SCROLL DOWN FOR RANGE 4th of JULY SCHEDULE

Fourth of July is a special time here on the Iron Range. Our immigrant ancestry and almost childlike adherence to the tenets of the American Dream make us a tad more nationalistic and militaristic than your average DFL political stronghold. It's actually a fun combination, with enough beer and fireworks thrown in to make it palatable for all.

All three major DFL gubernatorial candidates are expected to tour the region for the parades and no doubt some lively discussions will occur! Remember, if you see Tom Rukavina in the back of a truck in one of the parades, you're supposed to yell "Tommy, stand up!" He loves this! He will say something memorable to you and your family.

In keeping with my recent tradition I've rounded up one unified cross-Range Fourth of July parade/street dance/firework schedule. The local papers have a paywall now, so this is my version of rum running. You'll have to root around more if you want the kiddie costume contest and VFW snoose run information for the town closest to your heart. New for 2010: color coding for your planning convenience! I've stuck to the interpretation of "Iron Range" that includes towns directly up and down the iron formation. Feel free to add corrections or additions to the comments if you have information on other nearby towns.

Blue=West/Central Range
Red=East Range
Purple=Iron Range occupied territories

Friday, July 2

• Nashwauk-Keewatin All-Class reunion, 6-11 p.m. at Nashwauk Rec Center
• Keewatin fireworks, dusk, with street dance all evening until 1 a.m.
• Tower Riverfest (concert event with admission charge), 6 p.m. to midnight at the Tower Marina

Saturday, July 3

• Tower parade, lineup at 10:15 a.m., 11 a.m. parade
• Aurora parade, 6 p.m.
  
• Gilbert evening parade and street dance, 7:30 p.m. with fireworks at dusk
• Nashwauk fireworks, dusk, with street dance starting at 8 p.m.
• Tower street dance, 8 p.m.-midnight, with fireworks at dusk
  

Sunday, July 4

• Virginia parade, 9 a.m.
• Swan Lake Floatilla (Pengilly, boat parade), 10 a.m.
• Nashwauk parade, lineup at 11:30 a.m. with 12:30 p.m. start
• Side Lake parade, featuring Veda Ponikvar, lineup at 11 a.m. for noon parade
• Ely pipes and drums at 12:30 p.m. with 1 p.m. parade and various fun all day
• Biwabik parade, lineup at noon, 1 p.m. parade
• Keewatin parade, lineup at 1 p.m., 1:30 for Shriner motor display, 2:30 for parade
• Virginia fireworks at dusk
• Ely fireworks at 10 p.m.
• Eveleth street dance, 8:30 p.m.-12:30 a.m., with fireworks over Grant Ave at 10:15 (1340 AM "Thunder over Eveleth" simulcast)

Monday, July 5

• Eveleth parade, lineup at 8:30 a.m., parade at 9:30
• Buhl, lineup at 8:30 a.m., parade at 9

You can find out more in places like the Hibbing Daily Tribune or Mesabi Daily News (subscription only) or at RangeBuzz, which has a great collection of links to individual cities under "Events."

Larger towns like Hibbing and Grand Rapids along with places like Mt. Iron, Hoyt Lakes and Chisholm all focus their efforts on other summer festivals. Have a Happy Fourth of July on the Iron Range or wherever you may be!

UPDATED at 1:21 p.m., June 30 with new Tower and Aurora information.

This is my weekly column for the June 27, 2010 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. A version of this piece aired on the June 5, 2010 episode of "Between You and Me" on KAXE.

Survival of the Finnish
By Aaron J. Brown

As Independence Day approaches, thoughts turn to the survival of our republic. Survival is a general human trait, but one of the reasons I love living in northern Minnesota is that the place reminds us that we are currently, sometimes just barely, surviving. Northern Minnesota is basically uninhabitable for three months of the year. Half the year is deeply unpredictable and could lurch toward winter or summer at any time, sometimes in the course of 24 hours. The other three months are great. Just great. No problems, except that’s when the bears are hungry.

My native Iron Range of northern Minnesota is of particular note when it comes to survival. Sharing the same menacing weather as the rest of the region, the Range also exists as a sort of modern survival experiment. This area is still economically dependent on mining, for one. Mining involves digging in the earth with sharp instruments or explosives. That’ll kill some folks. In the old days it took place miles below the heavy, iron-laden earth. That’ll kill some folks. Recently, dump trucks topping 400 tons have been deployed to haul ore. You can imagine what could happen with a truck bigger than even the biggest of the dinosaurs. It doesn’t happen often, on account of the new safety regs, but when something goes wrong it could most definitely kill some folks.

It’s not just mining that demands survival on the Iron Range. Indeed, try being a teacher, a small business owner or anyone who deals with electrons instead of aging adults who need care. For that matter, try being someone who cares for aging adults in need of care. Furthermore, consider the plight of the aging adults in need of care. It’s a place where it doesn’t make much sense to try to survive, but that most folks who live here do anyway – sometimes, out of spite. It’s nice in the summer. You can wear t-shirts to a restaurant, indeed, you’re supposed to. Instead of prosperity, you get stories. Stories are better.

There’s a reason the word “survival” is paired with the word “story.” To tell a story you have to survive. You should hear the stories of all the poor bastards who got eaten by the sharks. You won’t though. It’s the meathead with a missing leg who gets to tell the story.

On the Range the story I like best is the story of the Finns. There were tons of ethnic groups that came over to the Range around the turn of the 20th century, all of them with pretty good stories. The Finns were the only ones that arrived overwhelmingly literate and determined to make things better for themselves through political organization. In essence, they were Power Nerds, and you can’t imagine how excited I am at that concept. The Finns got here, got jobs in the mines like everyone else and quickly realized the economic injustices that were commonplace in America during the latter days of the Industrial Revolution. They organized a major regional labor strike that failed miserably because, well, Power Nerds aren’t invincible, and besides, it’s part of the story.

Did the Finns go home? No, they regrouped deep in the swamps of Zim, out in the forests and hayfields of Cherry and Salo, down in Meadowlands and up the thick woods of Balsam and Lawrence, all around the Iron Range like a surrounding army. They waited. They played music and sang songs, worked long hours farming barren land and insisted on the best education possible for their children. They survived to see another failed strike, and another, and then they survived two world wars and their descendents today are considered to be fortunate. I am one of them. And even though I don’t deserve to, I get to tell the survival story.

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.”

If you're reading the internet on Saturday night you are, like me, not normal. Or perhaps we are normal in our common modern social affliction. Regardless, you are a person who appreciates the media, especially good media. KAXE is great media -- radio, for sure, but also online news and information and content on demand. They're wrapping up their "Come to Your Senses" summer fundraiser tonight.

Did I mention that KAXE is total independent public radio, providing original and NPR content to a vast swath of northern Minnesota? It is, and it's amazing. While based in northern Minnesota, the station provides programming of appeal to people everywhere through PRX and the world wide web. If you listen you know that and should pledge your financial support now, if you haven't yet. If you haven't heard KAXE before tune in and see what you think. KAXE is a big part of the reason I continue this blog as I contribute to their Saturday morning show "Between You and Me" and the weekday morning shows. Show your support!

Read a recent past appeal regarding KAXE here.

Tune in tomorrow for the Saturday morning radio spectacular "Between You and Me" on northern Minnesota's 91.7 KAXE. The show airs from 10 a.m. to noon and each week deals with a new topic for host Heidi Holtan, regular contributors like me, and callers to explore through stories and music. This week we talk about "the sixth sense," sometimes called ESP, in honor of the last day of the "Come to your Senses" KAXE summer fundraiser. I share the nine things that might not have happened (or that I would have done differently) if I had ESP.

So tune to 91.7 FM in Saturday at 10 a.m. You can also listen and pledge online at www.kaxe.org.

KAXE is a large grassroots media organization that relies on small donations from regular folks to survive. Make your pledge at www.kaxe.org before Saturday to be included in the summer fundraiser, but consider joining the station at any time regardless.

I've been a little behind this week. You might have missed from last week's Iron Range Resources board meeting that the contract economic development "developer" position held by David Richter, who I've interviewed for this blog, was given a sort of three month probation to show results. This all cropped up in a recent controversy from the previous week. That'll show me to drag my feet on the entrepreneur story I keep threatening to work on. I waited too long and one of my sources gets put on double secret probation.

Something about this seems like screaming at seeds to grow faster. Either you commit to an entrepreneurial development plan or you shouldn't even try. This unwritten entrepreneur story keeps getting better and better and I haven't even started writing it yet. I'll try another few days of not writing it and see what turns up.

My friend State Rep. Tom Anzelc, who I helped get elected as his campaign manager and strategist in 2006 and who, like me, lives out in Balsam Township, has been in the news these last two days. An ex-girlfriend slapped Anzelc with a restraining order full of salacious charges, pretty much the widest gamut of awful things you can imagine. He is in the process of responding to these charges, all of which were presented without evidence, and ultimately these charges will be dismissed. It's easy for me, a clear political ally and friend of Tom's, to say this. You may well doubt this statement as a result. But I really don't care. I used to have political ambitions, a desire to play the game the way you might expect, but those days are long gone. I'm not going to run for office in the foreseeable future, I might never run another campaign and I'm also telling what I know to be the truth. At this point I'm just trying to make sense of the world as a man more of letters than of politics, so much as anyone can ever be free of politics once it's seeped into the blood.

There will be a protracted legal process to follow in which I and others will describe Tom as a gentleman who did not and would never do these things and the complainant will say otherwise. Ample evidence will be provided showing that Tom is, in fact, innocent of the accusations. I suggest there is more to this story than just a he-said/she-said argument, but rather that the timing of the charges -- some 18 months after the ending of this previous relationship during a re-election campaign -- is notably suspicious and probably all you need to know about the truth of the matter. The rest will be in the papers. Believe me, it will. And I suppose that's what I'm getting at. I'm just plain sad that a guy like Tom gets sent up in the court of public opinion as another Iron Range cad when he's, in fact, a good deal more progressive and deferential to gender relations than 90 percent of the political structure here. Most people who truly know the Iron Range know what I'm talking about: the off-color remarks, subtle chauvinism, and old boys network that come to characterize the aging political structures of such locales. Tom has always been different to me, at least since I've known him when we began a friendship that spans two and a half generations of the Iron Range experience. And the forces that win if Tom goes down on false charges, forces that know no political affiliation, are not the forces that bring the Iron Range forward, upward or anywhere close to where it needs to go to survive beyond the next bust, which looms with a Cheshire cat grin on the horizon.

Tom Anzelc and I have talked almost every day since 2006. When the phone rings, my 3-year-old twin boys reflexively say "It's Tom." We've talked for hundreds of hours, hundreds, mostly about politics, but also sometimes about other things. At no point has Tom ever used a disparaging word about women. At no point has he blared with the "big man" bravado I hear sometimes from others I know. That's just not Tom. A couple times he's remarked he should have broken off this past relationship sooner than he did. I think that is now a well established fact. The rest of the facts, including the ultimate truth, will emerge soon enough. You know, we do have more important business ahead -- all of us, of all ideologies. I am sticking with my friend Tom Anzelc. The rest of it will be corrected by the long arm of time and history, which will fix us all in our rightful places.

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, June 20, 2010 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune, referencing my visit to Chicago detailed earlier in the week.

Know your place
By Aaron J. Brown

I don’t travel much. When you live in the place you want to live and do what you want to do, you don’t need to travel much. And then when you travel the trip reminds you not only of the big world outside your place, but also the meaning of your place, where it fits. I live in northern Minnesota, am enjoying a cool beverage on a reasonably warm day and writing this column. So I don’t need to travel much. Just a little.

I went on a trip recently for work, to a conference about education. I’ll say it short like that because to explain exactly what the conference was about would require more than a few words, but rather several in a sentence that would dwarf this one; yes, even this one that just used a semicolon and continues on even as you beg it to stop – the dash providing only temporary comfort, and then the anticlimactic conclusion of an ellipses … but I did get to travel.

The trip in question was to Chicago, or more accurately the suburbs outside of Chicago. I’d been dealt this same switcharoo back when I lived in Dubuque, Iowa, and my Chicago friends told me they’d take me back home for a weekend but I found they didn’t live in Chicago; they lived in Geneva. For a guy like me, the best part about Geneva is the train that goes into the city. That was the same train system I took on this journey.

I had this romantic vision of flying into Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and taking a train into the city for the express purpose of eating a hot dog. The fare was $2.25 and the hotdog was $7 and, all things considered, events worked to plan. The particular suburb that I was supposed to find did not have a train station. In fact, the suburb seemed designed as an impenetrable fortress to anyone who did not own a reliable car. But I only learned that because, according to the Metra train website, this place was just 2.86 miles from a train station on the line. I walk 2.86 miles on a lunch break. No problem, I previously believed. I was full on hot dog and ready to move.

I disembarked from the train into a suburban compound complete with wine shops, Italian restaurants, and shoppes of all kinds. I walked to the nearest place most obviously not governed by city aesthetic code, a gas station, and asked how crazy it would be to walk into Oak Brook. The attendant looked at me like I was crazy, most of all because he did not know where Oak Brook was located. “It’s just north of here,” I said. He looked at a map and realized this for the first time. You can’t walk there, he said. “Do you want me to call a cab?”

Defeated, I agreed. The cab took me to my destination the way you’re supposed to go – passively and oblivious to your surroundings. The distance from the gas station to my hotel was less than the distance from one side of Hibbing proper to the other. Can you imagine living somewhere where you did not know what lay just a hard walk away?

After the conference I caught a ride to a different station and rode the train back to O’Hare. Bad weather killed my flight and, long story short, I ended up spending 12 hours in the airport waiting for another way home. An airport is a place. In fact, an airport is the one place you can expect to see on most maps. Yet, I learned in my half-day at O’Hare, an airport is also not a place, it’s a sort of purgatory, a sort of prison, where everyone there wants to go someplace else, either someplace better than home, or home itself. I’m glad to be home.

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.”

My weekly contribution to "Between You and Me," KAXE's weekly Saturday morning call-in and music show joins this episode's theme of "State Parks." What better place to talk about state parks than northern Minnesota, where the really good parks are located? I jump in the fray with the perspective of a northern Minnesotan who lives around, but seldom visits, these parks as they are containment centers for city folk and should remain as such.

You can hear "Between You and Me" from 10 a.m. to noon every Saturday at 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota or streaming live all over the world at www.kaxe.org. Episodes and my individual essays are available through PRX, ready to be shared with a local public radio station near you!

I let it pass without mentioning, but Ironworld, still operating as the Minnesota Discovery center, reopened a couple weeks ago. I met with the new CEO Paul Dwyer a few weeks ago and one of the things he was planning was a Thursday night arts program, free to the public, where local bands would play. Early bands would be family friendly. Kids would be invited to participate in different ways. As the night would wear on and kids went off to beddy-by, the music would get a little louder. Anyway, starting tomorrow that's all really going to happen:

Art in the Park - Free Admission!

Thursdays June 17 through September 2
5 to 9 p.m. at the Minnesota Discovery Center Amphitheater in Chisholm

Performing June 17:

• Richie Johnson
• High Drama Blues
• Mark Henderson and the Mojosaurus
• Lost Children

Refreshments will be available for purchase. Call 218-254-1223 with questions or to participate as a visual or performing artist!

In keeping with my goal of supporting the Iron Range arts community, and with the fact that Ironworld is considerably more broke than the last time they were open, I'll be sharing notices on this event through the summer. Time permitting, I hope to share more arts news about the region as well, perhaps in a weekly roundup. Any interest in that?

I'm posting this mostly for its literary significance. When was the last time you heard a beat poem about Minnesota's budget crisis? That's what I thought.

Over my lost weekend at O'Hare I missed this Bill Hanna story (subscription only, sorry) from the Mesabi Daily News that was reprinted in other SPC papers, including my column's benefactor the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Headline: "[Iron Range Resources] position directly led to no new jobs."

I almost did a spit take when I saw this. Not because I strongly agree or disagree, just this thought: "Well, we're creaking the hinge on a mighty big steamer trunk today, aren't we?"

The story essentially attempts a cost/benefit analysis of the new business development specialist contract position at Iron Range's unique economic development agency, known locally as the IRRRB (IRR is the official acronym, IRRRB was two acronym's ago and, thus by Range rules, interchangeable). Essentially, the agency spent $150,000 on fees and expenses for the recruitment and consulting services of Iron Range native and former Twin Cities entrepreneur David Richter, whose efforts since the beginning of the year, according to the story, have failed to yield any new jobs for the Iron Range. The story pits Richter's justifications against the skepticism of State. Sen. David Tomassoni. Tomassoni says Richter "hasn't created any home runs" and Richter argues that it's not always about home runs, or as I will now dub it "the Nick Punto Defense."

Accountability for these economic development efforts is fair game, in fact deeply needed. I seem to remember something about $9.5 million in Iron Range money wasted on just one recent boondoggle. The reason for the spit take, however, is that the Iron Range, through the IRR, cities, counties and nonprofits, is a vast, sprawling ecosystem of programs, spec buildings, initiatives, cohorts, study groups, lobbyists and dusty old offices filled with people licking envelopes that have also produced no new jobs since the mines hit the skids in '82. It's a veritable Pandoravich's box.

I don't have a dog in this fight; at least, not a specific dog -- more like Aristotle's ideal dog, a dog so great you cannot conceive of a greater dog. By this I mean I'm looking for any better way to create jobs on the Iron Range, better than the last 30 years of mad flailing and inside deals that occasionally strike a short bit of luck amid a sea of wasted time and money. That's not to say economic development efforts, or all past or present efforts, are wasteful, just that most have failed. We've been doing our live action, decades-long musicless version of "The Music Man" for a good spell now while the world economy has been running hot laps around us.

I did an interview with Richter about entrepreneurship as a strategy in Iron Range economic development a few weeks back. Some professional twists and turns have kept me from getting the other interviews I wanted before I wrote some news analysis on the topic. I guess I didn't think the subject would turn out to be so topical. Sorry about that. It's getting good and topical now, ain't it? I've got some more calls to make.

But the part of the story that had me floored was this little ditty at the very end of the story.

But [State Sen. and IRR Board chair David] Tomassoni said a better route may be to go with someone who is full-time in the area.

“Perhaps we should let someone who knows the area do it. We’ve got people like Gary Cerkvenik and Ron Dicklich (consultants who live on the Range) available. Commissioners always seem to hire someone outside the area.

“I’m not sure at this point. It just doesn’t seem to have worked,” the Chisholm state senator said.

I need a hot towel and a good rest after reading that.

Doug Grow has a good read over at MinnPost about the likelihood of rural Minnesota losing political clout in the state legislature after the 2010 Census spins into 2012 redistricting. Of particular note is Rep. Al Juhnke's assessment that the next two years of legislative activity are going to become make or break for all manner of rural initiatives, a matter on which I happen to agree with him.

Speaking of my zone of knowledge, I can imagine a "no news" 2012 redistricting for northern Minnesota's Iron Range, but I can also picture a deeply divisive, painful redistricting as well. Check the ages of our representatives, and the chances that some of them will angle for commissioner gigs in the event of a DFL gubernatorial win this fall and it's more likely than not that the region will be represented by fewer people with less seniority very soon. This is somewhat likely if the DFL loses the governor's race but exponentially more likely if the DFL wins. Same deal for Duluth. The people in the wheelhouse of the seniority bump are all in the suburbs.

The only true solution for places like the Iron Range is for people to deal in ideas instead of seniority. Make your own clout. Make it out back, in a still you built yourself.

OK, so I know I failed to offer more Iron Ranger "On the Road" tales from my Chicago trip last weekend. I got mired in conference business and then on the last day I spent 12 hours at O'Hare International Airport fighting for passage back to my native land here in northern Minnesota. More on that in this Sunday's column in the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Meantime here are some photos from my first day in Chicago, before the conference when I rode the train into the city.

I got there the day after the Blackhawks won the Stanley Cup.


They put blood in the fountain at city hall when that happens -- actual game blood.


Mechagodzilla pooped in Millennium Park. The people were pretty excited about that.


An eastern European couple took my picture near there. My pockets were full of maps and unnecessary items. Because I didn't want to look like a tourist!


No dooooogs alloooooooowed! (This means you, Snoopy).


Unfortunately most of my trip was spent in the suburbs, which I found much less interesting. Maybe it's because this is the image I was left with on a road near my house before I left:


It's good to be home.

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, June 13, 2010 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

On the move, on our dime
By Aaron J. Brown

It would appear that another Iron Range highway must move to accommodate mining activity. It’s the 21st century but I can’t help wondering if war with the Spaniards won’t indeed become necessary in the near future! Don’t get me wrong, I’m hip to the needs of local iron mines. A cold winter of economic discontent boiled down our region’s situation to a fairly stark reality. If the mines aren’t running, we Iron Rangers aren’t ready to do anything else with our people or our economy. Not yet, hopefully not for long, but in case you missed it, we’re not ready.

Meantime, let’s move a highway, right? I’m talking about a recent item from the east Range about Cliffs Natural Resources marking up plans to move Highway 53 between Virginia and Eveleth. United Taconite is mining along the ore formation and the long expected collision course with the highway has now been specified. According to media outlets, engineers at the Minnesota Department of Transportation are considering one plan that would move the highway north and east of its current location, and another that would relocate the Highway 53 entrance to Virginia along the Bobby Aro Memorial Highway 7, a highway my bike and I spent some time with as a youth. Both plans could cost up to $100 million to implement within about seven years, but mining remains a billion dollar industry so, fellow Iron Rangers, we once again greet a choice that is not really a choice.

What some media outlets, particularly those of the televised variety, failed to acknowledge is that per an agreement reached in 1960(!), Cliffs, the current operator of United Taconite and other Range mines including nearby Hibbing Taconite, won’t have to pay for the relocation of the highway. Nice deal. That puts the potentially $100 million price tag on … some dudes. Oh wait, we are the some dudes in this equation. I don’t mean to belittle the necessity of mining between Eveleth and Virginia for the economic vitality of the region. But compare this to what Hibbing got out of the Oliver Mining Company back when the COMPANY paid to move the town around 1919. Hibbing got a world class high school, the most expensive in the nation at the time – utterly irreplaceable – and its current city hall, also a good deal classier than what’s seen in your average mining town. Today it’s for the people to move the highway and say thank you.

Well, I don’t blame the mining companies. It’s a great deal for them, and why wouldn’t they push for it? It’s a dog eat dog world out there and you better believe American mineral companies are wearing Milkbone underwear. (Norm from “Cheers,” thanks Norm). Yet again we see the long term political and economic effects of human desperation on the Iron Range. In 1960 the red ore mining was near dead and the taconite era was only beginning, not yet a sure thing. I can imagine some official whose name is lost to history frantically swiping a pen to paper allowing the easement that puts MnDOT or more likely the federal government on the hook for this highway move. And while we are paying to move a functional four-lane highway, might I remind you that the cost to upgrade the dangerous two-lane portion of Highway 169 in Itasca County from Nashwauk to Taconite to four lanes (completing the “Cross Range Expressway” promised by leaders before I was born) also runs about $100-$120 million. Which project do you think will get funded first?

What’s most frustrating is that my routine drives across the Iron Range you seldom see the boundless steps toward the future like you read about in a Carl Sandburg poem. Instead I’ve witnessed the repair and relocation of highways as they relate to mines and the demolition of decaying public buildings. Don’t even get me started on the spec buildings. And the taxpayers have paid for all of it, and have been thankful to do so.

It bears repeating, our problems on the Iron Range are increasingly connected to our complacent attitude toward obvious decline. We need fight and innovation, same as when Hibbing’s “fighting mayor” Vic Power sat at a table with the Oliver. A long time ago.

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

What would a guy like me say if he were assigned to write an essay about tattoos? As I write this (for advance posting, mind you; in real time I am in the Chicago suburbs attending a conference about online education assessment improvement) I am wearing khaki pants and a soft, very nice cotton t-shirt advertising a St. Paul bookstore owned by Garrison Keillor. It's a safe bet I don't have a tattoo. But I am a contributor to northern Minnesota's finest radio hour, generally contained within a two-hour radio program called "Between You and Me" on 91.7 KAXE. My essay on tattoos and much, much more -- some shit you won't even believe -- with guest host DJ the DJ will air during the show, which runs 10 a.m. to noon Saturday.

Tune in, yo: 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota or streaming online all over the world at www.kaxe.org. The show and my essays are archived at PRX, available for distribution to public radio stations all over the world. But mostly, we keep it NorMinn 24-7, yo. Other urban tattoo reference!

On the ground in Chicago. I love Chicago. I don't love the suburbs. I took some pictures but don't have a camera cord. I made some notes and amusing observations, but lack the will to write them down here tonight. So, tomorrow. I'll say this. In keeping with my choice of graphics in yesterday's preview post, today I spent a total of two hours on planes, another two on trains, 14 minutes in an automobile and an additional three to four hours of waiting to ride all of those things. Without John Candy this is a very boring movie.

Tomorrow morning I'll be on the plane that buzzes above my woodland house every morning as it approaches the Range Regional Airport in Hibbing. We don't have many commercial flights in and out of the Iron Range. It was a big deal when they added the third daily flight this year. The red winged aircraft usually flies close enough to the ground to be identified as the Delta link flight not worth repainting from the old Northwest colors. All of this creates a sort of Casablanca feeling to the spectacle, even if tomorrow I'll really just be flying to a work conference in the suburbs of Chicago and not fleeing Nazis into Spain. A boy can dream.

I got the e-mail from my boss a few weeks ago. Subject header: "Interested in going to Chicago?" You bet I was. I've been working from my deep wilderness home half time for a few years now and my office is in Hibbing, a great Range town that remembers your great-grandfather's first name and drink preference. I could use the break. While I'll greatly miss this bustling household, the trip is a good opportunity for some professional development, a term that I'm pretty sure wasn't uttered when I was growing up. A little bit of research uncovered that I wouldn't be sipping martinis at the top of the John Hancock Building, however; I'd be attending workshops in Oak Brook, a suburb about 27 miles from downtown. My house is 27 miles from Hibbing. (A parallel not lost on me).

Oak Brook is the the site of McDonald's "Hamburger University" across from which I'll be attending my conference. My hotel is a little over a mile away on the other side of a golf course. One of my colleagues who's been there before told me not to expect to see any sidewalks during this trip.

Anyway, I'm going to this suburban land as a stranger and, while my days are full, my nights are wide open and I don't really know anyone -- not even Mayor McCheese. So you might see some interesting (possibly nontraditional) postings around here or on my Twitter feed @minnesotabrown. There's a chance I may try to ride the train into the city. If I don't I'll be catching up on some writing, perhaps a follow-up to "Suburban Blues" from my book "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range." And fellow Rangers, when you hear the rotors of those engines at sunrise, know that I am on the plane, and that I'll be back soon.

I just wrote a column about the rerouting of Iron Range Highway 53 for United Taconite's mining operations south of Virginia, Minn. Bone up by reading Monday's story from the Duluth News Tribune. The column will run Sunday in the Hibbing Daily Tribune, but ask yourself the question: how does this story compare to the moving of Hibbing in the 1910s, '20s and '30s? Some would say it's similar. Some. Not me.

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, June 6, 2010 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Shocked, shocked to find oil in this establishment
By Aaron J. Brown

I’m supposed to have a very strong opinion about all this BP offshore oil spill down South. That’s what the TV tells me. I guess I do. Oil is in my car, in the gas that fuels my car, in the tank that heats my house and in most things I own in the form of plastic. So I guess I’m mad at the Gulf of Mexico for taking all my oil. Serves you right, rare birds.

Of course, I kid. I’m appropriately upset about the whole thing, but no one – not me, you or the bearers of bright, white teeth on the TV should be surprised. We’re less than two years separated from the political slogan “drill, baby, drill” used in a serious national campaign and now we’ve seen some of the logistical hazards of extracting oil from the deep sea. It’s as shocking as the fact that somewhere tonight there’s somebody doing somebody wrong (cue steel guitar). If you don’t like it, try going without oil products for one day. See how that works for you. Maybe then the oil companies won’t need to drill in the ocean. If you try that, probably you’ll be left with some lingering questions about the nature of our economy.

My first awareness of oil came as a boy, living on my family’s junkyard on northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. Barrels of used oil were all over the place. The one thing all these barrels had in common with the rest of the junk on the junkyard was that when the junkyard went broke and out of business the barrels and junk went someplace else, someplace I can’t quite pinpoint, probably never will. And life went on. Or did it?

The gulf coast oil spill is much bigger than any junkyard. Indeed, the crisis in the gulf threatens to turn a massive ecosystem into a permanent junkyard. Whether it was my family’s failed business, money trouble that plagued many millions of Americans over the past 20 years, or the real estate collapse, environmental changes, health care or debt – personal and federal – none of the big issues today should surprise us. While all of these topics are some version of controversial, none are dismissible. All require difficult, unpopular solutions. The real question is whether a majority of Americans can accept that. It seems from my casual observation that cobbling a majority to do anything unpopular will require extraordinary circumstances and leadership – all of which will face scorn and misinformation. Most of what we see on national news programs is some combination of scorn and misinformation, with just fleeting glimpses of entrepreneurial journalism.

The oil spill story is just one of many stories of late, among health care reform, the “tea party,” the wars overseas and the state budget gap, that push irony beyond its healthy boundaries. It really doesn’t matter whether you’re a partisan Democrat or Republican, a conservative, liberal or independent. Few who carry those labels are willing to own up to reality. For liberals, solving the big problems of debt, economic development and this ugly oil spill require not just massive government efforts but also the means to pay for them – in the form of tax increases and cuts in government functions that aren’t working. For conservatives, the same problems would have to be solved with much larger cuts to government services – particularly entitlements now considered politically untouchable – and a decreased federal capacity to address issues precisely like the oil spill. Indeed, the private sector might respond independently – but that’s a lot of faith to put in the teachings of Ayn Rand when watching an oil slick grow larger than New England.

I realize combining the oil spill, health care and the national debt all in one argument is dangerously close to a fallacy. There are plenty of different points of views on all these issues and while I have my opinions, I’m not here to push them on you. All I ask is that in this “summer of oil, anger,” as the Associate Press recently described it, ask yourself how innocent you and your neighbors are in the real problems that fuel these national outrages. I’m certainly not. The oil is on my hands, too.

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

This Saturday morning's topic on "Between You and Me," the KAXE call-in and music program lighting up the northern half of the best state ever, is "survival." Host and producer Heidi Holtan and others will be asking for stories of survival, thoughts on survival and its many meanings. I'll chime in with my usual thematic exercise in commentary. Those who've read my book "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range" might recognize my approach this week, but I also forged into some new territory.

Also Saturday is the 91.7 KAXE Annual Meeting with a 4 p.m. potluck and evening concert featuring Sam Miltich and his new endeavor the Big Dipper Jazz Band. This is the same band that just headlined Dylan Days in Hibbing last week. I couldn't catch the Hibbing show (I know, ironic) so I'm looking forward to this one.

KAXE, operated by the independent nonprofit Northern Community Radio, isn't just some droll little gem in the north woods, it's the coolest functional grassroots media organization that I'm aware of. If you read this blog and aren't listening, checking out their great online content or visiting KAXE on Facebook you're missing out.

Tune into Between You and Me from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday and stop in later for the annual meeting. If you're not a member that can be rectified quickly.

Also, "Between You and Me" is available for syndication at PRX. You can listen to my essays or the whole show in the archives.

If you've read my book "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range," you know that I like making abstract, sometimes comical connections from history to the present. In that spirit, here is another reason I think northern Minnesota's Iron Range can be a cool place sometimes. We all know the World Cup is coming up, right? Right? It's soccer. They call it football. Anyway, the world eats this stuff up. An ad agency made up 32 promotional posters for each of the qualifying national teams in the World Cup. The American one is OK, I guess, depicting a soccer team crossing the Delaware River a la George Washington, presumably to kill Germans in their drunken slumber. But check out two of the posters for some of the Iron Range's most famous ethnic groups! First Italy:

Then Slovenia:

The Finns aren't in the world cup because they were too busy organizing a labor riot to field a team. Believe me these the two coolest posters in the group. Add four generations of beer and processed meat and does this explain the Range or what? Anyway, not sure this matters. Just have fun with it.

(hat tip to Andrew Sullivan)

There were a few interesting turns in the last day of candidate filing here in northern Minnesota. I've already mentioned the intrigue in Duluth with State Sen. Yvonne Prettner Solon leaving office to run for Lt. Governor. State Rep. Roger Reinert rather quickly announced his bid for the seat and faced little opposition. Now it appears he did draw one primary opponent, former Duluth school board member Harry Welty. Welty is an experienced (out of respect, I'll avoid the Ole Savoir "frequent" label) candidate for state and federal offices, but I've always had a soft spot for the guy even though some Duluthians keep calling him a crackpot. I think he's more of a gadfly, a conscience for that netherworld between Democrat and Republican. In that regard it's notable that Welty is running, I believe, for the first time as a member of the Democratic Farmer Labor Party. He started as a fiscally conservative, socially liberal Republican and then gradually through his career became an independent and, now, as he describes a "Lincoln Democrat."

Welty's got an uphill battle. Reinert -- also a good guy with far more connections in the progressive DFL base -- is heavily favored. I'd say he's beyond heavily favored. Welty appears to be running on local issues, most notably his opposition to the Duluth School District's red plan, but is capable of discussion of state issues as well, based on my several years of reading his blog. So Reinert starts ahead, but I do think on this day it's worth welcoming Harry Welty to the DFL, if you are of that ilk.

Keeping with this theme, 2008 Independence Party nominee Jay Cole has filed as a DFLer to run for the House 7B seat vacated by Reinert, after Duluth City Councilor and longtime DFL political activist Kerry Gauthier announced his campaign last week. I'd say this race also favors the established DFLer Gauthier, but that Cole -- like Welty -- represents and interesting outside voice that will resonate better in this election year than most others.

So, OK, my props to the independents joining the party aside, where were all the big fireworks for these huge DFL vacancies? Almost non-existent. Is that the sign of a mature party or one that's stagnant? Indeed, your answer most likely depends on your affiliation. The Republicans in both races offered unknown, token opposition.

In Range news, no news. All Range DFL incumbents drew an opponent; some more threatening than others, but I don't see any alarming upsets as of now. Honestly, I'd say so if I did.

There are some dust-ups in local Range-area races, but most of those can wait for another day.