NORTHLAND GET TOGETHER
AAUW’s Northland Get Together by Colleen
The colors on the drive to the AAUW Northland Get Together in Virginia, MN on Friday, September 13th, 2019, were outstanding. The trees sporting green merging into yellow, into orange, into red were splendor to our eyes. Julie Despot and I were on the road already on Friday, as the Get Together started early on Saturday, the 14th. We were among thirty-five AAUW women sampling three different home made breads with our coffee/tea prior to starting our day of learning and networking. Saundra Martell, as well as her daughter, Laura, joined us at the LYRIC Center for the Arts. Also represented were women from Duluth, Grand Rapids, Ely, Hibbing and Virginia. Sitting at tables decorated with beautiful bright sunflower centerpieces and being surrounded by amazing art pieces made it extra comfy for listening to our three morning speakers.
LYRIC Center for the Arts Executive Director, Mary McReynolds, informed us how the Center is revitalizing the Virginia’s downtown…expanding the Center as the demand increases. She talked about a “Recharge the Range-Creative Arts Focus Group” which is working on a virtual arts map of the Range area.
Mary Erickson, a skilled artist who loves geology and history, integrates in her weaving, collages, and photographs, the role women have played in the development of the Iron Range. The land, mining rocks and minerals are a source for Ms Erickson’s muse. She said layers of earth are like layers of family and that, to her, weaving is different from painting because with weaving you are creating the canvas as part of your work. In painting, you are just covering the canvas. She showed examples of how her great grandmother influences her art. Whitney Ridlon, Community Development Representative with the Minnesota Department of Iron Range Resources & Rehabilitation (IRRR) was our third speaker. Ms Whitney outlined for us many programs and grants that she administers to encourage and facilitate the revitalization of the downtowns of the Range cities. Examples are enhanced lighting in parks, utility box wraps, city banners, energy efficiency upgrades, “meet and chow down”, etc. She highlighted a project where ten women got together in Chisholm and decided they were going to do something positive for their downtown. They are in their third year as a group, creating a pocket park in year one, (this women’s grassroots effort proudly got coverage in the Star Tribune); a large outdoor building mural in year two and did a cosmetic store front restoration in year three. The group is now working on providing opportunity activities in the pocket park. The City of Chisholm has taken over maintaining the park.
Our lunch was a delicious array of Range ethnic foods. Prior to us enjoying it, a Virginia AAUW member gave us the history of each dish and told about the cook who created it for us. Based in Austria, Croatia, Finland, Turkey, England and Germany, she explained how the Range towns adopted and changed the recipes to fit their tastes and resources. One story she told was that the pastie came from Cornwall, England. On the Range, the cook would squeeze a letter of the alphabet into a corner of the pastie to indicate who was getting what when they went down into the mines. When it was time to eat, the miner would hold the pastie by that corner, put it on his shovel and hold the shovel over the mine candle to heat the pastie, and then eat it. They would not eat the corner with the letter, but throw it on the ground for the “gremlins”. There tended to be mine residue that clung to the hands of the miners. And in that residue was arsenic. It was felt that by the miners throwing that corner away, they saved themselves, unknowingly, from being poisoned. After lunch, each AAUW Branch gave a short report of what they were doing in their branch, thereby sharing many new ideas with us. Although neither Julie, Saundra nor I won the end of the day door prizes of beautiful plants, we all felt we left as winners. We were loaded with new resources, ideas, and new friendships as we headed home on that colorful highway.
Which Branch is hostess for the 2020 gathering? The Branch name that is next in the alphabet. We look forward to next year when our Brainerd Lakes Area AAUW Branch will plan and welcome our sisters from the north to our (12th ?) AAUW Northland Get Together.