Image: Steve Lunde

“I think that I shall never see / A poem lovely as a tree.” – Joyce Kilmer, 1913

ST. CHARLES, Minn. – A Winona driver pulled into the St. Charles Kwik Trip with no taillights, this at 12:55 a.m. It got the attention of a passing deputy right away. This was not good news for Alex Manuel Cruz Rodriguez, 20. He failed sobriety testing. His blood showed as 0.08% alcohol — the legal threshold for impairment. He was arrested.

DAKOTA, Minn. – After field sobriety tests outside his car and a blood-alcohol breath tests, deputies arrested Joshua Jeffrey Steinfeldt, 50, of Dakota, for drunken driving. They said they had spotted him weaving over fog lines and center lines on four-lane Highway 61. The sobriety tests didn’t go well, and he blew 0.14% into a breath-check device as his blood-alcohol level. Anything exceeding 0.08% stands up in court as driving under the influence. The stop was about 8:25 p.m.

WINONA, Minn. – A religious group showed up at Levee Park to oppose a pirate circus show. Callers notified police, who showed up to assess what was happening. Police advised the protesters about the complaints, but determined that the group’s objections were protected as First Amendment free speech. There were no arrests.

STOCKTON, Minn. – A Lewiston driver was stopped for speeding on Stockton Hill and cited for drunken driving – plus speeding. Maria Elizabeth Baer, 29, obviously was impaired based on body-scent secretions and bloodshot and watery eyes, deputies said. Also, they said, she admitted to drinking. As expected, they said, she failed field sobriety tests – like walking straight and touching finger to nose. This was about 6:50 p.m. on one of the two near-horseshoe curves on Highway14 at Quarry Hill Road.

WINONA, Minn. – Firefighters removed a storm sewer grate and one went went down inside to retrieve a child’s drone that had crashed into the sewer. The drone was plucked from the darkness with a four-foot oike pole. The child was happy. This was about 4:05 p.m. at East Fifth and Laird streets.

VIROQUA, Wis.—A Liberty Pole driver was injured when he lost control on gravel in a Highway 27 construction zone, struck a driveway, went airborne over a ditch, struck a fence, rolled 360 degrees, and came to rest upright. Milan Gilman,76, was taken to the nearbv Viroqua hospital. Deputies said he perhaps was saved by wearing a seatbelt. Gilman was heading into Viroqua. The accident was about 2:20 p.m. south of the Viroqua Hills Golf Course near the County Road J intersection.

GOODHUE. Minn. – Police Chief Josh Smith is holding down the fort at the Goodhue police station – perhaps by himself, it’s unclear – after submitting his resignation and after other officers immediately walked away from their jobs in sympathy. Smith resigned at a City Council meeting Wednesday after the Council refused his recommendation for pay increases.. Although Smith resigned, he didn’t make it effective immediately. Even so, at least two other officers flat-out quit in support of the chief. Mayor Terry Buck has called an emergency City Council meeting for Monday but has failed to respond to news media queries. In fact, there appears to be an attempt to keep what’s happened hush-hush. The video of Wednesday’s Council meeting was never posted on YouTube, contrary to normal practice. Meanwhile, sources said, the mayor is surveying police salaries at other small towns and reviewing Smith’s recommendation for recruiting an additional officer.

INDEPENDENCE, Wis. – Animal rights activists cut a chain-link fence and released 3,000 mink from the Olsen fur ranch overnight. The intrusion was discovered first thing in the morning. In an anonymous  post on the Animal Liberation Front website, a person admitted to the release. Trempealeau County Sheriff Brett Semingson issued a call for anyone who saw suspicious vehicles between 11 p.m. and 3:45 a.m. The ranch is in a wooded area off the six-mile stretch of State Highway 121 between Whitehall and Independence. The Olsen fur ranch also was the target of an 800 animal release in 1987.

Animal Lib profile

The Animal Liberation Front is a decentralized if not shadowy resistance movement that promotes non-violent action against animal cruelty. It’s been around since the 1970s. Participants remove animals from laboratories and farms, destroy facilities, arrange veterinary care, and operate sanctuaries. Critics call participants eco-terrorists. The FBI has labeled it an extremist organization. In July the organization enthusiastically noted the closure of a fur ranch 140 miles away in LeCenter, Minnesota.

Mink profile

Mink are a weasel-like animal. Ranch-bred males can be seven pounds, females much less. Trappers in the Upper Midwest in the early 1800s sought mink for the silky fur tyat was in demand globally for haut coiffure coats. The species almost disappeared in the wild, but breeding ranches cropped up to meet the demand. The industry thrived until animal rights movement targeted cruel practices. As a result, mink and other furs have come to be shunned in high fashion. Faux fur now has replaced the real thing in the fashion industry. In some areas, including  the Root River valley in Minnesota, fur ranches all have gone out business. But a subsidiary industry held on a while longer —  summer fur storage companies. Because fur fashion items were vulnerable to damage in summer heat, these companies stored furs in refrigerated warehouses between seasons. One of the last of these firms was in Winona —  Furs by Francis next to the Winona National Bank. It closed in 2010.

WINONA, Minn. – A driver climbed out of his wrecked car after it struck a parked vehicle and  flipped. When police arrived, Wilfred Jake Schmitz, 23, was already exchanging insurance information with the other driver. He was unhurt. This was about 6:05 a.m. in the 700 block of East Wabasha Street. Schmitz admitted to drinking, police said. That he had been drinking was confirmed by a blood-alcohol breath test that showed 0.14% — almost twice the legal level for impairment.  Schmitz was ticketed after an ambulance crew agreed that medical attention was unnecessary.

Two dots. Both Winona and Stockton rated two dots, each blue for wind damage. A tornado touchdown, in red, is in the middle of Dodge County. Image: National Weather Service

Winona crews cleaning up downed limbs; Xcel had issues

WINONA, Minn. — Winonans woke up to limbs ripped from trees and other remnants of a new batch of thunderstorms. Power was out in some sections of the city. On Stockton Hill, at Highway 14 and Pumpkin Road, a downed blocked the roadway. The storms swept across southeast Minnesota causing much worse damage elsewhere. In Wabasha County, hail as large as 2-1/2 inches along the Mississippi River. That’s baseball size. it came down hard enough to leave unmistakable craters in automobile hoods – while winds, some at 70 mph, ripped shingles from roofs. The National Weather Service had a report of a tornado touchdown in Dodge County west of Rochester. Metal grain bin towers in Claremont and Spring Valley were blown over. Rainfall just about everywhere but less than an inch.

Earlier: Winds crumple Dodge County grain elevator

Snapped like a toothpick. Tree decapitated at the knees on Bullis Street  in Kenyon. In front of St. Michael’s Catholic Church on the South Side. Image: Gordy Kosfeld

GOODVIEW, Minn. – Deputies got a call about a driver with a poorly muffled muffler darting onto the shoulder and back again and then again. Then they heard him. Once stopped, William Allan Post, 37, of Minnesota City, evinced drunkenness, deputies said: Bloodshot eyes, words that slurred when they came out, and poor balance.  How about the routine field sobriety tests? Nothing redeeming there, deputies said. Then his blood was tested at the jailhouse and sent to the state crime lab for testing. The stop was about 11:30 p.m. on 44th Avenue near the Boller Lake causeway.

WINONA Minn. – Police stopped a car without lights after dark and then smelled marijuana as soon as the driver lowered his window. Shyrone Shanton Snead, 26, of Winona, was charged with impaired driving. This was about 9:55 p.m. at Fourth and Lafayetre streets on the East Side. Snead failed the usual series of on-site sobriety tests, officers said.

MELRUDE, Minn. – Five people were hurt when their minivan struck a moose during a rainstorm on U.S. Highway 53 near the Sax-Zim Bog nature preserve in northern Minnesota. One passenger, Lauren Elizabeth Dinsmore, 44, of Rochester, was taken 30 miles to the Virginia hospital with non-life threatening injuries. The other passeners were less seriously hurt. All were buckled up, the State Patrol said. The moose, an adult female, died. The animal crashed through the windshield. The accident was about 6:15 p.m. Besides Lauren Dinsmore, the passengers were Jason Christopher Dinsmore, 44, of Rochester; Anne Roberta Dinsmore, 64, of Howell, Michigan; 13-year-old boy ,from Rochester; and 9-year-old boy, from Rochester

800-pound impact. The cow moose catapulted into the windshield.

BLACK RIVER FALLS, Wis. – A swimmer drowned at Lake Wazee. Sheriff Duane Waldera declined to release the victim’s name immediately. Bystanders pulled the body from the water about 3:40 p.m. This was at a beach at the relatively shallow east end of the abandoned taconite quarry. At its deepest, Lake Wazee is 350 feet and known for its clear water and deep-water diving. The quarry was abandoned in 1983 and allowed to fill in with water. It now is a Jackson County park nine miles east of Black River Falls.