NewsSouth

In a picture on the bulletin board behind Dan Gjelten’s desk, a man and woman stand in the Pacific surf, wearing race T-shirts and finisher’s medals for the Nike Hood to Coast Relay.

The couple is Gjelten and Lisa Burke, taken a year after their plans to participate in the 197-mile relay were scrapped by a head-on car crash, sending them home with morphine pumps instead of medals.

“This is where we wanted to be in 2006,” Gjelten said, pointing to the picture. “It just took us a year to get there.”

Continue reading "Hood to Coast Relay turns into race for recovery" »

Posted by at 10:08 AM | Permalink

On a recent sunny Saturday morning in February, single digit temperatures didn’t stop runners from crowding into a tiny storefront in a quiet residential neighborhood in St. Paul.

The groups of athletes periodically straggled in and out, some finishing a run, others just on the search for gear.

“We did 18 miles this morning,” said a man sipping water on a bench, his fleece hat frosted with perspiration from his workout. “This is a Boston [marathon] group.”

Continue reading "A run for their money" »

Posted by at 08:45 PM | Permalink

When my great-grandpa came from Sweden to work in the Iowa iron mines in 1916, it only cost him a couple cents to write home.

Ninety-two years later it costs 90 cents to send a letter to Sweden, something that is becoming increasingly rare as letter writing is replaced by e-mail. As Americans lose contact with their cultural heritage I try to keep an element of my “Swedishness” alive by sending frequent letters to friends and relatives in Scandinavia.

“With ‘Swedishness’… we mean Swedish thought, Swedish will, Swedish dreams, which we have brought with us as our essential wealth. We mean the planting in American soil of the seed we have not only brought with us, but which we are,” wrote David Nyvall, a Swedish immigrant to Minneapolis in his 1921 pamphlet “Svenskhetens bevarande," published the same year my great-grandpa brought his family to the United States.

Continue reading "Swedish heritage comes to life in letters" »

Posted by at 07:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)