One Thing Even My Friends Don't Know...

By Jennifer Poenix

This Saturday on "Between You and Me" with Heidi Holtan, we're reprising last week's topic since Heidi had a bad case of laryngitis. We're asking you to tell us one thing about yourself that even your closest friends don't know. I think it's good we've had an extra week to think this over. There are some things about ourselves we don't necessarily wish to share, but if we think about it hard enough, there's probably something we can tell KAXE's audience.

My thing is that I often get teary-eyed while watching Sesame Street. There I said it. See? It's not so bad to share these things.

I love watching Sesame Street, Old School (Volumes 1 & 2) with my four year old son. He seems to get just as much enjoyment out of the show as I do.

 What he doesn't notice, is that sometimes I have to blink back tears. 
I think I get emotional because watching Sesame Street brings me back to such an innocent, happy time. Sitting on the living room floor, with my daycare friends, laughing our heads off, and then, when the show was over, "falling" down the basement stairs just like the baker in the counting song.

Also, some of the clips are just so darn sweet. For example, here's one that never fails to get my water-works going:



That yarn ribbon in the girl's hair! The way they plaster the posters everywhere! The lady who finds Ace! The happy reunion between Ace and the kids! The boy saying "Where were ya?!"  *sniff*

I hope you'll share something with us this Saturday, on "Between You and Me," from 10-noon.

What's For Breakfast on Friday Mornings

Every Friday morning about 7:45 John Bauer and Heidi Holtan talk with a KAXE member and ask them what's for breakfast.  Listeners have told us this is some of their favorite programming because it's real people talking about something as universal as oatmeal.  Or coffee and a cigarette. 

Last week on What's For Breakfast Cindy Hinkanen of Floodwood was their guest.  She spends her mornings with her mother and told John all about her morning routines.  At the end of the conversation she said that she and her mother would stop by KAXE.  John and Heidi didn't really believe it, but sure enough, Cindy and Janet walked through the doors!  Listen to the conversation here! 

On What Comes Next

   by Robert Jevne

   The one thing even my friends don’t know about me is that I am an optimist. And why would I, or anyone, keep that a secret? First, it’s a recent development and second, I’m afraid they will think I’m crazy, but at this point, I feel I have nothing left to lose and I am now ready to make the leap in order to get this thing going. So…here goes. I am very optimistic about our future. Our immediate future anyway. To be exact: about the next year. Let me explain. For those of you who don’t know - We’re all going to die. According to the Mayan calendar 2012 marks the end of well… the calendar. It completes a 5,125 year cycle which will culminate in some sort of astronomical alignment and subsequent cataclysm. And I couldn’t be more relieved. All this bickering has been driving me crazy, and I’m not just talking about the current political cycle. I’m talking about since our very origins. All this struggling against nature, against each other, and even against our own selves; the whole civilization process always has been and continues to be completely out of hand. You Pull yourself out of the mud, clean yourself up a bit, pound together some kind of shelter, hunt, gather, make nice with the neighbors, put on a nice pair of slacks, slog back and forth between work and home and try, try, try to make your corner of the world a better place to rest your sorry behind and the behinds of your loved ones and what do you get? - another night staring at cable news wondering what the heck went wrong.

   Ask yourself two questions: If you knew you had only one year left to live, what would you do? Secondly, and I think more importantly: If you knew we all had only one year left to live, what would you do?

   Call me a cock-eyed optimist but I can’t help but feel this is a great opportunity and I don’t mean in the “there’s money to be made off this” sense but more in the this is our chance to fulfill our destiny as a magnificent clan of enlightened animals living peaceably in an earthly paradise sense. Think about it: If the end of us all means the end to war, pestilence, hunger, poverty, racism, pain and suffering and there’s only one year left, does it make any make sense to cling to the old divided ways for what little time we have remaining? There’s not enough time to work out our differences or to hammer out some kind of compromise. Its just time to let go of all that and love each other as we were meant to. Now. Don’t we owe each other and ourselves at least that much after all we’ve been through? And hey, its win-win because even in the extreme unlikelihood that the Mayans are wrong and somehow, someway, we manage to survive 2012, we would still have one kick-ass year under our belt and could there really be a good reason not to make it two, or ten, or a hundred, or forever?

To sum up: Yes, we are all going to die so, if this next year is going to be our last one together, let’s go out there and make it a good one.”

KAXE Goes to the Third Annual Iron Range Earth Fest

by Scott Hall

The 3rd Annual Iron Range Earth Fest this Saturday in Mt. Iron has given us an opportunity to meet some of the people who will be demonstrating innovative things at the event. There is a strong and timely emphasis on energy production this year.  It's refreshing to meet people who are up to their elbows in research, development, and teaching about wind, solar and biomass energy sources.

In recent weeks, on KAXE's morning program, we've talked with the president of Silicon Energy, Gary Shaver.  Silicon Energy will begin manufacturing solar panels in Mt. Iron possibly as soon as this Summer. Silicon Energy is based in Washington state and uses new materials and processes they think will expand the potential of solar energy.  We also met Jesse Dahl who teaches solar energy classes at Hibbing Community College, and Dan Janisch, wind technology instructor at Mesabi Range Community and Technical College.  Both of these programs will have exhibits and demonstrations at Earth Fest. The Rural Renewable Energy Alliance in Pine River will have a program and exhibit as well.

There will also be workshops on beekeeping, bread baking, wine making, cooking with local foods, rain barrels, gardening, the art of basket making, and much more.  Exhibits and workshops will be at the Mt. Iron Community Center on Hwy 169, Messiah Lutheran Church next door to the Community Center, and Merritt Elementary School in Mt. Iron. While you are at it, stop by KAXE's booth in the Mt. Iron Community Center.

Love On the Rocks ... Ain't No Big Surprise

By John Bauer

  April Fool's Day is celebrated in different countries around the world every year.  It's not a national holiday ... but widely recognized and celebrated as a day when thousands of people play all kinds of good-humored hoaxes and practical jokes of varying sophistication on friends, family, neighbors, co-workers and in this case ... KAXE listeners.
   The April Fool's version of KAXE Morning Show last Friday with John Bauer and Heidi Holtan announced that Neil Diamond would be the closing act at the 91.7 KAXE Mississippi River Festival, July 16th.  Tickets would go on-sale at 9 AM sharp and no sooner.  Phones perplexed ... Facebook frenzied... Twitters twit ... Emails exploded and blogs blew!   Word spread faster than mayonnaise on warm bread!  Holly Holy ... was it true ... the Solitary Man was comin' to town?
   At 9 AM ... $#!% hit the fan!  People showed up at our door.  Hundreds of ticket requesting phone calls were answered with April Fools!  99% of the people were able to laugh at themselves for being taken.  Others weren't so happy.  I sincerely apologize to those who were offended and I applaud those who were able to laugh at themselves.   

One Thing Even My Friends Don't Know About Me IS...

by Steve Downing

GET TO KNOW ME  (this week on Between You and Me)

            Most of my friends don’t hunt, so hunting isn’t something we tend to talk about when we’re together. They know I hunt, and no one holds it against me; it just isn’t a component of our friendship. So this is a chance for me to do some sharing.

            One thing my friends don’t know about me: before I field-dress a whitetail, I ditch the packboots and slip into my red wingtips.

            I want to assure friends and un-friends alike that I haven’t turned into a fop. Fop-hood is not on my short list of aspirations or accomplishments. I’m a jeans and hoodie guy. Except for very, very special occasions.

            To wit: that moment of big-game harvesting. This experience is so all-consuming, so intimate, so meaningful, how could you ever over-endow it with special-ness? You can’t. I’ve even on occasion finished off the hunting wardrobe-of-the-day with a Jerry Garcia necktie that complements the rest of the outfit wonderfully well, contrasting here, blending seamlessly there.

            In the event you think I’m either joshing or heaping scorn on the whole deer-hunting adventure, I dare you, I double-dare you: dress up for field-dressing, once. I guarantee: you will never go back to the beat-up, sun-faded, beer-and-blood-stained, tradition-rich duds you’ve been wearing since that long-ago time when they actually fit you.

            Finally, the shoes and tie in the attached photo are mine. Pretend they’re yours. Ask yourself: besides the deer hunt, how many other opportunities would you have during the year to deploy these invaluable assets? I’ll say no more.

Who, me?

by Robert Jevne

Exclusivity is nothing new. Even before Facebook made it so easy to friend and unfriend everyone to the point of being meaningless, people had lists. I had a list, you had a list, everybody had a list. A list of who was invited and who was not. That much hasn’t changed. Being exclusionary is a part of human nature not just the nature of a program. Luckily, the advent of Facebook didn’t exclude the possibility of making real friends, or unmaking them and that is still very personal. Before Facebook, exclusivity wasn’t something people liked to admit to so, by convention, it was a mental list. Not something you would ever write down or show off in any way as we do now and maybe because it was clothed in secrecy, exclusion was used without mercy when someone “acted out” one too many times. “Acting out” was the equivalent of a You-tube rant except in person and granted, it usually didn’t come with a barrage of death threats from around the world or the need to drop out of UCLA or off the face of the planet when it went viral but it had its own dangers. It meant you might make somebody’s list. Somebody’s mental list. Then there you were. You - YOU were the unwelcome guest. And word spread like wildfire which is about as fast as dial-up. You’d find yourself showing up at a “friend’s” party even a “friend of a friend’s” party only to discover face to face that YOU were the one who didn’t belong there. You found out right then and there in front of all those people gathered in a tribal clump on the conversational sofas. You could see it on their faces and you, with barely one foot over the thresh-hold, before you could even muster the wherewithal to turn and run, you had to face up to the fact that it was YOU, of all people, who no longer belonged, and you had no choice but to hold your chin up and forge on with a drink and maybe a joke or two and another drink and maybe some imitations. People loved your imitations and your spontaneous break-dancing antics as well as your really loud singing replete with dramatic gestures. And the ladies loved seeing your totally awesome biceps and that pentagram you had tattooed on you chest when you were thirteen by that nice lady named Sharon who insisted you call her “Honey” and her boyfriend Eric who was a real live clown and who helped keep you from squirming. Now, he was strong. And the next thing you knew you were on a roll. You were turning this whole thing around. They were eating it up. The people were loving it. Loving YOU. You were in, baby. You were in like Flint.

Do you ever wonder what happened to that group of friends? You haven’t seen them in a month of Sundays. You should really give them a call - see what’s going on. God, those were good times, great times. Weren’t they?