Star Tribune
Journalist and author Larry Millett highlights St. Paul history
A: Well, if I’m doing a book like “Lost [Twin Cities],” I’m researching a lot of different places. I’m looking at old newspapers, old magazines. I’m looking at architects and architectural styles, looking at the history of how things were developing in downtown Minneapolis or St Paul. When I do research for one of my novels, I did one called “Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders,” I’ll research things like the Winter Carnival. It’s set in 1896, and I was hoping I could use a real ice palace. But turns out, the 1896 Ice Palace, melted before it was done. So, I made up an ice palace.
You’ll find the name of a certain well-known person who was in town. And you start digging into that, seeing if you can maybe insert them into the book. I insert a lot of real people into my books. James J. Hill is in a lot. I look for real places and people to incorporate into the novel to make it feel more real.
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.
Under the dimmed lights of coach Drew Potter’s classroom, the three dozen football players of Staples-Motley — many of them sporting bleached hair in a show of solidarity — watched game tape on Wednesday afternoon. The coach, in his dark-framed glasses and Adidas shoes, peppered his speech with vintage Dad jokes, references to John Mellencamp and Drowning Pool lyrics, and a line from “Karate Kid.”
But they listened as he spoke about assignments against Chatfield.
“Other towns have very good athletes, too,” Potter said. “But we prepare. Right now, we’re in the classroom.”
In the corner, a collage of newspapers from the ‘88 season. In Potter’s first year, the team didn’t win a game. Last year, when they reached the playoffs, the local paper didn’t put them on the front page. Now, Potter said, they’re splashed all over it.
It’s a recognition that the towns are behind them.
Poring over a copy of the Staples-Motley Athletic Hall of Fame annual, booster Mike Hajek notes the district’s lineage runs deep, with legacies in cross-country, tennis and wrestling. The retired longtime Minnesota Twins broadcaster Dick Bremer, a graduate of Staples, hasn’t even been inducted yet. But Superintendent Shane Tappe, whose son is on the team, noted this year’s cumulative GPA of the volleyball team. The activities director noted the prowess of the speech team.
Star Tribune
Slower ballot processing, expectation of instant results fodder for vote-count skeptics
“A very large amount of absentee ballots dropped off at cities tonight is causing a delay in our reporting,” read an Anoka County statement on election night. “We want our results to be 100% complete instead of releasing a partial count. It could be a couple of more hours.”
In years past, absentee ballots had to be received by 3 p.m. Election Day, but this year, the deadline was moved to 8 p.m. People who waited to return their absentee ballots until Election Day had five extra hours, meaning less time for the election officials opening envelopes, checking to make sure signatures on the envelopes matched those of the registered voter, and double-checking with partisan absentee ballot judges, and finally feeding ballots into vote-counting machines.
On Wednesday, Scott County election officials explained they would recount all 21,000 ballots from the House District 54A. DFL Rep. Brad Tabke holds a 14-vote lead in the race, and if Republican Aaron Paul prevailed in the recount, it would give Republicans control of the state House. Scott County will also audit Shakopee’s 10th Precinct to figure out why it had a record of receiving 20 more ballots than it has a record of counting.
A few people in attendance asked questions.
How are ballots counted? Who is in the room? Who can observe what officials do when they find something amiss and have to count again? Will the recount be open for the public to observe?
Shakopee Mayor Matt Lehman said he was glad for the scrutiny on elections.
