Eyewitness to History

Our correspondent attended today's ceremony as Shawn Odden, president of the U-Haul Company of Fargo, did the unveiling.

Sosie caught in Alex whirlwind
Stan's Sister Sosie today attended the prestigious unveiling of the much-anticipated Viking Exploration mural that will be seen criss-crossing the nation on U-Haul trailers this summer, touting her hometown as "The Birthplace of America."

Sosie was unable to capture the exact moment of the magical Chamber of Commerce unveiling, due to some technical difficulty with her IPhone, but offered a suitable explanation and alternative photographs. Sosie is in town to visit her mother and prudently uses mother's nap times to savor the excitement that is Alexandria, home of the famed Kensington Runestone, which everyone in town knows was left there by a boatload of Norwegian explorers long before Columbus was even born.
Sosie, a regular pilgrim to the Big Ole hallowed ground, annually harangues clueless summer interns at the Runestone Museum Gift Shoppe, telling them they need to stock license plate holders advertising Alexandria as The True Birthplace of America. Her diligence has paid off: this year the shoppe unveiled a gorgeous license plate holder promoting "The Birthplace of America."

Sosie duly acquired her copy, before heading over to the Alexandria Ace Hardware store to purchase a genuine Minnesota Gopher exhaust pipe attachment designed to gas rodents sleeping in their dens. This lethal device is unavailable in California, where Sosie's vegetable garden has been pillaged by local gophers, undeterred by her puny West Coast defenses.
Dr. Death
Her big brother wiped out an entire colony of striped gophers on Abbey Point a few years ago and recommended this deadly yet humane procedure -- which has earned him both praise and scorn in the neighborhood. She paid $14.95 for hers and believes that, despite its lethality, it will slide by airport security without notice.
Speaking of scorn, success always breeds its detractors, and the Alexandria Chamber of Commerce, with its Runestone acclaim reaping bushels of tourist dollars over the years, has a few. Yesterday Sosie confronted some radical wearing a tee shirt claiming nearby Kensington as  "The Real Home of the Runestone." She bravely sends along this photo.

Here's Ralph Gunderson, who agrees with Lorlee Bartos that Kensington is the true home of the stone. He came into the Runestone Museum yesterday, just after Sosie's photo shoot of the license-plate holder and poster. (After arranging for the photo, the management kept the items in place for marketing purposes.) Ralph, born in Kensington to Eleanor Gunderson, the woman who has kept Kensington history alive, is a busy guy. Today he was in charge of wheeling the replica Viking ship put in place for the hoop-ti-do.