Community Conversations

Heat. Smoke. A surge of visitors. The lingering COVID-19 global pandemic.

Add these factors up and it’s made for another challenging summer for some Cook County businesses and employees. From small businesses to local government to medical professionals, the notion of ‘worker burnout’ is an important topic as the calendar prepares to turn to August.

WTIP’s Joe Friedrichs and Rhonda Silence hosted a community conversation July 29 on WTIP with community leaders, business owners, employees and healthcare professionals about what’s been a challenging year for the local workforce. Featured on the program were County Administrator James Joerke, Cook County Chamber of Commerce Director Jim Boyd, Andrea Orest from Sawtooth Mountain Clinic and Marcia Hyatt, a life coach in Cook County. Also featured on the program are local business owners Bruce Block and Courtney Quaife.
 

Back in 2016 Curtis Gagnon, a Grand Portage Band Member who passed away in December of 2020, spoke with WTIP Volunteer Roger Linehan in an hour-long conversation that covered a lot of territory.

He tells the story of when he shot a moose at the right time but in the wrong place, and how it unintentionally tested the boundaries of tribal sovereignty and treaty rights--an event that had a lasting impact on people all across Anishinaabe country. He also talked about the traditional ways and spiritual values of Anishinaabe people and shared his thoughts on the future of mother earth and our responsibility to care for the natural environment. 

The interview initially aired in 2016 and was re-aired in January 2021, with the permission of his family.

BJ Muus and Leonard Sobanja—familiar names for many of us on the North Shore. Both men are full of wit and wisdom, yet are decidedly different.

BJ Muus is the longtime, but now-retired host of the community Christmas concert and host of WTIP’s Sounds of the Spirit program.

Leonard Sobanja was principal of School District 166 for years and later joined the school board. He has been a volunteer at the Cook County Historical Society and helped create WTIP’s Moments in Time feature. [32.27]

WTIP’s Rhonda Silence interviewed both of these men, to capture just a bit of their interesting life stories.
 

Deb Benedict and Rita Plourde are widely recognized as two of the most influential and important community leaders in Cook County during the past two decades.

Benedict served as the executive director at WTIP from 2001 to June 2018. Under her direction, WTIP grew into a trusted provider of news, information and entertainment on the North Shore, with a nine person-staff, dozens of volunteers, over 1,200 members and many thousands of listeners.

Plourde retired this year from Sawtooth Mountain Clinic. She served as the administrator of the clinic for 38 years before announcing her retirement earlier this year. Plourde joined Sawtooth Mountain Clinic in 1981 and she was responsible for recruiting and retaining physicians and support staff to provide services at the local Clinic, as well as securing funding for health care operations and establishing and maintaining public health services in our community.

Benedict and Plourde were the featured guests of a WTIP community conversation Oct. 17. The audio from this program is shared below.
 

In this installment of Conversations on Health and Wellbeing, host Kristin DeArruda Wharton learns more about innovations in health care and disruptive systems that have, and are changing the status quo of caring for individuals and families.

Kristin speaks with Elizabeth Chidothe, a nurse practitioner with Nice Healthcare, a healthcare innovated providing comprehensive primary care to employers for just $30 per employee per month. 

Kristin also speaks with Dr. Steve Calvin, perinatologist and founder of the Minnesota Birth Center, to learn about how licensed birth centers created a new option for families seeking birthing care that ultimately changed birthing care in hospitals as well.
 

There has been quite a bit of activity on Second Street in Grand Marais over the last year or so, as ground was broken, driveways were punched in and houses were installed in the Nordic Star development.
 
It’s been interesting to watch the progress and many of us in the community have wondered…who is going to live there? And then, later, who is living there?
 
Well, during this WTIP Community Conversation, we meet some of the people of this new neighborhood—Andre Robinson, Erin Petz, and Emily Kettleson.
 
We also hear from some of the people involved in bringing the Nordic Star housing development to fruition--Mary Somnis, executive director of the Cook County/Grand Marais Economic Development Authority; One Roof Community Housing Development Coordinator Julie Petrusha; and One Roof Housing President Jeff Corey.
 
We’ll also visit with former EDA board member, Abby Tofte, one of the people who helped establish the EDA and One Roof Housing partnership.
 
Thanks to all our guests!

During the early-morning hours of July 4, 1999, a series of thunderstorms roared across northern Minnesota. In what would become forever known as “Blowdown Storm,” damaging and powerful winds would leave scars on the area some of which are still visible to this day.  According to estimates by the US Forest Service, an estimated 25 million trees were blown down during the storm.

In the summer of 2019, WTIP is looking back on the Blowdown storm through a series of commemorative features and interviews with those who experienced the legendary storm firsthand.

Included in this series was a special community conversation program that aired lived June 20. WTIP’s Joe Friedrichs hosted the program. He was joined in the studio by Janice Matichuk from the Cache Bay Ranger Station in Quetico Provincial Park and by retired meteorologist from the National Weather Service in Duluth, Mike Stewart.

Several people also phoned in during the show to share their stories and memories from the Blowdown storm.

Audio from the program is available below.
 

WTIP has been following the story about Seth Jeffs, a religious leader with a history of legal trouble in the western United States and deep family connections to the polygamous sect of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Jeffs has purchased 40 acres of property along Pike Lake Road in Cook County and plans to build a large structure on the land. 

In response to Jeffs' Cook County land purchase, a group of community members have organized a town-hall style meeting scheduled for Saturday, May 18 at 9 a.m. The event includes the panelists Tonia Tewell, the founder and director of Holding Out HELP, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to work with those inside and outside Utah’s fundamentalist and polygamous communities, and private investigator Sam Brower, known for his work in exposing the crimes of the FLDS church and Jeffs family.

As part of WTIP’s ongoing coverage, Joe Friedrichs spoke with Tewell and Brower about their knowledge of the FLDS community, Seth Jeffs and the upcoming town hall meeting in Grand Marais. You can hear both of these interviews in this special community conversation.

Please note: WTIP is not affiliated with Saturday's town hall meeting.

For more information on Seth Jeffs, click on the links below:

A March 2019 update on the FLDS compound in South Dakota.

Seth Jeffs arrested at South Dakota compound in 2016. 

A 2019 report from KARE11 about Jeffs and his arrival in Minnesota. 

In October 2017, WTIP aired a special hour-long program focused on people connecting with family members from their past.

The program featured two Cook County residents who were in the process of connecting with family members from their early childhood, or in one case with relatives they’d never met.

This month’s first Thursday community conversation with Joe Friedrichs is a follow up to that show from 2017 about reconnecting with family members and what the process can entail both emotionally and how it can be done in the modern era.

Cook County resident Heidi Doo-Kirk shares her story about a sister who was taken from the home as a young child. We also hear from Cook County resident Stan Tull who was adopted and his efforts to trace his biological roots.
 

During the fall and winter of 2018-19, WTIP reported on a variety of topics related to climate change and its impact on fish, and fishing here in the North Shore area.
 
On Thursday, Jan. 17, WTIP’s Joe Freidrichs led a discussion about what climate change means from a variety of perspectives, including what is meant by “climate change” and when and if these changes will impact anglers and fish along the North Shore and other parts of northeastern Minnesota.

Joining Friedrichs for this discussion about climate change and what this means in Minnesota and specific to the North Shore were:

--Finland Area Fisheries Supervisor with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Dean Paron.

--Grand Marais Area Fisheries Supervisor for the DNR, Steve Persons.

--Tom Beery from Minnesota Sea Grant.

The show aired live at WTIP Jan. 17.