Star Tribune
North Minneapolis’ Hall STEM Academy launches observatory, with NASA astronaut’s help
A north Minneapolis magnet elementary school unveiled its new two-story space observatory Wednesday evening — complete with two research-grade telescopes — and a visit with an astronaut from NASA.
Dozens of students and their parents toured the $1.2 million observatory built at Hall STEM Academy and listened to astronaut Raja Chari talk of his work in space. The school, which serves about 220 students in pre-K to fifth grade, is the first elementary school in the state to have an observatory, said Joel Halvorson, STEM coordinator at Hall.
Chari, who was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Iowa, said he and his colleagues were stunned when they learned about the observatory attached to the elementary school.
“I’m envious of you guys having an observatory in your school,” Chari said. “Dream big, because you guys are going to change the world and the universe.”
Chari was commander of the NASA SpaceX Crew-3 mission to the International Space Station launched on Nov. 10, 2021. He and his crew spent 177 days in orbit, according to NASA’s website. There, he performed two spacewalks and helped in capturing and releasing three SpaceX Dragon spacecraft and two Cygnus cargo vehicles.
The telescope could spark student interest in science and space at a young age, Chari said. New science tables in his eighth-grade classroom was his “spark” into science, he said.
“You guys have really invested in something special here,” Chari said.
Funding for the observatory came from Minneapolis Public Schools’ Comprehensive District Design plan, which aims to eliminate policies and practices that disadvantage students of color and low-income students and brings critical resources to the city’s North Side, Halvorson said.
School officials are still deciding how students will use the telescopes for class, he said. Cameras hooked up to the telescope can record night events, when school usually isn’t in session, for students to watch the next day.
The school also plans to open it up for community use in the future.
Fifth-grader Tristan Van Berlo, 10, said he didn’t think the two-story observatory and large telescopes would be as big as what he saw.
“I thought it was going to be tiny,” he said. “I thought it was going to be twice the height of a chair.”
Mark Job, president of the Minnesota Astronomical Society, advised school staff on the project and said he was impressed with what the school has done. Despite city light pollution, the observatory still gives a good view of planets like Jupiter and Mars because of its shutters, he said.
“During the day, we’ll be able to use that 5-inch refractor to look at the sun and sun spots,” he said to the first group of parents and students who climbed up the observatory’s circular stairwell. “It’s not just a nighttime thing. It will work both ways.”
Star Tribune
Coloring book duo teams up again to highlight St. Paul’s Rondo history
Kosfeld used family photographs and old newspaper pictures as the basis for her illustrations. She also researched clothing of the period. It was important to her, she said, that her drawings “were respectful. No cartoons or caricatures.”
“Rondo,” Kosfeld said, “can be a heavy subject to some communities. But I wanted to show it was just beautiful. Playful.”
The project took nearly two years to complete from January 2023 to early 2024. Kosfeld and Kronick published the coloring book themselves. The Rondo book can be found at several shops and bookstores in St. Paul, including Next Chapter Books, Red Balloon, Wet Paint, Waldmann Brewery, Subtext Books, the Minnesota Historical Society gift shop and St. Paul Children’s Hospital.
Kosfeld is working on a third coloring book with a St. Paul focus, this one on the art, architecture and history of the St. Paul park system, to be published by the Ramsey County Historical Society.
Star Tribune
Harris goes to church while Trump muses about reporters being shot
LITITZ, Pa. — Kamala Harris told a Michigan church on Sunday that God offers America a ”divine plan strong enough to heal division,” while Donald Trump gave a profane and conspiracy-laden speech in which he mused about reporters being shot and labeled Democrats as ”demonic.”
The two major candidates took starkly different tones on the final Sunday of the campaign. Less than 48 hours before Election Day, Harris, the Democratic vice president, argued that Tuesday’s election offers voters the chance to reject ”chaos, fear and hate,” while Trump, the Republican former president, repeated lies about voter fraud to try to cast doubt on the integrity of the vote and suggested that the country was falling apart without him in office.
Harris was concentrating her Sunday in Michigan, beginning the day with a few hundred parishioners at Detroit’s Greater Emmanuel Institutional Church of God in Christ. It marked the fourth consecutive Sunday that Harris, who is Baptist, has spoken to a Black congregation, a reflection of how critical Black voters are across multiple battleground states.
”I see faith in action in remarkable ways,” she said in remarks that quoted the Old Testament prophet Jeremiah. ”I see a nation determined to turn the page on hate and division and chart a new way forward. As I travel, I see Americans from so-called red states and so-called blue states who are ready to bend the arc of history toward justice.”
She never mentioned Trump, though she’s certain to return to her more conventional partisan speech in stops later Sunday. But Harris did tell her friendly audience that ”there are those who seek to deepen division, sow hate, spread fear and cause chaos.” The election and ”this moment in our nation,” she continued, ”has to be about so much more than partisan politics. It must be about the good work we can do together.”
Harris finished her remarks in about 11 minutes — starting and ending during Trump’s roughly 90-minute speech at a chilly outdoor rally at the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, airport.
Trump usually veers from subject to subject, a discursive style he has labeled ”the weave.” But in Lancaster, he went on long tangents and hardly mentioned his usual points on the economy, immigration and rote criticisms of Harris.
Instead, Trump relaunched criticisms of voting procedures across the nation and his own staff. He resurrected grievances about being prosecuted after trying to overturn his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, suggesting at one point that he ”shouldn’t have left” the White House.
Star Tribune
How votes get counted in Minnesota on Election Day
If that’s good, in many counties, election judges have a machine tabulate results, or count votes for candidates. In these counties, one copy of the tape the that machine prints in this process is taken to the central office. In most places, that is the county elections office. In others, the central office is the city elections office, which then reports to the county, Simon said.
Some precincts are close to the elections office, and some are far away, which explains some of the variation in when results show up.
But not every county tabulates at the precinct.
In Ramsey County, judges take the ballot counting machines from precincts to the county’s election office, Elections Manager David Triplett said. There, judges of different parties verify the machines’ seals, check the number of ballots against the number of voters that day, and if they add up, tabulate the votes.
“We have 100 receipts; we have 100 ballots. All right, go ahead and let’s report that result,” he said.
It is legal for precincts to transmit results to central offices online, but it’s rare, Simon said. And no devices used in the election can be connected to the internet while voting is in progress.
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