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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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...
What a beautiful autumn we enjoyed. Splendid colors and great weather for getting outdoors. It was great to see the parks, trails and other outdoor areas remain busy as community members enjoy our great scenery. We even had a bonus week of summer weather after an early winter tease. As always, Community Education encourages folks to stay active and stay well. While there will be no indoor walking at Washington Elementary School this year, we will hope the ground stays clear for many more weeks...
"I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us." - J.R.R. Tolkien, "The Fellowship of the Ring" It's been a long haul hasn't it? Our "new normal" hardly seems new anymore, as we can most accurately measure its duration in months. Much of our lives seem more complicated, more difficult, and sometimes downright impossible. We see the number of cases climbing, our sch...
The Carlton County Salvation Army Adopt-A-Child program is registering families needing help by providing gifts for their children this year. The Covid-19 pandemic has created greater need in our communities as a result of job layoffs and furloughs, and The Salvation Army’s Rescue Christmas campaign is designed to provide more assistance to struggling families. Register in person at the Salvation Army, 316 Carlton Ave., Cloquet (enter through the front door), from 1-4 p.m. Monday through Friday until Nov. 20. Registrants should bring one of t...
Interested in being a kettle bell ringer? Bell ringing will be completely safe this year with mask, distancing and sanitizing mandates in place. Donations at the kettle can be completely contactless, with Apple Pay, Google Pay and QR code options available at every kettle. The Salvation Army expects a decrease in giving at its iconic red kettles this year, due to fewer kettle locations, reduced foot traffic and fewer volunteer bell ringers. Sign up at RegisterTo Ring.com. You can also call 218-879-1693....
For members of the Cloquet Combined Honor Guard, every day is a veteran's day. On Tuesday, they honored veteran Richard Allen Kedrowski, a veteran of the Army, Air Force and Minnesota Air National Guard who died at the age of 77 on Oct. 28. He had a "colorful" military career, his son said, pointing out during the service that his dad was stationed in Germany when the Berlin Wall went up in 1961, and again when it came down in 1989. While the family remembered their husband, father and friend...
The murmur of voices punctuated by the sound of pots and pans greets seniors as they enter the Senior Center in Cloquet on almost any given morning. Head cook Brenda Angell, 58, is in the kitchen working her magic, as she has done for 25 years. She said the senior citizens make her job even more rewarding. "I love my people here," Angell said enthusiastically. She said the center normally bustles with activities such as Bingo, games and parties. Now there is only coffee and conversation during...
Cloquet's Jody Dixon crosses the pedestrian bridge over the St. Louis River just off Cloquet's Spafford Park earlier this month in this photo of fall beauty taken by her husband, Bill Dixon....
Jim and Colleen Myhre have purchased the 29 Pines Golf Course in Mahtowa, closing on Sept. 4, and have renamed it Rugged Spruce Golf Club. "We had planned to keep the original course name," Jim Myhre said. "Outside experts" advised that it would be a good idea to change the 40-year-old name to better signify a fresh start. Roxanne Olson was the previous owner of the course. Jim grew up about two miles from the course. He thinks he first played there in about 1980. He played in a league there...
Pete Tomhave was on a lunch break at the Cloquet Country Club in the maintenance building, looking at an aerial view of Cloquet Country Club. He asked his boss, superintendent Jud Crist, if the picture was taken from a plane or a drone. It was a plane, Crist said. That's when Tomhave mentioned that he had a drone and might be able to take some new pictures of the golf course. When he showed Crist how the drone could perform, the boss got board approval to make a "virtual tour" of the course...
Cromwell resident Courtney Kruse was recently awarded a $2,500 Teacher Appreciation Scholarship to Western Governors University. The scholarship is designed to help current teachers improve skill sets in the classroom or to assist aspiring teachers in obtaining the required credentials for educators. Kruse, a special education teacher at Cromwell-Wright, is pursuing a master of science degree in curriculum and instruction from WGU. She was virtually presented with the scholarship Aug. 27 by WGU Strategic Partnerships manager Lauran...
There are lots of birthdays this month at Villa Vista and Cardinal Court in Cromwell. Roy Miller, formerly of Meadowlands, marked his 100th birthday on Oct. 8. He is living at the Cardinal Court and enjoys the company of many new friends. Roy was 72 years old when he got his first bicycle. It was a 21-speed mountain bike, although he says he never got it out of third gear. Larry (Lawrence Peter William) Switzer, 93, of the Cardinal Court, was born Oct. 4, 1927, in the Kettle River area. He went...
One hundred years ago, Cloquet's library was reborn from the ashes of the 1918 fire, thanks to the generosity of two sisters. One hundred years later, the descendants of those sisters - Cordelia (Shaw) Lynds and Hattie (Shaw) DeLescaille - are again coming to the rescue of the building that bears their family name. Now it's water (and snow) that is damaging the building, which is in desperate need of a new roof and more. No longer a library, the Shaw Memorial Library building has been home to...
A remarkable goal by freshman Elijah Aultman last Thursday pretty much cemented the soccer player's standing on a new team in a country he's called home for less than a year. Elijah and his brother, Jordan, came to Carlton County from Sierra Leone last year, after being adopted by John and Jackie Aultman of Esko. They went from a place that is tropical all year to Minnesota in winter, and from a country that is ranked as one of the poorest in the world to one of the wealthiest. The constants in...
Scanlon's Jerry Eliason said he was just a boy when the "Sea Hunt" television series sparked his interest in shipwrecks. The series only aired for four seasons, but Eliason watched reruns of Lloyd Bridges as former Navy diver Mike Nelson, and he bugged his parents for scuba diving lessons for years. He finally got his wish when he was 12. "They hired a local diver to give me some training," said Eliason, who grew up in Rice Lake, Wisconsin. "So I got my first dive gear at age 12, and certified...
Look hard enough, below the golden arches off Highway 33 in Cloquet any Monday or Thursday morning when the weather is tolerable, and you'll see them. Guys and gals in lawn chairs and on truck gates enjoying a cup of coffee and maybe a breakfast sandwich, but most of all, conversation with friends. Pre-pandemic, this coffee klatsch used to meet inside the McDonald's restaurant. In the old-old days, a few of them even met in the first McDonald's building. When Covid-19 precautions forced...
Cloquet's Lyn Jutila is currently exhibiting her watercolors at the Pine Knot office. She recently sat down with us to talk about her work and how she became a watercolorist after hanging her paintings on the multi-colored brick wall that is The Knot art gallery. "I moved here from California. I'd always enjoyed painting on boards, on driftwood. I began painting in oils, but enjoyed viewing watercolors and dabbling with them, taking classes now and then." A stay-at-home mom, her children...
Artist Stuart Nelson of Cloquet has received another honor from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. His work will be featured on the 2021 walleye stamp issued by the DNR after it was chosen in a contest. It is the fifth time Nelson's work has been featured on a fishing stamp. Nelson chuckles from his home on Big Lake and says he has been painting "forever, probably. I've got a degree in art. I went for four years to an art school, so I've been painting pretty much all of my life."...
When teachers at Cloquet's Washington Elementary School put out a plea for some picnic tables, it didn't take long for one family to step up. "This post struck a chord in us because we are friends with many of the teachers and have personal ties to the school since our daughters attended Washington," Christina Rock said. ButJeff and Christina Rock didn't just donate some spare picnic tables. The entire Rock family worked together to create two special tables for the school, built to last and...
Water is all around us, but how often do we think about it? Where does your drinking water come from? A city supply, private well, bottles? Sometimes it feels like it magically appears, ready for use. And then it goes down the drain or toilet. Poof, all gone! Or is it? I am going to reveal the secret life of water. We all know the water cycle where water evaporates up to the clouds where it collects until it gets dense enough to rain (or snow). It then falls back to Earth to become groundwater again. When water seeps in from the surface and...
As I’m putting the finishing touches on this news column today, it’s my 75th birthday! That’s three quarters of a century! Or 27,394 days old, counting the 19 leap year days I added. My birthday was Aug. 31, and it sure feels weird getting to this age. When I was just 15 or 16 years old I never even thought of getting this old. But the years just keep rolling along! Now, we have to pray for a cure for Covid in the near future, although I think it may take another year or more. We don’t go anyw...
Two 20-something women have matching tattoos using the Latin words attributed to Julius Caesar: "Veni, vidi, vici," which translates to "I came, I saw, I conquered." It seems a fitting phrase for these driven women who came from humble beginnings and are or have marched their way through advanced college degrees in highly analytical fields. But they live 1,400 miles apart and, until this past July, had never met. They hadn't even known of the other's existence until luck - and genetic...
For 22 years, Gordy's Hi-Hat - and later, the Warming House - has supplied the residents of Sunnyside Health Care Center with free ice cream at least once a summer. Most years, the residents are walked and wheeled down the hill from the nursing home adjacent to the hospital to enjoy their treats and an outing. This year residents could not go to the Warming House because of Covid-19 restrictions, "so the Warming House came to us," said activities director Toni Hubbell. At left and above, Sever...
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...
The McKnight Foundation has chosen author Marcie Rendon to receive its 2020 Distinguished Artist Award. The annual award recognizes a Minnesota artist who has made significant contributions to the state's cultural life. Rendon, an enrolled member of White Earth Nation, is the first Native American woman to receive the award in its 25-year history. Last year the award went to Ojibwe painter Jim Denomie. Rendon said she's honored and humbled to receive the award. "I am pleased that I am the...
