Star Tribune
Solar eclipse a no-show in cloudy Minnesota
Kristen Christenson brought her twin boys to the Bell Museum in St. Paul on Monday, where hundreds gathered in the afternoon to catch what they hoped might be even a quick glimpse of a solar eclipse behind a gray, cloudy sky.
Timothy and Benjamin Christenson had a large LEGO set depicting Earth, its sun and the moon in orbit. “I figured other people would also find it entertaining,” said Christenson, who gave it to her boys for their fifth birthday in March, and which they’ve played with every day since. As it turned out, the toy model setting in the grass was a big hit among the Bell crowd — who, like all Minnesotans who stayed local on Monday, were totally deprived of an actual celestial show by the crummy weather. Meanwhile, the twins demonstrated on the LEGO set what was happening above, behind the clouds.
“This is it, guys,” Christenson, who had also carted in homemade viewing boxes, said as the eclipse reached its supposed local peak. “It looks like nothing.”
Optimism turned to mild disappointment for those Minnesotans who weren’t keeping a close eye on the forecast Monday. As sky watchers in select parts of the U.S. experienced a few minutes of dark at daytime, the crowds gathered at the Bell and across town at the Science Museum of Minnesota made solar-themed crafts and watched livestream feeds of the eclipse from other, sunnier cities experiencing totality.
An eclipse last October also fell on a cloudy day locally, though that day saw the clouds part enough to give dedicated watchers a show, said Sally Brummel, planetarium manager at the Bell Museum. Despite Monday’s disappointment, Brummel was still feeling lofty.
“An eclipse lets us really understand where we are in the universe,” she said. “We’re able to see or experience these two other objects in the sky, the sun and the moon and they line up just perfectly, and they’re just the same size of the sky for an eclipse to happen.”
In downtown St. Paul, the Science Museum of Minnesota was also bustling, with many kids on spring break visiting with their parents. On the museum’s outdoor terrace, beneath the clouds, Kevyn Zeipelt of St. Paul said she was disappointed but didn’t regret the attempt.
“We had to give it a shot, at least,” Zeipelt said, adding that “there are other cool things at the Science Museum.”
Heather Ethen, who was visiting with her four kids, said they made plans months ago to visit the Science Museum for the kids. The weather made it feel like a letdown, she said.
“Disappointed is a great word for it,” Ethen said.
Back at the Bell, as peak viewing time came and went with nothing but cloudy skies, Christenson turned on her phone’s flashlight and shined it into the cereal box projectors that she and her sons had created for the occasion, trying to give them a taste of the visual effects they would have seen had it been a sunnier day.
Star Tribune
Aunt IDs 3-year-old who was fatally shot in Minneapolis home, speaks about what happened
A close relative on Tuesday identified the 3-year-old boy who was fatally shot this week in his family’s northeast Minneapolis apartment a day earlier.
Woods said police have told the family that Jajuan got ahold of the gun and it went off.
“Someone left a loaded gun [in the home,” said Woods, who has started an online fundraiser for her sister, Charlotte Williams. “He got ahold of it thinking it was a toy.”
Woods said her nephew, who went by Junior, “loved trucks and dinosaurs. He was just so silly and goofy. He was a momma’s boy.”
Jajuan suffered a gunshot wound to the top of the head, a source with knowledge of the incident told the Star Tribune. Paramedics rushed the toddler to HCMC, where he died a short time later.
Woods said she did not know who owned the gun.
Police spokesman Trevor Folke said Tuesday evening there have been no arrests and had no update to share in the “active and ongoing investigation.”
Bergman is championing efforts to boost literacy and invest in early childhood programming, and getting there, she said, requires financial sustainability, and that may mean closings and mergers. She attended last week’s finance committee meeting — as she’s done on a regular basis — and described the mention of “opportunity” as another rosy way of avoiding hard truths.
The district is spread too thin, she said. Some schools could take more students. Yet in others, class sizes are huge and caseloads so large that educators can’t build relationships with students and families, she said.
“I just fundamentally believe, and it’s been one of the objectives of my campaign, to be someone out in the community talking about this moment, listening to reactions, and listening for the places where families could get on board with the possibility of their beloved school having to close,” she said.
A way to get there, Bergman said, is by consolidating buildings, and in turn, expanding programming — perhaps not far from the school left behind.
Callahan argues that the mere mention of closings is causing families to leave the district: “This is not something that should be talked about so flippantly,” she said.
She said she would entertain the idea only if there also are plans to stabilize and recruit students, plus answers to three questions: How much money is being saved by closing a building? How many students will be retained if the school closes? And how many new students have to enroll to keep it open?
State environmental regulators are suing the Lake County Planning Commission to try to stop a developer from building 49 new cabins at a century-old fishing resort on an entry lake to the Boundary Waters Canoe Wilderness Area.
The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said that the planning board ignored local and state shoreline protection rules to allow the Silver Rapids Resort on Farm Lake to build the cabins. The project would accompany an extensive remodel and renovation to a motel and restaurant on the site that would also increase the size and number of docks.
The agency asked a district court judge in a suit filed Oct. 3 to throw out the resort’s permit for the construction. A hearing is scheduled for November and no work will be allowed to start while the case is pending. A group of homeowners in the area opposed to the project filed a separate lawsuit that also seeks to overturn the resort’s permit.
Alex Campbell, the environmental service specialist for the planning commission, declined to comment on ongoing litigation. Commission member and Lake County Board Chair Rich Sve did not return phone calls seeking an interview. Sandy Hoff, one of the site’s developers, did not return messages seeking comment.
Silver Rapids opened in 1919 as a fishing resort on a stretch of shore where White Iron Lake meets the western edge of Farm Lake. The Boundary Waters begins on Farm Lake’s eastern shore a couple miles from the resort. It has 12 small cabins on site, an 11-room motel, a restaurant and 21 campsites.
Developers asked the county planning commission for a permit to allow an $45 million expansion that would include a remodel of the restaurant, the installation of a tiki bar and the building of 49 new cabins that would each be sold to up to four owners apiece and rented out when those owners aren’t using them.
The expansion would increase the total number of dwelling units on the site from 13 to 62 and add 12 new docks with space for 75 boats.
But the county’s shoreline protection rules, which were written in the 1990s, allow the resort a maximum of 29 dwelling units and docks that could fit a maximum of 14 boats, the DNR argued in its complaint.
