What’s New in Ely

Patterns and fabric are spread out at Ely Folk School as volunteers work on the Mittens for Ukraine project. In Case You Haven’t Heard...

There is always lots going on in Ely, so if you want the latest happenings read the local newspapers and Shopper, check out posters in business windows, or visit such Facebook pages as What’s Up Ely and The Real What’s Up Ely.

If you rent out your cabin, town apartment, or a vacation property, check page 46 for help on making certain you are following the legal requirements, but also to ensure your guests have a great time and will want to come back to Ely. It’s easy! e e e

War zone winters create hardships for people who already may be in dire straits, having lost homes and loved ones to the conflict and lacking basic utilities like heat and electricity. Fleece fabric and beaver hide scraps are byproducts of Wintergreen Northern Wear’s manufacturing and Ely Folk School’s hat-making classes, and no one at these enterprises likes to be wasteful. Two seemingly unrelated problems were creatively combined by a few Ely folks who have developed the Ukrainian Mitten Project.

Wintergreen Northern Wear donated big bags of fleece scraps, too small for making parkas but just right for little mittens. The beaver fur will be used to create thumbless mitts for the smallest hands and also for trim. Ozzie Reif, a whiz with a sewing machine, provided patterns and instruction. Ely Folk School instructors added more sewing expertise, and the school was soon the center for the project, providing space, organizing materials, reaching out to volunteers, managing

donations and finances, and teaching a few people to sew along the way.

Many people are now involved. A group of 11 women held a sewing afternoon at the Presbyterian Church and finished 50 pairs of mittens. They had blue fleece and added yellow ribbon to reflect the colors of the Ukrainian flag. Some Heart of the Woods quilters gathered at the Senior Center and sewed more mittens, plus donated fabric. A quilter from Duluth learned of the project and is contacting others in her area who may be willing to help. Quilters are accustomed to sewing for charity, creating quilts for many different groups from cancer patients to foster kids to veterans.

Of course, it’s one thing to feel compassion for those in need and quite another thing to find an effective means of providing practical help. Making mittens is relatively easy compared to delivering large packages to a war-torn country and ensuring the contents reach children with cold hands. Ely health care practitioner and friend of the project organizers, Tatiana Riobokin, has relatives in Ukraine who have assured the project that they can handle that end of the transaction. Amazing! Tatiana has created little cards to put in the mittens that express in Ukrainian well wishes of all involved.

The project has a goal of providing 500 pairs of mittens this winter. Close to 300 were ready to ship as of this writing. Anyone interested in helping can simply show up at the Ely Folk School Thursday mornings at 10 am or call Program Director Lucy at 2350138 to pick up materials to take home and sew.

The sewing is fairly simple, but for those who don’t care to wield a needle there are other jobs—packaging,

shipping, finding and organizing donations. Contributions of fleece fabric and money for shipping are also welcome. (Wintergreen doesn’t generate enough scraps for so many mittens.) There is also a concern to ensure no Ely children go without mittens this winter, so a volunteer could identify and fill that need.

Hopefully peace will come to Ukraine before next winter, but there will always be fabric scraps and cold toes and fingers, so who knows where this project will end up?! e e e

Ely Community Health Center (ECHC) has a new home. The former Scott Anderson dental office now provides more spacious rooms for the free clinic and additional appointment time for the dental services ECHC offers. They were able to purchase this convenient downtown location through a grant from the MN Dep’t of Health. For exercise classes, blood pressure checks, and other ECHC programs, see the calendar on page 64. e e e

It has been a very long time since Ely has seen a film festival in town, and those of the past were mostly one-time events. An exciting new venture is the End of the Road Film Festival, which aspires to put Ely on the movie connoisseurs’ map, a northern Minnesota version of such festivals as Sundance and Banff. For this year, the festival will coincide with the last weekend of Winter Festival, Thursday through Sunday, Feb. 9-12. Ely Historic State Theater is hosting the project with a citizen’s committee choosing which films to show. The effort is being led by Jacob White, a filmmaker and owner of White Pine Productions.

Inspired by the quality and creativity of Minnesota filmmakers and storytellers that he was seeing at film festivals in the region, Jacob imagined adding such an event to Ely’s slower winter season. Focused on providing an alternative to the Hollywood stories that now inundate our movie choices, Jacob seeks to bring stories more representative of small town, rural, northern lives like those we live here at the End of the Road.

Not satisfied with simply letting a movie casually wash over the movie-goers as entertainment, the festival will feature Q&A sessions following films at which the filmmaker is present. Others involved in the films, like actors and, for documentaries, subjects or experts on the topic, may also come to Ely to be part of these conversations. Participants can learn about filmmakers’ intentions in creating the film, the production process, and the plethora of choices they have to make around such tiny details as the paint color of the set, what props to have in the background, and when the music volume changes. Audience members can also explore the film’s topic or themes. Necessarily brief so that the audience for the next film can enter the theater, these sessions can continue around drinks in the theater lobby or at a restaurant down the street. Filmmakers can benefit from these interactions too, discovering how movie-goers respond to production choices, what part of the story had the greatest impact, and generating ideas for future films.

Each day of the festival will feature groups of films organized around such genres as Documentary, Family, and Comedy. Local and regional films made by producers who live in Minnesota will be a large part of the mix, but there will be others as well. Short films will be shown in blocks of 60-90 minutes with each block including related topics or styles of filmmaking.

By last August, applications from filmmakers were coming in at an impressive rate for a first-time festival, but final choices won’t be made until mid-December. Titles and information about each film plus the schedule will be at ElyStateTheater.org/ERFF.

The Film Festival still needs more volunteers to help this year and also plan ahead for the future. They are looking for people to host the guest filmmakers in their homes and be their guide to all things Ely. It’s a great opportunity to be involved and get discounted admission. To offer your help contact event organizers at festival@elystatetheater.org.