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Last February, with the help of Visit Cook County’s Linda Jurek, I sent information on our “One Moose Apart” program to the Smithsonian. I recently heard from the staff of the Medicine and Science section; they want to include One Moose Apart in their collection of materials on the COVID-19 pandemic. The form to submit materials requests a personal narrative. Here is an edited version:
Cousin Peggy Kidwell, a retired Smithsonian Curator, learned of the One Moose Apart campaign in our Christmas/Valentine’s Day letter. She inquired, and I went to our Visitors Bureau; Linda Jurek readily supplied me with posters and T-shirt. I took a few photographs of signs that popped up sua sponte in Grand Marais. My favorite was four lawn signs: “Let’s slow the spread/Help us prevail;/Space out, mask up/ Or don’t exhale.” Peggy sent all on to the Smithsonian.
“One Moose Apart” was the slogan that our public health folks and Visit Cook County came up with to encourage social distancing to prevent spread of the COVID-19 virus. It was part of a campaign to reduce contact, encourage mask wearing, and publicize vaccinations.
The result was that Cook County had the least COVID-19 infections in Minnesota and no deaths from COVID until November 2021. We just recently got our booster shots, and all the shots were received with little or no negative reactions. About 90 percent of residents are vaccinated. A small, recent infection increase appears to be related to those few families and friends who remain unvaccinated, including tourists that are the lifeblood of our local economy. Nearly everyone here has gone with the program, despite Cook County being a destination for iconoclasts and people living off the grid.
As a personal matter, the “One Moose Apart” slogan humorously reminded me to maintain social distance, mask up, and accept the inconveniences. All our businesses quickly adapted to the restrictions, and so did we. Restaurants went to delivery-only meals, usually brought outside by wait staff. The YMCA closed for an extended period, keeping us out of the hot tub after not playing Pickleball. We pick up the mail with a mask on. After a short closing, the municipal liquor store went to phone orders/curbside delivery. The liquor store at Lutsen made its masked sales over a Dutch door. Plastic screens sprang up in all public contact spaces.
One restaurant and glampground, Wunderbar, provided free, pick-up-yourself meals on the deck, especially for truckers and tradesmen. COVID-19 also had a major role in causing Wunderbar to close, denying us an important community gathering place created by Teri and Chris Downing. The virus likely also contributed to the rapid closing of Wunderbar’s successor and predecessor, Harbor Light Bar and Grill. Harbor House Grill, a fine dining place overlooking Lake Superior across the famous Highway 61 was also a likely casualty.
One bright spot was an increase in tennis and golf play because outside recreation was safer and got us out of the house. Our local, municipal, challenging golf course, Gunflint Hills, saw a significant increase in rounds played, number of golfers, and revenue. There were similar increases for cross-country skiing and hiking and wilderness adventures.
Cocooning from the virus got us Pixie cat and pushed me to begin this column. “Wondering 61’ came from my wife, Myrna, and me taking so many trips to Duluth for medical appointments, movies in theaters, and shopping. The 150 miles of State 61 connect Thunder Bay area Canadians with the Grand Portage Casino and hotel as well as our golf courses and cultural events. Restricted border crossing hit the Casino business hard. Similarly, Myrna and I could not celebrate our anniversary at a neat Thunder Bay restaurant with a great wine list, “Lot 66” (named after a parking lot!).
The greatest loss for me and our community has been the elimination of public singing of all kinds; it’s too effective at putting viruses in the air. Church choirs have shut down. The annual Borealis Chorale of 75 fine voices and 25 instruments has had to cancel at least two Christmas concerts. (We thus are denied the composing and directing skills of Bill Beckstrand, a gifted musician who recently moved off his island to Hovland, Minnesota). The concerts and programs of the North Shore Music Association and our public library have disappeared; likewise, until very recently, the plays and other events at our Arrowhead Center for the Arts. The Readers and Writers Conference of the Grand Marais Art Colony went virtual. That festival is what occasioned us to retire, again, to Grand Marais, and we miss terribly the live sessions with authors–and all the other shut down events.
Our local UCC church moved services first to the internet and then to the parking lot for this last summer. Just now we have moved back inside— masked, one moose apart, and without hymns. I think we going to find a way to have a tenor voice at our Christmas Eve service. It’s unsettled whether he will sing in a corner of the sanctuary, in the next room, or down the basement connected by wireless things.
One Moose apart helps make the gross inconveniences of the pandemic bearable.
Steve Aldrich is a retired Hennepin County lawyer, mediator, and Judge, serving from 1997-2010. He and his wife moved here in 2016. He likes to remember that he was a Minnesota Super Lawyer before being elected to the bench. Now he is among the most vulnerable to viruses but fully vaccinated. Steve really enjoys doing weddings, the one thing a retired judge can do without appointment by the Chief Justice. He officiated at a well-masked wedding this year where the “congregation” was in Grand Marais, Norway, and White Bear Lake.
Copyright Stephen C. Aldrich and News-Herald, 2021.
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