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Montgomery Co. offers a special lens to view fall for colorblind visitors

Published Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:20:49 GMT

Ashlyn Thompson’s father recently received an invitation to view the vibrant red, yellow and orange colors of fall. As a colorblind person, it’s something he’s never seen before.Montgomery Parks recently acquired special color-correcting glasses for color deficient visitors, and the agency did a test run last month that included Thompson’s dad.“We invited six volunteers to try these glasses for the first time,” said Thompson, who’s also an Inclusion and Community Outreach specialist at the agency. “It was a lot of ‘Oh my gosh, this is what you guys see every day?’ It was incredibly heartwarming.”Colorblindness is a difficulty seeing the difference between certain colors, especially red and green. Some color deficient people also struggle making out blue, green and yellow objects. The condition is often inherited and has no cure.The glasses were developed by EnChroma, a California-based company. Thompson said she was i...

Wetter Times Ahead by Midweek

Published Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:20:49 GMT

A warm — if not hot — Saturday was endured across South Florida with a record high tied in Miami at 89F, and more warm weather is ahead this Sunday.High pressure continues to hold on to control across the area this Sunday, allowing for mostly dry conditions and above average temperatures. The only difference is that there should be a few more clouds around compared to the sunny skies seen on Saturday.Now by Monday, a front is going to begin to approach from the north. It’s a very weak front but what it will do it start to increase our winds out of the northeast and introduce more clouds into the picture.Monday will feature partly sunny skies and temperatures that are still warm, but also with the chance for showers, especially across northern areas late in the day.That shower and isolated storm chance will linger into our Tuesday, so some areas will be dry while others could be wet depending on where the highest moisture sets up as the weak front stalls across the ...

UN calls attacks near Gaza hospital ‘reprehensible’ as demands for cease-fire grow

Published Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:20:49 GMT

As Israel pummels Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital in the north of the Palestinian enclave, global organizations are rallying behind calls for an immediate cease-fire in the war against Hamas.The World Health Organization said in the early hours of Sunday morning that it had lost contact with the 700-bed Al-Shifa health care facility, one of the largest in Gaza, pointing to reports of those leaving the scene being shot.“As horrifying reports of the hospital facing repeated attacks continue to emerge, we assume our contacts joined tens of thousands of displaced people and are fleeing the area,” the WHO posted on X.Israel claims Hamas has installed armed command centers inside hospitals and other civilian facilities, but Doctors Without Borders said that Al-Shifa, which includes maternity and outpatient areas providing emergency and surgical care, had been targeted with power cuts while access for ambulances or evacuation had been cut too.“This is unconscionable, reprehensible and must ...

Dubai air chiefs summit, sponsored by Israeli firm, avoids discussing strikes as Hamas war rages

Published Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:20:49 GMT

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — As Israel unleashes one of the most-intense aerial bombing campaigns the Middle East has ever seen, leaders from the world’s top air forces met Sunday in the United Arab Emirates to talk about almost anything that wasn’t an airstrike. The discussions at the Dubai International Air Chiefs’ Conference, held ahead of the biennial Dubai Air Show this week, shows the delicate balancing act the federation of seven sheikhdoms faces. The UAE maintains diplomatic ties with Israel despite widespread and growing anger in the Arab world over the civilian casualties from Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip against Hamas. The Air Chiefs’ Conference demonstrates how those ties continue, particularly as Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd., an Israeli defense manufacturer, was a sponsor of the summit. And while the Dubai Air Show focuses primarily on commercial aircraft in a region crucial to East-West travel, there’s a military comp...

Readers and writers: Celebrating Minnesota Native authors — in several genres

Published Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:20:49 GMT

November is Native American Heritage Month so today we’re saluting Minnesota Native authors whose new books in several genres remind us that Native people are here and telling their stories, especially in our vibrant writing community.‘A Song over Miskwaa Rapids’: by Linda LeGarde Grover (University of Minnesota Press, $21.95)“Who could the dead man be?” was asked and wondered about in the Elders Club in the casino, at the tobacco shop in the gas station, and in the teachers’ lounge at the elementary school. Where might the dead man have come from, and where was he going? The most intriguing question of all: how did Michael Washington’s driver’s license come to be on the corpse of an unidentified young man from decades ago?  How did this happen, and what might Michael’s involvement be? The story, now back in the media, grew like seeds planted in fertile soil as it intertwined with the histories of tribal dealings and relationship...

Twin Cities’ first kicksled shop opens in downtown St. Paul as the sport gains traction

Published Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:20:49 GMT

When Melisa Christensen first hopped on a kicksled and slid happily across a frozen pond in West St. Paul, she thought to herself, “Why isn’t everyone in Minnesota doing this?”Three years after that first ride, Christensen opened her own kicksled shop in downtown St. Paul this week, called Brave the Snow, to share that childlike joy with others.First things first, what is a kicksled? Christensen describes it as a miniature dog sled that you stand on the back of and kick like a scooter. Kicksleds also have a small bench in front for a child or small person to sit on.As for the learning curve, “Anybody can do it,” Christensen said, “It’s less intimidating because you don’t have to strap on special boots or have any equipment.”Filling a nicheKicksledding, which began in Scandinavia as a mode of transportation, is slowly gaining popularity in the Twin Cities. “It’s just as Scandinavian as lutefisk and lefse,” Christensen said.When she tried to buy her first kicksled in 2020, Christensen...

Progressives continue notching victories in St. Paul with candidates, sales tax question winning on ballot

Published Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:20:49 GMT

On the Friday before St. Paul’s Nov. 7 election, city council member Mitra Jalali joined leaders of the St. Paul Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and members of Faith in Minnesota/ISAIAH, a progressive interfaith advocacy organization, outside the Karibu Grocery and Deli on Payne Avenue to advocate for raising the city’s sales tax to fund roads and parks.They were joined by Black Hart of St. Paul bar owner Wes Burdine, as well as labor organizers from the Service Employees International Union, which represents frontline workers in the commercial cleaning and health care sectors, and LIUNA Local 563, which represents everyday laborers in the construction industry.Also among the participants in the speak-out was Amina Abdulahi, a member of ISAIAH’s Muslim coalition, who took the microphone to share in Somali her experiences as an East Sider.“In Ward 7, our roads are broken,” said Abdulahi, communicating through an interpreter. “Fixing the roads, and th...

Robert K. Vischer: Higher ed: responsible for the whole person, not just the future employee

Published Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:20:49 GMT

Ask anyone you know in higher education today, and they’ll tell you there are always two notable things about this point of the fall: first, the semester is already more than halfway over (where did the time go?) and secondly, their admissions colleagues are on the road already working feverishly to recruit next fall’s freshman class (again, where did the time go?).The academic calendar is very cyclical and predictable. But we within higher ed would be foolish to treat this cycle as routine. Even now as high school seniors are narrowing down their list of colleges and universities, many are also wondering if those lists shouldn’t be altogether scrapped. With rising public concern about whether college offers a sound economic return on investment (ROI), can you blame them?At a time when economic pressures continue to be constricting, students and their families are right to scrutinize the ROI of a college degree. And as for us in higher ed … while we should be attentive to future ear...

Jesse Wegman: Teach the importance — and the principles — of free speech

Published Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:20:49 GMT

It was a relief to learn of the arrest last week of a 21-year-old Cornell University student for threatening to rape and murder Jews on campus in reaction to the Israel-Hamas war. It was also an easy case: Violent threats against specific people are illegal, and they are dealt with by the justice system, not school administrators.Easy cases are hard to come by these days, especially at colleges and universities, where the divisions over the Middle East conflict are starker than in any other sector of American society. Examples abound of abhorrent speech by students and faculty members, mostly aimed at Israel, Jews and even Jewish students — and yet abhorrent does not equal criminal. How should a university respond when members of its community express sentiments that are at odds with the values the school is trying to inculcate, not to mention with human decency?There are answers, and they won’t make everyone happy. They start with a core value that too often gets lost in the heat o...

Literary pick for Nov. 12

Published Tue, 11 Feb 2025 11:20:49 GMT

We build community because we can’t expect, demand, or control the machinations of the captivity business. Likewise, we can’t be sure that the politics of confinement will provide the spiritual and artistic  resources we need to transcend our encagements. These Collectives are our expression of both community and art. They provide our agency. The carceral state will not feed the kind of hunger an artist in these kinds of places experiences. So, we find ways to feed each other. — from “American Precariat”These words were written by Zeke Caligiuri, one of a dozen incarcerated writers, including some award-winners, who edited “American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion” (Coffee House Press, $19.95), made up of 15 essays by authors not in prison. His foreword traces the growth of writing classes and artists’ communities in the Minnesota prison system, beginning in Stillwater where the first prisoner-produced publications were born. He also ...