Four old Duluth pals

Who, the cousins surely will wonder, are those three classy women the scrapblog editor was seen with Wednesday night at Sawatdee near the Strib in downtown Minneapolis? (Who knew she HAD classy friends?, the cousins are thinking, making mental notes to treat her more respectfully.) And who the Sam-Broberg-Hill is Pete Miller? Long ago and far away (late 1970s and early 1980s, Duluth), these four women, gorgeous greenhorns at the time, worked at the Duluth News-Tribune. They are Kristi Fuller, Laurie Hertzel, cousin Rosy Red-Cheeks and Anne Brataas. Anne (daughter of former state Sen. Nancy Brataas, IR-Rochester, who probably represented a few Spricks in the Legislature) was Lifestyle editor, Kristi and Pam were Lifestyle clerks and Laurie was a shy librarian in the News-Tribune's windowless morgue. Now, almost 30 years later, they are successful, confident, wise and still gorgeous, eh? Laurie is projects editor/writing guru at the Star Tribune; Anne, who worked as a reporter at the St. Paul Pioneer Press and other major papers for years and is a scientist and author, runs her own medical-writing business, and Kristi, a former teacher and savvy businesswoman, the only one with the good sense not to go into journalism, is a big shot at Boston Scientific. (Pam, of course, is the extremely important night assistant team leader associate shotgun sidesaddle breaking-news ace at the Strib, as well as executive extremely key top poohbah CEO editor and publisher of the scrapblog.) Pete Miller was an ad designer at the Star Tribune who lost his job when it was outsourced to India. Somehow his work e-mail got linked to Pam's, so he got all of the four women's e-mails about our get-togethers and occasionally would send commentary. We never met him, but we liked him anyway.