Au Naturel, Too

Calendar for a cause - Country Messenger

The 18-month calendar showcases many of the well-known Scandia and Marine on St. Croix [MN] residents posing nearly-nude behind the items of their trade.

Professional photographer Verna Pitts and her business partner, graphic artist Jeni O'Brien, masterminded the project. The two were inspired by the movie "Calendar Girls," in which members of a ladies' social club pose nude for a fundraiser calendar.

As the "Too" in the name suggestions, the 2011-2012 calendar is the second of its kind. Pitts and O'Brien produced the first calendar in 2006, which also featured residents of Scandia and Marine nearly-nude, to raise funds for Jenna Lynn, a teen from Scandia who was battling a rare form of bone cancer. Jenna died in 2008 at 18.

Jenna's parents, Jeff and Jan Lynn, posed for the latest edition of the calendar. Jan said the original calendar helped pay for cancer treatments and improved the quality of life for her daughter. With a second calendar in the works, the two said they were honored to be on its pages as a way to give back to those who had given to them.

"We needed to be in there for somebody else," Jan Lynn said. "It's for a good cause and it brings the two communities together."

Now, six years after the first calendar, the towns again came together to create a calendar, this time for Toni Poletes, an owner of Ostlund's Marine Garage. Poletes, 52, has metastatic breast cancer and is struggling to pay medical bills after her insurance notified her she maxed out her coverage in March.

$30. Buy it here.