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 26 - 50 of 57
The idea of a roundabout is no longer under consideration for the intersection of Minnesota Highway 210 and Carlton County Road 61, county engineer JinYeene Neumann said Monday at the board of commissioners meeting. Neumann presented information about the application for a Transportation Economic Development program grant application for the intersection. The board approved it. The engineers have designed the strip with J turns for traffic control instead of a roundabout. Neumann said that...
It has been 100 years since Finland natives John and Hannah Konu bought and moved to land west of Moose Lake near the Kettle River. Their grandson, Gerry, and great-grandson, Mark, are carrying on the family tradition of farming the land despite the continued decrease of small family farms. Gerry and Mark Konu will be honored at a reception at the Carlton County Fair on Saturday, where they will be presented with the award of Carlton County 2021 Farm Family of the Year from the University of...
Barnum school officials are meeting with officials from the Moose Lake and Willow River districts to discuss schedules and busing changes for the next school year. “We are discussing the parts of the school bus routes that we can share,” Barnum superintendent Mike McNulty said. “Some of our routes are the other school districts. Some students from each of the school districts go to school in one of the other districts, so we are talking about how to keep bus routes from overlapping.” McNulty said the districts have also discussed startin...
People streamed in and out of the convention center at Black Bear Casino Resort last Thursday, eager to take another step toward a post-pandemic life. By the end of the day, another 455 residents of Carlton County and members of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa had received their first doses of the Covid-19 Moderna vaccine. The event came in a partnership between the band and Carlton County and was staffed by workers in the health departments from each. The Fond du Lac band...
People in the Sturgeon Lake area are experiencing bittersweet feelings about losing a much-loved landmark, the Sturgeon Island covered bridge. "It will be replaced this fall if the state funding comes through," said Pine County engineer Mark LeBrun. "The issues with the old bridge are that parts of the structure that the bridge sits on are starting to wash out and it is narrow at 14 feet. It has served its life." Inspections in the past few years have shown that the bridge is beyond repair and...
When Florian Chmielewski carries his accordion into the VFW in Cloquet, he can't help but smile. "I told someone that I have been doing that for 76 years, bringing my accordion into a place and setting the case down," he said. "I have to do it. I am there to make people happy. I bring joy to their lives." Chmielewski celebrated his 94th birthday Wednesday in true Florian style: by playing at the VFW's senior dance. "Someone asked me who was going to play for me on my birthday," Florian said. "I...
Students went back to the Barnum elementary and high schools Tuesday, Jan. 19. “It was great to hear their voices in the halls again,” said Barnum superintendent Mike McNulty in a telephone interview later that day. “I hope that lasts a long time.” The elementary students have returned to school five days a week, while the high school students attend school four days a week. They participate in distance learning on Wednesdays, explained McNulty. “Wednesday is a day for the teachers to do preparation work,” said McNulty. “We don’t have th...
Ginger Spiess, a former Moose Lake resident who now lives in Ramsey, Minnesota, had just 10 minutes to prepare for a trip to Washington D.C. on Jan. 4 for what turned out to be an infamous week after protestors stormed the Capitol on her second day there. The backlash led to the impeachment of President Donald Trump Wednesday, the second time the U.S. House of Representatives has done so. For Spiess, the events that led to her proximity to the actions on Jan. 6 were an accident. "It had never...
The holidays are fast approaching and gift buying is in full swing, but don't forget your local businesses as you search for that perfect gift for someone on your list. There is a wealth of unique gifts available right in this area, as well as friendly familiar faces in the businesses who are eager to help you make a selection. During this year of pandemic, it is doubly important to support local businesses and organizations, especially during the holiday shopping season. They are having a...
Dinel and Lance Hollerbach were asked to smoke a whole hog for a birthday barbecue years ago, but they didn't have a smoker that was big enough. "One man said that he had a big roaster," Dinel said recently. "We went to look at it in the woods. There was a tree growing through it." They brought the smoker home and Lance used his welding and fabricating skills to fix it up. "When he pulled up with it at the place where we were going to smoke the hog, people laughed and called him a redneck,"...
The Barnum school district got some good news recently, in a year that saw the small rural school district facing financial woes and then a pandemic. In this case, however, two negatives made a positive. The fund balance for the Barnum school district should be around $450,000, the finance committee reported at the school board’s working meeting Tuesday, Oct. 6. Final figures will be presented to the board by the auditor at its monthly meeting Tuesday, Oct. 20, said superintendent Mike McNulty in a telephone interview this week. “Fifty per...
Changes at the Cloquet Ford Chrysler Center have been noticeable the past few months since it has been under new management. Owners Al and Renee Birman have stepped back to a more silent role and the previously silent partner, Mike Larson, has taken on a more active role. "We are trying to get things to a more stable structure," Larson said. "There are changes in several processes that we are working through." New staff members have been part of that effort. "We are under new management," he...
Not being able to get a hug from family members is the hardest part of living in a senior care facility during this time of the COVID-19 pandemic and social distancing. "The residents with dementia don't understand," said Natalie Zeleznikar, owner of Diamond Willow Assisted Living. "The families are frustrated. They are doing window visits, but it is not the same." Federal and state government guidelines have directed residential care facilities to restrict visitors - including family and...
A stock water tank and a giant Coca-Cola bottle replica contained most of the one million pop can tabs Wright Elementary School students collected back in the late 1980s. The collection was to be recycled for cash, with the money donated to the Ronald McDonald House in Minneapolis, a place where families can stay while children receive medical treatment. An appreciative Ronald McDonald himself came to the tiny school on a snowy day in February and entertained the students for the afternoon. "Peo...
Barnum superintendent Mike McNulty felt chilled the afternoon of April 1 after leaving his office at Barnum High School and returning to his rented cabin near Sand Lake. "I felt like I was coming down with a cold," he said in a telephone interview this week. "I took a hot shower to warm up." But he felt better the next morning and went back to his office. "I didn't have a temperature but, within hours, I alternated between feelings of being chilled and feeling hot," he said. "I got out of the of...
Just before Easter, a single chick-in-an-egg toy was left at the end of the day after a customer brought in a birchbark basket of 30 of them. The toys were free. Another woman brought in homemade facemasks on Friday that anyone could take for free. "They went like crazy," said Renee Gaffney, one of the owners of TJ's Country Store. Those are just two examples of how people in the tiny community of Mahtowa have pulled together during the statewide stay-at-home order in response to the...
Elmer Lindholm was buried in straw and in a coma inside a barn in France in 1918. He was one of the American troops sent to fight in World War I. For most of a week, Lindholm would be in the grip of the influenza that was spreading across the world and killing millions of people. The "Spanish" flu hit young people particularly hard. He was in his early 20s. Roy Grist, an Army physician at a hospital near Boston, wrote to a colleague about what he had been seeing in soldiers during the pandemic....
The Barnum school board voted to cut positions from the school staff for the next school year at its monthly meeting on Tuesday, March 17, despite a plea at a community meeting a couple of weeks ago to cut the positions slowly. “We are where we are,” board chair Colleen Fetters said, and called for approval of the reduction of one full-time elementary teacher, a half-time Spanish teacher, a full-time physical education teacher, a full-time math teacher, and a third-time science teacher. All passed. A vote on the reduction of a half-time mus...
A community meeting brainstorming solutions to financial issues in the Barnum School District aimed to bring people together Wednesday, March 4. A circle of 21 stakeholders, made up of three members of school personnel, students, parents, community members and support staff expressed their views about what needs to be changed in the Barnum School District now that the school board is discussing cuts in staff because of a deficit budget. Facilitators Laraine and Paul Mickelson of Mickelson Consulting led the discussion using a circle process,...
It had been decades since Becky Dooley of Cloquet had played a clarinet, but she brushed off her rusty skills and joined the Cloquet Community Band after she retired a couple of years ago. "I hadn't played the clarinet for 35 years," she said. "I used to play in middle and high school. I got a book and relearned, and then I joined the community band." Dooley became more involved when Carol Risdon and Gene Risdon, who had managed and played in the band for 21 years, retired at the end of last...
Kettle River is the only small town in Carlton County to be featured on the WDSE documentary, "This Town," to be shown at 7 p.m. on Monday, March 2 on the Duluth station. Three other northern Minnesota towns - Sandstone, Ball Club and Grand Portage - are included in the documentary, which describes how the towns started and how they are looking to their futures. Kettle River, like so many other small towns, started when a rail line came through in 1909. A depot was built, and farmers would...
Students, parents and teachers talked to the Barnum school board at its monthly meeting Tuesday, Feb. 18 to express their concerns about proposed staff cuts following news that the district needs to make significant cuts or it will go into the red. Kyle, a student, spoke first and listed two items that the students wanted the board to realize: that academic needs are met by the students’ relationships with the teachers, and that the students care deeply about each and every teacher. A high school teacher asked if restructuring, such as a f...
The double whammy of fewer students and state and federal mandates that aren’t fully funded has the Barnum School Board looking at major cuts to keep the budget in the black. The issues aren’t new, nor are they unique to the Barnum school district. However, after five years of deficit spending, the school board now needs to make $750,000 in cuts or risk going into statutory operating debt. A large crowd of concerned residents attended the working meeting of the Barnum school board Feb. 4. It wasn’t so much a presentation from staff to audie...
Dancers twirled to the music of Florian Chmielewski at the Cloquet VFW last Wednesday afternoon, like so many other Wednesdays before. The dance floor fills up for every song played by Lindy's Band, named in honor of the late Lorren Lindevig, and led by International Polka Association Hall of Fame accordionist Florian Chmielewski. At the age of 93, the former state senator and lifetime musician is still playing and still drawing crowds for his old-time accordion music. Terry Solquist, Florian's...
A group of Carlton County senior citizens got an inside glimpse of the Carlton County jail last week. It provided a better understanding of why county officials are so eager to replace the aging facility. Members of the Carlton County TRIAD group - a statewide group of senior citizens, law enforcement and community members working together to prevent crime against senior citizens - toured the Carlton County Law Enforcement Center on Dec. 4. Carlton County Sheriff Kelly Lake gave background on...
