This week my contribution to the KAXE Saturday morning call in and music program "Between You and Me" joins the show's topic of gardening stories. Gardens are firing up around northern Minnesota (finally, we think) and the Browns will be expanding our garden know-how as well.

A version of this piece ran as my Sunday column last week, but you'll find that the audio version is all the more enjoyable. Mostly because it's shorter. In any event, if you liked that you'll like this show even more as people call in their stories, advice and questions for guest hosts Linda Johnson and Bonnie the Plant Lady.

"Between You and Me" airs Saturday from 10 a.m. to noon on 91.7 KAXE or streaming live at www.kaxe.org. This station is operated by Northern Community Radio, an independent nonprofit public media organization that finds a way to produce great content for a very large area without much money. They hold their annual meeting later at 5 p.m. Saturday in the form of a Mexican potluck and dance with live music from the Tolerators. That's how they roll. You should join them, both in food and fun, but also as a member.

The Hibbing hospital nurses have cancelled their impending strike after a productive negotiating session. (Story, Fox 21)

Iron Range labor backers and DFLers will be holding a May Day luncheon Sunday from 1-4 p.m. at the Operating Engineers Local 49 Hall on Enterprise Drive in Virginia. This is the labor hall just off the freeway as you approach Virginia from Mountain Iron on Highway 169, or just off the 53 exit from the south. It's being billed as a speaking and discussion event with several notable political leaders and potential 8th CD DFL candidates as well.

The Neil Simon play "Barefoot in the Park" opens tonight at 7:30 at the Hibbing Community College Theatre. The show runs this weekend and next with nightly shows Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday matinees. The reviews from last night's benefit performance for the HCC Foundation Dinner were very good. After our 2009 kerfuffle over the fate of the college theater and the arts on the Iron Range it'd be great if people could get out to support local theater in northern Minnesota. (Disclosure: I teach at HCC).

Today would be a great day for me to link bait some nonsense about Northern Minnesota's 8th Congressional District race, the new attacks on the Medicare votes of Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8), or the strange collection of fascinating Democrats you've never heard of who are going to run against him.

I just wanted to write a little note saying that I'm not doing that.

Or did I just do that?

In all seriousness, I expect this race to firm up around the edges into the summer and I'll spend the requisite amount of time to cover it then. I've had some informal conversations with potential DFL candidates and will be doing formal interviews here at MinnesotaBrown when the field is set. I hope to secure an interview with Rep. Cravaack as well, if he's game.

If my delay is frustrating to political junkies, please understand that I'm trying to make this blog more independent minded in editorial direction and that I refuse to play booster for a political party, even though my outside affiliations (depicted, as always, in the "Blog Notes" on the sidebar) would indicate my personal sympathies. I'd like this to be the only 8th-district based blog offering honest debate between all sides on the topic of who should represent us in Congress. It'll probably kill me, but we'll try anyway.

I was out of town when this was announced, but the Hibbing hospital nurses have set strike dates of May 4-7. The local members of the Minnesota Nurses Association authorized the strike April 15 against the Range Regional Medical Center over staffing levels, patient safety and opposition to the merger of sick days and vacation days.

Negotiations continue. Management is making arrangements in the event of a strike. It bears mentioning that nurses in some departments at the hospital are organized with the Steelworkers and would not be a part of this strike. Even though the Range is generally pro-labor, strikes like this aren't always popular. It's been impressive how well the nurses have handled the PR of this situation by focusing on patient safety.

We have friends expecting a baby any day now with a c-section scheduled during the strike period. Needless to say, any expectant parents would hope for an even speedier resolution.

There was a structure fire at Poor Gary's Pizza in Biwabik overnight. The new site Range News Now has the story.

It's happening again. Gas prices are inching upward, approaching and soon to breach $4 a gallon with some experts saying that even higher prices are possible. Local, state and national media outlets are going to gas stations, sticking cameras and microphones into the faces of motorists to garner their opinion. People don't like price increases. They say all manner of colorful things into these microphones and cameras. Good bites. Good bites, all.

But just three years ago we were living out the same story, with the same gas prices for largely the same reasons. It was almost as bad about two years prior to that. Is this part of the day-to-day coverage and discussion that most Americans get as part of their cursory news consumption? Not really. We study history in school, but the recent past has no meaning or context in our world.

We learn that gas prices are straining the economy and President Obama's re-election chances, two things influenced by myriad other issues as well. But gas prices make a lot more sense to everyday folks than the actual underpinnings of our economy and political system, and so that's what we are instructed to be outraged about.

In 2008 I bought a small SUV that gets 19 mpg in the middle of our last gas crisis. That may not seem wise, and maybe it wasn't, but I live on the end of a muddy second-day-plow dirt road and could no longer tolerate being paralyzed in the wilderness every time we got more than six inches of snow or during spring thaw. Still, this whole justification runs contrary to the economic incentive I would otherwise have to run a smaller vehicle and live closer to my place of employment. In a nutshell, we are middle class and have no debt except our mortgage. We can handle the price increase, and so we will.

Can you? Can the working poor? Hell if I know. Certainly not comfortably. But let's not sit here and be surprised. Nothing has changed in our public policy nor in our attitudes about the use of petroleum products. As a society we continue to double down on the "big cars driving long distances" model, which will work fine as long as I am a college instructor instead of a sheet metal fabricator, and I don't pretend otherwise. Even if gas goes over $7 a gallon, I can do vast amounts of my work from home, as could many of my colleagues and the students we teach. I expect that I will have to do just that in the not-so-distant future.

Nobody likes $4 gas, or $5 gas, or anything that pinches our monthly budget. But no amount of boosterism by the oil industry or green energy advocates can produce a path back to $2 gas. Get over it. Make a plan. And TV news, still the biggest source of news for most people, could do a lot more to put this issue in proper context.

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, April 24, 2011 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Happy Easter!

Grow, baby, grow: a backyard beginning
By Aaron J. Brown

For most of my life I've lived on one side of the yet unresolved battle between man and nature. Ever residing within the natural splendor of northern Minnesota, I've mostly logged combat time for the cause of despoilment.

I was raised on a junkyard where the puddles sparked with oily rainbows, watching heavy, steaming taconite trains roll south through the swamp. Later I would become a print journalist, a willing participant in the sacrifice of many trees for the purpose of selling cars and reiterating the adorability of local children and/or animals. Then I became a teacher, felling more trees in order to enhance critical thinking. It's all very important, you know.

My earliest memory of growing something was when I sent away for free seeds in the mail through a magazine promotion. A small packet of marigold seeds arrived and I planted them along the trim at the north end of the trailer house. In a couple weeks they sprouted and bloomed, immediately before inadvertently being weed whacked. I'd like to say that I've forgotten about the way I felt but you know, here I am, penning memoir about it.

For the last six years we've settled back out in the country. The first few growing seasons were spent figuring out how children work. Having now adopted a more practical "containment" strategy we've realized how big the forest is when we turn loose the little maniacs within. And it occurred to us, seeing the boys grow taller each year, that we were finally in a position to grow plants, too.

Last year we started a backyard garden, a little square jobber that produced enough zucchini to make us aware of the concept of too much zucchini, a figure previously unknown. The cold months since, nearly but not quite vanquished, have been filled with a loose, indistinct plan to expand the garden. And now this time has come.

We're doubling capacity with the addition of another square plot. We're building a better mechanism to hold up the tomatoes, feeding fewer of them to the worms. We're going to try planting some kind of lettuce. I don't know, it's cold out. We really should have a firmer plan.

One thing's for certain, after half a decade of fixing up the inside of our house we need to do more to cultivate what happens outside the house. In addition to our vegetable gardening we're going to expand our landscaping. We need shrubs. We need gnomes or something. Anything to distract from the fact that we have vinyl siding, which is standard now and very efficient, but would put the late Frank Lloyd Wright to sleep. I'm sorry, "send him to a farm." Maybe one of those ball things, shiny and such.

Who knows what might happen after the lettuce and the landscaping? Flowers, probably. This means I'll have to learn the names of the flowers, and their parts, things long forgotten from my college botany class. And perhaps then by the end of this process I'll know the peace of nature, and growth.

I suppose the main idea of a garden to me now goes back to that notion that, in a world of unfettered consumption, rife with wars fought to maintain the consumption, it's still possible to produce. You don't have to be good at it; you just have to try hard this year and plan for next. Every sprout brings new hope.

Aaron J. Brown is a writer and college instructor from the Iron Range. Read more at MinnesotaBrown.com or in his book "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range."

As fires burn across this world, we endure. I have been posting a little less frequently than I'd like but about as often as I can afford right now. Life is busy and as many of you know I have young children and a real job (which is not this).

I took some time off late this week so Christina and I could catch a show in the Twin Cities. "Honk," a musical retelling of the story of the Ugly Duckling, was staged at North Hennepin Community College in Brooklyn Park under the direction of our old friend Mike Ricci, formerly of Hibbing. (Catch closing night Saturday at 7:30!) We visited the Apple Store. We ate steaks that were not prepared in accordance with Weight Watchers principles. We drove and talked a lot, also enjoying some random moments of silence -- a rare and treasured commodity.

I will continue to report on news items from around the Iron Range, in northern Minnesota, USA, North America, Earth, Solar System, Universe, Mind of God. This will include some proper coverage of things like the MN-8 Congressional race, Essar Steel's Nashwauk project and, roughly speaking, the future of the region. However, I have been holding back on some creative projects that, for the sake of my own sanity and growth, I need to let loose. Here's a list:

• Fiction! I have a couple stories I aim to serialize or write into a full length novel.
• A live stage show this summer, testing my chops as variety show host. I'll be asking for help on this one.
• A couple long form essays in the style of my first book, "Overburden," that I might shop around to magazines or compile into e-books.
• Clean my damn garage.

There are more but this is enough for now, don't you think? Be patient through the changes and don't give up on this ol' blog. Some neat things are going to happen here, or else my spectacular failure will provide you, the reader, with other forms of amusement.

On 91.7 KAXE's Saturday morning call-in and music show "Between You and Me" this week I'll be joining the program's theme of celebrating this large, unique public radio station's 35th anniversary. In honor of the occasion I review the meaning of a year. As usual, I wax poetic with jokes. Kind of my deal these days.

The show airs from 10 a.m. to noon on 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota or streaming live all over the world at www.kaxe.org. If you aren't aware of KAXE and what it does you should check it out and consider becoming a member. This small organization does a big service to the region and, pound for pound, rivals big public media outfits like Minnesota Public Radio.

The show and my essays are syndicated through Public Radio Exchange and occasionally appear on other stations around the state. Tell your local station if you'd like to hear my work in your hometown.

So the Iron Range has a roller derby team, the Iron Range Maidens, and they just sent me a press release. Such an occasion requires me to share the item with you in its entirety. I hope you agree.

IRON RANGE MAIDENS WIN SECOND BOUT!

The Iron Range Maidens competed in their second bout on Saturday, April 16. The Babe City Rollers of Bemidji invited the Iron Range Maidens to compete in their pre-bout against the Roller’s B Team.

Iron Range Maidens sent a roster of 20 skaters plus 4 alternates. The bout consisted of two twenty-minute jams where the Iron Range Maidens blocked the jammers of the other team while assisting their jammer through the pack of blockers to score. The final score was Iron Range Maidens 116, Babe City Rollers B Team 54.

Iron Range Maidens team member, Heidi Holtan said of this bout, “It's exciting to see the team come together after practicing all these months. We know each other well and back each other up out there on the floor in the thick of things. And it's thrilling to see how strong these women are - especially because it's a brand new sport for every one."

There are two more opportunities to see the Iron Range Maidens in action this season. The Maidens take on the Duluth Derby Divas on Saturday, April 30 at the University of Wisconsin Superior Wessman Arena. Doors open at 6 pm for this bout.

The Maidens can also be seen at their inaugural home bout on Saturday, May 21 at the IRA Civic Center in Grand Rapids. The Maidens will take on the Capital City Roller Girls of Bismarck, ND. This home bout will include a pre-bout mixer, entertainment, and activities for families. For more information on the Iron Range Maidens see www.grandrapidsrollerderby.com or find the Iron Range Maidens on Facebook.

I'm looking forward to that May 21 home bout. The Maidens are essentially an expansion team, so their early success is a credit to some solid organization. Huzzah, Maidens!

A spark from maintenance work that left a smoldering ember on old timbers has been identified as the cause of the fire at the Soudan Underground Mine state park. It appears unlikely that the mine will open for tours this summer. There was no damage at the advanced physics laboratory located deep within the mine. (Story: Duluth News Tribune)

The news backlog has grown large so I'll just link you to some stories about what's going on around the Iron Range.

Hibbing nurses authorized a strike at the town's big regional hospital last Friday (Duluth News Tribune). Parties now enter a 10-day "cooling off" period while labor and management continue negotiations. At issue is staffing levels in the various hospital departments. Nurses claim that staffing levels are dangerously low and that policies regarding overtime need more clarity.

The DNT also provides an interesting look at one of several high speed internet projects going on around northern Minnesota, this one from the Northeast Service Cooperative. A quick read will tell you that the mission of expanding high speed communication in this region is one part political, one part business and at least one more part engineering. If you've ever been in a room with politicians, businesspeople and engineers you probably know why creating a 21st century internet infrastructure in a place like this is so hard.

Officials will be stopping traffic on the cross-Range expressway, otherwise known as Highway 169, near Chisholm on April 26-27. The purpose is to check the progress of efforts to shore up the highway over old abandoned underground mines that threatened to suck the highway and multiple innocents down into a cavern of doom. If all goes well, that won't happen. Folks might remember the summer everyone was rerouted through downtown Chisholm, producing a brief Radiator Springs-style renaissance for the quaint mining town.

Meantime on the front of today's Hibbing Daily Tribune (subscription only links) we learn that two different drunk drivers hit two different Hibbing police cars at different times last weekend. We also learn that State Sen. David Tomassoni (DFL-Chisholm) is suggesting that state lawmakers serve longer terms, four years for the House and six for the Senate. Why do these stories produce the same emotion in my heart? They are so different, and yet somehow so thematically compatible. Oh, unfinished novel, why can't you be this interesting?

I'm a few days behind on this, but it's worth mentioning that a top official with the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation traveled to the Iron Range to reassure National Steel retirees who saw their pensions stripped down after the company declared bankruptcy in 2003. The PBGC pledge to fix the problem now enters its strongest phrasing yet. Fundamentally, the problem was mismanagement of the pension fund during the transfer. Some, but not all, retirees were completely screwed on this deal, paid a tiny fraction of their promised benefits.

The problems they find will have implications across the nation's economy. Recent pensioners affected by the rash of consolidations from bankruptcies in the last 10 years already feel the pinch. There will be even more at stake as companies and perhaps even governments seek to shed legacy costs over the next 20 years. Further, this remains a big political issue on the Iron Range, particularly around my neighborhood on the western Mesabi.

(Story, WDIO-TV)

Business North leads today with an update on the Essar Steel project slated over the boneyard of the old Butler mine outside Nashwauk. Company officials explain the progress of what is supposed to become the first integrated mining and steelmaking facility on northern Minnesota's Iron Range. Others, (including, as I now see, myself), are quoted voicing skepticism over the company's long range plans regarding the steelmaking portion of the project.

I've often said that it makes deep, logical sense to produce steel in the same place you mine ore. It would save gobs of energy and transportation cost. And I hope Essar does proceed with their stated plans. But I think we on the Iron Range would be wise to plan for a world where one company and one project can't save the region or any given town (in this case, Nashwauk) within the region.

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, April 17, 2011 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Old school without even trying
By Aaron J. Brown

It happened, like many things, in Target. A good marketer can tell you that there’s an innate difference in the aesthetics between major retailers like Target and Wal-Mart. These cathedrals of capitalism play to different parishioners. Target is the place where you shop if you’re a hipster on a budget in a small Midwestern town. Everything from the lighting to the interior design aims to make people who think they’re smart feel OK with a corporate retail plan that involves them making impulse buys every bit as unnecessary as those found on the end caps at Wal-Mart.

That’s also why in the back corner of the Target men’s clothing section you’ll find a selection of fedoras fitted for small/medium, medium/large, and large/x-large heads, which are pretty much all the kinds of heads. One day, with time to kill, I tried on and ultimately coveted these fedoras, some brown, some faux straw and varying degrees of black, gray and charcoal.

The hat display itself indicated what Target Corp. wanted me to think about them. On one side were ball caps with ironic statements and overrated beer logos. On the other were retro t-shirts depicting things that were genuinely popular before the targeted consumers were actually born. These fedoras insisted upon themselves. “We are fedoras,” they said. “Fedoras are old and stodgy, but not when you wear them with these slovenly chic clothes. You will look even younger and hipper, because old people would never try to wear a fedora with a bright green Scooby Doo shirt.”

I tried on a tan hat, tucking back my head to properly display the soft chin of a man with a mortgage and multiple children. The result was a picture of my great-grandfather.

I actually already own a fedora that I bought from Alto’s Menswear in downtown Virginia when I was still in high school, still long after these hats had faded from fasion. I was in my Blues Brothers phase. The hats perched behind the counter in such a way that you could see them but not touch them. They came in black and gray. An old man measured my large noggin, more deep than wide, and fitted one of the black ones for me. I wrote a check, one I’m sure he regarded warily until it cleared at the bank next morning.

This hat is in my closet, waiting for me to age back into it.

Last week, I read with interest a 2009 column by George F. Will, the erudite conservative commentator prone to baseball analogies and long sentences, so long as to be considered something relating to Reagan and John Locke and so forth, the stuff after the fifth comma being for the educated elite, most notably this final statement espousing a general fondness for the Whigs against Mr. Van Buren in ‘36.

In this Will column, the writer opines that denim jeans appear to be lowering the common denominator of our nation, spreading a doctrine of informality and irreverence to an empire in decline. Though not normally my bailiwicks, I found myself agreeing with nearly every aspect of what Will was saying. What does this mean?

In my natural state I wear khaki pants, a button shirt with a pocket for my blue pen and notebook. My fedora would smell of cigars even though I don’t smoke them; the hat would produce this smell independently. I would look in the mirror and the generations would stare back at me, and I would stare into the future at kin to come.

If our fashion is to be derived from a bygone day, may we empty the steamer trunks of our attics and wear the vestments of our ancestors. Why not emulate the best of our past instead of the most garish? Because it is not cool? That is precisely the sort of criteria great-grandparents would advise us to ignore. Just a few more years, hat. Our time will come.

Aaron J. Brown is an Iron Range writer and community college instructor. Read more at his blog MinnesotaBrown.com or in his book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range.”

The 91.7 KAXE Saturday morning call-in and talk show "Between You and Me" tries again with the "Even my friends don't know" topic. Host Heidi Holtan is on the mend from her lost voice. Tune in from 10 a.m. to noon on 91.7 FM or streaming live at www.kaxe.org. I explained more last week, if you need additional verbiage.

Session Weekly's Nick Busse pens a profile of the Iron Range legislative delegation worth reading. Perhaps repetitive for political insiders, "Ranger in a Strange Land" is a great primer for those who have wondered about the mindset of the fabled Range Delegation, which held its annual "Ranger Party" in St. Paul last Tuesday.

For me the most notable parts of the story are the subtle ways that new members Rep. Carolyn McElfatrick (R-Grand Rapids) and Rep. Carly Melin (DFL-Hibbing) change the dynamic. Melin is of a whole new generation raised after the Perpich years. McElfatrick represents the burgeoning conservatism of the "lakes region" portion of the traditional Taconite Tax Relief Area."

The above graphic is from Session Weekly. It's good to see the geography of these seats. This map is going to change significantly after redistricting, most likely not to the political advantage of those who live along the iron formation. The bulk of the people living in the region depicted in the map live near all those tightly bunched lines in the middle. Canada, Lake Superior and sparsely populated western districts will prevent the same redistricting model from continuing.

BONUS: Iron Range lawmakers got a favorable editorial in today's Star Tribune. A press conference on that topic is scheduled after this afternoon's IRRRB meeting in Eveleth.

When I described my feelings wandering around the Iron Range city of Marble last weekend in a recent post, my observations spurred some unexpected squabbling in the comments. Alert reader Tony used the opportunity to create this:




I think this needs to go viral. The less context the better.

The Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board meets 1:30 Friday afternoon at the agency's headquarters south of Eveleth. Afterward there will be a press conference by Iron Range legislators to discuss several issues, most notably the economic development fund at stake in the legislative budget negotiations in St. Paul.

Yesterday Janna Goerdt wrote a story for the Duluth News Tribune about the renaming of the Babbitt-Embarrass school to reflect the St. Louis County school district internal consolidation between B-E and Tower-Soudan. The school will be called the Northeast Range School and its mascot will be the "Night-hawks."

Naturally, the locals are not sure about all this, and that's understandable. This sort of change is not easy and certainly not immediately beneficial for the towns losing their high school. There is some symbolism here. Babbitt was something of a boom town when the taconite era came to the Range in the 1960s and '70s. Like many American schools of the time, the expanded building was named for John F. Kennedy after the iconic president's assassination. Babbitt-Embarrass today boasts a wonderful, big school without a lot of students. Now it will be the Northeast Range School.

The other night Christina and I went out to dinner and took our time getting home, driving around the towns of the western Mesabi. For as long as I've lived and worked around this part of the state there are still corners I've never had happenstance to visit. One of those places was Marble.

If you go from Hibbing to Grand Rapids you drive by Marble all the time. It's one of the bypassed towns, like most of the Range. You've got Grand Rapids, Hibbing and Ely that snare you completely. Virginia and Eveleth, Calumet, Coleraine and Tower will slow you down a little. Everything else, a couple dozen neat little towns, can be seen at 65 miles an hour, if you bother to look.

Marble's a nice little town; declining of course, but what isn't these days? You can pick up a decent little house here for $40,000. You've got a gas station, bar and restaurant, a nice ballfield and access to the Mesabi Trail out the back side of town. One could easily move here, but few do. A quick glance explains that the people who live here are either retirees or young families without much money. They will move out when they can or must, to be replaced by the same. This town will not change much for another 100 years.

I was attracted by the view of an old mine dump beginning to green up with the spring, so we took a stroll down the Mesabi Trail at sunset. That trail is smooth and sharp-looking. A decade of development, aided by the advocacy and clout of former Rep. and House transportation chair Jim Oberstar, had a lot to do with that. We wondered aloud if we were seeing the trail in as good a condition as it ever would appear. I sure hope not.

The main street of Marble looks about the same after 100 years. Looks, but isn't. One wonders about the future of places like this. I see possibilities here. Walk up the trail toward the mountain that our immigrant ancestors built from scratch. You will see something special, not like the flatland towns or hollow exurbs. This is a hard rock place with trees and water, and our history is lying around in staining red dirt that you couldn't remove if you tried.

Stop and look for yourself.

I've got the feature commentary spot at Minnesota Public Radio's website today. In "Lagging connections in rural areas a drag on Minnesota's prosperity," I talk about the digital divide between the Twin Cities and rural Minnesota, particularly the Iron Range. This gap threatens more than just the future of rural Minnesota, but the whole state's integrated economy. Check it out.

Every word of this Washington Post column, "Demon Denim," by conservative intellectual columnist George F. Will is in accordance with my beliefs about pants. Will and I are in total, unmitigated agreement. I am disturbed by this, but not as disturbed as you after you read the column.

It bears mentioning that I am 31 and was raised in a trailer house on the Iron Range; Will is almost 70, the highly educated son of a philosophy professor. I don't know how this happened. 

(Pictured: Me, left, drinking Sprite in college with friends.)

For a different take on how nonferrous mineral mining debates can proceed, check out this story from Peru. The government there is stopping a copper mining project after locals rioted. We in northern Minnesota can take some comfort that no one has died during our debate on mineral mining. Nevertheless, the environmental impact of this form of mining isn't a debate reserved just for little ol' us.

This is my weekly column that ran in the Saturday, April 9, 2011 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. I was bumped off the Sunday page for a large number of letters to the editor.

Mr. Apple lives forever
By Aaron J. Brown

I'm learning that life's challenges wait in the misty valley between things you can control and things you cannot. This was proven true the day Mr. Apple visited our home.

I noticed a spot on the apple drawn from the bag the other night, so I cut off the discoloration with a knife. The cut resembled a jaunty little smile, so I cut a nose, eyes and eyebrows. When I set the happy apple face next to the rest of my dinner, a reheated piece of grilled steak, I took great amusement in the scene. This apple appeared to be joyfully coveting the steak, a wanton gaze of meaty self indulgence by a staple of vegetarian diets.

Thinking this a great moment to teach the concept of irony to my three young boys, each eating cheese sandwiches over at the table, I presented the plate to them like a stage.

"Hey, guys, look at Mr. Apple!"

And, oh, the peals of laughter as Mr. Apple spoke to them, regaling my sons, aged 5, 3 and 3, with stories from his orchard days and lamenting his position on the dinner plate.

Eventually, one of the boys asked, "Can we keep Mr. Apple?" Another added, "Yeah, can he live here with us?"

Uhhhh. About that, I thought. This comedy was becoming a drama.

"Mr. Apple is an apple. He is my dinner and I am going to eat him."

I made several errors here, beginning with naming the fruit, followed by the repeated use of personal pronouns. I glanced over to Christina, for a lifeline. She smiled and shook her head. This was a problem of my own making.

"Noooooo," called out Doug.

"You can't eat Mr. Apple," exclaimed George. With that, he grabbed Mr. Apple and ran. This quickly became part of the fun. Mr. Apple hopped along the window frames, across the coffee table and through the air. Then, Mr. Apple bumbled out of George's hand, rolling across the carpet, collecting lint and dog fur and the accumulated crumbs of a thousand snack crackers. His smile endured.

"Boys," I said, having finished the rest of my dinner. "I need to wash Mr. Apple."

The boys knew what seemed to be coming. "You can eat Mr. Apple's back," said Doug, offering a compromise. "Yeah," said George. "We can save his face."

"Guys, he's going to get all mealy. We can't keep him. He's an apple."

Melancholy eyes looked up to me. This required a serious response.

"OK, Mr. Apple is more than an apple. He lives in all apples. He will appear in another apple some day, if not in this bag than in the bag after. Every time we eat an apple, Mr. Apple will be there. As long as we remember our time with Mr. Apple he'll never really be gone."

They accepted this as truth. Quietly they left the room to play with trains. Solemnly, reverently, I consumed the flesh of Mr. Apple. We were one, and the universe would continue. I would outlive this one apple; may the boys outlive me.

It then occurred to me that this was the most spiritual lesson I'd ever offered the boys. We've yet to broach the serious questions of life and death, no more than in the abstract. I suppose I always figured that life would dictate that moment. I hadn't expected that this moment would arrive during dinner on this random night.

The tree of life bears fruit of all kinds, some sweet, some bitter, most always with spots. Cut away the spots and you have Mr. Apple, a joyous soul we are glad to know.

Aaron J. Brown is a writer and community college instructor from the Iron Range. Read more at his blog MinnesotaBrown.com or in his book "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range."

UPDATE: In an earlier version of this post I suggested that the letters to the editor that bumped me from Sunday to Saturday were presumably about the firing of the Hibbing city administrator this week. I wrote, "I thought about writing a post on that topic, but what more is there to say? Hibbing, baby. It's a hard town to not be fired in." Well, that's fine and all, but none of the letters were about this topic. The first letter was about northern Minnesota seceding from the state, followed by a detailed introspection of the labor rally last week and a complaint about trash in the Memorial Building parking lot. Never can tell. 

UPDATE: Heidi lost her voice before the April 9 show, so this topic including my essay will be revisited for the April 16 program. 

This week's topic for 91.7 KAXE's Saturday morning "Between You and Me" program could generate quite a tizzy. "One Thing Even My Friends Don't Know About Me." We all have little habits, little secrets -- stories from the past or odd things we do now. I dig into a regretful story from the past, mining a major ethical lapse for laughs and introspection. Ha ha! I am a weak, flawed vessel! I have a microphone! Anyway, that's where I'm going with this. I hope you like it. The show should be great.

Tune in to "Between You and Me," the music and call-in juggernaut featuring host Heidi Holtan and the voices of northern Minnesota, between 10 a.m. and noon Saturday on 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota. The station streams live and archives old shows at www.kaxe.org. The program and my essays are syndicated through PRX, so be sure to recommend them to your local or large, cash-laden state public radio organization.

MinnPost's Jeff Severns Guntzel interviews young adults in the "Rural Minnesota: A generation at the crossroads" project. He talked to some of my students at the college. These voices are very important to a region like northern Minnesota to understand itself and make the right policy choices down the line. This will be a project worth following.

Last month we learned that the Iron Range's top export, taconite pellets to make steel, would be making the long journey to China for the first time in history. This week the Range's second biggest export, recording artist Bob Dylan, made his first ever appearance in the large Asian nation.

Dylan, who was born in Duluth and raised on the Range, graduating from Hibbing High School in 1959, enjoyed a warm reception by Chinese fans who see him as one of the world's great voices against war. Unfortunately, as part of the negotiations with the Chinese cultural ministry to allow Dylan to perform there he was prevented from singing "The Times they are a' Changin'" and other more anti-authoritarian songs. Nevertheless, some of his edgy lyrics still snuck through the censorship.

It would appear that the mere presence of Dylan, singing to a young generation of Chinese very much aware of the lyrics to "The Times They are a' Changin'" is the larger symbolism.

I'm still involved in making arrangements for Dylan Days 2011, May 26-29 in Hibbing. We'll be announcing our writing contest winners very soon. Dylan, like taconite*, turns 70 this year.

* Taconite's age is approximate.

I have almost too much to talk about this morning, so I'll just cover the basics. Yesterday was a notable day. MPR and Northland's NewsCenter hosted a "Economic Prospects for the Arrowhead" forum at the Radisson in Duluth. Immediately before that the state House voted to strip $60 million in local mining revenue (the Iron Range equivalent of property taxes) from an IRRRB economic fund. In short, the future is playing out very rapidly and I take away two simple truths, both of which I mentioned in my Sunday column:

1. The Iron Range region, in accordance with Duluth and other nearby towns, needs to rejigger its approach to economic and community development.
2. Whatever we don't do for ourselves will be done for us, less appealingly, by the legislature and other interests that do not and will not understand Iron Range history, culture or status quo politics. If the Johnson economic fund isn't raided this year, it will be next year or the year after.

I mentioned last night that regardless of your political stripe, and I know readers here run the gamut of ideologies, we share an enemy here on the Iron Range. As unique as we are, other places share the same enemy. That enemy is mediocrity. Mediocrity thrives when we wait for big talkers to fix our own problems for us. Whether those big talkers are big business developers or federal politicians, their ability to help us is fundamentally limited. The city of Duluth is doing better than it has in decades because of small, self-starting ideas and initiatives. The city of the Iron Range -- and we are a small city, similar in size to Duluth, stretched out over a long iron formation separated only by trees and tired attitudes -- must also generate and support new ideas. The change will start with a feeling, and will be followed by results.

From his comments last night, I can sense Commissioner Tony Sertich of the IRRRB knows that big things must happen soon. Legislators in St. Paul know they can't hold the line for much longer. This is a major moment in Range history. We must not waste our last, best chance. I predict a major push to fix our declining school systems and pour remaining resources into local development is on the way. I intend to strongly support such a plan.

I'll have more on the forum later. Off to work...

Follow the "Prospects for the Arrowhead" northern Minnesota economic forum below. I'll be joining other speakers in talking about the future of the region. Time permitting, I'll add some live blog content below. MPR's Minnesota Today is offering a liveblog.



Hit refresh if you aren't seeing new content. The hashtag on Twitter is #duluth. I'll be live-tweeting @minnesotabrown. (Click through to read the feed even if you're not on Twitter.)

Today, Midwest Energy News posted a story from Minnesota writer Dan Haugen about the past, present and unknown future of Excelsior Energy's beleaguered Mesaba Energy Project. I'm quoted therein, along with other Excelsior opponents and supporters. I hope you'll find this to be a reasonable, balanced look at the history of this project and its attempts to stay relevant in 2011 as I did, though my opinion about this project is now well documented.

While I'm preparing for tonight's MPR "Economic Prospects for the Arrowhead" forum in Duluth tonight, the state House is debating the slashing of an Iron Range economic development fund in St. Paul at 3 p.m. You can follow the debate, which I expect to be colorful, here on the House web TV channel. This conversation could easily spill over into tonight's talk, so there are a lot of moving parts to observe this fine day.

There's still time to register for Tuesday evening's "Prospects for the Arrowhead" forum at the Radisson Hotel in Duluth. This event is organized by Minnesota Public Radio and Northland's NewsCenter and will be hosted by Cathy Wurzer. The reception starts at 6 to be followed by an open discussion of the region's economic future at 7:30. I'll be there, doing my Range shtick, hearkening thoughts found in my recent column and other writings. Join us!

UPDATE: I'll be posting a live update plug-in that will allow you to follow the proceedings from here at MinnesotaBrown if you can't make it to Duluth.

As previously discussed, retired Iron Range miners from National Steel (now Keetac, under new management) have been through the wringer on their pensions after National folded in 2003. A specific group of miners receives pennies on the dollar, less than half the promised amount.

Late last week the Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, a federal organization tasked with the almost impossible job of protecting worker's pensions when their parent companies go bankrupt or reorganize, issued an important statement.

The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation moved quickly to resolve problems described in a recent inspector general report on the takeover of National Steel’s pension plans in 2003. The report said corrective action began last year.


“We take our responsibility to the people we serve very seriously,” said PBGC Director Josh Gotbaum, appointed to lead the agency last July by President Obama. “We are embarrassed and saddened that this occurred. We are resolved to set things right, and we will do so.”
 
Following National Steel’s 2003 bankruptcy, PBGC became responsible for seven pension plans covering 35,000 workers and retirees. PBGC has since paid more than $1.5 billion to National Steel retirees.
In Minnesota’s Iron Range, more than 1,000 National Steel Pellet Company retirees receive benefits from the agency. PBGC has paid over $62 million to Pellet Company retirees since assuming the plans.

At the same time PBGC took responsibility for paying benefits, it also took over the plans’ assets. The agency’s IG found that PBGC and its contractor had done a seriously flawed job in making sure it had collected all the assets and that assets had been properly allocated to each plan. As a result, some National Steel retirees might have received lower benefits than they should have.

Neither the IG nor PBGC yet knows whether any National Steel pensioner actually suffered any reduced benefit as a result of the audit. PBGC is working now to find out and expects to know sometime this summer.

PBGC committed to correct its mistakes. “If anyone lost even a dime, their benefits will be corrected and they will be paid back with interest—and an apology,” Gotbaum said.

Local media have reported on the findings, though importantly this finding is more of an eventual admission of reality, not the news these miners still wish to hear: that their pensions will be funded at full value. That finding will require more political will than has been needed so far and the setting of a significant precedent over corporate pension plans.

It bears mentioning that on the western Mesabi, no issue dominates the chatter of local coffee klatches and public gatherings as much as this one, especially among the 50-70-year-olds who still dictate opinion leadership in the region. I talk a great deal about the Iron Range future to a small audience. This is a story of the Iron Range present with many local eyes on it.

The April weather in northern Minnesota has taken a February turn, with snow and cold blanketing the Iron Range. Nevertheless, programming is planned for this April 4 "Day of Action" traditionally reserved for community action in honor of Martin Luther King Jr.

There are events all over the state, but the one that might interest folks up here on the Range is the We Are One Iron Range march and "teach in." A reader told me that a letter to the editor in a Cook newspaper referred to the participants in this event as "rioters." That's an old play and a reminder that current events are constantly reigniting discussion of the labor history of the Iron Range. It's a good opportunity to spur discussion about the future of work and quality of life on the Iron Range.

March: Begins at Virginia City Hall,
327 1st Street S @ 5pm and continues to the Servicemen’s Club

Teach In, Speak Out: Servicemen’s Club,
229 Chestnut St.

This is my weekly column from the Sunday, April 3, 2011 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Today's Range pioneers must break the circle
By Aaron J. Brown

No position, no land, no political condition may be defended indefinitely. Always in history the walls fall, the barbarians throw open the gates. The same is true here today on the Iron Range. Our defenses are failing. We must begin a new campaign for social territory, prosperity and the values which lifted an immigrant people from poverty to prominence.

By now you've heard that House and Senate Republicans advanced bills raiding an economic development fund administered by the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board. Named for Douglas J. Johnson after the state senator's retirement, this fund capitalizes projects throughout the Range using interest from the region's taconite production tax revenue. Local lawmakers, both DFL and GOP, expressed anger and frustration over the nabbing.

The outrage is well deserved. The dollars from the Johnson Fund are derived from mining production tax revenue, the Iron Range equivalent of property taxes. No state dollars have ever gone into the fund, nor was it ever intended to be used to fix a state budget crisis. Indeed, the act of taking this money is similar to asking a major city to ship its cash reserves to St. Paul, never to be returned or even acknowledged.

No Range citizen of any political stripe should abide this sort of unfair, sham solution to our budget predicament, particularly when a small region like the Range is bled out like an animal so that others may be spared any sacrifice whatsoever. All this, of course, represents a political argument repeated countless times in recent years. I've repeated it myself and there'd be little reason to repeat it again if there weren't such a new urgency.

The concern is this could happen. Only Gov. Mark Dayton can stop it this year. Even if he does, he can't forever, nor can we hold off wary urban liberals and suburban conservatives for much longer.

Those disinclined to pass favor or interest toward Range simply will not change their minds, not now. Sometimes the sin is rank partisanship, ours or theirs. Sometimes the sin is the continuation of failed policies, the propping up of an abject failure like Excelsior Energy or the practice of running new projects through the same group of lobbyists. The people are confused by promises and leaders in St. Paul can't understand why this should be allowed to continue.

It shouldn't. We need change.

With taconite poised to have a very strong 2011, this economic development fund might seem only a parochial concern. It is not. Defunded, our ability to recover from the next inevitable drop in global steel prices or industry reorganization will be deeply compromised.

Mining, the primary economic driver of our region, will end forever at some yet unknown time in the future. No other region faces such a specific existential threat to it's economy. For half a century the Range survived down times in mining with the economic development and tax credits afforded by the IRRRB. The agency and its funds are vitally important to any hope of economic diversification beyond mining, and it is more of a prayer than a plan at this point.

Nevertheless, the status quo is not defensible. I won't try anymore, nor should Iron Range leaders. We must demand a new way forward, for there is no reason to give up hope.

Last week I wrote about our region's population. It's not dropping, so much as aging, become less economically vibrant. We could survive as a tourist draw, retirement home and sometimes mineral colony indefinitely, just not particularly well. What if, instead of holding money in ways that are sorely misunderstood around the state, the IRRRB and entire Range focused on efforts that would address our greatest need: a welcoming environment for young families and entrepreneurs.

Schools. Communities. Measurable goals and accountability, to be enforced by the people of the Iron Range.

Sometimes Great Plains pioneers circled the wagons to fight off external threats. They would fight and fight. Their defensive position would often allow them to survive, move on. But the Range has circled the wagons since we lost Rudy Perpich and we've lost much more since. It is time to break the circle, ride hard and fast at the horizon. Our hands should reach forward toward what really matters, instead of covering our eyes or being chopped off after 20 years of mad flailing.

This storm will not pass. We must ride.

Aaron J. Brown is a writer and community college instructor from the Iron Range. Read more at his blog MinnesotaBrown.com or in his book "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range."

My weekly contribution to this Saturday morning's edition of "Between You and Me" on 91.7 KAXE joins the rotating topic of "unwelcome guests." Stories may focus on the obvious interlopers who might linger in your basement, or on the critters who sneak in or surround us. I'll be revisiting the story of the flying squirrel that visited us one very early morning last month.

Between You and Me combines the voices of northern Minnesota and great music. Tune in from 10 a.m. to noon on 91.7 FM in the region or streaming live all over the world at www.KAXE.org.

Here is another installation in my occasional series on Iron Range newspaper classifieds. This one is from the March 31 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune, the only paper I know that's run an ad for a lost ring right next to an ad for a found ring.

TO THE lady who bought "Gone with the Wind" movie at the Goodwill, could I please watch the movie one more time? Call Amy at [Number withheld].

There is a lot of humanity in that question. This is is hard to say and probably even harder for you to hear, but no, you may not. The world you inhabited, a life where you watched this movie at your leisure, while others brought in the cotton harvest, that world is gone. Don't despair. After all, tomorrow is another day ... And also "Gone with the Wind" is at the library, which is just a block and a half from the Goodwill.