Star Tribune
At MN college, every student is entitled to free bagpipe lessons
Before bagpipe rehearsal came the earplugs.
Mike Breidenbach, director of piping at Macalester College, proffered a pair with a grin before pipe band practice Wednesday night. Gather enough bagpipes in an enclosed area and it’s going to get loud. And there can’t be many places in Minnesota with more bagpipes per capita than this St. Paul campus.
After the earplugs came the first bagpipe joke.
“Do you know the difference between a bagpipe and a lawnmower?” said Breidenbach, who first picked up the bagpipes as a Macalester undergrad 32 years ago. He thought bagpipes looked like fun. He was right. “You can tune a lawnmower.”
In the Macalester College Pipe Band, they take the music seriously, but not themselves.
Bagpipes mark the big moments at Macalester: Graduation day, game day, first day of classes. Students who open acceptance emails release a flurry of digital confetti and a wail of bagpipes to let them know what they’re in for.
The first students unleashed the first bagpipes on campus in the 1930s as a joking reference to the college’s Scottish name. The bagpipes caught on. Before long, Macalester had a pipe band, highland dancers, an official tartan plaid and a standing offer of free bagpipe lessons — free bagpipes included — for any student who wanted them.
“It wasn’t the reason I signed up to come to Macalester, but when I got here and heard, I think during orientation, that there were free bagpipe lessons, I thought it would be a crying shame to pass that up,” said Matt Horwath, who graduated in 2019 with a degree in music, with a focus on bagpipes.
UnitedHealthcare and Essentia Health announced an agreement Friday for the Duluth-based health system to keep participating in the insurance company’s Medicare Advantage network next year, affecting about 10,000 patients.
Similar to HealthPartners, Essentia Health announced earlier this year the health system would go out-of-network for UnitedHealthcare Medicare Advantage patients due to what it described as high rates of denied claims and payment delays, as well as the insurer’s prior authorization requirements.
“We realize that the uncertainty of this situation was difficult for many of the patients we’re honored to serve,” Dr. Cathy Cantor, Essentia’s chief medical officer for population health, said Friday in a statement. “We felt strongly that it was important to advocate for our patients, and we were able to reach an agreement for 2025 that addresses many of our issues and concerns by improving timely and reliable access to the high-quality care they depend on from Essentia.”
Essentia Health said Friday it still plans to go out-of-network next year with Medicare Advantage plans from Kentucky-based Humana.
With 14 hospitals and 78 clinics, Essentia Health has operations in Minnesota, North Dakota and Wisconsin. UnitedHealthcare is the nation’s largest health insurer.
This fall’s Medicare open enrollment period has been unusual in Minnesota for the number of contract impasses that have complicated health plan choices for seniors. Beyond Essentia, three other health systems with operations in the state have announced they’ll go out of network next year with Humana, as well.
UnitedHealthcare said the contract agreement with Essentia announced Friday applies to Medicare Advantage plans for individuals as was as retiree groups.
Scott County is rescanning some Shakopee ballots voters cast in Tuesday’s election due to a ballot distribution error and scanning machine malfunction, officials announced Friday.
The rescanning, which began at 4 p.m., could have the most bearing on the contest between DFL Rep. Brad Tabke and Republican challenger Aaron Paul for a seat in the Minnesota House, Scott County Property and Customer Service Manager Julie Hanson said.
Tuesday’s results showed an exceedingly tight race for the 54A seat, which includes the city of Shakopee. As the rescanning began, the competition was headed to an automatic recount.
Tabke earned 13 more votes than Paul overall, Tuesday’s returns show. Paul won several precincts with small margins, while Tabke had a nearly 11-point margin in northeast Shakopee and a 14-point margin in one precinct north of Shakopee High School.
In one precinct near Canterbury Park, the two candidates were separated by a single vote.
For legislative races, taxpayer-funded recounts occur when the results are within 0.5 percentage points of the total votes cast.
Hanson said the rescanning will likely take “a couple hours” and results will be updated on the Secretary of State’s website once the process is complete.
The 54A contest isn’t the only one where the need for a recount is in question.
Star Tribune
Judge doesn’t wait until Trump’s in office, sentences Minnesotan for role in Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol
Buttressing their argument before sentencing, prosecutors also raised Nicholas Fuller’s criminal history, which includes convictions for theft, auto theft, first-degree property damage, disorderly conduct and drunken driving.
The defense countered with its request for Nicholas Fuller to be spared prison, serve three years’ probation and pay the the $2,000 in restitution.
Nicholas Fuller “has from the beginning acknowledged the wrongfulness of his conduct and has expressed a desire to plead guilty,” the defense wrote to the court.
The defense explained that Nicholas Fuller went to the rally “because he believed there were irregularities in the election, which is what he had been hearing on the news and in his community. He wanted to support Trump by showing up to the rally.”
Addressing the prosecution pointing out that Nicholas Fuller pushed on an officer’s riot shield, the defense wrote, “Mr. Fuller was chatting with and smiling at [the officer] when he put his hands on the shield. [The officer] gently pushed the shield a few inches forward, and [Nicholas] Fuller gently pushed it back. The two did a little back and forth like this and that was the end of it. This interaction was nonaggressive and non-threatening, albeit a stupid thing to do.”
According to federal records, Nicholas Fuller is the 14th Minnesotan charged in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Overall, In the 44 months since Jan. 6, 2021, more than 1,504 individuals have been charged in nearly all 50 states for crimes related to the breach of the U.S. Capitol, including more than 560 individuals charged with assaulting or impeding law enforcement, a felony.
