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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With so many folks missing their regular holiday gatherings this year, James Sheetz wanted to share one of his favorite traditions from his time at Wrenshall School. In the 1960s, home economics teacher Joan Urbanski worked with her students to put together a Christmas tea, complete with handmade recipe books. Urbanski still lives in the area. Sheetz asked Audrey (Olson Seboe) Kavanaugh, class of 1965, to reminisce: "I loved everything about it," she said. "Starting with baking and decorating...
With so many holiday traditions upended this year it's fun to be able to hold dearly to the ones we can enjoy safely together. Our family has always loved the lighting displays put out by Wrenshall area residents. The drive back from daycare always takes longer in December because we have to drive down Goad Drive on the way home. I was excited to see the community get into the spirit again this year with the fourth annual Deck the Wrens Halls lighting contest. My family did a drive through town...
Like for plenty of other folks around the country, our Thanksgiving looked quite a bit different this year, but we still celebrated our immense blessings around a dinner of poultry and savory spices. This year I felt especially thankful for the health and safety of my family. My husband, Janaki, contracted Covid-19 sometime in early November and has since recovered, but the repercussions from even one mild case are a good reminder of the precautions we all should continue to take to keep each...
The cult horror film "Plan 9 from Outer Space" was Bela Lugosi's last film, and was shot without a script because director Ed Wood didn't really know what it was going to be about. This is the kind of important trivia that a puppet named Rentfield shares on a new horror movie TV show shot partially in a pole building in Wrenshall. Local resident Mike Sholtz is the puppeteer for Rentfield as well as the co-creator of "Uncle Clutch's Video Horror Shop." The show takes its inspiration from the...
In 1914 Emily Dickenson wrote about the feelings that follow suffering. Whatever your political party, this year's election has been painful. This Sunday marks the new moon and it's a wonderful time to look up and enjoy the vast expanse of cosmos that connects us all. While this is a column about Wrenshall news, the stars that I look at in my backyard are the same ones that someone in Carlton or Esko enjoy. One of our family's favorite activities is to track the International Space Station as...
Halloween is arguably one of the most creative holidays, and this year that spirit (pun intended) will have to go toward figuring out new ways to celebrate. Luckily, Wrenshallites are figuring out some safe alternatives. The city of Wrenshall is hosting scarecrow scenes in Hugh Line park over the weekend. Visitors can walk through the park and pose for selfies, then vote for their favorite creation. Votes are due to City Hall by Nov. 3, with a winner announced on Nov. 4. Wrenshall school is...
On a computer screen in Wrenshall last Saturday, the fate of the first champion of the USA Jigsaw Puzzle Association was being decided. The president of the association and Wrenshall resident, Valerie Coit, was toggling through her Zoom screen gallery to keep a close eye on the more than 100 teams and individuals competing from 11 a.m. to 6:45 p.m. when the final heat ended. Coit's attention to detail paid off as a few of the contestants were within seconds of each other's time. "Some of the...
This was a surprisingly difficult growing season for a lot of our crops on the Food Farm. It was dry early in the growing season, then the first real rain we got was full of hail. This fall has started off dry as well, exacerbated by a failed irrigation pump. But one vegetable that has done exceeding well is something of a historic one to the area — cabbage. The cabbage and potato farms of Wrenshall used to be the main suppliers for Duluth and Superior and beyond. Boxcars were loaded with the c...
By the time this paper hits your mailbox, we will have had one partial week of school under our belts. We will have either had a hard frost or we will have been given another week of needed growth for our final shares of tomatoes and peppers. By the time you read this column our family will have established a new schedule and know where we are going on each day and who will pick up whom and what to pack for lunch. We will know how much space the fall cabbage will need in the root cellar. For me,...
I have a small plot on the farm that I use to experiment and play - growing things such as artichoke, eggplant, or tomatillo. That last plant is irrepressible. I started growing tomatillos five years ago and every year I have so many volunteer plants that they could probably count as a perennial weed. Even the yellow spindles that I started from seed and forgot in pots grew into flourishing shrubs dripping with green fruit. It was this resilience and energy that came to mind as I talked with...
Of all of the sectors to be affected by the Covid pandemic, performing arts and special event centers have been some of the hardest hit. That is certainly true of our community treasure - The Historic Scott House. James Sheetz usually spends his summer months diligently preparing for musical productions along the lakeshore near his family's historic home. The Scott House has seen reviews of "Mary Poppins" and welcomed world-class musicians to share their craft with the community. When the...
For many families, summer is looking a little different this year. Many camps are canceled along with many of the usual structured activities. For me and my 3- and 5-year-olds, this means that news of a skid steer, jackhammer, and telehandler doing construction work nearby is a morning outing. Construction at Wrenshall school is in full swing and for those who need a program on the calendar, I highly recommend it. My husband, Janaki Fisher-Merritt, is on the school board, and while I’ve d...
I remember when I first learned that my smartphone kept track of the number of steps I took every day. I was sort of creeped out that this piece of technology I carry everywhere was keeping such close tabs on me but I was equally horrified that I lived such a sedentary lifestyle. I thought for sure that living on a farm would mean an abundance of ambulation but the reality of my driving and desk time for my day job came crashing into view. I made some short-lived resolutions about moving more...
The Friday morning “Backyard Almanac” segment on Duluth’s public radio station KUMD last week included a recipe for one of my favorite fruits — the strawberry. Wild strawberries, while quite a bit smaller than their commercial cousin, are a fruit packed with sweetness. “Fragaria virginiana” is its scientific name, and they grow as a perennial in a variety of habitats — in dry open fields, woodland edges and along roadsides. The recipe was this: 1. Pick the strawberry. 2. Put the strawberry in...
This week Don Johnson wrote in with a reminder of a very important Wrenshall anniversary. Here is the story: "It turns out that the 12th of June is the 30-year anniversary of the Brickyard Restaurant. So I thought I would give you some history of how it came into being." Johnson says there were three men who were part of the Wrenshall Development Corporation. They were Hugh Line, head janitor at the school who served several terms as mayor of Wrenshall; Ken Holmes, a farmer and then later a bus...
The first week of June we brought the last of the rutabagas from our root cellar to the Whole Foods Co-op in Duluth. The following week we started the first summer deliveries to our Food Share members. There are a lot of things that power the farm and allow us to provide local organic produce to our community year-round, but arguably one of the most obvious and most important is the sun. We’ve been seeing a lot of the sun these days and, while we could definitely use some rain to balance it all...
My maternal grandmother, Mildred Schulenburg, was born in Hull in northeastern England in 1910. During World War I, her hometown was a common target for Zeppelin airships, and she recounted stories of watching neighbors perish in the attacks. When she was 18 her family immigrated to the United States. In October of that year the United States was plunged into the Great Depression. When she was 80 years old she built a new house for herself, and we have a snapshot of her hanging on a kudzu vine....
Wrenshall graduation begins at 4 p.m. May 29. To provide for social distancing, the ceremony will be outside in front of school, similar to a drive-in movie theater experience. Since a limited numbers of cars are allowed to park and watch, the ceremony will also be broadcast on WKLK 96.5 FM and streamed live on Facebook. I spoke to a member of Wrenshall's graduating class, Alexis Schmidt, about the unique end to her senior year. While she certainly feels disappointed by the cancellation of prom...
The scientific name for a weed I am seeing a lot around the farm this spring is urtica dioica, which sounds like something a doctor might tell you if your urinary tract infection has taken a turn for the worse. I much prefer the common name: nettles. The two t’s in the middle of the word look like the tiny spines on the stem of the plant itself. This is where the hollow hairs called trichomes reside. They act like hypodermic needles, injecting chemicals like histamines into flesh to produce a st...
I recently ran across a quote from the writer and thinker Bell Hooks talking about the possibilities a classroom environment offers students: "The academy is not paradise. But learning is a place where paradise can be created." In her book "Teaching to Transgress" she continues: "The classroom, with all its limitations, remains a location of possibility." There has been a lot written about what impact the loss of a deliberate space for learning might mean for students. I teach at the college lev...
Last week, Gov. Tim Walz announced that schools will continue distance learning through the end of the school year. I wouldn’t normally use this column to air petty annoyances but I’ve noticed some terminology that I want to address. Schools are not “closed” for the year. While the physical buildings are inaccessible, the administrators, teachers, and students are working really hard to figure out how to make distance learning work as best it can. Parents and caregivers are putting in a lot of...
The arts have been an important refuge for folks during this global pandemic. For some it might be binge-watching a TV series or catching up on the bedstand stack of books, but in Wrenshall the community is getting creative with how they are taking in and producing a shared culture. Seniors in Jeanna Aldridge's class recreated famous works of art using only materials they had at home. Wrenshall's Tom Cawcutt Sr. has started a weekly live concert series from the comfort of his own home. Cawcutt...
I took the news of John Prine passing away last week a little hard. His music holds a special place in the mythology of the Food Farm. When telling the story of Jane and John founding the farm, we often turn to the lyrics to Prine’s “Spanish Pipedream.” “We blew up our TV, threw away our paper. Went to the country, built us a home.” They moved from Oregon to Holyoke in 1975 to start a farming community during the height of that decade’s back-to-the-land movement. Author and farmer Gene Logsdo...
Some of the funniest memes I’ve seen lately have revolved around parents having to share in their children’s day-to-day education and learning. Nobody seems to be questioning the summer break that teachers take to plan and revise curriculum now that the classroom experience is taking place inside the home. This is Week 2 of online learning for Wrenshall schools and I reached out to Superintendent Kim Belcastro to hear how the transition is going. “You have to learn and adapt in these situa...
Thanks to all for playing Wrenshall trivia this week. I had a videoconference with Dale Wolf and he told me all the answers. I wrote them down while dehydrating apples and now they are either in the compost or at the bottom of the stack of papers that I cleared off my desk to make room for my son’s new “classroom.” So I called the next best resource, Jim Sheetz. Here are his responses: QWhat was the total number of brickyards running in Wrenshall during the peak time of that industry here?...
