Star Tribune
In Carlton County, a battle over green cemeteries spirals to affect the whole state
Vern Simula wanted the story of his life to end where it began. In the earth of Carlton County.
Simula, 90, was born in Cloquet and generations of his family rest in a local cemetery. But when he tried to make his own arrangements, the cemetery turned him away.
Simula wants a green burial. No embalming. No glossy coffins with satin pillows. No makeup on his cheeks to create the illusion of life. Just a grave, a shroud and a return to the earth.
“My body is a temple, with its [30] trillion cells,” said Simula, a longtime advocate for green burials. “Those cells are valuable to creation. I don’t want them pickled with formaldehyde and I don’t want them incinerated in a waste of fossil fuels.”
Not every cemetery welcomes a green burial, but Simula thought he had found a new resting place — a new green cemetery was set to open in Carlton County. But a battle between the cemetery and its uncomfortable neighbors spiraled into a ban that will stop any new green cemeteries from opening in Minnesota for the next two years.
Individual green burials will continue — the practice is central to many faiths. But two years is a long time to ask Vern Simula to wait for the state to study humanity’s oldest burial practice.
When his hometown cemetery turned him away, Simula made arrangements to be buried instead at Fort Snelling National Cemetery, which accommodates green burials, particularly for Jewish and Muslim veterans.
Then came plans for a new green cemetery right in Carlton County, in beautiful Blackhoof Township.
A 20-acre hayfield was going to be converted into the Loving Earth Memorial Gardens. There would be trees and wildflowers and walking paths. People would be buried in plain pine boxes or biodegradable wicker coffins or simple shrouds. There would be no marble headstones and manicured lawns and no concrete grave liners to stop the earth from sagging as the coffins decayed. Families would be invited to walk the trails and pick blueberries from the bushes they planted over their loved one’s grave.
That was what Matt Connell pictured when he bought the site and filed his paperwork with the county.
“It never crossed my mind that people would be angry over it,” said Connell, who lives in Crystal and teamed up with the New Jersey-based Steelmantown Cemetery Co. to start the business. “I was naïve. I thought people would really like this.”
But where Connell saw a peaceful park, some neighbors saw a nightmare.
Strangers’ bodies in unmarked graves they could see from their kitchen windows. What if coyotes dug someone up? What if the cemetery contaminated nearby wetlands or wells? Would it spread disease? Would it crowd the roads with traffic? Would it change the character of the entire community?
As residents circulated petitions and spoke out against the plan at public meetings, county officials drafted new cemetery regulations and declined to register the cemetery plat.
And then the Minnesota Legislature got involved.
The Minnesota Senate Health and Human Services Committee held a hearing on green burials in March and a bipartisan cross-section of state lawmakers did not like what they heard. A two-year moratorium on new green cemeteries was tucked into one of the end-of-session spending bills, with with orders for the Department of Health to investigate. The study will cost taxpayers an estimated $79,000.
The idea of a green burial can seem distasteful and even disrespectful in a country accustomed to a more sanitized view of death. It’s been generations since we washed the bodies of our dead ourselves and laid them out in the parlor with pennies on their eyelids.
“It’s very different than what we’re used to,” said Dr. Rebecca Wurtz, director of the Public Health Administration and Policy program at the University of Minnesota. “But it’s what was done for hundreds of thousands of years. … Certain religions feel very strongly that this is exactly the way someone should be buried.”
Dead bodies and green burials are not a threat to public health.
There are only a handful of infectious diseases that can be spread from dead bodies to the living, Wurtz said — cholera, anthrax, ebola. The rest of the 39 trillion microbes we each carry — viruses, bacteria, fungi — decay with us into the soil.
Allison Ronning, who lives in the nearby town of Kerrick, is an end-of-life doula — helping families through the process of death. A green burial would be her choice. If state lawmakers had given her a choice.
“I told my family, ‘This is the way I want to go,'” she said. A good death is a gift, she said, and we only get one shot at it.
Simula, who will be 92 by the time the study concludes, has gathered 300 signatures on a petition asking the Health Department to hurry up.
Connell says he has already turned grieving families away.
“Which kind of breaks my heart,” he said. “I hope that all of us, opponents and proponents alike, will be friends one day. And we’ll all have a laugh about it, and we’ll all be looking out at this beautiful arboretum cemetery and sharing in its beauty.”
Northern State 35, Concordia (St. Paul) 34: Wyatt Block’s 2-yard TD run and the PAT with 10 seconds remaining lifted the Wolves past the host Golden Bears. Block’s touchdown capped an 11-play, 72-yard drive by the Wolves, who trailed 24-7 in the second quarter. Jeff Isotalo-McGuire’s 34-yard field goal with three minutes, 32 seconds remaining gave the Golden Bears a 34-28 lead.
Winona State 31, Bemidji State 28: Cade Stenstrom rushed for two TDs and passed for 150 yards and a TD to help the host Warriors outlast the Beavers. Stenstrom’s 1-yard TD run and the PAT with two minutes, 10 seconds remaining gave the Warriors a 31-21 lead. The Beavers responded with an 11-play, 93-yard drive to pull within 31-28 with 18 seconds remaining but the Warriors recovered the ensuing kickoff.
Div. I-AA
North Dakota State 59, Murray State 6: The top-ranked Bison built a 42-3 lead in the first half and went on to defeat the host Racers in Murray, Ken. CharMar Brown ran for 97 yards and three TDs for the Bison.
South Dakota State 20, South Dakota 17 (OT): Amar Johnson’s 3-yard TD run in overtime lifted the host Jackrabbits to the victory. The Coyotes opened the OT with a 40-yard field goal.
Youngstown State 41, North Dakota 40 (OT): The host Penguins went first in OT and scored and then stopped North Dakota’s two-point conversion to hold on for the victory. The Penguins sent the game into OT on a 35-yard field goal with 12 seconds remaining.
Div. III
Augsburg 35, St. Olaf 34 (OT): The host Auggies stopped a two-point conversion in overtime to outlast the Oles. The Auggies went first in the overtime and scored on a 25-yard pass from Ryan Harvey to Tyrone Wilson. It was Harvey’s fifth TD pass — the fourth to Wilson. After the Auggies’ PAT, the Oles scored on a 25-yard TD pass from Theo Doran to Braden Menz. But the Oles’ pass attempt for the conversion failed.
After splitting their two-game West Coast trip to begin the season, the Wolves improved to 2-1 with a 112-101 win over Toronto in their home opener. It was a wire-to-wire win that featured some strong bursts of play from the Wolves and other times when their decision-making was suspect. But those moments when they were on, specifically the start of the game and most of the third quarter, were enough to carry them against a shorthanded Raptors team that was without RJ Barrett, Bruce Brown and Immanuel Quickley.
Julius Randle had 24 points while Anthony Edwards had 24 on 21 shot attempts. Donte DiVincenzo had 16 off the bench. Nickeil Alexander-Walker left the game in the fourth quarter and did not return, though he was in the bench area for the final minutes after going to the locker room briefly.
The Wolves’ starting lineup had its best stretch of basketball on the season after that unit started off sluggish in the first two games. Mike Conley, who was 3-for-16 to open the year, hit two early threes to set the tone, though Conley would finish 2-for-8.
Donte DiVincenzo replaced him at point guard halfway through the quarter and continued the hot shooting from the point guard slot with three threes of his own. The Wolves forced five Toronto turnovers and had a 32-18 lead after one.
Coach Chris Finch toyed with some different lineup combinations in the first half as he had Conley and DiVincenzo begin the quarter together while having Joe Ingles run the point later in the quarter. It led to an uneven second, and the Wolves led 56-44 at halftime.
But the Wolves played inspired coming out of the break. Jaden McDaniels, who didn’t take a shot in the first half, had nine points in the opening minutes of the third. Edwards hit a pair of threes as they pushed their lead to 22. The Wolves weren’t sharp closing the night, and the Raptors had the game within right inside of two minutes, but the Wolves had built enough of a cushion.
Rudy Gobert. Gobert had 15 points and 13 rebounds and was the beneficiary of some lobs from his teammates like Edwards, Conley, Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Joe Ingles. Gobert also finished with four blocks.
Gobert had two blocks on one possession in the fourth quarter that got the crowd off its feet and Gobert pounding his chest. Gobert blocked D.J. Carton and Jamison Battle.
Star Tribune
Trump denigrates Detroit while appealing for votes in a suburb of Michigan’s largest city
NOVI, Mich. — Donald Trump further denigrated Detroit while appealing for votes Saturday in a suburb of the largest city in swing state Michigan.
”I think Detroit and some of our areas makes us a developing nation,” the former president told supporters in Novi. He said people want him to say Detroit is ”great,” but he thinks it ”needs help.”
The Republican nominee for the White House had told an economic group in Detroit earlier this month that the ”whole country will end up being like Detroit” if Democrat Kamala Harris wins the presidency. That comment drew harsh criticism from Democrats who praised the city for its recent drop in crime and growing population.
Trump’s stop in Novi, after an event Friday night in Traverse City, is a sign of Michigan’s importance in the tight race. Harris is scheduled for a rally in Kalamazoo later Saturday with former first lady Michelle Obama on the first day that early in-person voting becomes available across Michigan. More than 1.4 million ballots have already been submitted, representing 20% of registered voters. Trump won the state in 2016, but Democrat Joe Biden carried it four years later.
Michigan is home to major car companies and the nation’s largest concentration of members of the United Auto Workers. It also has a significant Arab American population, and many have been frustrated by the Biden administration’s support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza after the attack by Hamas against Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
During his rally, Trump spotlighted local Muslim and Arab American leaders who joined him on stage. These voters ”could turn the election one way or the other,” Trump said, adding that he was banking on ”overwhelming support” from those voters in Michigan.
“When President Trump was president, it was peace,” said one of those leaders, Mayor Bill Bazzi of Dearborn Heights. ”We didn’t have any issues. There was no wars.”
While Trump is trying to capitalize on the community’s frustration with the Democratic administration, he has a history of policies hostile to this group, including a travel ban targeting Muslim countries while in office and a pledge to expand it to include refugees from Gaza if he wins on Nov. 5.
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