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Skywatch: Harvest moon 2023 has good company

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:55:50 GMT

Sadly, summer officially came to an end this weekend. Saturday at 1:50 a.m. was the moment of the autumnal equinox. That’s when the sun slips below the celestial equator, a projection in the sky of the Earth’s terrestrial equator. From day to day and week to week until Dec. 21, the sun’s arc across the sky will get lower, and the days will become shorter as we dive toward winter.In the meantime, we still have plenty of daylight, and our nighttime hours are bright with moonlight. That’s because we start this week with a football-shaped waxing gibbous moon. We’ll have a full harvest moon on Friday since it’s close to this year’s autumnal equinox.The harvest moon was named because it lights up the night sky around harvest time. Like any full moon, it rises at sunset and sets around sunrise. What makes the harvest moon so unique is that it rises only about 20 minutes later each night instead of the usual 45 to 50 minutes, so there isn’t as much of a gap between the time the sun goes dow...

Readers and writers: Author Hampl and artist/printer partner on project again after four decades

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:55:50 GMT

“Forty years,” Gaylord Schanilec says with a laugh. “Forty years it took for me to get a manuscript from Patricia.”Schanilec is an internationally known artist and printer and the owner of Midnight Paper Sales printing company. He’s talking about Patricia Hampl, award-winning poet and author.Artist, illustrator and fine press printer Gaylord Schanilec, left, worked with author John Coy on the Minnesota Book Award-winning “My Mighty Journey” in 2019 before he partnered with Patricia Hampl on her new book “It’s Come to This.” (Paul Nylander / Minnesota Historical Society Press)They first partnered in 1982 when Schanilec did a two-color drawing frontispiece and ornamental rose decoration for the fine press edition of Hampl’s second poetry collection, “Resort and Other Poems,” published by Bookslinger Editions.“Working on ‘Resort’ was pivotal for me,” Schanilec continues, “and I b...

Trudy Rubin: Russia’s kidnapping of Ukrainian children under the spotlight at United Nations

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:55:50 GMT

When President Joe Biden urged world leaders on Tuesday not to diminish support for Ukraine, he used a phrase whose importance you may have missed. Speaking at the U.N. General Assembly, Biden charged (correctly) that Russia’s price for peace is “Ukraine’s capitulation, Ukraine’s territory, and Ukraine’s children.”I’ve added emphasis to those last two words because of Moscow’s policy of illegally transferring tens of thousands of Ukrainian children to Russia proper, or Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine, and trying to transform them into good little Ukraine-hating Russians.In his own speech to the United Nations, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy also denounced Russia’s seizure of his country’s children as “purely a genocide.” That Russian war crime goes to the heart of why Ukraine believes it must win this war.According to official data from the Ukrainian government, at least 19,546 children have been tran...

Minnesota lawmakers approved up to $1 billion for housing. Where is it going?

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:55:50 GMT

Amina Deble’s heart breaks every time she visits her elderly aunt or another Somali-American senior trying to get by in a cramped, one-bedroom Twin Cities apartment. She likens the housing units she’s seen to small prison cells.“They take depression medicine,” said Deble, who lives with her daughter, a doctor and homeowner. “They’d love to live like other people.”One of the key challenges confronting her community isn’t so much financial as cultural. Based on the tenets of their faith, many Muslims reject giving or receiving interest-bearing loans, referred to in Arabic as “reba,” or “exploitive gains.” In other words, traditional mortgages are culturally off-limits, though fee-based workarounds are not.“For the Muslim community, it’s really hard for them, even if you make enough income,” said Deble, of Columbia Heights. It’s just one aspect of what many call a housing crisis in the Twin ...

Literary calendar for week of Sept. 24

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:55:50 GMT

BAKOS/WEBER: M. E. Bakos signs copies of her Home Renovation Mysteries, the latest of which is “Killer Flip,” and Frank Weber signs his book, “The Haunted House of Hillman.” 10-11:30 a.m. Friday, Sept. 29, Lake Country Booksellers, 4766 Washington Square, White Bear Lake.Shannon Sanders (David Choy / Graywolf Press)GRAYWOLF LITERARY SALON: The first in-person fundraising Salon since 2019 hosted by this Minneapolis-based literary press highlights Graywolf writers Roger Reeves, award-winning Texas-based author of two poetry collections; Sally Wen Mao, New York-based author of three poetry collections; and Shannon Sanders, Washington, D.C., whose debut novel “Company” is drawing critics’ raves, with starred reviews from Booklist, Kirkus and Publishers Weekly. This often-hilarious story collection follows three generations of the Black Collins family (four, if you count two babies), who experience generational disputes and envies, adult sibling ...

Ask Amy: Siblings face dilemma over mother’s will

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:55:50 GMT

Dear Amy: My stepfather has two adult children, and my mother has three adult children.Our stepfather died, and over time mother changed the will so all money she had inherited from him would go to her biological children (which includes me), instead of sharing it among all five.She was not fond of the stepchildren.My sister, who was the executor of our mother’s will, says that two weeks before our mother died (suddenly), Mom said that she was thinking of changing the will to include everyone — her children and stepchildren.Should we children that inherited the entire estate split the inheritance with the stepchildren?It all feels awkward. Other dynamics are that our stepbrother is a millionaire, who would most likely think that we are not giving him enough and/or appreciate the gesture.Therefore, we are not sure it would “fix” dynamics already created by my mother’s actions. It all feels awkward.What would be fair might not heal the situation. And is there any way to heal it?...

Word Game: Sept. 24, 2023

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:55:50 GMT

TODAY’S WORD — TREASON (TREASON: TREE-zun: The betrayal of a trust.)Average mark 55 wordsTime limit 60 minutesCan you find 70 or more words in TREASON?TODAY’S WORD — TREASON tare tarn taro tear tenor tensor tern tone toner tore torn trans tsar rant rate reason rent rest roan roast rose rote earn east aeon aero ante antre arose arson arts aster astern atone sane sate sear seat senator senor senora sent snare snore snort soar sonar sone sora sore sort star stare steno stern stone stoner store oast oaten onset orate ornate near neat nest noes nose note noterTo purchase the Word Game book, visit WordGameBooks.com. Order it now for just $5 while supplies last!RULES OF THE GAME:1. Words must be of four or more letters.2. Words that acquire four letters by the addition of “s,” such as “bats” or “dies,” are not allowed.3. Additional words made by adding a “d” or an “s” may not be used. For example, if “bake” is used, “baked” or “bakes” are not allowed, but “bake” and...

De los patios de recreo a los patios de armas: las escuelas rusas están cada vez más militarizadas

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:55:50 GMT

(CNN) — Los patios de recreo de Rusia se están convirtiendo en campos de desfiles. En las escuelas, desde el Pacífico hasta el mar Negro, los niños de la guardería se visten con uniformes y participan en prácticas de marcha. A los niños mayores se les enseña a cavar trincheras, lanzar granadas y disparar con munición real.En las escuelas de todo el país se glorifica el servicio en las fuerzas armadas, se forman “compañías voluntarias” de adolescentes y se cambia el plan de estudios nacional para enfatizar la defensa de la patria.En resumen, se está preparando a los niños rusos para la guerra.La militarización de las escuelas públicas rusas se intensificó desde la invasión rusa de Ucrania, impulsada no por una oleada espontánea de sentimiento patriótico, sino por el Gobierno de Moscú.La inversión es enorme. El ministro de Educación, Sergei Kravtsov, dijo recientemente que actualmente existen alrededor de 10.000 clubes de los llamados “militares-patrióticos” en las e...

Tigst Assefa shatters the women’s marathon world record by more than 2 minutes in Berlin

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:55:50 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Tigst Assefa broke the women’s world record by more than two minutes Sunday at the Berlin Marathon, as Eliud Kipchoge won the men’s race for the fifth time but couldn’t break his own record.Ethiopian runner Assefa, the winner in Berlin a year ago, ran 2 hours, 11 minutes, 53 seconds to break the previous women’s record of 2:14:04 set by Brigid Kotsgei at the Chicago Marathon in 2019.Kipchoge ran alone from 32 kilometers (20 miles) onward but slowed slightly toward the end. His time of 2 hours, 2 minutes, 42 seconds was more than a minute and a half off the record he set in Berlin last year. Kipchoge broke the two-hour barrier in Vienna in 2019 when he ran 1:59:40 but it was not officially considered the world record. He was running in an event that did not conform to regulations because it was tailored around his time, with groups of pacemakers and drinks delivered by a cyclist.The German environmental group Last Generation had signaled it inten...

Nagorno-Karabakh evacuations begin as Armenia warns of ‘ethnic cleansing’

Published Fri, 21 Feb 2025 14:55:50 GMT

KORNIDZOR, Armenia — The first convoys of civilians have left Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia following an Azerbaijani military offensive amid growing warnings that a mass exodus could be on the cards.On Sunday, humanitarian organizations and the Armenian government said that dozens of people had been evacuated after Azerbaijan agreed to open the Lachin Corridor that links the breakaway territory to the country. According to the Ministry of Health, the Red Cross escorted 23 ambulances carrying “seriously and very seriously wounded citizens of Nagorno-Karabakh.”Meanwhile, other civilians say they had begged the Russian peacekeepers to take them across, after Karabakh Armenian leaders on Tuesday accepted a surrender agreement following just 24 hours of fierce fighting and shelling.At a checkpoint near the village of Kornidzor, on the border with Azerbaijan, a steady stream of civilian cars is now crossing over — many laden down with bags or filled with loose bedding and other...