Opinion

Over the weekend I took my daughters to the ocean for the first time in their lives. It was a trip planned for quite some time - before I knew what my current working situation would be. And so, with our non-refundable plane tickets, we boarded a plane late Friday for a weekend in sunny California. I'd decided a while ago that to visit the ocean, they needed to visit somewhere warm and especially during the winter months. Thanks to a lot of help from willing contributors, the three papers were able to get out on time with full coverage of events. It really does take a village, and I'm very grateful to have the help so I could get away for the weekend.

Back in 1951 my mom’s older sister, then a young widow with two youngsters ages seven and three, packed up their clothes and a few belongings and boarded a train to California, to start over and build a new life for herself and her kids. They stayed with her brother and his family near Oakland, and she soon found a job working for the city there.

Most city council meetings don’t attract many citizens to attend, or much attention from anyone for that matter. That’s especially true during the chilly evenings of winter. But a little over a week ago, a sizeable delegation from the Granite Falls Area Community Foundation (GFACF) made sure that wasn’t the case when they showed up on January 18th at the Granite Falls City Hall.

So, January is many things, but I think the word most people use to describe it is “long”. Yes, technically it’s tied for the longest month of the year with others but I’d like to see any other month look hard and long into the cold, grey eyes of January and see who blinks first.

Last week, the new owner of the newspaper was gracious enough to send all of us who wished to go to the Minnesota Newspaper Association Convention. I jumped at this opportunity because working the way we do these days, remotely and with much smaller staff sizes, networking opportunities don't happen very often. I've always found networking opportunities like this to be a match-strike of inspiration. Being able to chat with those in the same industry and hear what others are doing, or the challenges they are recognizing, and how they are overcoming them helps me to mull over my own thoughts and ideas with more perspective.

Heading north 350 miles or more in the dead of winter in mid-January does not sound like a luxurious vacation to most folks, but it is something that plenty of others do each year whether it’s to Baudette, Warroad or the Northwest Angle, the lure of ice fishing on Lake of the Woods is hard to resist.

Soup’s On January is, on average, the coldest month of the year. And that means one thing.

After months of having to hear from my mother, my sister, my grandmother, and my husband how terrible my previous column photo was, I decided to change it. Not because I thought it was terrible, because honestly, who cares? My column picture isn't a beauty contest, and I'm 40. I hardly see why it makes a difference. However, I just got sick of hearing how "old" I looked from all of them - thus, here's a quick photo from my porch featuring my seventeen-year-old hat that I originally purchased at the Minnesota Newspaper Association. This hat was a purchase made the very first time I attended the convention. Back then I was just a young, perhaps overly ambitious newspaper owner who was asked to speak, as a part of a panel, to a group of journalism students about the nittygritty of what living a life of journalism is like.