From Where I Sit By Pat Spilseth, Columnist “And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet, 1875-1926. I wonder what the new year of 2023 will bring. The past several years have been unsettling. Not only has the COVID pandemic disrupted and destroyed lives and… Read More

Publisher’s Perspective By Tim Douglass, Publisher of the Pope County Tribune Child care availability in Pope County has become a serious problem.  And we’re not even talking about affordability, just the option to be able to get a child into a child care facility. Of course the problem isn’t unique to Pope County.  The struggle for parents… Read More

Stoneage Ramblings By John R. Stone Next year is going to be an interesting year. Maybe some of the stuff that will be unresolved at year’s end will get resolved in 2023. The January 6 committee in the House of Representatives has completed its report and made referrals to the Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ,… Read More

Minnewaska Musings By Paul Gremmels, Columnist “One Christmas was so much like another, in those years around the sea-town corner now and out of all sound except the distant speaking of the voices I sometimes hear a moment before sleep, that I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I… Read More

Growing Green By Robin Trott, Extension Educator University of Minnesota Extension Educators are excited to bring you the fourth annual Gardening from the Ground Up Zoom webinar series. Free virtual workshops will take place Feb. 20-24, 2023, from 1-2:30 p.m. each afternoon. The series will focus on trees and shrubs in the home landscape. Webinars will… Read More

The Outdoors By Scott Rall, Outdoors Columnist At this very moment, the town I live in is pretty much shut down. Snow in amounts I don’t like, along with winds I hate even worse, are arriving later today. The pheasants are getting a huge reprieve from hunters that would normally be chasing them until the very… Read More

View From a Prairie Home by Hege Hernfindahl, Columnist I hope you will excuse an old woman. But last week, the week before Christmas when I always write about the various ways one can celebrate and the reason for this, I was confused. You see, because I need time to edit my columns, I always write two… Read More

From Where I Sit By Pat Spilseth, Columnist Each year I look forward to reading Christmas cards that friends from all over the country send telling about their families and activities of the past year. It’s a great catcher-upper with folks I have no regular news from. If I get a card with only a signature, I’m… Read More

Publisher’s Perspective By Tim Douglass, Publisher of the Pope County Tribune At a recent Glenwood City Commission meeting, City Administrator Dave Iverson explained how the city has been hurt financially by stagnant Local Government Aid (LGA) from the State of Minnesota.  Glenwood, like all cities in Greater Minnesota, receives state LGA each year. Lack of LGA increases… Read More

Stoneage Ramblings By John R. Stone Sometimes what you see is not what you think it is. I had a humorous reminder of that this past week. I had spent Saturday morning, Dec. 10, with some buckthorn brigade people cleaning up some buckthorn we had cut earlier. When we were done I went home, took a… Read More