November 2022

Franz Albert Richter is a renowned local artist who has recently celebrated his 80th birthday. He is also the current artist on exhibit at the Madison Mercantile located in Madison, Minnesota as well as the recent subject of a documentary celebrating his life and art. According to Pioneer PBS, Richter “has long been considered one of the most influential artists and historians of the Upper Minnesota River Valley region. He grew up on a farm south of Clarkfield and after graduating from Clarkfield High school (Class of 1960) he moved to the Twin Cities to pursue further education. There he met and collaborated with the likes of Garrison Keillor, Robert Bly and Architect Dennis Grebner. After a stint as a Freedom Rider in the civil rights movement in the south and a visit to San Francisco for the “Summer of Love” in 1967, Richter returned to his home farm to pursue “a life in art.”

Guests at the annual Granite Falls Area Community Foundation Awards banquet were treated to a live viewing of St. Cloud umpire Louis Thomas Williams IV’s back-flips at the beginning of his speech in the Granite Run Golf Course’s clubhouse.

The Yellow Medicine East Theatre group performed both Friday and Saturday evening, hosting a production of the musical “Anastasia”. The story is based on the 1997 animated film of the same name, and is an adaptation of a legend of the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia who escaped the execution of her family. Years later, Anya, an amnesiac orphan, hopes to find trace of her family by siding with two con men who hope to take advantage of her likeness to the Grand Duchess. The play was directed by YME theatre director Kade Davidson, with assistance from a variety of area businesses, and volunteers who helped with set design, posters, providing snacks, and parents donating goodies for concessions. The theatre group was also able to borrow costumes from the Dawson-Boyd Drama Department.

Once upon a time in the year 1426 BCE, there was a man named Korah, who along with two other people led a revolt against Moses. Korah was a Levite and a cousin to Moses and Moses’ brother Aaron. God had declared that all Levites were to be assistants to the priests in worship in the Jewish temple; but only Aaron and sons of Aaron could be priests. This didn’t sit well with some of the other Levites. They resented Moses’ leadership over them and decided they weren’t going to let Aaron’s family have all the rights to become priests. So, they gathered, they plotted, and they rebelled. The rebellious Levites that followed Korah (250 of them) showed up at the temple with censers. (A censer is a container to burn incense which only priests were allowed to do.) As a warning from God, Moses told the people if they get away from these people they were following, they would be OK, but if they did not – God’s wrath would consume them. You can read the whole story in Numbers 16, but it ends with the earth splitting open and swallowing the rebels and a plague continues to kill the rebel’s followers (14,700 of them) until Aaron is able to stop the plague.

Dorian Gatchell served in the US Military, having served his country well and assumes his great great- grandchildren will some day consider him a hero. He told the students at the ECHO Charter School at Thursday’s Veterans Day Program, that he considered so many others to have earned the title of Hero.