Students at Delano High School will recreate the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the 17th century.
Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible,” performed by local students, premieres Friday, Nov. 10, at The Delano Performing Arts Center and is scheduled to run for five performances.
The play, a dramatized and partially fictionalized story of the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692-93, was first performed at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York Jan. 22, 1953.

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A Liberian-born man and a church in Delano have teamed up together to raise money to dig wells and pay for children in his native country to get an education.
James Woiwar, a volunteer with Teamwork Africa, and St. Paul’s United Church of Christ in Delano are working together to build wells and support an orphanage in Bong County, Liberia. The church held a fundraiser last week to pay for the projects.
The church, which built one well last year in the country, wants to build more this year so more people in the country can get access to clean water. They also want to help pay for children, many of whom have suffered abuse, at an orphanage to get food, shelter, and an education.

See the full story in this week’s newspaper.

By Robert Hopwood
Delano Herald Journal Editor

Nothing says winter like snow.
When I drove Up North this past weekend, snow flurries started falling in Bemidji, and by the time I got to Baudette, the pine boughs were weighed down with snow, and the ground was a brilliant white.
The snow followed me back down Highway 10 to Delano, where a fresh layer covered corn fields that were green just a few weeks ago in a layer of white.
Despite what the calendar says, winter has returned. It always beats that yearly timekeeper by a few weeks.
When I walked out of the Delano Herald Journal’s offices Monday night, I stopped for a brief moment on the patio of the Jerome. The snow was quietly falling, creating a magical scene across the city.
It doesn’t matter the season; nature is almost always exquisitely beautiful.
Take snow. Each flake is a delicate, six-pointed ice crystal, but together, billions of them will turn any landscape into a wonderland. And few things are more sublime, to me, than animal tracks across a field of freshly fallen, undisturbed snow.
Bobbie L. Dahlke, the communications coordinator for Delano Public Schools, told me Monday that she loves everything about winter. She has no plans to move.
That’s good because the North Star State knows how to do winter. It is the third or fourth coldest state in the country, beaten only by Alaska, North Dakota, and sometimes Maine, depending on the list and its methodology.
“I love to hear the crunching of the snow when I go for walks late at night,” Dahlke said. “I like to play in the snow with my dog and my daughter, and I like to go sledding and skiing, and snowshoeing, and snowmobiling, and all the fun things that we can’t do in the summer [but] we can do in the winter.”
My favorite things about winter are how it turns the landscape into a winter wonderland, the crisp air, the magical feeling of watching the snow fall in the city at night, enjoying a cup of hot chocolate, or reading a good book on a cold day by the fireplace, watching the snow fall, and feeding songbirds.
Deputy City Clerk Bryce Borland, who hails from Florida, the country’s hottest state as measured by average temperature, said he loves seeing the seasons change in Minnesota, which he didn’t experience in his home state.
“Snow on its own is just something that every year is still kinda magical for me, and the transition to that coinciding with the holiday season,” he said. “I feel like especially the front half is really fun and then makes up for the back half when you get a little tired of it.”
Rep. Joe McDonald, R-Delano, agrees with Borland about the first half of the season. He said he likes winter in December and January.
“I like a beautiful snowfall, a snowstorm on an evening where you’re locked in, so you pop the bottle of wine, put on a good movie,” he said. “I don’t like the frigid cold, obviously, and the wind. But there’s a lot of things to like about the winter.”
“It’s beautiful as far as the scenery, photographically, of a beautiful snowfall,” the master photographer said. “It’s kinda magical, having the snow just fall to the earth and fill up the streets and the yards.”
And Christine Cole said she likes how a fresh, fluffy snowfall can make everything look clean again.
“If you can be home and in a nice warm cozy house watching the snow fall, that’s nice, as long as you don’t have to go shovel it or go out in it,” the Watertown resident said.