Steve Fernlund and The Long Way Home

This weekend is the beginning of the aspirational season.  Aspiration is a hope or ambition for achieving something—a wish, if you will. Last night marked the Winter Solstice. The time we see the least amount of daylight in the 24 hours we have each day. Now, as the Sun begins its northward migration, we will see evermore light each day until it peaks in June. We aspire for more sunshine, an aspiration borne out by history, science, and our experience. Not a wish Since mid-November, we’ve been inundated with Christmas music to prepare us for Monday's Christmas Day—a genuinely aspirational holiday celebrating the birth of the baby Jesus—peace on Earth and Goodwill to Man, and all that.  In addition to songs like “Santa Baby” and “Jingle Bell Rock,” aspirational songs like “So This Is Christmas” by John Lennon get plenty of airtime with lyrics like this: So this is Christmas And what have you done?           Another year over     ...

On Saturday morning, December 16, almost 50 people were in the Colvill Town Hall to discuss the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) underway for Cook County and prioritize what improvement projects to complete on the Hovland and Colvill town halls.  District 1 Cook County Commissioner Deb White and District 5 Commissioner Ginnie Storlie were in attendance to answer questions. The meeting was moderated by Colvill resident Arvis Thompson, who has managed the Colvill town hall for years as a community volunteer. In the summer of 2022, the county commission began assessing the maintenance and expansion needs of county properties, creating a Capital Improvement Plan (CIP). On a 5-0 vote, the commissioners approved a six-figure contract for the architectural firm CR-BPS-Building Performance Specialists to inspect current properties and plans for additional space needed.  Commissioner White said this was a forward-looking inspection completed to the board's satisfaction. The plans for upg...

On the wall in the office Anna Hamilton shares at the Cook County Home Center is a poster that reminds her every day about her passion for creating affordable housing in Grand Marais. A rainbow blankets a drawing of a community with one house surrounded by pine trees. Over the rainbow are the words, “there’s no place like home,” underscored it reads “Hamilton Habitat.” Anna and her sister, Sarah Hamilton, formed Hamilton Habitat five years ago to address the long-term lack of affordable housing in the growing tourist area. They are long-time residents of Cook County and have a track record of building small businesses, mentoring others, and providing generous helpings of philanthropy.  Hamilton Habitat is finishing two new houses this month, hoping to hand them over to the new owners by the New Year. Like all things construction, it may take a few extra days to get them done. The new houses are modular homes purchased from Liechty Homes in Hermantown. The first arrived last Friday....

Aquatic invasive species (AIS) are organisms not native to a water system that were introduced, sometimes inadvertently, into a new marine environment. They are threatening Minnesota waters.  These non-native species harm fish populations, water quality, and water recreation.  In conjunction with the Minnesota DNR, the Cook County Soil and Water Conservation District (SWCD) is working to prevent the spread of harmful AIS in and from the roughly 35 bodies of water where one or more AIS are present. There are almost 2,000 bodies of water in Cook County, which means that, so far, the percentage of local lakes/streams infested with AIS is far lower than in other parts of the state. SWCD receives grants from the State of Minnesota to fund its efforts to stop the introduction and limit the spread of AIS. The grant suggests activities that include oversight, management, county-wide public awareness, AIS monitoring, and ways to enhance compliance with guidelines and rules that are in ...

It appears that a political party that once stood for minimal government interference in private lives has decided, now that it has political power in several states and the judiciary, that it needs to be involved in every part of people’s lives, especially the lives of women and anyone who sees the world a bit differently than they do.  Self-proclaimed MAGA adherents are seeking local and state offices to control what books a librarian has available, what subjects schools can teach, what the press can report, and what kind of medical care is given.  So much for liberty.  There is an ongoing effort by outsiders to determine what books are available in school and public libraries. In most cases, these people aren’t readers or writers. Often, they’ve never seen, much less read, the books they want banned.  Librarians are the best people to decide what material should be available. Parents are the best judges of what their children should read. It’s not that hard. ...

The handwringing over the mess in the public hospital in Cook County brought back a memory from my days living in Sin City. We moved to unincorporated Clark County, referred to as Las Vegas, in 1999.  Those heady days of rapid growth in the early 2000s meant many people relocated from other parts of the country to live in the desert under the neon lights. A common question newcomers asked of those of us who lived there a while was, “Where do you go when you need to go to a hospital?”  We’d answer, “California.” The publicly owned North Shore Hospital's (NSH) elected board announced a special meeting on Tuesday, December 5. Open to the public, part of the meeting will address some strategic planning issues. But the board will go into a closed session, citing “attorney-client privilege” to “discuss litigation regarding defamatory statements made against the Hospital.” The brouhaha over the termination of Dr. Bruce Dahlman by his employer, Wapiti Medical Staffing, was covered in ...

Cook County Commissioner Debra White (Dist 1) is hosting a meeting on Saturday, December 16, at 10 a.m. in the Colvill Townhall to discuss the Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) underway for Cook County.  Specifically, Commissioner White will present and discuss the proposed improvement plans for both the Colvill Townhall and the Hovland Townhall and receive feedback from the public that she can share with the county board and staff. Both town halls are simple buildings that are more than 70 years old. They are each anchors for their respective unincorporated communities, hosting weddings, dances, birthday and anniversary celebrations, and other community events. The Hovland town hall is the venue for the bi-annual Hovland Arts Festival, and the Colvill town hall is the meeting location for a local Girl Scout troop. Although owned by the county, most of the maintenance and management of these historic buildings has been done by community volunteers over the years. Among the improvement...

The Cook County Sheriff’s Office is asking the public for help identifying the owner of an overturned pontoon boat resting under 25 feet of water at the bottom of Pike Lake in Cook County.  The boat was discovered by fishermen last summer who were using an underwater camera to discern the bottom structure, presumably to aid in catching fish.  Cook County Search and Rescue used its new side-scan sonar equipment to determine the boat’s precise location and capture video of its condition. The side-scan sonar equipment is a recent addition to the water-based work of the Sheriff’s Department. Side-scan sonar is ideal for search and survey operations because it can quickly scan large areas. Gunflint Trail Search and Rescue, led by Michael Valentini, raised the funds to cover the $100,000 cost of the equipment. The pontoon appears to be of an older vintage. It may have been scuttled, without its motor, many years ago. “I’m guessing that it has been on the bottom for quite some time,”...

I don’t think this is the first time I’ve done this here, so here’s another mea culpa. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about a time-honored practice of leaving on a high note that gave the impression that the bohunk, our crew of animals, and this old hoot were moving to the small town of Carlton. That may happen someday, but not now.  In that column, I was doing something I often do: thinking out loud on my keyboard. My recent supervisor at SWCD, the best manager I’ve ever worked for, suggested I shouldn’t think out loud in a newspaper column.  The confusion about us moving is all my fault. Not the thinking-out-loud part. But giving the impression that a move was imminent. MEA CULPA. So here’s the deal. Since we first met on that fateful blind date when we were two misfit 16-year-olds, the Bohunk and I had regular and deep conversations about our future together. From how many kids we would raise (I favored nine to field a baseball team) to where we’d live and how we’d make a l...