Coupon quest

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, Aug. 24, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Coupon quest
By Aaron J. Brown

Economic woes introduce many people to the world of couponing. It’s not that our current economy is oppressively bad; no one is selling apples on street corners or loading family possessions into cars to go pick peaches in California. It’s just that today’s food and gas prices pinch the family budgets of everyday folks. Coupons bridge the gaps, especially if you’ve never used them before.

Don’t take my word for it. That’s an order. I’m not the coupon expert in my house. My wife Christina is a coupon junkie. I don’t mean that she just clips out the Sunday coupons for products we normally buy the way a lot of people do. It’s much more than that. She hunts down hard-to-find coupons: Coupons you can only find in rare Ukrainian newspapers sold in black market newsstands deep beneath the surface of the earth. The products associated with these coupons are not from your so-called “name brands.” Indeed, they are often packaged in burlap sacks and advertised as “Bag O’ Food Stuff.” But you wouldn’t believe how cheap this food is. It feeds the family for a month, tastes good with the free tater tots she got from another coupon, and, most of all, has another coupon on the side of the sack. This coupon will secure a free college education for one moderately intelligent child if you buy 150 bags of frozen corn before the year 2012.

I’m kidding. A little bit. While I have lately been “the writer” in the family, Christina has achieved sudden success as The Northern Cheapskate (http://www.northerncheapskate.com/). She writes and edits a free blog that features coupons and deals focused on family budgets. I’m not writing this to promote her blog. I’m writing this to explain why, when you see my cart at Super One, I have 56 boxes of graham crackers, half a beef and a mitt full of tiny coupons allowing me to buy these things for $6.50.

Oh, but it’s not always a picnic. I am often the one dispatched to the store to make the final buys because we live far outside of town and my job is in town. When I go to the store to execute a coupon purchase, it’s not as simple as buying all the items on a prepared list. Christina’s lists often go like this:

1) Go to the back of the store and ask for Lenny. Lenny has a special book of coupons
that appear to be expired but that really aren’t, if you are wearing the color red.

2) Take this book of coupons and wash it in a blend of lemon juice and vinegar. This will reveal the real coupons.

3) Purchase six packs of blue pens, four packs of black pens, and 24 pounds of butter. Take them to Pens n’ Butter, that new store on the edge of town, and trade them for a free cereal voucher. OMG! Free cereal.

4) Trade the cereal with passing migrant workers. Try to barter for fine silks and steel tools.

5) Take the tools to a large local retail store and exchange them for diapers and a six-pound tube of toothpaste as part of a special promotion designed to attract migrant workers. Act like a migrant worker. Accept temporary employment if necessary. Put your wages in an envelope and bring it home with the diapers and toothpaste. Also, stop by the bread store for super saver Tuesday.

The experience is much like playing Nintendo’s old school “Legend of Zelda.” But, of course, there is no disputing the results. Christina runs a tight ship in the household budget and you wouldn’t believe the deals. What are we going to do with all this extra money? Well, that depends on the coupons in the Sunday paper. Maybe it’ll be a metric ton of Honey Nut Cheerios or a steamer trunk full of iPods. Either way, we’ll be living well.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Read more or contact him at his blog, MinnesotaBrown.com. His new book “Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range” is coming out this fall.

I archive my columns at my writing site.

On proper boat maintenance and our fathers’ mysteries

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, Aug. 17, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune.

On proper boat maintenance and our fathers’ mysteries
By Aaron J. Brown

Today, I have a boat. Not a boat, but the boat. I would need to consult my notes, the dusty old owner’s manual and the title to tell you all the things true boat people would want to know. Most of this information – from the construction of the engine to the physics of the hull – is a mystery to me. Here’s what I do know. My great-grandfather bought some version of this boat when he lived on Serpent Lake down on the Cuyuna Range. It’s been through a lot; now, after last weekend, it’s mine.

Even though the old pictures show my great-grandfather standing in front of his 1957 wooden speedboat, wearing a brimmed hat and glasses, for me the boat will always be my dad’s. My great-grandfather died shortly after I was born, so my only memories of the boat are of dad rebuilding the relic from his childhood. The boat lived in our garage, always there and always changing, maturing from its old form to something greater. That’s how it seemed to me, anyway. The truth was that dad was always there and always working on the boat, usually to the detriment of his marriage, occasionally attempting and usually failing to explain the workings to his bizarrely academic son.

In the beginning, this classic wooden speedster sported blue paint and wood grain along the sides. Unlike the low, slow rides of a fishing boat or the high, powerful excursions of mightier vessels this boat mixes both, riding low to the water while using power and a unique shape to leap through waves. But, like many boats of its kind, despite Herculean maintenance efforts, the wood hull rotted beyond use when I was still very young. By chance, sometime in the ‘90s, dad found a ’62 fiberglass hull that almost perfectly matched the shape of the old wooden boat. So again he began a restoration, converting all the fixtures, adornments and the old motor over to the new hull, which bears a similar patch of blue over its white base. The title calls it a different boat but it is the same boat, certainly in spirit.

I’m part of the fifth generation of Browns on the Iron Range, the first in my paternal lineage to never work in a mine. I’m also the first to make a living in the vague, foggy margins of modern human society: writing, teaching and causing words to appear on something called “the Internet.” Most important, I only recently began to understand how this boat actually works, and even so only barely, like a child’s knowledge of animals at the zoo. The deep inner workings of machines have always been second nature to the men of my family. For some reason, perhaps simply an outcome of my time on this planet, all of that escaped my interest as a boy. By the time I realized how good it would be to know these things I was completely absorbed in other interests, my career, marriage and, now, my family.

Dad now lives in a big city and couldn’t bear to see the boat so far away from water when he knew I lived so close to it. So one day he called up and asked if I would take it. But the truth is that the transfer of my father’s boat to his eldest son was bound to happen eventually. This boat, so warm and familiar, but also so mysterious to me, was always something that I would have to reckon with. I tried taking notes when he explained the motor, the fuel mixture, the connections of tubes and ropes that make this boat go. Taking notes is what I know how to do. The notes, however, got wet. This transition will not be easy.

I can only be glad that my dad – now plotting his next garage project – is only a phone call away when the mystery grows too great. I can only hope that one day my own sons enjoy unraveling their father’s mysteries as I do today. For nothing rides on a Minnesota lake quite like this boat.

I archive my columns at my writing site. My new book "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range" is due out this fall.

Same now as it ever was

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, Aug. 10, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Same now as it ever was
By Aaron J. Brown

Most people know the political tradition here on the Iron Range: Independent, but generally Democratic, and heavily influenced by the past and present labor movement.

Sadly, it’s almost impossible to talk about politics and history without some people raising their partisan hackles, sharpened so harshly by the cable news sensibility of our times. Try to suspend partisan bias for a moment.

The Iron Range political tradition grew out of the historic struggle between unskilled immigrant workers and the mining and logging companies that prospered using their labor. Interestingly, the Iron Range of the early 1900s up until Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was, like the rest of Minnesota then, solidly Republican. Most immigrants couldn’t vote and those who could, along with skilled native laborers, businesspeople and the editors of papers like the Mesaba Ore all voted alike. The tradition of that time was to preserve the mining companies, and everyone’s jobs and family, by voting the way the mining companies recommended – for pro-business candidates who would discourage unions and preserve commerce above all else.

That’s why our region went overwhelmingly for GOP corporate favorite Warren Harding in 1920, a man who, according to the recent book, “The Teapot Dome Scandal” by Laton McCartney, was recruited by corporate interests to remain clueless about corruption in his administration once elected so that his appointees could conduct favors for the oil industry. (I’ll let you construct your own modern parallels on that one). After Harding’s fatal heart attack in 1923, Minnesota went Republican again in 1924 for “Silent” Cal Coolidge, who once visited Hibbing and remarked that the Hull Rust mine pit was an “awfully big hole,” and yet again for Republican Herbert Hoover in 1928.

History allows us the hindsight to say that the voters of Minnesota and the Iron Range should have seen the economic collapse of the Great Depression coming and the corruption that marred this time in American politics. But the greater problem of that time was not partisan (indeed, plenty of corrupt Democrats participated in the process, too). No, I wouldn’t write this if it were simply a notable observation from history. Today’s headlines may be delivered to our e-mail inboxes, heralded across a network lightning fast network of computers, but they tell a starkly similar story.

For instance, last week we heard reports about Wal-Mart, a company that, like the mining companies of the early 20th century, opposes unions in its workforce. Wal-Mart recently issued a recommendation to its managers to “discourage” the passage of a law making it easier to form labor unions. Some of the reports quoted managers who heard veiled language implying that employees should be specifically discouraged against voting for presumptive Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama, who supports the pro-labor law. Wal-Mart issued statements correcting that it does not tell employees how to vote, but its opposition to unions remains clear. Similar interests are spending millions trying to discourage union formation by spreading misleading political ads in Minnesota’s U.S. Senate race.

The parallels between the stories of mining camps of the 1920s and the folks who clock in at our local Wal-Mart or other big box stores are amazing. No, they’re not obvious. There’s a big difference between the kind of work done by 1916 miners and 2008 Wal-Mart cashiers. But the role these jobs play are the same: they are the jobs done by people starting out, raising young families, especially by those who weren’t promised any favors at birth.

Important in all this is how today’s partisan labels are equally irrelevant to the hard truth of how the world really operates. This isn’t a Democrat vs. Republican thing; it’s a powerful vs. powerless thing. The structure of our society is rapidly becoming more similar to the 1920s: a few rich, powerful people at the top, a relatively small group of hangers-on who support the upper crust, then a vast collection of people living paycheck to paycheck in the middle, and finally a huge, undocumented mass of people living below the poverty line.

And yet here we are, arguing about drilling for oil and how the estate tax hurts the “little guy who happens to be a millionaire.” The ghost of Warren Harding has risen. How will we vote this time?

America, and especially the Iron Range, prospers only when the middle class is growing, poverty is subsiding, and when most citizens regard such events as universally good. In this, the interests of hungry, up-and-coming citizens willing to work their way up must be reconciled with those of the powerful companies who rely on their toil.

It is the same now as it ever was.

I archive my columns at my writing site.

Modern life exposes soft underbelly of human nature

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, Aug. 3, 2008 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Modern life exposes soft underbelly of human nature
By Aaron J. Brown

For all our bluster, we humans are really just soft, pink beings that consume more than we should and run much more slowly than other mammals our size. Ancient humans learned this quickly, by necessity, after it was realized that saber-toothed tigers would eat them if presented the opportunity. So these humans banded together, forming coalitions of soft, pink people who would use their smarts to overcome larger and/or faster critters with sharper teeth or better flavor. Sure, they were in good shape. (Nothing gives you cut abs like fighting ancient bear-like creatures that I presume once existed). But they didn’t have cool rhino horns or awesome cheetah speed to protect them.

Life was hard, but simple, and always a little better for the children’s generation; unless, of course, it wasn’t (Ancient bear-like creatures gotta’ eat, after all).

Northern Minnesota developed rapidly over the past couple of centuries. People here have also learned about our soft pink nature, hence all the parkas and elaborate fish houses. But the place was also shaped by the hard, usually outdoor jobs that people here worked: Logging, mining, tending to lighthouses, and delivering mail in a sled pulled by something furry and durable.

This is the story of our people, but a story shared by many like us all over the globe. And it is a story that is changing as the rigor of human existence becomes even more mental and even less physical.

The other day we cleared weeds by a small strip of lakeshore down a winding path from our house. It’s the kind of outdoor task that challenges my, what are they now, muscles? Still, it’s a classic northern Minnesota activity, the kind of thing I saw countless relatives engage in as a young boy on the Iron Range. And I have to admit, I felt a strong sense of satisfaction in cutting down these weeds, wading into the water to clear sticks and lake sludge, creating a small beach for my family to swim and, OMG!, my cell phone is in my underwater pocket! Aaargh!

The moment was over. My time as a hard, tough human conquering nature gave way to mourning over the loss of an object key to the life of a soft, modern technocrat.

I heard somewhere you can dry a wet cell phone, take out its battery and air the whole works out. Sometimes the phone will survive if you do that. Yes, I heard this somewhere, somewhere vague and possibly a product of my delusion. I tried this. As I write this the phone is on my kitchen counter, drying. Sporadically, elements of the phone will light up, but we’re still a long way from functionality.

Soft. Pink. Human. Here I am worked up about this phone, when I had just carved out my mark on the landscape of property that belongs to me. ME! I removed weeds! I shaped land to suit my needs. I am seriously thinking about buying a dock. Maybe. Anyway, when I do I will put it wherever I want! So long as the DNR agrees! And also the county zoning board!

Anyway, that’s what I really love about living in northern Minnesota. We are always on the front between the old ways of human adaptation, once manifested as building fire and later manifested as making a lawn mower operate much longer than its manufacturer intended, and the new ways of using technology to compensate for human weaknesses. The battle is always raging, which keeps things interesting – even if it might cost me a phone.

I archive my columns at my writing site.

Rummage sale memories

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, July 27, 2008 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Rummage sale memories
By Aaron J. Brown

We joined in a rummage sale with some friends last week. We’ve learned some things about organizing rummage sales over the years. Be ready for early birds. The traffic drops off around 2 p.m. Price to sell. Use your identified price tags to divvy up the booty at the end of a shared sale.

But I wasn’t prepared for the lesson I learned last weekend. Be prepared to see strangers buy the itty bitty baby clothes once worn by your precious little children. Strangers! They’ll probably take them home and wipe grease with them, or decoupage NASCAR logos on them, or who knows what. Strangers! That’s the shirt Dougie wore to his first Christmas. That’s what Georgie wore in the picture hanging on our wall. Stranger, who are you and what gives you the right? Oh, yeah. The price tag. It’s a rummage sale. That’s right.

It’s not manly, or Iron Rangerly, to admit these feelings, so don’t. Unless you have a newspaper column. I’ll take the heat for all of us. That’s what I’m “paid” for. It was hard watching all those baby clothes go into the rummage sale pile. They had to go, I admit. We can’t keep everything, and we made good use of rummage sales in clothing the three young boys in our household, so this was really just the way it all works.

But that’s one thing about rummage sales. There is a vast, emotional chasm between the front and back of the checkout table. For sellers, their unused stuff – once deemed valuable – faces its judgment day. For the buyers, it’s all about judgment.

“Can you believe they’d charge $5 for this?”

“Oh, look. Someone apparently thought Vanilla Ice was pretty cool. Ha-ha.”

Yes, I’ve spent plenty of time on that side of the rummage sale aisle. But I wasn’t ready to see my stuff judged by the same standards.

A couple years ago our VCR died. It was old and its time had come. That’s when we learned that you can’t buy VCRs anymore. Not new, at normal stores, anyway. So after two years of collecting dust, we decided to sell all the old VHS tapes. We were purging the technology, see, not the content on the tapes.

Invariably, this meant selling tapes once deemed – again – “precious.” I begrudgingly stuck 25 or 50 cent stickers on “Citizen Kane,” “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” and my whole collection of “X-Files” episodes. I even included my “Best of Johnny Carson” and “Late Night with David Letterman” tapes that I watched again and again as a teenager, right before falling asleep after school so I could wake up in time to work overnights as a disk jockey at an Iron Range radio station.

25 cents! Proportionally, this would put the value of my entire existence somewhere in the neighborhood of $128.50. That’s not bad for a rummage sale, but we’re talking about my life here.

Naturally, I was again attaching excessive emotional meaning to the situation. Without a VCR, or the prospect of VCRs ever re-entering the public marketplace, I would never again be able to watch these tapes anyway. But there they were, on sale, being browsed by strangers.

In the end, rummage sale Darwinism played out exactly as any objective observer would have predicted. Popular products priced affordably sold easily. All of the quality baby clothes worn by my kids sold quickly to grateful new parents. The kid videos in our sale sold like hot cakes; meantime, “The Man Who Knew Too Much” remains in our garage, ready for the next sale (25 cents, people! You can’t beat that deal!).

Watching this commerce take place, I realize that stuff is just that, stuff. You can sell this stuff for 25 cents, maybe a dollar if it’s a cute outfit for baby boys, but there is no earthly value on the human memories behind it. That is not for sale.

I archive my columns at my writing site.

Textistential Crisis

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, July 20, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Textistential Crisis
By Aaron J. Brown

I'm slowly entering the age group that, upon hearing young people in public, wonders how the humans of the future will maintain electricity and running water. I'm not all the way there, yet, but drifting notably.

This transition became known to me as I emerged from our minivan at a gas station in northern Minnesota. I overheard a teenage boy and girl engage in conversation. It's not polite to eavesdrop, but these were loud, attractive teenagers and it had been a long, uneventful drive. I had secretly hoped that these teenagers would talk about the things that I would talk about if I were a teenager again, especially an attractive teenager with a truck, no apparent job and a pretty girl talking to me.

These kids were talking about text messaging. No, not the impact of text messaging on society or on how they longed for the deep human experience of one-on-one conversation, but about text messages they sent to unrelated people recently. It seems sometimes people don’t read their text messages right away, waiting instead until later, when whatever they were talking about was already over. “OMG,” as the kids say.

Text messaging is a form of communication I hope to avoid, much like faxing. As a teenager in the 1990s I used cord phones and typewriters. (It was the Iron Range; we were behind). Then, when I went to college I learned about computers, the Internet and e-mail. I totally skipped fax machines, which caused problems when I was dealing with people mired in the fax machine generation.

ME: “Can’t I just e-mail this?”

FAXY MCFAXER: “Oh, no. I don’t understand computers.”

ME: OK, fine. Do I have to press one first, or just the green button?”

FAXY MCFAXER: “Oh, that all depends. I’ll just fax you what I have. It will get there at some vague point in the future and your co-worker will put it in the garbage, so look for it there.”

And … scene! There’s my opinion of fax machines. Text messaging is much trendier, but every bit as inane to me. The concept of text messages is that these cell phone-based communications are for times when you can’t talk in person, on the phone or over e-mail. I can imagine times when that might work. Maybe you’re pinned in a closet while an armed militia occupies the local branch of your friendly neighborhood bank. What a great time to text: “OMG. Militia at bank. Send cops!”

But that’s not how it really works. Text people are actually replacing vast portions of their human interaction with abbreviated missives fired at very important people in their lives. In my day job, I encounter vast numbers of students who have had major life conversations using text messaging, including fights, break-ups and even discussions of how their marriage might be structured.

So, begrudgingly, for the first time, acknowledging my mortality, I offer this general query: What is it with the kids these days?

I don’t know anything about the pair of teenagers back at that gas station. Maybe there were just friends, friends who longed for each other, a couple or something else. But I guarantee, when they own a minivan in 2023, they’ll wish they had talked about something else. Something … important.

I archive my columns at my writing page.

A little less hooey, a little more Huey: the column

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, July 13, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune. You'll notice that it's based on a post I made here two months ago, but includes new information and perspective.

A little less hooey, a little more Huey
By Aaron J. Brown

It may not seem popular to emulate the late Louisiana Gov. and Sen. Huey Long, who was assassinated at the peak of his power in 1935. Most folks on the street don’t know who he was and, to many of those who do, he was a corrupt Southern despot. But he took a poor state, Louisiana, and willed it from one century into the next at a time when most folks thought it’d be stuck behind forever. How? He just did it. He rewrote the tax code, eliminated favors for the oil industry, and built roads, schools and hospitals.

Let’s not ignore the obvious. Long’s tactics were often ugly. He fought powerful interests and used rough tactics. But his name is still carved in marble all over Louisiana. Why? He paved the roads. All of them. The big ones and the ones used only by poor farmers.

Today, we have paved roads in northern Minnesota. They’re not always great and should be improved, but they are paved. No one could fathom forcing rural Minnesota to go without paved roads just because they weren't close to the Twin Cities. Without these paved roads, we’d be mired in poverty forever just as Louisiana seemed to be in the 1920s and ‘30s when Long was governor and the rural roads were so bad farmers couldn’t move their crops. The same argument could me made about electricity, which didn’t reach some Americans until Franklin Roosevelt’s Tennessee Valley Authority.

Well, today, I argue the most pressing issue isn’t unpaved roads or power lines. The issue is affordable high speed internet access for every Minnesota (heck, American) at work and at home. High speed internet is the new utility that will bring us from one century into the next. It is a very expensive concept with millions of miles of cable to install. There are a lot of reasons not to do it, but those reasons will all seem pretty silly when the Internet – and thus the economy – is controlled by other countries, counties that invested in high-speed internet throughout their population.

In his report “Municipal Broadband: Demystifying Wireless and Fiber-Optic Options,” Christopher Mitchell of the New Rules Project explains the idea that today’s internet is as important to the future as roads and bridges at the beginning of the last century. And he lays out the idea that municipal entities like cities, counties or (this is me talking) Iron Range Resources might need to take an advanced role in getting this technology going. The report is available at www.newrules.org.

I know that we can all get the Internet now, with no additional investment needed. There are still vast numbers of people using dial up web access on the Iron Range, some cities like Hibbing have excellent high speed options from multiple companies and even country folk like me can use satellite internet providers. Some of these options are affordable and some cost quite a bit more. But access to these services is neither consistent, nor affordable for all Iron Range residents. Furthermore, the future economy will need massive bandwidth (four lane highways instead of dirt roads) to get teleconferencing and interactive media to every corner of the Iron Range.

Someone I know in the tech business told me that a municipal network is not necessary because this service can be provided as needed already. But that’s true of any place and any customer willing to pay. By creating a ready-made network, we jump ahead of the pack. The Iron Range has access to as much or more resources in northern Minnesota than Huey Long did in Louisiana 1930. We could build the best rural internet network in the country. Not because our current population demands it, but because that’s what needs to happen to make this region competitive in the future. The resulting endeavor would be far more attractive to new and existing businesses than any glossy brochure put out by an economic development official.

Just as in the early 20th century, developers of the early 21st century react to economic reality, not talk. The Iron Range may not have population growth, but we do have mineral wealth and, if we invest wisely, superior infrastructure. There has been some publicity surrounding projects like FiberNet, which would create municipal owned networks in participating towns. I don’t endorse any specific project except the concept that the bigger the scope, the better. To me this seems an ideal goal for Iron Range Resources, one that could yield more jobs in the future than even the biggest of the agency’s currently funded projects.

The funny thing about history is that it starts right now. Huey Long may be a dusty old demagogue from a civics book to most, but on his good days he left the Iron Range a roadmap we can use responsibly. When you combine the international community’s increasing dominance of technology infrastructure with our increasingly global economy, it would be foolish for the United States to fall even farther behind in an internet technology that the U.S. itself developed. When that fact is fully understood, it will be proven to be just as wise for the Iron Range to invest in owning its share of the high-tech economy of tomorrow. We talk about the future all the time. Now we should start building that future.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Contact him or read more at his blog, MinnesotaBrown.com.

After the Fourth

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, July 6, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune.

After the Fourth
By Aaron J. Brown

Last I checked we still live in the United States.

Don’t worry, I’m not about to ramble off on an anti-immigrant tirade or demand that the foreign language directions for my recent electronics purchase be replaced with Toby Keith lyrics. My point has to do with our national patriotic holiday.

Around here (meaning America), the Fourth of July is one of the big holidays. One could argue it’s the biggest holiday of the summer, equivalent to winter’s Christmas, spring’s Easter and autumn’s Halloween. All of these other holidays come with a depressing aftermath, however. The post-Christmas letdown is the most obvious. You’ve got wrapping paper all over the house and the relatives resume their icy indifference to each other. After Easter, it’s that green plastic grass from the kids’ Easter baskets. That stuff will survive the human race. Then, on All Saints Day after Halloween, we must reckon with that polar bear suit that was part of an elaborate themed costume that is now just a used polar bear suit.

But what about Fourth of July? What comes after Independence Day? It’s not like we’re supposed to get tired of freedom or the Bill of Rights. Are we supposed to take down the flags? What about the bunting? Does taking down the red, white and blue bunting mean we stand with the terrorists? I sure hope not.

I think this problem has gotten worse in recent years. Something happened after the sincere crisis of 9/11. Every day became the Fourth of July. Americans needed some way to show solidarity after that terrible day, so they found myriad ways to show their patriotism. Flag decals. Flag sweaters. Flag pins. But see, that’s what the Fourth of July used to be. It used to be the day that people publicly demonstrated love of country. The other 364 days were for going to work and mowing the lawn or drinking. Or inventing the Internet. You know, American stuff.

Now that every day is the Fourth of July, we don’t have the healthy transition out of the holiday that we enjoy after the other big occasions. Just think: what if the downtown speakers never stopped playing “Little Drummer Boy?” Not even when the temperature hit 90. What if we ate six pounds of turkey, stuffing and potatoes every day, a la Thanksgiving? Well, I tell you what. We’d be crazy. We’d sweat grease, drive around on scooters and crave the predictable patterns of a regular work day.

Symbols and demonstrations have their place. Take a wedding for instance. Weddings have all sorts of traditions. The couple cuts the cake together, demonstrating their desire to share food. The bride dances with her dad at the reception, showing that she’s still his little girl even though he is now very, very old. And all these traditions hold deep meaning. But what if these traditions were deployed every day? What if husband and wife jointly poured their Cheerios into a communal bowl, sharing it with a decorative spoon? That wouldn’t make the marriage stronger, just stranger.

So the bunting comes down today. Not the flag or love of country. That goes on all year in word and deed, but the American flag bandana now becomes optional. (Hint: it’s only cool if it’s ironic!) Holidays are reminders of important principles. We don’t forget what Christmas means in July. Nor should we forget what Independence Day means. But patriotism is not substance on its own. There’s a time for demonstration and a time for action. With an important election, deep economic challenges and meaningful opportunities all hovering on the horizon, it’s time for today’s Americans to give their great-grandkids something to be patriotic about.

I archive my columns at my writing site.

Seven words I won't forget

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, June 29, 2008 edition of the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Seven words I won’t forget
By Aaron J. Brown

When I was eight, a stroke of luck changed my life and taught me the majority of the dirty words I currently know.

That was the year I won the Weekly Reader National Invention Contest. I’m not bringing this up to brag. My invention was rather silly, never saw successful production and produced no financial security for my family then or now. But the trip I won to Washington, D.C., set the fires that still burn in me today.

We lived on a family-owned salvage yard in the southern swamps of northern Minnesota’s Mesabi Iron Range. My family was hard working and my parents were smart, but life in a trailer house on the junkyard does not come with the social expectations of college, career and prestige that go to the children of the well heeled. But when this trailer house kid landed in Washington, a truth was unlocked. Most of the restrictions we encounter in our lives exist in our own minds, not in reality.

I learned this in part when I toured the halls of power in Washington as a tourist, but I also learned it late that night in the hotel room shared by my family. When I was supposedly asleep the television piped out HBO, an impossible luxury on the junkyard. This was the first time I saw George Carlin, the famous comedian who passed away last week. And yes, I was 8, and 8-year-olds, as a rule, should not watch George Carlin. Still, I’m glad I did because I could sense in Carlin’s routine the power of words.

Carlin was one of the most influential stand up comedians and writers of the late 20th century. Many people viewed him as controversial or crass because of the salty nature of his routines, but there was a deeper truth to his act. The lines drawn in society are arbitrary. People have the power to cross them when they are wrong or unnecessary. One such line was the one laid before a working class 8-year-old from the Iron Range, biting his pillow to keep from laughing too hard at what he was hearing on HBO.

Jump ahead. I’m in high school. My friend Dusty and I went down to Duluth to see Carlin at the DECC. The high school years are nothing but crossing, or not crossing, lines. Among other things, including romantic prospects, these lines separate the life teenagers believe possible and the life they believe beyond reach. Thanks to my trip to Washington, I never doubted that college and then anything were possible if I worked at it.

I spent my first night away from home, the first night I knew I was only coming back as a visitor, in a college dorm room in Dubuque, Iowa. My Puerto Rican roommate was due the next day so I was left in limbo, a space between the comfort of home and the sense of what was to come next. I was on the line. That night, I strolled down to the pop machine in my bathrobe (in any decade beyond the early ‘60s, I was the only guy on most college campuses who still wore a bathrobe) and bought a Country Time lemonade. I still remember exactly what I drank that night, a sense that would leave me in the years to come. I lit a cigarette and wondered what to do.

That night I put on the headphones to my Sony Discman (remember CDs?) and listened to George Carlin explain the seven words you can’t say on TV. If you know me, you know that I seldom say these words in the company of others. But it was these words, first when I was 8 and later, that showed me the power of words. What matters more than words are the people who use them and why they use them. George Carlin used his words, many of them deeply offensive if observed in a vacuum, to break down lines that didn’t need to exist. And he was really funny. I’ll always remember that.

I archive my columns at my writing site.

RIP George Carlin, but the 'seven words' live on

I didn't post anything about George Carlin's passing yesterday. I am working on a column for next Sunday. Most who know me know that I hardly every use Carlin's famous "seven words you can't say on television," but I realized after some contemplation that these words have been a tremendous influence in my life. And that's what I'm working on for Sunday.

Columnist Heffernan cut loose by DNT

Yesterday I finished reading Cormac McCarthy's "The Road," a novel about a man and his son searching for food and shelter in a post-apocalyptic America. They survive through sheer will, try to maintain hope despite absolutely no evidence that hope exists. Roving gangs of cannibals rule the landscape.

And, with no intent to cheapen McCarthy's great work, something about this book reminds me of today's newspaper industry.

Today, Jim Heffernan writes his last column for the Duluth News-Tribune. Management is moving in a different direction. He and I are, or were, part of a very, very small collection of writers paid specifically to maintain a column in a northern Minnesota daily newspaper. (I am a paid columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune). This is different than a reporter or editor writing a column as part of his or her job duties or from syndicated columnists who sell their work to multiple papers. Independent columnists provide a point of view that can and should be refreshingly different than the views inside the news room. Heffernan's day of reckoning came today. I know mine will come eventually. But still, we move down the road toward a hope that hope exists somewhere, in some time, in some medium.

Raise your glasses for Jim Heffernan, dean of northern Minnesota letters!

The things we learn in a decade

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, June 22, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune.

The things we learn in a decade
By Aaron J. Brown

I’m finally starting to pick up on the patterns of nature out where I live. I grew up in the country around the edges of the Mesabi Iron Range, but I was a kid more interested in books than deer or fish. Then I went to college and got a job in the big(ish) city. About three years ago we moved from Hibbing back out to the rural fringe. When you live in a place where the power goes out every time it’s windy, you realize that you’re really a part of a natural rhythm. Robins arrive. Loons nest on the lakeshore. Leaves bud. The smell rolls from the cold, woody scent of February to the stinky musk of April and then the hot, sweet odor of late June. Then, this past weekend, the turtles arrived.

Turtles are everywhere. You don’t see turtles in town, even small towns (especially since five and dime stores stopped selling turtles, and then stopped existing altogether). We’ve got turtles dragging across our country road at all times these days. I thought I was finally settling into my country ways when I decided to greet a turtle in a cartoonish way.

“Hello, Mr. Turtle!” I declared.

The turtle peed all over the driveway and ran, RAN, as fast as a turtle can run away from an idiot who thinks he’s Dr. Doolittle because he finally knows that pine trees aren’t all the same.

“Hey, Mr. Turtle, I mean you no harm.”

Mr. Turtle pees again, and runs faster.

Growing up in rural northern Minnesota, I have always been surrounded by experts. They know the names of the animals, may have even been here when God told the people to name them. They knew when the ice was out early, or late, and when it was safe to put out the lawn chairs. I know a little, but not what they know. But, thankfully, I still have the power to change all this.

Speaking of natural cycles, last weekend brought my high school class reunion. The matters of turtles, foliage and nature’s cycle were not discussed at the reunion, but the fact that we were all part of a pattern of life was on bold display. It’s been 10 years, a decade (to enhance the drama) since we had all marched through the Cherry High School gym/auditorium/tornado shelter to the strains of “Pomp and Circumstance.” On this day, however, we were all just regular people, many of us married and raising kids, worrying about our siding, shingles and our youthful ambitions that, while still possible, have become much less assured than back when we were invincible. There was karaoke, beer, conversation, additional beer, and then someone would ask, “What have you been doing these last 10 years?”

Ten years? That’s serious.

Most people who read this are over 28 and, thus, know that the 10-year reunion is the first stop of many along life’s journey. Some who read this probably know that turtles pee when you try to say hello. But that’s the glory of this time of life. You’re old enough to know that you’re fallible but young enough to learn new things, perhaps even to change course if you want. Perhaps this changes with age or maybe it is and always has been a personal choice. I don’t know. I’m still working on figuring out turtles, because I do know that they show up every June, crossing highways, moving toward something that is very, very important to turtles.

I archive my columns at my writing site. My new book "Overburden: Modern Life on the Iron Range" will be released in October by Red Step Press.

The parasite debate

This is my weekly Hibbing Daily Tribune column for Sunday, June 15, 2008. I went a little crazy this week. This is the result of living in the deep woods of northern Minnesota and watching too much political news on cable.

The parasite debate
By Aaron J. Brown

Good evening and welcome to Nature’s Hall at the University of Northern Minnesota for this, the first of a series of important debates. We all know the stakes. The economy is sputtering. We are at war. But this summer, people here are struggling with something worse. Bugs that bite. We are joined by two candidates who both think they are the most effective parasite. First, we bring the opening statements. Mr. Tick?

TICK: My friends, we all know that there is nothing creepier than me, crawling up your leg, then your torso, then your neck, gradually your face and then into your hair where I will attach and gorge myself on your blood before detaching and reproducing at a vast rate.

And you, Mr. Mosquito?

MOSQUITO: My fellow northern Minnesotans, it is time for a change. It is time for a parasite that tells the truth. Every day, I make a soft but consistent buzzing noise that lets you know I am in the room. I fly erratically around your head, giving you warning of my arrival. And then I work hard, with the help of an organization of tens of thousands of everyday mosquitoes, to extract a small amount of blood from you that will be used to build our network of 21st century parasites.

MODERATOR: You are both well known in northern Minnesota. Every year, you and your kind emerge like buds on the trees. But what makes you the most effective early summer parasite? Mr. Mosquito, then Mr. Tick.

MOSQUITO: Everybody knows the unyielding strength of the American mosquitoes. You may swat me down, but there will be five more that rise up in my place. Swat them and 25 more will emerge from the bird bath in your back yard that you should have emptied out. But even if you do empty your bird bath, buy a bug zapper, burn citronella candles and spray yourself with bug dope, you’ll suddenly realize there’s a big itchy bump on your forearm. And somewhere, probably in that puddle behind your shed, I will lay 10,000 eggs to pave a path to the future.

MODERATOR: Mr. Tick, your response.

TICK: My friends, have you ever been sleeping safely in your bed, at night, when it’s dark, and felt a tick crawling on you? You probably brought that tick over to the toilet and flushed it down, or maybe you lit it on fire with a lighter. But then you went back to bed and it felt like there were a thousand ticks crawling on you, even though there probably weren’t thousands. Probably, it was just me. Crawling on you. At night. In the dark. Looking for a warm crevice in which to insert my mandibles.

MOSQUITO: While no one doubts my opponent’s record as a sneaky, blood-sucking parasite, I contend that effective parasitic activity requires full participation in the food chain. Mosquitoes are not only everywhere in northern Minnesota, they provide valuable food to frogs and dragonflies while ticks like you simply spread disease and creep people out. I mean, there’s a reason people just swat me and burn you with a lighter. That’s why …

(Dragonfly enters hall, eats mosquito).

TICK: My friends, that just proves my point. What good is a tasty parasite? Besides, it’s misleading to say that nothing eats a tick because we ticks actually have numerous natural predators, including some species of wasps and several kinds of bir …

(Bird flies into hall, eats dragonfly, then eats tick).

BIRD (to moderator): The feeder’s not going to fill itself, Hoss.

Seriously. A little seed here? (Pause). I’m sorry, did I interrupt something? Oh. Cameras.

Tweet, Tweet. Right, well, I’ll be going. (Flaps away).

I archive my columns at my writing site.

Steel barons of the 21st century

This is my weekly column for the Sunday, June 8, 2008 Hibbing Daily Tribune. It was held over from last week because Essar made an announcement reiterating their commitment to the Minnesota Steel project just beforehand. My original sentiment remains, though; the Range must not depend on large steel companies or consultant-driven projects to deliver all the economic growth we actually need.

Steel barons of the 21st Century
By Aaron J. Brown

Right now Iron Rangers are waiting for news about our future. We need to stop waiting and start planning.

You hear the sound of people waiting in our cafes, bars and gas stations. “Things sure will be better when they get that steel plant by Nashwauk,” the kind waitress or good-natured clerk says. You hear the sound of waiting in the real estate ads in the paper: “Steel plant coming, buy today,” they boast. Often, the specifics become rather hazy. “New stuff coming,” someone says. “Should be better around here then.”

Indeed, fortunes will be better on the Iron Range when there are more jobs, a stronger and independent economy and a more contented population. But that’s nothing new. And yes, Minnesota Steel’s parent company Essar announced plans to begin the first phase of construction this summer, declaring their intent to build the first-ever mining and steel making operation on the Iron Range. Still, we still find ourselves waiting, watching distant decision makers ponder their options, our fate.

Most know that Essar, an Indian company with holdings all over the world, announced last year it would buy Minnesota Steel to advance the longstanding concept of an integrated steel and mine facility near the former Butler Taconite location. Essar has been held up during the financing process, which delayed what was supposed to be a spring groundbreaking for the first phase of the project. Now, Essar is further tied up in a vast battle for market share in the North American steel industry. They bought Canadian-owned Algoma Steel around the time they bought Minnesota Steel and have recently been trying to close a deal to buy the major American steel company Esmark, which would give them vast steel making capacity on the continent. Meantime, competitor ArcelorMittal is fighting that deal, trying to make its own deal and may end up cutting some kind of deal with Essar. Confused yet? Here are two names we Rangers might remember. Rockefeller and Carnegie. Throw in J.P. Morgan for good measure. Unless you’ve got stock in steel companies (and check your 401(k), you might) the most important detail is that powerful companies elsewhere are battling for the biggest piece of a global pool of capital, resources and power. We are just one part of their big plan. The only difference is that the seat of power is moving from New York to India.

Why India? India is hungry and ambitious; we are waiting.

It is not my intention to be overly pessimistic about the steel plant or other developments. I will be among the first to welcome Essar when it opens Minnesota Steel operations. Indeed, it makes logical sense to make steel in the same place where the iron ore is mined. If the international demand for steel continues as some forecasters predict, this steel project and the local mining industry in general could enjoy a decade or two of relative comfort. But that is the rosiest of scenarios and our parents and grandparents raised us to work hard and be smart. Fact is, corporations – whether Indian like Essar or American like Cleveland Cliffs – conduct operations here on the Iron Range because they need our ore to do business. Business comes first; the real estate market in Keewatin, the fate of Greenway schools and the health of our small business sector are far more distant concerns to the people who run these companies.

What was true of the Range in 1908 remains true in 2008. The powerful play chess with our lives so long as we let them. Strip away development dollars, speculative pricing and the bevy of consultants whispering in our ears and you will find a familiar group of people at the heart of the Iron Range. They are the same people we see at the café, the bar, the gas station, the bank or walking down Main Street. They are us. While it may be true that we should have patience in regard to coming steel plant or any number of other job creation projects, we must not wait for our futures to materialize. We need to explore ideas, create homegrown growth and teach our children this new lesson: good things come to those who dream, think and work.

I archive older columns at my writing page.

Evolution of Exercise

My Hibbing Daily Tribune column for this week was supposed to be about the Minnesota Steel story, but details emerged late in the week that may change the column so the paper held it. Instead I offer this charming (but not newsbreaking) piece about exercise. KAXE fans know that a version of this first appeared on "Between You and Me" a couple weeks ago. Look for that Minnesota Steel piece next week or the week after.

Evolution of Exercise
By Aaron J. Brown

Here’s the thing about exercise. If we humans were worth anything evolutionarily-speaking, we wouldn’t have to exercise. Our workout clothes would simply be called clothes. Our gym membership fees would be devoted to food, shelter or the wooing of a fertile mate. We would monitor our heartbeats only to determine if we were still alive and, even then, only if the matter were in doubt. See, people didn’t used to exercise unless they were training for an athletic activity, like the 1912 Olympics or spring tryouts for the Peoria Whigs. Now we have to exercise all the time, three days a week if we want to die young, five days a week if we want to live forever.

We exercise because people don’t do much anymore. Sure, we think we do plenty. I’m really busy right now. I have to finish this column and then I have to grade some papers and then I need to look at You Tube for something funny I heard about on MSNBC (what a dork) and then, because I’m so tired after working so hard, I am going to recline into a horizontal position and sleep on a bed. What a day! I have no fields to till, no wood to stack and there is absolutely no chance that I’ll have to hunt down tomorrow’s dinner on foot. Work for me, and many Americans involves sitting, standing and eating cake in honor of an equally lumpy co-worker about to get married, retire, or die – possibly all three.

We live in an amazing world. I was at the grocery store today and, for the equivalent of an hour’s pay, I could bring home enough food to keep my whole family alive for several days. For a day’s wages I could easily feed my family for more than a week. And we’re not talking about energy pellets here. We’re talking about cheesy bratwurst from Milwaukee, apples from Oregon and potatoes from Idaho. Carbon footprint? Sounds delicious. And I can eat all this stuff for a fraction of my take-home pay. And you better believe I’ve tried. Modern life makes it easy to pack on pounds and slow the cardiovascular system developed by a thousand generations of my hunting, gathering ancestors into a metaphorical 1982 Cutlass Cruiser with no oil or muffler.

So what does the future hold for us as a people? The weather is getting warmer in northern Minnesota and, despite my strong desire, I am going to try and limit my cheesy brats and get out to run on my dirt road – not to chase anything or go anywhere – just to run. If I’m successful, I’ll lose weight. My ancestors, who worked a lot harder for their food, would think that was a pretty dumb reason to run. If they lost 20 pounds it was because of “the consumption.” They just wouldn’t have understood. I’ve got to exercise to make up for how hard I work.