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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Despite receiving a petition from 27 area residents, the Thomson Township Board of Supervisors voted Thursday to push back the paving of East Riverside Road and Serenity Way to 2022 because of a planned building project that could negatively impact a new road surface. It’s not the first petition submitted to township officials. In 2014, residents submitted a petition, but it was rejected then because the township had a comprehensive plan for repaving. According to the petition, that plan stated that all roads would be paved by 2018, yet East R...
Kirsti Marohn MPR News The Minnesota Pollution Control Agency says contamination from PFAS — so-called “forever chemicals” — has been detected in groundwater at nearly 60 closed landfills, at amounts higher than the state’s acceptable levels for safe drinking water. Fifteen of the closed, mostly unlined landfills have PFAS contamination at least 10 times higher than the state’s health-based advisory values. One — Gofer Landfill near Fairmont in Martin County — is more than 1,300 times higher. Carlton County’s former landfill near the current...
"Arya The Protector," a children's picture book by Cloquet author Burton Laine, won a first-place children's book award in the 2020 Christian Author Awards. In the book, the sheep on a farm have no reason for fear, because Arya, a shepherd dog, is a protector that is always there to watch over them and protect them, a reminder that God keeps us safe. The book is illustrated with 24 photographs from the farm, of the shepherd dog interacting with the farm family and the sheep. The photography is...
At 4:37 a.m. on March 20, we officially passed into spring with the vernal equinox. We’ve tipped the scales and there is a little more light every day. Our family joined plenty of other folks around the area with a big fire in the backyard to boil down sap. I saw two trumpeter swans fly across the fields just as I was putting the maple syrup into jars. In the greenhouse, our onion seeds are up about an inch in their flats. After checking on the starts, I grabbed an onion from the root cellar o...
For its 20th anniversary, One Book Northland committee has selected "The Nickel Boys" by Colson Whitehead as the 2021 One Book Northland title. The committee selection was influenced by the cancellation of the 2020 events for that year's selected title, "Just Mercy" by Bryan Stevenson, due to the pandemic. The topic of racial injustice presented in this nonfiction work still needs to be made available for community discussion, and so a coordinating fiction work was carefully researched and...
A Cloquet man accused of murdering his pregnant girlfriend and her young son was in court virtually March 4, as his new attorney and prosecutors met to decide on dates for an important contested omnibus hearing delayed by grand jury proceedings last fall. It was the first hearing for 34-year-old Sheldon Thompson since that Carlton County grand jury voted to charge him with five counts of first-degree murder in October 2020. In total, Thompson faces eight charges: two charges of murder in the first degree, premeditated and murder in the first de...
A Cloquet man was charged this week with criminal vehicular homicide this week for causing a head-on crash in September that killed another driver. Tony Northrup, 54, was charged Monday, March 15 in Duluth Sixth District Court in connection with the death of Melissa Kalinoski, 42, of Cromwell. According to the Minnesota State Patrol report, Kalinoski was driving west on Highway 2 east of Brookston when Northrup crossed the centerline and hit her head on while traveling eastbound on Highway 2. Kalinoski died at the scene and Northrup suffered...
A Two Harbors man pleaded guilty Monday to five counts of criminal vehicular operation-great bodily harm, admitting he was under the influence of alcohol when he hit a car occupied by a family of four on Midway Road last summer. It was the second time that Rodney Drake Scandin Jr., 36, pleaded guilty after the previous plea agreement was revoked by the prosecution. According to the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office, a car occupied by four family members was stopped on Midway road facing north on June 26, 2020, waiting to turn west onto Stark R...
A Cromwell man is facing multiple charges after fleeing police in the early hours of Saturday morning in a high-speed chase. David John Aho, 20, is charged with felony fleeing a peace officer in a motor vehicle and misdemeanor and gross misdemeanor charges of driving while impaired, two counts of criminal vehicular operation, minor consumption and speeding. According to the criminal complaint, Carlton County Sheriff’s Office deputies were on patrol at 2:04 a.m. Saturday, March 13 when they clocked a care driving 71 mph in a 60-mph zone on H...
The hallways at Cloquet High School, above, were bustling Tuesday as students returned to more in-person classes for the first time since November - when Covid-19 rates were peaking in Carlton County - following other area secondary schools that have already returned to school. CHS principal Steve Battaglia said about 72 percent of students are back on campus. Students can choose distance learning and currently Cloquet has more than 200 high school students learning online. That includes a...
It was a clear victory for Gordy’s Hi-Hat in the quarterfinal round of the Great Minnesota Burger Bracket sponsored by Minnesota Public Radio’s Warming House program. Gordy’s had 446 votes to 257 over Matt’s in Minneapolis, while the Rusty Nail in Battle Lake won over the Royal Bar in Park Rapids. The Rusty Nail and Gordy’s Hi-Hat will face off in the burger bracket the week of March 21, the same week that the Hi-Hat opens for the season on March 24. To vote, visit mprnews.or...
Covid-19 vaccines are now available for the following essential frontline workers at Community Memorial Hospital in Cloquet. That group includes airport staff, child care workers not previously eligible, and first responders, and individuals working in agriculture, correctional settings, food production, retail and service, the judicial system, manufacturing, public health, public transit and the postal service. You do not need to be a CMH patient to receive the vaccine. To schedule an appointment, fill out the form on the Community Memorial...
A 57-year-old man died after his vehicle left the roadway at approximately 5:51 p.m. March 10 and rolled over into the ditch near the 3800 block of Canosia Road, according to a press release from the St. Louis County Sheriff’s Office. Poor weather and road conditions likely contributed, as it was snowing heavily on March 10. Members of the St. Louis County Rescue Squad, Solway Volunteer Fire Department responded....
The Cloquet City Council closed its meeting Tuesday to discuss legal strategies for pending litigation, shortly after amending the city’s project labor agreement, which is targeted by the civil lawsuit. Although no legal documents were shared through the city, the Pine Knot News was able to find the lawsuit by searching federal court records. The city’s project labor agreement, or PLA — adopted in May 2017 by then-mayor Dave Hallback and the city council — is the issue, along with other PLAs in...
As someone who is going on his 13th month of working from home, I've attended so many Zoom meetings, Webex sessions and Google Meets that I've lost count. One thing that I have noticed is a whole new world of excuses. It's like the "dog ate my paper" crowd has grown up and become adults. Here is a list of some of the most common, along with the actual definitions. • • She said: "I'm so sorry, I'm having issues with our band width." She meant: "I've got three kids and a spouse using every possibl...
I've read and listened to a lot of stories in the past week about "the moment" when people realized that the global pandemic was going to change their lives as they knew it. While we'd been living with the impact of the crisis for months, for me, everything changed within minutes after the group photo at right was taken a year ago. I had just finished up another workshop at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities in Ho Chi Minh City, where I was working as a visiting professor through...
Claire Persons spent hours agate hunting last summer. "It doesn't matter if the agate is tiny, pebble size or larger," she said. "There is great enjoyment in the hunt and discovery. She shared her finds by creating make necklaces, shown here. She also wrote a poem about the rock hunt, which kept her mind off a pandemic world. An Agate Hunt Early during my morning rounds, Walking along the gravelly grounds, I spy a sparkle of red orange hues, And naturally I stoop down for a closer view. This...
The Tri-Community Food Shelf will once again be participating in the Minnesota FoodShare March Campaign. This year's campaign runs through April 11. It is the largest food-and-funds drive in the state with approximately 300 food shelves/pantries throughout the state participating each year. Every dollar Minnesota FoodShare works to secure annually from corporations, individuals, foundations and businesses goes directly into the Minnesota FoodShare FoodFund. Those dollars are distributed to food...
Do you have a favorite place to watch the sunrise? Perhaps you are lucky enough to have a great view out your living room window, or from your back porch. We have an abundance of trees around us, for which we are grateful for many reasons. While they add their own beauty, these large plants require us to leave home for that perfect, unobstructed sunrise view. A favorite roost for me and Keith, my morning amigo, to watch the sun emerge is the Thompson Hill lookout beneath the visitor center on...
A new radio program on Minnesota Public Radio is trying to muster up some interest through potential listeners' stomachs. The Warming House program, which began running on MPR stations in January as a balm for pandemic-induced tedium, has set up tournament bracket-style face-offs between favorite burger joints across the state. Yes, Gordy's Hi-Hat made the tournament field and votes are being tabulated this week. It's good timing, as Cloquet's landmark seasonal restaurant is scheduled to open...
Carlton County sled dog racers Will Bomier and Ted Wallace have spent countless hours over the past several decades tending to, training and racing their dogs. For them, time spent with their dogs is what they love to do. It turns out that is quite a lot of time, as Bomier and Wallace have over 80 years of mushing experience between them. Bomier lives near Mahtowa. He’s 38 years old but can already count 35 seasons on the dog sled trail. “My dad used to take me out, wrap me up and put me in the...
Lake Country Power will hold director elections this spring. Director ballots for Districts 1, 3, 5 and 9 will be mailed to co-op members between March 26 and March 31. Individuals running for the LCP board in or near Carlton County include the following District 9 candidates: Larry Anderson, Esko Paul Horgen, Sturgeon Lake Kevin Maki, Saginaw Lake Country Power will use a hybrid election process for members, offering the opportunity to vote online or by mail. Voting instructions will be included with the mailed ballots. The LCP annual meeting...
Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, in partnership with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium, will host THUNDER inDIGIfest 2021, a digital multimedia festival to be held March 26-28. THUNDER inDIGIfest 2021 is a three-day virtual festival featuring original multimedia productions in photography, audio, animation, and film submitted by students, faculty, and staff from the 37 tribal colleges and universities affiliated with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium in the United States. “This festival is designed to let p...
Former Cloquet police chief Steve Stracek will be the new deputy chief of the Duluth Police Department effective May 22. Stracek left Duluth to lead the Cloquet department in August 2014. He retired in June 2017 after being placed on paid administrative leave that March based on complaints from police union members. After being investigated by a third-party investigator and exonerated, he was reinstated and retired. Prior to returning to the Duluth Police Department in 2019 as a patrol officer...
Prosecutors added a charge in the case of a Cloquet man accused of fatally shooting his friend late last year. In addition to the second-degree manslaughter charges filed against Joseph James Fohrenkam, 18, for the Dec. 28 shooting, Duluth prosecutors added a third-degree murder charge in St. Louis County Court on Feb. 23. According to the criminal complaint, Joseph Fohrenkam was drinking with four other young men in a parked truck outside a home on the 3600 block of Giiniw Road, on the Fond du Lac Reservation in St. Louis County the night of...
