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
Sorted by date Results 1 - 12 of 12
Hello, to all the electricity users out there, and that includes most of us. Hopefully, your coffee maker went on this morning, your cell phone was charged, the toaster worked, and your car headlights went on during your dark morning commute. All of these activities most of us depend on are driven by the movement of small subatomic particles called electrons; there is a reason the words "electron" and "electricity" are related to one another. How in the heck do we get these tiny, negatively...
Spending time in Carlton, Cloquet, Thomson and Jay Cooke State Park is sure to reveal a few sites of interest for sure. I like to paddle the St. Louis River from Scanlon to the Thomson Reservoir on warmer days than today. During the journey we get to run, or portage, a famous drop called "electric ledge." When approaching this drop, you can't miss how it got its name: not from the electricity flowing through my body, but the high power lines that span the river. This beautiful St. Louis River...
Welcome to autumn: cooler, wetter, mushrooms galore, and changing leaf colors. We see green leaves all summer and now those same leaves are turning yellow, orange, red, and even purple; what's up with that? The causes of these changes are fascinating. The pigments in the leaves are also responsible for the red in apples, orange in carrots, blue in blueberries, purple in eggplant, and the yellow in "dandy lions." The functions of these pigments vary: they can attract pollinators such as bees,...
Have you ever picked up a really interesting rock and wondered what it was and how it was made? Well, I have, and still do. Each rock tells a story about its creation: when it was made, how it was made, where it was made, and how it got to its finding spot. As I learn more about rock creation, I become interested in all rocks, even the plain ones. One rock that is definitely not plain is our state gemstone, the Lake Superior agate. While visiting my son and his family in Omaha last week, my gran...
Hello to another edition of "Look at that!" I have been on the run recently and found myself in Anchorage, Alaska, where two of my grandchildren live. The last time I traveled was my first trip to Hawaii, where I was struck by the similarities in geology between the north shore of Oahu and the north shore of Lake Superior. Even though our north shore is about a billion years older, the similarities were striking. I decided to look for any similarities in the Anchorage area and Carlton County but...
Hello again, we are in a winter wonderland, and I love it. As long as it is winter it might as well snow a little bit. I was going to continue my discussion on peat bogs this week, but my peat guy in Cromwell had to cancel our interview. No problem, so many things to wonder about. Yesterday I went cross-country skiing with two of my grandkids, ages 5 and 8. Halfway through our ski, I built a little ski jump off to the side and watched as they soared 12 feet through the air and landed on their...
Wow, that was a cold few days last week, hope your water pipes and septic mounds survived. I was lucky - the only thing I lost was the ability to open my gas cap from inside the car because my cable snapped. It is often more difficult to enjoy the outdoors when wind chills are so wicked; one place I can count on being fairly comfortable during these times is in the middle of a spruce bog on a pair of snowshoes. I love bogs in all seasons, except when the mosquitoes are in charge. Northern...
Hello to you all, or should I say, "Aloha." I am playing and learning in a place far, far away from Carlton County and the Pine Knot News. It took me 66 years to get here, but I made it: O'ahu, Hawaii. It is a lot warmer and a lot greener here. I have seen whales, lizards in our Airbnb and flying fish being chased by tuna. I've wiped out on a boogie board, and jumped into a jungle waterfall. My favorite thing to do was snorkeling - I saw fish that put Dr. Seuss creatures to shame; the colors...
Happy new year to you all. I was very happy to see the snow we received last week because I love solid water, and all the things we can do with it. Sliding with my grandkids, riding a snowmobile, skiing at Mont du Lac, jumping and skiing at Pine Valley, fishing on a frozen lake, skating across a pond or a rink, or just looking at it, are all some of the reasons why I really do enjoy winter. In some of our past adventures we traveled in time or became really small. This column is about...
Merry Christmas to all of you Pine Knotters! Time passes so quickly, 2019 will soon be upon us. Our last adventure required time travel as we investigated the origin of the red clay that is carried by the Nemadji River. Our new adventure requires us to get small, but I happen to have a shrinking machine. Miss Frizzle would be proud. This time we are examining the root-beer-colored water of the St. Louis River. This brown-colored water is also common in most of the north shore streams that spill...
Hello again from the red clay waters of the Nemadji River. Last week we journeyed back in time and were lucky to see Glacial Lake Duluth and witness a lake 450 feet higher than current Lake Superior. It was so high it backed up and covered Jay Cooke Park and a good deal of Carlton County; it existed there for about 1,000 years, according to glacial geologists (glaciologists). The presence of this ancient lake is an important part of the Nemadji River story. We know the Nemadji River basin has an...
Hello, everyone in the Pine Knot community, hope you all had a great Thanksgiving. I did! I spent time with my family, my favorite mother-in-law and some of my grandkids. We always like to take a little hike in the woods and look for stuff; this time we ventured a little way out on a frozen pond and enjoyed looking through the ice and crystal clear water for plants, animals and whatever else we could discover. This got me thinking about the color of water in my own neighborhood. In Carlton...
