Star Tribune
How did Rochester save the giant Canada goose?
The giants weren’t really all gone, however.
While ornithologists argued about whether they existed, a flock was growing in Rochester.
In the 1920s, Dr. Charles Mayo purchased 15 Canada geese in North Dakota. He brought them to Mayowood, his more than 3,000-acre family estate in Rochester. At least some — maybe all — were giants. The flock attracted wild birds and began to grow exponentially.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt rode in a car with Dr. Charles H. Mayo, center, and Dr. William J. Mayo in 1934.
The birds got more help in the 1930s, when the city damned the Zumbro River and created the 20-acre Silver Lake. For decades, a power plant discharged warm water into the lake, keeping it from freezing over in the winter. Canada geese started coming by the thousands to make their home in Rochester.
Because Canada geese pick out mates based on size (called assortative mating) and then stick together for life, the giants among them maintained their subspecies. They became the dominant type of branta canadensis in Rochester.
Hanson, a bird expert who worked for the Illinois Natural History Survey, often came through Rochester during fall fishing trips. He was “perplexed” by their seemingly large size, he wrote, but could never be sure just how much bigger they were. Maybe he was misremembering what the Canada geese looked like in Illinois, he wrote.
A St. Paul man has received a prison term topping 13 years for orchestrating what investigators said was the biggest fentanyl pill bust in Minnesota history, carried out by several accomplices who mailed the deadly opioid in stuffed toy animals from Arizona to the Twin Cities.
Cornell Montez Chandler, 25, was sentenced Wednesday in U.S. District Court in St. Paul after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute fentanyl in connection with the operation that ran from August 2022 to February 2023.
After serving 13⅓ years in prison, Chandler will be on supervised release for another five years.
One of the investigating agencies, the Washington County Sheriff’s Office, said the capture of the unprecedented haul totaled 280,000 pills. They weighed more than 66 pounds and had a street value of roughly $2.2 million.
From 2022 to 2023, Minnesota saw an 8% decrease in drug overdose deaths from 1,384 to 1,274 deaths, according to preliminary data from the state last month. Though the numbers are preliminary, 2023 likely marks the first time since 2018 that Minnesota has seen a drop in this category.
“Chandler wasn’t just part of that epidemic; he fueled it,” prosecutors wrote to the court ahead of sentencing as part of their push for a sentence of 15⅔ years for Chandler, whose criminal history in Minnesota also includes convictions for first-degree robbery, fleeing police, drug possession and drunken driving.
“He not only traveled to Arizona with other co-defendants, where he personally participated in the packaging and shipping process,” the filing continued, “but he also organized and directed other defendants with shipping and trafficking information, retrieved or received packages from the recipients in the Twin Cities, and coordinated the distribution of fentanyl for further trafficking through several co-defendants.”
The defense asked that Chandler get 10 years in prison, noting he was exposed to substance abuse in his home as a child, and that he suffered lingering trauma from when he was hit in the abdomen by a stray bullet at age 20.
Star Tribune
Minnesota electric utilities hope to keep Inflation Reduction Act benefits after Trump and Republican Congress take over
An October analysis by the Washington Post found that GOP U.S. Rep. Michelle Fischbach’s district has $423 million in investments related to the IRA, the most in Minnesota.
It will be up to the power industry to demonstrate the jobs and other benefits of the IRA and renewable development in general to voters, said Beth Soholt, executive director of Clean Grid Alliance, a St. Paul-based nonprofit representing wind, solar, battery and transmission developers.
“If you look at the election results and the analysis, a lot of it is like ‘people didn’t really see what the Biden administration was doing for their pocketbook and they didn’t see it in their day to day lives,’” Soholt said. “So how can you have more visibility that new taxes are coming into their community coffers and they’re getting spent on things that matter in their lives.”
Outside of the IRA, there could be room for common ground between Trump and Minnesota’s electric sector.
“Good to see you, Amy.”
That’s something I might expect to hear when my Lyft driver picks me up, I check into my hotel or I show up for a restaurant reservation. From a driverless car? Not so much.
But that’s exactly how I was greeted each time my husband, teenage son and I took a self-driving Waymo taxi through the hilly streets of San Francisco in August. Considering it was a highlight of our eight-day trip for my 13-year-old (who would rather have been back home playing Fortnite with his friends in our basement), we used it frequently to get around.
During our first few rides, I was uneasy about the autonomous vehicles (all-electric Jaguar I-PACEs), to which my kid exasperatedly declared, “Get with the times, Mom. Get with the times.” Fair enough. The more we used them, the more natural it became. I even developed a fondness for the ride-hailing service. It was a relief not to feel judged for short rides (again, those hills!), but I did miss insider travel tips from actual human drivers.
Of course, San Francisco is far more than the autonomous vehicles owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet. We decided on the City by the Bay because of cheap Sun Country round-trip tickets (under $600 for the three of us) and a good deal at the classy Argonaut Hotel on the outskirts of touristy Fisherman’s Wharf.
The hotel was the perfect base to walk from for watching sea lions jockey for position on the floats at Pier 39, playing vintage arcade games at the Musée Mécanique (big thumbs up from the teen), trying In-N-Out Burger (parents disappointed, teen another big thumbs up) and marveling at the picturesque views from the towering SkyStar Wheel. While the wharf was fun, we spent most of our time exploring other neighborhoods. Here are four stand-out experiences worthy of a place in your San Francisco itinerary.
A nighttime tour of Alcatraz Island elevates its eerie vibe. (Amy Carlson Gustafson/For the Minnesota Star Tribune)
“The first thing you want to learn when you hit Alcatraz is keep your mouth shut and walk with your back to the wall,” declares the narrator on the captivating Alcatraz cellhouse self-guided-audio tour. Told from the point of view of guards and prisoners, the chilling story guides you through the infamous federal penitentiary located on an island just off the coast of San Francisco.
Active from 1934 to 1963, Alcatraz was home to big-time criminals including Al Capone, George “Machine-Gun” Kelly and Robert Stroud (aka the “Birdman of Alcatraz”). With the nighttime tour, the darkness elevates Alcatraz’s eerie vibe as visitors explore the island, the prison’s dilapidated cells, long haunting hallways, and grim dining hall. And if the weather cooperates, you’ll be treated to a stunning sunset.
