This Duluth News Tribune op/ed by Rolf Westgard details the most underrated issue northern Minnesota will face in the next century: our water. We've got it. The world needs it. This could be a problem. Read the full text.

From today's Hibbing Daily Tribune, under the headline "North Hibbing, high school used for film":

HIBBING — North Hibbing and Hibbing High School were recently used as settings for a film depicting how time is a “human conception.” And how, no matter how hard one tries, the past cannot be physically revisited.

Or, can it?

Whoa ... dude.

Here it goes again. A foot of snow possible through tomorrow.

In Proctor, parents are up in arms over a move to bus children of all ages on the same routes. Concerns include safety and inappropriate language by older kids.

As a rural kid, I spent two hours a day on the bus. And yes, I got hit on the head with a skateboard once and learned most of my swear words and virtually all I know about sex from surly teenagers in the back of the bus. But isn't that how it's supposed to work?

Anyway, I'm sure those older kids stop swearing and beating up little kids once they get to school. Hooligans are highly focused on their education.

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, March 29, 2009 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. A version of this piece will air on next week's "Between You and Me," Saturday morning on 91.7 KAXE.

News from the equinox
By Aaron J. Brown

Last week we welcomed the spring equinox. Note that I did not say “spring,” but rather “spring equinox.” Equinox means that the days are as long as the nights. That much we can see, and believe.

For northern Minnesota “spring” is not exactly a recognizable season. Sure, the wildlife goes through its annual machinations of migrating, flocking, herding and mating (a process similar to our human “freshman year of college”). But “spring” implies warmth, water and flowers, all foreign to the season as we know it. People of the north accept that spring means violent winds, heavy unpredictable snow and difficult choices as far as jacket-wearing is concerned. What gives us hope is that spring means a change from bitter cold being the default to merely a likely possibility. Patience will allow summer to wash in, melting whatever ice remains.

This year the spring equinox coincides with an economic downturn that I’m sick of writing about and you’re sick of reading about but that creeps into our lives like bigger pants and grey hair. As with the turn from winter to spring and summer, we have every reason to assume this economy will improve. But we in northern Minnesota know that the conversion might be anything but seasonal or predictable. The change can, however, be marked by observations of the world around us.

Most mornings my drive from the woods north of Nashwauk to my job in Hibbing orients around the enormous steam cloud billowing out of Keewatin Taconite. The wind points the steam like a finger, to the north on a warm day and angrily to the south on a cold, bitter day. On a calm day the finger points upward to the heavens.

The plant has been in temporary shutdown since the new year and I'm still not used to a horizon that doesn't include the steam out of KeeTac. People on the Iron Range are starting to realize, slowly, that this temporary idling and the other shutdowns in process or planned at all the Range's taconite mines are vague in scope. New projects like Essar Steel in Nashwauk also suffer from a life bond to the international demand for steel products. And while long-range projections show that steel prices will recover (they always do, you know), an Iron Ranger can’t help but feel powerless if we just sit back and watch. Because even as national economic indicators begin to stabilize this place is, as it has always been, the final length of pipe in the economic drain. The manna from heaven always gets here last. Maybe that's why the steam finger always points at the sky.

We are told that an efficient new steel industry will rebound quickly. We are told many things. The only thing we know for sure is that the days are getting longer and somewhat warmer. That fact remains encouraging and should serve as a signal for work to begin.

I won’t invoke the need for a spring “rebirth” to cure this economic mess. Rebirth is a cliché, for one, and not entirely accurate. One finds many things under the melting snows of a new spring. For instance, a dead partridge. A flat football. A sea of doggie doo. None of these things will be reborn. Rather, they will be removed and, where possible, repurposed. Something about our country’s addiction to debt and greed, the contradictory bleating of the pundits on TV, reminds me more of doggie doo than it does the Great Depression. We must shovel it out and begin the summer business of growing a green lawn for the kids to play.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Contact him or read more at his blog MinnesotaBrown.com. His book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” is out now.

Marshall Helmberger's Sunday editorial in the Timberjay papers (Ely, Cook, Orr and Tower) should make some waves in the state budget debate. He lays out a compelling argument against the stopgap methods the governor hopes to use to plug the state budget deficit.

My only addition is that budget disasters like the one we have now can only be solved long term if all sides agree that a combination of fair taxes and reasonable cuts will balance a budget. You can do cuts alone, but only if large, specific functions of government are ended. That's almost never done. The practical argument is then about what's the fair and reasonable way to provide the level of government that voters seem to want. That's where the debate should be.

Looks like things are in a holding pattern in Fargo. Kudos to everyone who worked so hard getting those sandbags up. The cold weather is slowing down the flooding, but this could be a long couple of weeks for our western friends.

I have a counterpart writing an "underground" alternative voice for the Fargo area. Check out the Phantom.

Wanna see an editorial about the ongoing debate over booster seats in Minnesota that contains this phrase:

Come on, this issue is open for debate. Don’t demagogue it.

AND this phrase?

While we do not doubt the sincerity of the sponsors of the bill to provide another layer of safety for children, we find it to be another example of Government Big Brother watching and also Government Mommy trying to protect everyone from any possible danger.

So says Daddy. Daddy's been really pissed off since Obama won. Only in today's Mesabi Daily News.

The St. Mary's/Duluth Clinic health system is entering talks with officials at Fairview University Medical Center Mesabi over ways to collaborate on the Iron Range. This Mesabi Daily News story shows the perspective of health care officials in Virginia about the possibility. I kind of get a "Poland 1939" feel off the article, but maybe that's just the East Range perspective.

If any sort of merger or ownership change happens to the Hibbing hospital that would be pretty big news. The Fairview/Mesaba Clinic system is the largest employer in Hibbing, which like most Range towns is increasingly reliant on its medical community for economic security.

Last week I detailed my first-ever Twin Cities book tour and teased the fact that some finagling friends snuck (sneaked?) me onto the House floor for a photo. Forgive the self-indulgence but here it is, fresh from the mail:

From left to right, House Majority Leader Tony Sertich (I served on his first campaign), me in a conspicuously green shirt, House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher and another great Balsam Township resident State Rep. Tom Anzelc (whose campaigns I now run). I show this to you for a few reasons, mostly self-deprecating in nature. Let me share my first thoughts.

1. You can probably tell I wasn't expecting to do a formal photo that day. This is exactly how I dress all the time. It amuses me that I wear that same ensemble to the dump each week. I may look out of place here but I look out of place at the dump, too. I am the khaki highwayman.
   
   
2. Really, Brown? You really needed three pens in your shirt pocket that day? Three pens of different colored ink? Gonna do some grading? Some grading on the House floor?
   
   
3. Am I related to the Speaker? I didn't think so, but this picture has me wondering.
   
   
4. How the hell did I get shorter than Tony Sertich? Check his shoes. I declare shenanigans.
   
   
5. I'm not used to seeing my friend Tom Anzelc all dressed up snappy like that. Up north our political consultations usually occur with him wearing an old Nashwauk-Keewatin sweatshirt or a plaid logging jacket. How do I dress back home? See #1.
   
   
6. Should have held up the book. Should have held up the book. FAIL!

I realize that posting this picture puts me at risk of seeming partisan but let the record state that I would take the same picture with Chuck Norris, Michele Bachmann and Rush Limbaugh at a moment's notice.

My next Twin Cities trip will be June 4. I don't think I'll be blending in any politics on that one, but if I do I just might wear an ironed shirt. No promises.

U.S. Steel has halted negotiations with the state to turn a large swath of its lands on Lake Vermilion into a new state park. They will now pursue private development of the land.

Rich people win again. They're like the Yankees.

The Duluth News Tribune joins in analyzing those cryptic comments from the chairman of the Essar Group in that Indian newspaper. The question is how Essar Steel can finance a project the size of their proposed Nashwauk mine and steel mill in this economy. The company remains insistent that they are building the project. I'll say this, if Essar does forge ahead with a project like this in times like these, they are going to be a force to reckon with in the North American steel industry.

Or else they'll be bankrupt. Let's go with the first one for now.

The Hibbing Daily Tribune is following up on the questions raised about Essar Steel's new Nashwauk mine and steel mill. An Essar official recently told an Indian business publication that the project was "on hold." However, the Tribune story says that local site work continues and it seems no one has been told anything but that the project is on track after a slight delay related to financing complications. But the boss is coming back from a visit with his boss soon. Everything is fine, though, except for the crippling economic malaise enveloping the whole world.

Something still seems off here ... my eyebrow is still cocked. And if you've seen my eyebrows that's no small thing.

UPDATE: Oh, hell, this was bound to happen eventually. Spring is NEXT week's topic. My books were cooked. This week the "Between You and Me" topic is "bartering." What are you willing to do or give to get something else? Does this economy have you thinking about bartering for goods and services?

For instance, I would happily give you an item of Dylan Days swag in exchange for a 500 word essay on bartering. More on this to come.

My weekly essay for KAXE's Saturday morning program "Between You and Me" is a rare triple threat. It began as a blog post, developed into a column that (coincidentally?) fit the topic for this weekly call-in and music program, for which I am a regular contributor. Nice, eh?

"Between You and Me" anchors the weekend of any cool resident of Northern Minnesota. The topic this week is "spring" and I write about how there is no spring around here, not really, but that there is a spring equinox. And somehow it's about mining, too. Because that's how I roll.

"Between You and Me" airs from 10 a.m. to noon on 91.7 FM KAXE and streaming online all over the world at www.kaxe.org. The show explores a topic by engaging in conversation with the varied voices of Northern Minnesota and its legions of expats all over the universe. Tune in!

The dog has been wagged. The Hibbing Daily Tribune is reporting on the Essar Steel quotes from the same Hindu Business Line story that I cited on Tuesday. The story quotes Essar's top official saying that a project in southeastern India was going forward because North American projects were on hold until steel demand is established. Mike Jennings was unable to get independent verification aside from the Hindu Business Line story. A lot of people are waiting to hear some clarification from Essar officials in Minnesota.

The news here is that, until now, Essar Steel was saying that the project was going forward no matter what, based on their long range projections for steel demand. Now it seems the project joins the fate of existing taconite mines in shutdown or slowdown: subject to the whims of present steel prices.

Highway 169 by Chisholm will be out of commission all summer (story from the Duluth News Tribune). From April 1 until first snow, traffic will be routed through downtown Chisholm while repair work is done on the highway. The road travels over an "underworld" of underground mine shafts that have been collapsing and shifting for years.

This means a good summer for downtown Chisholm. Hibbing-to-Virginia commuters now have the option for a convenient post-work belt at Tom and Jerry's or a impulse couch purchase at Rupp's. At the same time I'm betting this is bad for Ironworld. I imagine they could route visitors through the fairgrounds, but that's not clear in the story.

The Mesabi Daily News refers to Highway 169 as the "Cross Range Expressway." I would point out that it does indeed cross the Range but it will never, never be an "expressway" until the Pengilly to Taconite stretch is complete. I have inherited this cause from my grandfather, a 1960s Keewatin councilman, and shall carry it to my golden years if necessary.

Some good news:

The Mesabi Daily News reports that ArcelorMittal has scheduled more than half of its workers during this summer's planned shutdown of its Minorca Mine in Virginia, Minn. The miners will be kept on the clock for maintenance work instead of being . The Steelworkers Union announced that many senior workers are voluntarily taking the layoff so that younger workers who would otherwise lose benefits can stay on.

I think I'm finally familiar enough with the Facebook world to advertise the fact that you can follow this blog on Facebook by clicking on the widget you see down the right hand column or this link. I'm half a year into using Facebook and have to say that I really recommend it ... the way a crack addict would probably recommend crack. Anyway, it's the hipster thing to do and for some reason most of my Facebook friends are older than me. Which is pretty much how my regular life goes too.

To learn why this is, buy my book.

Federal economic stimulus efforts now include $40.1 million for a unique physics experiment just north of the Iron Range that I don't fully understand. The Mesabi Daily News reports.

The $178 million NOvA neutrino experiment has been studying the mass of the universe by shooting high energy subatomic particles from the Fermi Lab complex near Chicago to a detector deep underground at the Tower-Soudan Mine in Northeast Minnesota. The additional funding, from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was awarded to Fermi Labs to build a second detector at Ash River, between International Falls and Orr.

Sounds like the kind of thing that would make mutants. Mutants could spice things up around here.

Ha ha! Actually it's just harmless universe measuring. The measuring of a universe that probably includes mutants.

UPDATE: If you're wondering, it took about 10 hours before someone properly informed me of what the neutrino project actually is. This 2003 City Pages story by Peter Ritter explains the project's intent quite clearly. Fascinating stuff, actually, and the story properly displays the contrast between Iron Range culture and the culture of the international physics community.

The top official for Essar Steel told The Hindu Business Line that their U.S. and Caribbean mining and steel projects were on hold until "some clarity emerges on the demand." This includes the Essar Steel Minnesota project near Nashwauk. That's reasonably consistent with what they've been telling U.S. media, but a good deal more stark than what we've heard.

One of the best things about writing a book like "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range" is all the stories, clippings and first hand accounts that people give you afterward that weren't in my book. This little number arrived in the mail last week from a Mr. Earl Currie. It's a 1943 advertisement for the Great Northern Railway that appeared in a magazine called Nations Business.
You probably can't read the text. Here it is:

more Vital than gold

All the gold buried at Fort Knox, Ky., is less important to Victory than the rich iron ore deposits of the Mesabi, Cuyuna and Vermilion Ranges of Northern Minnesota.

The Mesabi Range alone contains the world's largest developed deposits, and much of this ore lies in open pits.

From these pits giant shovels scoop the vital "red dust" into Great Northern cars, which dump it a few hours later into docks in Duluth and Superior, at the Head of the Lakes. There ore boats are swiftly loaded for delivery to the nation's steel mills.

When the shipping season closed December 5, new mining records had been set on the Minnesota ranges, and Great Northern Railway handled nearly 29,000,000 long tons -- a third of the Lake Superior district's total production.

With the necessity of conserving equipment, Great Northern, between shipping seasons, is reconditioning motive power, cars, trackage, and its Allouez docks in Superior, making ready for a still bigger job in 1943.

The fabulous iron ore deposits in Minnesota are only part of the wealth contributed to America by the Zone of Plenty -- and delivered by this vital artery of transportation.

GREAT NORTHERN RAILWAY
Route of the Empire Builder -- Between the Great Lakes and the Pacific

The map shows the 1943 routes of the Great Northern Railway, running across what the company terms "The Zone of Plenty." The Zone of Plenty includes the northern plains states, the Northwest, Iowa, Missouri, Wisconsin, Chicago and -- lit up like a Christmas tree -- the entire state of Minnesota. How many maps do you know that show Hibbing and Virginia in the same sized font as Chicago and New York?

What I love about this ad is that the vague wartime train propaganda actually does a great job of explaining, in the present tense, why the Iron Range is so significant to the nation's economy and history. This rich value now stands in stark contrast to our beleaguered economic present, but I'd argue it may again be part of our future if we're smart. And no, I don't just mean more mining.

In 1999, at age 19, I purchased a Great Northern Railway hat at a model train show in Dyersville, Iowa. The guy asked me why I would do that, since there weren't any Great Northern routes near there. "There are where I'm from," I said. WHAT A FREAKING NERD! But I'm beginning to realize why I was destined to write this book.

Deep and sincere thanks to Earl Currie for sending this to me. He also included a fascinating article of research on the work that went into transporting the never-ending flow of iron ore that poured off the ranges down to Duluth and Superior during World War II. I'm hoping to incorporate aspects of his research into a future column.

The Iron Range is a hard place to be an intellectual "Hamlet" type. This is partly because some of our most powerful officials and opinion makers have no idea what that means. It's also because it's a place that operates best when you pick a side and stick with it. Loyalty, old relationships, stubbornness, and general fortitude are all highly prized on the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota. That's why I've had a hard time articulating my exact opinion about the nonferrous mining proposed for the East Range by companies like PolyMet.

My Ranger sensibility calls on me to pick a side. Should I join my environmental friends in opposing the project for its environmental risk near the Boundary Waters? Or should I join my mining and development friends and support what could be a legitimate source of jobs and innovative mining techniques? I know and respect many people on both sides.

Mike Jennings penned a Sunday editorial on this topic for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. It seems Mike is struggling with this same question. As with any Iron Range political/economic/environmental issue, emotions are running high. Pro-nonferrous mining interests term the opposition as being shill obstructionists. Environmentalists dismiss out of hand that a company would actually use environmentally improved methods of extracting minerals. Jennings comes to a conclusion pretty similar to my current perspective.

PolyMet may be able to address all valid concerns raised by WaterLegacy before a draft EIS is released publicly. The likelihood that the successful, safe extraction of nonferrous minerals would open a promising new chapter in Minnesota’s mining history gives reason to hope that the company can do so.

But if legitimate causes for concern remain once a final draft EIS has undergone public review, then PolyMet should be placed on hold until its plans and its technology catch up with its promise.

I would like to see how the innovative technology being touted will address the concerns raised about sulfide mining around the world. I think that's a fair question. But it also appears to me that efforts to essentially ban nonferrous mining in Minnesota at the legislature is an over-correction. What is the right action? To sleep, perchance to dream? Oh, hell.

Wherever natural resources in Northern Minnesota are concerned, leaders must make plans that benefit people here long term. The minerals and water beneath our feet, the timber and natural beauty around us will only become more valuable and vital to human survival as the years tick by. Let's hurry up, but let's do it right. I can envision safe new nonferrous mining practices in northern Minnesota. I just need to know that's what we're actually dealing with here.

I was about to give Matt Lauer of NBC's Today show some Northern Minnesota props after he missed this morning's show because of "an accident involving a deer."

That is, until I learned that he was on a bike and didn't actually hit the deer, but rather flipped over his handle bars trying to avoid it. City boy.

This is my weekly column from the Sunday, March 22, 2009 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. I read a version of this piece for the March 21 edition of "Between You and Me" on KAXE.

Wearing many 'hats,' a good hat is hard to find
By Aaron J. Brown

Let me begin by saying that I long for the old days. I know the picture you see next to this column shows a youthful face, but the picture is old and you haven’t seen me with my shirt off. With three kids, a mortgage and frustrations that become a little more cliché each year, I feel I’ve earned the right. Specifically, I long for days that happened before I was born, when men could wear hats in a non-ironic way.

We’ve all seen the pictures from 19th and 20th century logging and mining camps. Historical photos show ubiquitous headwear at old time political rallies, in church pictures and ancient portraits from company newsletters. The men and women of the early monochromatic pages of our family albums all seem to be wearing hats.

Sure, people still wear fedoras, wool caps, bowlers and brimmed straw sun-hats. But there are only two ways to do so legitimately: 1) having been alive long enough to have experienced the hat craze in real time, or 2) wearing these hats in an ironic way designed to draw attention to yourself. This second group often includes the same people who still listen to records because they “prefer the smooth sound to digital.” That’s probably true and also you sound pretentious. Nobody really wears hats any more. Southern and western politicians are sometimes expected to wear cowboy hats. We Minnesotans wear hats during the winter to prevent us from succumbing to hypothermia. Many men and some women wear ball caps, the “C student” of the hat world, on occasion, but never to a high occasion – again, unless the caps are worn ironically as a sign of defiance. Hats are out.

Strangely, despite the long decline of the hat, people are wearing more metaphorical hats than ever. You know what I’m talking about: The hat expression overused to the point of criminal negligence. Suzie wears many “hats” at the office, one for being the receptionist, the other for being the only one who knows how to use the fire extinguisher, and yet another for being the only person who knows why knowing how to use the fire extinguisher is a specifically important skill when working with Smoker Ted down in the Microfiber Division.

Along these lines, I wear many “hats.” The “hat” I’m wearing now is the one I put on to write things like this for people like you to read or hear. (You’re a real person, aren’t you? Oh, I hope you’re real). I wear another hat in the classroom, another to play with my kids, another for various community endeavors. I’ve got so many metaphorical “hats” that sometimes I don’t even remember which one I’m wearing and which one is shoved back in a corner of my metaphorical “garage” with my metaphorical “weed whacker.” Perhaps what I really need is a metaphorical “hat rack.” I’m betting that would require therapy, which is way more expensive than “therapy.”

Maybe the waning popularity of real hats and the overtaxation of metaphorical ones are, in fact, related. Maybe when people stopped wearing stylish hats as a regular part of their wardrobe something came unhinged in our brains and we suddenly became multitasking maniacs. Maybe what I really need is not therapy, or herbs or stress relief pills, but rather to slide on a warm brown felt fedora on a cool spring morning. I could walk by brick buildings on damp streets with a calm swagger, tip back that hat to look up to the deep blue sky. Someone else with a hat would walk by and call out, “Mornin.’” I could tip my hat back down from the wisps of clouds above, nod and call back, “Mornin.’”

Too bad hats are out.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Contact him or read more at his blog MinnesotaBrown.com. His new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” is out now.

Everyone gets the wrong mail sometimes. Postal workers are humans, after all. Maybe you've received someone's college alumni newsletter or some kind of notice from a cell phone company. You just put it back in the box and assume that the matter is corrected.

Well, in northern Minnesota you get some different kinds of mistaken mail. For instance, on Friday we accidentally recieved the latest edition of "The Trapper and Predator Caller" magazine. The picture shows last month's edition. The one we got by mistake is the April edition that encourages readers to befriend a bow fisherman to get top notch trapper bait. Yes, that would be fishing with a bow and arrow. The article is titled "Carp Diem." This is the coolest thing I've seen in a long time and it's going to be hard to say goodbye when the mail comes tomorrow.

Northern Minnesota iron mining is surely in a down cycle, with current and planned temporary taconite mine shutdowns looming over the Iron Range. But Mike Jennings of the Hibbing Daily Tribune has an interesting story in Sunday's edition about the optimism of steel industry insiders in the long term strength of steel prices and the likelihood of a strong recovery in 2010 and beyond.

Most followers of Range news have been tracking the Essar Steel development in Nashwauk, a new mine and steel plant owned by an international India-based steel company. Iron Range officials and educators are trying hard to embrace the Indian culture of the Essar managers and employees being assigned to the new facility as it begins construction.

This Hibbing Daily Tribune story by Kelly Grinsteinner describes a celebration of the Indian holiday of Holi yesterday at the Lone Pine Community Hall (the Pengilly area near Nashwauk). Here's one of my favorite images from the story:

The crowd dined on Indian food as well as American fare. Videos of Indian culture were shown, followed by a performance by a polka-playing duo.

It's a bold new world. Oom pa pa, indeed.

This post at Wonkette explores how Duluth native and Iron Range-raised Bob Dylan's last two albums correctly predicted significant (largely negative) events that shaped the last decade. Indeed, some of Dylan's older material also foretold historic events. His latest album, "Together Through Life," subtly suggests the end of humanity, according to one critic.

I'm just pointing this out so you can get ready for it. There are two schools of thought: sit on the roof or dig a bomb shelter. Go with what feels right.

Driving snow on the first day of spring on the Iron Range. I'd call it an omen if this sort of thing didn't happen every spring.

Taegan Goddard posts about a theory I suspect, too -- that the never ending cuts to newspapers will enable all manner of backroom political shenanigans once thought to be under control. Who's going to investigate anything? The days of paving riverbeds with overpriced concrete on a government contract might be back. "Citizen" journalists don't have the chops yet. "Regular" journalists don't know if they'll have work six months from now. Or else they work for a company with an agenda of one kind or another. Or else they're just plain overworked with nonjournalistic tasks to the detriment of their ability to do their jobs.

Most mornings my drive from the woods north of Nashwauk to Hibbing orients around the enormous steam cloud billowing out of Keewatin Taconite. The wind points the steam like a finger, to the north on a warm day and angrily to the south on a cold, bitter day. On a calm day the finger points upward to the heavens.

The plant has been in temporary shutdown since the new year and I'm still not used to a horizon that doesn't include the steam out of KeeTac. People on the Iron Range are starting to realize, slowly, that this temporary idling and the other shutdowns in process or planned at all the Range's taconite mines are vague in scope. Even as national indicators stabilize this place is, as it has always been, the last length of pipe in the economic drain. The manna from heaven always gets here last. Maybe that's why the finger always points at the sky.

This week's topic for KAXE's "Between You and Me" is hats. I'll be presenting my usual commentary near the beginning of the call-in and music program, which airs between 10 a.m. and noon on 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota and streaming online all over the world at www.kaxe.org.

I'll be talking about literal hats and the metaphorical "hats" that we all wear. The two have a connection ... which makes the whole thing a rare "meta-metaphor."

As readers of this blog know, I subsidize my blogging by begging readers to buy my book "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range" (available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble). Last week I took the "Overburden" road show to the Twin Cities for the first time. It was an exciting trip and I'm now able to share some highlights, including pictures and audio.

The primary reason for traveling to the Twin Cities in the middle of a winter storm was a speaking engagement at the University of Minnesota Bookstore at Coffman Memorial Union in Minneapolis on March 11. This is one of the hottest literary locales in the area. The picture at right (taken by my stepmom Julie) is me just after giving my talk to a crowd of mostly ex-Iron Rangers now living in the metro area.

One of the cool things about this presentation was that my talk was recorded and released as an official iTunes podcast by the U of M Bookstore (Go to the iTunes store and search Podcasts for "University of Minnesota Bookstore" to download to your iPod). You can also hear the podcast at the bookstore's website. It's a long podcast at about an hour and 40 minutes, but it's a good representation of the readings I've been giving since the book came out. Also, the last half hour is a Q&A session that was the best I've ever had. Nothing I do is ever perfect, but this went better than average.

The next morning I visited friends at the State Capitol and was very generously allowed access to the House floor before the opening of the day's session for a photo with House Majority Leader Tony Sertich (whose first campaign committee I served on), Speaker of the House Margaret Anderson Kelliher, Rep. Tom Anzelc (whose campaigns I manage) and me. No, not every obscure Iron Ranger writer is granted this privilege, so I count my blessings and keep things in perspective. Political hack, you may call me. I prefer to believe that I am a multifaceted hack working across the spectrum. I'll post that photo after it arrives in the mail.

After the Capitol I did a signing at the Eagan Barnes and Noble where I sold two books, one to Excelsior Energy's Pat Micheletti, a Hibbing native. We had a long conversation about the merits of his company's Mesaba Energy Project, which I have labeled a boondoggle, and -- sufficed to say -- we did not reach consensus. However, he did help me sell a second book to a unaffiliated customer and, therefore, receives a rare kudos in this post.

But that's not all. On my way home I stopped off in Superior, Wis., across the bridge from Duluth to visit my old stomping grounds at 91.3 KUWS on the University of Wisconsin-Superior campus to be part of a recording of the journalism show "Final Edition." The show aired March 13. The audio for that half-hour show about blogging and the media is currently posted at Business North and will be archived at the KUWS Final Edition page. The show is produced and hosted by Mike Simonson, who was my mentor and news director when I was a student working at KUWS. Simply put, he's one of the greatest living journalists I know. This show, which also features Barrett Chase of PerfectDuluthDay.com and Beth Jett of Fox 21, turned into a great discussion on the future of online journalism and blogging in northern Minnesota.

Then I went home. I'll be back in the Twin Cities on Thursday, June 4 with other events up north before then. Stay tuned.

Lee Bloomquist has posted video and and update on the Essar Steel Minnesota project near Nashwauk at the Iron Range Resources blog "Rangeviews." The information matches the media reports seen over the past week, but it's interesting to see the actual dirt work going on.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty told reporters when he was in town Tuesday that Essar has assured him that they won't be asking for additional state assistance on the financing of this project.

Something is "blowin' in the wind" at Minnesota native and Hibbing High School alumnus Bob Dylan's home in Malibu. It appears neighbors are upset about the smell coming from a portable toilet on Dylan's property.

Ha ha! I wonder if anyone else will think to use the term "Blowin' in the wind" for this story. Ha ha!

Oh. Everyone will. Every single news organization on the planet. I give props to the ones who thought to include "Idiot Wind" puns, too. Those are true Dylan people. (Let me add "It's all over now, baby poo" to the discourse).

The Duluth News Tribune penned a timely editorial using the occasion to invite Dylan to visit his native Duluth, "port-a-potty and all."

Of course, as one of the organizers of Dylan Days in Hibbing, where Dylan grew up, graduated high school and played his first gigs I must take issue with the premise that only Duluth would welcome Dylan and his biffy. I respectfully ask Bob to compare Duluth and Iron Range zoning regulations to see which place would really be more welcoming of an outdoor commode.

I kid, of course. This is all for fun. But if you remember nothing else about this discussion, remember this: If you are famous, you may defecate in Duluth wherever, whenever and however you like with total impunity. In fact, you will be publicly thanked when you are finished. That's Duluth. D-U-L-U-T-H. Hope to see you soon!

When the headline reads "Iron Range teen faces charges after skunk prank goes awry," I'll bite. So will you. (Duluth News Tribune).

Oh, and if you're wondering: Gilbert.

On Monday, the Lessard Council officially offered its blessing for the the first $20 million allocation of the Upper Mississippi Forest Project, an initiative to buy a permanent easement on vast tracts of forest lands and wetlands mostly in Itasca County. I wrote a post about the topic a couple weeks ago. The idea is that the first $20 million would be approved this year with the other $20 million on the table for the next funding cycle.

The Lessard Outdoor Heritage Council is the advisory board tasked with prioritizing the spending of the sales tax revenue for the preservation of the outdoors and the arts. This group formed after voters approved a constitutional amendment authorizing the dedicated funding last fall. (Remember "Sportsmen Vote Yes?" That was this).

This is by no means the last step. The legislature must approve the Lessard Council's recommendations and there is a good deal of consternation on the part of metro legislators that more metro projects weren't recommended. This is politics, so I get the idea that pools of money must be fought over like scraps of meat. But I'd gently suggest that if you want to preserve the outdoors you should do so in places where "the outdoors" still exist. I guess we could buy a few thousand salt licks to leave around the north end of White Bear Lake, but I don't know that it would constitute a better long term plan for the state's great outdoors.

One angry commenter on the Star Tribune website essentially said that this project amounts to a $40 million swamp that Minnesotans shouldn't care about. Not only is that inaccurate, but preserving this land guarantees hunting, hiking, recreational vehicle and snowmobiling opportunities for generations of all Minnesotans, including those who wish to occasionally flee their metropolitan environs. Not buying the easement will segment and sometimes destroy the forests for the benefit of a few wealthy landowners. It's too bad, politically, that these forest lands are all in one county. But no county has more lakes or forests for its size than Itasca. Preserving places like this are part of the intent of the original law.

If metro legislators were wise they'd realize they'd have a much better shot at gobbling up the arts funding that's also part of the sales tax approved last fall. (WINK WINK!)

The amount of journalism done on the state of journalism is exhausting to read. There's so much of it! And so many ex-journalists producing it! But most of it is thoughtful, researched and, well, pretty much common sense in the end.

Highlights I've seen recently:

Clay Shirky writes a detailed postmortem on the "dying" newspaper industry and how we're all probably going to have to spend some time in the wilderness before a new system of finding, analyzing and disseminating information to the public forms organically. (h/t Andrew Sullivan)

Round and round this goes, with the people committed to saving newspapers demanding to know “If the old model is broken, what will work in its place?” To which the answer is: Nothing. Nothing will work. There is no general model for newspapers to replace the one the internet just broke.

With the old economics destroyed, organizational forms perfected for industrial production have to be replaced with structures optimized for digital data. It makes increasingly less sense even to talk about a publishing industry, because the core problem publishing solves — the incredible difficulty, complexity, and expense of making something available to the public — has stopped being a problem.

Deeply sobering ... and also exciting. But it's not all bad, right? Local papers are doing a little better than the big dogs. That's the theme behind this MinnPost story by Joe Kimball, who explores how the little Minnesota town of Slayton supports TWO weekly newspapers. I happen to also know that Lake of the Woods County (a county with a population similar to a small town) also supports two weeklies and that there are several weeklies making a go of it all over northern Minnesota in close proximity to competition. Ely, for instance, is another two newspaper town.

Kimball's story correctly identifies how small town papers can thrive alongside the information revolution seen at big papers. Success comes by collecting the nuts and bolts information people want to know about their town that can't be replicated or repeated on blogs and free sites. I'd further argue that the financial success of these papers is directly related to the debt load carried by the papers' owners. A small town paper owned free and clear can be a license to print money if they have community support and low overhead. A small town paper owned along with 300 other small town papers by a company that went $500 million into hock to buy the lot of them is going to be held to an impossible profit expectation that will serve as a self-fulfilling prophecy of failure and decline.

This brings me to my third find from Monday's web patrol, this John C. Dvorak piece from PC Magazine called "Newspaper Publishers are Idiots." Naturally, as a working newspaper columnist still (barely) in the biz, the citation of this link shouldn't imply that my newspaper publisher is an idiot, but rather other newspaper publishers. The stupid ones.

Dvorak joins Shirky and Kimball in identifying obvious change factors in the newspaper business that have been either ignored or mishandled by the industry leaders since the 1990s. In essence, the newspapers of the future (or whatever they are called) will find their niche in reporting of hard, useful information about the communities they cover. Because that can't be faked. Columns, pop culture analysis, "localization stories" and blog posts can be faked. Trust me. I do it all the time.

It's not that there won't be columns, editorials and the like in the future. It's that newspapers that want to make money will find a way to severely reduce the repetition of information that can be found for free online and substantially ramp up the publication of new, credible information that the public wants or needs to know. Periodically, the papers and news sites in my neighborhood do just that. But having been a local newspaper editor and an outsider looking in, I can safely say that reporters' and editors' ability to do good work is severely hampered by an industry that still doesn't get it.

Elephant in the room alert: The reason all this seems so revolutionary when it actually isn't is because this change will involve a lot of very powerful people losing an obscene amount of money.

Word up north is that Essar Steel Minnesota is proceeding with plans to build a mine and eventually a steel mill near Nashwauk on Minnesota's Iron Range. This, despite financing problems that are delaying the next phase of construction. The Star Tribune had a story today. The interesting observation to me is that Essar CEO Madhu Vuppuluri is considerably more bullish on the project schedule in the Star Tribune article than he was for the Hibbing Daily Tribune last week.

In any event, all reports indicate that Essar is moving forward at some measurable rate. The language to keep an eye on has to do with the project's progression into the next phase, from a complete taconite plant to a combined mining and steel plant. I read a lot about shipping pellets to Ontario that sounds more like a traditional Iron Range taconite operation. This aspect of the project in particular will probably rely on the economy and demand for steel.

Meantime, when the Hibbing Daily Tribune first reported on Essar's financing problems, Nashwauk's mayor Bill Hendricks took a swipe at the paper for "inaccuracy" without laying out any specific inaccuracies. This Sunday brought one of the most epic take-downs of an overreaching local official by HDT publisher Wanda Moeller. It's worth a read regardless of your opinion on the project ... if you can get the paper copy. I'll link if they post it online.

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, March 15 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. A version of this piece ran as an essay on KAXE's "Between You and Me" on March 7.

‘Please’ and ‘Thank You,’ signs of hope
By Aaron J. Brown

As a relatively young parent of relatively young children the words “thank you” have come to mean something different, even better than what they used to mean. With three boys aged three or younger, life in our house has come to resemble a Mad Max sequel released straight to DVD: survivalist behaviors, loud yelling and a constant rumble over limited resources. Thank goodness they don’t have dune buggies. With an incomplete vocabulary, the needs, wants and complaints of our boys can only be articulated in grunts, screaming and primitive sentences. That is, until the words “thank you” changed everything.

Like most parents, we tried to instill basic politeness in our oldest son Henry when he started talking. Please and thank you. Please and thank you. Please and thank you. But somehow, perhaps through genetics or some ancient code of children, his compliance with these rules always came across as forced, like a hostage video. He would say thank you, but not in a way that made you happy.

(Like a robot) “Thank you.”

It’s a fool’s errand to try to get a preschooler to respect tone of voice as an important component of human communication. “Sometimes I feel like you aren’t being sincere when you talk to me that way … MISTER.”

Last fall, Henry went to pre-school for the first time while his younger twin brothers Doug and George finally learned some primitive speech skills, too. At preschool, Henry seemed to pick up that saying thank you wasn’t just something you say, but something that has actual meaning not just to the person being thanked, but to you too. My wife Christina tells the story about making dinner one evening and, in the midst of a high spirited romp through the kitchen, Henry stopped, looked at her and said, “Thank you for making dinner, mama.” It started sneaking into daily conversation.

“Hey, bud, here are some Cheerios.”

“Thank you, daddy. I like Cheerios.”

The clincher came when some of Doug’s first words was a friendly phrase that sounds a lot like “thanku.” George’s words are harder to decipher, but he shoots a winner smile every time you give him, well, any kind of food.

Why does all this matter? Why should you care about these kids you probably don’t know? What makes this different than the endless prattling of your co-worker who purports that his 7-year-old has “ice vision” and will be varsity by his freshman year? Well, you see, they’re human. HUMAN! Saying thank you is a human thing to do. Animals know only domination and submission. The wolf doesn’t say thank you to his wolf-mate for letting him eat the choice hunk of meat; he just takes it. Humans have learned that humility keeps a society going without constant violence and rancor. And this is so reassuring to a household that has known increasing violence and rancor among tiny boys determined to pummel each other over graham crackers. There is a light at the end of our tunnel, and thus, the tunnel of humanity.

Being grateful to people who help you, helps everyone. Please, say thank you.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Contact him or read more at his blog MinnesotaBrown.com. His new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” is out now.

My friends the Rudstroms in Brevig Mission, Alaska, posted a great video about what happens when a snow drift blocks the door to your house in an Alaskan Inuit Village not far from the Bering Strait. (h/t Rudstrom Family Blog)

And, on the subject of things that are close to Russia, via "TYWKIWDBI" here are some of the earliest known color photographs (from 1910-1915) taken in the waning days of the Russian Empire. Here's my favorite:
Caption: "A. P. Kalganov poses with his son and granddaughter… Kalganov displays traditional Russian dress and beard styles, while the two younger generations have more Westernized, modern dress and hair styles."

You see pictures like this in the paper on the Iron Range today only the older person is wearing a polyester Blatz Beer jacket, the middle person is wearing an Adidas jacket and the younger person is wearing a tube sock as a top.

(h/t Andrew Sullivan)

Vice President Joe Biden is coming to St. Cloud this Thursday. The agenda: a town hall meeting about how to strengthen the middle class. What better place to explore middle class issues than a town known for its all-you-can-eat buffets!

St. Cloud is called the Granite City. I know this because one time I was in Iowa and told a guy I was from the Iron Range northern Minnesota.

He says , "Don't they have a town up there that they call 'the Granite City?'"

And I say, "I don't think so."

And he says, "They mine granite."

And I say, "Uh, no, we mine iron. It's the Iron Range."

And he says, "I'm pretty sure I saw something about it on TV."

And how could I argue with that. Anyway, I looked it up and the "Granite City is St. Cloud, which is in central Minnesota (though it is north of the Twin Cities) and will be hosting the Vice President this week. More details to come.

In a rare double whammy, I'm promoting two radio appearances today. Today at 5 p.m. I'll be a guest on the 91.3 FM KUWS (Superior, Wisconsin) program "Final Edition," a roundtable discussion about journalism in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. The topic is "blogging" and I'm on with Barrett Chase of "Perfect Duluth Day" and Beth Jett of Fox 21, which unveiled its new website today. The host is one of the great Twin Ports journalists, Mike Simonson, who was my news director when I worked at KUWS. In fact, I used to fetch coffee for guests on Final Edition. So you can imagine the sense of pride when I walked into the studio and Mike told me that I could go fetch myself some coffee if I wanted it.

Anyway, it was good to be back in the familiar environs of KUWS. If you miss the show, it will be archived at the KUWS website under the "Final Edition" page.

And, as usual, I'll have an original essay on the Saturday KAXE program "Between You and Me" which airs 10 a.m. to noon on 91.7 FM or streaming online at www.kaxe.org. The call-in and music program explores a new topic each week. This week we explore "risk." I am taking a risk in that even as this post is published, I have not yet written my essay, recorded, edited or submitted it. And yet, I am here telling you to listen anyway. I hereby guarantee that it will probably be totally awesome.

I'm still catching up from my trip to the Twin Cities. Here are some of the headlines from the last two days.

Essar Steel is delayed eight months because of financing issues. This is the combined mine and steel mill in Nashwauk that's been talked about in some form for approaching two decades but that had finally begun construction. Concerns about the health of the project are being raised again. (Mike Jennings, Hibbing Daily Tribune)

Beleaguered start-up company Excelsior Energy discussed plans to sell electricity from the proposed Mesaba Energy Project to cash-strapped public utilities around the state. (Again, Mike Jennings, Hibbing Daily Tribune). For me this idea puts the "dude?" in dubious. I want to know how this expensive (more than $2 billion) experimental plant could provide least-cost power to utilities owned directly by taxpayers.

I'll have more later in the day.

I have returned from the Twin Cities. My first metro book tour for "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range" was a success and I thank all those who came out to events and wished me well in my travels.

Wednesday morning, a blizzard had wrapped up northern Minnesota. Though snowfall was less than expected, wind speeds were very high and there was a lot of drifting. I drive a Ford Focus. These quaint vehicles have a very specific threshold for snow depth before they become decorative snowstorm flair. I find that depth to be around 7-8 inches. We had about 6 and a half inches of snow Wednesday. Finding some form of religion, I managed to escape my driveway and unplowed township road to reach the paved and plowed byways of our modern Iron Range transportation infrastructure. Huzzah!

The Wednesday afternoon reading at Coffman Memorial Union at the University of Minnesota Bookstore went very well. A nice crowd of folks, mostly ex-Rangers, joined me to talk about the Iron Range's past, present and future.

Thursday morning began with me and my dad eating fresh, never frozen, steak and eggs in South St. Paul. Then, with the aid of friends, I wandered onto the floor of the Minnesota House of Representatives and managed not to embarrass myself in any sort of obvious way (that I know of). Then I did a signing at the Eagan Barnes and Noble.

Signed copies of "Overburden" are available at both the U of M bookstore at Coffman and the Eagan Barnes and Noble. I also signed copies at the Harmar Mall Barnes and Noble in Roseville, where I'll be giving another reading on June 4.

More to come ...

At this hour I am taking stock of my situation regarding the overnight snowfall and my plans to get from Balsam Township in the wooded heart of Itasca County to the bustling (and also snowed upon) metropolitan area for today's 4 p.m. reading at Coffman Memorial Union at the U of M. It's normally a four-hour drive. This could be a very long day.

Confirmed: The Duluth News Tribune is staking its editorial future on angry, misguided rants written by conservative older folks. This one blames every conceivable problem in Duluth on socialism. I can't wait until my 70th birthday when I can write my op/ed blaming the 2032 robot uprising on those damn kids trampling my yard as they flee the patrols.

David Brauer at MinnPost points out the continued speculation over the deathwatch on the big Twin Cities dailies. Some sources say the Pioneer Press will go, others say the slightly larger Star Tribune might succumb to financial wounds or switch to an ultra-lean all-online format. Brauer suggests that both papers are in better shape than the other big dailies that have shut down around the country. In any event, good luck getting a newspaper job in the next five years. The next time they'll be hiring they won't even be printing hard copies anymore.

This morning, Mike Jennings of the Hibbing Daily Tribune explores the financing situation for Essar Steel Minnesota's Nashwauk project, a combined mine and steelmaking operation currently in early construction. Essar, an India-based global corporation, is reportedly having some trouble securing necessary loans because of the credit situation.

Jennings reports that State Sen. Tom Bakk will be meeting with a high ranking member of Gov. Pawlenty's cabinet to see what Minnesota can do to free up credit for Essar.

Of course, the state can't do much. I'm sitting here in my living room watching "Thomas the Tank Engine" and I already know that. But there will be a meeting. And Tom Bakk is in the paper again. Essar CEO Madhu Vuppuluri does say several important things in the story: 1) that Essar is still pumping its own money into the project until financing is secured, and 2) that they aren't seeking funds, but rather financing. Vuppuluri and state officials all seem to agree that credit markets are thawing and that a package could be achieved by June, roughly speaking. I'm doing some low key investigating of my own on this and will report more next week. All told, this project seems to be in better shape than the economy as a whole ... for whatever that's worth.

The first time my parents brought us to the Twin Cities they didn’t tell my sisters and I where we were going until our Oldsmobile station wagon pulled onto I-35. It was a long drive and they didn’t want us to melt down in excitement. My first question once we got there: what’s behind those concrete walls along the freeways?

I grew up on the Iron Range, specifically on our family’s salvage yard where we ate, slept and learned to read in the only metal structure that didn’t contain scrap iron, hubcaps or transmissions. So you can imagine the contrast between my world – the junkyard, the Iron Range, and the distant taconite plants on the horizon – and this urban world of freeways, skyscrapers and suburbs.

Those worlds collide once again this week. You might know that I am a writer, college communications instructor and political organizer from the Iron Range. My new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range" is a humorous, heartfelt exploration of the past, present and future of the Iron Range and places like it.

On Wednesday, March 11, I’ll be giving a lecture at the University of Minnesota Bookstore at Coffman Memorial Union in Minneapolis. The program begins at 4 p.m.

The following day, on Thursday, March 12, I’ll be doing a signing at the Eagan Barnes and Noble from noon to 1 p.m.

This is my first Twin Cities book event after a long winter of Iron Range and Duluth book events. These occasions have prompted many fascinating conversations, amusing stories and unusual observations from audience members. Why should you attend? Well, we'll be exploring why the Iron Range and place like it will have a vital role in the future of this state and nation. We'll be exploring why there’s something out there, a human force more vital than the rat race that drove us into the current economic crisis. And we'll be exploring why “guns,” “fire” and “beer” are powerful words – not always wise words, but deeply powerful.

In particular, I’d like to invite the members of Minnesota’s online community to the 4 p.m. lecture at the University of Minnesota Bookstore at Coffman Memorial Union on Wednesday, March 11. I’ll be back to the Cities in the future, but I’d love to meet as many of you as possible at this exciting new event in the mysterious world of the Twin Cities.

MORE: Zack at MNPublius and Eric and Two Putt Tommy at the Minnesota Progressive Project were kind enough to promote my Wednesday and Thursday events in the Twin Cities. Thanks guys!

EVEN MORE: Snow! They are predicting a massive snowstorm Tuesday and Wednesday that will ensnare the whole state. My default is GO GO GO! But the moment of truth will come Wednesday morning when I try to plow my Ford Focus down our township road to the fancy paved road up the way. If I get to the paved road I will not stop for any reason!

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, March 8, 2009 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Name these times
By Aaron J. Brown

The Great Depression. The Crusades. The Dark Ages. The Renaissance. And, of course, the Iron Range Recession of the 1980s (known locally by one pseudo-word: “Da’eighties”).

These terms describe historic periods of great significance to varying numbers of people. The Crusades represent the roundabout reason there is strife in the Mideast. The Iron Range economic crunch of the 1980s is the roundabout reason there are now more Iron Rangers living in the Twin Cities than who live here now. I don’t have to explain much for some of you to experience some spark of awareness or emotion when you see these descriptions.

We know what we’re in. It’s a recession and certain indicators show that it might be more. Nevertheless, a TV news commentator might breathlessly declare today’s economic conditions as being like the Great Depression, while another describes them in terms of Japan’s “Lost Decade.” That’s a favorite of mine; most Americans didn’t know that Japan “lost a decade” in the 1990s but today the guy who orders parts for your department is talking about it like he’s a Nobel laureate economist. While aspects of the Depression, the Lost Decade or the period in the late 1800s where America’s economy stagnated for two decades might hold relevance, today is different.

In all cases, the numbers are larger. Budgets are vaster. Everyday people are more connected to the stock market than ever. And yet, government programs like education, transportation and health care are part of the fabric of society now. The very nature of how people live their lives, buy and sell their goods and define a good living has changed. I can transmit a video from here to most places on Earth in a few minutes. If I lost my job tomorrow I could still do that. Today’s economy is relatively terrible, demands correction, but no one is selling apples on street corners.

With the omnipresent information demands of the internet and cable TV channels, media professionals have to fill more time and muscle out more competition. Thinking and doing research is hard; so, instead, we talk. If no one listens, we talk louder and if we talk loud enough we get on TV. Just as water always takes the path of least resistance, today’s writers (including myself) often take the easy way out. And that includes describing the events of today as being “just like” the events of some readily recognizable event of the past. The similarities between the present and past are vitally important, but the differences are what define our time on this Earth.

For instance, the Dark Ages terms a long period in European history as a time limited to disease, wars and slow social development. Conversely, the following Renaissance, literally translated as “rebirth,” describes the time when European society expanded the arts and sciences, welcoming an age of reason to the vicious world known before. Historians will tell you these descriptions remain only partly true. Historic developments were achieved during the Dark Ages and both eras saw rampant public defecation. The similarities were great, but the fact remains: one had to follow the other. Each represented part of a string of vital, but incomplete progress.

I’ve heard many relatives, friends and colleagues describe the downturn at local Iron Range taconite mines as being just like those we saw in the 1980s. In that taconite plants are experiencing layoffs and shutdowns, the similarities are thick. In that mustaches and mullets are somewhat less fashionable, and that Iron Range mines have modernized a great deal since the 1980s, the similarities don’t hold water. I don’t say this to give the many worried families of the Iron Range unjustified confidence. Rather, I contest that we are all in this together for a new era that combines the truth of the past with the unknown of the future.

These times deserve a new name.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Contact him or read more at his blog MinnesotaBrown.com. His new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” is out now.

I must give a strong recommendation of Frank Rich's column ("Some Things Don't Change in Grover's Corners") in the Sunday New York Times. He compares the conditions today to the conditions under which Thornton Wilder wrote his famous play "Our Town." He cites Wilder's nephew and literary executor as saying that the play is being produced twice as often now as it was in 2005. Rich doesn't think that's a coincidence and explains why. My new favorite quote this week comes from a line delivered by the "Stage Manager" in the play (essentially the narrator who explains life in this "normal" little town):

“Wherever you come near the human race, there’s layers and layers of nonsense.”

It's a shame I didn't think of using that line. I played the Stage Manager in a 1997 Cherry High School production of "Our Town."

It's a good thing that Sens. Tom Bakk, David Tomassoni and the Mesabi Daily News editorial page are standing up for those poor, defenseless mining companies at this time of great peril. Because with the world crumbling all around us, lord knows the the biggest problem we've got is that mining companies might have to pay for all of their permits on projects that we later subsidize with millions of Iron Range Resources dollars entitled to the citizens of the Iron Range.

Damn the proletarian rabble loafing about the streets!

Go down to the Hibbing Public Library and read the editorials from the Mesaba Ore from 1906 to roughly 1916. You'll see that not much changes around here insofar as newspaper editorials are concerned.