When the ad agency that created the quirky “Messin’ with Sasquatch” campaign for Jack Link’s Beef Jerky wanted a Northwoods feel for a Halloween feature on its interactive website, one of the creators recalled a book she had read to her daughter. The book? Antler, Bear, Canoe by Grand Marais artist Betsy Bowen. The Jack Link’s representative found Bowen and […]
Continued frustration over condition of County Road 8
A week after County Commissioner Sue Hakes asked Highway Engineer David Betts to investigate the possibility of doing something to make County Road 8 (Devil’s Track Road) more drivable until it gets paved again next summer, the county board pondered the cost of overlaying it with finer – Class I—gravel, but only briefly. Betts estimated that putting Class 1 down […]
Superior National gets loan by the skin of its teeth
Added to the county board agenda at the beginning of its October 25, 2011 regular meeting was a request from the Cook County/Grand Marais Economic Development Authority (EDA) for $225,000 to help Superior National at Lutsen Golf Course meet payroll and pay bills as it heads into the winter months. But the last-minute, off-the-cuff way it was brought to the […]
DNR considers special exception for Lutsen Mountains water use
When legislation passed this summer allowing Lutsen Mountains Corporation (LMC) to extract up to 150 million gallons of water per year from the 23-mile-long Poplar River, it was believed that would adequately address the ski hill’s need for water for snowmaking operations. However, the legislation also prohibited extraction if the river’s flow is lower than 15 cubic feet per second […]
Write it down!
Whenever I’m talking to someone a bit older than me and they express concern about not being able to remember things, I get worried. I’m old by some standards, but decades younger than these folks—and I am already severely memory-challenged. What is my memory going to be like when I’m 60, 70, or 80 years old? I better book my […]
Cars and trucks were speeding in road construction
We spent one month of road construction at the Pine Mountain Campground last summer. We drove at least four times a day through the roadwork to town. Every time we were on the road, cars and trucks went whizzing around us. Even some guy in a county truck almost sideswiped us once. He didn’t see the flag girl and hit […]
Economic ship still sinking
In last week’s paper, Jerry Hiniker took issue with my “Luddite views of modern technology.” Sorry Jerry, but I couldn’t find “luddite” in either my Webster’s or Funk & Wagnall’s dictionaries…even spell check refused to recognize it. Perhaps with broadband access to Wikipedia I might have had better luck. I can only assume that “Luddite” is a derogatory Biblical term […]
Let’s just burn the 1 percent money
Ordinarily, on finding out that our city government had entered into a contract that committed us indefinitely and exclusively to use one consultant on any and all pool projects, with huge penalties for actually acting in the city’s best interests, I’d be asking for the head of whomever was responsible for it. But if that’s what it takes to kill […]
