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Holiday shoppers will find new and unique items at a Hispanic holiday market next month.

Outgoing Sheriff Troy Dunn said last week that the number of traffic fatalities in Rice County has increased to four for the year, after the driver of a car died from injuries incurred when her vehicle crashed into the Warsaw Township Town Hall.  Driving safety has been a constant theme brought up by local law

In this Student View column, International Student Counselor Christina Zhen ‘22 describes what brought her to the Hill and how she made close friendships along the way.

Between March and September 2020, I walked every morning in the prairie and woods of the Cowling Arboretum.  When I started, the leaves of hepatica were just unfurling from the ground at my feet. On April 1 the first flowers appeared. First hepatica, then Dutchman’s breeches, trout lily, and rue anemone. In the prairie, the pasqueflowers appeared on April 5, then nothing but brown for a month until the prairie smoke bloomed in early May. Every morning I walked though the woods and out onto the prairie, out around Kettle Hole Marsh where in late March the chorusing frogs found their voices, then back through the empty campus. I kept track of the date on which each new flower began to bloom. Beginning around the 20th of April there was something new almost every day until the beginning of August. 

I grew up among the remnants of the eastern deciduous forest, and from my mother I had learned to identify trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, and Dutchmen’s breeches. I knew the woodland flowers by heart. But in June, when the action moved from the woods to the prairie, I began to put names to plants I had never known before. I downloaded the iNaturalist app on my phone and took a picture of every unfamiliar plant I saw. I began to memorize the prairie as I had memorized the woods.

I still have a long way to go. I’ve begun to distinguish between the four species of aster in the local prairie, and the six species of goldenrod. But the species of sedge are still largely a mystery to me. 16 species have been identified in the Arboretum where I took my walks, and there are likely to be more: the genus Carex includes roughly 600 separate North American species. My list for 2020 includes just one, Mead’s sedge (carex meadii), which I identifed on May 24.

Mead’s sedge is named for Samuel Barnum Mead (1799-1880), a physician who in 1833 settled in Augusta, Illinois. The year before Dr. Mead arrived in Illinois, the poet William Cullen Bryant had visited the state, and had found inspiration in the prairies, “boundless and beautiful,” “with flowers whose glory and whose multitude rival the constellations.” Surveying the prairies that covered most of Hancock County, Illinois, Dr. Mead immediately set to work cataloguing the plants he found there, including the two species that bear his name, Mead’s Sedge (carex meadii) and Mead’s Milkweed (asclepias meadii). In 1846, Dr. Mead published in The Prairie Farmer a 12-page “Catalogue of plants growing spontaneously in the state of Illinois, the principal part near Augusta, Hancock County.” The list includes 12 species of goldenrod and 42 species of sedge. 

Dr. Samuel Barnum Mead

The herbarium at Brown University includes a specimen of Mead’s sedge collected by Dr. Mead near Augusta. Through Dr. Mead’s frequent correspondence with other botanists, the specimen found its way to the physician and botanist Henry Parker Sartwell (1792-1867), who included it in his Carices Americae Septentrionalis exsiccatae. The two-volume work, published in 1848 and 1850, was a collection of actual dried plants in the genus Carex, accompanied by printed labels, available to subscribers who wanted to add examples of the species to their collections. One of the subscribers to Sartwell’s volume was Rhode Island wool merchant and amateur botanist Stephen Thayer Olney (1812-1878), who later bequeathed his collection to Brown. 

On the sheet from the Brown herbarium, there are two small plants that Mead carefully removed from the prairie to preserve as much of the root structure as possible. The roots are dark gray, the faded color of Illinois soil. A cluster of grass-like leaves rises above the roots, ranging in color from raw umber to straw to gray with a hint of green. Two thin gray-green stalks extend above the leaves, terminating in the seed heads, like underdeveloped heads of wheat. After removing them from the soil, Mead would have laid the specimens between sheets of paper and placed them in a plant press to dry before mounting them, labeling them, and sending them to their destination. 

In the nineteenth century, thousands of plant specimens were dispersed throughout the country through a network of amateur and professional botanists. In May 1844, Dr. Mead wrote to the botanist John Torrey: “I have been exceedingly busy in collecting plants for 2 yrs., in order to obtain by exchange one specimen of all N. American plants. I have collected & distributed about ten thousand specimens within 2 years & I have already collected a thousand or more this spring.” Many of the correspondents with whom Mead exchanged plant specimens were also physicians, who were drawn to botany during their medical training, which included the study of medical botany, the identification of plants with pharmacological uses. Dr. Mead sent specimens to Dr. P.D. Knieskern in New Jersey, whose botanical collection was later acquired by Rutgers, to Dr. George Engelmann in St. Louis, whose collection went  to the Missouri Botanical Garden, to Dr. Joseph Barratt in Connecticut, whose collection went to Wellesley College, and to Dr. Charles Wilkins Short in Louisville, Kentucky, whose collection of more than 15,000 specimens went to the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences. 

“I have received some 800 species from Dr. Engelmann & he has promised more as he is in my debt,” Dr. Mead wrote in a letter to John Torrey in July 1844. “I have sent Dr. Short already about two thousand specimens.” 

Samuel Barnum Mead died at the age of 81 after falling out of an apple tree. At his death, Dr. Mead’s personal herbarium included more than 10,000 specimens, including every species growing in Hancock County, and nearly every species in the state of Illinois. Specimens that he collected and exchanged with other botanists are included in herbaria throughout the United States, including 140 in the collection of the New York Botanical Garden. 

Meanwhile, the prairie itself was disappearing under the plow. Since the beginning of the nineteenth century, 99% of the original tallgrass prairie has disappeared. In Hancock County, Illinois, the original prairie that Mead explored is long gone. The restored Minnesota prairie I pass through on my walks contains only a small fraction of the species present in the original prairie. But some of those plants from the original prairie still exist, mounted on sheets of paper. 

A specimen of Mead's Sedge (Carex meadii) in the Brown University Herbarium. The specimen was collected by Samuel Barnum Mead and sent to H.P. Sartwell (ca. 1845). 

The Xcel Energy Freeborn Wind post-construction noise modeling equipment is up, this time at the tree line, not behind it.

Just filed today at the Public Utilities Commission:

Madson_Motion_Order Show Cause HearingDownload Affidavit-Madson_Exhibits-A-EDownload Overland-Aff_Exhibits-AA-LL_Part-1Download Overland-Aff_Exhibits-AA-LL_Part-2Download

Xcel Energy has 14 days to respond, and then off to the Public Utilities Commission for consideration. The Commission needs to take a hard look at what they’re doing, because these wind projects sited without rules and too close to people is harming those living in the project footprint.

Noise remains a problem for those trying to live in the middle of a wind project. No surprise when the owner uses a 0.5 ground factor to model bigger, louder turbines, several hundred feet above the ground (these have rotor diameter of 120 meters, or 393.701 feet!). This has been ongoing for so long, going on 5 years, I find I’m forgetting crucial details. But what’s happened in this docket, and what has happened in other dockets, all adds up, particularly with the Bent Tree noise exceedences demonstrated, and resulting settlements, and the Blazing Star noise issues going on right now.

Noise was a problem in Bent Tree with Vestas V-82 for the Hagens and Langruds.

Bent Tree Noise report confirms permit violations!

Wind turbine noise is a problem for the Blazing Star wind project with these bigger and louder Vestas V-120:

Blazing Star Wind NOISE! More on Blazing Star noise

Freeborn Wind noise has long been an issue. Noise was a problem when the Freeborn Wind ALJ recommended denial of the permit because they had not demonstrated, using 0.0 ground factor, that they could comply. Yes, do not forget that we won that round, first recommendation of denial of wind permit application ever:

WE WON!!! ALJ Recommend Freeborn Permit be DENIED, or…

So then the PUC changes the rules, moves the goal posts, and allows use of 0.5 ground factor in modeling to predict noise, and don’t forget, these are now Vestas V-120 turbines, bigger and louder.

Freeborn? PUC upends ALJ’s Freeborn Wind Recommendation

Can you spell U-N-D-E-R-E-S-T-I-M-A-T-E ?? GI-GO???

Tried for an Environmental Assessment Worksheet and got the gong:

PUC Freeborn Mtg 2-6-2020

Filed a MERA claim (Minn. Stat. 116B.03) and we were booted out of court:

Association of Freeborn County Landowners v. Public Utilities Commission

And we appealed the Commission’s final decision on Freeborn:

Freeborn Wind appeal – we lose…

We are persistent. The noise numbers are too high, and they’re higher than pre-construction noise modeling predicted. Yeah, well, DOH, using the wrong ground factor.

The Commission needs to address this obvious problem and deal with the consequences. Avoidance just doesn’t cut it. This is real, and it’s not going away.

ONWARD!

Dundas City Administrator Jenelle Teppen discusses the November 8 City Council meeting.

Northfield School Superintendent Dr. Matt Hillmann provides a Covid update, and discusses the November 7 School Board meeting.

Some medical professionals are suing the city-owned hospital after they were terminated for refusing to receive the coronavirus vaccine.

American Legion Post 84 Commander Ray Ozmun says the Legion and VFW Post 4393 will host a short program at 11 a.m. Thursday at Veterans Memorial Park adjacent to Riverside Lions Park on Eighth Street W.

Like many manufacturers across southern Minnesota — and around the world — Jim Stickney’s problems are a few handshakes removed.

Northfield Area Fire and Rescue Service Chief Gerry Franek said he will be announcing his retirement sometime in the first part of 2022. While this is not unexpected news, Franek has been with the Northfield Fire Department and the expanded Fire and Rescue Service for nearly 35 years, it has led to an examination of the department that has

Event date: November 9, 2021
Event Time: 05:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Location:
801 Washington Street
Northfield, MN 55057

The expansion of a tax increment financing district to include land for a proposed 100-unit apartment building has earned the Northfield City Council’s stamp of approval.

Event date: November 9, 2021
Event Time: 06:00 PM - 09:00 PM
Location:
801 Washington Street
Northfield, MN 55057

Event date: November 9, 2021
Event Time: 06:00 PM - 09:00 PM
Location:
801 Washington Street
Northfield, MN 55057

Help us celebrate first-generation college students this week with events and activities happening on campus November 8 - 12!

Happy 78th birthday to Joni Mitchell today… this Fine Tune features Joni’s work performed by her and others, as well as Joni  performing the work of others. – wendy n Both Sides Now / The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band A Case of You / Herbie Hancock Court and Spark / Joni Mitchell Blue River / Eric

La sorpresa de la venta de los apartamentos de Northfield Estates (Los Dallas) y vacunas en Northfield gracias a las escuelas y el departamento de salud del condado de Rice.

Raider Wrap 11-6-21It’s the end of the fall season for Raider Sports. Charlie Monaghan and Josh Voight bring their perspective as a player about the season and Coach Brent Yule will recap the overall season, as first year head coach and what to look forward to next year.  Brent gives us a sneak peak into

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