“Where the coffee’s hot, the lakes are cold, and all the children are above average.” — Serving the Chain since 1897.
Schools
Lakeside opened Wednesday before Labor Day for the first time in district history, ran three days, closed for the holiday, and started again this morning. Enrollment is 412. Nobody was late on Wednesday and eleven people were late today.
The first bell rang at 8:10 Wednesday morning, five days before Labor Day, and by every measure the district keeps, the day went the way first days go: 412 students, no bus later than nine minutes, one kindergartner who would not let go of a mother’s sleeve until 8:40 and who was fine by 8:50.
Then the week did what this year’s calendar made it do. Three days of school. A holiday. And then this morning, a Tuesday that a good many people described as a second first day.
It is the first pre–Labor Day opening in district history, permitted by a temporary state-law exception the board voted in March to use, not unanimously. Minnesota has required a post–Labor Day start since 1985; because the holiday fell on September 7 this year, the Legislature allowed boards to open any day from September 1, this school year and next.
In Brief · Elsewhere in No. 36
City hall. A handwritten 8, read aloud as a 6. The adopted motion says sixteen, and the board voted 4–1 to leave it there. →
Big Pelican. Two on Saturday, one on Sunday. The log reads SEPT. 6 — ONE. →
4-H. Eleven came home with blues and reds and no purples. Christopher Jonson, 17, aged out. →
The ballot. Absentee voting opens Sept. 18. Three candidates for two council seats; one school board seat drew nobody. →
Sept. 25. Homecoming and the Spelldown landed on the same Friday and only one of them can have the gym. →
County 12. The sweet-corn stand closed Saturday at 2:20, its sixtieth season and its first without Arvid. →
“I would rather be right by accident than wrong on purpose.”
— Sherry Niskanen, who voted against eighteen and moved to keep the sixteen · page one
The remaining juvenile loon was still on Big Pelican at first check.
Friday’s Pike home opener remains at 7 p.m.; the junior class says the pie table opens with the concession stand.
City Hall says absentee-voting applications are ready ahead of the Sept. 18 opening.
Schools
Lakeside opened Wednesday before Labor Day for the first time in district history, ran three days, closed for the holiday, and started again this morning. Enrollment is 412. Nobody was late on Wednesday and eleven people were late today.
Read the full story →The Hagen Pasture
Clerk Donna Skoglund found the error herself while assembling the council packet. The planning board met Thursday to decide whether to correct it and voted 4–1 to leave it exactly as adopted.
Read the full story →The Hagen Pasture
Two lots, a redrawn plat, and one number the developer says he can live with. A plain accounting of the difference between what was proposed and what was adopted.
Read the full story →State Fair · 4-H
Final placings for the Misquah 4-H delegation, posted at the extension office as they arrived. Nobody won a purple. Two came close, one came home annoyed, and Christopher Jonson aged out on a Sunday afternoon.
Read the full story →Labor Day
Twelve days of State Fair ended at nine Monday night. The trailers were back by eleven, the campers by Tuesday noon, and one household is still missing a cooler.
Read the full story →Milestones
Three separate roof funds — First Lutheran’s basement, the pavilion, and the rec warming house — pass fourteen years today. One of them has a beer attached to it now.
Read the full story →The November Ballot
The city clerk’s office begins issuing absentee ballots a week from Friday. Two council seats drew three candidates; one school board seat drew none and will be filled by write-in or appointment.
Read the full story →County Fair
The fair board holds its postmortem at the grounds office at 7. Attendance was the best since 2016; the ice failed Thursday at noon; and there is a letter about the Forest Club building.
Read the full story →County 12
The Paulson sweet-corn stand finished its sixtieth season and its first without Arvid. Dale opened at six every morning it ran, as instructed.
Read the full story →The Loons of Big Pelican
Greta Solberg checked Saturday and found two. She checked Sunday and found one. The second bird is still on the water.
Read the full story →The Fishing Report
Tim Brevik on the fall turn: walleye up on the breaks, the grouse opener Saturday, and a reminder that the ramp lip is still there and the county still knows.
Read the full story →The Season
Loon Ridge got its Labor Day weekend bump, lost it Monday, and is now into the part of the season Renée Fontaine says she keeps the place open for.
Read the full story →Pike Football
The Pike opener came down to a fourth-quarter drive that stalled at the Braham 12. Twenty-nine players dressed, nobody got hurt, and the line did what the coach said it would.
Read the full story →Fall Sports
A Saturday scrimmage that told the coach three things, and an invitational where the Pike runners finished in the middle and one of them finished in front.
Read the full story →Fall Sports
Scores from the opening week and the schedule through the end of September, as of Monday.
Read the full story →Our View
A clerk found her own mistake, told everybody the same afternoon, and a board decided to live with the result. We think two of those three things were plainly right.
Read the full story →Letters to the Editor
A. Lindgren of Third Avenue on the difference a pen makes.
Read the full story →Letters to the Editor
L. Sundquist of Loon Lake Road responds to the sixteen-lot record.
Read the full story →Corrections & Amplifications
Two corrections this week, one a matter of wording and one a matter of fairness.
Read the full story →The Klatch · From Eunice
Eunice on the week the town got busy again: children on the sidewalk, a clerk who told on herself, and the first cold morning that made anybody say anything.
Read the full story →Second Avenue
Mud Lake Brewing Co. has been open twenty-four days. The Holts have announced no event, no special release and no ceremony, and report that this has disappointed several people.
Read the full story →The Daybreak
Pat Reinholt’s legal pad matched fourteen drivers with twenty-six riders over twelve days. It came down Monday. Something else is already taped in its place.
Read the full story →Schools
Two sections, half days behind them, and the twenty hardest minutes of a September afternoon still ahead. Kara Lindvall, in her fourth year, has been counting down to it since Friday.
Read the full story →Schools
The first Doris Knutson Spelldown and the homecoming football game landed on the same Friday. Nobody noticed until last week. Two committees are being polite about it.
Read the full story →Schools
The Vekved triplets missed Wednesday and Thursday of seventh grade for the State Fair dairy shows, drove home Thursday night, and were in class Friday morning with the rest of them.
Read the full story →