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Vol. CXXIX — No. 27  •  Misquah, Minnesota  •  The Chain of Lakes
Tuesday, July 28, 2026  •  Archive Edition
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The Voice of the Chain of Lakes

The Misquah Pilot-Independent

“Where the coffee’s hot, the lakes are cold, and all the children are above average.” — Serving the Chain since 1897.



Issue No. 30ArchiveOpinion

Letters to the Editor

Letter: On Carts, Gates, and the Reading of Other People’s Gardens

M. Aakre of Loon Lake responds to recent correspondence concerning the width of a certain gate.

By M. Aakre, Loon Lake  •  July 28, 2026

Letter: On Carts, Gates, and the Reading of Other People’s Gardens photo
The gate, wider, and the cart, reinforced. The carpentry is the correspondence. — Pilot-Independent photo

To the Editor:

I read with interest last week’s letter concerning graciousness, and with greater interest the photograph that ran beside it, which I am told required a boat to obtain the angle. I will not comment on the reinforced cart, except to say that some of us reinforce our carts after the harvest requires it, and some of us reinforce them beforehand, out of hope, and that the town may draw its own conclusions about which approach has historically moved more pumpkin.

As to the gate: it is wider. I widened it. A gate is infrastructure, not correspondence, and I decline to accept its measurements as a form of speech. If certain parties across the bay wish to read intentions into carpentry, they are welcome to inspect my new posts at any reasonable hour, though I note that the last inspection conducted from their side of the water was performed with binoculars and, reportedly, a notebook.

The vines are very healthy. This was stated previously as a fact and is restated now as one. Facts do not escalate; they accumulate. The scale — recertified, as the whole county knows, at everybody’s request — will accumulate the final one on the fair’s last Saturday at ten o’clock, and I will be there early, as is my habit, having found that punctuality weighs nothing and carries anyway.

Mind the scale.

M. Aakre
Loon Lake

On Main, above the bank
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