The other day I was driving the family somewhere and one of the boys pointed out a junkyard along the highway.

"Hey, boys," I said to my three sons. "Did you know Daddy grew up on a junkyard?"

A pause, then George, 4, uttered a begrudging, "Yeah." Then he sighed.

My wife laughed at me. And so it is.

Between recent writing at this blog, my book, and pretty much every damn thing I am able to translate into memoir, I talk about the junkyard constantly. Did you know? Did you know I grew up on a junkyard? I did, you know.

A recent story by Candace Renalls in the Duluth News Tribune profiles Don Kotula, who grew up on a Hibbing scrap yard in the 1950s and went on to build Northern Tool and Equipment into a major international supplier of parts and supplies. I suggest you read the story for its own merits, a testosterone-drenched love letter to machines and violence.

One passage stood out to me, though:

Being the kid from the town’s salvage business created challenges that toughened him.

“Because you came from a junkyard, you had to strive to prove yourself,” Kotula says. “Up to sixth grade, everything was good. After that, everybody wanted to kick my butt.”

His father’s advice was to pick out the biggest kid and fight. Kotula, who was average size and not much of a street fighter, did just that.

“I knocked out a couple of front teeth,” he says with a tinge of pride. “Dad said you always had to stand your ground.”

Now, I never fought in school. It wasn't my nature. It was the late '80s and early '90s. Fighting was bad, m'kay. Dad did, however, instruct me in the fine art of knocking a bigger kid to the ground and beating his head on the ground until he stopped moving, a fact I still keep tucked away for future use. 

When Kotula says that at some point all the kids wanted to beat him up because he was from the junkyard I was reminded of a Louis CK joke about the song "Signs" by Five Man Electrical Band. In that song, CK highlights the first line "And the sign said long haired freaky people need not apply." He says, "First of all, no it didn't." That is not what the sign said. That is what a long haired freaky person projects onto everything because he is defensive and driven to become exactly what others hate about him.  (Ha Ha! Believe it or not, this is funny when Louis does it).

I suppose this story shows one of the ways you can go after growing up on a junkyard. Kotula went all in on junk and parts. I went the memoir route. But we are still driven, still angry, still overcompensating for those childhood feelings of isolation, swimming in a sea of junk that lapped against the retaining walls shielding it from the good and decent public who would never understand us.

Or maybe not. Maybe I'm just an egghead writer. Can't even turn a wrench.

I'll show you where you can put that wrench.

Yeah, I grew up on a junkyard.

One of my favorite professors during my time at the University of Wisconsin-Superior was Anthony Bukoski. I took his creative writing workshop as an undergraduate and then again a few years later as a graduate student. Was it then that I became a writer almost entirely obsessed with time and place? It's as good a reason as any other.

Bukoski, a Polish-American writer from Superior's east end, writes short fiction almost entirely based in and around this northwestern Wisconsin port city. His complex, vivid working class characters could only come from a writer who knows and loves the people of this place.

Another of my favorite writers, the late Paul Gruchow, one distilled the moral question facing any writer as asking yourself what you've done to "honor and protect the lives of your people." Bukoski honors his people very well.

Last Saturday the Star Tribune featured the re-release of Bukoski's short story collection "Time Between Trains" by the Duluth publisher Holy Cow! Press. This is a wonderful book, and the title story is a pitch-perfect example of Bukoski's style: Taconite trains, loneliness and love.

Today I feature an interview with Jeff Anderson, DFL candidate for Congress in MN-8.

Anderson is a recent Duluth city councilor and radio ad executive who grew up in Ely.

This interview was conducted Jan. 18 at the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm as part of a series that includes Anderson's DFL opponents, Rick Nolan and Tarryl Clark. Later in February I plan to interview the incumbent, Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8).

The interviews are presented by this blog and KAXE-Northern Community Radio. Richie Johnson of Hibbing shot and edited the footage for us. An audio package is being prepared for KAXE to air sometime before the Feb. 7 precinct caucuses and the DFL nonbinding straw poll. You'll be able to see the full video interviews on local public access television. We are working on a way to share excerpts from the interviews elsewhere as well.

Click here to see the interview.

This is my Sunday column for the Jan. 29, 2012 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. It's an expanded version of the piece I wrote for "Between You and Me" on 91.7 KAXE the previous day.

To-do or not to-do: a life of lists
By Aaron J. Brown

We live a life of lists, parsing our rented time on this spinning rock into arbitrary sections. We catalogue our days because that is how we know what was and what must be.

But lately these lists have grown shallow. Websites and magazines bellow: “Five ways to use bacon as a garnish” or “The eight most famous short people.” There are three moves that will drive your man wild and four that will keep your woman from hassling you all the time. Just last week I wrote a column listing five things to be grateful about. Why five? Why not? It’s a number. And, of course, there are the to-do lists. I write a lot of those.

Time management experts recommend using to-do lists. To be clear here, these are people who make a living telling other people what to do with their time, people who while away the hours as time agents, who spend vacation time forgetting about time, retiring from their work having managed millions of hours they never lived. These are the people who tell us what to do with time.

When I was still in college, commuting 85 miles from Hibbing, Minnesota to the University of Wisconsin-Superior, I forget a meeting I had schedule with a professor before I drove home one night. For a GPA-hungry nerd this was unforgivable, even if my professor seemed utterly unfazed when I called him. It was at this time that I began formally recording my schedule and to-do lists every day.

These reams of lists now sit on a shelf in my home office. Years of records document the birth of my children, the construction of our house, new jobs, tedium and triumph, failures and redemptions. Most items have been checked done, if not on one day, then the next, or the next and eventually. The only thing that didn’t survive the churn of my lists was a novel I wasn’t ready to write, and this only serves to benefit the unsuspecting readers who might pick up such a thing.

It is indeed the mark of civilization that we must list our goals. All writing is really just lists. To do, to done. Even to-do lists, however, are becoming vapid with the times. And I’m not innocent in the least.

An honest list includes everything. While a casual observer might not be able to discern all the contents of my lists, if only because of my terrible 21st century handwriting, the lists do tell. In code you can find the distractions and fool-hearty notions of the past. Nothing specific, just the rings of a tree, the high watermark of an ancient river bed. Over the last ten years you gradually see my life move online – away from reporting on city council meetings and toward Twitter exchanges with reporters.

Today, you can mostly find lists of tasks to be completed on the internet, as though social media optimization were an acre of timber to clear. And I suppose it is. “FB.” That means Facebook. “Boards.” That means my online course discussion board maintenance.

I’m glad I keep paper lists if only because it gives three dimensions to a modern world that includes so many electrons dancing through the wires. And something seems that this will all come in handy. How long can we go without turning shovels and chopping wood? My working theory is the first day that the Diet Coke truck fails to make its appointed rounds we will learn the limits of the internet.

Wilco has a song “You Never Know” that goes “every generation thinks it’s last, thinks it’s the end of the world.” Well, this generation is doing a fine job convincing itself that there won’t be anything left when we’re done. Truth is we will fade to the next generation as surely as last week’s shopping list.

The lists will tell our story. To-do, or not to-do. Here’s hoping those lists are worthy of our time.

Aaron J. Brown is a writer and community college instructor from the Iron Range. He is the author of the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and host of the Great Northern Radio Show on 91.7 KAXE.

Covering politics and economic development in the upper Midwest these days invariably brings about a conversation about North Dakota.

Have you heard? North Dakota is booming.

And it is, mostly owing to massive new oil drilling projects in the west. Conservatives like to point out North Dakota's more lenient regulatory environment and lower taxes as the reason for the growth. Liberals like to point out that if it weren't for the demand for the natural resource found beneath North Dakota the state's economy would in the same boat as the rest of the Midwest.

I don't think the truth is exactly "in between," but I do think the two theories melded together -- high-demand natural resources and an "all in" political approach -- in some form explains the massive scope of North Dakota's economic boom in the west, which is actually visible from space.

But regardless of your opinion about the "why" and "whether," I think everyone will find fascinating the details of the "what" and "how."

This new blog by a oil field worker living in what is commonly called a "man camp" near Williston, N.D., is a simple personal blog detailing life in western North Dakota, making good money and working like a dog.

Something about this guy's perspective, which is a little rough around the edges at times, reminds me of descriptions of workers on the Iron Range some 100 years ago. Camp life. Wondering about loved ones and friends who are far away. The only difference is the modern labor practices and internet access.

I am happy for our brothers and sisters in North Dakota, but as you can see "man camp" economic development is highly specialized sort of thing, not something that's easy to transfer across state lines, if only because there is no oil here.

Follow "I Am Here" for stories from the western oil fields.

h/t Bob Collins, NewsCut.

I was hoping to run all three MN-8 DFL candidate interviews this week but we have experienced delays. Rendering these massive digital files has taken longer than expected and Richie has been working hard to polish the videos up for broadcast. I still hope to run Jeff Anderson today, but it looks more like we'll have to run Tarryl Clark on Monday. I am running the interviews in the order in which they were conducted and trying to be conscious of when the "traffic" is relatively equal, to be fair to all concerned.

This has been an good training exercise for us. We had a little unexpected trouble with the sound quality because we didn't have a mixer available as planned. It's OK, but more like documentary sound than studio sound. We'll have this problem addressed for the next interview with Chip Cravaack and will also apply the lessons of this exercise to future content here at the blog. I'm still glad to have done this and it only paves the way for better content into the future.

UPDATE: Word is that both Anderson and Clark will likely have to wait until Monday. Sorry!

Business North has an update on the Magnetation pellet plant discussed here yesterday. Their sources place Superior, Wisconsin, as a leading contender for the facility, though it sounds like the deal is not yet done and Itasca County remains a logical candidate as well.

It could be that the smokestack chasing and economic development gamesmanship of the past 20 years has finally come to this: a reality TV show.

I'll have more on Superior's recent string of economic development successes in a future post.

The next couple days will feature the thoughts of DFL candidates seeking to replace Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8) in this unique northeastern Minnesota district. I'll be talking to Cravaack in a couple weeks, but for those who seek an immediate counterpoint Cravaack has an op/ed in today's Duluth News Tribune about Iron Range mining projects. I'll be asking him about this during his interview.

Today I feature an interview with Rick Nolan, DFL candidate for Congress in MN-8.

Nolan is a former Congressman from the Crosby area. In 1980 Nolan opted not to seek re-election and has since run a sawmill and international trading business.

This interview was conducted Jan. 18 at the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm as part of a series that includes Nolan's DFL opponents, Jeff Anderson and Tarryl Clark. Later in February I plan to interview the incumbent, Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8).

The interviews are presented by this blog and KAXE-Northern Community Radio. Richie Johnson of Hibbing shot and edited the footage for us. An audio package is being prepared for KAXE to air sometime before the Feb. 7 precinct caucuses and the DFL nonbinding straw poll. You'll be able to see the full video interviews on local public access television. We are working on a way to share excerpts from the interviews in other places as well.

Click here to see the interview.

This has been rumored for a while, but Magnetation is now confirming to WDIO they are considering several sites for a new iron pellet plant in the region. A site near their scram mining operations in Itasca County and a site in Superior, Wisconsin are among those under consideration.

I had heard whispers about the Itasca site, which is near their ore reserves. Superior is news to me, though as a major rail and port city serving Minnesota's Iron Range it would fit in the company's supply line. More on this in the morning.

UPDATE: The story goes on to reveal that sites in Indiana and Illinois are also among the four being considered. It would appear that the company is choosing between locating this processing plant near its ore supply (Itasca County), a major distribution hub (Superior, Wis.) and potential steel-making customers (Illinois and Indiana).

Unlike the many taconite plants on the Iron Range today, this mill would produce taconite pellets from material salvaged from old red ore dumps around the Range. Question is, does the ore leave the Range as unprocessed concentrate or as finished pellets ready for the furnaces?

It's been a while since I've shared much in the way of Iron Range arts and entertainment news. There are always things going on around here, especially in the winter. We're still in the juicy center of winter. By March it is all bones and gristle. I don't mean culturally. I mean spiritually.

What I am saying is that we are still in the part of winter in which we of northern Minnesota are capable of hope.

And there is no hope quite like the hope of young thespians. From the wires:

The Subsection 7A-3 One-Act Play Contest will be held at Mesabi Range College this Saturday, January 28th, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Tickets (an all-day pass) may be purchased in the lobby on the west side of campus where there is easy access from the parking lot: Adults $8, Students $5.

The Section 7A One-Act Play Contest will be held at Hibbing Community College on Saturday, February 4th, from 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Tickets (an all-day pass) may be purchased in the theater lobby before the shows: Adults $8, Students $5.

Rep. Tom Anzelc (DFL-Balsam Township) has officially introduced a bill demanding more transparency in the loans given by the Iron Range Resources and Rehabilitation Board (IRRRB) to private companies.

The IRRRB is the unique state agency that governs mining production taxes paid by iron mines in lieu of local property taxes. The agency's economic development efforts over its 70 year history have had mixed results, producing both quantifiable job creation and large scale failures.

The IRRRB was heaped with bipartisan criticism over its early loans to the proposed Excelsior Energy coal gasification power plant project on the Range, a project that has failed to garner necessary permits, financing or purchase agreements and appears unlikely to do so. Rules shielding the use of those loan funds were tucked into a conference bill late in the 2008 session by Sen. Tom Bakk (DFL-Cook) and signed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty. Anzelc now seeks to repeal that language and require more openness in private expenditures of public money.

As the Duluth News Tribune story by Peter Passi shows, Anzelc has gained some support for his bills and might find more yet. However, he still needs a Senate sponsor and several Iron Range lawmakers remain cool to the concept.


Disclosure: Though I was not involved in drafting this bill Anzelc is a friend of mine and I have run his legislative campaigns.

The week ahead will be full of a lot of northern Minnesota political discussion here at the blog. I want to take a moment to share one of my non-political projects.

I have been one of the lead organizers of Dylan Days in Bob Dylan's hometown of Hibbing, Minnesota for more than 10 years now. We just unveiled a great new website, DylanDays.org, which was put together with the help of Hibbing native Dan Bussey and Byers Communications. This year's Dylan Days is May 24-27, 2012.

One of my big parts in Dylan Days is to coordinate the B.J. Rolfzen Memorial Writing Contest and edit the literary journal which all happens before Dylan Days. Are you a writer? A poet? This one's for you.

B.J. Rolfzen Memorial Dylan Days Creative Writing Contest

HIBBING, Minn. ─ Dylan Days of Hibbing, Minnesota, announces its 2012 B.J. Rolfzen Memorial writing contest for poetry and short fiction. All fiction will be judged in one category; poetry will be judged in a student division and an open division for all other poets.

The deadline for the contest is March 1, 2012. For more than a decade, this contest has built itself from modest roots to its status today as a national and international competition that still manages to provide an opportunity for new, emerging or off-the-beaten-path writers and poets.

Winners of the contest will be published in the "Talkin' Blues" journal and official Dylan Days program and receive copies of the publication. First place winners will have their names recorded on a plaque in Bob Dylan's hometown. All are invited to participate in a reading at Dylan Days on May 25, 2012.

For poets, Dylan Days accepts a single poem up to 1,000 words on any subject. The contest is divided into an open division for most poets and a student division for currently enrolled high school or undergraduate college students.

For writers, Dylan Days accepts a short story in any genre, limited to 4,000 words. All writers are invited to submit stories on any subject.

Entries need not be about Dylan or emulate his work. Contest organizers are calling for creativity, strong writing and compelling themes.

Read the detailed entry information at DylanDays.org.

I grew up a mechanic's son of a mechanic's son on the Iron Range of northern Minnesota. My family has long lived around the Range's tamarack swamps, seldom within its cities and often many miles out. Always more focused on the machines, the woods and the work than the machinations of the region's booming, busting ways, the only consistent connection between my family and Range culture is stubbornness.

And I am still here, still in the woods with a sight line to a taconite plant but so far away as to not hear the industrial hum of its concentrator. Like all the Iron Range children of the 1980s I was raised to leave, but I did not. I nevertheless failed to learn the language of machines, the tongue heard in my home as I matured. My dad tells of hearing Finnish in the home of his grandparents, even being able to understand some of it. But he lost the language and I never learned it and my memories of machines run more or less similar to his of Finnish. I am now more likely to learn Finnish than to overhaul an engine.

I write and teach. I can fix a toilet, mow my lawn, haul my own garbage. But I am a denizen of the Information Age and the service economy. I plot podcasts and websites, delicate vases in a sea of engine blocks.

The other night the wind blew hard. It was 20 below. I was washing dishes when the lights blinked. Just a blink. The split second of threatened darkness reminded me that if the power were to go out for a day, which has happened in the past, the whole works would freeze. So much depends upon our machines, or rather our command of them.

I call out in the language of the machines, a prayer to the power behind fate and motion.


Above, my son Henry peeks into an old car parked out at my grandpa's hunting shack a few years ago. Thanks to Historically Minded for a post that inspired these thoughts, a thoughtful essay on the man who started a tractor encased in Antarctic ice. Additionally, I am always inspired by the complex simplicity of my friend C.O.'s "What's in the Shop" blog -- one of my remaining windows into the language of machines.

This is my Sunday column for the Jan. 22, 2012 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. A shorter version of this aired Jan. 21 during "Between You and Me" on 91.7 KAXE.

Good things come in fives
By Aaron J. Brown

We creatures use modern minds to operate machines, systems and philosophies that would once have been considered possible only through black magic. I drove a car to work, a job in which I teach communication classes to people who hold powerful tiny computers in their hands, each capable of communicating with people in every corner of the world on a whim. These devices also allow you to play Angry Birds (but not in class, OK? Now is not the time).

The problem with complex thinking is that it makes you think you have complex problems. If you spend too much time thinking you’re sure to find plenty wrong with yourself and the people and circumstances around you. Sometimes our expectations in life – from relationships, career and family – seem to lead to nothing but disappointment.

One new website called “5 Things” (appreciate5.wordpress.com) by Sarah MacRostie, a northern Minnesota artisan mom, seeks to cut through the haze of negativity. The “5 Things” Facebook site (facebook.com/appreciate5) allows people to post five things that make them feel grateful at any time. Seeing all the gratitude piled up on “5 Things” is heartwarming enough, but sometimes the simple act of asking yourself what you’re grateful about can reshape your whole way of thinking.

I can point to a lot of big things that I am thankful for. First, there is my wife and three boys (not sure if that counts as one, or four). The boys are legally required to live with me, but Christina isn’t. That means something. A day or week or year of dreary routine and little setbacks is made bright with the love of another person. I’ve got someone, and we’ve crafted a family both unique and exciting.

My son George is telling me a train story as I write this. The tracks spiral around the family room, trains running full steam and on time. Doug just called out “Dad, I have a secret.” I asked what it was. “I love you. I say it nice and loud.” Then he threw a stuffed angry bird at a cardboard facsimile of a pig fortress. Henry and I discussed a ramp for his racetrack earlier.

This is a normal day, but also special.

Above my head stands a sturdy roof. Out my window tall trees obscure the view of a lake that is too small for anyone else to fuss over, but big enough for eagles, fish and fowl. Today the lake is an arena floor, a playground and pathway to the unknown, virgin forest on the distant horizon. This summer the ice will melt, lapping up against ancient rocks that the boys have named.

We’ve got some football on the television today. While a public radio supporter like myself is supposed to find the NFL meaningless and cliché, Sunday afternoon football provides great comfort, dull bleating mixed with high drama – good whether you’re sitting on the edge of your seat or napping. Perhaps it doesn’t matter which.

I’ve got enough food to eat, evidenced by my belt as it strains like the moorings of a mighty ship in harbor. The coffee is on, hot and strong. Santa brought me a container of creamer this year that has yet to run out.

My iPod is stocked with bluegrass music. The dinner is ready. My life, for this fleeting moment, seems to be focused and controlled. Perhaps this always was the case, or could have been, but gratitude is the light by which it becomes apparent today.

I don’t know if that was five things, or a hundred. I think the lesson in “5 things” is that by the time you get to five, you no longer need to bother counting.

Aaron J. Brown is a northern Minnesota writer and communication instructor at Hibbing Community College. He is author of the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and host of the KAXE’s Great Northern Radio Show.

Minnesota Public Radio has a nice summary of the MN-8 Congressional race. It's a good primer before I release the audio and video from my interviews with DFL candidates Jeff Anderson, Tarryl Clark and Rick Nolan, recorded Wednesday at the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm.

The candidates weighed in on hot-button issues like the federal budget, nonferrous mining, health care reform and public criticisms they've received. I think they revealed their stylistic differences and varied approaches to the job of a member of Congress, even if many of their positions lined up.

We are in production now. I'll be releasing the video here at the blog early next week, probably Monday. We are also making the video available to other media outlets in a sort of Creative Commons fashion, so I'll let you know where else you can see it. The audio from the interviews will be edited into packages that will air on 91.7 KAXE. You'll be able to hear those online as well.

I am in the process of scheduling the final interview in the series with Rep. Chip Cravaack. I thank all the candidates for agreeing to this interview series. My goal is to give everyone a sense of who these candidates are and how they approach things. So far, I think that's happened. Stay tuned!

You might notice some changes over at Google or Wikipedia today. Many popular websites are joining in a protest over the SOPA law being debated in Washington, D.C.  I am not "going dark" with my website today, mostly because I'm not convinced I know how to bring it back up. But I would like to join with others in recommending to my representatives, including Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken and Rep. Chip Cravaack, to drop this legislation or consider a dramatically different approach.

As it stands, most of the news and content sites you know and love would be put at incredible legal risk under some versions of the SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). Essentially, we could be shut down if we link to a website that is suspected of online piracy, a nebulous term that is hard to define. While I am no fan of pirates, the lack of legal due process in the bill would essentially allow authorities tremendous powers to censor the internet in what is supposedly the greatest free republic on earth.

We are still in the infancy of what the internet will come to mean in our society. While there are many things wrong with the new media -- link baiting, plagiarism, and shallow content -- there are also many things we wouldn't want to lose to the powerful interests that already run so much of the rest of our economy (and media, for that matter).

As I've said before, internet freedom and access is THE central issue in the development of our democratic republic. Censorship won't happen overtly. People will lose the means by which to speak before they are told what they can't say.

On Wednesday, Jan. 18, I'll interview each of the DFL candidates for Minnesota's 8th Congressional District at the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm.  At 1 p.m. I meet with Rick Nolan. At 2, Jeff Anderson. At 3, Tarryl Clark.

You might recall the series of interviews I did with DFL gubernatorial candidates in 2010. This will be dramatically different. Those interviews were packaged as traditional print stories with some analysis tagged on the end. I considered doing the same this year but had this thought:

The Minnesota blogsophere is among the nation's best. Plenty of political analysts turn over every move by our state's leaders, from the left, right and in between. The problem, especially here in the north, is that few media organizations are producing the sort of original content that gives the pundits things to talk about.

Am I still a pundit? Yes, I suppose so. Will I "analyze" this race at some point? Sure. But MN-8 DFLers are going to precinct caucuses on Feb. 7 and many of them have only vague notions of the candidates running. Local media seems to be a step behind and lack resources to devote political reporters to the race. So I'm hoping these interviews give such caucus attendees and future primary voters some objective information to work with to make up their own minds.

These interviews will be presented by KAXE-Northern Community Radio. Excerpts from the interviews will be packaged into audio segments that air on that station's morning show next week. The complete interviews will be produced into video segments that air on local cable access and here on the blog, also next week. I'm working with local videographer Richie Johnson, who will put a professional sheen on my normal antics.

And yes, I will also be interviewing the man these candidates seek to unseat, incumbent U.S. Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8) sometime after the precinct caucuses. He'll have a chance to respond to the comments of the DFLers and address the issues. This interview will be produced and distributed in a similar manner, again most likely from the Minnesota Discovery Center in Chisholm.

Please consider submitting questions for the DFLers or Cravaack. You can leave a comment below, e-mail me, or comment on Twitter or Facebook. I'm looking for open questions that do not lead into your particular opinion. I'll accept questions for specific candidates, but I'm most interested in the issues you think would most influence your vote in the upcoming election. I'll use the best or most relevant questions in the interview, ones relating to federal policies or northern Minnesota issues. It is my goal to conduct friendly, focused, fair interviews for all of the candidates.

The lack of snow in northern Minnesota this winter has led to the cancellation of the John Beargrease sled dog race (WDIO) for only the second time in its history. Low snow totals make racing more dangerous for people and dogs. The Duluth News Tribune also has a story.

Here is my Sunday column for the Jan. 15, 2012 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

A toilet story
By Aaron J. Brown

Let us begin with this reflection: people are disgusting. All people. Everywhere. You need look no further for evidence than the toilet found in your very home.

I’m sure you’re a very neat person. I’m sure you clean that thing every week, scrubbing and polishing away every speck of grime. But in some tiny corner of the commode lies a grimy remnant, a greasy reminder of all things foul.

We learned this first hand recently when my wife and I attempted our first joint “do-it-yourself” job since the ill-fated roof rake assembly of 2002, a project that firmly established the boundaries of our tolerance for one another. And so, a revelation:

Life on the hardscrabble, blue collar Iron Range of northern Minnesota carries certain expectations. Among these are the expectation that you smile at pictures of dead deer, limit any complaints about cold weather to one sentence, and the big one, that you do it yourself. Do what? Everything that doesn’t involve paper or public speaking.

Naturally, being a person who works almost exclusively with paper and public speaking, this is a problem for me. People of the Range, especially men, are expected to attempt to do home improvement projects themselves, regardless of their level of skill or experience, whether it takes 36 hours of reading directions in a crawlspace, whether the thing they are doing catches fire and burns uncontrollably for four days requiring helicopters to extinguish the unrelenting oily flames.

It doesn’t help that I am a mechanic’s son from a five-generation Iron Range family. The fact that I call plumbers and bring my car to the shop for routine maintenance is even more damning.

We live in the country now, a half hour from most service professionals. A leak from the base of our toilet prompted a call to our longtime plumber who put the matter in stark terms. It’s a long drive, a small job and he’d rather see me pay $1.50 to put on a wax seal myself than drive out there and charge me a bunch of money.

So now even service professionals wonder why I am not more proficient with tools, despite my vast profitability to them. One could regard this as a new low in my “do it yourself” record. But I think I hit the real bottom a few moments later when our plumber spent several minutes trying to explain to my wife that yes, this really was a DIY job even for me. At least everyone involved seems to know me pretty well.

And now, back to the toilet and the specter of human taint that casts its shadow over all toilets, everywhere. When you think about it, we humans are the only creatures who concentrate our waste into one distinct engineered receptacle. There is simply nothing else for a toilet to become except for dirty and contagious.

Nevertheless, we successfully drained the tank, removed the nuts and bolts, yanked up the commode and replaced the wax seal. One of the bolts was bent and that provided the only drama as we had to rustle up another. Christina and I ended the project without yelling at each other, storming away, doubting our original decision to spend our lives together, or breaking the toilet in a fit of rage. The kids call this a “Win.”

I can’t say that I’m a DIY pro now. I’ll still need the help of professionals on most of the specialized machinery in my home; and that’s fine by me, so long as I am employed. Still, it was a confidence booster to see the underside of a toilet and live to tell. Hey, maybe someday I could have my own cable TV show, “Brown on Toilets!”

On second thought, maybe not.

Aaron J. Brown is a writer from the Iron Range who teaches at Hibbing Community College. He is the author of the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and host of the Great Northern Radio Show on 91.7 KAXE.

This week on "Between You and Me," the unique Saturday morning conversation program on 91.7 KAXE, the topic is "enough." The idea comes from an exhibit and program going on now in Itasca County called "Enough for All." It's a look at poverty.

Poverty, eh? Well, I get a little tired of the same-old, same-old on anti-poverty crusades. Like a lot of people on the Range, I grew up around a lot of what I guess you'd call poverty. My contribution to the show explores the origins of the word poverty, and the way poverty follows us down through the ages.

Have I ever told any of you about growing up on the junkyard? Yes, well ... more of that. But not too much.

You can hear "Between You and Me" from 10 a.m. to noon on 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota and streaming live all over the world at www.kaxe.org.

I've recently advocated a sort of temperance in talk that boom times in mining are enough to propel the economy of Minnesota's Iron Range forward. That's not very fun, or very popular, or very important, I suppose, as the economy will react independently of what some blogger writes or what you see on your computer screen or smart phone. But a recent international stories might explain my caution.

I'd previously written about Australia's steel industry woes as a warning to our own. Now global iron ore prices are expected to drop this year, according to Dow Jones as reported in the Australian press.

There are many reasons why the American steel industry is better positioned than Australia's, and why demand for steel will continue and thus ensure that Range taconite operations will continue long past the price fluctuations. But local euphoria remains over many proposed mines and projects, most of it rooted in the fantasy of the 1990s: that a return to 1970s-level mining employment is possible.

The process of taconite industry consolidation, efficiency and mechanization that began 30 years ago has rendered such a thing impossible. What remains is a more sturdy iron mining industry, better prepared to last much longer, but that will forever employ a more or less limited number of people.

In other words, while the House of Iron Range Taconite might be well-built, like any house it has a ceiling.

To be considered separately from this are the proposed nonferrous mining projects. These projects use different technology, would be owned and operated differently and involve commodities even more economically volatile than iron. The potential for jobs is there, but that potential requires even more context and consideration before being realized. Nevertheless, I mention these projects because people who actually live on the Iron Range generally group them with the taconite jobs they know and love.

It's bad practice to simply wait for new mining jobs to be created, or, more accurately, wait for political pressure to build to expedite a permit process snarled on important questions, which might allow financing to possibly create jobs (depending on mineral prices). There are too many moving parts to that equation and, while the issue must be resolved, I am always disappointed to see local governments pass resolutions of support for mining and then sit back and wait, sniping at criticism as though it were some existential threat. A more functional region would be working on other ideas while all this was going on. The fact that this isn't happening is, in itself, the real existential threat.

Back to iron mining, still the region's best and most tested employer. One of the big "oh boy!" projects on the Range these last two decades has been the proposed iron mine and steel mill by Nashwauk, a project that had lingered in spirit form through the '90s before being purchased and recently developed by the Indian steelmaker Essar.

Essar Minnesota has prepared the site, poured footings and is now getting important permits to begin construction. It has encumbered and spent a great deal of state and local money on rail and road infrastructure, all of which is visible to travelers in my neighborhood north of Nashwauk, Minnesota.

But buried in a routine report on the project's permitting success, Essar officials revealed to several local boards this week that the project would nevertheless be delayed. Taconite production will be held up until the summer of 2013 and the steel mill is on the distant horizon, so far out that I'd argue it's not responsible to assume it is a sure thing. The main problem: global financing. The secondary problem: steel prices are good, but not great, and steel mills are expensive.

Perhaps my caution is unmerited. I suppose I could end up eating a lot of crow on this, watching Canadian National trains loaded with steel bars and copper rolling down to Duluth. But caution is where I'd bet my paycheck right now; indeed, we who live on the Iron Range are betting our paychecks with every public decision made on these matters.

A more useful approach for us to take, whether we support or oppose new mining and the inherent environmental consequences, would be to work on what we see around us. Our towns must be more inviting. Our people could be better cared for. Our students could be introduced to deeper and more responsive curriculum.

It is often said that "Jobs" are the Number One Issue. True, jobs are necessary for any of this to work. But we don't just need the "x" number of mining jobs; we need three other permanent jobs for every mining job created. Those jobs are no sure thing. They must be grown. We must start with our communities and schools, using the resources -- however limited -- we have available to us now. Doing this gives us better options in the event of sour mining news and greater prosperity if mining flourishes.

KSTP's On the Road segment with Jason Davis featured the owners of the legendary Sunrise Deli in Hibbing as they made the decision not to close down, but to continue as a wholesaler of the popular ethnic foods that characterize the Iron Range.



It's been a turbulent year for Hibbing food landmarks. The similarly named, similarly beloved, but independently owned Sunrise Bakery recently moved from its iconic location on the north side of Third Avenue East, the elbow of the road that pivots up to the old vacated North Hibbing location. It is now located in a smaller refurbished building along the old Great Northern tracks, now used only to bring coal to the municipal plant.

As Jen at "I [heart] Hibbing" points out, sometimes you can't fight the changes. Indeed, sometimes you shouldn't.

The magazine Minnesota Moments features in its winter edition ten Minnesota bloggers who write about life in this Midwestern state. I was honored to be included.

It's a nice collection of writers. My section gets into some nitty-gritty about choices you have to make when you write about controversy and politics, and some of you might find that interesting.

Special thanks to Audrey Kletscher Helbling at Minnesota Prairie Roots, another of the featured blogs, who collected responses for the magazine and shoe-horned me past the editors. MN Prairie Roots, rich with photographs, history and modern perspective about southern Minnesota, is probably the best "place" blog in the state.

Writing about place is the great potential of the internet, allowing everyone from anywhere tell the story of their people. Together, we learn who we are.

Tonight at 6 a public meeting will be held in the small western Iron Range city of Keewatin regarding the red dust blowing off the Magnetation scram mining site south of town. Representatives of Magnetation have been invited, as have local officials.

Magnetation is a newer company producing iron concentrate from mine dumps once considered too difficult to extract. It's been one of the biggest new employers and positive economic stories on the western Iron Range these last few years. However, anyone who's driven by Keewatin on Highway 169 has seen the red stained highways and red-tinted houses of the city.

Some days it looks like a tomato soup explosion. My grandpa says that's how the whole place used to look, but not in a long time.

The story is atop the Hibbing Daily Tribune front page today.

Duluth, Minn., mayor Don Ness delivers remarks Monday from a unique lectern after being sworn in for his second term in office. Ness ran unopposed in the November 2011 election. Ness enjoys historic popularity as some credit him with leading a more youthful, economically diverse Duluth, once known mostly for decline and political discord. Several new and returning city councilors were also sworn in and gave speeches from the frozen podium.

I just went for a walk outside. I had to unzip my coat. I sweat through my shirt. This is Hibbing, Minnesota.

The temperatures in northern Minnesota are running 50 degrees warmer than you often see this time of year, a couple dozen degrees above average. There's almost no snow in open areas, just an unending sea of mud and grass. Maybe this is winter in some places. It is deeply disturbing for those of us along the Laurentian Divide.

This is my Sunday column for the Jan. 7, 2012 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. The "top words" column is another annual tradition of mine. A version of this piece aired recently on 91.7 KAXE.

Occupy Language: Top words from 2011
By Aaron J. Brown

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said “Use what language you will, you can never say anything but what you are.”

How we talk, what we describe and why is the sum of our human existence. That’s why every year I look at the list of top words put out by an organization called the Global Language Monitor, which tracks language use in our culture. From this list we learn who we are and how we are different from those who came before.

The top word for 2011 is “occupy.” This word is associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement, which was big news this year, but also with the end of the occupation in Iraq and in the terms incorporated by successful protest movements around the world.

Time Magazine named “The Protester” as its Person of the Year for a reason: this was a year of meaningful protest, even if some results have been uncertain. The word “occupy” represents more than the literal meaning, but rather the occupation of our minds by disturbing conditions in our world.

Next on the list is “deficit,” a term you often hear in American political disputes but is actually causing even more ruckus in other parts of the world. Are you familiar with the European Debt Crisis? If not you’ll soon get to know it’s sequel, “Global Debt Crisis,” starring the USA and China and featuring some place you know being burned in protest.

Or maybe not! Ha Ha! Let’s stay positive.

It doesn’t bode well that the third word on the list is “fracking.” This controversial term refers to a hydraulic process that removes fossil fuels from previously unattainable reserves. Fracking involves pumping toxic liquids into the earth and the possible side effect of “earthquakes,” so at minimum we are closing the gap between reality and science fiction.

Some important people would like you to know that there’s nothing wrong with fracking. Why wouldn’t we believe them? They are scientists, no? Legend of local monsters coming to life mean nothing in today’s modern go-go world.

Another ominous word takes fourth position: “drone.” The United States has been secretly flying unmanned Predator drones into the airspace of some of the world’s most dangerous hotspots. And the fact that a midlevel writer in the upper Midwest knows this shows you about how well the secret has been kept.

After this the list gets funny. Sort of. The fifth word is Non-Veg, an Indian meal featuring meat that has become something of a worldwide culinary trend. The sixth was new to me, Kummerspeck, a German word referring to weight gain due to emotional overeating. That’s not very funny, but the Americanized version “grief bacon” is pretty funny. The seventh word is haboob, an Arabic word now being applied to massive sandstorms in the American southwest. Sandstorms aren’t funny either, but I’m glad to welcome haboobs to the vernacular.

The list makes mention of how words and numbers are constantly merging. The term “3Q” is the eighth word and represents a sort of universal term for “thank you.” It earned some notoriety by being banned by the Chinese government. The last two words are also protest terms, “Trustafarians” are the wealthy British protestors who participated in the low-income riots last year. “(The Other) 99 percent,” of course, are the population group that has suffered during the global economic crisis while the Top 1 percent have benefited, according to the backers of the aforementioned Occupy movement.

A year with so many protest words also brought the term “Arab Spring” as the top phrase of 2011. Dictatorships across the Middle East fell at the hands of democratic protestors and small armies. The top phrase from 2010 was “Anger and Rage,” which also makes the list in 2011 but with the caveat that the proper term ought to be “Frustration and Disappointment.” This seems to me to be the Minnesota version of Anger and Rage.

Global Language Monitor also lists the top names of the year, first being the late Apple founder and tech innovator Steve Jobs and the other being the late Osama bin Laden. Though these two men lived very different lives and produced very different outcomes, both unequivocally changed our world forever.

It’s usually hard to predict what the top words will be one year to the next. You can expect that the 2012 election and continuing financial problems around the world will influence the selection. I suppose all we can do is let hope “occupy” our hearts and try to lay off that grief bacon.

Aaron J. Brown is a writer and college instructor from northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. He is the author of the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and host of the Great Northern Radio Show on 91.7 KAXE.

The topic for this week's "Between You and Me," the Saturday morning call-in and talk special on 91.7 KAXE, is fitness. As with many, the new year has me thinking about my shape -- round -- and making plans to get things back under control. My essay this week, a reprisal of a previous humorous view of my upper body condition at a water park, should be a fun listen for those of you with an active (but not too active) imagination.

You can hear "Between You and Me" from 10 a.m. to noon on 91.7 FM in northern Minnesota or streaming live and archived at www.kaxe.org.

In the last couple years I've come to regard modern politics as a drug. You take the "politics opiate" for a reason you regard as good -- the future of your country or community, issues close to your heart, a cause of some importance.

But it doesn't take long before you can find yourself in politics for the thrill of victory, the fear of defeat, the drumbeat of endless speculation and process. At some point you look to the media and local political organization not for information or action, but for a constant, syrupy reassurance of your political worldview and ego.

And you hope you're one of the ones who doesn't get caught up in the nonsense. You're different. You're right. You will prevail.

You're kidding yourself. Or at least I was.

There are some serious problems in American democracy today, most of them related to the way Americans interact with their democracy. The country has a long history of partisanship, but I think you could argue that our partisanship hasn't been so ideological since just before the Civil War. The parties are no longer just organizational hubs, they are religious identities.

Further, now that we live in the Information Age our remarkable, malleable, enduring capitalistic republic has reverted to a form of "political-entertainment-as-government," if only because in this moment that system is both the most profitable and easiest for traditional power brokers to manipulate. A constant campaign between groups that hate each other keeps people watching, political groups spending and leaders putting off big decisions until the next big election, when conditions might be better for their side.

Perhaps it has always been this way? I read a lot of history, though. I talk to a lot of old timers. This feels new.

This past Tuesday I watched the results of the Iowa Republican caucuses pour in. Much like a football game, I watched with great interest even though I don't live in Iowa and am not a Republican. I still expect to vote for President Obama, although for very different reasons than four years ago. Nevertheless, I hooked myself up to the 24/7 political drug IV of TV news for a night and, boy, it felt like a relapse -- a careening fall back into the abyss of anxious worriment.

I was pulling for Ron Paul. I disagree with his central premise, that a robust federal government should be all but abolished, but I appreciate how evenly and thoughtfully he applies his views to his policy proposals. I like that he is running on an idea, not just because his election would be good for him personally. And I agree with him profoundly on the need to decommission the military industrial complex. Naturally, Paul lost.

But in a free moment Tuesday I decided to go back to some of the things I wrote in January 2008 when I was wrapped up in the excitement of that election. I even "endorsed" candidates in the GOP and Democratic caucuses -- which is kind of ridiculous in retrospect. I did get the race I wanted, eventually -- Obama vs. McCain -- but that race didn't play out as the civil, high-minded affair that I hoped for.

At the time I supported Obama because I thought he was a candidate for "our times." Like many I think I thought he'd elevate discourse, soften the partisan divide, change the dynamic in a broken Washington and media complex. None of that really happened. A lot of blame can be laid at the feet of Republican obstructionism and the flame-fanning media, but I thought Obama could overcome that. He didn't.

Obama did score some policy victories, however. Because of our reactionary times, those victories cost Democrats the House, and might cost them the Senate and even the White House in '12 (though I bet not), but he did accomplish core gains on health care, righted the economic collapse of President Bush's last year in office, and has been a remarkably adept foreign policy leader.

You'd wish health care reform was better -- less costly, less cumbersome, and creating the necessary detachment between health care coverage and your employer. You'd wish the economy was better -- it still isn't very good and far too many people are stuck in a rut, fighting for survival. You'd wish we were out of Afghanistan just as we're now out of Iraq, that American interests were buoyed in China, Europe, Russia and beyond. We wish for these things and will get them, eventually. And when they come the leaders who achieve them will stand on the shoulders of Obama's policies, even if they curse Obama's name.

Obama is a leader for our times, as I said in 2008, but not because he's magic, as I and others thought at the time. He is a leader for our times because he is pragmatic and skilled in surfing on the waves of nonsense our times produce. It is possible that Mitt Romney could beat him. But Romney is certainly pragmatic, too, although I find him to be a bit more of the calculating and disingenuous type. And this is the sort of people our times produce. Radical fireballers who can't govern and pragmatic politicians who struggle to deliver tiny doses of pragmatism to an angry and frustrated republic.

If conservatives wanted real change, meaningful reforms to the federal government, the only candidate who would actually do that seems to be Paul. Romney will parrot the talking points of right-wing talk radio, but would probably be a very similar president to Obama, throwing occasional bones to his base instead of the left. Further, I believe Obama to be more capable of delivering long term entitlement reform and an enduring budget solution -- one that includes taxes and cuts.

For that reason I think Obama will win, but who knows? Our times are strange indeed. To break the cycle, a lot of us would have to decide to utterly change the way we think about politics, something I hope for in coming years.

It's been interesting to watch the patterns of mining and economics on northern Minnesota's Iron Range lately. In addition to bullish numbers from the big taconite producers, small scram operations like Magnetation are expanding wildly. This most recent story from WDIO shows how a joint venture between two companies, Magnetation and Steel Dynamics, parent company of Mesabi Nugget, seeks to extract concentrate from several big tailings basins near Chisholm.

Officials describe using warmer than average weather to chase the available ore, feeding hungry mills and contracts. Something about the temporary, hunter-like attitudes of these smaller operations reminds me of the descriptions of the old red ore mining days at the dawn of the Mesabi Range. Lots of small mines, younger adults working out on location. They don't need to live in little location villages anymore. Most of them have F-150s or at least a beat-up Dodge.

Range mining of the late 20th century was a story of big producers hiring lots of people. These new operations now seem more like a contest of humankind against the ore itself, never mind the parent companies, to be concluded when the ore is gone. After that, Range miners will again hope to be employed by the big taconite plants.

There's no way this can last forever, but the economy on the Range has to be a lot better than it is elsewhere.

Daniel Fanning, the Iraq war vet and Duluth political organizer, announced Wednesday in a letter to supporters he would withdraw from the race for Congress in Minnesota's Eighth District. Citing a lack of funds and insufficient support from likely delegates in the DFL endorsement process, Fanning said he will focus on helping the DFL win the contest against freshman incumbent Rep. Chip Cravaack (R-MN8) in other ways.

Fanning represented an outside candidacy, a true dark horse who had limited support within the party but whose personal story and frank style had an upside. Unfortunately, he just never caught the wave he needed to build support in advance of next month's crucial precinct caucuses.

Three candidates remain in the DFL race: Former Duluth city councilor Jeff Anderson, former Congressman Rick Nolan from Crosby and former St. Cloud-area state Sen. Tarryl Clark who moved to Duluth for this race.

Fanning's departure puts support from Duluth and progressive corners of the party back on the table. This benefits Nolan and Anderson most, who probably would have split support with Fanning in these constitencies. Fanning's exit hurts Clark by increasing the amount of support she'd need to win the DFL primary, where she and Anderson have said they'll run with or without the party endorsement. Clark has faced scathing criticism over her residency situation and now faces a strengthened Anderson and Nolan, both of whom are busy citing their deep, personal roots in northern Minnesota.

A close, three-way primary field is possible here, but so too is a quick winnowing to two candidates, or even one, if the endorsement process produces a clear leader.

Though it's been in the works for some time, today it's official. The Duluth Missabe and Iron Range Railway is no more. Parent company Canadian National has merged it with two other regional railroads to streamline its operations, which carry a robust array of commodities including Iron Range taconite bound for eastern steel mills. I discussed trains just before the holidays.

Suggested nicknames for the major cities of northern Minnesota's Mesabi and Vermillion iron ranges, listed without commentary (west to east):

Grand Rapids: G-Rap
Coleraine: Raine Maker
Bovey: V-Bo
Taconite: Tac Attack
Marble: Marbs
Calumet: The Met
Nashwauk: Wauker Texas Ranger
Keewatin: Kee West
Hibbing: Histocity
Chisholm: Chisel Town
Buhl: Water City
Mountain Iron: Myron
Virginia: 53169
Eveleth: Eva-last
Gilbert: Broadway
Biwabik: Pen City
Aurora: Sky Light
Hoyt Lakes: Hoy Hoy
Babbitt: Babs
Embarrass: Frozone
Tower: Too Tall
Soudan: The Underground
Ely: Electric Ely

This is my Sunday column for the Jan. 1, 2012 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune. My annual predictions column is one of my favorite traditions. Enjoy and Happy New Year!

Time to delve into ‘12
By Aaron J. Brown

The pathway was clogged with skunks. I hate skunks. Warm winters bring out the skunks. So I guess I hate warm winters, too.

I was deep in the tamarack marsh known as the Sax/Zim peat bog. All you find when you search for this place on Google Maps is a bunch of squiggly lines and some checked lines that denote railroads. Come to think of it, Google Maps just refers you to a PDF of a St. Louis County map from 1970.

It was time for my annual visit to the Oracle of the Sax/Zim Peat Bog, the moss-covered recluse who knows the future. But first I had to contend with these skunks. There were at least a dozen of them, but the biggest three were costumed and highly metaphorical.

The first skunk approached wearing a camouflage jacket and night vision goggles. “I am the Skunk of Fear,” he said. “I represent the trepidation people have about the new year.”

He was quickly joined by another skunk wearing a Magic Eye t-shirt. “I am the Skunk of Confusion. I do not know where I am. I do, however, have very strong opinions about politics.”

Finally, a third skunk, the biggest among them, stood at the front of the skunk mob. “I am the Skunk of Moving This Along. Join me, and I will take you to the Oracle.”

I followed him through the scrub brush, not too close, to the ancient terrestrial mound which serves as the Oracle’s home. While the skunks took to rough talk around a burn barrel I entered to speak with the woman who had all the answers about the upcoming year.

“Oracle!” I called.

She was at her breakfast nook reading something on her electronic Nook. She gave me a look and quickly stowed it in her tuque.

“I have come for the future,” I said.

“It’s already here,” she replied. “I will tell you several items for your newspaper column, but I demand something in return.”

“Anything,” I said. “Within reason,” I added.

“Find jobs for the skunks,” she said. “They have been out of work for months and have become shiftless and troublesome. They’ve been waiting for the new mines to open and hire them despite their lack of education or experience. I try to tell them, but … they are skunks.”

“I will do what I can.”

I’d have those skunks blogging before the day’s end. With this she began her predictions.

“Supporters and opponents of nonferrous mineral mining will find an uneasy peace battling a common enemy,” she opined. “Skunk bloggers.”

This Oracle was good. Real good.

“Controversy will arise when the City of Hibbing decides to tear down an old building,” she continued. “The unoccupied economic development spec building out by the airport will find itself on the chopping block when city officials forget why it was there in the first place.”

“But why?” I asked incredulously. “It’s a city treasure!”

“Safety,” she replied. “At any moment it could topple upon on a passing child.”

“Surely the local historical society will have something to say about this,” I said.

“They have already offered a bulldozer and a store of oily rags for the job,” she said.

“We will build another,” I said. “Maybe two. That’ll show them.”

“Hmmm,” she sighed. “In other news, the success of last year’s air show will inspire another big event, an exhibition of those funny flying machines that don’t fly from right before people figured out how to make machines fly back in 1905.”

“Like, that stock footage from old timey movies?”

“Yes.”

“Why is the future picking on the airport?” I said.

“It isn’t. That would be Congress you’re thinking of.”

“Topical,” I said. “What else you got?”

“In the 2012 election it will be revealed that a presidential election involving people named Barack, Mitt and Newt is an elaborate joke being played upon the American people by the committee of industrialist that have actually run the country since Nixon resigned.”

“How will this joke be revealed?”

“In Ron Paul’s speech after the Iowa caucuses.”

“My, that will be something.” I said.

“I need to get back to my Scandinavian murder mystery,” the Oracle said. “And, as you can see through the window, the skunks have taken to chanting something they saw on the internet.”

They will become the finest bloggers in the world, I thought. And with that the skunks and I made the long walk back to civilization.

Aaron J. Brown is a writer and college instructor from northern Minnesota’s Iron Range. He is the author of the blog MinnesotaBrown.com and host of the Great Northern Radio Show on 91.7 KAXE.

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