Welcome back to The Flyover, your daily digest of important, overlooked, and/or interesting Minnesota news stories.
Remembering the Shooting at Rocori High School
Megan Butala was a senior at Rocori High School in Cold Spring, Minnesota, back in 2003, when one of Minnesota's worst school shootings took place. Her friend, 17-year-old Aaron Rollins, was one of the two victims, along with 14-year-old freshman Seth Bartell.
Two decades later, she tells MinnPost's Brian Arola, the trauma is still complex and present, bubbling up again with the news of other school shootings. The attack at Annunciation Catholic Church in August is the latest reminder. “It opens the wounds every time you hear of one happening,” says Butala, who is raising her family in Cold Spring (population of around 4,000). “You put yourself in their shoes and realize they’ve now joined this club no one asked to be a part of.”
Former Rocori students who spoke with MinnPost said that as with Annunciation, the community rallied together after the September 2003 shooting. (One photo that accompanies the article shows a "Our Heart is With Annunciation" sign planted in a Cold Spring yard, though the town is more than 80 miles away.) But it's the type of pain that never really goes away.
“It steals your innocence," says Leah Brix, who was a freshman at the time of the shooting. “We grew up that day in a way we should not have. It took so much from us.”
Immigrants Make Richfield Great
As you may have read in last week's grocery store-themed Open Thread, Mexican grocery chain Loma Bonita Market is almost ready to open in the massive but long-abandoned Rainbow Foods in Richfield. That's great news, and it also makes perfect sense—Minneapolis's neighbor to the south is packed with excellent immigrant-owned restaurants and grocers.
For MPR News, Sarah Thamer caught up with folks like Miguel Hernandez, whose family owns El Tejaban Mexican Grill on Nicollet Avenue, and Arif Ahmed, the Ethiopian entrepreneur behind Nashville Coop, to talk about bringing international flavors to Richfield. (About 17% of the city's population were born outside of the United States.)
"In Richfield, immigrant businesses aren’t just surviving—they’re shaping the city’s economy and community," Thamer writes.
Hernandez agrees: “It's clearly been a good place to be an immigrant and start a business, because there's so many other owners in the city, and that's just proven by going down 66 and seeing so many great places to eat."
RIP Holidazzle (Again) and Mpls Aquatennial
Thanks to return-to-office mandates, downtown Minneapolis is back, baby! But the Aquatennial and Holidazzle? Unless they find an angel donor, they are not coming back. That’s the news today, as the Mpls Downtown Council announced that it will no longer organize either event due to unpredictable funding. Instead, it will put efforts toward a new series, the blandly named "Winterapolis," which appears to be more of a conglomeration of events as opposed to a central happening. “Events and festivals are always going to happen downtown,” Downtown Council CEO Adam Duininck assures Katie Galioto at the Star Tribune. “It’s a natural gathering point.”
Both Mpls Aquatennial and Holidazzle have multi-decade histories, with diminishing returns over recent years. A celebration of our city’s water, Aquatennial launched in 1940 as a PR move meant to showcase Minneapolis—and distract attention from pro-labor events meant to celebrate the Teamsters' victorious 1934 strike. Once a sprawling, multi-week festival, in the past few years it has dwindled down to a parade and fireworks show. Meanwhile, Holidazzle began as a nighttime parade in 1992, retired in 2013, and was revived as a downtown festival for a few years. Last year’s event on Nicollet Mall was expected to draw 100,000 attendees. Instead, it brought 65,000 people. But will downtown shoppers come for Winterapolis?
CATS!
We conclude today’s Flyover with two super cute stories of kitty cats thriving and surviving. First, we’ve got Liza, a vocal local cat named after Liza Minnelli, who turned 21 this weekend (it's estimated that she’s about 100 in human years). “She’s 21, she’s able to make her own decisions now,” says owner Brian Vork, who picked her up from a shelter over two decades ago. He and his family took her out for a birthday drink over at Sociable Cider Werks, and WCCO was there for this adorable segment on the long living cat.
Meanwhile, CBS Minnesota has a story about Xiao Mao, a cat who somehow survived an 8,000-mile trip from China to Minnesota in a shipping container with no food or water, most likely surviving off of dew and vermin. Her name means “little cat” in Mandarin. "When she arrived to us, she was deathly thin and very ill," says Kerry D'Amato, executive director of Pet Haven Inc. of Minnesota. "She would charge at us, hiss and lunge. Today, she chirps at us and comes out when we call her." Aw! D’Amato says she’ll be up for adoption in a month or so.
