids get on the bus, again and again, different kids each like snowflakes and, well, here we are again.

The first time I got on a bus to go to school I was wearing a homemade pair of pants, shirt and jacket, with a homemade backpack and a Muppets lunchbox. In my memory I got on the bus the first day of school but my mother has since reminded me that the bus driver forgot us the first day, turning around just past our driveway and missing us again. Mom drove me to school in the station wagon with my younger sisters in the back, still in pajamas. It was actually the SECOND day of school that I remember climbing the steps of the bus looking for a friend and some comfort in a large, changing world. That bus rode straight and true to school, where the smell of fresh floor wax blended with the peanut butter and jelly sandwich lofting out of that lunchbox at midday. To this day the new floor wax at work conjures the phantom odor of peanut butter, and adrenaline, and the excitement of another chance for a new beginning. I hope this one is the best one yet.

Aaron J. Brown is an Iron Range writer, blogger and an instructor at Hibbing Community College. Read more at MinnesotaBrown.com or in his book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range.”