Thanks for our local economy

Last night we ate (again) at one of our favorite local restaurants, The Watershed Cafe in Osceola, WI. That's worth mentioning today because each table had a League of Women Voters chapter note card like those shown in the pictures. We've not seen anything similar in Minnesota but maybe we've just missed them, although there were none on the tables at Coffee Talk when we stopped for coffee this morning with the Better Half [BH].

Vote card front

Photo by J. Harrington

Vote card back

Photo by J. Harrington

Vote card interior

Photo by J. Harrington

After coffee we headed to the old Taylors Falls train depot to check the annual Crafts and Fine Arts Sale by area artisans, which continues through tomorrow. We suggest it's worth the trip. BH bought something or other from a potter, Guillermo Cuellar, whose stoneware we've used for years. Almost all of our round artisan loaves are baked in one of his cloches.

Taylors Falls Artisans celebration

Photo by J. Harrington

All of which reminds us that we're grateful to live in the beautiful St. Croix River Valley and share it with cool, friendly local businesses and artisans and one of the first official Wild and Scenic Rivers.

Locals

By James Lasdun

They peopled landscapes casually like trees,

being there richly, never having gone there,

and whether clanning in cities or village-thin stands

were reticent as trees with those not born there,

and their fate, like trees, was seldom in their hands.

Others to them were always one of two

evils: the colonist or refugee.

They stared back, half disdaining us, half fearing;

inferring from our looks their destiny

as preservation or as clearing.

I envied them. To be local was to know

which team to support: the local team;

where to drop in for a pint with mates: the local;

best of all to feel by birthright welcome

anywhere; be everywhere a local...

Bedouin-Brython-Algonquins; always there

before you; the original prior claim

that made your being anywhere intrusive.

There, doubtless, in Eden before Adam

wiped them out and settled in with Eve.

Whether at home or away, whether kids

playing or saying what they wanted,

or adults chatting, waiting for a bus,

or, in their well-tended graves, the contented dead,

there were always locals, and they were never us.

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