Star Tribune
What would Goodhue County do? Pick up trash along the Mississippi River. And so can you.
Our story begins with one citizen and 92 photos of garbage.
Bottles. Cans. Food wrappers. Discarded tires. Soggy plastic bags. Used diapers.
Once the snow melts, there’s nothing to block Minnesota’s view of all the junk that piled up over the winter. One Goodhue County resident, good and mad about the drifts of garbage along the Mississippi River, headed to a township meeting a few years ago with photo proof and a plea. Could the responsible jurisdiction please clean up the mess?
But the mess covered a tangle of jurisdictions. There was garbage on township land, on county land, on state land. There was litter strewn across the city of Red Wing’s waterfront and onto the property of the nearby nuclear power plant and into the sovereign territory of the Prairie Island Indian Community.
Watching the trash talk that day was Goodhue County Commissioner Linda Flanders.
“There were so many jurisdictions that I realized, we’re never going to get anywhere,” she said. “Everyone was throwing up their hands. ‘I could do this, but it’s not going to solve the problem.’ ‘I could do that, but it’s not going to solve the problem.'”
If no community could solve the problem alone, maybe they could work on it together.
The Mississippi River has been called one of America’s most endangered rivers; choked by garbage, urban pollution, agricultural runoff, mercury, bacteria, nitrogen, PFAS and microplastics. A problem so huge, it feels like someone else’s problem.
Goodhue County, it turns out, is home to problem solvers.
At Prairie Island, the story begins with one woman, one very large dog and a bright ribbon dress.
Nicky Buck, a traditional ecological Dakota knowledge-keeper, had watched with dismay as visitors came down from the Twin Cities to fish in Sturgeon Lake by the river. They took their fish home, but they left their garbage behind — in her home.
“I was getting upset, because I had just pulled a tire out [of the river] near Maiden Rock,” she said. Sifting through the mess, she found discarded bills with names and addresses. She was tempted, she told her uncle, to drive north and return that tire to sender. Her uncle had a better idea.
“He said, ‘My girl, nobody wants to learn from anybody who’s angry,'” she said. “‘So you just need to be the example you wish to see.'”
She put on bright clothes and her ribbon skirt and started collecting trash by the roadside, accompanied by her eye-catching Great Dane.
“I started picking up trash in town,” she said. “I would do it when school busses went by, because I know children are pretty influential in their families.”
On a warm summer day in 2021, 30 volunteers set out to clean up the mess someone else had made. They called the event Wakpa Awayankapi, from the Dakota term for those who watch over and protect the river. They collected 119 pounds of trash in one day.
The next year, Flanders launched the Mighty Mississippi Cleanup Challenge, teaming up with Prairie Island and the city of Red Wing. There were cleanup events, there were signs in multiple languages there was a very persuasive pollution video, narrated by a credible Morgan Freeman impersonator.
The cleanup went so well, Flanders extended the challenge to neighboring counties in 2023. To the county that collected the most trash would go the bragging rights.
Last year, bragging rights went to Dakota County, where 178 volunteers spent 334 hours picking up 2,475.5 pounds of trash at seven different events. But the real winner was the river. And Goodhue County, which just won an award from the National Association of Counties for the initiative.
This year’s Mighty Mississippi Cleanup Challenge runs from April 15 to May 15. Organizers are hoping many more counties join in and add their weirdest finds to the annual Wall of Shame. Car mufflers. Bicycles. Furniture. Fluffy pink house insulation. None of these things belong in the river. And none of them are in the river. Not anymore.
Red Wing City Council Member Becky Norton, a science teacher, sees a lesson in the litter. She sees the tragedy of the commons. A public resource — a commons — being destroyed by the people who share it. Fishermen who toss away garbage that poisons the fish. Neighbors who won’t pick up the trash at their feet, because it’s not their trash.
“That’s the thing about the river cleanup,” Norton said. “It is a group of people who recognize that we all live here, we all take out of this commons. When can we take a moment to put it back?”
If you’re up to the challenge, visit: goodhuecountymn.gov/1485/Mighty-Mississippi-Cleanup
The lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church in Detroit Lakes said that a missionary was killed in an act of violence Friday in Angola, Africa.
Beau Shroyer moved there in 2021 with his wife, Jackie, and five children. They were working with the missionary organization SIM USA, founded in 1893 in Charlotte, N.C. SIM USA president Randy Fairman shared in a message to the Lakes Area Vineyard congregation that the Shroyers were one of the first families to move to Angola after pandemic lockdowns eased.
Fairman said many details are still unknown about Shroyer’s death. He said he got a call Friday “informing me that Beau Shroyer was killed while serving Jesus in Angola and is now with his Savior.”
“It is my belief that from his vantage point, he can see how his family will be cared for, and it is not hard for him to trust our good Father,” Fairman wrote. “From our perspective and the perspective of Jackie and the kids, we now must trust Jesus in a season that we never imagined. We must trust Him without requiring Him to give us an understanding of why He allowed this. It is difficult and stretches our faith.”
Troy Easton, lead pastor of Lakes Area Vineyard Church, said in a message to congregants that “Moments like these create so many unanswerable questions for us and it adds to the pain to know that we may never understand why our Father has allowed something like this to happen.”
“As more details became available regarding what’s next for the family, what arrangements are being made to celebrate and honor Beau’s life, and practical ways you can love and serve them, we will be certain to share them with you.
Along with his wife, Shroyer, 44, a former Detroit Lakes police officer and real estate agent, leaves behind children Bella, Avery, Oakley, Iva and Eden.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
This year, its jump-scares and lore landed it on Forbes’ list of “7 of the World’s Scariest Haunted Houses” alongside a 160-room mansion in California filled with “occult oddities,” a house built on an old cemetery near Chicago, and a haunted theme park in New Zealand built on the grounds of an old psychiatric hospital. The Haunted Ship, as the Irvin is known in October, is open just one more night — from 6:30 to 10 p.m. on Halloween.
“But this isn’t just a manufactured scare factory,” according to Forbes’ scare scouts, who reportedly visited the ship and had the VIP experience — which includes controlling the dialogue of a disembodied skull as visitors stream past. “In 1964, a sailor died on the ship during a boiler room accident, prompting the Duluth Paranormal Society to investigate the ship. Employees have reported seeing unexplained shadows, hearing phantom footsteps, and had objects thrown at them while doing maintenance work.”
The pilot house of the William A. Irvin is covered in cobwebs during October, a stop on the VIP tour of the seasonal Haunted Ship. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
The tour twists through the ship’s nooks, crannies and areas specific to its life on the Great Lakes — like a few gruesome dining areas where bloodied limbs are scattered about. There are creepy clowns and Victorian-era beings who stare wordlessly. A sink runs with bloody-colored water and a skeleton sits in a muddied bathtub surrounded by its innards.
The VIP experience offers a chance to roam through the ship’s living quarters alongside an ethereal character in the role of Irvin’s second wife. She sashays through the space with tales from the past, then allows you entry into private spaces where a saw blade rests in a sink and a body meant for the morgue vibrates with electrical waves on a bed. It offers a chance to dip into the pilot house, where wheels and gears are draped in cobwebs, offset in the opposite direction by a fresh perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge.
The view from the Haunted Ship offers a new perspective on the Aerial Lift Bridge. (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
There are countless dark corners for jump scares, strobe lights and tight spaces with hidden exits. There is a place designed to trigger claustrophobia. And there are mind-bending questions: Is that a person in that chair or isn’t it? Who is making that growling-moaning sound? What is that smell?
The final question is answered at the exit of the ship, where there is a running tally of how many people haven’t been able to finish the tour (90 as of Friday night) and how many have wet their pants (35).
How many people have opted out of the Haunted Ship? (Jana Hollingsworth / The Minnesota Star Tribune)
Police said they will be releasing details Monday about the shooting death of a 23-year-old man last week in New Hope.
Carnell Mark Johnson Jr., of Bloomington, was shot in the chest Thursday in the 7300 block of Bass Lake Road and died that same day at North Memorial Health Hospital, the Hennepin County Medical Examiner’s Office said.
A police official said more information will be released about the shooting later Monday. No arrests have been announced.
