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Brenna Kolstad and Bruno Lauren Belland: Brenna: “You got my picture last week!” (Some times I run into the same person... that’s life...) “I appreciate it because I had everybody say, ‘I saw you in the paper!’ So I feel real famous.” (And it’s rare to get in two weeks in a row.). “I feel blessed.” Lauren: “I work at Bear Head Lake State Park. I’ve been in Ely since 2022. It’s been really great to get into the community. I love it here! I always enjoy the hiking and last summer we got into trying to explore the local campgrounds: Fenske Lake, Birch Lake. Just places kind of around here. Like I said, just getting to know the town more and what it has to offer.” Brenna: “Like Lauren was saying too, because last week when we talked too, we talked about community and tonight there is a poetry night at the Folk School and maybe we’ll go check that out potentially. Again, just other things around town happening that we want to be a part of. Only two years since we moved up here but we have already met a lot of great people. We read about it in the ECHO. Lauren got me a subscription for my birthday. Super lucky about that so we keep up with stuff that’s going on in town. And even community members touching base on stuff like Palestine and Gaza and keeping up on everything local and national and international. You guys do a great job.” (Thank you. I’ll pass that along to the ECHO staff and contributors.). “It’s just been fun. We’re just soaking up the sun today. Might check out the poetry night and see what cool cats are around. I’d like to give a shout out to all my co-workers at the GEL. Love you Bob, hostesses and servers and all. Yeah, so checking out the poetry night. They did it last year at the Northern Grounds and they had themes for each season. Tonight I think is the spring theme. You just go in and sign up if you want to say a poem. It could be one that someone else has written or one that you have written. It’s fun to see what people bring and fun even to just listen.” Lauren: “It’s a really creative community. I’ve loved diving into all the whole art scene. There’s painters, potters, and crafters and builders and poets and writers. It’s fun to be around all the art.” Brenna: “Yeah, definitely. And last time I wrote a poem I wrote it for Lauren, plauded my love for her.” Lauren: “She surprised me with writing a poem for the last poetry night we went to because the theme was Valentines and love and stuff like that. She secretly wrote me a poem and read it to me at poetry night. It was really cute.” Brenna: “I read it out loud. I like to be spontaneous and I had to share my love.”
Ora Koehler and Naveah Gams: Ora: “We were just going to the park after school. We were just playing.” Naveah: “We played on the swings and we saw one of our friends over there with a pet bunny.” Ora: “We are both in sixth grade. It’s pretty good. I like lunch.” Naveah: “School was good. My favorite part is social studies. I like that I don’t have to read too much.” Ora: “I’m just going to hang out with Naveah.” Naveah: “And I’m just going to hang out with Ora or go back to my house. I am happy at this school. I have a lot of friends here. It’s the only school I have been to and I like it.”
Daniel MacCoy: “I have a new garage. I have some toys and doing some maintenance on some toys. Just got done with work. Works been going good. It was a little slower than other years but it gave me time to work on some of my own construction projects and stuff like that. I work on wood stoves, chimney sweeps, rock work, full fireplaces from start to finish from stone and everything. We’ve been busy with archery this winter. My daughter Aspen actually qualified for nationals with her elementary team, fourth and fifth grade. Girls and Boys. So we’ll be going to Kentucky to compete. It starts in fourth grade. They usually have a field trip in third grade to the archery room in the basement of the Napa Building and thats where they practice. She did that last year and she actually qualified last year as an individual to go to nationals and we went to Utah. That was a blast. We stopped at Moab and went through South Dakota and saw the Black Hills and all that on the way. We kind of made a little vacation out of it. She is now at play practice. She’s been busy lately. She’s in the fourth and fifth grade musical that they are going to be putting on in a couple weeks. So we will be going to Nationals in early May to compete. Other than that, life goes on.” (Now that you have a garage I see you don’t have your green house.) “I’ve been too busy with work and life and kids that I don’t grow large things any more, at least for now. I grew the largest tomato in the world in 2014 and that was 8.4 pounds but it has since been beat multiple times because I gave my secret out I guess, if you will.” (And what about the pumpkin?) “Yeah, one year I grew, the biggest pumpkin was 1,197 pounds. Almost 1,200 pounds. But the world record now is like 2,700 pounds so mine was nothing compared to that. A lot of it has to do with genetics. People cross big pumpkins with big pumpkins. They share seeds. We take the male flower from another plant and pollinate onto the female and it just crosses and people make good crosses and bigger pumpkins.” (Good thing you did it when you did.). “I don’t have the space any more. Maybe when I get some land.” (I am surprised what all you do in this little space.) “Yeah, we get a lot done around here. I have two kids. Aspen 11, and Ace is seven. This year Ace learned how to downhill ski. He had an instructor teach him for like a total of three runs down the bunny hill at Giants Ridge and he was ready to go up to the big hills. And he scared his dad. He scared me big time. But he made it down a few times and we walked out of there in one piece.”
Kate, Laurana and their mother Karyn Smith with their bunny Andre: Laurana: “We were playing with some people and talking about our bunny. They did pet him.” Karyn: “The bunny is a Flemish Giant.” Kate: “His name is Andre.” Laurana: “His great great auntie or something like that was a Harlequin.” Karyn: “He only has three legs.” Laurana: “He broke one of them falling off a chair. When my mom and dad took him to the Twin Cities the price there was so high they turned around and came back and got his leg cut off here at the Ely Vet Clinic.” Karyn: “It was going to cost seven to $9,000.00 to get it reset down in the cities so we decided we’d spend a thousand to get it amputated instead at the Ely Vet Clinic.” Kate: “His name is Andre because of the famous wrestler Andre the Giant and his breed is Flemish Giant so it kind of goes with Andre the Flemish Giant.” Laurana: “We are in third grade and we live in Ely, Minnesota.” Karyn: “They are in the two different third grades so they are in different classes.” Kate: “We are both nine.” Laurana: “School is the best! Sometimes we get extra recess and we have gym and music and art and library and computers. Library and computers are the same thing.” Kate: “I like school.” Karyn: “Why did we decide to bring Andre outside today?” Laurana: “Because he hasn’t been outside for so long.” Karyn: “About two years ago we were bringing him everywhere to show everybody a big rabbit for Easter. Right now they are not letting pets into the school so I thought that since it was recently Easter we’d bring him and let people see a big rabbit. This is the first time he’s been in public since he’s had three legs since about six months ago. It was also winter.” Laurana: “Two years ago we brought him in our class. He is almost 4. His birthday is middle of July.” Kate: “In bunny years he is almost 40.” Laurana: “Yeah, one year for us is 10 years for him.” Karyn: “They live 10 to 12 years...” Laurana: “He is 30 something years old right now in bunny years. We got him when he was less than one and then in a couple day he was one and that’s 10 years in bunny years....You have to give them vegetables and things that are good for them.... We encourage exercise.... We’re probably going to go home and read.” Karyn: “We’ll probably go and get their brother, Jack. He is in Virginia. He goes to Mesabi for college. He’s a freshman in the welding program. I go get him most weekends. I am still working at the Voyageur North Outfitters with Tanner, (the new owner). I do all the gear. Tents, I make sure that they are waterproof. All the packs and sleeping bags and all that stuff, I make sure that it is in almost perfect shape.”
