How did you land in Cook County?  What journey led you here? 

Family memories of the area, of course! I came here camping, canoeing and fishing in the area with my parents, brother and my father’s Boy Scout Troop when I was little in the early 1960s, prior to the formation of the BWCAW. Grand Marais as a shining outpost of creature comforts distinguished itself in my young mind because it was the “last civilization stop”—meaning sold candy! --On our way to and from Atikokan, Ontario, driving my brother to a month-long canoe camp. I felt the Grand Marais gleam again as a young newspaper reporter in Duluth in the 1970s shortly after college, covering the BWCAW formation and the famous bonfires that Cook County protestors staged to protest it. Though I supported the creation of the BWCAW, I always admired the spirit of push back and sense of place. Still do. I returned to live here in 2015 to be with that spirit!

Will you share a bit about your non-profit, Minnesota Children's Press, with us? 

Indubitably (a favorite word I learned in 2nd grade on a family and friends car trip that included a worldly 6th grader) !

After a 30-year career as an award-winning newspaper writer and science curriculum designer, which included 20 years teaching children to write and publish  newspapers  at the Minnesota Institute for Talented Youth in St. Paul, I took that youth journalism model up to Cook County. In 2015, working with Boreal.org I won a 1-year Blandin Grant to create and pilot the online newspaper www.borealcorps.org. 

It was so successful that in 2019 I formed a 501(C)(3) charity based in Grand Marais, Minnesota Children’s Press, and formed a 15- person advisory board of youth development leaders around the state to create more creative literacy opportunities for rural children.

Our  first pandemic summer of 2020, we held an Outdoor Book Club that won honors at Minnesota Authors awards: “Ice Cream and Fish: A Children’s History of Grand Marais, Minnesota “ Www.icecreamandfish.org 

We may be rolling out a statewide children’s newspaper, so stay tuned, because it’s a great fit for the Minnesota Children’s Press mission, as expressed in our mission statement.

Minnesota Children’s Press exists to mentor the youngest rural and underserved learners, ages 5-15, in mastering and applying literacy skills needed to create, publish and sell original books, newspapers, zines, websites and more to fund local projects that improve screen-free child culture and unite the community through shared purpose, sense of history and pride of place.

Of all of the wonderful projects that you have worked on with children, what is one of your favorites? 

The book our children’s publishing club, Story Scouts (www.storyscouts.org)  will publish next month in March, “Go Away Rock Snot” embodies all the founding values I envisioned when I formed Minnesota Children’s Press: It is a collaboration of rural kids showcasing their intellectual ambition and impactful agency. About 50 children in Cook County, ages 5-12,  helped create it by working with water scientists from the Science Museum of Minnesota and Minnesota DNR to write, draw or proof read it in our Comma Club. The resulting book is fun, creative, engaging and highly readable  (there are 129 drawings!) and addresses an important topic: the threat of invasive species to Lake Superior watersheds and how to stop them. Other values it embodies are: it serves society by raising public awareness of an environmental threat and offers solutions; it models caring and social responsibility through environmental stewardship; the story and art were produced without screens and technology. Children talked, listened, asked questions, observed, hand drew, handwrote and dictated the story to me. With my design studio, I  scanned it all and did the computer design and layout needed for commercial printing in Minnesota — we do not print overseas because toxic inks and paper treatments are used, with no explanation or identification of health risks to young readers who often nibble a page or two of a book. 

Many people may not be aware of the fact that your mother was famous!  Will you tell us more about her? 

Gladly! I’m extremely proud of my beloved mother, the late Nancy Brataas of Rochester, Minn., who is best known as the first woman to be elected Minnesota State Senator, winning in special election in 1971 to fill a vacancy.

You can read more about her here at the website I made as she was dying in hospice in 2014. (www.nancybrataas.org)  

Mom was a lifelong politician with the Republican Party, once serving as the state Republican Party Chair. But it was the old party, often referred to as the “Arne Carlson” Republicans, after a much respected Minnesota Governor (whom I inherited as a friend, and still talk and email with weekly, thanks Mom!) . As an Independent Republican, she was fiscally conservative but socially open-minded, and committed to serving people and society, not herself.  

How open-minded? As I wrote on her memorial website, Mom’s;  “other remarkable gift was her ability to engage and mobilize people at a grassroots level. Long before the term "public engagement" was coined and began appearing on business cards as a corporate vice presidential calling, public engagement was Nancy's expertise. In one memorable effort in 1989, she mobilized 11,000 volunteers over 3 months to reach 1 million Minnesotans through a phone bank and data analysis system she designed and staffed to show that greater than 70% of Minnesotans favored a woman's right to choose abortion. The scope, pace, and importance of the outcome are pure Nancy.” Wish we still had her ferocious vision and drive now to help make the people’s will, vision and civic agency visible and actionable.

What is your favorite part about living and working in Cook County? 

Three things: 1. Natural beauty—the cold and the truly awesome natural beauty, especially the freshwater of Lake Superior that refuses to be tamed. I feel the “thin space” concept many who live here also feel and reference in their art. We live on and near the legacy of an awesome and violent geologic event, and the rocks have never forgotten it! The continent nearly broke in half here. Geotrauma; such spiritual power! 2. The people; so many of us who stay are bound by the same invisible forces—the power of place, the intimate social and cultural charm of recognizing, if not knowing, nearly everyone you see in a Grand Marais day downtown just going about your business. 3. The sense of original, creative possibility. People who live here tend to write their own life scripts.

Lastly, what is the best advice that you were ever given and how did it impact your life? 

A beloved graduate school advisor counseled me to “Say yes to everything that doesn’t hurt you or other people.” It’s true—the power and possibility of ‘yes’ take you phenomenal places!