City council talks about pairing down plan for new city hall


Councilor Anton Moody was worried about the costs he saw to build a new city hall/liquor store. He suggested cutting 2,400 square feet from the 16,000 square foot plan to save $840,000 from the estimated $5.5 million costs. Council has spent the last year discussing building the replacement facilities. At the May 27 meeting, Moody and the rest of the […]

Cook County board of commissioners get COVID-19 update


Cook County Commissioners held a special meeting June 2 with only two items on their agenda. Commissioners opened their meeting with their weekly Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Incident Command team update from Cook County Public Health Coordinator Grace Grinager and Cook County Emergency Commander Mike Keyport. The EOC performs multiagency coordination including acquiring, allocating and finding resources, managing and distributing […]

Pavelich to stand trial


One of the stars of the “Miracle on Ice” 1980 Olympic gold medal hockey team, Mark Pavelich, who was arrested last fall and charged with four felonies connected with beating his neighbor with a metal pipe, has been found competent to stand trial. Last month Judge Michael Cuzzo found that based on Mark’s most recent mental evaluations Mark, “has sufficient […]

Meet Ann Sullivan

Editor’s note: Ann Sullivan is running for the District 4 Cook County Commissioner seat now held by two-term commissioner Heidi Doo-Kirk. Although born in the Twin Cities to a pair of former naval officers following World War II, I’ve spent lots of time in Cook County! My grandfather, Purl, and my Dad brought our family on many trips to the […]

Grand Marais Recreation Park ramping up


After reviewing the latest Minnesota DNR guidelines concerning opening campgrounds around the COVID-19 pandemic, the Grand Marais park board decided to open June 4 for self-contained guests on independent sites and open select bathhouses on June 15 for dependent sites. The motions passed at the board’s June 2 meeting. Grand Marais Parks and Recreation Director Dave Tersteeg said he feels […]

Cook County High School 2020 graduation

The 2020 graduates of Cook County High School didn’t get to celebrate in the gym with their parents, relatives and friends watching because of the rules governing the COVID-19 pandemic. Heck, the entire school had to go online for the last three months. However, nothing was going to stop graduation. CCHS seniors received their diplomas with their parents or guardians […]

An homage to the Burma Shave signs found at “Jingle Lane”


Anne Brataas and her Boreal Corps Story Scouts kids have been busy as of late, coming up with ideas to help spread the word about the importance of following safety practices during this pandemic. Brataas remembered how catchy the Burma Shave signs were that ran across America along the interstate. If you are old enough, you might remember this one. […]

The land reveals more


There was a famous imprisoned writer – maybe Dostoevsky in the labor camps, or Frankl in the concentration camps, or Solzhenitsyn in the gulag – who in order to conserve paper wrote across and over the page three times, letter atop letter, word over word, sentence on sentence. We now know that the Renaissance masters painted over their previous works […]

Black flies– scourge of the north


The day was perfect for gardening, a slightly overcast sky, pleasantly warm temps, and I was in my garden. There were seeds to be sown and weeds to pull. No problem. Gardening is an enjoyable pastime for me. I’d slathered bug dope on every piece of exposed skin, and thinking I had the “bug” situation conquered, set about troweling and […]

Fish report

The thought struck like a dull thunderbolt. Fish eat bugs. Bugs eat us. We eat fish. Does that make us cannibals? Think about it, but not too hard. Now that I have your attention, let’s get to the fish report. With the temperatures warming up, the fish bite has also warmed. So too, has the mosquito and blackfly bite. In […]