This is my weekly column for the Sunday, July 31, 2011 Hibbing Daily Tribune. A version of this piece aired Saturday on 91.7 KAXE's "Between You and Me."

The things that make us human
By Aaron J. Brown

We know that fire needs fuel, oxygen and heat to burn. A swap meet, combining elements from rummage sales, antique shops and art expos, also requires three elements: a large retirement age population, a rapidly fluctuating local economy and folksy charm.

Grand Rapids, Minnesota, is the genial kind of Midwestern town you find at the intersection of mining, forestry and tourism, industries that produce all these necessary requirements for the swap meet being held this weekend at the Itasca County Fairgrounds.

It’s been a few years since I’ve been to the swap meet. I’m on hiatus. Nothing makes these vendors more nervous than a guy like me with three young boys in tow, each one some combination of sticky, clumsy or unaware of the unforgiving reality of glass things smashed against ceramic things. All my money is tied up in the mortgage, gas and Goldfish crackers. I don’t carry cash. So I’ll wait to go to the swap meet until I’m a little older and have the gray hairs and frown-wrinkles necessary to secure a good price on the old license plates and vintage typewriters I so vainly crave. I estimate this will occur next year or the year after.

But I hear about the swap meet; I see the signs and newspaper ads. Fact is, I could use some old maps and authentic wall displays from before I was born. Furniture is always more interesting when you know it probably once belonged to someone who is no longer alive, even if you don’t know the name or vocation of the deceased. Words take on new meaning when written at a dead man’s desk. Swap meets provide great lessons on topics like anthropology, economics and history.

First, the anthropology. As I teach in class sometimes, the objects in our lives communicate something important about us. Walking around a swap meet you realize the way the things about us have changed very much, very recently. Televisions, radios and appliances are a good deal less cumbersome, but kitchen implements have somehow become more awkward. This is perhaps due to the sheer number of electric slicing, dicing, mixing, grilling and steaming devices we’re now required to have if we are to replicate the meals we see on our much more efficient televisions. Mostly, though, these objects remind us that so much of what we buy new today is built to wear out long before it ever reaches a swap meet.

Then, the economics. It is a swap meet, after all. Money has a way of clouding the raw value of an object. We think of money in terms of how much we make in a week or how much is in our bank account or stock portfolio earning compounding interest. We don’t even handle money any more; most of it is exchanged through computers by the swipe of a card or click of a computer mouse. But how many out-of-date Corel ware bowls is a 1935 adding machine worth? Now we’re talking. Naturally, it depends on the pattern and whether the adding machine works or not.

Finally, the history. Stroll through a swap meet and you see something that Americans have always had a hard time understanding, our recent history. Sure, we read about the old stuff in school, but this is not a nation built on reflection, but on barreling into the future with a dim sense that it’ll be better out there somewhere. That’s how so many big issues take so long to fix in our system, and why the ghosts of the past linger so long in our lives today. Yeah, that soup ad from the 1940s is kind of racist. So is that promotional 1957 map from the Chamber of Commerce. The stuff of our recent past will always explain us better than the nostalgic assurances of a talk radio host or coordinated campaign to sell life insurance.

So check out the swap meet. Swap what you will and remember the rest. Just don’t break anything.

Aaron J. Brown is a writer and community college instructor who lives north of Nashwauk. He is the author of the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and the book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range.”

This week on "Between You and Me" guest host Maddi Frick lights up Saturday morning with talk of swap meets. Not coincidentally the annual Itasca County Swap Meet will be going on throughout the weekend at the fairgrounds in Grand Rapids. I'll be joining the 91.7 KAXE call-in and music program with another of my commentaries on the topic de jour. I'll explore the anthropology, economics and history involved in swap meets, with jokes of course.

You can hear "Between You and Me" from 10 a.m. to noon Saturday on 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota or streaming live all over the world at www.kaxe.org. Programs and my individual essays are archived at the KAXE website and syndicated through PRX for other public radio stations.

The Essar Minnesota Steel project near Nashwauk seems to be making slow progress in its construction of a revitalized new taconite mine and still-proposed steel mill. Nevertheless, they are holding press events. Yesterday Essar officials joined officials from Minnesota Power and the Nashwauk Public Utilities Commission to announce that Essar will purchase power from Minnesota Power by way of the Nashwauk PUC. 

Minnesota Power presently supplies most of the power to Range taconite mines and is familiar with the business.

Yesterday, work began on the Greater Minnesota Broadband Collaborative Project, extending internet speeds and connectivity in northern Minnesota. A project in southern Minnesota also began construction. These projects largely stem from the controversial federal economic stimulus efforts of 2009 and remind us that those efforts are not yet complete.

Most of you know I have now spent years advocating for more and better internet infrastructure in northern Minnesota as our last, greatest opportunity to diversify our resource-based economy. The Internet Innovation Alliance contacted me recently and referred me to the graphic below and a news page updating efforts to expand broadband in Minnesota. This is a very simple but comprehensive list of potential benefits.




(Thanks to Patrick Tuohey at the IIA)

Northland's NewsCenter offers an update to yesterday's revelation that former BP head Tony Hayward is now working for Glencore, the company behind the PolyMet project here on the Range:




UPDATE: I must add, as I mentioned yesterday, that PolyMet has said that Hayward will not be involved in its Range project. That's true, but I consider this worth discussing anyway. The issue at the core of the debate is the long-term, legacy commitment by the company's corporate family to taking responsibility IF any unforeseen disasters take place in the future. No one expects or wants a disaster, but I believe it's fair to ask questions about Hayward's record at BP in this larger context.

If a company would be willing to make a binding long term, post-mining commitment to future environmental responsibility I think the permits would be forthcoming, a crucial step to the financing and mining plans of PolyMet and other companies on the Range.

MinnPost's Don Shelby has a fascinating scoop about how the parent company of Polymet, which is proposing new nonferrous mining on the Iron Range, has hired Tony Hayward. You might remember Hayward as the CEO of BP during the massive underwater Gulf Coast oil spill last year. Hayward's job with Glencore: Overseeing environmental policy and practices.

Here on the Range this is a fascinating turn of events for a project that's complained of a slow environmental review process amid criticisms of potential long term environmental damage. The economic/political/environmental drama level is now securely set at "11."

UPDATE: Polymet tells MNIndy that Hayward will not be involved in the Iron Range project, that he's involved with some other higher level function in Glencore. OK, then. Still an interesting public relations issue that will surely be revisited in coming days.

Last night Minnesota Twins outfielder Michael Cuddyer was asked to pitch the 8th inning in a 20-6 drubbing by the Texas Rangers. The good news is that after pitching into a jam he closed the inning without giving up any runs. The bad news is that we live in a world where this happens.

I keep threatening to write a novel the way the barbarians once kept threatening to overrun Rome. Unthinkable, but one day it could happen. On my journey I've decided to rejigger my reading list to include more fiction. And today I'm glad I've done so.

"Let the Great World Spin" by Colum McCann (2009) doesn't need any extra praise from the likes of me. It's a National Book Award winner and the critical blurbs on the cover read like an author's most depraved fantasy. But McCann's approach to this New York-based novel reminds me in some ways of how I'd like to write about the Iron Range. In an author interview in the postscript he says "Wherever we are now is wherever we once were."

Though I'm not one to be lured by the mystique of New York I've always felt an affinity for the city. If I had to flee, I'd flee there, sure. At some point in the early 1900s both New York and the Iron Range were similarly populated by vast numbers of immigrants who would go on to shape the places they chose to call home. There is something about divergent storylines converging on an interesting place that makes great art. "Let the Great World Spin" is such a work.

McCann goes back to a day in 1974 when a daredevil walked a tightrope connecting the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Below him and around him tiny interactions sprawl out into an unfolding story of regular people performing their own acts of bravery, threatened by their own forces of gravity.

In this time the streets of New York bubbled over with crime. The fresh wounds of Vietnam had yet to scab over. Computer scientists mapped out the bones of what would become the internet with almost no fanfare. And, of course, the man walking between the still-new World Trade Center towers, 110 stories above the pavement, (a true event on which the story is based) reminds us that in 2001 those towers would come crashing down in a terrorist attack.

In writing with exquisite detail about the past, McCann does what many modern writers have tried and failed -- he crafts a compelling thematic understanding of post-9/11 America. I recommend the book. Feel free to join me in a discussion in the comments if you've read it, too.

* Reviews on this site will be occasional. You'll note that the links I have here go to Amazon, where I am part of an affiliate program that converts your voluntary purchases into a small commission for me. This is one of the few ways I make money on this blog and I hope you don't find it too unseemly. My decision to write about books will always be dictated by my editorial judgement, not profit.

One summer a few years back I was in the Noon Rotary Club in Hibbing, Minnesota, and along with my colleagues was tasked with taking tickets at the St. Louis County Fair in the nearby town of Chisholm. It was a fundraiser for the club and an opportunity for service at the biggest single summer event on the Iron Range.

In my early 20s, my appearance in the blue Rotary shirt must surely have confused me with the area youth hired by older or vacationing Rotarians to take their place on the lines. Nevertheless, steeled by several months behind the editor's desk of an unpopular local newspaper, I was ready to collect money from people averse to giving it to me. Make no bones, that was the job.

You have to understand how it used to be. Before this time. Things were cheaper. Things were located in other places, places where things used to be located. The gates were closer to the lots. People who used to be well-liked and respected were alive, unlike now, when they were dead. Those people never would have allowed this to happen, that is, all the things that had recently happened.

Never mind the details. If you don't already know them I can't in good conscious recommend you learn them. And anyway, the details aren't what matters when you work the pedestrian gate.

The pedestrian gate was the one gate where people weren't entering from paid parking lots. In other words, the cheapest way to get into the fair was through this gate operated by me and one other guy. With all the aforementioned lamentation of change this was where the white hot reality of the situation encountered the cold muscle of volunteer labor.

There are all kinds of plucky, blue collar county fairs all over this state. I'm not in the business of telling you this one is better than yours or yours or yours. But the St. Louis County Fair, like the very Iron Range region it serves, is the most opulently blue collar fair I've seen. It's expensive, built for the kind of pleasure that comes in bottles or tank tops, loud as hell and perched over a mine pit dug by four generations of our ancestors. They have art and chickens and whatnot, too, but that's not the thrust. You wouldn't come here for that. Yet every year, scores of people of all ages, some rarely seen throughout the rest of the year, teem in through the gates to participate in a tradition celebrating the middle age of summer, the last time all of this will happen before the cold end we know is coming.

The St. Louis County Fair opens Wednesday, July 27 in Chisholm and runs through Sunday, July 31. Though a great amount of hot weather awaits us on northern Minnesota's Iron Range, this event is largely regarded as the practical end of summer. The rest is just waiting -- maybe a short vacation with the kids before school starts, a quick stab at the rest of the summer chore list.

It's coming, though. The end is near. A season of growth always falls to the cold rotation of Earth on its axis. Breathe it in. Hold it tight. Look up at the blue sea of sky, covering the green and red stripes of the Iron Range summer horizon.

To access or print the schedule of events, click here for Page 1 or Page 2. These are PDFs because that's how this works, friends. That's how it goes where I'm from.

Though I still don't know what I'll do with it, I've entered the Google+ world. You can "+1" this site using the button below or in the side bar. Follow me? Or don't. It works differently. I will learn it when Twitter dies, which is supposed to be soon I guess.

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, July 24, 2011 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

History echoes through our modern democracy
By Aaron J. Brown

Maybe you’ve got a book like this in your house, a big one: heavier than most new computers, too big to hide. For me this book was “The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln” by Sean Wilentz, and I’m happy to announce that I not only finished it, but learned something (and built some arm strength in the process).

“The Rise of American Democracy” is compelling and well-written – the topic deeply relevant to our times. With a state budget battle that raged too long and increasingly dangerous federal budget shenanigans, I’d advise our leaders to read it as well while they apparently have time on their hands.

Wilentz endeavors in thousands of thoughtful observations to show that the democracy that formed in our country after the ratification of the Constitution was highly complex, vulnerable to collapse, and indeed wasn’t even just one democracy. Two democracies – one northern, populous and industrial; another southern, slave-holding, and disproportionately powerful – formed simultaneously and battled politically until those divisions turned to outright war.

Make no mistake, the Civil War was about slavery. Though the north and south had many differences including states’ rights concerns, constitutional interpretations and voting rights, slavery was the underlying issue that spurred the other differences.

However, it should not be presumed that the North was universally “good,” while the South was “bad.” Most northerners who opposed the spread of slavery to new territories simply didn’t want black people to move West with them. Racism, tensions between immigrants and former slaves, and the always-powerful machinations of Eastern capitalists forged an American history that was so deeply inhumane at times that it’s no wonder that scars remain in today’s American race relations. Only a small minority of abolitionists and forward thinkers advanced the ideas of liberty and universal suffrage that we take for granted today, and they were mostly hated and mocked in their time.

Slavery and Civil War are the parts you might remember from school. The specifics of the events and the churning nature of political coalitions that rose and fell during this time would surprise many modern Americans. President Andrew Jackson was such a critical force in preserving the union, despite his racist anti-Indian policies. The lesser known one-term President James K. Polk played a big role in the acquisition of California and other western territories, despite his mediocre handling of national divisions.

The divide in early America wasn’t just between slave and free states. Those supporting the idea of true democracy ran the constant risk of mob rule and propagated the aforementioned racism. The once-federalist ideals of wise government and economic maneuvering were then, as they are now, often co-opted by powerful moneyed interests. Both of these ideals were crucial to the development of our early democracy, and each had to serve as a check and balance on the other. Today, all legal citizens can vote and hold their money in stock portfolios that yield compounding interest. These bounties were hard-fought.

What’s interesting are the ways different political groups shifted within the slave/free, democracy/federalism camps. Both the Democratic Party (which bears only passing resemblance to today’s version) and the Whigs of that era had liberal and conservative wings. Coalitions on various issues, such as slavery, would form outside of party label or even create new parties.
You might not see the Free Soil Party on the ballot next year, but it was crucial in breaking up the Whigs and putting anti-slavery politics in starker terms in its time. After the collapse of the Whigs over the slavery issue, the Republican Party (also unrecognizable by today’s metrics) formed a wider coalition of anti-slavery groups to win the 1860 election.

After snapping shut Wilentz’s thick volume, I recall other political realignments.

There was 1912, when many progressive fled the Republicans for Theodore Roosevelt’s “Bull Moose” party.

The Depression and Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal brought the rest of the progressives over to the Democrats, leaving Republicans squarely in the camp of big business interests.

Eisenhower brought many genteel post-war conservatives back to the GOP while Kennedy won a new generation for the Democrats. The Civil Rights Act sent Southern conservatives to the Republicans while earning liberal loyalty for the Democrats that continues today.

Do you really think the plasticized, inflexible brand-name political parties of today represent the rich diversity of American thought and progress? You shouldn’t. Most likely the Red vs. Blue divide is a cultural mask for real policy divisions that Americans have always faced down, often though not always wisely. If you don’t like what you see, vote Free Soil. Or Anti-Mason. Or Liberty. Or Know-Nothing. American political factions might be better served casting off their tethers to major parties and advocating for what the people want and need.

The events that transpired between the presidencies of Thomas Jefferson and Abraham Lincoln seem today distant but distinctly-heard echoes across the 150 years of history that’s elapsed since. Divisions in American society today are different, indeed would be utterly unrecognizable to the founders of this democracy. But the central questions of our time are similar to theirs and represent the driving questions that defined America.
Who will have the power? For whom will government policies benefit? What are the rights of people in this republic that Jefferson so earnestly hoped we could keep?

Aaron J. Brown is the author of the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and the book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range. He lives north of Nashwauk.

There are a lot of odd patterns on the Iron Range. Finding them is great fun, and why I've endeavored to stay here and write.

Most people see the economic patterns. Mines up, mines down. Pawn shops and the Wal-Mart. There's the drawn out process by which the Friday night boys cruising main street in their used pickups become just like their fathers. Maybe that's not unique to the Range, but the microcosm of the geography gives the phenomenon a certain aura.

And, of course, there's the big city newspaper columnists who occasionally visit Hibbing to see the town where Bob Dylan grew up. They all seem to form different conclusions, though usually centered on the idea that time seems to pass differently on the Iron Range. That's certainly what Garth Woolsey of the Toronto Sun found in his column "Times Not a'changin' in Bob Dylan's homtown" today.

Woolsey fondly describes the town as captured in the 1950s. In my experience (though I wasn't even alive in the '50s) I can certainly see that in the town. The early '50s represented Hibbing's modern pinnacle, so the town maintains some of that glory. But then again, those coming to Hibbing for Dylan reasons tend to see that era because they're looking for it.

When the wind catches Hibbing from a different direction you can see a town caught in the '70s, with long wavy hair and no thoughts of tomorrow. A different light and you see '80s paralysis, an amber image of a town that stopped growing cold in its tracks when the American steel industry folded in on itself.

I'm not one to judge. I'm frozen in the late '90s when I began to realize the power of the internet, watching the information and opportunities appear over the lines, whisking my friends away while I wait earnestly for something important to pop out here on the other end. So far, just columns.

(h/t Matt Nelson)

This Saturday morning on 91.7 KAXE's "Between You and Me," guest hosts Michael Goldberg and Gail Otteson explore the topic of omens with music, calls from listeners and the writing of several commentators such as myself.

Omens can be good, but most folks tend to focus on "ominous" signs, or the bad. But not all bad is really as bad as it looks.Here's my omen, shared from my essay this week:

As a teenager I’d go on long bike rides down the dusty dirt roads of the Iron Range. One hot summer day I was returning on a dirt road about three miles from my house. It was the muggy sort of day where storms appear like an angry mob. The white dry gravel road projected heat distortion on the folding horizon ahead of me. The dark clouds in the distance billowed closer and suddenly a glinting wall seemed to move toward me, a battering ram of rain that sent the dry dirt up in clouds before stamping it into mud.

What did it mean? Oh, you'll find out on "Between You and Me" from 10 a.m. to noon on 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota or streaming live all over the world at www.kaxe.org. The show features the people of the region sharing stories and thoughts to create a living tribute to this great place. My essays and the show itself are archived at the KAXE website and syndicated through PRX.

I'll be back on KAXE Monday morning at 7:20 talking with Scott Hall in a prerecorded segment updating the ever-churning news about Minnesota's Eighth Congressional District race.

(Photo: This is not the dirt road I wrote about, but a similar setting and a similar road. I found this in my old files and shared it because the color of the road in the hot summertime was the same).

And in regional political news, Don Ness will be unopposed this fall in his bid for a second term as mayor of Duluth. That's right, the town that usually celebrates every fourth year with a bellowing kerfuffle on the city ballot will instead crown the youngish, internetty Ness the Hipster King of the Zenith City. This is the first time in modern memory that Duluthians haven't had a contested mayoral race.

Two city councilors will also go unopposed, one roughly allied with the conservative wing of the council and the other with the liberal majority. There will be a contested race requiring a primary in the fourth ward, along with a primary among six candidates for the two at-large seats.

There might be some mild intrigue in those council races, but the real story here is the performance of Ness in his first term and the conditions that led to this. The first losers in the national debt and anti-tax political winds will be local governments and nowhere is that more obvious than Duluth. The environment has turned once-honorable civic positions into unpleasant tasks requiring you to make your city somewhat less livable through budget cuts.

That's why Ness's job in his first term is so remarkable. Indeed, he has presided over massive budget cuts and the restructuring of the city's retiree debt responsibilities, factors that felled or tarnished many a previous Duluth politician. At the same time the 2010 census showed relative population stability. A drive down Superior Street would cause even the most hardened critic to acknowledge a downtown revitalization, one that includes far more recreation for young families and professionals than anyone ever would have believed possible 20 years ago. Ness was not only a central in these events, he led the city through them without making very many enemies, something almost impossible to do in Duluth.

Many expected Ness to one day succeed his former boss, Rep. Jim Oberstar, in Congress. Some were surprised the life-long DFLer opted not to run against Rep. Chip Cravaack in next year's election, citing his desire to stay in Duluth and raise his family. But if this record in Duluth keeps up Ness might find himself in a good position to run for governor as a greater Minnesota mayor who gets results, no doubt commuting to the Capitol from Duluth on what I presume will be a hovercraft.

That is, if he manages to defeat Mickey Mouse at the ballot this fall. I think he will. In all seriousness, good work Mayor Ness. You're creating an example for how to lead an area like his forward amid a terrible political and budget climate.

Here's a story that shows how things have changed in northern Minnesota politics. A federal budget debate in D.C. could end rural transportation subsidies which would cause the suspension commercial air service to the Iron Range, International Falls and Thief River Falls. The program to ensure air travel to rural areas was strongly advocated by former Rep. and House Transportation Chair Jim Oberstar (D-MN8). Now the work group considering the cuts is lead by his successor, Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8), who represents the exact same district, which includes two of these airports.

The program's merits aside, it's interesting how Cravaack's approach to governance is so philosophical. (We need to cut "x" amount of federal spending and once we have completed "x" amount of cuts, jobs will be created and everything will be OK). I'd find a lot more to like about cuts that seemed more strategic. For instance, Cravaack would consider deeply disrupting the vulnerable economies of these three airports on a budget purge, while the purchase of six fewer jets by the defense department would pay for the whole Essential Air Service program.

That's not to say that this program isn't above reform or even reductions, but any plan that cuts air service from a huge portion of the state shouldn't be considered a good idea.

MinnPost's Devin Henry has the story, which is worth reading.

This morning Gov. Mark Dayton signed the last of the budget bills ending the Minnesota state government shutdown and funding the next biennium. Though the deal was messy and unpopular, arguably unwise, it will be nice to have a semblance of normalcy return to what was once regarded as a good governance state.

I'm also happy to report that the much-discussed raid of $60 million in local Iron Range taconite revenue (taxes paid by mines in lieu of property taxes) was not part of the final tax bill. All of that money remains in the control of the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB) tasked with using it to encourage job growth on the Iron Range.

While this is right and fair, the whole escapade is very frustrating. That local money should never have been under consideration as a state budget fix. But, because the state has statutory control over the IRRRB, which is an unusual agency serving one region that has been reliably DFL in nature, we had to have an unpleasant screaming match that, as Faulkner would say, signified nothing.

My observations, thus, are as follows:

• Having long advocated for IRRRB reforms, I think the agency should reconstitute what's called the "Douglas J. Johnson Economic Trust" into something with more identifiable results. A Gov. Tom Emmer would have raided the fund and quite possibly disbanded the agency, so the clock is ticking.
• The GOP used this rather skillfully as a negotiating chip. Knowing that Gov. Dayton would never approve of the raid, they got to use this as a bargaining chip that probably cost the DFL in other areas. 
• Huge pots of money named for former politicians never die a heroes death. We should move forward with this being considered a fact, not a theory. 
• A great amount of political power and personal prestige is tied up in the IRRRB's management of this fund. Changing it will be hard. But I don't think any in the Range political structure can argue that the status quo is safe into the future. Lacking votes to protect the agency by law, it must defend itself through successful action.

One thing people in rural and post-industrial places like the Iron Range need to do is ...

Sigh. Here I go again.

Listen, just look outside your window right now. Do you see a green or blue thing that is not a building where animals live or could live? I mean big ones, not squirrels. If yes, you are rural. Bonus points for deer excrement.

If no, do you see a house, maybe your house, singed with some kind of common particulate that you're told is harmless but that has been steadily accumulating since 1981 and you know this because what do you expect; I'm not going to move around all willy-nilly working in some damn cube in friggin' Edina so I have lived here since [taconite, steel, coal, oil] started OR was raised here after the [mines, mills, refineries] went bad OR bought this house second hand from an old timer who used to work the railroad, odd kind of guy but nice; used to give pennies to the kids on his way home from work; that's what grandpa said.

If any of that rings a bell you are post-industrial. Don't be ashamed. Post-industrial is going to the hot thing next season.

If you are both, of course, you are probably on or near the Iron Range. Even if you live or work smack dab in the middle of a concrete Plinko game, if you have fond feelings, maybe even a childhood memory of these kinds of places you're my target demo. Stick with me.

So let's go back. You know what the thing is about the Iron Range? Stuff closes all the time. Sometimes it's economic, sometimes it's because of trends, sometimes it's because our business class is all about the same age and approaching retirement. All of this snowballs into the aforementioned feeling that stuff closes all the time. Because it does. And this affects people.

So the Mesabi Athletic Club in Hibbing closed Monday, rather suddenly. (Story, Hibbing Daily Tribune, subscription link) This was a private gym and workout facility, the closest thing to a YMCA in town. The MAC faced increasing competition from the handful of strip mall/24-hour fitness joints you'd see in most towns, soulless people-mills where even attractive people appear sullen and the TVs are all set to CNN because that's what you watch in purgatory. Also, utility bills -- which have spiked in Hibbing (a town that still operates a coal-generated power plant) -- were a big factor. In fact the sudden closure was due to a delinquent power bill.

The MAC is for sale, but so is most of the town and neighboring towns. I'm not trying to project an overly negative economic image here. The economy is actually fairly stable right now. It's just that commercial real estate has been like this for three decades, which bears mentioning.

Presuming that the MAC won't reopen in its current form, or that if it does the same market forces that caused its closure will suck down another private investor, let's get to my original point. Every crisis is an opportunity. Communities that convert their complaining skills into "doing stuff" skills will survive and thrive in the 21st century. Even Hibbing could do this. Yes, Hibbing! And all of the Range.

What if community leaders ... scratch that. What if regular people -- parents, young people, seniors, working people -- got together and began forming a new YMCA in Hibbing? The town had one years ago. Grand Rapids and Mountain Iron both support successful YMCAs about half an hour away on either side.

Some general facts, the Hibbing Schools are facing declining enrollment. They have a pool at the Lincoln Intermediate Elementary that no one knows what to do with. What if a nonprofit YMCA was co-located at the conveniently-located school in collaboration with the district? What about the high school? What about the old Jefferson school, which is now owned by a bakery that doesn't need all that space?

The old bowling alley on Highway 37 entering town? The old Ogles grocery store where they have farmers' market in the parking lot now? That's right by the mall. Half the Irongate Mall is available. Literally. One contiguous half of the mall has been closed off from the public because there's nothing in there. And, of course, the MAC itself, though small, could serve a more limited scope model.

Closures might seem depressing at first, but these closures do open opportunities. Fill these spaces. Commercial development would be great, but think of the possibilities for creative people and nonprofits as well. What if the IRRRB was involved, fixed these places up or knocked them down for parks and fields. Build, grow, consolidate and reuse: find the happy medium that these communities have sought since their inception just 100 years ago. It's not always about expanding; it's about regenerating.

I'm willing to work on this. Who else?

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Follow MinnesotaBrown on Twitter or "like" the blog on Facebook. Read more in my book "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range."

Last week I had a conversation with a local business owner in northern Minnesota who provides WiFi internet to her customers. Or, at least, she did. Her internet provider shut down her service because someone, presumably a customer, had illegally downloaded music using the connection. Efforts to implement security to prevent such downloads did not work, so after the second suspension of services she has stopped providing WiFi until they figure something out.

Her efforts to stop the problem seemed to be in good faith, yet her business now operates at a severe disadvantage to larger, corporate-run competitors in her town. I can only assume that these companies either have more expensive software, run their own servers (ignoring such problems), or have some other kind of security arrangement with their provider unavailable to this woman and her small company.

I'm not here to advocate for illegal downloading. Rather, to me, this story seems emblematic of a coming battle that might be over before most people even know it happened.

The citizens of our country now use the internet as part of their everyday lives. People like me now depend on the internet for our work. But control of the internet is only nominally held by the people. Large telecommunication companies, wireless companies and their larger corporate families have vast amounts of day-to-day power in people's use of the internet. Though regulations exist, there is very little legal protection for people such as the business owner in my example.

Related to this are the larger battles for what's called "net neutrality," a big issue in the blogging world my wife and I inhabit. Big companies would like to further monetize the web by creating different tiers for access and dissemination of content, with a pay-to-play system for the fastest, most reliable connections. Opponents of this idea advocate for what's called "net neutrality," or the belief that the internet -- like radio and TV broadcast frequencies and city cable services -- belongs to the people, not the companies that do business over the channel.

Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), a lightning rod for partisan criticism, has probably established himself as the highest-profile official advocating for net neutrality. He'll have a helluva re-election fight in 2014 and you can bet that internet providers will have some input into the position of his eventual GOP opponent (though, to be fair, they have tremendous input into the Democratic party as well).

Rural internet users like me have few choices for access. We pay $70 a month for satellite access that is often slower than advertised and subject to bandwidth limits that prevent any kind of regular use of streaming media or content production. Upload speeds will prevent me from podcasting from my house until new options arise. No laws are being broken. I agreed to the terms with my provider, because I had no choice. I routinely advocate for public initiatives to expand better, more diverse high speed internet options to rural areas, but do so against the pressure of private companies who would likely acquire the networks anyway.

A major freedom of speech issue is coming, and it won't come in the form of a law. It will come in the form of a policy for which you must click "I agree" or go back to your printing press.

This belies the notion that government needs to be reined in to preserve liberties. This sentiment is partially misplaced. Yes, our democratically-elected government can impose restrictions, occasionally does, but has not done so lately for largely political reasons. In any event, a system of legal recourse -- one part judicial, one part electoral -- exists to check this power.

Your government might be able to wrest your beloved incandescent light bulbs from you because of its radical liberal environmentalism (this is sarcasm), but private companies control your access to the electricity needed to run those bulbs and has de facto influence over the materials you choose to read in their lovely white glow. From television programming, to car, home and medical insurance, to access to the internet and wireless networks, private companies exert great control over our lives. That control is expanding, and so-called advocates of "freedom" on issues like guns and hydrofracking are willing conspirators.

Many good corporate citizens exist and you can argue that market forces contain corporations to the public good, but I have no more faith in that notion than a conservative has in the government. Our collective dependence on the strength of blue chip stocks in the portfolios of the middle class prevents the sort of intervention in corporate doings that is a regular part of democratic government. In any event, a rogue corporation with enough capital has all the tools it needs to take over the government in a decade or less.

Fact is, I have faith that my First Amendment rights prevent the U.S. government from shutting down this website so long as I respect the legal rights of others and the criminal code. But my current web host Google reserves the right to shut me down at any time with no recourse. All I have to do is give them a reas....

Just kidding! I love Google. I must love Google. And there you go.

One time I was at this woeful cocktail party at a private college in Iowa. By that I mean it was a VIP gathering for college donors in which students like me were to intermingle harmlessly as a sort of living reminder of why guests paid too much to drink white wine punch mixed in front of them.

As a hazard of the evening I was paired in awkward conversation with the husband of a professor I wasn't getting along with. I believe that he was an unemployed martial arts teacher, not that it matters but it kind of does. He asked where I was from and I said, "northern Minnesota, up on the Iron Range."

"Don't they mine granite up there?"

"No, iron. It's the Iron Range."

"Isn't there some city up there. The Granite City?"

"Not that I'm aware of."

Anyway, long story short St. Cloud is the Granite City and that's in central Minnesota, which is not the same thing. Don't confuse this with the Granite State, which is even farther away (New Hampshire) and apparently where freshman Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8) has moved his family before announcing his bid for re-election this past weekend.

We've been talking about the 2012 8th Congressional District race here for some time and in many ways I hesitate to go the full frenzy when we're still in the off year. But this story is so quirky, and attention for the race is already building faster than anticipated. So here we go.

According to the Duluth News Tribune story, Cravaack's wife Traci works in Boston three days a week. He works in Washington about four days a week during the session. They're selling their house in Lindstrom, Minn., and Cravaack will move to North Branch, Minn., while the family lives in New Hampshire so that they can spend more time together. You will need a map to understand this.

The political challenge is that MN-8 is a big district including several distinct regions, but which is fundamentally a combination of Duluth, the Iron Range, and rural or exurban areas with fast-growing populations. While Jim Oberstar was gone a lot, maybe even more than Cravaack, the image he projected was that of traditional Range politics and no one questioned his knowledge of the region. A freshman, no matter the situation, does not have that good will built up yet. While politics might be practiced differently than in the past, I still estimate voters in this district to be mindful of a candidate's roots and hometown.

I know that the Congressional life is particularly hard on young families like Cravaack's and so moving his family closer to D.C. makes sense. In fact, that's what members of Congress did for 100 years without fault until a generation of challengers, such as Cravaack, started winning races against incumbents by labeling them out of touch with their districts. I think families should stay together where possible. All of this is why it's hard to get real people to run for these offices.

What I don't get is why New Hampshire? Sure, it's a popular place for Boston commuters but the first re-election campaign for any member of Congress is traditionally the most difficult. After that the odds of re-election generally rise. It is fascinating to me that Cravaack would choose an arrangement with political liabilities like this in the midst of a race that will be even tougher than the surprise victory he won in 2010.

Crazy, or crazy like a fox? As with all things these days, I suppose that depends on your politics. Regardless, I'd view this weekend's revelation as the beginning of a story, not the end.

I'll be on the radio Monday with Scott Hall on the 91.7 KAXE Morning Show at about 7:20. The topic is Minnesota's 8th Congressional District and the 2012 election featuring incumbent freshman Rep. Chip Cravaack (R) and his three announced DFL challengers: Jeff Anderson, Tarryl Clark and Rick Nolan. Themes will closely match my blog series on MN-8, which has garnered some attention. You can listen live in northern Minnesota or streaming online from anywhere.

UPDATE: My interview was bumped for an interview with some legislative players in the Minnesota shutdown/budget negotiations. Stay tuned for the rescheduling.

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

Bad ‘economojo’ plagues Range, and beyond
By Aaron J. Brown

These are unsettling economic times for American small towns, particularly the mining towns and surrounding region here on northern Minnesota's Iron Range.

It's not that the Range economy is awful. Things are better than 2008-09. Area taconite mines are running hot, pushed by global steel demand. The problem is that the future seems hazier than ever, and I wonder if that's not the real problem elsewhere, too.

Here on the Range, most big new economic development prospects -- a steel mill, copper/nonferrous mines, and a power plant -- linger in some sort of external delay or existential improbability. The steel mill needs international financing. The copper mines need permits and international financing. The power plant is farcical, beyond a long shot. Nevertheless, these projects absorbed the most public economic development investment on the Range over the last 15 years, to the tune of about $100 million (ballpark) combined local, state and federal dollars.

Of course there have been other initiatives. One economic developer catchphrase clearly states "We need to hit singles, not just swing for the fences."

In this, agencies like the IRRRB and city economic development authorities have tried different ideas under different leadership philosophies and budget climates: wage subsidies, small business loans, storefront loans, education programs and the like. Many more millions of dollars have been spent in this way, with measurable success and failure more or less holding equal.

Here, as seen across the country, economic development remains an advanced sort of Hungry, Hungry Hippos game – lots of churning for a few marbles. You can hear about this in an excellent recent episode of NPR’s This American Life (www.thisamericanlife.org).

Some have argued that an immediate embrace of nonferrous mining as a short-term economic solution would allow growth to replenish local coffers and foster economic diversification. In other words, "Get those mines going now and then we're talking." A similar sentiment exists for Essar’s mining and steel proposal in Nashwauk, the largest consumer of public job creation dollars of our current crop.

I can respect the concept but, first off, I couldn't get those mines going if I wanted to and neither can all the elected officials who ran vowing to start those mines. The involved companies are very optimistic but can't make any promises about long term mineral prices or demand.

It’s interesting that the stock for Polymet, one of the biggest players in Range nonferrous mining, soared the day after they closed their $4 million loan and land swap with the IRRRB last week. Though the company claimed not to “need” the loan, it’s clear that they needed the boost to gain the attention of Wall Street financiers. Even then, analysts at stock watchers like Motley Fool advise some caution until mining begins; paradoxically mining won’t begin without permits and financing.

Regardless, these operations will not alter the current mineral-dependent, tourism-focused white dwarf fate of this region, even if they are successful. Citizens will be rightfully pleased if jobs are created, but public policy makers must not overlook their responsibility to plan beyond these big projects controlled by outside forces.

The mines will mine if they can make a profit, as they always have. No, we must diversify first. We must diversify now. Any public spending must have direct public benefit, now more than ever.

Where to start? How about a public/private partnership to connect high speed internet across the region -- even beyond our cities to the rural areas where many professionals now live? Successful models have now been demonstrated in Wyoming and Massachusetts. (Read great coverage of this issue at DailyYonder.com). Only ignorance by elected leaders and the heavy thumbs of lobbyists have stopped efforts in the past, and continue to hold the issue off the docket.

Few people will start creative or entrepreneurial projects where they can’t get new digital products to market. This is what we need.

We can plainly see that public dollars are limited these days. Still, economic development and job creation strategies must build for the future. A vibrant, balanced economy for the Range must include the capacity to attract workers, entrepreneurs and creative people outside resource extraction industries. In short, we are better off investing in schools, effective local government, and necessary technology. These things will flex with the times and provide the most to our people.

We can do nothing and enjoy the limited prosperity of high taconite prices for one to four years. We might break lucky if all the mining projects boom and stay open beyond the decade, but that’s a gambler’s prayer. The economic confidence necessary to complete a full recovery will require some thought, some planning and some hard work outside our comfort zone.

The problem isn’t our economy. It’s our trajectory or, if you’ll permit me, our "economojo.” We need more, and we must provide it ourselves.

Aaron J. Brown is the author of the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and the book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range.” He teaches communication at Hibbing Community College.

By now those interested have absorbed much of the analysis of the tentative compromise between Gov. Mark Dayton and Republican majority leaders in the legislature to end the state's two-week shutdown.

Dayton loyalists are calling this the best the governor could have gotten under the circumstances and that's probably true. It's still a terrible budget. It is a small moral victory for Republcans trying to protect the wealthy and their interpretation of taxation, though probably not one that will last long or provide them political comfort next year. DFLers in the legislature have few good options. Many appear to be coalescing in opposition to the budget deal. Republican legislators will face enormous pressure to walk back on some of their sticking points. The passage of a bill will be difficult any way you cut it.

Most frustrating to me is the realization that even if the upcoming Special Session yields a budget fix, bipartisan negotiation failed to produce a long-term solution. In the school funding shift, which is nothing but a two-bit accounting trick, we admit that all we can accomplish are things that almost every learned person agrees is stupid. But it's a stupid thing that temporarily fixes a budget gap without either side having to concede ideological ground. At some point the gap in this funding shift will be so great that the means to fix it will be more difficult than the rest of the budget combined.

I can count several Iron Range school districts that will be lucky to survive this increased shift. They can't bond or levy their way out of what's coming.

One unanswered question that I have, shared by many on the Iron Range, is the exact status of the GOP plan to rob the equivalent of Iron Range property taxes from an IRRRB jobs fund. This was one of the more shameful gimmicks used by the GOP and as far as I know this thing will have to be negotiated out in the special session, which appears to be slated for Monday sometime. Added to the mix is the political horse trading involved in Gov. Dayton's biggest accomplishment, the agreement to a $500 million bonding bill to build projects across the state.

People always say "politics are broken." In this case politicians on both sides must recognize that we are cruising for much bigger problems in the future if we don't regain the ability to negotiate both revenue and cuts as a normal part of government stewardship.

To quote one airplane, "BBBBWWWWEEEEWSSSSSCCHHHHH!"

"RRRRUUUUUUSSSSSSCCCHHHHWWWAAA," added its friend, another airplane in the sky.

Range Regional Airshow Announced

Hibbing, Minnesota, June 24, 2011 - The Chisholm-Hibbing Airport Authority is thrilled to announce the 2011 Range Regional Airshow, July 22-23, at the Range Regional Airport, Hibbing. The event celebrates 80 years of providing business and leisure flights to Northeastern Minnesota, "Iron in the Sky."

This two-day, patriotic celebration will recognize our armed service men, women and veterans with static displays and aerial demonstrations of aircraft from all generations. With a variety of musical entertainment, children's activities, educational displays, and aerial performances, the event promises fun for all ages at the easily-accessible Range Regional Airport, located on Highway 37 in Hibbing.

"The 2011 Range Regional Airshow is the first airshow on the Iron Range in 18 years," said Shaun Germolus, Airport Director. "With big name musical acts and high-quality air performances, the airshow promises to be this summer's biggest event. We're excited to be bringing an Airshow back to the Iron Range."

The event kicks off Friday night at 6 p.m. with an adult-only evening of music by Blackfoot, Skinny Molly, and The Gear Daddies interspersed with aerial performances by the U.S. Golden Knights, Miss Mitchell, John Mohr-Brainstorming, John Klatt, and Gene Soucy and Teresa Strokes. Food and beverages will be available for purchase. Saturday is family day starting with a pancake breakfast from 8-11 a.m. and the opportunity to visit educational and static aircraft displays. Children will enjoy playing in our "Kids Play Area" filled with bounce houses and activities. Starting at noon the aerial performers take to the sky, entertaining the audience with gravity-defying feats and displays of speed and grace. Don't miss the scheduled fly-over of the B-52 Bomber slated for mid-afternoon.

For more information, contact the Range Regional Airshow at chaa@rangeregionalairport.com or online at http://www.rangeregionalairport.com/airshow/. Tickets are available at all Lucky Seven General Stores. Tickets for Friday are $30.00 (Must be 21 or older or military id) and $15.00 on Saturday (kids 12 and under are free).

"Between You and Me" on 91.7 KAXE this Saturday morning calls for stories of your "brush with fame." Guest host Julie Crabb will be taking calls, playing tunes and sharing material from contributors like me. My piece begins with the phrase "I am a quintessential B-list local celebrity." It's self-indulgent, sure, but I like to think it's self-deprecating enough to be acceptable to an audience of Midwesterners. If I'm wrong I'm sure you'll let me know, passive-aggressively, for the duration of my my remaining years on earth.

You can hear "Between You and Me" from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday on 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota or streaming live all over the world at www.kaxe.org. The new KAXE website makes it easier to find show archives and my individual essays. "Between You and Me" is syndicated through PRX, available for your local public station to pick up if you pester them about it long enough.

Today could be a big day in negotiations to end the Minnesota state government shutdown. Gov. Mark Dayton has offered to accept an earlier all-cuts budget deal if it includes a substantial bonding bill. Dayton meets with GOP leaders this afternoon with the possibility of a special session in the near future. Follow the Shutdown Blog at MPR for up-to-date news.

As I tweeted, it's fitting if this two-week standoff ends with a political solution used for ages -- miles and miles of concrete.

The Minnesota Discovery Center continues its "Art in the Park" series, running tonight through the rest of summer. Below they describe their next three shows, including three different and interesting genres from northern Minnesota musicians:

Minnesota Discovery Center’s Art in the Park continues with varied performances

July 14, Josh Palmi takes to the Art in the Park stage at Minnesota Discovery Center’s amphitheater. Palmi’s acoustic performance is a mix of original rock, blues and country. Palmi’s 7 p.m. performance is followed by Lost Children, a regional rock band with a growing following across the Range. On July 21, beginning at 7 p.m., the North Shore Philharmonic Orchestra presents a “Mostly Tchaikovsky Evening” featuring Symphony 4, Romeo and Juilette and Mozart violin concerto in D major. July 28 features an acoustic performance by High Drama Blues at 7 p.m. followed by rock band 5th Floor at 8 p.m. Admission to Minnesota Discovery Center is free Thursdays after 5 p.m. Food and beverages are available to purchase. For more information, call 800-372-6437 or visit mndiscoverycenter.com.

MinnPost published an interesting commentary on copper and other nonferrous mineral mining on the Iron Range Monday, written by geologist Rolf Westgard. True Range insiders know that the human story of the Iron Range may largely be explained by geology. Westgard makes some notable observations in his piece. Simply put, global demand for copper will make it harder and harder for companies to resist mining the vast but hard-to-reach minerals available below the Iron Range, despite environmental and economic barriers that exist today.

I've already written a column slated to run this Sunday in the Hibbing Daily Tribune that mentions copper mining, among other things. Not to give away the store, but it builds upon my developing worldview that "miners gonna' mine, but leaders need to lead." Specifically public spending should focus on public good and sustainable development, instead of relying on large outside-controlled projects to "save us," all while spending unwisely on projects with low return.

I've been called cautious. I've been called naive or idealistic. I've been incorrectly identified as a liberal who reflexively adopts environmental stands. You have to understand my point of view. These sorts of economic development hope-and-dream strategies have been going on literally my entire life, which began as the Iron Range economy collapsed and never fully recovered.

I deeply respect the progressive traditions of the region, especially regarding education. This is, in part, why I have become an educator myself and have thus far aligned with the DFL. I understand the conservative counterarguments. Many Range institutions badly need reform. Few from either party seem to deliver anything but subservient leadership or partisan talking points. Wait until the Republicans are in charge, say the Republicans. Wait until the DFL is charge, say the Democrats. Wait until the Blah Blah Blah Voldemort is built, say the developers.

Wait. Wait. Wait. For what?

More on this Sunday. My book where I first developed some of these themes (along with a lot of regional humor) is "Overburden Modern Life on the Iron Range."

As many of you know I'm a community college educator who holds the belief that robust, world-class public education is the fundamental responsibility of any modern, civilized society. People have different views of how we should do this. Some have more trust in private education vouchers than I have. Some believe in reform. Some belief in more funding. I believe in more funding and reform. But that's all just a baseline look at the situation. Today I've got something more specific.


Audrey Kletscher Helbling at Minnesota Prairie Roots wrote a really fine piece of community journalism comparing the advanced placement course offerings at public high schools in her area. She started with a logical assumption, that the wealthier town with fewer students in poverty would have the most AP course offerings and students. That assumption, she writes, proved false. While the wealthier community was no slouch, another nearby town actually offered more AP courses. But she went on to lament that another, similar town had dismal AP offerings, despite its demographic parity.

Her conclusion? The culture of a community and a school have a huge impact on the drive to A) offer advanced courses, and B) push students to prepare for and take them.

I find this to be a fascinating theory in the greater discussion of public education in Minnesota, one that has special relevance to the school districts in my area here on the Iron Range.

I attended the Cherry School for most of my educational career, graduating in 1998 with 38 students. While we did not have the formal AP courses described here, we did have college preparatory classes, some of which were offered through concurrent enrollment with local colleges. I was among several students from this very small, working class school who viewed the pursuit of advanced classes as necessary. All but a few students capable of handling the course material went for the advanced curriculum.

In the years since, I've heard - in a mostly anecdotal way - that a combination of funding cuts, curriculum changes and staff reorganization has all but eliminated the multi-track option. In fact, shop and vocational classes were also eliminated. So even students who didn't care to pursue a liberal arts degree are denied training that would help them find jobs later. This is true across the Range, for a variety of reasons. Yes, state funding formula cuts have badly hurt the region, but so too has declining enrollment and the increasing cost of special education mandates. Nevertheless, some schools have a culture that pushes students toward college preparation and others don't. The difference between the communities is, on the surface, negligible. Not so of district leadership.

As districts make their plans for an increasingly difficult landscape in Minnesota public schools, they should remember that no matter how bad the money situation gets (and it will get worse before it gets better) that advanced, college preparation courses are a modern necessity. If you can't prepare a capable student of any means for college or meaningful living wage work, you should not operate a school in this country. And failure to operate public schools in this country is NOT an option.

Consolidation, pairing and sharing, online options and any number of tools can be used in appropriate ways, depending on the logistical and cultural needs of the community in question. Yes, state funding is a major barrier and I'm not discounting that. But organizationally, districts must not rest on the notion that graduation is all that matters for their students. 21st century college curriculum should be considered as important as heat in January.

Regardless of what you think of my opinion, go over to read and follow Audrey at Minnesota Prairie Roots, another blog about life outside the metro in the Great State of Minnesota.

Former Congressman Rick Nolan makes it official today by announcing his DFL bid for the seat currently held by U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8). Nolan is touring the district today, though he's been seen at local DFL events for months.

Nolan joins Duluth city council member Jeff Anderson and former St. Cloud area State Sen. Tarryl Clark in what seems to be the likely DFL field in this competitive race. The district was previously represented for 36 years by former Rep. Jim Oberstar, an Iron Ranger and national transportation policy expert who lost to Cravaack in a 2010 stunner. More candidates could enter but they are not making themselves known at this time.

I spent a lot of nice June days writing an in-depth series on MN-8, which you can now read in its entirety. When the field seems final I'll schedule formal recorded interviews with all the candidates, including Cravaack.

Campaign Websites:
Rick Nolan
Jeff Anderson
Tarryl Clark
Chip Cravaack

The choppy, awkward first couple minutes shows why I've always wondered what's up with Gov. Mark Dayton. The strong last minute shows why I respect him and ended up voting for him.



Dayton is not a compelling public speaker. Perhaps his policy positions put him in line with a brand of Anderson/Perpich progressivism that is out of fashion these days. But the governor is sincere and determined. Setting his policy positions aside, and those of the Republican legislature, Dayton's interpretation of the word "compromise" here is the most reasonable.

Another way to look at this: Most seem to think that the public is pretty much outraged with everyone in office right now. Who do you think cares less about getting re-elected or what people think about them on Twitter? Admittedly the Republicans are better at saying they don't care about those things, but is that the same?

I'd bet that, for a time anyway, the governor's position ends up being the one that has enduring support. He might blink first. He might blink a million times. In fact, he just did. But maybe this isn't a no-blink contest after all.

The Hibbing hospital nurses began their strike Monday. The Minnesota Nurses Association strike will continue until Thursday with negotiations to start over after that. The sticking point has been staffing levels, patient safety and the inclusion of nurses in the hospitals decision making process.

The Fairview University Medical Center-Mesabi is the region's largest hospital. It has remained open through the strike using alternative staffing arrangements. Other nurses at the hospital are represented by different unions, including the Steelworkers.

Matt Nelson has a nice story in the Saturday, July 9 Hibbing Daily Tribune about a woman celebrating her 109th birthday in this Iron Range town (subscription link). Here's a excerpt:

Signie Burke has lived through two world wars, 19 U.S. presidents, and has been retired for 44 years.

Hibbing’s oldest native celebrated her 109th birthday yesterday with cake, visitors and accordion music at the Guardian Angels Health and Rehab Center.

Burke was born at home in July 1902 in a mining location which is now part of the the Hull-Rust Open Pit Mine. When she was two years old, her house was propped onto logs and pulled by horses into Hibbing, where she attended school at the old Lincoln.

Burke spent a career teaching at Range-area schools that closed decades ago, long after the old Lincoln. The memories she shares in the interview pulse with the rich details of the early 20th century on the Range -- meat hanging off hooks in the storefronts, running from wild horses on her way to school.

109 years is a lot for one person, but it's not insignificant for a place either. Burke's life has spanned nearly all of the modern Iron Range. Not long before her birth the Range consisted of some remote logging camps (including one over old north Hibbing). These pioneers had taken territory held for thousands of years by successive Native American tribes, who had each been displaced by politics, disease and tribal wars stemming from Eastern relocation. And with this came 40 years of intense immigration for the mines, 40 years of relative prosperity, and the last 30 years of economic stagnation in the Iron Range as we know it today.

I offer this merely as a suggestion that this region is labeled "old," our demographics show aging, but that the region's modern history is very, very recent. With turbulent times seemingly on the way, and our fresh water and low prices at the ready, I hope for a similarly interesting and long-lived century for my children here in the woods outside the Iron Range.

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, July 10, 2011 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Animated children’s programming, a dissertation
By Aaron J. Brown

Some among you don’t have children. Some among you have older children you raised some decades ago. Some among you have children, but don’t watch much television because you are so dang busy making homemade granola bars and teaching them to speak Cantonese without a discernible accent.

If any of these describe you, what I’m about to say might not make much sense. I don’t care. I am a college educated adult with a love of knowledge who is writing these very words while watching Gordon pull the Express into Knapford Station on my TV. The twin four-year-olds are sprawled out in a labyrinth of tracks, tendrils reaching every free space in the living room. You see, Gordon is getting too big for his britches. He’s showing off so much that he didn’t see the ice on the tracks. What do you think will happen?

The answer, of course, is another undocumented railway accident on the Island of Sodor, where everyday commerce challenges natural limits to machines governing their own operation. If the trains want to engage in dangerous activities why do their drivers’ allow it? Are they incompetent? Are we incompetent? Are we really in control? Is there such a thing as free will?

I’m not complaining about the shows the boys like. I once subjected my parents to great amounts of He-Man and Mr. Rogers. The issue, rather, is the intellectual bubble created for us adults in the house. We notice higher concepts buried in these kids’ shows, but who do we rush out to tell? If we do, does it matter?

Maybe you know the Count from “Sesame Street.” We are led to believe that, like the stereotypical Romanian vampires from which his character is derived, the Count holds hereditary land and title. The other day on Sesame Street the Count introduced himself. He said that he is the Count because he likes to count. In other words his castle, fine vestments, and the elevated respect he appears to be granted by other residents of the Muppet/Sesame Street world were owed not to the Count’s fortuitous birth, but by his own unmitigated love of numbers.

What would happen if this applied to all of us? No one doubts the Count’s claim on being a count because his dedication to counting is unquestionable. If he were to start botching fours or sevens his paper kingdom would collapse. What if we lived in a true meritocracy? What if we simply adopted our titles from a proper combination of action and passion? What if we already live in such a place, but forget the power we do have?

This all comes along with difficult questions about the ways that creators of children’s shows deal with the reproduction and family structure of their characters. Let’s talk about anthropomorphic vehicles, shall we?

In the aforementioned Thomas the Friends stories, the trains coexist with humans and do not sexually reproduce. Trains are “born” when they are manufactured in factories. Trains “die” when they are scrapped or smelted. This seems reasonable. But in “Cars” and “Cars 2” we are confronted with a world in which vehicles with human characteristics live independently. In the first movie we are presented with cars capable of friendship and business arrangements. It is also implied that male cars would be attracted to female cars, but we’re never sure to what end. (Two points).

In the second movie, we learn that Italian race car and Lightning McQueen rival Francesco Bernoulli has a mother and that Luigi the taxi has an uncle. All of this implies a traditional family structure and some form of biological reproduction. Is it because they’re Italian? Is it because of the metric system? Why is this so confusing? And alarming?

Let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. If I didn’t have boys who liked watching Thomas the Tank Engine, Curious George or Word World, would I be diving head first into an abyss of great philosophical writing and heady literature? Perhaps, but more likely I’d be finding base distractions. If anything these deep thoughts shed light on one truth. From the simple, rises the complicated. The complicated may sometimes only be unwound by the simple.

A good engine should never cause confusion and delay.

Aaron J. Brown is the author of the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and the book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range.” He teaches communication at Hibbing Community College.

This Saturday's topic for the call-in and music program "Between You and Me" on 91.7 KAXE is food. There are a few tried and true topics for this show; one of them is food. Food lets you talk about all the things that really matter behind the veil of a recipe, a smell or a flavor.

My assignment was to talk about picky eaters. With three young boys, including two picky eaters, I know all about this. I ended up exploring the dangerous (and hilarious!) world of peanut allergies. You'll see, I bring this around.

The KAXE Mississippi River Festival will be going on all day Saturday, so if you're looking for some great live music with some very well known musicians check it out.

You can hear "Between You and Me" from 10 a.m. to noon on 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota or streaming live all over the world at www.kaxe.org. My essays generally run in the first half hour. A few other commentators and the voices of the people of northern Minnesota round out the program for a unique two hours of good radio.

A couple weeks ago I was talking to this guy who works in the St. Louis County highway department and he asks my opinion on the rumble stripes. Rumble stripes? Those are a thing? Well, now I see that they are a thing.

This story has everything. Rumble stripes prevent deaths but make noise. Noise is bad. So the county is filling in the rumble stripes, but now we're not so sure if that's a good idea. Also, the state shutdown has halted the rumble stripe filling. The county commissioner is wearing a green shirt with an American flag tie. All of this means something...

When the dust settled on Election Night 2010 many surprises highlighted the GOP victories in Minnesota. The biggest, of course, was Chip Cravaack's defeat of Jim Oberstar in the northern 8th Congressional District. But tucked away among several legislative gains was Carolyn McElfatrick's 2.5 percent win over Loren Solberg in State House District 3B, a seat that includes Grand Rapids, southern Itasca and Aitkin counties.

This is the far western front of what most would consider the political boundaries of the DFL-dominated Iron Range; 3B hadn't gone Republican in 30 years. Solberg was chair of the powerful Ways and Means committee. While McElfatrick was running an enthusiastic campaign, Solberg had just beaten her by 15 points in 2008.

Looking back, however, the clues were there. President Obama only carried 3B by three points that year in a much better DFL climate. This is a changing district, older and more conservative than it was before. Nevertheless, an unprepared incumbent, depressed turnout and Republican tailwind greatly aided McElfatrick's win, all advantages she won't have in 2012.

Yesterday, LaPrairie city councilor and former DFL field worker Joe Gould became the first Democrat to announce a challenge to the incumbent McElfatrick. Two other prominent local DFLers, former Itasca County Sheriff Pat Medure and bank vice president and Grand Rapids city councilor Ed Zabinski are also rumored to be mulling runs. This is setting up to be a fascinating race, one that will play heavily in DFL efforts to retake the Minnesota House.

The western Mesabi has always been a slightly different animal than Rukavina Country in the East. I only know that, as far as Iron Range politics goes, the 2012 fighting will be in the west. 

One catch: District 3B may not even exist after the court releases the new redistricting maps next winter. Rep. Tom Anzelc (DFL-Balsam Twsp) represents most of the rest of Itasca County and points north. Rep. John Persell (DFL-Bemidji) represents Deer River in Itasca County and points west. The largest town in newly elected DFL Rep. Carly Melin's district is her hometown of Hibbing, just over Itasca County's eastern line. The population of Itasca County more or less equals a House district. An extraordinary set of circumstances awaits political watchers in northern Minnesota, the results of which will determine much about the region's future.