Thermal oxidizer to fire up today
The thermal oxidizer, the hopeful solution to smell and air quality from the ethanol plant, is scheduled to be turned on today.
The $1.5 million oxidizer was origonally ordered in January and arrived for installation in July.
Unfortunately the installation kept getting set backs, first because state inspectors required some pipe replacement.
When the original date for installation had to be delayed getting the company reps back to install it caused another delay.
The first part of this week the installation crew installed additional airlocks the oxidizer requires and on Wednesday had to fine tune the burners.
Plant manager, Rick Serie, expected the burner turned on between 2 and 3:00 p.m. today.
The oxidizer will eliminate emissions coming out of the stack, but in the winter, when the temperature is below 68 degrees, steam will still be visible.
GEP presents Sanders Family Christmas
The Green Earth Players open their production of "Sanders Family Christmas" this Friday.
The play is a sequel to an earlier Green Earth production, "Smoke on the Mountain", performed by the group several years ago.
The musical comedy follows the Sanders family around the south in the ‘30s and ‘40s as they go from church to church singing a mix of familiar tunes as well as some unfamiliar holiday tunes.
Paula Gerrig, Slayton, is the first time director for the play, and Sue Sandbulte is the musical director.
Members of the cast include Shane Amborn, Bruce Baartman, Fran Bohlke, Traci Carlson, Terri Ebert, James Harsma, Cheryl Nath, Phil Voigt and Louella Voigt.
Chamber teams up with Wrestling Club for fund-raiser
The Luverne Chamber of Commerce, along with the Blue Mound Wrestling Club are co-sponsoring the sale of a Luverne Coupon book.
With many of the coupon books sold by local groups, a big chunk of the money goes to a for-profit business that puts the books together and gets a local group to sell them.
However, with this book the Chamber and Wrestling Club are doing the entire project, so all the money will stay local.
The book will contain $850 worth of coupons and will cost $20.
The book sales will be conducted by members of the wrestling club as well as some local businesses.
The sales campaign will run from Monday, Nov. 18 through Thursday, Dec. 14.
The late Katherine Graham comments on our Russell Wiggins
Below is part of an e-mail I received from Rick Jauert.
Jauert is currently reading a recently released book from the late Katherine Graham. A comment she made about Rock County Hall of Famer, Russell Wiggins, former editor of the Washington Post, where she was publisher is included.
I wanted to share with you an excerpt from Katherine Graham's new book, "Katherine Graham's Washington ('A huge, rich gathering of articles, memoirs, humor, and history, chosen by Mrs. Graham, that brings to life her beloved city'). It is a wonderful book. I'm 300 pages into it with another 600 to go. I thought this item might make a good little anecdote for your column since it highlights still another claim to fame for Luverne's Russ Wiggins. "Washington was still a segregated city, though with pockets of integration (notably the streetcars), and racism was an ugly aspect of the city. It was under Russ Wiggin's editorship, in the
late 1940s, that the (Washington) Post published the first picture of a black bride. Russ had especially selected two people
with Ph.D.s from Howard (the Black University in DC) to break that particular barrier, hoping to keep the protests to a minimum, and he personally took all the protest calls that came through the switchboard."
Publisher Roger Tollefson can be contacted by e-mail at tolly@star-herald.com