Duluth girl badly injured in likely fish attack

by MinnPost staff 07/21/201707/21/2017

When fish attack. The Duluth News Tribune’s Sam Cook reports: “Ryan Kesselhon couldn’t figure out what was happening to his 11-year-old daughter, Maren. One minute, Maren had been peacefully dangling from her family’s paddleboard in Island Lake north of Duluth on Wednesday afternoon. The next second she was screaming wildly. … ‘I couldn’t figure out what she was screaming about,’ Ryan Kesselhon said. ‘Then she lifted her foot out of the water, and I could see it was filleted open in many places.’ … Closer examination revealed she had been cut in 25 places, mostly on her upper ankle and on top of her foot, Kesselhon said.”

Interesting look at tensions between private land ownership and public access on the Knife River Trail. The Brainerd Dispatch’s Jamey Malcomb writes: “Even more troubling to trail users, near the trailhead on Shilhon Road in St. Louis County, no trespassing signs have recently gone up on private land that the trail used to cross and people used to access the river, forcing a reroute of the trail. The four 40-acre parcels are the final pieces of publicly-owned property in the Knife River area and the fear was that if the land is purchased by a private entity, more no trespassing signs would go up and the trail would be confined to its current form. … Commissioner Rich Sve said that he was sympathetic with the situation and the county board is forced to walk a fine line with land sales. Eighty-three percent of the land in Lake County is publicly owned and 100 percent of the property taxes come from the 16 percent of county land in private hands.”

Something one might take for granted. In a commentary in the Chicago Tribune, David M. Perry writes: “We are moving from Chicago to the Twin Cities in just eight weeks. Moreover, we’re doing it, at least in part, in hopes of ensuring a better future for our son. … When it comes to life with disabilities, state administrations matter. Sure, federal laws ensure basic civil rights, federal programs mandate (sometimes, but not always, with funds attached) all kinds of services, but states and their third-party partners (think nonprofits) tend to administer everything. When a state collapses, it takes the disability services down with it. As Politico recently wrote: Illinois is a failed state.”

They make this look really fun. MPR’s Bob Collins reports: “Maura and Bobby Marko are the type of parents who can make you think you raised your kids wrong. … The couple has a passion for the outdoors and it’s clear that if there was one thing they weren’t going to give up when one — and then two — kids joined them, it’s the outdoors. And why should they? ‘We are raising our children to love and explore the outdoors as much as possible,’ they write on their website — We Found Adventure. ‘Passing down our respect and enjoyment of the outdoors to our children is our biggest goal in life.’ The first camping trip with their son, Jack, was 2014. He was six weeks old.”