Star Tribune
Two Minnesota kids write their way to national recognition for cursive skills
Caden Baune, a fourth-grader from the southwest Minnesota town of Lamberton, is already a three-sport athlete at age 9. But it’s his skill on the printed page that’s won him national recognition.
Caden is this year’s Zaner-Bloser grand national champion among fourth graders in handwriting. The Red Rock Elementary student was selected as the fourth grader with the cleanest cursive handwriting in his school.
Cursive, for the record, is a style of penmanship where letters are connected in a flowing style, as opposed to block printing. It’s still taught in many schools, though not as widely as it once was.
He proceeded to win the Central Region and ultimately the Zaner-Bloser National Handwriting Contest.
“It really proved that if you work hard, you can improve wherever you want to,” Baune said.
Believe it or not, Caden was not the only Minnesota student to win the award from Zaner-Bloser, an Ohio-based company that markets curriculum for elementary schools. In the fifth-grade category, 10-year-old Zita Miller of St. Anne’s Academy in White Bear Lake took the top prize.
Zita said she writes everything in cursive. But the stakes of the competition still felt high enough that she was a little nervous when it came time to put pen to paper. When she found out she won, she said, several emotions hit at once.
“I felt very nervous, excited and happy at the same time,” Zita said.
In her free time, Zita said, she likes to unleash her creative mind by writing stories and mysteries in a journal she keeps.
Caden said he practiced his cursive at home sparingly in the lead-up to the competition. Most of his training happened in the classroom. Even then, Caden said, he typically writes most assignments in regular print handwriting. But he signs all of his worksheets and homework in cursive.
Jodi Smith, Caden’s fourth-grade teacher, said her class learns the cursive alphabet, and each student learns to write their own name in cursive.
“Part of the goal is to help the students develop a signature,” Smith said
The Zaner-Bloser competition requires students to write “the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” in cursive — a sentence that uses every letter in the English language and is regularly administered in handwriting and style tests. Caden said he got two tries, then asked to choose the one he liked best as his official submission.
“When I found out that I (won), I was very happy,” Caden said. “My mom and dad were very proud.”
His mother, Brittni Baune, said Caden’s tenacity carries him in his endeavors — whether that means competing in basketball, soccer or baseball, or with his twin sister, Keeley at home.
“If there is anything that has an award, Caden works very, very hard at it,” Brittni Baune said.
He’s not the only renowned writer to come out of Red Rock Elementary. Eight years before Caden was named a national champion, a student named Ella Erickson won the same award in the same category.
Erickson said she was exposed to “great handwriting” through her great-grandmother, who used to write her thank-you notes and birthday cards. Erickson’s mother encouraged her to write back.
Like Caden, Erickson is also a three-sport athlete. She plays varsity volleyball, basketball and softball at Red Rock Central High. Erickson said she loves to compete, and feels proud of the honor — but added that good handwriting also means she is usually the designated writer for group projects and presentations in class.
“It’s probably not the same as it used to be but I do still take pride in having nice handwriting,” Erickson said.
The Star Tribune put Caden’s writing ability to the test against two reporters and an editor during a Friday visit to the newsroom.
The four contestants ranged in age from 9 to 51; each were tasked with writing four sentences. It had been so long since some of the journalists had written in cursive that at least one of them found they had no recollection of how to pull of the unique uppercase F and G that cursive dictates.
A staff photographer who judged the competition said Caden was easily the best penman.
If Revolve Labs, formerly known as Bit49, can start bringing in revenue at the new AI data center, the company should be able to move or decommission the machines at the existing site, St. Onge said.
“The ideal would be to phase out our current site and move everything over to the new site,” St. Onge said at the public hearing.
Several Glencoe residents at Tuesday’s public hearing, which addressed whether to rezone the property Revolve Labs intends to buy, appeared skeptical about the company’s proposal. “Revolve Labs has not proven themselves to be good neighbors,” Gould said to St. Onge at the hearing.
Eddie Gould, 80, confronts a representative from Revolve Labs, a Colorado-based company that runs a crypto-mining facility near his home, at a public hearing Tuesday in Glencoe, Minn. (Jp Lawrence)
But many at the public hearing seemed to welcome the possibility that the company might remove the noisy machines at its current site, which is near the town’s 646,000 square-foot Seneca Foods plant, a Dairy Queen and the corner of a residential neighborhood.
Crypto mining uses huge amounts of computing power, which need to be cooled by banks of fans. Over the past few years, the noise of these fans has led to complaints from residents living near crypto mining facilities across America.
In southwestern Minnesota, similar concerns about noise led to dozens of residents in Windom voicing their opposition in August to a conditional use application by Revolve Labs to build a facility there. The company pulled out of the proposal a month later, citing feedback from the community.
Longtime business owner and photographer Shawn Fagan has been named the next executive director of the Rochester Downtown Alliance (RDA).
Fagan, who had been on the RDA’s staff as a deputy director since the summer, takes over for Kathleen Harrington, who led the organization in an interim capacity for the past year and a half.
“Shawn’s passion for downtown, his collaborative spirit, and his strategic vision for growth make him the perfect choice to lead the RDA forward,” Harrington said in a written statement.
Fagan and his wife, Michelle, have been involved in the downtown since 2003 when they opened a photography studio along South Broadway. They later bought the 151-year-old building and added an event space, Studio 324, that they continue to operate. For their contributions to downtown, the couple received the Sandy Keith Downtown Impact Award recipient in 2021.
The Fagans also own Café Aquí, a coffee shop just outside the city’s special services district.
With his new role, Fagan will be responsible for leading the downtown business community through a period of major anticipation and disruption tied to Mayo Clinic’s $5 billion build-out.
The RDA, which represents more than 300 downtown stakeholders, is best known for putting on popular events like Thursdays Downtown and Social-ICE. The organization is also responsible for managing a public service program that provides cleaning, hospitality and safety services to the 44-block district.
Star Tribune
Minneapolis Market mass shooting among 5 homicides in federal RICO charges against Lows gang
Five Minneapolis homicides — including a February mass shooting outside a market — are at the heart of the latest federal racketeering case to take aim at a street gang in the city. The latest target: the northside-based Lows, described by law enforcement as the most violent among its peers.
The new charges, announced Wednesday by U.S. Attorney Andrew Luger, chart a three-year path of bloodshed that saw rivals and bystanders alike killed amid a long-running gang war. Eleven alleged members of the Lows are named in the indictment, which also includes allegations of gun and drug trafficking.
“The murders and shootings alleged in this indictment should shock the conscience of every law-abiding citizen in the city,” Luger said in a press conference Wednesday. “To put it simply, the existence of the Lows gang constitutes a threat to the sanctity of human life and we will continue to take all appropriate steps under the law to remove this threat.”
The Lows indictment bookends an initiative launched by Luger’s office in May 2023 to use complex conspiracy charges to disrupt Minneapolis’ most prominent gangs. The charges follow similar indictments against alleged members of the Bloods, 10z/20z and Highs gangs and brings the tally of those charged to beyond 90 people. Earlier this month, Luger’s office won its first racketeering conviction since starting this work when a jury found three alleged Bloods members guilty of charges that covered racketeering and using a firearm to carry out murder.
All of those charged in this latest case — some of whom have related state prosecutions pending — are in custody and were expected to make first appearances in St. Paul. None of them had attorneys listed as representing them as of late Wednesday, according to the federal court docket.
The Lows street gang has existed in Minneapolis since about 2004 and claims as its territory a section of north Minneapolis south of Broadway Avenue while the rival Highs gang operates north of that road. According to court documents, the murder that year of 18-year-old Christopher Little, identified by law enforcement as “a known Lows member,” intensified a rivalry with the Highs that has since included “hundreds of shootings and murders” in their territories.
A grand jury on Monday returned the latest 18-count indictment under seal charging 11 alleged Lows members with crimes including racketeering conspiracy involving murder, attempted murder, gun trafficking and drug trafficking. The indictment charged 78 “overt acts committed in furtherance of the enterprise” – including seven murders or attempted murders involving 10 victims. Bystanders were struck on two occasions. A judge unsealed the charges Wednesday amid the first federal court appearances in the case.
Those charged include: Ashimiyu Alowonle III, 38; Timothy Calender III, 26; Glenn Carter III, 23; Victor Collins, 22; Damari Douglas, 20; Deontae Jackson, 35; Shannon Jackson, 32; Robert Knights Jr, 19; Albert Lucas V, 20; Kaprice Richards, 23; Cartrelle Smith, 27.
