After Annunciation, Inaction

Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.

Gun Bills Stall in Legislature

Eight months after the horrific shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church and School in south Minneapolis, it's looking increasingly unlikely that any gun-reform measures will make their way through the Legislature this session. The Star Tribune's Nathaniel Minor writes that "even a bipartisan effort to improve school security and mental health resources for students appears to be at risk of failure."

“I’m not shocked,” Mike Moyski, father of 10-year-old Harper Moyski, who was killed during the shooting, tells the Strib. “I am disappointed that parties aren’t working together more.”

We'll give you one guess which party is the one holding up gun bills in the divided House.

Republicans have supported a few smaller gun bills, Minor writes, but even as Annunciation families remain hopeful it sounds like maybe the more ambitious bills will have to wait. If the Senate can't pressure house Republicans to act, "I think that that becomes an issue for the election,” says Rep. Emma Greenman, a DFLer whose district includes Annunciation.

Duluth Library Cool as Hell???

Did you know the Duluth Public Library looks like something from a deleted scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey? We didn't, until a recent viral post from the terrible website formerly known as Twitter. Check this out:

Insanely cool.

Perfect Duluth Day has a very long, very interesting story from a few years back about the library and Gunnar Birkerts, the architect who reportedly designed it to resemble an ore boat. Birkerts was born in 1925 in Latvia, but fled at the age of 19 to escape the Soviet occupation. In the U.S., he went to work for his favorite architect, Eero Saarinen; he would also become chief designer for Minoru Yamasaki, who was beginning work on the World Trade Center, before setting out on his own. Birkerts designed the Duluth Public Library near the height of his career, and a year after it opened he won the Brunner Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. (And if you're wondering, yes, Sven Birkerts, the noted critic and essayist, is his son.)

But the library is in trouble. In December, Northern News Now's Sophia Lauber reported that its "main systems" need repair, and that there's been an uptick in unsafe behavior, including "violence and drug use both inside and outside the library building." As a result, it's possible that the library will relocate. Sad!

ConneQt Needs Hosts for Homeless LGBTQ+ Youth

ConneQt, an Avenues for Youth program that helps match queer young people with host families, got its start in 1997. But as Southwest Voices reports, the program's need for host families has never been greater amid the ongoing “local and national trend on one side of the political spectrum to erase trans from public life,” as program manager Ryan Berg tells SV's Jan Willms.

Are you able to feed and shelter a young person (between age 16 and 24) for roughly a year? Hosts are asked to write an open letter about themselves and their interest in the program, and ConneQt's youth meet with potential hosts in person before making any decisions. "Having a choice is instrumental in emotional and mental growth,” Berg says, adding that their hosts can be empty nesters, singles, or couples, and can be LGBTQ+ themselves or allies.

Interested parties can contact Berg at 612-345-8445 or by email to learn more.

The X From the X Shines On

Excellent use of free will, as the kids say:

That playoff setup got a workout on Saturday, when your Minnesota Wild clobbered the Dallas Stars in a 6-1 game one victory. Game two is in Dallas tonight; puck drops at 8:30 p.m.