Legalectric

Here it is, hot off the press, Special Prosecutor Jack Smith took this to a NEW Grand Jury, and here it is. The differences from the initial one are clarifications that he was acting as a “candidate,” and that his actions were not “official” acts:

No CapX 2020 and the Prehn Family have filed a Petition to Intervene in the “Mankato-Mississippi” transmission line project, a/k/a as the Wilmarth-North Rochester-Tremval line:

This is a big double-circuited 345kV transmission line proposed mostly for new/greenfield right of way. We need this WHY?

Next on the schedule is release of the Environmental Impact Statement scoping document on October 3, 2024. The deadline for Intervention will be January 3, 2025, and the DEIS should be released by March 3, 2025.

For more information:

• Camping and client meeting! August 21st, 2024

• Transmission scoping meeting yesterday July 9th, 2024

• FYI, the Wilmarth – Mississippi Application! July 1st, 2024

• Xmsn Scoping Meetings July 8-10 June 27th, 2024

• Tomorrow at the PUC May 28th, 2024

• Comment period on Mankato-Mississippi xmsn April 8th, 2024

• Another Xcel transmission application filed! April 2nd, 2024

The Itasca Economic Development Corporation is hosting a “Just Transition Task Force” to look at how the community will deal with the energy transition and loss of the Boswell Cohasset coal plant.

September:

October:

The Task Force’s charge? From their site:

Just Transition Grant Fund

$150,000 was awarded to convene a year-long just transition process for Itasca County, and for the greater northern Minnesota region. The Just Transition Grant Fund supports work to develop an action plan to ensure a thriving economy, supported by an informed community, as we work through our energy transition. The action plan will include a community-driven just transition vision and series of recommended pathways or actions that will allow the region to collaboratively identify and pursue federal funding and other resources in alignment with its vision.

And here’s what they regard as resources, again from their page:

• BRECC Notes
• Community Economic Development Focus on Energy Communities DOHHS
• Community Energy Transition Final Report and Recommendations
• Energy Transition Advisory Committee (ETAC) Plan
• Minnesota’s Power Plant Communities: An Uncertain Future
• Pennsylvania Playbook: Decommissioning and Redevelopment Playbook for the Sunbury Plant
• Public Utilities Commission 2024-2028 One-Pager Strategic Plan
• Public Utilities Commission 2024-2028 Full Strategic Plan
• McKinsey & Co., Rural Rising Economic Development Strategies for America’s Heartland
• Meeting Notes

This one is interesting, and I’m forwarding on to City of Red Wing folks:

Community Energy Transition Final Report and Recommendation

Two of these do concern me, the BRECC Notes because the focus is on a Bill Gates proposal for a nuclear plant in Kemmerer, Wyoming!!! Please, just no… why is this even included??

The second concerning thing is that the Meeting Notes are only from February 26, 2024, and nothing after. What have they been looking at, considering, since then?

Supposedly there’s a draft report, and that’s to be the topic of upcoming “Town Hall” meetings, per KAXE, which notes:

But I looked and looked, and I cannot find this “draft strategic action plan, “and if it’s not public, how can we review it before the town halls and be able to comment knowledegeably?!?! So I sent a request to the IEDC folks on this team, and hope to get it soon, and then I’ll post.

FULL DISCLOSURE: The IEDC deserves close scrutiny due to the decision by its Board to support the Excelsior Energy Mesaba Project and its strident advocacy of the Mesaba Project, including the spread of misinformation and disinformation about coal gasification and the project specifically. It brought the Chair of the Public Utilities Commission into the fray in blatant and bold ex parte contact, despite the clear warning I gave to the Commission’s Asst. A.G. prior to that meeting (I could not believe her lack of concern, saying they’re well aware of the ex parte rules). I also could not believe that Chair Koppendrayer actually showed up … so I had to raise the issue of verboten ex parte contact at the meeting, and Chair Koppendrayer agreed, he confirmed “Ms. Overland has a point,” that it was a valid concern, and that he thought he should not be present — and he got up and left the room!! That was absolutely the right thing to do. Did IEDC think no one would notice, that no one would challenge ex parte contact? Unreal.

• IEDC gets carried away February 15th, 2007
• IEDC on Mesaba Coal Gasification November 1st, 2006

This Just Transition Task Force looks like a better way to operate, though there’s some transparency missing in action. Let’s get those meeting minutes published on the Just Transition page, and let’s get that draft Strategic Action Plan out in the open!

Meanwhile, again, here are the planned meetings:

We said goodbye to our Sadie yesterday, and I’m loading all my photos of her for Alan, and, well, 3 hours remaining to fill up the thumb drive. So I’m going through them… sigh… 14 years is a long time together.

That’s our Little Sadie above, her first winter with us, December 2010, near her birthday. You can see the greyhound in her, but the shih tzu not so much:

I met her at Dog Days of Stockholm, August 14, 2010, when I’d volunteered at the shelter to take a dog down and show her off. I was initially offered a little poof-dog, and no way. I traded that one for Sadie. She did her magic with me, riding down to Stockholm with her chin on my shoulder the whole way — such a sweetie. Much later, I learned that she was after the crumbs on my shirt… oh well. I did show her off, talked her up, but no luck. I’d learned a little of her story, she’d been found as a stray in March, 2010, and had been in the shelter since. Only nine months old and 6 months of that in the shelter during her most crucial developmental time. She needed a home STAT, and I couldn’t resist, even though she was not a German Shepherd.

Sadie came home with me for the weekend to test her out with Kady, and it went OK, though she was overwhelmed I think (horrible photo, old camera). And she was so small, particularly compared to our sheps, but she as still a baby, and became knows as our “medium pup.”

We agreed she was a good fit and Alan signed on the bottom line, wrote a check, and she was ours. Little did we know what life with a nine month old puppy was like.

THIS was the essence of Sadie — here she is “playing tennis” with Kady:

Kady was not too impressed, note the eye roll:

Sadie was always on the move until around 3 years old. She chewed everything in sight, including 2 pairs of Alan’s Rayban glasses, a phone, hair brushes, shoes, a library book, and the little bitch counter-surfed a holiday dessert to the floor, a GINGER CHEEZECAKE! Ate almost all of it, and did not get sick. That theft was serious…

And she chewed on and unrolled hundreds of rolls of toilet paper, no matter how they were loaded:

All the sheps were older when we adoped them. Kady was probably 7, and she and Sadie basically got along, but Sadie was for sure a bit too much for her. I don’t think there were any bloody spats, but for sure a few snarls and snarks. Then we adopted Summer, our “hospice” dog, who at 12 was rescued from a Gary, IN shelter. We drove to Wisconsin and loaded her up, this time, it was Sadie who was not too impressed and she may have wanted us to take Summer back. That tongue says it all:

And yet Sadie was very afraid of Steiner, they were never close:

After Summer and Kady died in 2014, we got the pop up camper, and Sadie LOVED camping. Though she could have jumped right through the rear screen, she was content inside, learned to be less reactive, and understood that all those dogs being walked on the site loop belonged there:

The easiest way to get her joyfully bouncing around was to ask her “Do you want to go CAMPING?!?!”

That first year, we went out west to the Black Hills and Hell Creek State Park on the Ft. Peck reservoir, and back through Ft. Stevens State Park in North Dakota and Scenic State Park in northern Minnesota.

In 2017, we went on a long trip along the UP and whew, did it rain:, but as long as she was headed somewhere in the van, she was happy:

Sadie enjoyed camp-hosting in the hybrid “office” at Myre-Big Island, despite the heavy rain:

We spent a lot of time at Myre-Big Island through the years when I was representing Association of Freeborn County Landowners, which I think she found rather boring:

We also picnicked often at Frontenac, staring at Wisconsin’s West Bank:

Spring 2022 we went out west, to Devil’s Tower and Craters of the Moon and places in between:

This spring, before camp hosting, I went to New Mexico, and she was as utterly freaked out by the 60 mph winds as I was. Here in the calm before the storm:

We bailed and caught our breath in hotel in Wichita!

Sadie, Alan, and I camp-hosted through the entire month May this year, yes all month, and she enjoyed being outdoors so much, and of course, she was also so happy to be snoozing in the tent. Here she is supervising clean-up after an intense storm that took out our screen tent, one of many storms that month:

Though we were camp-hosting at Frontenac, she spent some of that time back and forth to Red Wing with Alan.

Did I mention that Sadie loved our new kitties? Oh, right, that’s probably because she didn’t, really. Election day 2016, neighbors across the street posted cats to give away, and I grabbed the cat carrier and grabbed two cats, Maggie and Thor. They each fit in my hand, that small. They were in a cage or a week to adjust, and then freedom. Turned out that the torty female loved Sadie, and was her emotional support animal when it was storming. Thor and Sadie had little to do with each other until the last month or so, when I think Thor sensed Sadie was fading, and he spent a lot of time snuggled with her.

Similarly, when Kady was fading with doggy dementia, though she and Sadie were not close, Sadie comforted Kady, as if she knew.

When Alan was hospitalized with leukemia, she missed him as much as he missed her, so I organized a picnic outside the door, and they both were so happy to see each other. This is my all time favorite photo of her — just look at her smile:

Some time after that, she started going downhill. Her driver-rear knee went out, it was twisting as she walked, and she had trouble on the stairs. She also started peeing randomly, without any notice, no bark, nothing. At that point, she had started on pee pills, and her dosage was increased, but we were often up sometime between 2-4 a.m. to take her out. She still enjoyed going for rides, picnics, and we didn’t camp much due to leukemia, just once in July 2023. She mostly laid around then, which was perfect because Alan was still in the middle of treatment.

Then in June, we went around the south side of Lake Superior to Ontario. She was pretty much stuffed into a packed car, and went along for the ride. She spent most of the time in the tent, snoozing.

The last few months, maybe 6 months, both knees were giving out, her Meloxicam dose was increased, but that’s just blocking pain, there was nothing we could really do. She was coughing now and then and panting all the time, congestive heart failure. She’d also slowed down eating, so we were bribing her with special treats, real lamb hearts, and I even baked her a turkey last week. Then, this last week, she pretty much stopped eating and was emitting with no notice, out of control and really gross, and just laying around, no spark at all. Alan noted later that he thought she’d looked at him eye to eye and told him “I’m done.”

We both spent all day yesterday sitting with her as we, waited for word from the vet, and then time to go in — what a long, painful wait that was. Now we’re left with memories of her, and so many photos to remind us of those 14 years we were all together. 3.3gb — so many photos that I had to let it run all night! And after that another 4 hours copying photos of her from all the travel files. AAACK! Fond memories for those two days of consolidating.

We’re missing our doggy. Fourteen years and one week she was with us, and every time we do anything at all, we’re looking for her. All these photos are comforting, remembering what a good long time we did have with her, that she went everywhere with us, almost, except airplanes and trains. She was a high mileage grrrrrrrl, with us for 14 years and one week. Sadie was the best grrrrrrrrrrrl.

Xcel’s Mankato-Mississippi transmission line, a/k/a Wilmarth-North Rochester-Tremval, is moving forward, so it was time for planning and strategizing and yes, we’re MOVING FORWARD too!

I’m working with the Prehn Family, they’ve joined NoCapX 2020 in commenting on this project. They live smack dab in the middle of the underground natural gas storage dome south of Hwy 60 and along/under Hwy 13, and have substantive, real, concerns about the potential for this project to traverse the gas dome.

Xcel did not even mention the natural gas dome in its application, applied for April 2, 2024, and didn’t bother to chat with CenterPoint until May 2 — how can that be?

Having a meeting with the Prehns is a good excuse for camping at Sakatah Lake State Park — the dome extends under Hwy 60 and encroaches on the park – there’s a monitoring station on park land north of Hwy 60! It’s a good opportunity to test out my solo camping set-up, with a smaller tent, smaller than the Wawona 6 and much easier to set up and tear down. PLUS the Prius isn’t stuffed to the gills.

Sakatah is an OK park, the sites are GREAT, but it’s so noisy, between the trucks and their jake brakes coming “down the mountain,” and airplanes headed to MSP. Only one startling owl catch, likely a screaming chipmunk. Anyway, will do a State Park review for my camper group.

++++++++++++++

We’ve been working on this project. Here’s the map we put together a couple months ago through hours of reconnaissance (for the record, somehow we missed some transmission that goes from east to west from Hwy 13 north of the CenterPoint pumping station heading west to Co. Rd. 73, so I need to update the map):

We had a good couple of hours to hash things over and get ready to dive in.

Speaking of hash, I had a new camp cooking experience, cooking over an apple wood fire. It’s been decades, and back then it was hot dogs/hamburgers at Camp Tonadoona or church retreats — YUCK! This was a good first attempt with salmon rubbed with pepper/lime, and rice and veggies too. Yeah, I’m bragging:

Stay tuned and we’ll have more on this transmission project. Until then, here’s a cicada fresh into the world: