The White House said Wednesday that President Bush has paid a price for the "Mission Accomplished" banner that was flown in triumph five years ago but later became a symbol of U.S. misjudgments and mistakes in the long and costly war in Iraq.

Thursday is the fifth anniversary of Bush's dramatic landing in a Navy jet on an aircraft carrier homebound from the war. The USS Abraham Lincoln had launched thousands of airstrikes on Iraq.

Beatty Zimmerman's Fudge Bars

INGREDIENTS:
1/3 c. butter
1c. white sugar
2 eggs
1 t.
vanilla
1/4 t. salt
6T. cocoa or 2 pkgs. cocoa bake
1 c. cake flour
1/4 t. baking powder
1/4 c. milk
1/4 c. chopped nuts, optional
Chocolate frosting

DIRECTIONS
Cream butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, and salt until fluffy. Add chocolate to well-creamed mixture. Hand mix the flour, baking powder and milk to cream mixture. Pour mixture in a greased and floured 9" by 9" or 8' by 10" pan. Place in 350 degree pre-heated oven. When shrunk from sides of pan remove from oven. When cool, frost with your favorite chocolate frosting. SERVES 20

Losing mind, one child at a time
By Aaron J. Brown

So we’ve got these babies all over the house. Two actually. Twins. And a toddler. All boys. And while that particular configuration is neither historically significant nor biologically unexplainable this is a pretty big deal in our lives. This babysplosion is why we don’t schedule things at 3 p.m. (baby snack time and big brother’s nap). It’s also why anyone who calls the house between 4 and 7 p.m. hears only a shrill tone, like the sound the nuclear bomb makes when it melts the phone at the end of the Cold War drama “Fail Safe.” Don’t worry. We’re fine. It’s just loud like that sometimes.

We’ve passed the baby twin stage where people mob us in public places. When Doug and George were extra tiny we had to fight our way through crowds of well wishers and general gawkers. Now people mostly stare from afar. But folks who talk to us often ask if we’ve seen a show on The Learning Channel called “Jon and Kate plus Eight.” It’s a reality show that follows the lives of a Pennsylvania couple and their
eight kids – including a set of school-aged twins and a set of sextuplets who are three years old.

Yes, we’ve seen the show.

In fact we watch the program regularly, mostly to admire the family’s ability to
function with 166 percent more children than us. And while our lives aren’t quite as crazy as that of Jon and Kate we do see many familiar struggles on their show. How do you spend quality time with every kid in the house? Where is (name of kid)? What is that? Put that down! You, too! Stop squeezing your brother! Cords are not for chewing! Drop and roll! Drop and roll!

In a voiceover at the beginning of the “Jon and Kate” show, Kate says, “Today, I may very well lose my mind.” We know what she means.

When the twins first arrived all the stress focused on basic life functions like bottles and diaper changes. We would joke about how as parents we were now playing zone defense instead of man-to-man. Well, it’s easy to run a zone defense when two of the people you’re guarding have the physical dexterity of giant aphids. The babies “got game” now, covering ground on all fours faster than a remote control truck. In weeks, perhaps by press time, they’ll be on their feet, expanding their reach, amplifying their destructive (but oh so cute) powers.

There also remains the constant struggle of sibling rivalry. Henry, our oldest, is adjusting slowly to the end of his solo domination of our attention. The side effect of this is sporadic poking, shoving or screaming directed at the increasingly wary pair of newcomers. I warn him that Doug and George are likely to become just as big as him, but he has yet to compute the mathematical implications of this scenario.

At the same time we remain in awe of how cool it is to have three healthy boys growing up in our house, learning to talk, think and ponder the same northern Minnesota sights that filled my childhood memories. Sometimes, when the stars align, we peek around the corner to see the boys playing nicely together. No screaming. No naughtiness. Just good times. Even if momentary, these times sustain us.

One time Henry went to play with some nearby kids, including someone’s new baby. That night when I got home from work Henry told me, “I saw a baby today, daddy.” Pause. “Just one baby.” The bar has been set high for the H-man. In his mind, babies should come in pairs. I must admit, we now scoff just a tiny bit when we hear folks lament the difficulties of bringing home their first baby from the hospital.

“Hmmph’” we say. “Just one baby.”

Sorry fellow parents. Today we may very well lose our minds, so we must find comfort in small triumphs.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Read more or contact him at www.minnesotabrown.com.

The average Iron Ranger votes much more regularly than in other areas. Our voter turnout percentage ranges from 80 to 90 percent in most local towns. However, I see fewer candidates for small town and county elections and an absolute drop off in civic club participation. Those days as we knew them might be fading. I do the blog as a way of trying to keep the Iron Range tradition alive in the Internet age. I think my generation of Iron Rangers will one day feel the fire in the belly to reverse some of these trends, but probably not the same way their parents and grandparents perceived civic engagement.

Tax data collected by the city of Duluth suggests that the statewide smoking ban that went into effect six months ago has not had a measurably negative impact on Duluth’s bar and restaurant business.

Anecdotal evidence from some Duluth bars supports this conclusion, as does the fact that the city clerk’s office has not seen a rise in bars going out of business.

I have long argued that the economic effect of the smoking ban on local bars can be overcome. It will take some time but these numbers are encouraging. I imagine the numbers are a little worse up on the Iron Range but once folks are used to this change in regulation folks will come back to the bars.

Blight Me: the unique aesthetics of the Iron Range
By Aaron J. Brown

It’s spring on the Iron Range. I know this because last week we had to hire a guy with a loader to remove a million tons of snow from my rural driveway. Not a plow. A loader. Hello, spring!

Maybe it’s just a little bump in the road on our way to the real spring. When real spring finally arrives, our thoughts will turn to the stuff that’s been hiding underneath that snow all winter long. The slow recession of winter’s white canvass reveals old cars, rebar, scrap lumber and sometimes even the fate of stray animals we used to see around (but not so much the last few weeks).

Someone I know who moved to the Iron Range from a small farming town once told me about her first impression of the Iron Range. The first thing she noticed was the rather eclectic collection of cars and other metal goods in people’s yards. I suppose as an Iron Range native I could have feigned outrage over this observation, but I know better. We Iron Rangers are a proud, noble people … who leave things in our yards.

One could argue that my perspective is skewed. I grew up on an Iron Range family-owned salvage yard out in Zim. (I have to be careful. My wife thinks I mention this more often than former presidential candidate John Edwards talked about “the mill). As a kid, if I saw an old car up on blocks in someone’s yard my response was, “what,
just one?” We lived in a trailer house just a few dozen feet away from another trailer house that was packed to the ceiling with hubcaps. We would walk back to grandpa and dad’s shop along a path that wound through piles of aluminum cans and hulking dead machines of uncertain purpose. And this was all very normal to us, like oak trees and picket fences of Rockwell’s America.

That’s how it is on the Iron Range. I’ve heard theories that the Range’s love affair with junk has to do with our working class demographics or the fact that early miners weren’t able to own their own land, so they didn’t mind leaving junk out. Heck, maybe we just like junk. After all, the junkyard where I grew up was just a dozen miles north of the now defunct Sanitary Harry’s bar in Kelsey. The late Sanitary Harry ran for governor several times under the promise of “a car in every yard.” His drinking establishment gained a reputation for the odd junk that would be piled both inside and outside the building. In its last years, a friend told me the bar’s owners had literally shellacked random junk to the tabletops.

The first controversy I ever encountered in Iron Range journalism had to do with a county blight ordinance. Folks in the countryside wanted the right to keep spare cars on their property so they could harvest parts when needed. But big government was getting in the way. Cabin owners were complaining and deputies were writing blight tickets. Letters were exchanged. Public outcry against the policy ran surprisingly hot. The blight ordinance is still on the books today, but I don’t see any fewer cars on private properties out in the woods. I assume something of a junk car détente took place behind closed doors.

Junk defines the Range and that’s not all bad. Along the Mesabi Trail near Hibbing, tourists from all over get a good look at rusted pieces of mining equipment that were simply abandoned near their final resting places. Some might question why that stuff was left there. The answer is clear to me. All who see these scrap metal specters know that the Iron Range is a place where people shaped the land and their children long outlived their machines. And that’s who we are.

I don’t mean to diminish the work of so many Iron Rangers in sprucing up their yards, property and homes. Many places around here look like the very picture of Americana. But I have to bear the truth that what many folks remember when they visit the Iron Range is the colorful, blue collar cornucopia of metal that adorns so many other yards. This sharp, rusted world is just coming into focus this time of year. Hey, I don’t mind. It gives the place character.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

1) The PUC ruled that transmission infrastructure for the Mesaba Energy Project IS exempt from a Certificate of Need as is stated in Minn. Stat. § 216B.1694, but Excelsior Energy still has to have routing and environmental permitting reviews completed on the route(s). This allows EE to move forward with preliminary design, but no construction. (If they have the money to do so, which is a big question mark.)It is possible that Minnesota Power will take this to the courts.

2) The PUC denied Excelsior Energy's petition for an unlimited stay on the (Power Purchase Agreement) for Phase II. This means that the PUC will address the PPA for Phase II and hopefully soon!

“It went very well,” said Excelsior Energy CEO Tom Micheletti by phone about the hearing in St. Paul after it was completed.

Micheletti felt the transmission issue was the more important of the two petitions before the MPUC. He also did not have any qualms about expressing his disdain for Minnesota Power, which asked the MPUC to delay a decision on transmission infrastructure until final action on the power purchase agreement has been taken.

“They (Minnesota Power) are taking frivolous and unwarranted positions on state law,” Micheletti said. “I have a new name for them. ARP. Anti Range Power. And you can quote me on that.”