Mankato Magazine

NAJWA MASSAD

One year into her first term, we wanted to know: How’s it going, MAYOR?

also in this issue: Winter FUN, cozy GETAWAYS MENDING SPIRITS’ KRISTY OLSON Essay on winter by JOHN GATERUD

The Free Press MEDIA

Najwa Massad JANUARY 2020

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FEATURE S JANUARY 2020 Volume 15, Issue 1

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Da Mayor From the deck of a ship in 1960, 5-year-old Najwa Massad said goodbye to her homeland of Lebanon. Today, she’s the mayor of Mankato. It’s been a long and strange trip.

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Winter fun & cozy getaways Don’t think of winter as a time to hide away until spring. Think of it as a time to embrace the cooler side of the place we live, and a time to check out some of the cozier weekend spots around.

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January John Gaterud reminds us how cold it can really get in winter, and how taking stock of family is a good idea.

ABOUT THE COVER We cornered Najwa in her favorite booth at Olive’s for a sit down interview about her life.

She was photographed by Pat Christman, who ordered the chicken Schwarma.

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 3

DEPARTMENTS 6 From the Editor 8 Faces & Places 10 This Day in History 11 Avant Guardians Karlee Holets

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12 Beyond the Margin Winter ain’t so bad

14 Familiar Faces

Kristy Renae Olson

22 Day Trip Destinations Door County

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32 Wine

Leigh’s faves

33 Beer

Lo-cal

34 That’s Life

Nell says so long

36 Garden Chat

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Let’s talk mustard

38 Coming Attractions 39 Community Draws It’s time to dance

40 From This Valley

To those no longer with us

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FROM THE ASSOCIATE EDITOR

By Robb Murray JANUARY 2020 • VOLUME 15, ISSUE 1 PUBLISHER Steve Jameson EDITOR Joe Spear ASSOCIATE Robb Murray EDITOR CONTRIBUTORS Bert Mattson Diana Rojo-Garcia Grace Brandt Nell Musolf Jean Lundquist Kat Baumann Katie Leibel Leigh Pomeroy Pete Steiner PHOTOGRAPHERS Pat Christman Jackson Forderer

PAGE DESIGNER Christina Sankey ADVERTISING Danny Creel SALES Joan Streit Jordan Greer-Friesz Josh Zimmerman Marianne Carlson Theresa Haefner ADVERTISING Barb Wass ASSISTANT ADVERTISING Sue Hammar DESIGNERS Christina Sankey CIRCULATION Justin Niles DIRECTOR

Mankato Magazine is published by The Free Press Media monthly at 418 South Second St., Mankato MN 56001.

To subscribe, call 1-800-657-4662 or 507-625-4451. $35.40 for 12 issues.

For editorial inquiries, call Robb Murray at 344-6386, or e-mail rmurray@mankatofreepress.com.

For advertising, call 344-6364, or e-mail advertising@mankatofreepress.com.

6 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

A mayor, a professor and a columnist walk into a bar...

M

ankato is nothing if not a community of characters, a cosmic collection of folks who identify all over the map on myriad variables.

We’re liberal and conservative, urban and rural, filthy rich and just scraping by. We’re Monday Night Football and smooth jazz, double espresso and pumpkin spice latte, four-wheel-drive pickup and hybrid. We all come together as a sometimes-surly and occasionally rancorous mix of bubbling humanity.

But at the end of the day we’re a community that cares for each other. We lift each other up. We thrive and succeed together, because of our differences, in spite of our disagreements.

I sat down with Najwa Massad a few weeks ago for this month’s cover story. And as we talked about her upbringing and childhood in Mankato, the strife she lived through when she moved back to Lebanon (her birth country) and the struggles she endured while she and husband John tried to get their business off the ground, I felt like I was talking to someone who could have been any of us.

Mankato is full of people with great stories to tell, and perhaps no story is as compelling as Najwa’s.

I’ll let you dig into it as you like, but I’ll tell you this: After getting to know Najwa a little, I’m glad someone like her — someone who has struggled, someone who has succeeded in business, someone who understands the feeling of trying to fit in, someone who has raised children — is this community’s mayor.

Elsewhere in Mankato Magazine, we’ve got a literary treat for you in an essay by one of my favorite college professors, John Gaterud.

His essay, to put it in a way my friends would understand, classes up the joint a bit.

It’s a powerful and gripping piece of writing that landed on my desk one day and I couldn’t wait to publish it. I actually wanted to publish it several months ago, but my boss wisely decided we’d wait for the January issue.

Publishing it now will give John’s piece the necessary realworld context you’ll need to fully appreciate its literary girth. Grab a glass of wine and dig in. You won’t be disappointed.

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t use a little bit of this space to say goodbye to one of our most beloved columnists, Nell Musolf. In the category of “All Good Things Must Come to an End,” Nell ends her run as a Mankato Magazine columnist this month.

As a columnist myself, I have to say Nell’s is one of those voices that I love. Her words call you over like an old friend you can’t possibly say no to, then warm you with relatable stories and heartwarming musings that remind you, even in our darkest times, there are laughs to be had, fun to be poked and young people to shake our heads at.

As a writer, I read Nell’s work sometimes and say, “Wow …

How’d she pull that off?” I know I speak for all Mankato Magazine readers when I say Nell’s unique voice will be missed on these pages.

And in case you’re wondering whether we’ve found Nell’s replacement, we have! But I’m making you wait until next month.

It’ll be a February surprise for you.

Robb Murray is associate editor of Mankato Magazine. Contact him at 344-6386 or rmurray@ mankatofreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @freepressRobb.

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FACES & PLACES: Photos By SPX Sports

Southern Minnesota Christmas Festival

This event, sponsored by Alpha Media, kicked off the annual Toys for Tots campaign.

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1. A family poses for a photo with Santa.

2. Kids have fun at the crafts table.

3. An overview of this years Southern Minnesota Christmas Festival in the G

rand Hall at the Mankato Civic Center.

4. The Mankato Ballet Company performs on stage.

5. Betty Kuehl with her sewing and craft stall.

6. A long line to see Santa!

7. Trolley rides were available to the public.

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FACES & PLACES: Photos By SPX Sports

Battle of the Bowls

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This event is a fundraiser for Partners for Affordable Housing.

1. Live music was provided by Ray Smart during the event.

2. Cornbread was served with the chili.

3. Amy Gasswint volunteers as bartender at the event.

4. Votes are cast for the favorite chili.

5. Several silent auction items were available.

6. (Left to right) Clara Klostermeyer, Tara Rustad, and Hannah Rustad volunteer serving.

7. Vendors serve up their chili.

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MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 9

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THIS DAY IN HISTORY Compiled by Jean Lundquist

$2,044,288 to be collected in county in ‘48 Jan. 21, 1948 The tax burden for Blue Earth County property owners increased $300,000 in 1948 over 1947. Rising prices that boosted county and school operating costs were blamed. The 120 school districts in the county accounted for over $700,000 of the total. The next largest amount was over $500,000, going to the county. Cities, villages, townships and the state accounted for the remaining amount. In 2017, the county budget was just under $32,000,000, according to the website.

Egg event planned Jan. 4, 1953 Judges from the University of Minnesota knew they’d have a hard time picking a winner from the egg show, planned as part of the egg institute in LeSueur County. 1953 was the fourth year for the competition they were judging. Every entry will contain eggs of high quality, but the winner must provide 12 such eggs, they said. They must be well matched in size, shape, color and shell texture. They must also be clean, without cleaning. There were three categories, and each family could make one entry into each: white, brown and cream. The program and judging would begin promptly at 10 a.m. with the showing of the movie “The Hen Makes an Egg.” Farmer at Sleepy Eye starts dump road war Jan. 16, 1964 Even though no trespassing signs had been posted, the road leading to the Sleepy Eye City Dump was still well traveled by those with garbage to dump.

The city had opened a new dump on the city farm about a mile south of town.

The farmer who owned the roadway, which the city had an easement to use, was threatening the city with a lawsuit. He alleged damage to fences along the roadway and wanted $300 for damage to his corn crop. The damage, he said, was caused by the high number of rats living at the dump.

Mystic must hunt for pay at MSU Jan. 11, 1984 When “The Amazing Kreskin” came to perform a show at the Mankato State University campus, he agreed that if he could not find his bill, hidden with a person somewhere in the audience, he would not be paid for his performance.

Larry Wilmes was in the audience that night and happened to catch a card Kreskin threw out to identify “volunteers.” Wilmes says he was a skeptic but agreed to play along. While Kreskin was blindfolded, Wilmes was one of 10 people who hid the envelope at the rear of the auditorium, beneath the chair of a woman. After “hearing” from the first nine people, who spoke to him only telepathically, it came down to Wilmes. As Kreskin walked down the aisle, Wilmes told him to go left, using only his mind. Kreskin found the envelope and did get paid. Wilmes says he is still not necessarily a believer but admits, “It was pretty amazing.”

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Artistry built on details Karlee Holets explores body image, gender, femininity

F

or Le Sueur native Karlee Holets, form has always played an important part in her work as an artist, even in her early years.

“I have always been interested in the arts,” Holets said.

“As a child, I loved to draw people. My mom always made sure that I had a black ballpoint pen and lined paper for sketching. Sketching on lined paper provided a grid to draw more proportionally. I did not like to use crayons or markers or coloring books. I think that is because I have always been more interested in form rather than color.”

Her focus was in the details, which continues to influence her pieces as a ceramic figurative sculptor as an adult.

“I would draw every detail of the human figure, including men’s chest hair or wrinkles on the face,” she said. “I still do not like to use color in my work even when I challenge myself to use glazes. I love the raw color and purity of clay.”

Holets, 32, works as the Gifts in the Gallery coordinator and the volunteer coordinator at Artistry, a nonprofit art center that offers art classes, visual arts, theater and outreach programs in Bloomington.

When she isn’t working at Artistry, she is in her clay studio. Despite doing what she loves now, it wasn’t always an easy decision. While a student at Winona State University, Holets initially started off studying psychology and even considered art therapy.

“I knew I wanted to do something in the arts, I just did not know what,” she said. “And of course, the fear of being an artist is a real thing. People will always question you and say things like ‘How are you going to do something like that?’ or ‘You will have a very hard life being an artist because there is no money in it.’ Of course, job security is important to us all and being an artist can be unstable” She also acknowledged the notion that while being an artist would be fulfilling, it would require a lot of work.

“Artists are their worst critics and often question everything they do. It is difficult to be original.”

Before college, she had more experience in drawing and painting than in ceramics, but that quickly changed after taking a 3D class working in clay.

“I felt like I could really focus more on form,” she said.

“It was more challenging, yet I understood it so much more. Most importantly, I found my own voice while working in clay.”

After college, Holets studied at Georgia State University in Atlanta as a post-baccalaureate student, where she was able to build her techniques in clay sculpting and armatures.

Her work in painting, drawing, ceramics and printmaking tends to feature similar themes.

“Body image, gender, femininity, and human emotion are all topics that I explore in my work,” she said.

One of her first projects at Winona State focused on gender.

“I have a family member that I am very close to that is transgender, and I thought this was a topic that was very important,” Holets said. “I found it as an opportunity to educate people and myself. It angered me that people that knew about my family member’s gender would ask me questions that I felt were invasive and inappropriate.

Mostly, they would ask about their body.”

After receiving her family member’s permission, Holets decided to create a sculpture addressing the social issue.

“We talked a lot about their experience and their process going through the physical changes, as well as society’s response to their changes,” Holets said. “After talking and thinking about it, I felt that I wanted to just put it out in the open and answer the question that everyone always wanted to know - what does a transgender body look like. I felt indifferent to this project - I was split with the feeling that this was not my personal story to share and also that it was a story that needed to me shared with people who just do not understand or were judgmental towards the topic.”

Her project included three figures that looked like faceless mannequins.

“When you see mannequins in stores, they often have the ‘perfect body.’ They hold the standard of beauty,” she said. “Each sculpture displayed a different physical stage of a person going from female to male. The first is of the nude female body, second is of the body with a binder, a very tight top that holds the breast flat, and the third is after top surgery and with hormone therapy with changes in the genitalia.”

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 11

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BEYOND THE MARGIN

By Joe Spear

Winter wonderland and attitude adjustment N ow that we’ve put “It’s a wonderful life” in the rearview mirror of the holidays, it’s time to get our minds right about January.

When the part of our psyche calls up our memories of Januaries past, images emerge through the snowblown wasteland.

Let’s start with the Super Bowl Blizzard of 1975, a 24-inch event from Jan. 9-12. Adding insult to injury, the Vikings lost the big game to the Pittsburgh Steelers 16-6 on Jan. 12.

That was followed by a March storm the same year that left 17 inches. We can’t forget the record-setting month of November 1991, where we got 33 inches, starting with the aftermath of the Halloween Blizzard, which brought 14 inches in a two-day total, the highest two-day total ever for Mankato.

March 1951, however, holds the record for Blue Earth County snowfall in one month with 43 inches, which likely contributed to the 1951 flood that decimated the area.

There is some fine advice from Brad Waters, who has a master’s degree in social work, writing in Psychology Today about combating the winter blues. He’s a popular counselor for the alumni at the University of Michigan. Given the Wolverines’ brutal loss to Ohio State this year, Brad will be in high demand.

The first thing, he says, is to stop using negative words such as “combating” and “fighting” and “beating,” when talking about your mood toward winter. Instead, see your relation to winter more like a dance than a boxing match, where you can adjust your mood to the pace of winter.

We don’t need to “beat” winter, we need only “dance” with it.

“And when we treat our ‘bad’ mood like it’s the enemy, we might just be setting ourselves up for a long and difficult bout in the ring,” he writes.

He says you need to engage all senses to take in what you like about warmer seasons. Flower scented candles. Incense that smells like a cozy wood fire. Place some stones or driftwood you collected on a beach near your work space.

It’s important to connect with the elements in winter, says Waters, because “our moods and emotions are intertwined with the worlds around us.” He sees our moods as “infinite invisible threads weaving together our behaviors with our memories, associations, connections to our environment, and relationships with one another.”

Instead of only going outside to shovel the walk or clear snow, take a hike in the woods and take photos of birds and kids sliding. Photos can create a more positive picture in our mind of winter, according to Waters.

Take advantage of the January thaw days. Go sliding. Do Mount Kato or take a walk at Minneopa.

Waters says people can isolate in the winter, so don’t do that, and if you see someone isolating, reach out.

Watch football from a bar with other like-minded fans, unless, of course, they are from Wisconsin. You can celebrate together and commiserate together. It’s good for your psyche and the local economy.

There will be a light deficit in winter so figure out how to get more light. Go to a Maverick hockey game.

Bright lights and white ice. Neon lights of bars and pizza places can help.

If the weather is brutal and dangerous and you’ve had enough magazine psychology be ready to buy a plane ticket. Sometimes even a few degrees warmer will matter. Drive to Iowa if you have to get even 10-20 degrees warmer.

Keep your Christmas lights up longer. The Christmas-related feast of the Epiphany as a nod to the three wise men is Jan. 6. If you have green lights, keep them up until St. Patrick’s Day. Go to a ballroom party. Go to a play. Sign up for curling.

Mankato gets an average of about 7 inches of snow in January, but it is not a popular month for tons of snow. Of the top 20 snowiest two days ever in the Mankato area, only three fall in January, two in 1988 and one in 1952.

Cold is more of an issue. January in Mankato averages 15 degrees. Last year, we beat — sorry, “challenged” — the average by 6 degrees with an average of 21.5 degrees.

Last year the last days of January were the coldest from Jan. 19-31, where there were 11 days out of 13 with night time temperatures below zero. And Mother Nature outdid herself bringing on Jan. 30 and Jan. 31 nighttime lows of 28 and 29 below zero.

But last January also started out like a lamb with five days over 40 degrees from Jan. 3-7. It can happen. Be optimistic.

And be thankful you don’t have to watch “It’s a wonderful life” for another year or so.

Joe Spear is editor of Mankato Magazine. Contact him at jspear@mankatofreepress.com or 344-6382.

Follow on Twitter @jfspear.

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 13

Familiar Faces

Operation RESCUE As president of Mending Spirits Animal Rescue, Kristy Olson has her hands full helping find homes for homeless dogs, cats, rabbits, birds and everything in between

W Photos by Robb Murray

NAME:

Kristy Renae Olson Occupation:

Licensed Family Child Care provider

Hometown: Mankato

Favorite food: blueberries

hen you think of animal shelters and rescue operations in the Mankato Area, you’d naturally think of the Blue Earth Nicollet County Humane Society, which does great work finding homes for hundreds of animals every year.

But BENCHS isn’t the only organization helping animals.

Mending Spirits Animal Rescue, founded in 2013, has built itself into a respectable and legitimate animal rescue organization in its own right, and Kristy Olson has been involved with MARS since its inception.

Olson, President of MSAR, said there isn’t a day that goes by that she’s not doing something for an animal or an animal foster family, or something else.

We caught up with Olson during a week when she was busy organizing a shipment of dogs coming into MSAR from Alabama.

MANKATO MAGAZINE: What’s the most challenging part of running an animal rescue organization?

KRISTY OLSON: TIME — Balancing working a 60-hour-aweek job with having a relentless passion to save animals’ lives every free moment I get. I do rescue 24/7 and there has not been a single day I have not done my rescue roles in over 6 years.

MM: Without a facility, where do your dogs, cats, rabbits, etc. live while waiting to be adopted?

KO: In loving, compassionate foster homes where the providers are well-paired for the animal they commit to, which parallels with the provider’s abilities, preferences and experiences.

Favorite quote:

MM: How many animals do you adopt out each year?

KO: It depends on our overall animal intake for the year but usually about 350-400 or so.

“The best is like water” — Lau Tzu

MM: Mending Spirits just took in a large group of dogs from Alabama. How does it happen that dogs from Alabama end up at a foster-based rescue in Minnesota?

KO: They end up here because the need is extremely high both locally and in southern areas of our country.

Overpopulation is a big problem in the South and there is limited resources for pet owners. We, with open arms, help where we can.

Desert island album: “Gnossienne” By Erik Satie

14 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

Kristy Olson is shown here weighing an animal that would have been euthanized if it hadn’t been rescued.

Often it is word of mouth that connects rescues and shelters with animals in need. Animal advocates scour social media and network amongst many people. There are so many people involved in an eclectic network to enable the rescue of an animal. It is truly an incredible process that involves teamwork to make it possible, both locally and from afar.

A positive reputation is important and associations are generated by others observing the strides that take place by an organization. Advocates see that an organization may frequently welcome the animals that no one wants and other rescues may refrain from such as behavioral cases, seniors, medicals, certain breeds etc.

This is notable in the rescue world and quickly advocates and members in the animal community parallel an organization with what they are actively doing.

There is also an approval process that rescues and shelters who help these animals must comply with. We have to show that we are in good standing, a legit organization, are a non-profit,

supply references, adhere and show we maintain standards and policies that are in the animal’s best interest such as home visits, quality vet care, spaying and neutering before adoption. There is a LOT of time involved in coordinating and securing an animal into care.

MM: How reliant is Mending Spirits on fundraising and donors?

KO: In 2019, 73% of our funding came from adoption fees while the remaining 27% is from fundraising/ donations. We need to increase our fundraising so we can secure a location to store our supplies and perform intakes. All we have is a 10 by 12 shed to store items along with kind volunteers allowing us the use of their homes.

MM: What’s the craziest thing that has happened regarding an animal in Mending Spirits’ care?

KO: We had a German Shepherd named Atlas that came into care that was rescued from a reservation.

Someone tried to shoot him on the

reservation and he was found still alive and wounded. We lovingly took him into care and noticed he had a constant nasal infection that would wax and wane. Upon Xrays, it was discovered he had a canine tooth that was almost 3 inches long and decaying inside his sinus cavity.

He had in-depth surgery to have it removed. It was a strange and unexpected thing to find, sort of a medical mystery.

MM: Tell us something about yourself that would surprise people.

KO: I am allergic to cats and dogs but that does not prevent me from rescuing, owning or loving them all.

MM: Does Mending Spirits have any adoption events coming up?

KO: Our next adoption event is 12-2 p.m. Jan. 12 at Pet Expo in Mankato.

We also have Yoga and a Pint, 10 a.m.

Jan. 18 at Mankato Brewery with yogi Layla; bring your own mat ($10 for an hour of Yoga and pint of your choice after).

Compiled by Robb Murray MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 15

Madame Mayor Najwa Massad’s journey to the gavel was a long one Story by Robb Murray | Photos by Pat Christman

S

he doesn’t remember what she was wearing that day, or how many people were on the ship with her.

She doesn’t remember where her father was, or her brother. She doesn’t remember being sad about getting on the ship, suitcase in hand. She doesn’t remember much of anything, really, about that day in 1960 when she left Lebanon.

What she does remember, though, is standing next to her mother, who stared sadly back at the shore — tears ran down her mother’s face as her arms waved goodbye. Her eyes turned from her mother’s face and looked to the shore, where the cousins and aunts and uncles who had gathered to say farewell to her family were waving back.

“Poppa decided,” she said, thinking back to that day, “he wanted to take his family and come to America.”

She didn’t understand why, but as she listened to her mother’s sobs and watched her extended family shrink into the distance as the ship headed for America, she knew, even at 5 years old, that something extraordinary was happening.

This is how Mankato Mayor Najwa Masaad came to America. The restaurants, the catering business, the mayor’s race — all of that would come much, much later. The journey that lead to her taking the spot at the head of the City Council table was one filled with intrigue, a trip back to Lebanon, a marriage at age 15, a baby at 16. She’d take cover from bombing raids in Beirut, search for housing with no money, hunt for jobs with no experience.

Before the success, there had to be a struggle.

But somehow, Najwa and her husband, John — the creator of the now-famous Schwarma sandwich — not only survived, but thrived. At age 64, Najwa can honestly say that the little girl who shipped off from Lebanon with her family in search of a better life found the American Dream. Or, more accurately, created her

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own version of it.

Her motto, she says, is “Everything happens for a reason.”

Well, here’s a story full of reasons why Najwa went from a ship leaving Lebanon to being Mankato’s first female mayor, and it’s first “first-generation American” mayor.

From Lebanon, with love

Najwa says she doesn’t remember much about those first five years in Lebanon. When she thinks of her childhood, she says, she thinks of Mankato.

When they arrived here, they did so with a trail already partially blazed. Najwa’s grandmother had come to the area to visit friends. But when WWII broke out, she was unable to return. So she started a life in the Mankato area, which made Mankato a logical destination for Najwa’s family.

After landing at Ellis Island, the family hopped on a train headed west. When they arrived in Mankato, the family took up residence in an apartment downtown above what is today the Wagon Wheel restaurant.

Najwa made friends quickly with a girl across the hall. She remembers walking to kindergarten at the Lincoln school building, and later to St. John’s Catholic School. She remembers using cardboard boxes to slide down the giant piles of snow collected in the Piggly Wiggly parking lot, and going to a little grocery on Front Street owned by her grandfather. She remembers playing in a nearby creek that isn’t there anymore.

Her father, she says, worked down the street at Champlin Auto Wash, washing cars for 75 cents per hour. The family wasn’t wealthy, she says, but Najwa didn’t know that.

“We didn’t have much growing up … but we had everything,” she said. “We had a warm home, wonderful parents, plenty of food — we didn’t need anything else. I can’t say I regret one thing in my life.”

Najwa Massad, shown here on election night in 2018, was born in Lebanon in 1955 and came to America in 1960.

During high school, her parents sent her to Good Counsel, which required tuition. But because her parents couldn’t afford the full tuition price, Najwa worked as a dishwasher, which knocked $10 per month off the tuition price.

Then, when Najwa was 15, her parents made a decision that would change her life forever.

Back to Lebanon

“Dad saved up money so my mom could go see her family,” she said. “She had never spoken to her family (since the family left). She couldn’t read, so letters were useless. We tried to get her to talk to her family, but a one-minute phone call was, like, $10 to $15 dollars for an international call.”

Najwa, her mother and her brother took a Pan-Am flight to Lebanon and planned to stay for three months.

At the end of those three months, her mother and brother got back on a Pan-Am flight bound for home.

Najwa did not. She’d fallen in love.

The first time she’d seen John Massad was at a family gathering. At 27, he was a cousin and part of an extended family she’d never met.

“I saw him,” she said, “and made him fall in love with me.”

It started with coffee. Then a lunch. Then another lunch. Eventually …

“We eloped!” she said with a hint of glee as she remembered that day.

John wrote a letter to Najwa’s father back in Mankato asking for Najwa’s hand in marriage.

“Poppa said, let her come back and finish school first, then it will be fine,” Najwa recalled. “Well, if you know me, I make up my own mind.”

Eloping in Lebanon is a little different than it is in the U.S. The bride, she says, is taken to someone’s home where the man of the house asks, “Are you here of your own free will.” If the answer is “yes,” that triggers a chain of events that includes contacting a priest, quickly acquiring flowers, arranging a hairdresser, renting a wedding dress and, most importantly, gathering family the next day at a church.

And that’s how Najwa married John.

Someone contacted her father later, by the way, to let him know what had happened.

“He just asked, ‘Is she happy? Is this what she wants?’” Najwa recalled. “And he said ‘OK.’” She was 15.

Nine months later, their first child, Meray, was born.

They stayed in Lebanon where John was deeply embedded in his family’s restaurant business. A master chef, their business had grown considerably and John was an integral part of the operation.

Meanwhile, things back in Mankato carried on, and in 1975 Najwa’s brother was ready to graduate from high school. Najwa, John and Meray traveled to Mankato to attend the graduation and visit family. But when they tried to move back, a civil war in Lebanon that had been brewing for months flared up.

“His family told us to stay in America,” Najwa recalled. “I had planned on living my life in Lebanon. …

I had a good life in Lebanon. We owned restaurants.”

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 17

Pit stop in Mankato, then back to Lebanon

The family’s visit to America turned into a new chapter in their lives. They’d come with a little bit of money but it was dwindling fast. They needed to find work.

“We were looking for jobs but no one would hire us,” she said. “I had no experience. John didn’t speak English. He was a master chef but he didn’t speak English.”

Eventually, Najwa found part-time work at a Bakery in Madison East Center. Later she was hired at a deli in Minnesota State University’s student union. John was given a chance to work a temporary job at Good Counsel, which he turned into a full-time gig.

“They found out what it’s like to have a master chef around,” Najwa said proudly. “He took over the kitchen for them.”

Things were going well in Mankato for the family.

Their second daughter, Karla, was born in 1977. But in 1978, John got a call from his father. He was opening another restaurant and he needed John to help him run it. So the family packed everything up and relocated to Lebanon.

While they were there, political tensions that never seemed to go away for good boiled over again.

There was one particular incident she still remembers vividly that illustrates what it felt like to live in a wartorn country.

“I remember I was in the kitchen. And suddenly I heard this horrible noise. It was just like a BOOM!” she recalled. “And people started running. I ran out to the street. Mothers were screaming and crying and one lady said to me, ‘You’ve got to go and get the girls.’

They were at school.

“In Lebanon kids start school at the age of 3. So I’m running, and apparently the sisters (nuns from the school) let the kids out, and I’m running to find Meray and Karla, and then I found Meray holding her sister running. I grabbed them and we came into the house, and then all of a sudden you could hear the BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The bombs had started. I had no clue, I’m a Mankato girl. We had nothing like this. And I remember John coming to me and saying, ‘This is going to be going on for a while. See what you need and just stay put.’”

They lived on the bottom floor of a four-story, cement building. An alleyway ran past their kitchen window, and just off the kitchen there was a small bathroom.

“I remember John saying, ‘When things happen I want you to go in there. And whoever from the building wants to come down, you have them stay in here with you.’”

She remembers nine people crammed into that bathroom one day when explosions started. Seared into her brain is a vision of Meray and Karla tucked under a sink as they listened to the sounds of war outside.

“The kids got to the point where they could tell from the whistle (of the projectile) if it was Syrians or us throwing bombs,” she said. “Isn’t that sad?”

She remembers John dodging snipers some days going to or coming home from work, and having to put barricades up around restaurants to protect from car bombs. They could watch Syrian and Israeli aircraft flying, and sometimes would see pilots parachuting to safety. Bombings often left the neighborhood without

18 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

electricity or plumbing; they’d have to walk to a well to fetch water in 5-gallon buckets.

“And then John said ‘That’s enough,’” she recalled.

“We’re not going to live like this anymore.”

The family contacted the American embassy and arranged to return to America. But because the region was in the midst of turmoil, they had to leave immediately. First on a small boat, then a larger one, and they finally landed on friendly European soil within 24 hours, where they saw an American flag waving at the embassy. They were tired and needed a shower.

“When we got off the boat — and Americans need to understand this — the most beautiful thing in the whole world was that American flag that was waving. It was waving on the shore. And I looked at it and I said to John, ‘Look at the American flag!’ And we got there the Americans looked at us and said, ‘OK, what do you need?’”

American embassy workers helped them book a flight on British Airways from Cypress to London to Chicago and booked them a hotel room.

“Sometimes I just want to shake people,” she said. “I just want them to understand how lucky they are to live in this country. I think people when they leave this country and come back, realize how fortunate they are.”

Once back in southern Minnesota, Najwa and John began looking for a place to open a restaurant. And in 1984 they opened Meray’s. It lasted until 1997 until, as Najwa says, they had to make a difficult decision. At that time they had Meray’s, a gangbusters store in River Hills Mall called Massad’s, and a catering business with an exclusive contract with the city’s civic center.

“We had three businesses, the girls were in college and high school and it was only John and I,” she said about the decision to close Meray’s. “The one that was the hardest to let go of was the one that needed to be let go.”

After that, their businesses continued to thrive, and they opened another one, Olive’s, with a menu very similar to Meray’s. So now they still have that catering business, a hilltop restaurant with a drive-through

window has opened and closed (perhaps only temporarily) and they’ve just launched a venture where their wildly popular Schwarma sandwiches will be served in Scheel’s stores.

“His Schwarma is all over the country now,” she said.

“His face is up at Scheel’s. He’s achieved his dream.”

Madame Mayor

Najwa’s election as Mayor was a first. In fact, no matter who won the election that year, it was going to be a first; the two candidates that survived the primary were Najwa and Bukata Hayes, and Mankato had never had a woman or a black man as mayor.

At the time, she didn’t want to trumpet herself as a pioneer. And she still doesn’t. She’s much more interested, even after 12 months, in learning how to do the job well.

When she ran for mayor, she said, her vision was simple. She wanted to focus on youth, celebrate the fact that we have vast pools of talent graduating from our area colleges and universities every year, and figure out ways to keep them in our community instead of exiting for greener and more exciting pastures.

But a funny thing happened when she took office, she said. She started learning about things she hadn’t thought about before. If you want to keep people here, for example, you need affordable housing. After that, they’ll need help buying their first home. And if we want them to start families, we’ll need to address the shortage in daycare openings.

“So the vision I had now has become a bigger challenge,” she said. “How do you work out those challenges? You can’t just snap your fingers. … I’ve been at it a year, and I’ve learned a lot more than I ever thought, and I have so much more to learn.”

Mankato City Council member Mike Laven has worked with four different mayors: Jeff Kagermeier, John Brady and Eric Anderson. He says one thing that characterizes Najwa’s approach is being able to keep meetings on task.

“She’s handled the meetings quite well, I think we set an unofficial world record of 6 minutes one night,” Laven joked.

On the serious side, Laven said Najwa’s ability to keep people like him from drifting off course with tangents is a welcome one.

“I appreciate it greatly for myself, and I think it’s the right way to go about it,” he said. “It’s a contrast to mayor Anderson who would let folks go.”

Laven echoed Najwa’s point about learning the ins and outs of how a city operates. And he said her openmindedness and willingness to learn has earned trust among her colleagues. She also brings a certain amount of business acumen that is a great quality in leading the city.

Laven cites the movement around adding an ice sheet in Mankato as one of the reasons why it’s good to have someone like Najwa holding the gavel.

“The folks leading the charge on this new sheet of ice, they think they understand everything because they wear suits and own businesses,” Laven said.

Najwa also owns a business, Laven said, so she’ll be in a unique position — as someone who understands the government issues while being knowledgeable of, and sensitive to, the business side of getting things done — to broker the discussion thoughtfully.

During the campaign, Najwa said someone called her “the total package.” She left that exchange a little unsure why anyone would say that. Then she thought about it a little bit.

She’s an immigrant.

She knows how it feels to not be able to get a job.

She knows how hard it is to raise children.

She knows how to run a business.

“And our population is changing,” she said. “Who better to understand the hardships? We know what it’s like to try to get help. But at the same time, we worked hard. We never asked for a handout.”

MM

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 19

REFLECTIONS

By Pat Christman

20 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

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here’s something about holiday lights that not only brightens the landscape, but a person’s mood. It can be as simple as a small tree or as extravagant as the 1.5 million lights that make up the Kiwanis Holiday Light display in Sibley Park. The darkness lights up and the snow cover comes alive with sparkling color.

Winters in Minnesota are never easy.

All the darkness and snow can wear on a person. But for at least a little while during December there are little tiny lights to brighten the landscape. MM

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 21

DAY TRIP DESTINATIONS: Wisconsin Winterland

By Diana Rojo-Garcia

Cave Point State Park overlooks Lake Michigan and is worth waking up early with the sunrise to see the frozen along the cliffs.

Photo courtesy of Door County Visitor Bureau

Your DOOR to adventures

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Door County can be amazing during the winter months

orte Des Morts is French for “Death’s Door” and also where Door County, WI receives its name.

The name of the 70-mile long peninsula with 300 miles of shoreline was given by French explorers who traveled through the waters of Lake Michigan and Green Bay. Between the 18th and early 20th centuries, many shipwrecks have been found.

Though historically correct, the county is far from the description of “death’s door.” Now, Door County is known for being one of the top cherry-producing areas, harvesting between 8 and 15 million pounds of cherries annually. Sister Bay hosts a “cherry drop” party to ring in the new year Dec. 31.

Other attractions include five state parks, 53 public swimming beaches, historic lighthouses, local wineries — and it has also been selected by USA Today’s Best 10 for the best destination for fall foliage, just to name a few.

Winter activities don’t fall short during the cold months.

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Nature fun

For those who don’t fear the cold, the county offers great areas for snowshoeing, snowmobiling, crosscountry skiing, ice skating and ice fishing on the frozen waters of Green Bay. Its five skate parks — Peninsula State Park, Newport State Park, Whitefish Dunes State Park and Potawatomi State Park — offer trails for skiing, snowshoeing and snowmobiling. Visitors can check out Crossroads at Big Creek for skiing or Ridges Sanctuary for snowshoeing with a naturalist (along with more winter events).

Snowmobilers can shred the 250 miles worth of groomed trails.

Jen Rogers, PR and communications manager of Door County Visitor Bureau, recommends visiting Cave Point County Park.

“Cave Point County Park is absolutely breathtaking in the winter. Ice forms along the cliffs and creates beautiful

Participants of the Fruit Loop Run dress in wacky costumes for the half-mile run/walk during the Fish Creek Winter Festival.

Photo courtesy of Door County Visitor Bureau ice sculptures from the sprays of Lake Michigan,” Rogers said.

She suggests getting up early to visit the park at sunrise for “out-of-this-world” photos.

Rogers also suggests watching the winter fleet come into Sturgeon Bay. “Onlookers can watch 1,000-foot freighters come into the canal for winter layup on the Great Lakes,” Rogers said. “Schedules for when the freighters are coming in can be found on the Door County Maritime Museum Facebook page.”

The park opens half an hour before sunrise until 11 p.m.

Cave Point 5360 Schauer Rd. Jacksonport , Wis., 54235 Ridges Sanctuary 8166 WI-57 Baileys Harbor, Wis., 54202

Winter Festival

Rogers also enjoys the community Christmas events in the winter months, which bring the community together.

But, an event that visitors look forward to is the Fish Creek Winter Festival in Fish Creek, WI, which takes place Jan. 31-Feb. 2 and will celebrate its 33rd year in 2020.

“The annual event is filled with wacky games, live music, chili cookoff, Fruit Loop Run and the fun Stumpf Fiddle contest,” Rogers said.

The Fruit Loop Run has runners (or walkers) participate

Woman enjoying the outdoors cross country skiing in Door County. Photo courtesy of Door County Visitor Bureau in a half-mile competition in silly costumes.

The festival, which overlooks Green Bay in a heated tent, also includes a cherry pit spitting contest, fireworks, sleigh rides and sledding.

Go to visitfishcreek.com/events/winterfestival for more information.

Plan a trip

Check out doorcounty.com for more events and schedule itineraries curated by Door County Visitor Bureau. It includes more winter activities (and don’t forget the other seasons), extended stay recommendations, winery tours or an over-the-weekend trip with suggestions to favorite local shops, restaurants and outdoor adventures.

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 23

Get cozy!

The Nicolin Mansion in Jordan is known as The Jewel of Scott County. Photo courtesy of Nicolin Mansion

Need a romantic place to get away from it all for the weekend? We’ve got you covered

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By Katie Leibel

ow that the holidays are behind us everyone is heading somewhere warm. Can we blame them? This cold can make us stir crazy and grumpy. The good news is, instead of spending a fortune travelling out of the country, southern Minnesota has plenty of cozy getaways for couples needing a romantic getaway.

Nicolin Mansion Bed & Breakfast of Jordan

Hidden away in Jordan is what their website calls “The Jewel of Scott County.” The mansion is more than 125 years old and is the epitome of luxury.

The Nicolin Mansion offers two options: dining with other guests over a candlelit breakfast or being served in the privacy of your own room. Breakfast is three courses and includes signature scones, chocolatedipped strawberries, croissant stuffed french toast or scotch eggs and a dessert. Every day is different, and can accommodate any dietary restriction.

Some exclusive features include a guest kitchen offering complimentary wine, soft drinks, coffee, tea and popcorn any time and a baby grand piano in the front parlor. Guests can also opt to purchase a cheese and cracker tray, chocolate fondue, fruit tray or even personalized champagne or wine goblets.

Each bedroom has a private bathroom, and some include a whirlpool bathtub. They all also have their own fireplace.

To book your stay visit nicolinmansion.com.

24 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

Historic Hutchinson House Bed & Breakfast of Faribault

This picturesque home borders the historic downtown district where guests can find unique restaurants, local shops, and entertainment. According to the owners, this spot was named one of the Top 50 Coolest Houses in Minnesota. This charming 1892 Queen Anne Victorian home is listed on the National Register of Historical Places and is worth an extended stay just for the beauty of the house itself.

This B&B some exclusive activities that guests can opt to purchase including a horse-drawn carriage ride, or 30 minutes or an hour with a massage therapist.

There’s also plenty to do nearby including a cheese cave tour, mural tour and walking tour.

To book your stay visit historichutchhouse.com.

Bingham Hall Bed & Breakfast of New Ulm

Back in New Ulm the Bingham Hall, depending on the room you pick, you can get a fireplace, a twoperson jacuzzi, a massage chair and more. Many of the rooms are also named after people important to the B&B’s history.

Many of the rooms are authentic to the era so guests can enjoy a luxurious stay in an old-fashioned way. The B&B also has two resident dogs, Sam and Rumzi, to keep guests company.

To book your stay visit bingham-hall.com.

The Konsbruck Hotel of Saint Peter

The Konsbruck is a boutique hotel with five suites, which have been carefully restored and decorated to maintain the original feel of this historic hotel built in 1895. According to Natasha O’Hara of Mankato Independent Originals, this hotel includes old world charm with modern amenities.

All of the suites feature high ceilings and decor that reflect the feeling and charm of the early 1900’s. This spot also includes the luxury of high-definition televisions and beautiful fireplaces. The suites feature large elegant bathing rooms with jet tubs and large ceramictiled showers for guests to enjoy.

Below is the 3rd Street Tavern, a casual full-service dining environment. Breakfast is included with guests who stay on the weekends.

To book your stay visit konsbruckhotel.com.

Czech Inn Bed & Breakfast of Hayward, MN

The Czech Inn Bed & Breakfast offers five guest rooms along with a retreat space that includes a full kitchen, an entertainment area and a large patio. Common areas include a sitting room, a spacious dining room, a 47” HDTV, Keurig Coffee and complimentary Wi-Fi and cable.

This B&B is one that the whole family can stay at as it has rooms with two twin beds and rooms with kings, as well. Each room includes a private en-suite bathroom featuring either a claw-foot bathtub or walk-in shower.

When guests book two gardenlevel rooms they also have access to the retreat room, a room with more than 750 square feet of crafting/meeting area and a fully equipped kitchen. The retreat room can also be rented out for private events.

To book your stay visit czechinnandretreat.com/index.html.

MM

The Hutchinson House borders the historic downtown district.

At Bingham Hall, rooms are authentic to the era.

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 25

Get Outside!

It’s time to shrug off your fear of winter fun.

There’s so much to do and so little winter left!

By Katie Leibel

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t’s official. It’s that time of year. We’re all getting sick of winter already.

It’s OK! You can admit it. It’s only January, but now that the holidays are over and the snow is still here everyone is sick and tired of it. Shoveling, brushing off your car, driving on icy roads — it all seems so obnoxious and annoying now!

Well, no need to fret. We’ve got you covered with some of the best winter activities in town. After chatting with Minnesota DNR Minneopa Area Naturalist Scott Kudleka and nature enthusiasts Tim and Linda Engstrom, we have plenty of winter secrets to spill.

Sledding

The number one sledding place in Mankato is, hands down, the sledding hill at Sibley Park. Where is it in the park? Well that’s not hard to figure out. Driving in from the side closest to the Minnesota River on Sibley Parkway, one only needs to glance to their left and see the giant sledding hill that is notorious among children and area sledding enthusiasts for it’s crazy slope. Bring water and dress in layers as you will get tired walking up and down that hill.

26 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

Ice-Skating

There are many great places for sledding in and around town. The three most popular (unofficially) would have to be the Spring Lake Park, the Stoltzman Road Park and C.D. Alexander park. All three provide excellent conditions, and many are the host to games of broomball, ice hockey and just regular skating.

Don’t want to be outside too much? Don’t worry! All Season’s Arena also has ice skating. Times available for open skating vary so it is best to check their website for their public skating hours at mankatocer.com/allseasons-arena or give them a call at 507-387-6552.

Don’t worry about having your own skates, as they’ve got you covered with rentals. General admission is $3 per person, $2 for skate rentals and $5 per person for open hockey.

Snowshoeing

With all of the parks and trails in the area, it isn’t hard to find a place to snowshoe, and snowshoeing can be pretty therapeutic to those who enjoy the activity.

“I prefer to hike and use my snowshoes. There are birds flying around and it’s just peaceful and quiet,” Linda Engstrom said.

Minneopa provides a great place to snowshoe. There are also guided tours for the trails at Minneopa held about once a month.

Currently there is one slated for 1-2 p.m. Jan. 25 and 10-11 a.m. Feb. 22.

There’s just one important thing to remember: DON’T SNOWSHOE ON THE SKI TRAILS. It can ruin them for others.

Skiing

Mount Kato is one of the most obvious places to visit to ski, but what about cross country and other forms of skiing?

“Liking winter flipped when I found something I like to do outside. When I first bought cross country skis in the ‘70s suddenly I had something I liked to do in the winter,” Linda Engstrom said.

Minneopa is one of the best places in the area to enjoy this sport, and cross-country skiing is one of those activities that people fall in love with as soon as they try it.

“There’s a five mile loop around the bison pen, which you can ski around,” Tom Engstrom said.

Although Minneopa does not always groom their trails, plenty of skiers go through and leave their mark on the trails to help others go through.

What else?

So, we’ve covered the basics, but what else is there to do?

Well, in Mankato, quite a bit. n Disc-golfing You read that correctly. Disc-golfing is among the many things to do in and around the Mankato area even when it snows.

One of the places many enthusiasts visit is Land of Memories. The best part? Not as many people are out because of the snow! n Fat Tire Biking Perhaps you’ve heard of this newer sport, and perhaps not. Fat tire biking is exactly how it sounds: biking around on a bicycle with fat tires to help grip the snow.

“I always tell people, if you can dress to ski in the winter, you can dress to bike in the winter. It’s the same concept,” said Tom Engstrom.

Fat tire bikes are often heavier than normal bikes because of their need to be able to navigate the snow.

Even when the roads are covered, one can still bike in about 4-5 inches of snow. But be careful! Because of the ice, they can slip out from under one if a corner is taken too sharply.

There are plenty of places in Mankato to use a fat tire bike, and safely at that. There are the usual bike trails: the walking and biking trail near Minneopa, simply going through Minneopa or just biking around anywhere for the heck of it!

“Kiwanis has their mountain bike trail that people bike on in the winter,” Tom Engstrom said of the trail near the dog park.

Needless to say, this sport is gaining traction for all the right reasons, not only does it help people get active, but it also can be done in the winter.

Many bike shops hold races year-round, so it’s easy to get involved if you keep your ear to the ground as they come up.

n Snap a photo!

Get a photo of the snow and enjoy the beauty of Minnesota during this time of the year.

“I also take my camera out, especially after the snow.

Sometimes it lands in especially nice ways, and you can see the animal tracks. It’s just pristine and sparkly when no one else has been out there,” said Linda Engstrom.

It’s so easy to get sick of all of the snow, especially after the holiday season, but keep in mind that only about half of the world gets to enjoy this winter wonderland we have for a good part of our year. n Winter Fest at Minneopa Minneopa offers lots of winter activities, from snow shoeing to skiing and more. One of the most wellknown is Winter Fest.

“We put out luminaries and people can walk candlelit trails and there’s bonfires and hot chocolate,” Kudelka said.

What better way to beat the winter blues than to bundle up and sit around a campfire and hike the candlelit trails with loved ones and friends.

This year’s Winter Fest is 5-8 p.m. Jan 11. n Bird-watching Grab your binoculars!

Although many of the birds have flown south for the winter, some of our feathered-friends have stuck around and are especially fun to see in the wintertime.

“There’s an eagle’s nest in the park and they lay eggs I think in February so you can see them if you bring your binoculars,” Linda Engstrom said.

So get searching.

Safety in the snow and ice

Everyone wants to have fun this winter, but they also want to stay safe.

Snow is fun, but the cold brings its own risks. Below is an annual reminder of snow safety tips. n Stay with friends or let someone know when you are going out. You don’t want to get stuck in the snow and have no one know you’re there. n Take your phone with you, but beware: Some parks do not have reception. n Dress in warm layers. You don’t want to overheat but you also don’t want to freeze. Stay warm.

Beating the winter blues

It’s not rocket science. Sometimes winter just brings you down. It’s cold, the snow can make travel hard and it can all seem like too much, but Kudelka has a piece of advice.

“I think people get so tied up about winter, and I think that (since) we live here in Minnesota and it’s better to embrace it and enjoy it,” he said.

Embrace the cold weather. Find an activity and have fun, or stay inside and read, knit or meet with friends.

One of the most important things is to get out or meet with people to avoid going stir crazy.

“Just get out there,” Linda Engstrom said.

“You have to make up your mind about what kind of life you want to live,” Tom Engstrom said.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves. MM

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 27

Y A S

ES

NEW YEAR’S DAY They say it rained forty days and forty nights once in the old days, and that was terrible; but during the winter of 1880-81 it snowed twice forty days; that was more terrible.

— O. E. RÖLVAAG, Giants in the Earth

By John Gaterud

S

eems right, the light just now, its cast and shadow, late afternoon, branches black against sky fallen to rose, another year past, another one gone. Snow skiffs across the road, settles in the lees. A lone redwing remains for the winter, the great tumbling harvest flocks long flown. It sits away from the jays and finches at the feeder, pecks absently at the ground. I wonder if it will survive until spring. First stars, distant and faint. January, a start.

Spent the day looking at photographs of old North Sea islands, Orkneys and Faroes, rockbound and remote, in jagged jades and grays, drawing me in, drawn. Something ancestral about them, of Scots and Swedes — the stacked stone, weathered visage, surf surging beneath. Some scenes were snowbound, white peaks, dark reefs.

When we were kids and it snowed, the street department sometimes barricaded two blocks in the middle of town for sledding, the first down a steep pitch, the second for the runout, no cars allowed.

Everybody came out then, great shouting packs of us, 28 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

and after a while the track turned glassy, all those steel runners running all afternoon, slick and quick, and on toward dusk, when corner lamps lit. Later, after we moved to the country, our dad would tow my brother and me behind the car on our skis, from two long ropes tied to the bumper. Skijoring, he called it, as he did with his dad as a boy back in Sweden, only here with the Studebaker, not horses. Windows down, he’d watch us through the side mirrors, cigarette punched between gnarled knuckles, black car ghosting along tree-lined roads, snow-wake sharp to our faces, the light fading, no tracks for miles but our own.

In Sherwood Anderson’s short story “Death in the Woods,” a pack of dogs races in circles before an old country woman dying in the snow under a full winter moon. She has taken a shortcut off the road from town to her farm near dark, but, exhausted by the effort, stops in a clearing, spent. She carries in a small grain bag roped to her back a few provisions she earlier traded eggs for with the local grocer. A butcher, pitying her poverty, added some liver, soup bones, a

few scraps of “dog-meat.” Now, deep in the woods, illclad and cold, she sinks in the snow against a tree, closes her eyes. Dogs appear. They’ve been out hunting rabbits, and start running, nose to tail, around and around, in a great silent circle, in some ancient ritual, of death and wolves, says the narrator, who imagines remembering this as a boy. One by one, the dogs break away and approach the woman to pause before her, then return to the track. She has fed animal life all her days, he says — “horses, cows, pigs, dogs, men.” When she dies, the dogs start to worry the sack from her back, drag the body across the clearing. Her dress tears open, down off her shoulders, naked to the waist.

She lies face down, frozen, alone. Only the circle remains. Several days later, a hunter happens upon the scene, hurries into town, returns with the marshal, a posse of men. The boy and his brother, out delivering papers, follow. In the clearing, the men stand, transfixed, mystified. One of them steps forward, kneels, turns her over. Night has fallen, moon through the trees. White clouds cross the sky. The boy, years on, still sees. “Everything,” he says.

The Children’s Blizzard, of January 1888, buried the prairies, killed hundreds of people. Great choking waves of snow swallowed towns, farms, churches, trains — a thousand miles wide across the Northern Plains. A benign day, the 12th, turned black, then white. Fronts collided, winds raged, bitter air swept south and east, dropped in places a hundred degrees.

No one saw it coming. Livestock vanished, families disappeared. Teachers in country schoolhouses roped students together, planned desperate escapes, lost their way. Two months later, the most notorious snowstorm in American history, the Blizzard of ’88, engulfed the East Coast, killed hundreds more. A monster nor’easter dumped up to 60 inches between March 11 and 14,

blew drifts 40 feet high. Trains stalled, barns collapsed, ships sank. No one saw this one approaching, either.

New York City stood silent, entombed in white. nnnn My parents married during the Great Blizzard of 1947, on Dec. 27, in North Conway, N.H., where they had met, after the war. My mother was a college kid from New Jersey, and worked summers and holidays as a desk clerk for her uncle, who managed the Eastern Slope Inn, a famous resort in the White Mountains. My father, born near Stockholm, worked as a bellhop at the hotel, but was there to ski. He knew Hannes Schneider, the Austrian émigré and “father” of the Arlberg Technique, who ran the ski school on nearby Mount Cranmore, the resort’s hill, and helped train soldiers for the 10th Mountain Division. The couple courted in the lobby, or so Mom used to say. The Skinny Swede, she called him. After the ceremony, they took the train down through Boston, heading for New York, where they planned to sail on New Year’s Day to Sweden for their honeymoon. It snowed the entire way, great blankets across the countryside, as the train crawled toward the city, which lay stunned, paralyzed. Greatest one-day snowfall in New York history (since broken), 26.4 inches in Central Park, piles more elsewhere.

Another nor’easter, no warning, no time. Their ship, the MS Gripsholm, of the Swedish American Line, moored at Pier 97, on West 57th Street, towered white, encased in ice. Most romantic trip they ever took, Mom always said. Cold, crazy. Back in the States, they settled on a farm in rural Jersey, raised chickens, cows, pigs, dogs, boys.

We used to raise chickens, my wife and I, but quit after Ed the Rooster one day attacked my mother-inMANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 29

law, who was visiting for the weekend. Ed, big as a rottweiler, spurred her leg, left a gash, deep. My wife drove her mom into town to the doctor — stitches, shots, the whole thing. Back at the house, Ed saw me coming across the yard with the hatchet, stood his ground, bared his teeth. For a long time, we didn’t eat meat.

One morning, years earlier, when we first got chickens, our neighbor farmer lady called and said they were butchering that day, so we drove down the road to their place to watch, a lesson. We were new at this, but confident the task would be easy. After all, they’d been doing it for years. Behind the house stood her husband and son. From the elder’s arms, hanging by their feet, were three roosters, their small eyes wide, alert. As the woman spread newspapers across an old wooden table, her son retrieved from the house a large bucket of what we learned was scalding water. After her knives were placed on the table, her husband passed two of the chickens to their son, then showed us with one hand — my left, I noted — how to grab the first bird’s feet from behind and simultaneously pin its wings back into a fist, thereby forcing its neck to protrude, which was easily laid across a stump.

“A machete, right?” one of us asked, pointing to the short sword leveled in the farmer’s right hand above the outstretched neck. “Corn knife,” he replied, then whacked. Expressions about headless running chickens assumed new meaning in a tossed rolling muff of flapping feathers. At the base of the stump, the rooster’s eye gazed skyward, toward us, it seemed, as we leaned toward it. Sighting on the second chicken, and then the third, the farmer repeated this process — his long thick forearm firmly attached to the knife — after which he collected the three combed heads and threw them onto a nearby brush pile, where their German shepherd, whose own part in the ritual appeared to be one of patience, rummaged and consumed them.

The carcasses were dunked, one by one, into the pail, held under with a stick, then withdrawn, sopping, waiting for the plucking — first fistfuls of feathers, then smaller clumps and tufts, and, finally, with the potential for tedium already surfacing (they’d once butchered a hundred chickens for the school district in a day, they said), the pinfeathers, pin by pin, down the legs and around the body and up the stumped neck: pick, pick, pick — until they looked like chickens I’d seen hanging in butcher shops, soft-shelled yellow feet and all. My neighbor was quick and clever with her knives, expertly cutting, ripping, and separating the big pieces, which, after trimming the fat, she tossed into the bucket, now filled with fresh cold water. The dog crunched on a claw he’d found. Back at our place, 42 unsexed chicks had by nature turned into a flock of hens and roosters, the eggless latter worthless but for feeding unless eaten. By genetics, they had to go.

Armed thus with the lesson from our neighbors, and the belief that chickens were no smarter than fish, which, when lucky, I’d been able to knock on the head, plus the square-bladed hatchet we’d bought at a garage sale, we set to fetching. We’d try for six birds. Hot water, hatchet, stump, outstretched neck. Near death, I’d read somewhere, time suspends. I never knew blood was so warm.

Once, later, at the edge of winter, near dusk and snowing hard, we heard our dog barking, distant and faint, from the slough beyond the woods behind our 30 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

house. We called and called, then went to look. After a while, she appeared, her neck bloody, soaked. Nearby, a small deer lay in the cattails, barely alive, its rear legs splayed. We were uncertain whether the dog had downed it herself or found it wounded. We thought about calling the neighbor’s son to come shoot the creature, but darkness had fallen, so decided to carry it back to our place. Where to put the deer for the night, or what good it would do, we had no idea. I knelt to lift it, but jumped when my hand greased across its entrails, into which the dog had apparently burrowed. I returned to the house and found a flashlight and a small plastic tarp, but, once back at the swamp, it didn’t matter. Wind rattled the rushes. It snowed for the next few days, so I never got around to burying the carcass, which, over the following few weeks, the dog brought into the yard in pieces, as I knew she would if I waited as I did.

Around this same time, Ed lost his comb to frostbite.

When the volcano Krakatoa lost its top, in Indonesia, in late August 1883, in one of the great eruptions in recorded history, the sky turned dark for weeks, months, years. A series of brutal winters circled the world for a decade.

When Krakatoa blew, Lt. Adolphus Greely, commander of the American contingent of the First International Polar Year Scientific Expedition, had braced himself upon a floe “grinding erratically through the shifting ice” of Kane Basin, between Ellesmere Island and northwest Greenland. Already stranded for more than two years a thousand miles above the Arctic Circle, he now stands marooned with 24 men, exposed in the open on the ice after abandoning their small launch as they try to push south toward a last-chance rescue before a third winter descended. They are hungry, desperate, doomed. A month adrift, they hope to reach land again — somewhere, somehow. The party has one canvas tent, salvaged from sailcloth, little food. Gales scour the sound, a shattered, heaving moonscape of icebergs dwarfed by granite cliffs and calving glaciers.

Shockwaves from the volcano, half a world away, reverberate through the din, glance off their antipodes, pass again. The worst for Greely had yet to begin.

“The worst journey in the world” is often recognized as Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition to Antarctica, from 1910 to 1913. The description belongs to Apsley Cherry-Garrard, a crew member whose memoir by the same title recounts the savage ordeal of the Britons’ race to the South Pole against the Norwegians. Harnessed like animals, the Englishmen drag sledges of gear and food, their sweat-frozen clothes stone-stiff against their bodies. Forty below zero, a thousand miles forward, 10,000 feet up. The Norwegians had learned from the Inuit that dogs travel best in polar regions, but the English — dressed in wool, cotton, canvas, and leather, neither furs nor skins — had insisted on bringing ponies to haul their stores, which would prove disastrous. Hearty though they were, the animals, bogged down in chest-deep drifts, would prove no match for Antarctica. In one early scene, a group of them staked on ice near open water becomes separated from the men when a ledge breaks and starts floating off. The men stand, horrified, as the ponies drift away, and with them part of the party’s future rations, reserved for that “time-to-eat-the-dogs” moment (as planned by many polar expeditions) once the animals were spent. In the ensuing chaos, a pod of

killer whales appears, surrounds the floe, and on some seemingly silent signal starts jostling the ice with their heads, seesawing it, up and down, side to side, until it tilts, and then tips to spill the clawing, screaming ponies, one by one, into the frigid, churning sea — a sign, an omen, the bloody backwash frozen upon the feet of the men frozen at water’s edge, dumbstruck, aghast, alone. Cherry-Garrard’s teeth will later chatter so hard from the cold that they break, crack out.

The worst for Scott had only begun.

I once watched a movie about 19th-century Swedish settlers in Minnesota — nybyggarna — in which a father, in trying to save his son from dying in a blizzard, splits an ox in half with an ax, guts the beast, and then places the dazed boy inside the carcass while he goes for help.

Ash masks the sun.

The teacher ropes her children together, and together push through the schoolhouse door and slip into the white gale.

Sgt. Joseph Elison, of the Greely Expedition, no longer stands or walks, his feet black with frostbite.

He lies without complaint in his sleeping bag. When his shipmates try to move him, his right foot falls off, flesh sliding from bone. They don’t have the heart to tell him.

Later, two doctors saw off his legs, one on each limb.

The cattle, lying together, backs to the wind, vanish under the snow.

Newlyweds clasp hands on a snowbound train.

Boys ski behind a car toward twilight.

Dogs circle beneath the moon.

Chickens stop laying.

The redwing goes missing.

Bodies melt from drifts in the spring.

Time drifts, settles in the lees.

MM

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MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 31

Wine & Beer

wines

By Leigh Pomeroy

These are a few of my favorite wines

southern mn style

O

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens, Bright copper kettles and warm woolen mittens, Brown paper packages tied up with twine, These are a few of my favorite wines!

n the top of my bookshelf stand nine empty wine bottles. While not necessarily my all-time favorite wines, they all bring me fond memories.

Three are Cabernet Sauvignons made by my good friend Bill Cadman at Tulocay winery. They are the 1987 (the year of my sons’ birth), the 2004, and the 2001 under the reserve “Cadman” label.

Thankfully, I still have two full bottles of the 1987 waiting for the right occasions to share with my family. While the wine is still in great shape, in recent tastings, the corks have disintegrated during extraction, leading me to pour the wine through a coffee filter before serving. While not the best choice for taking sediment and cork out of an older wine, it’s better than drinking cork crumbs.

Also on the shelf is a bottle of Empennage under the “Cadman” label, a one-off proprietary wine made by Bill in the 2001 vintage.

It’s a blend of 49% Cabernet Sauvignon, 29% Syrah, 15% Merlot and 7% Petit Verdot. Blending traditional Bordeaux varietals with syrah has been popular among Australian winemakers and has more recently gained traction in Washington state and now California. These blends are not for the faint of heart, coupling the power and berry flavors of cabernet sauvignon with the power and spice of syrah.

Two more bottles on the shelf are Cabernet Francs. One is a 2001 Moon Mountain Vineyard that I picked up as a closeout when the label was discontinued; it was an absolute steal. The Moon Mountain

32 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

Vineyard on the east side of Sonoma Valley still exists, but the wines are now bottled under the Repris label and cost a lot more.

The second is a 2005 Willis Hall made by another good friend, John Bell. The grapes came from Washington’s Columbia Valley.

Both wines showed power yet restraint and possessed what I call a bacon-like flavor that I associate with fully ripe Cabernet Francs.

Not too many wine drinkers have heard of the cabernet franc grape, which together with sauvignon blanc is the parent of the more famous cabernet sauvignon. The cabernet franc is the predominant red grape in France’s Loire Valley and there yields a lighter, more refined wine than those from Washington and California.

Cabernet franc was once the primary grape of St. Émilion in Bordeaux, but it has since lost favor to merlot, which yields better and is less susceptible to rot.

Cabernet franc can also be found in northeastern Italy in the cooler Trentino-Alto Adige and FriuliVenezia Giulia regions because it ripens earlier than cabernet sauvignon.

My neighbors Preston and Judy are true Cabernet Franc heads.

Their favorite comes from Barrister Winery in Spokane, Washington, with grapes from the Columbia Valley from a vineyard not too far from where the Willis Hall was sourced.

But they also appreciate, as do I, the Cabernet Francs from DeRose Winery near Hollister, California — yes, it’s a real city and not just a clothing brand. The grapes are grown in the narrow

Cienega Valley, where vineyards have existed since the 19th century.

Among the many reasons why I like DeRose is that they offer older vintages of their wines for very reasonable prices.

The only other California wine bottle above my bookshelf is a 1995 Noceto Sangiovese. Made by another good friend, Jim Gullett, this wine was not overpowering nor one of Noceto’s reserve or single-vineyard offerings. But we drank it just this year and, at 24 years of age, it was still vibrant, though, as one might expect, on its downward slide.

And since it came from the cellar of former Minnesota State University Mankato professor Mary Dooley — a true leader in her field both as a geographer and a woman, mother of winemaker Stephen Dooley and a special friend — it offered a special memory.

Two other bottles occupy places among the nine: a 2008 Barbaresco “Serra” from Paitin in Piedmont, Italy, and a 1989 Chateau Margaux from Bordeaux. Barbaresco is made entirely from the nebbiolo grape, like its neighbor Barolo. But wines from its best producers can equal and even excel many of the better-known and generally more powerful Barolos.

Chateau Margaux is legendary and one of the five Premier Grand Cru Classé wines of the Médoc. The 2016 vintage today sells for $600 and up. I think I bought the 1989 for less than $90.

Cost aside, it was exquisite. Need I say more?

Leigh Pomeroy is a Mankato-based writer and wine lover.

BEER

By Bert Mattson

Drink Lo-cal

M

ichelob Ultra is an anomaly among the big beers.

Its continual growth in popularity - bear with me - in an era where big beer brand sales are generally on the ebb, is a reflection of diet. Ultra is marketed to that effect. While the beer’s nutritional content isn’t radically different from competitors’ beers – as little as one calorie in some cases - the one macro (dietspeak for macronutrient) that people tend to tally most these days is carbohydrates Ultra’s carb count is lower.

Limit carbs to below a certain percentage of macronutrients protein, fat and carbohydrate - a day and your body will start to burn fat as a predominant fuel. This is a powerful driver on the dieting front.

But it’s worth noting that carbs aren’t only of concern to people seeking to manage their weight.

Monitoring carbohydrate intake is also critically important to people managing Type 1 diabetes. Further, ketogenic diets have been a means of managing epileptic seizures for a century. Ketogenic diets, or keto, are the ones that severely restrict carbs, and protein to a lesser extent, to force the body to burn fat. There are also supposed to be ancillary benefits.

My point isn’t to campaign for lowcarb diets but to note that, whatever the impetus, craft brewers evidently also have taken notice. Carb counts are displayed more often these days, even if they’re not always easy to find. (Where it’s critical, double check carb counts, particularly if the information is coming from an indirect source.) Moreover, quite a few brewers have developed beers dedicated to this dietary restriction.

Carbs from various food sources affect blood sugar the same. It is the amount that matters. This sounds like a truism but is more meaningful than it appears. Consider, when it comes to carbs, that a cup of ice cream is roughly equivalent to two-thirds of a cup of noodles. I don’t want to judge anyone’s priorities here (it’d be nuts to choose the noodles), but this will ultimately boil down to a

matter of values. For scale, both of those items amount to about 30 grams of carbs. That puts those portions out of range for many carb counters and near the daily limit for others. Yet the craft beers we’re about to discuss are below 5 grams.

Fortunately for me, that’s right in line with my values.

Slightly Mighty Lo-cal IPA from Dogfish Head comes in at 95 calories, and 3.6 grams of carbs — clearly identified on the can. It’s one of the top brews out there at under 100 calories. Monk fruit is added.

Hops have a tropical bent. A worthy reward for the calorie counter.

D a y t i m e l o w - c a l I PA f ro m Lagunitas comes in at 98 calories and 3 grams of carbs. This one has undergone some recipe and packaging alterations. Calories and grams are identified on recent packaging. This is the best beer I’ve tried to date at this carb count.

It stands up with high-end session IPAs as far as I’m concerned. Floral, cracker and crisp. Way beyond Ultra for an extra .4 grams.

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Bert Mattson is a chef and writer based in St. Paul. He is the manager of the iconic Mickey’s Diner. bertsbackburner.com

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MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 33

THAT’S LIFE

By Nell Musolf

I

All good things

had just parked the car and was getting ready to let our dog, Rocky, out of the back seat when it occurred to me I’d left the house without the most essential of all dog walking items: plastic bags. Since Rocky is prone to do his business at the most inopportune times and on the most pristine lawns, I knew I had two options: take my chances or turn around and go home. As it turned out, I didn’t have to do either.

Another car pulled up next to me. I eyed the driver, a dark-haired woman who looked pleasant and approachable. Maybe she had a plastic bag in her car and I wouldn’t have to go all the way back home. I walked over to her car.

“Hi, I know this sounds odd, but do you have any plastic bags in your car I might have?”

The woman smiled. “Hi, Nell.” It turned out she was a former boss, one I hadn’t seen in at least 10 years. We chatted for a few moments and yes, indeed, she did have a few spare plastic bags in her car and was happy to give them to me.

As Rocky and I went on our walk, I thought about how nice it was living in Mankato and running into people like former bosses and current doctors. Although our town is growing by leaps and bounds, it’s almost a given that if you go out to eat or the store or the library, you’re going to see at least one person you know.

I like that. I like going to the bank and knowing the teller’s name. I like seeing the same dentist year after year. The older I get the more I appreciate the comfort of familiarity. Familiarity can come in many forms, and for 34 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

me, writing this column has become as comforting and as familiar as that old blue blanket Linus pulls after him.

It was, I think, 2006 when I began freelancing for The Free Press after Sara Gilbert Frederick, then the magazine’s assistant editor, asked me if I’d like to write for her. My response was an immediate “yes!” I still remember my first assignment — interviewing two cake decorators at the hilltop Hy-Vee. I was so nervous my hands shook as I took notes, but I was immediately hooked. I loved interviewing people and loved even more writing up those interviews. A freelancer was born.

One of the best things about being a freelancer was having the opportunity to meet so many unique and interesting people living in Mankato and surrounding towns. Looking back on the stories I had the privilege to write, my mind still boggles over the variety of humankind in this valley. Glass blowers, dog groomers, cancer warriors, custodians, teachers, gardeners, students, lawyers … the list seems endless and everyone I met had a good story to tell.

In 2007 when Amanda Dyslin, then the assistant editor of the Mankato Magazine and one of the truly nicest people I’ve ever met, asked me if I’d be interested in writing a monthly column, I jumped at the chance.

Editor Joe Spear OK’d the idea and thus began a monthly journey I’ve enjoyed immensely.

After Amanda left the magazine, Tanner Kent, a sweetheart, took the reins of editing the magazine for a few years, followed by Robb Murray, another fine editor.

Any writer will agree that having a supportive, responsive

editor makes all the difference.

What is all of this leading up to? Although most of us don’t like to think about it, everything ends sooner or later and the time has come for me to wrap up this column.

The start of a new decade seems like the right moment to wave goodbye.

Writing about my admittedly bizarre take on life, my family, friends and dog has been a pleasure and I’ve been honored to share my quirky thoughts with the community. This particular writing gig has been an adventure I’m glad I was fortunate enough to have.

I want to thank Joe Spear for the opportunity to write for The Free Press Media and for putting up with me for all these years. And if anyone ever wants to say hello, I’d love to hear from you at nellmus@aol.com.

(Yes, Virginia, AOL does still exist!)

It’s been a fun ride and I’m going to miss sending in my monthly column, but like the saying goes, sooner or later all good things have to come to an end.

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Nell Musolf is a mom and freelance writer from Mankato. She blogs at: nellmusolf.com

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 35

GARDEN CHAT

By Jean Lundquist

Y

Let’s talk mustard

ou might have the joyful squeal that I let out a few weeks ago when I got my first seed catalog. Then, to my ultimate delight, there was not one, but three in the mail that day.

Now is the time to plan your garden. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail, you know.

As I’m planning for 2020, I’m excited to try some totally new things — like growing mustard for greens and seeds.

I like mustard, but not a lot. I prefer ketchup to mustard on hot dogs, landjaegers, brats and corn dogs, for example. However, I love a challenge. Mustard will provide me with that this summer.

Most people grow mustard as a green. It’s a staple in spicy mesclun mixes. (For anyone not familiar with mesclun, Wikipedia defines it this way: Mesclun (French pronunciation: [m3s’klœ]) is a mix of assorted small young salad greens…”)

Like most greens, including lettuce, mustard is ready to eat when it’s ready to eat, then quickly bolts to seed.

If you miss harvesting it on its best date, you’ve got a great chance of getting a whole new crop next spring because of the rapid slide to seeds. The plants are prolific 36 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

in providing seeds.

The seeds grow in pods, similar to radishes. The radish pods are so tasty in salads, a variety was bred to go directly to seed without producing an underground radish. The breeders named them “Rattail Radishes.”

When I took them to Farmers’ Market several years ago, one mother turned up her nose because of the name, but her young son convinced her to buy them. Once she got past the name, I know she was not disappointed.

I don’t yet know if the mustard pods, when young, will be tasty in salads. I can let you know.

In the first three seed catalogs, I counted 12 different kinds of mustard. I assume a combo of these seeds will make a good prepared mustard. Then again, you know what they say about assumptions….

It appears there is one kind of mustard seed used to make plain, mild yellow mustard. Others make Dijon mustard.

Dijon recipes I’ve found call for dry white wine, beer or water – whichever you have on hand. Some require horseradish.

I was thinking about buying horseradish roots to plant,

until I remembered that we had that once, and we had to pour a cement slab over it to get rid of it. It was impossible to dig out! Fortunately, a friend struggles through the horseradish process each fall and has a little to spare. But don’t feel sorry for him – he has a party and they all burn their noses and eyes together and call it fun.

Before I go whole hog into growing mustard, and risk growing mustard everywhere because of the prolific nature of the plant, I’m going to purchase some seeds now, grind them up, make a quick batch and see if it’s worth it. Like I said, I like mustard, but not a lot. nn n n If you are buying your seeds now and in the coming months, I urge you again to pay attention to varieties you plant. A good friend told me (bragged?) she had the best tomato crop ever from her containers.

I asked her what varieties she had grown, and she said she didn’t know.

I said as kindly as possible, “WHAT???”

If you don’t know what you grew this year that brought success, you can’t duplicate it next season. If you don’t know what you grew that you regretted, you can’t avoid it next season, either.

I learned the value of knowing what I’m growing the summer I planted all yellow tomatoes. I didn’t make any spaghetti sauce or chili that year.

Write the varieties down on your map. Don’t tell me you don’t make a map…..

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nn n n As you’re taking your dog outside to take care of business at night, listen for the owls hooting in the distance. They are looking for mates this month, and the chorus can be quite entertaining.

And take heart – the days are getting longer – spring is coming!

Carpet Cleaning starting @ $40.00 per room

Mattress Cleaning Upholstery Cleaning starting @ starting @ $50.00 $60.00

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Jean Lundquist is a Master Gardener who lives near Good Thunder. gardenchatkato@gmail.com

507-995-5476 www.kbcleaningmn.com MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 37

YOUR LOCAL

COMING ATTRACTIONS: JANUARY

AUTO

LOAN

EXPERTS!

5-7

‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ Time to be determined, will be held at the Kato Ballroom — Loosely based on the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, “Superstar” follows the last week of Jesus Christ’s life.

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ACCELERATE YOUR SAVINGS WITH AN EXCEPTIONAL RATE FEDERALLY INSURED BY NCUA EQUAL HOUSING LENDER

Mankato Craft Beer Expo 3-6 p.m. at the Mankato Civic Center — Sample beers from more than 40 different craft breweries — General admission is $45; early admission is $60; VIP admission is $100.

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Billy and Elton: The Hits 7 p.m. at the State Street Theater in New Ulm — Musician Phil Thompson plays the best music from Elton John and Billy Joel — Tickets are $20 and are available at the New Ulm Chamber of Commerce.

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Since 1934

507-387-3055

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5 YEARS IN A ROW 38 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

Summit Avenue Music Series’ “French Connection” 3 p.m. at Chapel of the Christ at New Ulm’s Martin Luther College — Peter McGuire on violin, Richard Belcher on cello, and Bethel Balge on piano performing songs by Gabriel Fauré, Claude Debussy, Lili Boulanger and Cécile Chaminade — Tickets are $15 at the door.

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MLK lecture 5:30 p.m. at Minnesota State University’s Centennial Student Union Ballroom — Lecture by Donzaleigh Abernathy, who grew up with MLK — Free and open to the public.

30-31

‘A Doll House’ 7:30 p.m. in the Andreas Theater at Minnesota State University — A housewife hides her financial problems from her husband.

When he learns of her deceit, he becomes angry. Disgusted by his selfishness, she leaves him to become an independent woman — Tickets are $16.

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Adult Spelling Bee 7 p.m. at Mankato Brewery — Teams of 3-4 may compete, all team members must be 21 or older, $15 per person to play.

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‘Annie Get Your Gun’ 7:30 p.m. in the Sigurd K. Lee Theater in the Ylvisaker Fine Arts Center at Bethany Lutheran College — Renowned in the Wild West as a sharpshooter, Annie meets her match, both romantically and professionally, in the form of fellow ace gunslinger Frank Butler — Tickets are $15

COMMUNITY DRAWS

By Kat Baumann

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 39

FROM THIS VALLEY

By Pete Steiner

Transitions and Toasts “If you love somebody, you better tell ‘em right now.”

T

he couple in the coffee shop were saying, well, you never know ...

They told the barista they had just lost their adult son unexpectedly in the prime of his life. In their grief, they reaffirmed an unquestioned truth: the only constant in this world is change. So often, that change is painful.

In this last column of the year, I want to lift a glass to some who’ve given up their daily presence among us — some who simply moved on, and some who’ve departed this Earthly plane. They all contributed so much to making Greater Mankato a desirable place to live; their absence now makes us poorer. (Forgive me for any omissions: this list is NOT exhaustive, done in mid-November for deadline.) nnnn We lost some great public servants. Jerry Huettl was a straight shooter. He was named Mankato’s top cop while I was covering news for KTOE. While many public officials are wary of media types, Jerry and I developed a trusting relationship, covering tumultuous times of excess student drinking, campus riots and high-profile crimes. He loved explaining to me the challenges of police life.

I also covered Tamra Rovney during her city council tenure. She was diligent, humane, and even on the toughest issues, she’d calmly answer questions with that beautiful smile. It was a shock to lose her at 50.

And Jonathan Zierdt: did anyone ever encounter him when he wasn’t smiling? A relentless promoter of our area through Greater Mankato Growth, he also waged a courageous, inspiring and very public battle with cancer.

Speaking of promoters, Sheri Allen oversaw tremendous growth in our local school system before retiring after a decade as superintendent. That growth included many new students and the building of two new schools. Thankfully Sheri still walks among us; she told me she’d take a year off, but we’ll be eagerly anticipating what she does next.

Also still with us: my former colleague, Don Rivet. It’s just that he no longer gets up at two a.m. to come on-air to tell us we need our winter coats today, or that school is cancelled because of the latest blizzard. Don knew he’d have a hectic day when he got a live call on his radio show from Sheri Allen about buses and late starts. These days, you might meet Don walking or biking our area trails.

Wortman. Sara was a force of nature who lit up any room, a cultural fount who particularly created beauty through choral music.

As a teacher in the public schools, Bette put music into so many young people’s hearts, not to mention that she was one of the best piano accompanists I have ever heard.

Speaking of great choral music: David Dickau is world class, but for decades, we could claim him as our own.

After his brilliant final concert with the Minnesota State University choirs last spring, he and Ann have moved to Idaho in retirement to be closer to their children. Not only is he a renowned conductor, his choral compositions are performed around the world.

And when it comes to lighting up a room: how about Ken Freed? So passionate, energetic, eclectic, larger than life; he spent 12 years building up the Mankato Symphony and creating exciting programs, including a jazz series at the Kato Ballroom and the Music on the Hill chamber music series at Good Counsel. Of course, you can still see and hear him at his full-time job as a violist with the Minnesota Orchestra in the Twin Cities. nnnn And then there’s David Andreas, a friend since childhood. His Dad and Mom moved here 75 years ago; with his uncle, they revolutionized the world soybean trade right out of little old Mankato, starting with Honeymead (now CHS.) A child of privilege and wealth, David could have coasted through life. Instead he plunged into a banking career and continued his parents’ generous philanthropic legacy: just note how many local buildings bear the Andreas name, or how many arts institutions list the Andreas Foundation at the top of their donor lists. Still David never betrayed a hint of arrogance or superiority. He laughed as readily as his father, loved riding his motorcycle to Mankato or St. Peter (after he and Debbie moved to Minneapolis) to catch some local music. At his memorial last June at the Civic Center, hundreds from all walks of life and all parts of the country came to honor the legacy of one who left us at just 69. nnnn

nnnn

So raise a toast to these wonderful ones who made our lives richer. And thanks to all who tell me you read these words. Here’s to a bountiful 2020!

The local music community has been hit particularly hard. That community is deep and diverse, but we will feel the loss, through death, of Sara McKay and Bette

Longtime radio guy Pete Steiner is now a free lance writer in Mankato.

40 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE

» C OME JU DGE

for Yourself.

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THE ROBERT TRENT JONES GOLF TRAIL AT CAPITOL HILL offers three magnificent 18-hole championship golf courses.

The Marriott Prattville is part of the Resort Collection on Alabama’s Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail.

Visit www.rtjgolf.com or call 800.949.4444 to learn more.

MANKATO MAGAZINE • JANUARY 2020 • 41

FIND THE FREEDOM TO LAUGH, SNEEZE AND JOG AGAIN.

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Mayo Clinic Health System in Mankato Call 507-479-1591 to schedule an appointment. mayoclinichealthsystem.org 42 • JANUARY 2020 • MANKATO MAGAZINE