Star Tribune
Are mass shootings really the legacy we want to leave for our children?
Last week, I took my three girls to our neighborhood movie theater to see “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” Years ago, every community had one of those discount theaters, but now they’ve become scarce.
We love to go during the day, midweek, if they don’t have school, because you can get unlimited popcorn for just $4. It’s a steal.
As we emerged from the light-hearted film, however, we saw a man in the hallway. He wore a black security shirt and he had a gun in a holster on his waist.
His presence and firearm seemed, sadly, normal and appropriate. I worry that we’ve just accepted this. I worry that the next generation – my daughters’ generation – will have to undo the crisis we’ve allowed to fester: the normalization of mass shootings.
They are the only thing that seems to unite us: not the politicized conversation about the gun regulations that would curb those shootings – as if there are two sides to this – but our collective vulnerability.
It does not matter who you are. Maybe you’re rich or poor. Maybe you’re respected in your community. Maybe you feel alone and overlooked. Maybe you’re young. Maybe you’re old. Maybe you’re in Minneapolis. Maybe you’re in Cottage Grove. Maybe you’re at the airport. Or church. Or work. Or school. Or … The venue is irrelevant now. These bullets do not discriminate.
Congratulations. We’ve done it. We are together now. It could happen anywhere at any time to anyone.
While I understand the disruptive forces that have complicated the attempt to end mass shootings in this country, I also do not believe that resistance is any different than the hurdles within other pivotal moments in American history. Every push that has led to safety and additional freedoms encountered seemingly immovable obstacles.
Where would BIPOC communities be right now if civil rights activists, advocates and allies in the past 100 years had decided that their demands were not attainable. What about women? Or the LGBTQ community?
Through those historic disruptions to the status quo, there was a constant refrain: We will not stop until this is fixed.
I do not hear the same retort about mass shootings. Only acceptance, one steeped in frustration and helplessness. I get it. I am not here to say I have the answers. But I also don’t think it’s fair to ask our children to address the consequences of our inaction.
Sure, I am standing on my soapbox while preaching to the choir as I attempt to tell it like it is. Those clichés mimic our repeated responses to the familiar devastation. Our pain is both real and rehearsed.
Those who live with the pain of that violence watch the headlines about the tragedies disappear in 24 hours.
“It’s a nightmare that I don’t wish on any parent – to go in and to see my baby lying there in a pile of blood,” said LaTonya Allen, the mother of one victim of a mass shooting at a Sweet 16 party in Alabama. “That was the worst thing that I could experience in my life.”
Earlier that week, I’d reached out to a friend of mine who lives in Louisville near the scene of a mass shooting at a downtown bank.
“Hey man? You good?” I said.
“Yeah. I’m not at the house right now,” he said.
Relief. For now.
“This is awful,” Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said at the news conference in the immediate aftermath of that Louisville shooting. “I have a very close friend that didn’t make it today, and I have another close friend that didn’t either and one who’s at the hospital that I hope is going to make it through.”
There are things I don’t tell my children related to my fears attached to their safety in this climate.
They hate that I sit in the aisle seats about halfway up the stairs in the theater. Every time. For me, it’s the angle. I can see most of the room and any character who might decide to unleash destruction.
I’m not Batman. I can’t stop these events singlehandedly. I know that.
But I’m comforted by the perception of security. I’m always looking around the theater, missing key scenes from the movies, wondering if that man who is just going back to get more popcorn for his family will do something terrible. And he probably thinks the same thing about me.
It’s fair to say we all don’t know what to do, especially with power-brokers throughout this country who refuse to use their influence to stop these mass shootings. But I also do not think that’s sufficient.
This week, I received an email from my youngest daughter’s school. A meeting had been scheduled to offer guidance on school shootings and her school’s active shooter response plan.
My daughter is in kindergarten.
But she is doing those safety drills that didn’t exist 20 years ago. She does not fully understand them but she understands the concept of searching for safety and security in the middle of potential chaos.
She knows her movie theater has a man with a gun who roams the hallways to keep people safe.
She does not know, however, that so many of us have decided that we can’t identify a solution to change this.
The Lynx are in the hot seat.
The team lost Game 3 of the WNBA Finals series against the New York Liberty on Wednesday night 77-80, setting the stage for a decisive match at Target Center on Friday night. Fans in the arena reacted with resounding disappointment after Sabrina Ionescu sunk a three-pointer to break away from the tie game and dashed the Lynx’s chance at forcing overtime.
Before we get to the reactions, first things first: The Lynx set an attendance record, filling Target Center with 19,521 spectators for the first time in franchise history. That’s nearly 500 more than when Caitlin Clark was in town with the Indiana Fever earlier this year.
Despite leading by double digits for much of the game, the Lynx began the fourth quarter with a one-point lead over the Liberty and struggled to stay more than two or three points ahead throughout.
The Liberty took the lead with minutes to go in the fourth quarter and folks were practically despondent.
Of course, there were people who were in it solely for the spectacle. Nothing more.
The Lynx took a commanding lead early in the first quarter and ended the first half in winning position, setting a particularly jovial mood among the fanbase to start the game.
Inside Target Center, arena announcers spent a few minutes before the game harassing Lynx fans — and Liberty fans — who had not yet donned the complementary T-shirts draped over every seat.
DULUTH – The Minnesota and Wisconsin transportation departments will make upgrades to the Richard I. Bong Memorial Bridge in the summer of 2025, in preparation for the structure to become the premiere route between this city and Superior during reconstruction of the Blatnik Bridge.
Built in 1961, the Blatnik Bridge carries 33,000 vehicles per day along Interstate 535 and Hwy. 53. It will be entirely rebuilt, starting in 2027, with the help of $1 billion in federal funding announced earlier this year. MnDOT and WisDOT are splitting the remaining costs of the project, about $4 million each.
According to MnDOT, projects on the Bong Bridge will include spot painting, concrete surface repairs to the bridge abutments, concrete sealer on the deck, replacing rubber strip seal membranes on the main span’s joints and replacing light poles on the bridge and its points of entry. It’s expected to take two months, transportation officials said during a recent meeting at the Superior Public Library.
During this time there will be occasional lane closures, detours at the off-ramps, and for about three weeks the sidewalk path alongside the bridge will be closed.
The Bong Bridge, which crosses the St. Louis River, opened to traffic in 1985 and is the lesser-used of the two bridges. Officials said they want to keep maintenance to a minimum on the span during the Blatnik project, which is expected to take four years.
Red Wing will celebrate the grand opening of its first permanent set of pickleball courts next week with an “inaugural play” on the six courts at Colvill Park on the banks of the Mississippi, between a couple of marinas and next to the aquatic center.
Among the first to get to play on the new courts will be David Anderson, who brought pickleball to the local YMCA in 2008, before the nationwide pickleball craze took hold, and Denny Yecke, at 92 the oldest pickleball player in Red Wing.
The inaugural play begins at 11 a.m. Tuesday, with a rain date of the next day. Afterward will be food and celebration at the Colvill Park Courtyard building.
Tim Sletten, the city’s former police chief, discovered America’s fastest-growing sport a decade ago after he retired. With fellow members of the Red Wing Pickleball Group, he’d play indoors at the local YMCA or outdoors at a local school, on courts made for other sports. But they didn’t have a permanent place, so they approached the city about building one.
When a city feasibility study came up with a high cost, about $350,000, Sletten’s group got together to raise money.
The courts are even opening ahead of schedule, originally set for 2025.
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