On Friday all the third graders from Myers Wilkins gathered at Grant Field for a dogless sled race to celebrate this year’s John Beargrease Marathon. They had been learning about John Beargrease and the race in his honor all week long. Each class had 4 teams that consisted of a musher and three dogs. There…

“Only in the darkness can you see the stars”. –Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr This past weekend we slipped away with some friends to their cabin north of Ely. It was bitterly cold, but the cabin was warm with good conversations and the heat from their wood stove. It was good to be together in…

A couple of weeks ago one of the boys I work with at Myers Wilkins Elementary school got an In School Suspension (ISS). This meant he had to hang out with me all day to do his schoolwork, eat his lunch and even to go out for recess. The school playground was full of kids,…

My husband Tim took this picture in October at the top of Mount Josephine in Grand Portage. Sitting on the rocks looking to the north you see Canada and to the south you see Minnesota. It was good to just sit for a long while and take in the view. There were other people, strangers…

The early reader book was one he seemed to like. In part because it was repetitive with pictures so he could read it. He loved it in part because he had a big sister. He flipped through the book reading, “My big sister likes to sing.  My big sister likes to cook. My big sister…

My favorite resurrection story is the one in which Jesus makes breakfast over a charcoal fire on the beach. He cooks up some fish and calls out to his guys in their boats, “Come Have Breakfast.” They come ashore and taste the love Jesus has for them one more time. I read this story from the…

We are living neath the great Big Dipper We are washed by the very same rain We are swimming in the stream together Some in power and some in  pain We can worship this ground we walk on Cherishing the beings that we live beside Loving spirits will live forever We ‘re all swimming to…

On Father’s Day Tim and I took a walk down at the end of Duluth’s Park Point by the municipal airport. The dirt trail is lined with tall pine trees, wild roses and plenty of poison ivy. Toward the end of the trail we cut down to the beach of Lake Superior. We wanted to…

The Saturday morning of Memorial Day Weekend well over 100 of us gathered at the Park Point Beach House to celebrate the life of Mark Ham. Mark and his wife, Cathie, would often row early in the morning just off the shore where we gathered on the beach. When I first spoke with Cathie, she…

We’ve been doing a lot of work on our 1978 Tartan sailboat recently. We have owned it for 20 years with many great partners over the course of that time. A friend of Tim’s from the Minnetonka Police Department where they both were police officers salvaged her originally. Mark brought her back from North Carolina…