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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Is Rep. Jeff Dotseth about to stumble again as he did last year with the bonding process that nearly cost Carlton County taxpayers $10 million in lost funding for the law enforcement complex in Carlton? In my opinion, Dotseth proved at that moment he cannot be trusted with issues directly affecting property taxes in Carlton County, and advancing our community’s needs should never again be left in the hands of his incompetent representation. Here we are again. In the current legislative session, Dotseth appears to have ambitious intentions f...
I am deeply troubled by the recent proposal to reduce the Carlton school week from five days to four. This change was proposed without adequate notification or consultation with parents, and it threatens not only our children’s education but also places an undue burden on working families who will need to arrange and pay for additional childcare. Next year, I will have three elementary school students. According to the childcare rate at South Terrace school, this care will cost $4v per hour, resulting in $2,400 for my family next year. With t...
The Northern Lights Academy is a school district serving students who need special education support for their whole school day. The staff at NLA believe all students deserve the opportunity to become academically successful and socially responsible citizens. This year they have asked the Minnesota Legislature for help in replacing outdated learning spaces which are also too small to serve all the students who need their level of support. Thank you, Sen. Jason Rarick and Rep. Jeff Dotseth, for introducing HF 4282 and SF 3939 — a request for a...
Efforts are underway in the Minnesota Legislature to further damage the future of the state’s community newspapers. The Minnesota School Boards Association (MSBA) has proposed last-minute legislation allowing school districts to publish their public notices on school websites rather than in their local newspapers. In its argument for moving public notices to school websites, the MSBA points to the loss of community newspapers and the increasing difficulty of finding one in which to publish its notices. Although those instances are rare, they a...
Let's talk about electric vehicles for a moment, shall we? A few weeks ago I bought a 2022 Kia Niro and I want to share my delight with it and perhaps stimulate some conversation around this new technology that may or may not change our transportation landscape. Those of you who know me know how much I loved my 2007 Subaru Forester. We made an unbeatable team, but after 17 years together, a fuel leak that saturated the back seat helped me realize that the time had come to move away from...
It would be easy to cast a wary eye at the actions of the Carlton school district, which over the course of roughly 10 days this month adopted a four-day school week beginning next year. The notion came as a surprise. The move to adopt it was hasty and could be construed as panic. The outcomes of a four-day week are worthy of a much longer discussion than the one held by the board and administration. The board’s action ignored Wrenshall altogether, even though the districts are in the process of negotiating consolidation. The superintendent p...
I worked for the City of Cloquet for 40 years and came to know Pine Valley well. It has long been a Cloquet gem overlooked by many. The first time I walked into the chalet, my immediate thought was what a great place this would be with an updated chalet that had a Master Fireplace! Thank you to the Medich Family for having this same vision. It will forever be a lasting legacy for not only Joe Nowak, Mike Marciniak and Hank Nelson, who gave their everything to Pine Valley, but also to George and Helen. Thank you! Jim Prusak, Pike...
I want to express my appreciation to kind strangers. Thank you to the father carrying his young son, who took my hand and made a path through the snowbank so I could get to the Good Friday service. Thank you to the kind gentleman who took notice of me struggling to push my grocery cart through the heavy slush and puddles in the Super One parking lot, and came to the rescue, pushing and parking with a smile. So appreciated! Thank you to the patient, smiling clerks who wait for me to decipher and count out the right change with my dimming...
Last week the Pine Knot ran a story by the Minnesota Reformer, with the self-ascribed tagline “Minnesota Reformer is a nonpartisan news producer.” I visited the Reformer website. After perusing several articles, it appears to me this organization is basically a surrogate for the Democrat party that publishes hit pieces. I wrote a letter to the editor filled with vitriol and accusations but paused before I submitted it. I thought, what is one more angry letter going to do to help the situation? It won’t. It may get a few nods of approval by pe...
The words “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are ensconced in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence. At a time when people in the new colonies struggled to meet basic needs, procure property and establish a free society, it is a bit puzzling that the Founding Fathers would list “pursuit of happiness” on an equal level as “life” and “liberty.” We are almost 249 years removed from the time when those words were written. The United States of America has grown from 13 colonies t...
Freedom to practice religion is a cornerstone of our country and its history — we enjoy many freedoms that are constitutionally protected, and the freedom of religion is the prime example. In the past, the Minnesota Human Rights Act included an exemption for religious groups from being forced to hire individuals that don’t align with their deeply held religious beliefs, because of that very protection. This meant that religious institutions like churches and schools were not forced to hire those whose belief system did not align with those of...
Trees, lakes, and water: Minnesota is known for an abundance of each. And there’s something else we have in abundance: common sense. We work hard, play hard, and don’t waste time on things that don’t serve us. Rep. Jeff Dotseth would be wise to follow suit. His time in the Minnesota House of Representatives has made one thing painfully clear: He doesn’t lead with common sense. Dotseth recently co-authored a bill, HF4687, seeking to address “cloud-seeding,” “weather control,” “zenobiotic radiation” and “electromagnetic radiation,” parallel to ch...
The Pine Knot and our weekly dose of news is likely complicit in any information overload you may be feeling these days. On average, Americans spend at least eight hours in front of a screen each day. And there’s that fascinating fact that one day of information today is as much as our ancient ancestors learned in a lifetime. Ugh. So let’s take a break Monday. It’s a perfect opportunity with the solar eclipse occurring in the early afternoon. It’s a good time to reset, relax and perhaps repent. The effect of this cosmic event on our brains...
As a 1966 graduate of Morgan Park High School, I befriended many Wrenshall graduates in that era. Morgan Park was a K-12 school, then a middle and high school, then just a middle school and now it’s gone forever. It was replaced by apartments as a result of Duluth’s consolidation known as the Red Plan, which cost taxpayers upwards of $300 million dollars. There are only a handful of K-12 school buildings left in the state. It is my belief these are diamonds in the rough. Wrenshall has always been K-12 and now has a trades facility to boot. Whe...
Well, this week was a cold, wet reminder of winter, wasn’t it? If you got stuck with your car, or felt you were holding up all the traffic because of your unpracticed driving ability, or lack of assuredness, you were not alone. It’s been that kind of non-winter in these parts. A year without much snow to deal with after records were set for depths last winter. The snow that just kept falling this week, and temperatures that dipped under the freezing mark just after, were enough to perhaps make us rethink any wish for a normal winter. But wha...
It was comical, for sure, last Easter, when my then 5-year-old and her friends went egg hunting in a backyard that had 4 feet of snow in it. She donned some snowshoes and did her level best. The parents who hid the eggs did worse. We fell crotch deep through the snow, and were soaked and cold watching the tiny ones gather their treasures. Easter just isn't the same up north from my upbringing down south. Minnesota south. Where Easter was usually fairly springlike, flowers and such. Light...
I enjoyed Steve Korby’s article about Angelo Pergol in last week’s paper, especially the part about him experiencing “historical nirvana” as he read through our collection of Pergol’s scrapbooks. When you walk through the door at the Carlton County Historical Society, you see the museum exhibits, which are just the tip of the iceberg of our collection. We have thousands of documents, books, letters, ledgers, reports, newspapers, and scrapbooks in storage. These items are waiting for someone passionate about a topic to explore them and find...
Early on Monday, March 11, Cromwell-Wright High School singers boarded a big yellow bus headed for the Crosby-Ironton School to participate in the annual Minnesota State High School League choral contest. The students had been preparing for months, receiving solo, duet, and ensemble instruction from MaryRose Varo, Cromwell-Wright's energetic and accomplished vocal teacher. On the piano, Cromwell-Wright's Macie Lind and I served as accompanists, rehearsing with soloists and singers of duets and...
It’s no secret rural ambulance services are struggling. Called a “quiet crisis” by the state health department as far back as 2002, rural ambulance services across the state are being confronted with their own mortality: Continue forward in the face of endless budget deficits, or fold, and let neighboring or private ambulance services take over, sometimes coming from much farther away. It all makes what the city of Carlton has accomplished so impressive. Instead of waiting for legislative solutions, city officials and leaders in Carlton spent t...
What Sen. Jason Rarick failed to mention in his article last week is that the testing locations that the Driver and Vehicle Services department is proposing closing are open only one day a week, at most, for limited or inconsistent hours, and run by examiners who are stationed full-time elsewhere. He mentioned losing Moose Lake, a testing center that is open for road tests from 12:30 to 3:30 on Thursdays. At 20 minutes per appointment, the lone examiner who travels there from Duluth can usually give six Class D skills tests before they need to...
I was at the Thomson Township annual meeting last evening, March 12, and proposed a resolution for the town board, staff, and attorney to lobby the Minnesota Association of Townships and our state representative and senator to consider changing state statute to again have township board elections held “at large,” as was done a number of years ago. The state, a number of years ago, mandated township boards be elected “by seat” instead. The only thing that this accomplishes is to give re-election advantage to the incumbent due to severel...
He gave it the old college try. But, they say, when you take on the bull, you get the horns. Or, in social media circles, and toned down for a family newspaper: Mess around and find out. There may be a new old saw: Take on the Iron Range and its taconite money, and you get the tailings. Alas, Sen. Jason Rarick, Carlton County’s representative in the Minnesota Senate, was awash in all of these sentiments last month when he dared to change the way of life on the Iron Range. If you recall, Rarick penned a bill this session that would expand the ...
It’s time to shine a light on an annual week of mindfulness in the journalism industry. March 10-16 is Sunshine Week, a nonpartisan collaboration among groups in the journalism, civic, education, government and private sectors that shines a light on the importance of public records and open government. At the Pine Knot, we are proud of our role in watching out for our readers. As you have read in the past, we are bullish on freedom of information issues and proper behavior by elected officials. It isn’t easy covering more public bodies tha...
The Department of Vehicle Services continues to be an issue throughout the state, specifically when it comes to accessing behind-the-wheel drivers tests. Families have grown frustrated with the current backlog that seems to be growing every year. To make matters worse, when families are lucky enough to find open appointments, it oftentimes means driving across the state. DVS representatives came to the Senate Transportation Committee a few weeks ago to offer an updated solution to this problem: closing half of all testing locations. In 2021,...
Wrenshall High School English teacher Ted Conover said students in his College in the Schools composition course were eager to add to local discourse. So they revised and shortened their long-form problem-solution essays on local issues into print-length editorials, and shared those with the Pine Knot News. Topics range from addressing issues in local schools, arts, athletics, all the way up to state funding and the Legislature — and we are sharing them with you. Enjoy these writings. The first batch appeared in last week’s Pine Knot The fig...
