A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
A hometown newspaper with a local office, local owners & lots of local news
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The city of Cromwell is prepping for major roadwork on Minnesota Highway 210, scheduled to begin next year. Last week, Mayor Sharon Zelazny summarized a variety of projects coming up over the next couple of years. The 210 project, set to begin in the spring of 2022, will include crosswalks and sidewalks, better lighting and improved drainage. The project will be inconvenient but also a boon to the small town in western Carlton County, as the intersection of highways 210 and 73 is the beating...
A goodly share of Cromwell-Wright High School students participate in vocal music every year. It's an art form requiring intensive individual work and attentiveness to instruction as well as the challenges of singing with others. Each learns about his/her own voice. Its range and clarity. How to memorize the pieces. How to breathe and sustain notes through slow passages. How to feel and convey the mood of each composition. How to modulate between powerful, often high, and passionate notes, and...
Though you can practice alone, even in a small space with minimal props, yoga is more pleasurable and probably better exercise when done with others or in classes. I’ve been doing yoga for more than half a lifetime. I’m grateful to the teachers, quite a variety of them, with whom I’ve studied wherever I lived. I have enhanced both my strength and flexibility by rolling out my mat several times a week, sometimes with friends or relations. Once you’ve worked consistently with one or more teacher...
The death of a beloved elder causes deep mourning. Some of us lose parents way before their time. My father died in a rock climbing fall when I was 27. My grandmother, Ruth Lee Markusen, Cromwell's beloved English teacher for years, died of cervical cancer in 1947, shortly after I was born. It's a blessing when some live long lives. My mother lived to be 89, plenty of time for us to work on her detailed, sometimes funny, life story, painstakingly written left-handed and then typed out on an old...
There are two complementary ways to avoid Covid-19 and reduce its incidence in our communities. Social distancing is one: the tiresome masking and regression to private spaces and the internet for everything from dining to schooling. Most of us have made sacrifices to follow the guidelines and learn alternative forms of working, learning and socializing. The other involves taking dosages of the new vaccines that have been tested and evaluated. Together, they form an even stronger route to...
We're in a deep freeze. It's beautiful: a bit windy, but gloriously sunny with ample snow. Yet not snowbound. This stretch is a skier, skater and morning walker's heaven. Walking this Tuesday morning with my neighbor and long-time walking partner June Collman, we compared notes on preparation. Suiting up is a process. Thick handknit wool socks, woven legwarmers, two pairs of long johns, snow pants. Bog boots or hiking boots. A thick pair of mittens covered by mitts, and a third inner layer of...
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources is asking for online public comment through Feb. 15 on its outdoor recreation task force recommendations for enhancing the state's outdoor recreation opportunities. The initiative is quite broad and includes many state-owned and operated areas in Carlton County. These include Jay Cooke and Moose Lake state parks, Fond du Lac State Forest, and the Soo Line north and south trails, among others. The DNR's State Forest Trail and Management Revisions Proj...
Since March, trillions of dollars of pandemic-related aid has flowed from the federal government to the states. This aid took many forms, including direct add-ons to unemployment payments and grants and loans to businesses. How did they work? Which sectors and occupations took greatest advantage of these? Economists tracked the first round for our region and here’s what we learned from the first rounds of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and extended unemployment benefits. The PPP p...
A difficult pandemic year did not spare the city of Cromwell. As mayor Sharon Zelazny said, “When it came to challenges and achievements, the challenges definitely won out.” Zelazny said the city council and staff made the Covid-19 pandemic the top priority. Every employee had to adopt their job description to include pandemic preparedness and adapt their responsibilities accordingly, she said. “Our municipal liquor store required everyone’s help to keep up with the necessary changes. I felt it...
Finally, the lakes froze three or more inches deep. So deep that, with temperatures in the teens or lower, snow did not stick to the surface. It seems magical to me that water I swam and paddled in months ago can serve up a platform for outdoor aerobic exercise in the depths of winter. I skated as a child, as a mother and, even after my son left home, on the lakes wherever I lived. In New Jersey, we used skate sails, holding them to windward, speeding along the lake surface and peeking through...
Once again, husband Rod Walli and I headed out to clear the Fond du Lac Forest cross-country ski trail of annual downfalls and upstart saplings. Once again, the Willow River Challenge Incarceration Program men and Sgt. Steve Whited joined us. I introduced myself - masked just like they were - to each man and thanked him for his work. On the trails we encountered more downfalls than usual. But we managed to get the A to B trails and the way back to the parking lot cleared. It helped that Rod...
A good economist colleague and friend of mine, University of Minnesota professor Deborah Levison, has spent more than 20 years studying child labor around the world. Despite many laws formally forbidding child labor, Levison's research finds that children are working all around the world, including in our own region. She's teamed up with photographer David Parker who has, over many years, captured hundreds of them on film. Levison and historian MJ Maynes have curated a virtual exhibit of the...
Thanksgiving is a great time to reflect on family history. Covid affords us, regrettably, more time to do so. To pore over old photo albums, view what our parents and grandparents and great-uncles looked like in their youth and parenting stages. Last week I wrote about the cousins who have stood in as sisters for me. This week, I'm thinking about all the men I came to love and adventure with through my father's family's relations. My father grew up in Cromwell, the son of a Danish immigrant - a...
I feel lucky to belong to a huge extended family on both my parents' sides. I'm an "only girl" with two brothers. Our first, second and third cousins have made up for that. I just spent part of a Sunday afternoon with my third cousin, Beth Wilson, the former music director at Cloquet High School. She's most recently completed a massive scanning of her father's photos, sending me a flash drive I am replicating for the dozens and dozens of cousins we have all over the U.S. (and even Guam!). I led...
It’s surprising how important Buddhist beliefs and practices have been to evolving world communities and their ability to live together in peace and mutual respect. I first learned about Buddhism during the 1960s Vietnam War, when Buddhist monks led nonviolent protests against American aggression. At its height, the U.S. committed 500,000 American soldiers to the war. Every man in my college class had to face Vietnam one way or another. Back home at my Jesuit college, we studied Catholic p...
Since Covid-19 crept into our communities, many of us have descended into a strange solitude. Neighbors, co-workers and merchants whom we love to patronize hunker down the way we do: behind closed doors, wearing masks, waiting for the virus to wither. Our parents, grown children and grandkids may be far away. It’s amazing, though, how new technologies enable us to connect, meet and make group decisions, patronize performers we love, participate in yoga classes and listen to gorgeous music. My Da...
Have you ever wondered why our neighbors decide to run for office? What life encounters led them to do so? Here are my endorsements for three local candidates - Michelle Lee, Mike Sundin and Quinn Nystrom - along with some background exploring their paths and priorities. Michelle Lee A Moose Lake resident and former news anchor/reporter for KBJR 6 in Duluth, Lee is running as a Democrat for Minnesota Senate District 11 seat. She grew up in Minnesota in a family of seven children. When she was...
Due to Covid-19 and social distancing mandates, the 11th annual Minnesota Sings competition took place virtually this year. Participants submitted videos of their performances via YouTube. Sawyer resident Joseph Kotiranta, one of two candidates sponsored by the Cromwell Area Community Club, won first place in the age 13-to-20 group. Cromwell-Wright student Aurora Gervais, a first-time competitor, ranked in the top five. Kotiranta chose Antônio Carlos Jobim's "The Girl from Ipanema," singing it...
If you've driven through Cromwell this past week, you'll have glimpsed the 10 scarecrows lining the main street downtown. Because the usually annual Harvest Fest had to be canceled, the Cromwell Area Community Club dreamed up a scarecrow competition as a fun way to lift spirits and capture a piece of the festival. The scarecrows had to be mounted by Sept. 17. The club was delighted to find 10 scarecrows. "They liven up the town," said Tracey Goranson, one of the organizers. She and her sister, L...
Three nights of frost propelled us into motion. Our roomy veggie garden still had lots growing in it: squash, pumpkins, tomatoes, peppers, chard, kale, basil and other herbs. Green beans that have been bearing for eight weeks. Latecomer beets and carrots that didn't survive a first planting are now coming into their own. So every evening, we spread out heavy plastic tarps over every square foot. Each morning, I'd uncover them, surprised at the moisture on the undersides and grateful to greet gri...
Labor Day turned out windy and rain-free but cold - 57 degrees in Cloquet's Veterans Park. Lots of people showed up for chili, music and rousing speeches in front of a cheeky sign saying to "elect an adult this time." With the traditional Labor Day parade canceled, the local DFL held a drive-in, some of us sitting in our cars, spaciously arrayed in a semicircle around the stage they'd built, with our radios tuned in. Others sat on lawn chairs in front of the stage or their cars. Organized as a...
Cloquet's Lyn Jutila is currently exhibiting her watercolors at the Pine Knot office. She recently sat down with us to talk about her work and how she became a watercolorist after hanging her paintings on the multi-colored brick wall that is The Knot art gallery. "I moved here from California. I'd always enjoyed painting on boards, on driftwood. I began painting in oils, but enjoyed viewing watercolors and dabbling with them, taking classes now and then." A stay-at-home mom, her children...
Over the past month, our area schools have had to redesign their spaces and curricula to cope with Covid-19 and submit their plans to the Minnesota Department of Education. Thanks to the size of the school, Cromwell-Wright’s leadership team, teachers and staff have opted for a fairly unique hybrid learning model, which allows all students to return to school on Sept. 8 but follows the state guidelines for a hybrid model (which has stricter social distancing requirements). The board adopted t...
In early August, the Minnesota Department of Corrections announced the pending closure of two of its prisons due to the state’s budget crisis. Both are among the smallest of our prisons. They are the two sites of the men’s Challenge Incarceration Program, a widely heralded and successful program enabling first-time offenders to do community service while learning new skills. Both are located in relatively small towns where their presence is welcomed, both for the services they provide to loc...
Music and film have long offered “outsiders” — immigrants, women, African Americans — opportunities to tell their stories, use their talents and earn a living. Often pigeonholed into stereotypical roles and marginal venues, many have been able to create breathtaking works that endure and enrich American life. They also provide windows into other cultures and belief systems, often emotionally, by telling stories. Sometimes their works cross racial and ethnic lines, tackling topics where most fe...
