7 Random Things

I've been tagged by Christina Brown at Northern Cheapskate to do a meme called 7 Random Things. What the hell is a meme I thought? Kids these days...

A meme, according to some meme blog I found, is described as this:
In the context of web logs / 'blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it's some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on. I generally consider these to be actual questions and not some multiple choice quizzes that determine some result at the end (what color you are most like, what cartoon character are you, what 80s movie are you).

So, after somewhat figuring it out, here's my 7 Random things.

1. Popcorn hulls - when I was little I saw some relative put in contact lenses. I thought they looked a lot like the hulls from popcorn so I stuck them in my eye.

2. Little River band - the first cassette tape I bought with my very own money. Have you heard about the Lonesome Loser?

3. pond's - I use this old lady smelling cream on my face. My 93 year old grandma has always used it and barely has wrinkles.

4. Corn Dogs - I love corn dogs. Even the veggie dogs that aren't as bad for you.

5. Entertainment Weekly. I subscribe.

6. Rings - I lost both my wedding ring and my engagement ring.

7. California - I have never been to California (she hangs her head in shame).

-Heidi

check out Aaron Brown's 7 Random Things...and POST your 7 Random Things here!

Aaron B's column: the unique aesthetics of the Iron Range

From MinnesotaBrown.com

Blight Me: the unique aesthetics of the Iron Range By Aaron J. Brown
It’s spring on the Iron Range. I know this because last week we had to hire a guy with a loader to remove a million tons of snow from my rural driveway. Not a plow. A loader. Hello, spring!Maybe it’s just a little bump in the road on our way to the real spring. When real spring finally arrives, our thoughts will turn to the stuff that’s been hiding underneath that snow all winter long. The slow recession of winter’s white canvass reveals old cars, rebar, scrap lumber and sometimes even the fate of stray animals we used to see around (but not so much the last few weeks).

Someone I know who moved to the Iron Range from a small farming town once told me about her first impression of the Iron Range. The first thing she noticed was the rather eclectic collection of cars and other metal goods in people’s yards. I suppose as an Iron Range native I could have feigned outrage over this observation, but I know better. We Iron Rangers are a proud, noble people … who leave things in our yards.

One could argue that my perspective is skewed. I grew up on an Iron Range family-owned salvage yard out in Zim. (I have to be careful. My wife thinks I mention this more often than former presidential candidate John Edwards talked about “the mill). As a kid, if I saw an old car up on blocks in someone’s yard my response was, “what,just one?” We lived in a trailer house just a few dozen feet away from another trailer house that was packed to the ceiling with hubcaps. We would walk back to grandpa and dad’s shop along a path that wound through piles of aluminum cans and hulking dead machines of uncertain purpose. And this was all very normal to us, like oak trees and picket fences of Rockwell’s America.

That’s how it is on the Iron Range. I’ve heard theories that the Range’s love affair with junk has to do with our working class demographics or the fact that early miners weren’t able to own their own land, so they didn’t mind leaving junk out. Heck, maybe we just like junk. After all, the junkyard where I grew up was just a dozen miles north of the now defunct Sanitary Harry’s bar in Kelsey. The late Sanitary Harry ran for governor several times under the promise of “a car in every yard.” His drinking establishment gained a reputation for the odd junk that would be piled both inside and outside the building. In its last years, a friend told me the bar’s owners had literally shellacked random junk to the tabletops.

The first controversy I ever encountered in Iron Range journalism had to do with a county blight ordinance. Folks in the countryside wanted the right to keep spare cars on their property so they could harvest parts when needed. But big government was getting in the way. Cabin owners were complaining and deputies were writing blight tickets. Letters were exchanged. Public outcry against the policy ran surprisingly hot. The blight ordinance is still on the books today, but I don’t see any fewer cars on private properties out in the woods. I assume something of a junk car détente took place behind closed doors.

Junk defines the Range and that’s not all bad. Along the Mesabi Trail near Hibbing, tourists from all over get a good look at rusted pieces of mining equipment that were simply abandoned near their final resting places. Some might question why that stuff was left there. The answer is clear to me. All who see these scrap metal specters know that the Iron Range is a place where people shaped the land and their children long outlived their machines. And that’s who we are.

I don’t mean to diminish the work of so many Iron Rangers in sprucing up their yards, property and homes. Many places around here look like the very picture of Americana. But I have to bear the truth that what many folks remember when they visit the Iron Range is the colorful, blue collar cornucopia of metal that adorns so many other yards. This sharp, rusted world is just coming into focus this time of year. Hey, I don’t mind. It gives the place character.
Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune.

Aaron Brown helps us with the weather blues

Here's his column from Sunday's Hibbing Daily Tribune:

Pre-spring warm-up by Aaron J. Brown

In northern Minnesota there’s a fifth season, one that doesn’t really have a name and that most folks who live south of the Great Lakes couldn’t understand. For the sake of argument today I’ll call it “Pre-Spring.” This season peaks right now. It’s sort of like spring in that things are melting. But it’s also like winter in that the lakes are still frozen and if you send your kids outside for too long you might find them frozen to the side of your garage. It’s not just a season. I contend that it’s a test written specifically for the people of the North to ensure that our souls are worthy of our mailing addresses.

This past week I went for my first run in three months. In previous years I have maintained a disciplined (in that it could be measured) running regimen that spanned the full calendar year. When the weather got cold, I would dress warmly. When our road got slippery, I would wear these fancy chains on my sneakers. But that was all a long time ago (OK, a year), before I went from being a father of one to being a father of three. This year we have baby twins at home, a toddler and a crazy dog, so all my willpower collapsed to the floor where it was probably eaten by an infant crawling too fast to properly identify.

So my running had been on hold. That is, until I realized that it was pre-spring and that I wouldn’t need the foot chains or extra layers. There’s something about that level of involvement that kept me from running when there was so much going on inside the house. When you have to suit up, strap chains to your shoes and then run, stretch and shower you’re talking about 45 minutes at the least, probably an hour. In that time, our children may have possibly caused the house to implode due to the sheer force of their vibration. It really makes sitting on the couch a viable alternative to running.

Looking out the kitchen window one morning this week, however, I saw bright sunlight, flowing water on the concrete garage apron and patches of brown grass replacing the white canvas that had until recently been our yard. I wouldn’t need the shoe chains. One polar fleece and a pair of sweatpants would suffice. The babies were napping and the toddler was otherwise occupied. I could run and probably get away with it. So I did.

And it was great, except that it was deceptively cold. Despite the bright spring sunlight, a bitter north wind iced my hands. The melting snow on our dirt road was still slippery, which forced me to run in the sludgy mud along the roadside. The whistling wind forced me to turn up my iPod to an unsafe level, at least according to some doctor who said something that I couldn’t hear. (He looked very concerned. It was probably important). Though I enjoyed the first good run of the season, I couldn’t help but notice the strange season we all endure, but that few from down south (you know, Iowa) would understand.

We northern Minnesotans now live in a world where a pretty girl in shorts and a tank top could walk by moments before a blizzard buries our entire region. This is a difficult place to live. It’s hard for the human mind to comprehend such a place or such a season. Fortunately, we’re used to this around here. It’s just Pre-Spring, or Sprinter, or Winting, or whatever you want to call the weird time before temperatures, and perhaps our very existence, can be predicted.

Aaron J. Brown is a columnist for the Hibbing Daily Tribune. Read more or contact him at his blog www.minnesotabrown.com.

From Aaron Brown's Blog - Community Media

KAXE's Community Web project is in part our own exploration into what the future of media might be - where will people get their news? How will friends/neighbors/fellow Northern Minnesotans communicate when even small town papers are owned by large conglomerates?

Aaron Brown is a frequent voice on KAXE and is firmly planted in the worlds of traditional media (weekly column in the Hibbing Daily Tribune and commentaries on KAXE) as well as new media (a prolific blogger at http://www.minnesotabrown.com/). From time to time we sample his writing here - if you have an interest in Iron Range politics or media in rural areas - we suggest you keep up with Aaron on his blog. Here's a recent post of his:

The future of small town media in 1,000 words by Aaron Brown

A really interesting comment about local newspaper websites crossed the blog yesterday morning. As you may know, the ACM family of newspapers on the Iron Range now require readers to sign up for a free account to use its newspapers’ websites. A MinnesotaBrown blog reader responded to the change in this way:

What the hell are they thinking with this "free account" crap? I refuse to register. I find their sites difficult to use, and damned annoying in that they don't include all the articles. In fact, I've pretty much quit going to the sites at all because they try to make it hard for me to use their sites, in the apparent hope that by doing so, I'll buy a paper.Well. I don't. I am not a newspaper reader. I don't buy newspapers, and I'm not about to start buying them. I DO go to websites to read news. Presumably they derive ad revenue from the advertisers on their website who count on me to buy their goods and services just like those who advertise in the paper assume there is a connection between readers and sales.
I feel the Range papers are marginalizing their online readers. They are marginalizing the potential of their online business. And they are marginalizing their future existence.e hell are they thinking with this "free account" crap? I refuse to
register. I find their sites difficult to use, and damned annoying in that
they don't include all the articles. In fact, I've pretty much quit going to
the sites at all because they try to make it hard for me to use their sites,
in the apparent hope that by doing so, I'll buy a paper.

The comment prompted this thought on my part. If and when the storied “e-Media Revolution” that people keep talking about happens (the time when the Internet finally and fully absorbs the functions of "old media" like newspapers and broadcast TV) the first wall that crumbles won't be the big city daily papers or CNN, but the small town newspapers and local TV news affiliates. This massive change will happen from the ground up.

These are my own thoughts based on my experience as a college communication instructor, former Iron Range small town daily newspaper editor and current writer and blogger. I still write for the Hibbing Daily Tribune, so it's important to note that I'd like to keep that job and that I'm not picking on that publication (or its parent company and affiliates), nor can I reveal any trade secrets (if I ever really knew any). But I can talk generally about the struggles that small town papers face in the Internet Age.

Here’s the problem. Let’s consider a hypothetical small town newspaper that had a circulation of, say, 15,000 in 1988. This paper has probably lost half its readers since. Today’s circulation, 6,000-7,000, consists of people disproportionately older and less Internet savvy than the population at large. Meantime, new readers were learning that they could get a good deal of what they wanted from this hypothetical paper’s website. Papers without a website were openly mocked by the Web-proficient members of their community, to the point where all papers adopted websites. As these websites developed, enthusiastic news people realized that the Internet is a really great medium for the written word and the websites grew in popularity.

But web readers got the product for free, advertisers weren’t willing to pay much to get on the website and the whole effort was costing the industry gabuldyjillions of dollars (an approximation). Newspapers were well aware this was happening and their leaders held numerous meetings (believe me). Some tried password protecting their web versions, but few would pay to read the papers online. Others tried making their web versions so awesome that they could entice advertisers to buy online ads. Some customers did, but this still didn’t make up the revenue.

Let me crystallize the problem: More people (and most young people) are using the Internet to receive news, but no one has figured out how to make as much money operating an online news site as newspapers USED TO be able to make before the Internet. Because media consolidation has driven up the debt service on your average small town paper to well above what is financially prudent, the old revenue figures are crucial to maintaining company stock prices. Unless this problem is figured out (and that ship may have sailed) we are trolling toward a total media realignment that will begin not with the New York Times, but with all the small papers about the size of the Anytown Whig-Observer. When these weeklies, small dailies and mid-sized papers in competitive markets realize that their revenue has fallen so low that it is equal to what they could make off the Internet alone AND when a majority of their readers are already on the Internet (two things not yet true, but coming), they’ll reconfigure. Add in the fact that many newspapers are now either owned by or in some kind of partnership with a local television network affiliate, and we’re talking about united, multi-media news operations functioning with the same editorial staff and disseminating news on TV and high-end websites, or perhaps a yet unknown combination of the two.

Oh, but there will be hundreds of bankruptcies and tens of thousands of layoffs before this occurs, so let’s not get too excited.

I teach blogging seminars for the KAXE Community Journalism Project. I’m not speaking for them either when I say this. But there is an efficiency argument that the Internet is a much more cost effective way to gather and share news in small towns. Over time, I could easily see community news websites that combine video, audio and print content replacing the old media. We definitely aren’t there yet, but nonprofit community journalism operations like KAXE are way out ahead of commercial companies in small towns. Streaming media on the big sites like http://www.cnn.com/, http://www.msnbc.com/ and http://www.foxnews.com/ is great – and will remain the standard into the future. But the “revolution” won’t really be at hand until the dams break in small and medium markets. When it happens, the results will be part chaotic, part fascinating and most assuredly remarkable. And while people in today's media industry will be affected negatively at first, it's important to remember that we will still need journalists, editors, technicians, graphic designers and photographers in this new media.

Now, there’s no reason that my current employer (I hope still current after speaking this heresy) and its sister publications on the Iron Range can’t survive or even thrive through all of this, but doing so will require a nimble approach when the majority of their readers make the leap to the Internet. None of this will happen next year, but I expect that it will happen before long. And it will happen in every corner of the world.Even, perhaps especially, here on the Iron Range of Northern Minnesota (U.S.A., the World, the Universe).

PS: And for those who prefer political posts, I'll leave you with this: the biggest uncontrollable variable in the budget of a small town paper is the cost of employee health care. Guess what happens as a result? Layoffs and a gradually crappier health care plan.

More from Minnesota Brown

Floods are bad, mmm-kay

I promise: Last bonding bill post for the week.

I forgot to mention an item yesterday. The Canisteo Mine Pit is still perched like a big, wet mountain lion over the town of Bovey on the Western Mesabi Range. However, Gov. Pawlenty did not include mitigating the problem in the bonding bill. I spoke with Tom Anzelc and he believes they'll need $4 million to drain the water elsewhere. There is $15 million for flood mitigation in Pawlenty's bonding bill, so Range can hope to get some of that along with other funding to fix the problem. Between the DNR, Mineland Reclamation and bonding, this must get done this year. I don't know that an Iron Range town has ever been destroyed by a flood and 2008 seems a rather stupid time to break that streak.

-to read more from Aaron Brown, see his blog.

Aaron Brown on the 2008 Bonding Bill released by Pawlenty

This is taken by permission from Aaron Brown's blog at http://www.minnesotabrown.blogspot.com/.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty released his proposal for the 2008 bonding bill in the Minnesota State Legislature. (See MPR's coverage). This is the plan he would like to see pass, though he will be working with a DFL House and Senate that will have different priorities for borrowing and spending.

Two encouraging things for northern Minnesota: 1) He includes $30 infrastructure for the proposed Essar Global/Minnesota Steel mill near Nashwauk, and 2) there is money for Duluth's DECC expansion. I don't normally get involved in Duluth's DECC issues, but they've been trying so long I kind of feel like they should get some sympathy. Ru-dy! Ru-dy!
Itasca County and the DFL Iron Range delegation want more than twice as much money as Pawlenty proposes for the steel mill infrastructure, so there will be some bartering on that issue. I need to see exactly how the money is going to be applied to roads, rails and sewers before I say who has the more accurate proposal. The fact that there is any money at all from this governor is encouraging.

Meantime, lots of haggling will occur over the transportation funding for bridge and road repairs and mass transit in the metro area. That's an area that could absorb most of the bonding bill if legislators vote on regional lines.

Stay tuned ...

more on the bonding front...

If you don't like reading about steel or bonding bills, sorry, today's not your day.

As expected, Range leaders came out today stating that Pawlenty's amount proposed for the proposed Nashwauk steel mill was too low. What I didn't realize earlier was that more than 2/3 of his proposal involves money from the 21st Century Minerals Fund or other permanent mining funds, not actual bonding. This project is about mining, but also about value added mining with the addition of a steelmaking operation. I think there's a good argument that such a transition in the steel industry would be worth a more substantial bonding investment by the state. There is going to be heavy negotiations on this issue before the final bill comes out, but it seems something will come together ... so long as the company is fully with the program (as of now, this is unknown).

-see more from Aaron Brown on his blog.

Aaron's take on Iron Range politics, pt. 2

originally posted at MNBlue.com and Aaron Brown's blog...this is the 2nd in a series about the political climate on the Iron Range of Minnesota.

How to win the Iron Range

Last week I talked about how Range politics centers on personal relationships. The region blends social conservatism with economic liberalism to create a unique environment that plays a big role in state politics and a bigger role in state DFL politics. Though the only Iron Ranger to hold statewide office was Gov. Rudy Perpich, the region has influenced the path of every Democrat and/or Farmer-Laborite elected to statewide office in Minnesota since Floyd B. Olson. But like the statewide DFL, any path to victory must include coalition building.

There are three big factions that make up the DFL’s majority coalition on the Iron Range. This configuration might also apply to many other parts of Minnesota (and the nation, for that matter) but I am focusing on the Range because I’ve run campaigns here. Apply this to your neighborhood how you see fit.

LABOR
Most people associate the Range with labor for good reason. The labor movement has its roots here. I don’t just mean Minnesota’s labor movement. I mean THE LABOR MOVEMENT. There were Wobblies and red flags in the streets here in 1907.

Today’s labor faction on the Range includes old powers like the Steelworkers, Teamsters and all the building trades, but increasingly the word “labor” on the Range refers equally to professional and service workers like AFSCME and Education Minnesota. They usually endorse and work for the same candidate in a primary (notable exception: the Steelworkers and AFSCME on the Iron Range are currently split between Al Franken and Mike Ciresi, respectively, for U.S. Senate).

Labor also represents a steady, though not enormous, source of political financing for local candidates and parties.

PROGRESSIVES
The current progressive voters on the Iron Range are strongly motivated by the Iraq war issue, but they’ve been around a lot longer than that. In fact, this faction has existed since the beginning of the Range and was in the 1910s and ‘20s an offshoot of the Republican Party. They are moralistic, pro-environment and generally refuse to compromise with those in power on issues important to them. Today they vote DFL (and sometimes Independence or Green). For example, Becky Lourey’s gubernatorial campaign in 2006 drew much of its strength from 8th CD progressives. This group fights with the Iron Range legislative delegation all the time, usually behind closed doors but sometimes out front. (Conservative DFL State Rep. David Dill’s 2002 and 2004 primary challenger Bill Hansen was DFL endorsed, due in large part to progressive activists … but Hansen lost both times … more on that later).

Like labor, the progressives are good at making things happen during a campaign but unlike labor they won’t work for candidates they don’t love. Similarly, progressives can raise lots of money if they really like a candidate but raise nothing for those they don’t like.

OPINION LEADERS
Past and present state legislators, party leaders, mayors, city councilors and county commissioners, and – increasingly – lobbyists, consultants and developers. Add to that newspaper editors/publishers, prominent citizens and anyone else who holds more sway on the street than Joe or Jane Ranger. I’d include bloggers if I weren’t the only political blogger I know of on the Iron Range and if my blog got more than 200 hits a week. In the old days, this collection of people would get together and form what we used to call a political machine. There are vestigial remainders of “machine” politics on the Range, but by and large this group is neither unified nor organized. When they DO get together on a candidate or issue, they can sometimes overrule the will of the labor and progressive factions within the DFL (That’s how David Dill beat Bill Hansen twice). However, when they are divided, a unified labor and progressive coalition can beat the conventional wisdom. That’s how State Rep. Tom Anzelc beat Bob Anderson in the 2006 DFL primary for District 3A even though Anderson had the same last name and is related to outgoing State Rep. Irv Anderson. (I ran Tom’s campaign).

Opinion Leaders hold a bit more sway than any other faction because opinion leaders often control the greatest amount of public influence and campaign funding, the latter disproportionately influenced by the aforementioned lobbyists, consultants and developers.

Oh, and Opinion Leaders are not necessarily Democrats. They only trend that way because of the power structure on the Range.

The Republicans have their factions as well.

SOCIAL/RELIGIOUS CONSERVATIVES
This is the core of the Republican Party on the Iron Range (and the entire 8th Congressional District, for that matter). Deeply pro-life and anti-gay marriage, this group also rivals labor unions in their ability to organize. Unlike labor, their numbers grow each year – even on the Iron Range. I think there’s a ceiling on that, but it’s worth noting.

BUSINESS LEADERS
Business owners, bank managers, stock brokers and others like them have trended Republican since the beginning of the Iron Range. When all the immigrant laborers couldn’t vote – in the 1900s and ‘10s, the Iron Range was a Republican bastion. The last Republican elected in the core of the Iron Range was the late former State Rep. Carl D’Aquila, a Hibbing businessman, who served in the 1950s. Unlike social conservatives, business leaders will cross over to the DFL if the Democrat is more moderate (especially in local races).

LIBERTARIAN/GUN RIGHTS
Democrat or Republican, a NRA endorsement will move 10 and sometimes 20 points in your favor in the general election. Gun rights are a major issue here. The rural edges of the Iron Range – the places where I grew up and currently live – hold a disproportionate number of “libertarian” style voters who distrust government, oppose gun control and vote accordingly. They will vote for gun rights DFLers, but seldom vote for the Democrat in a presidential election.

As I said last time, by the numbers the Iron Range is a solid but improbable DFL stronghold. However, like another Democratic stronghold – the South of the early- to mid-20th Century –the Iron Range elects conservatives and liberals same as anywhere else. We just do all our campaigning in the primary. Business Leaders and libertarians will cross over under the right circumstances, which is why guys like House Majority Leader Tony Sertich will sometimes outperform the DFL’s statewide ticket by 10 or 15 points.

I’ll continue this series in a few days with a piece about the challenges of keeping the positive aspects of Range political tradition while modernizing the parts that no longer work (or never worked). No easy task. One commenter posted that my analysis glosses over the Iron Range’s “cult of personality” that overshadows issues and genuine progress. There’s something to that. I’ll explain.

Aaron Brown blogs about the Iron Range

You might recognize Aaron Brown from his weekly essays on KAXE's Saturday morning program Between You and Me or his contributions to the Morning Show.

Aaron is a man of many hats and along with being a father of 3 under 3 he is an instructor at Hibbing Community College, a columnist with the Hibbing Daily Tribune, a blogger who is involved in DFL Iron Range politics and a writer. You can find more on him on his introduction from his new postings on MNBlue.com. MNBlue.com is described as: providing analysis of, coverage of and snark about Minnesota politics.

Aaron is writing a series of postings about the political culture of the Iron Range on MNBlue.com - check it out:

The Range: where "poli sci" is some kind of ethnic dish and potica is political
Submitted by Minnesota Brown on December 15, 2007 - 12:07pm.
This is the first part of a series of cross-posts about Iron Range political culture for MNBlue.com and the MinnesotaBrown blog.

The first thing you have to know about the Iron Range is that you need to cast aside the conventional wisdom on "rural vs. urban" political trends. The Range is often considered to be a rural area by those who haven't spent much time here. But in truth the Iron Range is an industrial area, larger than Duluth but spread out over a long string of small- to medium-sized mining towns. A local college history instructor, Pam Brunfelt, first explained this analysis to me and it's the best I've encountered. These towns operate much the way neighborhoods function in a large city but the geographic isolation has preserved the kind of rivalry that most cities escape after their first few decades.

At the same time, parts of the Iron Range -- such as the part where I now live in Itasca County and the part where I grew up near Cherry -- are classically rural. But in all cases you can't make the assumption that rural areas naturally break to conservative trends and urban areas naturally skew liberal. For instance, my home township -- Balsam -- tilted just slightly for George W. Bush in 2004 and is home to a strong evangelical Christian community like what you'd expect in a "red" precinct. But state DFLers, because of tradition and personal connections, still do very well here. And then my native Cherry -- which is one of the few legitimate farming communities on the Range -- is solidly liberal (and was home to many socialists at the beginning of the 20th Century, including famous communist Gus Hall).

The cities of the Iron Range are mostly 3-1 DFL towns. Places like Chisholm and Keewatin run about 80 percent DFL in local races. Some of the larger towns -- especially Hibbing, which is the mine managers used to live and control politics back in the pre-WWII era -- have larger communities of Republicans, but the vote totals still tilt 2-1 DFL. In all cases, local DFL candidates run about 10-20 percent better than statewide DFL candidates.

Why? The first rule of Iron Range politics is the importance of personal relationships and sincerity. Traditional modern politicking -- the kind you see from Hillary Clinton or Mitt Romney at the national level -- don't jive around here. The Range is (generally though not exclusively) socially conservative and economically liberal. I know several pro-lifers whose opinion on taxes and spending would be considered socialist in the suburbs.

People often wonder why Paul Wellstone did better on the Iron Range than anywhere else when his politics ran slightly to the left of most Rangers. The reason is because the Range will forgive political differences if people perceive the politician's motives as sincere and if the candidate visits often and listens well. So Wellstone thrived here while others have not.

You have to know people, the ara and the history. Political conversations don't begin with "Do you support the Whatsit Bill?" They begin with "I was talking to Eddie Skavich the other day ... ya, he's Bobby's brother ... no they never did find Bobby's thumb ... ya, they found the finger. That was in Buhl ... so ya, are you for the Whatsit?" Now, if you are good at the personal touch, it matters much less if you are for or against the Whatsit bill. Wellstone was a master at this. All the good local pols were born for this stuff.

In future posts I'll talk about the factions that make up the DFL and Republican political spectrum on the Range.
~ MinnesotaBrown