Street Sweeping Begins April 19

Public Works crews are gearing up to start the City’s comprehensive street sweeping program to clear away what has accumulated in the streets over the winter. The City has scheduled Tuesday, April 19, for the first day of sweeping. Beginning Monday, April 18, drivers should watch for temporary “No Parking” signs to avoid a ticket and tow.

Starting April 19 for approximately four weeks, sweeping crews will take care of more than 1,000 miles of city streets. Alley sweeping will be completed by then. To make sure the crews can do the most complete job possible, temporary “No Parking” signs will be posted at least 24 hours in advance to make sure streets are clear of parked vehicles. Drivers need to follow street sweeping parking rules or they may have their cars ticketed and towed to the Minneapolis Impound Lot.

Learn more about how to stay informed about spring street sweeping.

Small Business Spotlight: Caplow Custom Frame & Restoration

Article by Becky Fillinger

Jane Westerlund in front of Caplow Custom Frame & Restoration

Jane with her sister, Judy Swatosh

Do you have artwork just waiting to be framed or restored? Jane Westerlund welcomes you to visit her beautiful shop at 4758 Grand Avenue S. You’ll find her there, along with her twin sister Judy Swatosh, working on such a variety of projects that I can’t even find the appropriate words to describe it. She welcomes visitors to just pop in and get to know her as well.   

Q:  You’ve owned Caplow Custom Frame & Restoration for almost 40 years. What have you learned about Minneapolis art collectors in that time?

A:  I have learned so much from working with the area’s art collectors. Minneapolis art collectors are sophisticated! They collect everything from etchings to lithographs woodcuts, engravings, and oil paintings. This runs from the 1800s timeframe to contemporary. They want to be involved in the framing process. I work closely with the collector to choose the frame that makes the art stand out. The highest quality materials are used which artwork demands. The art collectors over time have moved toward contemporary art. Each art collector is very specific regarding what they collect. The depth of my knowledge has increased from the many years of experience and the variety of art projects. The art I work with has broadened my eye and I have learned about many periods and techniques.

Above and below, restoration of a large French billboard.

Metal collar - mounted to raw silk and custom framed

Q:  Your LinkedIn profile lists many of your skills, which go way beyond custom framing. For example, you regilded an antique harp. How did you learn the expert repair and framing services you offer your clients?

A:  My study of art has included gilding, different types of papers and skins. Color and design are a main study. Calligraphy has sharpened my eye. Nate Caplow (the prior owner of the shop – he was a fount of knowledge) taught me mold making and gilding. In addition, I have studied with many masters and continue to learn. I am a member of the Society of Gilders.

Q:  You graduated from MCAD in 1960, one of the most culturally significant times for art in the 20th century. Were you a witness to Pop Art, Psychedelic Art Happenings, etc.?

A:  The 60’s was a fantastic time for change in art, with so many influential artists including Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and many more. So yes, I was a witness to change. At that time, I veered in the direction of calligraphy and color and I studied under Donald Jackson, a calligraphy master.

Q:  What is your favorite type of project?

A:  There are so many projects, I love problem solving and bringing old pictures, frames and pictures back to life with restoration so they last for another 100 years.

Q:  How may we follow your news?

A:  Instagram and Facebook are ways to follow me.

Waning Crescent Moon Over University

Submitted by Ric Rosow

A beautiful waning crescent moon was visible in a red sky shortly before sunrise on March 28th. I blended together two images taken seconds apart to create this image. The first image was take at a shutter speed of 1/200 of a second. A fast shutter speed assures that the moon is in sharp focus. Since the moon is constantly moving, if I use a slow shutter speed the moon will appear blurred in my photograph. The second image was taken at a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second so that the rest of the scene was revealed. In that image the moon was blown out and had no detail. Blending of the two images takes place in Photoshop. The goal was to blend the sharp focused moon from the first image into the second image to create an interesting work of art. There are several ways to blend images together. I experimented with several techniques before achieving a result I liked.  

You can see more of my work @ricrosowphotography.com and treslechesartgallery.com

Local Tastemaker: Claire Maxwell, Spoon and Stable Wine Director

Article by Becky Fillinger

Are you interested in trying some new and innovative wines by the glass or with your delicious meal at Spoon and Stable? We talked to Claire Maxwell, Wine Director, about what we can expect with her at the helm. I think it makes for a must visit - click here to make a reservation for this North Loop treasure.

Wine Director Claire Maxwell  Photo credit Erin Kincheloe

Q:  How did you become a wine director? Were you in restaurant management previously?

A:  I've been working in restaurants or farms for about 15 years, and over time I became more and more drawn to wine. Early in my career, I had the chance to work with James Beard Award winner Diedre Heekin of La Garagista Vineyard in Vermont to plant their first vines. Ten years later I found myself poring over the wine list The Bachelor Farmer trying to learn all I could. Around the time I started working at Spoon and Stable, I was pursuing my WSET 2 certification. Eventually, our former Wine Director, Ben Dale, asked me to be the Wine Steward. In that role, I started a tasting group amongst staff, because I think it’s extremely helpful for servers to practice talking about wine. That led to my promotion, and I’m so excited to grow from here.

Q:  What's your high-level vision for the wine program at Spoon and Stable?

A:  I want the wine program at Spoon and Stable to inspire both comfort and curiosity. Taste and smell, and therefore drinking wine and eating food, is inextricable from the creation and recollection of memories, and I will never take for granted the power restaurants have to shape these memories. Sometimes, when we go out to dinner, we want all of our favorites - the things we know and love, the things that have brought us pleasure in the past. Sometimes, we want to try something new with help from a server or a chef or a sommelier that we trust. Spoon and Stable will always offer the classics, and my goal is to earn guests' trust so that every now and again, we can surprise and delight them with wines that are off the beaten path. The world of wine can feel intimidating and rarefied, but I'm not interested in perpetuating that stereotype.

Q:  Will you have a particular focus on any geographic regions or styles of wine (for example, focus on sustainable/organic, etc.)?

A:  First and foremost, the wine has to be delicious. And it has to turn the volume up on the dishes Spoon and Stable serves. A good food and wine pairing can transform both the dish and wine; together they are more than the sum of their parts. 

Beyond that, I want to support winemakers that are making wine honestly but with discipline, whose processes allow a true expression of the grape. Winemakers who share this interest tend to practice small-scale farming with an eye toward low intervention, both in the field and in the cellar. Some of them are certified Organic or Biodynamic, but more importantly, they are responsible stewards of the land that they farm.

Lastly, I'm always interested in winemakers that are expanding our understanding of what the wine world can be and who can be part of it. I'm interested in supporting producers who are working in new and innovative ways, or farming in a place no one thought could make good wine, or who are returning to traditional practices that have been all but forgotten.

Q:  What will regular patrons be happy to see retained?

A:  I'm holding on to a lot of old favorites. The Napa Cabernet Sauvignons that our guests enjoy are not going anywhere. Burgundy and Bordeaux will always be represented on the list. More than anything, I'd like to expand on those regions that are so beloved, and show off different, equally delicious expressions. 

Q:  How will regular patrons be surprised with your new placements?

A:  I think regular patrons will see more wines and grapes they've never heard of before. I redesigned our wine list to make it more user-friendly, so I’m hoping it leads to our guests trying unexpected pairings, wines they never thought they would like. Our wine list is now divided by color and country of origin, from northernmost to southernmost. Generally, the further north, the colder and shorter the growing season is, which creates bright, linear, and energetic wines. To the south, longer, warmer growing seasons create riper flavors and brawny, muscular wines. I’m hoping this helps to create a culture of excitement and confidence in exploring wine! 

Q:  How will you entice new customers to try Spoon and Stable through your wine list?

A:  I’m hoping to entice new customers by bringing them more options available by the glass, some of which can be very hard to find anywhere else. Focusing on a vibrant, and at times, off the beaten path by-the-glass list seems like a good first step, because guests will always have a server, or me, right there to guide them through. I want to convey that wine at Spoon and Stable is a big tent; there is something for everyone, and we’re all invested in helping guests find the right glass or bottle.

I am also deeply committed to earning guests’ trust. Before I make a wine recommendation, I want to know what kind of wines a guest enjoys in their day-to-day life and what kind of price range they are interested in. 

Q:  Any special thoughts on by-the-glass selections?

A:  I’ve expanded our by-the-glass list with a new section I’m really excited about, called “For Your Consideration.” It’s where we’re able to share limited stock bottles with both half glass and full glass options, so guests can feel more comfortable going outside their comfort zone with some really special wines. You’ll find Camp 4 Cabernet Sauvignon from Kitá Wines there, a vineyard owned by the Santa Ynez Band of the Chumash Tribe. Winemaker Tara Gomez is incredibly talented; this bottle has so much verve and life. Or Vitovska Solo MM17 from Paolo Vodopivec, a winemaker dedicated to working solely to Vitovska, a grape indigenous to Northeast Italy and Southwest Slovenia where his biodynamically farmed estate is located. 

Q:  Is there something really new and different you’ll be adding?

A:  Well - me! It’s the first time in a long time that Spoon and Stable has had a dedicated sommelier available to guests during service. Instead of being intimidating, my goal is to help guests feel confident and empowered by their preferences, and safe enough to remain curious.

Q:  What do you personally like to enjoy drinking on your day off?

A:  I love Beaujoulais. I like juicy, carbonic, chillable reds - I almost made a whole section dedicated to them on our list! And sherry. Anything oxidative, salty, and nutty.

Turmoil in the Twin Cities: How Daylight Saving Time Briefly Divided a State

Article by Michael Rainville, Jr.

A few weeks back, the United States Senate passed an act that may impact our everyday lives come wintertime, so hold your clocks up to a mirror, because it’s time to reflect on Daylight Saving Time in the Twin Cities.

This past March 13th, we switched to Daylight Saving Time (DST), a tradition that has been around since 1966. While adjusting our clocks twice a year is an easy task, it wasn’t always this way. As the world became more global, coordinating transportation, meetings, events, etc., became increasingly more difficult as most towns followed local solar time, meaning noon was when the sun was at its highest point in the sky. Locally, this confusion reached its tipping point in 1965 when Minneapolis and Saint Paul followed separate times.

In order to get a better understanding of the 1965 debacle, let’s start with the origins of Standard Time.

WWI poster used as a reminder to end DST come October 27th, 1918As railroads grew and expanded across the United States in the later half of the 1800s, it became a nightmare to coordinate arrival and departure times since there were over 300 different times at the many railroad stations across the nation. At first, railroad managers implemented 100 time zones in the United States, but that quickly proved to be ineffective. In the 1880s, railroad companies took note of Cleveland Abbe, a meteorologist, who assigned four time zones to his various weather stations across the nation. Once the planning of creating four time zones for railroads to use was complete, Standard Time with four zones became official at noon on November 18th, 1883, in Chicago, Illinois.

Standard Time and the four time zones were predominantly used by railroads and cross-country business affairs up until World War I. During the war, Germany created Daylight Saving Time in order to save fuel, with Britain following suit. The United States, too, implemented DST on March 31st, 1918, which also meant the four time zones were federally recognized. With backlash from farmers, DST was dropped once WWI ended. However, it was still an option on a more local level. One of the main metropolitan areas to still use DST was New York City, and since that city was so influential in the financial sector, many large cities also used DST including Minneapolis, home of the Grain Exchange.

A local conductor and engineer synchronizing their watches for the start of "War Time" during WWII

The federal government would once again institute DST during WWII, this time calling it “War Time,” and made it an option for local municipalities to use once the war was over. With no federal regulations regarding DST, confusion was plentiful.

In 1957, Minnesota passed a statewide DST act much to the chagrin of the farmers. DST was used between Memorial Day and Labor Day, the shortest timeframe in the nation, and counties were allowed to set their own DST. However, a group of drive-in movie theater owners successfully sued the state and counties were no longer able to set their own DST. This also caused confusion on a regional level as North Dakota did not use DST and Wisconsin did, but between April and October.

May 2, 1965 Pioneer Press cartoon 

In 1965, everything came to a boil when towns in the western section of the state, like Breckenridge and Moorhead, opted to stay on Standard Time while towns in the east, like Duluth and Winona started DST in April along with Wisconsin. This caused a chain reaction of towns either switching to DST before the state allowed it, or not switching to DST at all.

Saint Paul would soon jump on the bandwagon of having an earlier DST starting date when their city council voted to switch to DST on May 4th, roughly two weeks before the rest of the state would. This greatly angered Governor Karl Rolvaag, the state legislature, and Mayor Arthur Naftalin of Minneapolis. Not every organization in Saint Paul switched to DST on May 4th either. The fire department did, but the police did not as it was against state law. The Ramsey County Board scheduled meetings using Standard Time, but the Saint Paul council chambers where they met had clocks set to DST. At the Minneapolis-Saint Paul International Airport, Northwest Airlines had two clocks at their front desk: one set to Minneapolis time and one to Saint Paul time. Despite there being two weeks of the Twin Cities being an hour apart, there were not many reported problems of employees showing up to work an hour early or an hour late.

The inconsistent implementation of DST throughout the United States was never really a major problem until this debacle in the Twin Cities. Congressmen Don Fraser of Minnesota’s 5th district, and future mayor of Minneapolis, brought legislation to the nation’s capitol that would bring uniformity to DST across the United States. Enacted on April 13th, 1966, and implemented a year later, the Uniform Time Act finally brought the nation together for the first time since WWII. States were allowed to opt out, with only Arizona and Hawaii still choosing to. For those states who chose to follow the Act, DST began at 2:00 A.M. on the last Sunday in April and ended at 2:00 A.M. on the last Sunday in October. The most recent change to this came in 2007 when Congress moved the start day up to the second Sunday in March and the end date pushed back to the first Sunday of November.

Current time zones in the United States

This year, the United Stated Senate unanimously voted to pass the Sunshine Protection Act, which would make DST permanent if the House of Representatives also passes it and President Biden signs it into law. If this were to happen, clocks will not be returned to Standard Time come November 5th, 2023.

Switching between Standard Time and Daylight Saving Time has become second nature to us all, but the times may be changing soon, or never again. Will this latest time legislation bring back the century’s old rivalry between Minneapolis and Saint Paul if one city tries to pull a fast one again? Only time will tell.

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About Michael Rainville, Jr.

A 6th generation Minneapolitan, Michael Rainville, Jr. received his B.A. in History, Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies, and M.A. in Art History from the University of St. Thomas.

Michael is a historical interpreter at the Minnesota History Center and has been a lead guide at Mobile Entertainment LLC, giving Segway, walking, and biking tours of the Minneapolis riverfront for 9+ years.

 

He can be reached at mrainvillejr@comcast.net

Gamut Gallery Presents Conexión, Curated by Gerardo Morado of ACME Collective, April 23-May 21

Featuring: Anihail Álvarez, Claire Hickman, Cristian Ybarra, Emily Quandahl, Evan Weselmann, Joshua McGarvey, John Alspach, Joshe Montaño, and Nichole Showalter.

Conexión refers to the union-like relationship between two or more things, people, places, or elements within a system. It is what brings us together and builds a community where there once was none. For his first curatorial exhibition, Gerardo Morado, the founder of ACME Collective, bridges conversations between local and international artists across nationalities and generations to bring us a vivid reflection of our shared human experience. As a first-generation American and emerging artist, DJ, and curator, Morado, has assembled the vibrant works in Conexión as a vehicle to unite and inspire visitors and local, young POC creatives.  

Presented exclusively at Gamut Gallery, this group exhibition weaves together electric colors and engaging textures, challenging the boundaries of contemporary art. Many of the participating artists have profoundly influenced Morado’s perception of art and the subcultures that encompass it: the featured paintings, illustrations, and textiles aim to foster new connections between artists and their audiences. Morado celebrates our differences while simultaneously reminding us of the common threads that bind us. In this way, Conexión upholds art as the universal language we all share. 

Public Opening: Saturday, April 23, 6-9pm - $7 pre-sales, $10 door, Free for members. Music TEKK NIKK

Curator + Artist Talk: Saturday, May 7, 10am - $5 pre-sales, $7 door, Free for members. 

Featuring: Curator Gerardo Morardo and artists, Nichole Showalter, John Alspach and Cristian Ybarra

Moderated by Cassie Garner
• Pre-sales coming soon
• Entry will be available at the door upon availability

Exhibit Finale + Closing Party: Saturday, May 21, 6-9pm $7pre-sales, $10 door Free for members. Pre-sales coming soon. Music curated by Acme Collective 

Featuring El Niño Indigo & a live Downtown Tempo Set by Heckadecimal 

Gerardo Morado is a Mexican American Artist, Curator, based in Minneapolis. In 2006 at the short age of 17, he was introduced to Underground Rave culture in Northeastern Mexico. This quickly became an obsession and he began to focus all of his energy to going to parties, collecting music, and learning how to DJ. Fifteen years later these are all tools Gerardo now incorporates as an event curator running his own event series/brand ACME collective. His main focus is promoting art, culture, and music in an intersectional, and inclusive way with a non-conforming approach. Gerardo is currently producing bi-monthly showcases which feature renowned and emerging artists in underground dance music and visual arts. These showcases intersect a full-fledged rave with a concert grade sound system, lights and visuals, and an informal art exhibition featuring a pop-up gallery and art installations.

ACME is a collective of interdisciplinary artists from the Twin Cities promoting art culture and music in an intersectional and inclusive way. Throughout the years, ACME’s experimental, avant-garde stylistic events have been uniting artists from various subcultures and generations with the aid of dance music and interactive installations.

Gamut Gallery is located at 717 10th Street S. Gallery and gift shop are open Wednesday - Friday, 11am - 6pm; Saturday 11am - 4pm. Closed on event days.

Tickets go on Sale April 15 for Out of the Box’s New Version of La Traviata at the Canopy Minneapolis

Show dates are May 27 - 29

Out of the Box’s new version of La Traviata at the Canopy Minneapolis Mill District stands the opera classic on its head – or more correctly, on three different heads. The show features three sopranos in the role of Violetta Valery, the opera’s’ heroine, singing different scenes at different locations in the hotel. The entire audience will see the first and last scenes together, but for the other three scenes, the audience will be split into small groups that will experience the scenes in a different order.

Artistic Director David Lefkowich explains, “the story of this opera really boils down to three stages of love - unrequited love, true love, and love lost - and the emotional journey that accompanies each stage. Mixing the order of scenes will plunge the audience into the middle of the performance and help them see how radically different it feels depending on where you are in the process of falling in or out of love.”

This Traviata is a joint production of Out of The Box and Opera Columbus, which will present the show in Columbus in June. Lefkowich says joining forces with Columbus has given Out of The Box the resources – both talent and financial - to do a bigger show than it could tackle on its own, stating, “This show will have more performers – singers and musicians – and more moving parts than anything we have done before.” After this initial run, Out of The Box and Opera Columbus will be taking the production to other cities.

Musical Director Brian DeMaris, who has directed for Mill City Summer Opera and serves as Principal Conductor of Anchorage (AK) Opera, notes, “we have an exciting cast of singers and musicians who have performed both locally and nationally, with some performers appearing in both the Minnesota and Columbus productions.”

Tickets go on sale April 15 at outoftheboxopera.com and will offer the option for a VIP Experience that includes an after party with the performers and creative team.

March 2022 by the Numbers from Cynthia Froid Group

Downtown real estate market update from Cynthia Froid Group:

The Grand Rounds

Article by Michael Rainville, Jr.

Minneapolis is full of wonderful parks, from Columbia and Webber to Minnehaha and Boom Island. The most remarkable facet of our parks is that many of them are connected via the Grand Rounds Scenic Byway System; an over fifty-mile parkway that creates a loop around Minneapolis, well, almost. The last segment needed to complete the Grand Rounds, dubbed “the missing link,” would connect East River Parkway near the University of Minnesota to St. Anthony Parkway in upper Northeast. Funding for the missing link was included in Governor Walz’s 2020 capital bonding proposal. Of the $2 billion that would be used throughout the entire state for various construction projects, $12.35 million would be used to complete the Grand Rounds. With the Grand Rounds on the cusp of completion, let’s take a look at how it became the nation’s and world’s best example of an urban byway.

Surveyors along Minnehaha Parkway with the Nicollet Ave. Bridge in the background, 1935.Parks and Minneapolis go together like peanut butter and jelly. The Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board was established in 1883, and its first president, Charles Loring, immediately hired Horace Cleveland, a well-known landscape architect, to create a masterplan for the park system. Cleveland had been lobbying for the creation of a unified park system between Minneapolis and St. Paul since 1872. From then until his hiring eleven years later, he fleshed out his ideas and even implemented some of them when designing the St. Paul neighborhood of Saint Anthony Park. Cleveland wanted to create a network of boulevards and parkways that connected parks and utilized the natural beauty of the area. Once hired, his plan quickly took shape with the creation of the Chain of Lakes parks and Minnehaha Parkway. The project would be named “The Grand Rounds” in 1891 when his updated plans for the Northeast and Southeast sections of Minneapolis were seen as ambitious and inspiring.

Cleveland’s ultimate goal was to create these natural areas for everyone to enjoy, especially the poor and less fortunate. At the time, Minneapolis was a small city, but the milling industries contributed to the city’s population drastically rising throughout the years. Cleveland wanted to make sure those with money didn’t buy all the naturally beautiful land and take away the opportunity for those with less income to experience the calming and peaceful splendor of what he experienced when he first came to Minneapolis in the 1870s.

1940 photo of workers building a brick wall along East River Parkway near the U of M.

A project this grand was not going to be completed overnight, so it was up to future Park Board presidents and superintendents to continue Cleveland’s and Loring’s vision. Theodore Wirth did just that when he acquired land to extend the parkway system to what it is today during his thirty-year tenure in the early 1900s. It would not be until the 1970s when the Grand Rounds would receive a facelift. The Park Board hired the famous San Francisco landscape architect firm Eckbo, Dean, Austin & Williams to update the park system. This led to a uniform look for the Grand Rounds. Pavement would be a different color than city streets, the parkways would be narrowed and bays for parking in certain areas would be added, the speed limit would be dropped to twenty-five miles per hour, separate paths would be made for bikers and pedestrians, and signage would be consistent throughout the system. All of these changes can still be seen today.

Once the Grand Rounds was completely updated and extended to include the downtown riverfront, it started to garner national attention. In 1997, it was designated as a Minnesota State Scenic Byway, and in 1998 it was designated as a National Scenic Byway, recognized as the premier national urban scenic byway by the Federal Highway Administration, and it provided the last link in completing the Great River Road along the entire Mississippi River.

Preferred and alternate routes of the "missing link" in SE and NE Minneapolis.

137 years in the making, the completion of the Grand Rounds is upon us. Minneapolis will soon once again show the world why we have the best and most comprehensive park system there is; a city of lakes, a city of nature, a city that inspires. The addition of the missing link and completion of the Grand Rounds is still quite a few years away, but if you’re interested in what this missing link will look like, check out the Park Board’s East of the River Park Master Plan they made available in February of 2019.

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About Michael Rainville, Jr.

A 6th generation Minneapolitan, Michael Rainville, Jr. received his B.A. in History, Graduate Certificate in Museum Studies, and M.A. in Art History from the University of St. Thomas.

Michael is a historical interpreter at the Minnesota History Center and has been a lead guide at Mobile Entertainment LLC, giving Segway, walking, and biking tours of the Minneapolis riverfront for 9+ years.

 

He can be reached at mrainvillejr@comcast.net

April 3 Event Parkway Closures for Goldy's Run 10 Mile

Please note the following Parkway closures on April 3, 7:30am-12pm, for Goldy's Run 10 Mile:

West River Parkway from 13th Ave S. to E 38th St.

East River Parkway

City Launches 2022 Shared Bike and Scooter Program

The City of Minneapolis has entered into license agreements with three operators - Lyft, Lime, and Spin — to participate in its Shared Bike and Scooter Program launching in mid-April.

To foster greater cooperation and coordination across jurisdictions the City, the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board, the University of Minnesota and the City of Saint Paul issued a joint solicitation for vendors and worked together to review and rank operator proposals.

Under this multi-vendor program, the City of Minneapolis has issued a sole license for bike sharing was issued to Lyft to continue to operate the Nice Ride system with both classic pedal bicycles and electric-assisted bicycles. The City also issued licenses to Lyft, Lime and Spin to operate motorized foot scooters. Negotiations between the operators and other jurisdictions are ongoing. 

Equity and safety continue to be key focus areas for the program. As part of the City’s Equity focused requirements, at least 30% of each operator’s scooters must be distributed in Equity Distribution Areas in north and south Minneapolis and a maximum of 40% of each operator’s scooters are allowed downtown and the surrounding neighborhoods.

Learn more about the Shared Bike and Scooter program. 

Unique Partnership Provides Trained Mental Health Services Downtown – Immediately and Where Needed

Article by Becky Fillinger 

Local citizens in dire need of mental and chemical health services are often not able to obtain support when and where needed. A unique partnership between the Downtown Improvement District (DID) and Hennepin County Behavioral Health is doing just that – help those in need find services.

James Seals, Outreach Social Worker with Hennepin County Behavioral Health, standing in front of the Downtown Improvement District (DID) van that is used to transport residents from the Downtown District to the Behavioral Health Center at 1800 Chicago to facilitate connections to services and supports for needs related to mental health and substance use.

Shane Zahn, DID Director of Safety Initiatives, shared with us the history of the project.

“The DID Livability Team and outreach partners had been contemplating how to improve the service response to those they served downtown for a while, and the increased need for trained mental health outreach in downtown was very evident at the start of the pandemic,” Zahn said. “In the spring of 2020, DID added its Social Impact Manager position and welcomed Joe Kreisman to the team. This gave DID the skills to begin reaching out to a variety of community partners and nonprofits to see how we could expand outreach services and upstream resources downtown. The partnership with Hennepin County came to fruition. Downtown’s proximity to the Behavioral Health Center at 1800 Chicago and the concentration of need from the shelters and services in and around downtown made it a seamless fit.”

Behavioral Health Center at 1800 Chicago

The entrance off of Chicago is temporarily closed, but there is an entrance off of Columbus for walk-in traffic Monday – Friday 9:00am-9:00pm (expanded hours as of 4/1/22).

The other half of the partnership comes from Behavioral Health at Hennepin County. Kate Erickson, Manager in Behavioral Health, told us there was a need to assist residents in getting connected to longer-term services and supports.

“There is already great work going on in Downtown Minneapolis that we can build upon – DID Livability Teams, Mad Dads of Minneapolis, YouthLink MN, Violence Interrupters, etc.,” Erickson said. “This collaboration assists residents in resolving the immediate need, and getting connected to longer-term services and support for needs related to mental health and substance use. As the county, we can see what services someone might already have in place, and work with the residents to find the right services to meet their needs.”

So how does this partnership actually work? James Seals was hired as an Outreach Social Worker at Hennepin County. As a Hennepin County employee, he has access to information, resources, and additional specialized staff at the County, and specifically the Behavioral Health Center. DID was able to share the costs of the Social Worker position, with help from the Downtown Minneapolis Neighborhood Association (DMNA).  In addition, DID purchased a minivan – which allows Seals to navigate the District more effectively while also providing a vehicle to transport clients to services. Both the County and DID are able to bring their unique attributes to the partnership and dramatically enhance what either could have done on their own. With the intentional work of both Zahn and Kreisman, this position has been connected to and become an integral part of the DID’s work in this area. 

Social Worker James Seals is rarely stationary. We spoke as he was moving through Downtown buildings, responding to calls from citizens, property managers or building security managers. He shared that he spends most of his time doing outreach to the community Downtown, building relationships with people, and working to provide immediate and long-term needs. “As I get to know them, I can help them get connected to services right away,” Seals said. “I can provide a ride to the Behavioral Health Center and connect them to the care team there. The team can determine what services the resident needs. I work the 120+ city blocks of downtown Minneapolis, meeting residents in need of support and making those connections."

"Some interventions don’t happen immediately. I connected with a resident who was struggling with ongoing substance use and experiencing homelessness. When I first met the resident, he was frequently seen on street corners in downtown Minneapolis signing and sleeping in bus shelters. Over the course of three months, I engaged with the resident, daily at times, to build rapport, assess needs, and assist with connection to services. The resident is now housed, connected to an integrated primary care clinic, and is connected to a case manager through the Diversion and Recovery Team (DART) who support him with his recovery and quality of life improvement goals. That looks like success to me.” DART sees residents in the Behavioral Health Center, the community and their home, providing long-term case management for those living with a substance use disorder and experiencing housing instability. 

Elizabeth Bieging, Supervisor in Behavioral Health at Hennepin County, elaborates on the care available. “At the Behavioral Health Center, we have walk-in services on the 1st floor, a crisis residence on the 2nd floor, and withdrawal management on the 3rd floor. We have recovery programs on site, such as long-term case managers who serve people living with a substance use disorder, vocational support for those who need help getting or keeping a job (but mental health or substance use is getting in the way), and health insurance navigation to ensure people have health insurance coverage to access needed services.” Learn more at www.hennepin.us/1800-Chicago.

Is the program successful? Kreisman said yes.  

“The ability to connect community members downtown with their existing resources and support systems has been invaluable already.” Kreisman said. “The Social Worker has been able to get folks into mental health resources, substance use disorder treatment, withdrawal management, shelter, and de-escalate situations downtown to reduce 911 calls for police and medical response.” 

Bieging agrees.

“The outcomes we are working towards are reducing any unnecessary emergency room use or inpatient hospitalization, reducing any unnecessary criminal justice system involvement, and facilitating connections to services and supports for Hennepin County residents 18+, centering needs related to mental health and substance use,” Bieging said. “We are having success! In only a year since we launched this effort, the Social Worker has already been able to connect residents to treatment facilities, mental health resources, and housing, and it is such a joy to all of us to know they are finding stability and care on the terms they wanted.”

Erickson shared quantitative results as well. James Seals, the Social Worker, made a total of 357 contacts with 153 residents between September and December, 2021 on the 120+ city blocks of downtown Minneapolis. Fifty percent of those contacts identified needs related to substance use disorder and 29% identified needs related to mental health. In the same time period, James provided transportation to 26 residents to facilitate connections to treatment and recovery support at the Behavioral Health Center at 1800 Chicago. In addition, all community members were provided individualized information and resources to use when they were ready.

Will the program be expanded? Zahn told me, “DID assessment resources are limited to the 120 square blocks of the City, but we know that downtown is much broader than our District as everyone seamlessly moves in and out of the boundaries. However, DID’s core services do not go beyond the boundaries of the District. This model of having a vehicle for effective transportation, the Outreach Social Worker as a County employee, and additional funding sources has allowed us to leverage the infrastructure the DID has developed in this work to reach residents who are in and out of the DID boundary. Residential neighborhoods that are currently being served but are outside the District’s boundaries include the Mill District, Philips, North Loop and Loring Park.” When the resident is ready to connect to services, Seals provides transportation to the Behavioral Health Center at 1800 Chicago. 

Walk-in services are available for Hennepin County residents 18+, centering needs related to mental health and substance use, open Monday-Friday 9:00am-9:00pm at the Behavioral Health Center at 1800 Chicago.  The team assists residents in connecting to on-site and community-based services.

Learn more about these resources:

• Behavioral Health Center and Video Walk-in behavioral health support referrals - social workers - YouTube
• Diversion and Recovery Team (DART)
• Downtown Safety Collaborative (mplsdid.com)

Other county-based resources related to this article include:

• Mental Health Emergencies Mental health emergencies | Hennepin County
• Emergency Services Emergency programs | Hennepin County
• Hennepin County Front Door, 612-348-4111 

Open Eye Theatre Announces the Relaunch of Puppet Lab

Open Eye Theatre recently announced the return of Puppet Lab, the Twin Cities’ celebrated incubator program for emerging puppet and mask artists. Two new co-artistic directors and four residency artists will participate in Puppet Lab this year. Projects will be workshopped during the spring and summer, and the program will culminate in a two-week festival of public performances at Open Eye Theatre in August 2022.

The Puppet Lab program, created by Alison Heimstead in 2010 for In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre, has transitioned to Open Eye. Puppet Lab will continue to establish a formalized process for emerging puppet and mask theater artists to advance their artistic development – to test and create new works within a supportive and challenging workshop environment. This program gives artists the time and space to test ideas, learn from others, and receive and respond to critical feedback. Puppet Lab seeks to nurture exploratory, experimental, and innovative performance, and is interested in ideas that work within traditional forms as well as projects that are new in every way.

Oanh Vu and Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra join Open Eye’s leadership team as Co-Artistic Directors of Puppet Lab. The Artistic Directors will work as a team to coordinate and facilitate the artistic activities of Puppet Lab.

Four residency artists will workshop their projects this year: Dominique Herskind, Mary Plaster, Liping Vong, and Amoke Kubat. This new cohort of puppetry artists will fill the Open Eye workshops with their creative explorations and have their finished works professionally produced in a two-week festival of public performances in August.

“I am deeply honored that Puppet Lab’s founder, the visionary Alison Heimstead, has invited Open Eye to continue the program, and that the Jerome Foundation has continued their generous support,” says Joel Sass, Open Eye Theatre’s Producing Artistic Director. “And I could not be more excited for Oanh Vu and Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra to join the Open Eye leadership team!”

“I am thrilled to see that Puppet Lab is continuing with such brilliant leaders!” said Alison Heimstead, founder of Puppet Lab. “Rebekah and Oanh are incredible artists and they will be strong, compassionate and critical leaders for this lab experience for many new and experimental voices in puppetry. Puppet Lab is in good hands!”

Artist Bios/Statements

Rebekah Crisanta de Ybarra (she/her, Maya-Lenca tribal citizen)

Rebekah is a Twin Cities-based interdisciplinary artist, musician (Lady Xøk), dancer, curator, writer, actor, puppeteer, teaching artist, and culture bearer whose work is rooted in Indigenous Futurisms. A curator of many performances, festivals, community events, panels, she is also a 2021-22 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow whose visual interdisciplinary performance work has been developed with Red Eye Theatre, New Native Theatre, Monkeybear’s Harmolodic Workshop, Catalyst Arts, and ArtShanty. Most recently she performed live at the La MaMa Puppet Fest in New York City.

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Oanh Vu (she/her) 

Oanh is an artist and educator who first encountered puppetry through Monkeybear's Harmolodic Workshop’s puppetry intensive and mentorship program. Since then, puppetry has become her passion as I’ve transitioned into a career as a puppeteer. Oanh has trained with master puppeteers through the Chicago Puppet Festival,Tom Lee, Rough House Puppets, the O'Neill National Puppetry Conference and Manual Cinema. Locally, Oanh has created and collaborated on a wealth of new puppet works that have been shown across the Twin Cities. As an educator, Oanh has worked for 13 years with the Science Museum of Minnesota.

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Dominique Herskind (she/her/they/them)

“I really enjoy mixing humor with existential dread and exploring the corporeal nature of our existence. Humor is a good narrative tool to use to tackle heavy topics, because laughter breaks down our barriers and lets us be more open to different thoughts and opinions. That’s the beauty of puppets, too: puppets allow the viewer to see the world reflected back to them through another lens. My project follows a puppet whose mind/consciousness is severed from its body. The mind can’t get the body to do what it wants, and the body can’t make the mind do what it needs. How can the body and mind be unified to keep its soul, the center for creativity, from dying? Puppetry allows life to be exaggerated, and I can’t think of a better medium to showcase the detachment of the mind and body.”

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Amoke Awele Kubat (she/her)

“As an emerging artist at 72 years, I have few peers (creative and personal). It is my intent to continue to grow as an artist and as a human being. My mind is sharp. My creativity is like gamma rays. My strongest talents are curiosity and the alchemy of process. I’m not afraid of trial and error, having younger mentors, or leaping into the void of creation. To develop a performance for Puppet Lab, I see myself as a "puppet", and animating the "stuff" found in an old lady’s purse! Using a variety of puppets and masks, an old woman remembers significant moments in her life. We see and hear simple stories as she removes and examines items from her purse. I will be exploring the journey of aging that does not end in dismissal and isolation and death. It is a journey that highlights each chapter of human experiences: child, teen, adult, elder, ancestor and descendant.”

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Mary Plaster (she/they)

“I’m so excited to be part of Puppet Lab because this in-person (not virtual!), supportive, intensive group process–focused on immediate, specific performance goals–is something I’ve never experienced in a lifetime of art and giant puppet making. As a visual artist, the last two years abruptly halted my paid work; displays in art galleries were also shut down due to COVID-19 concerns. Plunged into this sudden stillness I took a hard inventory of my life’s arc and realized it was imperative to use the time to make tangible steps towards long-held objectives of developing smaller, more intimate storytelling. Much of my life’s work supports environmental activism. The project I plan on workshopping for Puppet Lab 2022 is a portion of a longer, dark fairytale I have just started developing. It will explore creatures and grand elements of nature as a call to return to the outdoors, to care for and defend wild places.”

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Liping Vong (she/they)

“With puppetry, anything goes—puppets can be magical and inhabit wild worlds and defy physics that other other performance art forms are tied to. I hope to take advantage of Puppet Lab’s collaborative process and feedback style to dive out of my comfort zone of performing and to develop and nurture my writing skills for puppetry. These explorations are new and important to me because I am a child of refugees from Laos, and my family is ethnically Chinese. Because my sisters and I grew up in small-town-turned-sprawling-suburb Iowa, in a predominantly white community, Chinese myths, folktales, other stories, and traditions didn’t quite make their way to me. Creating a body of work that honors these tales from my heritage is a long-time goal of mine. I also hope that learning about these stories will lead me to other tales.”

Local Filmmaker: Zina Poletz Gutmanis

Article by Becky Fillinger

Zina Poletz GutmanisThe current Russian aggression against Ukraine is not a new development. As our local community seeks ways to help Ukraine, we are fortunate to have in our community local Ukrainian-Americans who are telling the broader historical narrative of violence against Ukraine. Meet Zina Poletz Gutmanis – a local documentary filmmaker. We spoke to her about Holodomor, growing up as a Ukrainian-American in the Twin Cities and current projects.  

Q:  You’ve been part of several national and local Holodomor commemorative events. Minnesota recognizes Holodomor as a genocidal event. What do you want all Minnesota citizens to know about the man-made famine of 1932-33?  

A:  The current invasion of Ukraine should be viewed as a continuation of centuries of Russian attempts to erase the Ukrainian national identity. The Holodomor (which means "murder by starvation" in Ukrainian) was an artificial famine engineered by Stalin to break the spirit of the Ukrainian people. To provide some historical context, under the Romanov tsars, most ethnic Ukrainians lived under serfdom, a form of slavery abolished only in 1861 - the time of our own Civil War. They farmed small plots of land owned by a foreign lord. Teaching or publishing or even acting in a play in the Ukrainian language was strictly forbidden. Even with this high level of repression, within days after Tsar Nicholas II was dethroned in 1917, Ukrainian leaders organized a government in Kyiv. On January 22, 1918, the Ukrainian People's Republic declared itself an independent nation. Independent Ukraine lasted only a few years. Outnumbered by onslaughts from the Red and White armies, Ukrainian lands ended up partitioned between the Bolsheviks and Poland.  

Lenin's policies gave Ukrainians cultural and economic freedom, but when Stalin came to power, these policies were reversed and people were pushed onto collective farms. The communist regime deliberately used terror and mass starvation to break the resistance of Ukrainian farmers to Soviet authority in general and to the confiscation of their land, grain, and animals in particular. Communist activists went door to door searching for grain and other food, leaving people with nothing. At the height of the famine in June 1933, an estimated 28,000 Ukrainians were dying each day. Concurrently, the Communist party arrested and executed or exiled Ukraine's finest minds - poets, musicians, writers, religious figures, historians. In 1988, the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine reported to Congress that “Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-1933. To learn more about this horrific chapter in history, Red Famine by Anne Applebaum is an excellent resource.

Protesting Ukrainian famine in Minneapolis, 1955

Two Minnesotans played important roles in documenting and calling the world's attention to this genocide. The first, Dmytro Solovey, arrived in St. Paul after World War II. His book Golgotha of Ukraine, issued in 1953, contained the first English-language set of Holodomor survivor stories, which he carefully compiled while living in a displaced persons camp in Germany. Copies of the book were sent to members of Congress and other leaders and public libraries.

In the 1980s, Slavko Nowytski, also of St. Paul, co-produced and directed Harvest of Despair, the first documentary film about the Holodomor.

Q:  Thank you for that overview. You recommend "compassionate conversations” in Ukrainian communities to deal with the trauma of Holodomor; but also World War II, displaced persons camps and now the Russian invasion. Why is it important to deal with the unspoken traumas, across generations?  

A:  I represent Minnesota on the U.S. Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor Genocide Awareness. One thing I've noticed in this role is that most discussion on the topic is academic. There was no culture in the community for survivors to share their own stories, maybe because it was so horrible to live through. I myself didn't know I was a descendant of a Holodomor survivor until a few years ago. In 2019, thanks to a grant from the Minnesota Historical Society, I recorded a set of oral histories with local Holodomor survivors, and children and grandchildren of survivors, which are now housed at the U of M. I was so honored that people trusted me enough to tell some deeply painful family stories. Sharing in a safe environment makes us feel supported and less alone. The Holodomor Descendants Network is an international organization recently set up for that purpose. There is a lot of attention and study taking place right now on the transmission of generational trauma. 

St. Constantine Dance Group, circa 1970s

Q:  You speak of your Ukrainian heritage as an “extra” enrichment to your childhood. What does that mean to you?  

A: Growing up in the 1970s and 80s, I lived in two worlds - the typical American world during the week and my Ukrainian world on the weekends. Friday nights was Ukrainian folk dancing. Saturday mornings we had heritage school followed by youth group and Sundays we went to church. My home base was St. Michael’s (now St. Michael’s and St. George’s) Ukrainian Orthodox Church. That’s where I went to church and Saturday school. But the other churches and organizations held events and activities all the time that I attended also. There were so many concerts, lectures, holidays, historic commemorations - it was a very positive experience. However, underlying it all was an unsaid expectation, maybe, that my generation had to carry the spark or the seed of the Ukrainian nation because Ukraine was not free under the Soviets. It was a captive nation.

Q:  You’re making a film on Ukrainians in Minnesota. Where are you at with the project? Will you go back to the earliest Ukrainians who settled here? What are plans for the film’s distribution?  

A:  With a second grant from the Minnesota Historical Society, I am partnering with three local Ukrainian parishes on a documentary that explores Minnesota's Ukrainian community, with a focus on the impact of the Holodomor. We are currently wrapping up the Research and Writing phase and moving on to seek funding for Implementation. It will cover the time frame from the founding of St. Constantine Ukrainian Catholic Church in 1913 to Ukraine's independence in 1991. Ukrainian immigrants to Minnesota were intimately connected to events happening in Ukraine during those years - lobbying, raising money - just like the community has jumped into action now, when Ukraine is once again in peril.

Q:  We will follow your progress - how may we follow your news?  

A:  To join our mailing list, please email HolodomorMN@gmail.com.

Cochon 555's 'Heritage Fire' set for June 12 at Loews Hotel

Tickets now on sale for June 12 Cochon 555's 'Heritage Fire' 

Tickets are now on sale for Cochon555’s Heritage Fire, the first Minneapolis edition of America’s beloved culinary experience.

 

Taking place at The Loews Hotel Minneapolis on Sunday, June 12, the event will feature an all-star lineup of local chefs and artisans, each cooking globally inspired heritage-breed proteins with offerings including a wide array of beef products from DemKota Ranch Beef, whole pigs, lamb, goat, squab, rabbit, duck, fish, chicken, artisan cheeses, and heirloom vegetables. Produced and owned by Agency 21, the event’s ultimate aim is to provide education to consumers and create an experience that guests can sink their teeth into, honest food from real farmers. Attendees must be 21+ to attend.

 

An all-star cast of the Twin Cities top chefs will be on-site cooking and dishing up delicious bites. Full lineup to be announced in the coming weeks. In addition to one-of-a-kind culinary creations, Heritage Fire will feature free-flowing wine, craft cocktails and beer. All tickets are all-inclusive of unlimited curated dishes, beverage pairings, live entertainment and more!

 

“We’re incredibly fortunate and thankful to return to Minneapolis and bring our Heritage Fire to the Twin Cities for the first time,” says Brett Friedman, Partner & CEO of Agency 21, which owns and operates Heritage Fire, Cochon555, among others. “This new twist to our Cochon 555 tour provides us the opportunity to showcase live Fire proteins and produce that are locally farmed and sustainably harvested.”

 

VIP Early Access: $150

Guests can celebrate early with the VIP experience – an extra 45 minutes to get up close with the chefs, winemakers, and farmers who make it all happen. Chefs will serve one special dish to entice VIP palates, while professional bartenders and sommeliers bring their best game forward with specialty cocktails and reserve wines.

 

General Admission: $99

Feast on responsibly-raised heritage breed animals, a perfect setting of ethically sourced food, and a variety of beverages from local craft breweries, distilleries, and wineries – all created by some of the nation’s most forward-thinking food and drink leaders. 

Art in Bloom Returns On-site at Minneapolis Institute of Art, April 28

The centerpiece of the show is the gorgeous still-life of dahlias painted by Eugène Delacroix.

Mia’s annual springtime celebration is back with four days of unique events, on-site tours, and more than 140 imaginative floral interpretations of artworks from the museum’s collection

Art in Bloom, the annual celebration of art and flowers at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Mia), is back on-site and in person for the first time in two years. This year’s event will take place April 28–May 1, and will coincide with the opening of “Floral Affair: A Bouquet for the Friends’ Centennial,” an exhibition that revisits artworks featured in past Art in Bloom events.

Floral arrangement from the 2019 Art in Bloom. Photo: Minneapolis Institute of ArtPresented by the Friends of the Institute, Art in Bloom will showcase more than 140 imaginative floral interpretations of selected works of art from Mia’s permanent collection, created by volunteer floral artists and commercial florists. During the four-day festival, everyone is invited to enjoy the fresh floral arrangements and commercial florist installations displayed in the galleries alongside the artworks that inspired them.

Highlights of this year’s event include: 

• A featured talk by Lisa Michaux, PhD, a former Mia curator who will bring her unique perspective and engaging style to the topic of floral themes in art. She will illuminate masterpieces by a wide range of artists who adored the subject, including Vincent van Gogh, Édouard Manet, Georgia O’Keeffe, Henri Fantin-Latour, Claude Monet, Pierre-Joseph Redouté, and Eugène Delacroix. Thursday, April 28, 11 a.m. Tickets: $25
• Live floral demonstrations by Bachman’s floral artists. Saturday, April 30, 1 p.m. Tickets: $25 
• Art in Bloom Family Event celebrating May Day with singing, dancing, and storytelling, plus a craft-making activity for kids to decorate a May Day headpiece with fresh flowers and colorful ribbons. Sunday, May 1, 10 a.m.–1:30 p.m. Free admission. 
• Free, guided tours of the floral displays, held in person and virtually. 

Art in Bloom is the principal fundraiser for Mia’s Friends organization, a group of members dedicated to supporting, enhancing, and sustaining Mia’s collections and programs. Proceeds from ticketed lectures and demonstrations provide the Friends’ with funds to pay for buses for tens of thousands of schoolchildren to come to the museum for field trips each year. 

This year marks the 100th anniversary of Mia’s Friends organization. To celebrate, the Friends have planned a special botanical exhibition that will open in the Cargill Gallery during Art in Bloom. “Floral Affair: A Bouquet for the Friends’ Centennial” revisits artworks featured in past Art in Bloom events. 

Visit the Art in Bloom page on Mia’s website for the complete 2022 Art in Bloom program and ticket information. Art in Bloom hours match the museum’s normal hours all weekend. General admission to Art in Bloom is free. The exhibition opens on Wednesday, April 27, and will be on view until August 14.

March 2022 Third Avenue Bridge Project Photos by Doug Verdier, Part 2

Submitted by Doug Verdier, who continues to document the Third Avenue Bridge refurbishment project.

This series of photos shows the removal of the artificial “island” created around the base of one of the Third Avenue Bridge piers to enable workers, equipment and materials access to the base of the pier below the water line to rebuild the base. The whole removal process took several days. Good weather helped, but crews worked day and night.

In this “before” photo, machinery, structures and equipment boxes can be seen lining the gravel island that was built prior to work being started on the base. A ladder tower was also constructed to enable workers access to the work area. All heavy equipment and materials were lowered throughout the project to the work area by tower cranes (red structure in top center of photo).

Much of the materials, equipment boxes and the white structure have been removed from the island by the crane. The yellow excavator is beginning to pull gravel from the edges of the island to enable the crews to remove it. The excavator, which was lowered to the island by crane, is shown building a pile of gravel that it will sit on while removing gravel from around it.

Just above the excavator are two hoppers being lowered by the red tower crane. The excavator operator will fill each hopper many times during the next couple of days (and nights) so the gravel can be taken up to the bridge, loaded onto dump trucks, and hauled away. Note the edges of the island are shrinking.

This photo shows the smaller island as gravel continues to be hauled out of the river. But also note that the ladder that once stood on the island is gone. Look up above the bridge just to the right of the red crane tower and you will see the ladder tower as it is being removed and lowered onto the bridge.

Another shot of the shrinking island. Two workers remained on the site (the excavator operator and a spotter) throughout the removal of the gravel. As the level of the gravel bed beneath the excavator got lower, the tracks of the excavator were standing in water while the remaining gravel was scooped up and hauled above in the hoppers that were lowered from the crane above throughout the operation.

Almost done! Both the excavator and the worker next to it are now standing in river water flowing down stream. More gravel was scooped up and hauled up as dusk approached. When the removal was finished, the two workers hooked up the excavator to cables lowered by the crane and watched as it was hauled slowly and carefully up to the bridge. They remained on the submerged remnants of the island until a smaller container was lowered to them to return to the bridge. Well Done!

A Natural Curiosity: The Story of the Bell Museum Virtual Book Launch with the Bell Museum set for April 20

Virtual book launch for A Natural Curiosity: The Story of the Bell Museum by Lansing Shepard, Don Luce, Barbara Coffin, and Gwen Schagrin

Wednesday, April 20, 7:00-8:30pm

Bell Museum (virtual) Register 

The University of Minnesota's Bell Museum in St. Paul will host a virtual book launch event for the new book A Natural Curiosity: The Story of the Bell Museum (University of Minnesota Press, April 2022) by Lansing Shepard, Don Luce, Barbara Coffin, and Gwen Schagrin on Wednesday, April 20 at 7:00 PM CT. Hosted by the Bell Museum’s Science Director Dr. George Weiblen, the event will feature brief presentations by coauthors Don Luce and Barbara Coffin and a moderated discussion focused on the museum's leadership and innovation in public education throughout its long history. Fellow coauthors Lansing Shepard and Gwen Schagrin will join the event during the Q&A portion of the event.

Since its humble start in 1872 as a one-room cabinet of curiosities, the University of Minnesota’s Bell Museum of natural history has become one of the state’s most important cultural institutions. From its conception as part of a state-mandated geological and natural history survey, to its most recent ventures into technology, environmental science, and DNA sequencing, the Bell Museum has informed, explained, and expanded our relationship to the natural world. Drawing on a wealth of materials unearthed during the museum’s recent move, the gorgeously illustrated book, A Natural Curiosity, chronicles the remarkable discoveries and personalities that have made the Bell Museum what it is today. The Bell Museum's story, engagingly told in A Natural Curiosity, reveals and explores the profound changes undergone by society, science, and the natural landscape over the museum’s lifetime.

Beginning this past January, the Bell Museum celebrates 150 years. The book launch for A Natural Curiosity is part of the yearlong celebration that will feature different experiences that showcase the rich and varied history of the museum.

April 4-8 is Severe Weather Awareness Week, Expect Tornado Drill Sirens April 7

April 4-8 is Severe Weather Awareness Week, when households and businesses are encouraged to practice what they’d do to stay safe if a tornado or severe weather strikes.

Expect sirens April 7

Thursday, April 7, is Tornado Drill Day. Sirens throughout the state will sound at 1:45 p.m. and at 6:45 p.m., giving people time to practice taking shelter in severe weather both at home and in the workplace. According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Minnesota experiences an average of nearly 30 tornadoes per year.

Alerts

An electronic weather alert service can make you aware of any imminent weather danger with email or text notices. Check the Minnesota Department of Public Safety website for options for wireless emergency alerts and smartphone apps.

There is specific information for people with disabilities or access or functional needs about how to prepare for storm season and other emergencies.

If severe weather is approaching:

• Turn to local TV or radio or the weather channel, or make sure you have alerts enabled on a smart device or a weather radio programmed to pick up alerts inside. Weather sirens aren’t intended to be heard inside. If a warning is issued, go to the basement or an inner stairwell.
• If you’re outside and hear the weather sirens, go inside immediately and take shelter in an inner space away from windows. Don’t use elevators.
• Stay sheltered until the all-clear signal has been issued.

More about staying safe during severe weather:

• Alerts and warnings
• Storms, hail and lightning
• Floods
• Tornadoes
• Extreme heat

Find emergency preparedness information on the City website.

Eric Richards Named New General Manager of Lunds & Byerlys Northeast

Article by Becky Fillinger 

Eric RichardsLunds & Byerlys Northeast, 25 University Avenue SE, has a new General Manager. Eric Richards is excited for this new phase of his career and wants to create memorable ‘grocery memories’ for the Northeast neighborhood just like he remembers from his St. Paul childhood. Stop by and say hello!

Q:  Congratulations on your new assignment as General Manager of the Lunds & Byerlys Northeast location. Have you managed a grocery store before? Do you have a high-level vision on where you'd like to lead the store?

A:  Thank you for the warm welcome! I have been in the grocery industry for twelve years. I started as a maintenance employee at our store in Highland Park, and worked at numerous locations before winding up here. This is the first store that I have worked at as a General Manager, and I am excited and humbled to be a part of such a welcoming community.

In my short time working here, I’ve seen how the store has a strong and vibrant history in our neighborhood, so I would most like to ensure that we continue to serve the community. I believe grocery stores are a wonderful cross section of the communities they serve, and our most important task is ensuring that we remain a good neighbor and steward of our “Northeast Neighborhood.” I have fond memories of trekking to the grocery store with my mom growing up in St. Paul, and I’d like to make sure that I can help create similar experiences for others here.

Q:  How much leeway do you have to personalize the customer experience at your location of Lunds & Byerlys? Will you host special events? 

A:  We have leeway to customize the shopping experience at each of our locations, although our “look and feel” is very similar between each of our stores. One thing that I am excited about is a recurring “Meet the Maker” event our Food Expert, Cynthia, is putting together for this summer. We hope to have local vendors at our store one day each weekend for a couple months to highlight their products and be able to spend time meeting people – more to come!

Q:  What's new for Spring, Easter and Passover at Lunds & Byerlys? 

A:  It’s so nice to see that the snow is finally melted and revealed grass underneath! We have a Kosher for Passover display located at the end of Aisle 1 that we just built, and there is already lots of Easter candy throughout our store. Hams are just around the corner, too!

Q:  I know you have a lot of choices - do you have a favorite prepared food from the store? How about from the bakery? 

A:  This one is a tough one for me, because we have all sorts of tasty food. I’d have to say my favorite prepared food throughout the store right now is our Mexican Street Corn salad. I like a little bit of a kick, and it tastes like warmer weather! If I had to select something in the Bakery, I’m a sucker for our new bundt cakes.

Q:  Any food or grocery innovations on the horizon from Lunds & Byerlys Northeast? 

A:  We are always looking to improve the shopping experience at our stores by creating new and flavorful food combinations. Some recent examples are our produce potato steamers, or the bundt cakes that I mentioned earlier. We are constantly rolling out new products that we developed in our test kitchen, which adds some fun surprises when coming in to work each day.

Q:  How may we follow your news?  

A:  Stop by and say hello, or visit us on our store’s Facebook page!