As a thirty-year resident of Grand Marais, and someone who has benefited greatly from the Sawtooth Mountain Clinic over those years, I, like many Cook County residents am deeply concerned about recent events stemming from the North Shore Health Association leadership, and their punitive approach to the staff and overall health care system.

We have struggled to put together a few words about the loss of the Lodge. There have already been so many beautiful words written about the place that Lutsen Resort, and the Lodge in particular, has had in the Minnesota community. Bryan Hansel and Carol DeSain have written elegant and poetic celebrations of the Resort that far overshadow our abilities.

In the days when physicians still made house calls, medicine was practiced with little technology and lots of heart. The life of a country doctor was a hard one, with long, lonely hours, little pay and late night drives through swirling snowstorms. Those were the days when physicians were forced to practice medicine with what was on hand, to pull miracles out of their black bags, and tap into the deep reservoirs of the quiet voice within that guided them through the forest of trees filled with the unthinkable. These country doctors were angels in the night creating something out of nothing and saving their patients’ lives in the process.

Questions to the county board. Will the PLAN focus on REPAIRS to the town halls as a priority? I mean actual repairs and not remodel items such as doors, ceiling, wall, and floor finishes which are unnecessary.