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Richard and Elaine Petersen have been residents of Clarkfield since 1955, and have been decorating the exterior of their home in various themes for the holidays since. The couple is known around town for having their large window of their home covered in lights and decor for every season.

Imagine it is night, you are driving along a lonely country road, you stop at a stop sign and your headlights fail. They just stop working. The car is running fine, but you cannot see the road. The moon is but a sliver. The stars are distant. You cannot see where you are going. There is nothing you can do; so, you wait and hope. In his book Standing on the Promises, Louis Smedes wrote, “Waiting is our destiny as creatures who cannot by themselves bring about what they hope for. We wait in the darkness for a flame we cannot light. We wait in fear for a happy ending we cannot write. We wait for a not yet that feels like a not ever. Waiting is the hardest work of hope.”

Katie Stearns has been writing since she was a small child, never imagining that she would eventually make a career from her hobby. After she and her husband moved from Duluth to a farm between Clarkfield and Montevideo with their two young children a year and a half ago, Stearns began seriously working on publishing her first novel. “I never really thought that I would let anybody read anything that I wrote,” she says. “It was always a very private thing.” Stearns recalls in childhood, having her first experience with positive feedback from something she wrote from a sixth-grade teacher. “It was like oh I’m actually good at that. Ever since then I was always writing something – even if it was just in my head,” she says.

Ben Bothun started his role as an Insurance Agent with F&M Insurance on March 14th. Prior to joining the agency in Clarkfield, Bothun worked for an insurance agency in Madison for five years. “This opportunity came up and it was a better fit for my family,” he said. Bothun says he appreciated the culture at F&M Insurance, and that he has found the company culture to be just as described. “I’m happy here. The people have been great, and the customers I’ve met have been great,” he says. Bothun lives outside of Dawson where he and his wife of sixteen years, Chelsie are raising two sons, Mason and Max, ages 13 and ten. Both Chelsie and Ben grew up in the Austin area, and lived in the cities after college for around 10 years. The couple decided to move back to the area for the slower-paced lifestyle. “We wanted our kids to grow up in a similar town around relatives and family,” Bothun says.

Last week, the Clarkfield Assembly of God Church had a special delivery of a new piano, purchased from Carlson Music in Alexandria by way of donations. The original piano was purchased in 1949 by Inez Appleseth Carlson in memory of her first husband. The current pianist for the Assembly of God Church is Paulette Heald (photographed with the new piano). The Clarkfield Assembly of God Church has only had a few pianists in their history. The first was Evangeline Landmark, followed by JoAnn Hildahl and Elsie Carlson, then Lillian Falkum. Photo by Jessica Stolen-Jacobson

According to a criminal complaint filed with the Eighth Judicial District Court, Christopher Lee, of Clarkfield, was arrested on April 15th on allegations of Second-Degree Assault as well as Reckless Discharge of a Firearm, and Domestic Assault. Lee was at the time of his arrest, the Upper Sioux Community Chief of Police.

As Prince said, sometimes it snows in April. Yesterday, as snowflakes tumbled in gale-force winds, I found myself longing for a gorgeous day in early fall: blue sky, leaves tinged with orange, grass deep green instead of stubbly half-brown tundra. Minnesota’s weather, while always interesting, may not always be pleasant. I’m confident in saying, though, that late summer / early autumn is most reliably beautiful. The weather – along with all of the fun fall activities (see: -the Meander) – is part of the reason our new -community artist in residence will come to Granite Falls in August, September, and October. What will they do when they get here? A few weeks ago, in this column, you read a brief overview of what a CAIR program is. Essentially, cities host an artist who teams up with local organizations, community members, and government to create new projects that foster cohesion, equity, collaboration, and play. These differ from usual artist residencies (in which an artist works on projects more or less alone) – in that the emphasis is on community-building rather than on, say, having the time and space to finally finish one’s novel. CAIR programs have a lot of different names: for instance, Minneapolis calls its version Creative City-Making. They also range widely in shape. In Pittsburgh, one residency is only three weeks long; artists work out of a retrofitted shipping container on the banks of the Allegheny to collect stories about the river. Pittsburgh has also hosted visual artists, who created Snapchat filters that used augmented-reality technology to offer new perspectives on familiar locations. In Japan, a centuries-old paper factory hosted an American artist who learned traditional materials and techniques to create a contemporary art project – a map of the town – in her style, along with drawings of gifts like plants and produce that were given to her by the residents as she worked.