Sabes JCC’s community garden promotes connection to Jewish values

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Greenery surrounded Makai Dorfman, Judaic and garden specialist at the Sabes JCC’s Camp Olami, as he enthusiastically walked through the garden that he helped create. He explained its unique qualities.“It’s shaped like a menora,” Dorfman told the AJW on a recent visit to the garden. “Each branch represents a different day of creation.”The Jewish attributes of the JCC’s new community garden, like its shape that can be seen fully from above, are less obvious than the efforts made by Dorfman and Sabes JCC Inclusion Director Anita Lewis to make it a place that everyone can access and enjoy.Throughout the summer, kids from Camp Olami, seniors, adults with disabilities and other community members are planting, nurturing and harvesting the new and inclusive — and completely organic — garden.Close proximity to the parking lot, raised beds for plants to grow and wide pathways ensure that the garden is a place where anyone — from wheelchair-bound seniors to pre-kindergarten children of all abilities — can find purpose and acceptance.The JCC’s new community garden follows a previous garden that had been a part of the early childhood center. A local Jewish Boy Scout working towards becoming an Eagle Scout helped to expand the garden from a small area into a larger, more accommodating “outdoor classroom.”“The garden is this place, and it’s safe and it’s enlivening and it’s changing children who oftentimes aren’t speaking, children who oftentimes don’t have anything in common with their peer group. Adults too,” Lewis said. Continue Reading

Questions about the Northeast Metro water supply plan

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In the land of 10,000 lakes, we have a water shortage. According to the Metropolitan Council:

“With more than 70 percent of the region’s water supply coming out of the ground, we are mining our groundwater and sending it downstream at the expense of our water supply, natural amenities, quality of life and economy. It’s a practice that is neither practical nor sustainable, as we can attest from the example of White Bear Lake,” said the Council’s Water Supply Planning Manager Ali Elhassan. Continue Reading

Republicans having meta-argument over frac sand mining

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h/t Politics.mn

So there’s the underlying issue of frac sand mining, and the issue of who correctly construed who, as Republican gubernatorial campaigns go after each other. For the part of the story about Republicans going after each other, Bill Kuisle, running for lieutenant governor with GOP gubernatorial endorsee Jeff Johnson, said it makes sense to delay frac sand mining so the effects can be studied. Continue Reading

OPINION | The Indian Wars are not over

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On an overcast, and quiet midday afternoon, 50 or so Anishinaabeg from ricing families and their friends gathered at Big Bear Landing on the shore of Big Rice Lake. It is 138 years to the day of the infamous Battle of the Little Big Horn.

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Decline in hunting permits shows shifting leisure trends

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The romantic image of the hunter in Minnesota’s popular culture will continue to hold substantial weight with many Minnesotans. However, this image is becoming increasingly inaccurate. From our history as a leader in the fur trapping industry during the 18th and 19th centuries to annual expeditions for the November deer hunting season opener, Minnesotan’s relationship with hunting can be described as quixotic at best. We’re not hunting nearly as much as we thought we were. Continue Reading