Star Tribune
Oh say, can you see Minnesota’s new flag popping up everywhere?
Minnesota’s new state flag doesn’t actually become its official banner until May. But Christopher Finlayson has already been flying the blue-and-white colors outside his home in Columbia Heights since the end of January.
“It’s new, [I’m] just more excited to show it off than anything,” Finlayson said. In the weeks since the state flag commission approved the new design in mid-December, following months of debate, it’s started to show up on flagpoles as well as mugs, stickers, hockey jerseys and other merchandise, as entrepreneurs try to capture the excitement generated by the process of replacing the old flag, which was adopted in 1957.
Minnesota’s statehood day, the anniversary of the day in 1858 when it became the 32nd state to join the union, is May 11. State lawmakers must officially approve or reject the new design by then; the DFL-controlled Legislature is expected to do so over the opposition of Republicans, who are trying to turn their opposition to the redesign into a political rallying cry.
The new flag is simpler in design than its predecessor, which featured an illustration of a Native American on a horseback waving to a farmer set on a blue background. The new version works better from a design standpoint, said Michael Green, owner of Flags for Good, an Indianapolis-based retailer that sells flags in an online store and to other businesses.
Green said Minnesota’s new flag looks much better than the old one on merchandisable items.
“They need to be recognizable at a distance,” Green said. “Any flag that has a seal on it, fails the test off right the bat.”
Flags for Good made garden flags, stickers and an LGBTQ version of the new Minnesota state flag since its reveal in December 2023.
Lee Herold, owner of Herold Flags, a flag store in Rochester, advocated for a new state flag since 1987. He said the old one was “not popular.”
“People would come in to get the state flag and they didn’t even know what it looked like,” Herold said.
“I had originally purchased it thinking, ‘oh, I’ll hang it on Flag Day,'” Greene said. “But then I got excited when it arrived in the mail.”
Republicans want to give voters final approval over the new design.
Rep. Bjorn Olson, R-Fairmount, served on the flag redesign commission, which included 13 voting members. He and other GOP legislators say the process was rushed and included only a handful of opinions.
“Thirteen people don’t have the right to tell 5.5 million people who they are and what they should identify with,” Olson said.
Herold, the Rochester store owner, is a member of the North American Vexillological Association, which is an organization of flag lovers who talk about and promote flag designs. He and Rev. William Becker submitted one of the 2,000 designs for the flag commission to consider, but the panel went with a mockup created by 24-year-old Andrew Prekker as the basis for the new state flag.
Prekker joined a Reddit server called “Vexillology” to learn how to create a meaningful flag. His final design had three main concepts to represent the state. The North Star, blue for water, and an abstract shape of the state. Prekker said it’s been a thrill to see it start popping up in the real world.
“People around the state are putting it on their front porches, which is crazy, and a really cool process to see,” Prekker said.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
