West End News: August 11

Birch Grove Community School invites one and all to their annual open house. This year it is on Tuesday, August 23, from 5 pm until 8 pm. This event is open to everyone, but is especially geared to families that would like to have their children attend Birch Grove. The open house includes informal conversation with teachers and staff, a tour, a bouncy house in the gym and a free pizza bake in the outdoor wood-fired oven.
 
Birch Grove serves kids for pre-school, starting at the age of three, on up through the fifth grade. It is an award winning program and the opportunity to give your child an excellent education with a lot of personal attention from their teachers. I can vouch for this because I’m the proud parent of two Birch Grove graduates.
 
For more information, you can contact Diane Blanchette at 663-0170 or email [email protected].
 
There is a great report out of Finland from the Camp Finland program that runs out of the Clair Nelson Community Center every summer. Among many other activities, the kids got to capture and identify dragonflies with DNR biologist, Kurt Mead. Kurt reports that there are about a hundred known species of dragon and damselflies in the Finland area.
 
Kurt expected that most of the captured insects would be the more common varieties, but was surprised by how many of netted flies were uncommon or rare. The predominant damselfly that the kids were catching was the Aurora damsel, which has only been documented in Lake County once before. Another exciting find was the Ski-tailed Emerald Dragonfly. The last time this species was found in Lake County was in 1920!
 
Reports of the outing will be included in a national database and a few species have been donated to the University of Minnesota Insect Collection in St. Paul. Although the kids had a lot of fun chasing dragonflies around on a warm, windy day, they did real science that will advance everyone’s knowledge of these fascinating and beautiful creatures. If you want to see the full dragonfly report, go to the website: friendsoffinland.org.
 
While I’m thinking about the excellent Clair Nelson Community Center, let me remind you of the Finland Farmer’s Market that takes place every Thursday from 5 until 6:30 pm through the first Thursday in October. 
 
The entire West End community is saddened by the passing of Craig Spates, who was a long time resident of Lutsen. Craig was a true character in a community that isn’t short on characters. When my son, Carl, was about four, he used to call Craig “that really ugly guy.” That sounds sort of cruel, but Carl really, really liked Craig, and actually meant “that very interesting looking guy.”
 
Craig was a mainstay in the community, working for decades in almost every capacity at the ski hill among a host of other jobs. He was an intelligent man with many interests, two of which I shared with him - music and politics. Craig was a big music fan and a unique and original musician and songwriter. He was also a dyed in the wool Democrat who followed all levels of politics closely. He had a deep understanding of the issues and the complex political dynamics that surround them.
 
Craig was a friend to everyone he met and the West End is a less interesting place without him.

(Photo courtesy of Camp Finland)