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The Herald’s final Sweet 16 of the 2023 season

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:59:37 GMT

No one can ever accuse the 2023 Xaverian football team of backing into a Division 1 state title.The Hawks survived what could be best be described as a gauntlet on their way to the school’s first Super Bowl title since 2015. There was an epic quarterfinal win over state power Springfield Central, a hard-fought semifinal win over a 10-win Needham team and two wins over archrival St. John’s Prep in a six-day stretch to claim the Div. 1 crown.“If you were writing a book, they might say this one would have been sports fiction,” Xaverian coach Al Fornaro said. “I don’t know if anyone has ever had to beat teams like that and then to beat a team the quality of St. John’s Prep was impressive, but our guys were ready to play.“We had some guys banged up (the Hawks played the final two games without star wide receivers Jonathan Monteiro and Charlie Comella), but we always say next man up. Sometimes it’s nothing more than words, but we let them know that they are o...

MLB notes: Red Sox enter pivotal Winter Meetings with extensive to-do list

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:59:37 GMT

The Red Sox have had several months now to get their house in order.Once it became clear that a third last place finish in four years was imminent, the club moved on from chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom and handed the keys to Craig Breslow. Since then the newly-minted baseball boss has mostly worked behind the scenes, enmeshing himself in the organizations and formulating a plan for how to build the Red Sox back into a contender.That changes this week, and in the coming days we should see Breslow finally begin executing his vision.Over the next four days the baseball world will gather in Nashville for the annual Winter Meetings, which have historically served as the offseason’s biggest hotbed of activity. Deals will get done, trades will be made, and by next week baseball’s new landscape should come into focus.The Red Sox are expected to be active, but beyond addressing their own needs there will be other events with industry-wide implications that will affect the clu...

Indonesia’s Marapi volcano erupts, spewing ash plumes and blanketing several villages with ash

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:59:37 GMT

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Indonesia’s Mount Marapi in West Sumatra province erupted Sunday, spewing white-and-gray ash plumes for more than 3,000 meters (about 9,800 feet) into the air, and hot ash clouds blew several miles to the north, according to Indonesia’s Volcanology and Geological Hazard Mitigation Center.There were no casualties, said Ahmad Rifandi, an official at the Marapi monitoring post, adding that villagers were advised to stay 3 kilometers (1.8 miles) from the crater’s mouth and be aware of the danger of potential lava.National Disaster Management Agency spokesperson Abdul Muhari said several villages were blanketed with falling ash. He said Marapi’s eruption alert was maintained at the second-highest level and that authorities have been closely monitoring the volcano after sensors picked up increasing activity in recent weeks.Japan’s Meteorological Agency said Sunday it is currently assessing whether there is a possible tsunami in the country because of Marapi...

Naloxone: What to know about the opioid overdose-reversing drug, free across Canada

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:59:37 GMT

HALIFAX — Health Canada has called the opioid crisis one of the most serious public health threats in recent history, and an addictions specialist says everyone can play a part in helping reduce the death toll. All it takes is access to naloxone, a life-saving medication that temporarily reverses an opioid overdose.“It’s something that all adult Canadians, and I would hazard to guess teenagers as well, should have access to and be aware of,” said Dr. Sam Hickcox, chief officer of the Nova Scotia government’s Office of Mental Health and Addictions. “If there’s something we could do to save a life, why wouldn’t we?”He compared administering naloxone to using an EpiPen to treat someone having an anaphylactic allergic reaction.Hickcox said the country’s ongoing opioid epidemic has been made worse as Canada’s illicit drug supply became “poisoned” in recent years with toxic, highly potent opioid additives like fentanyl and carfentanil. Some users report not knowing...

Sunday Bulletin Board: The key to fixing stuff: A good, firm slap of the hand!

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:59:37 GMT

Then & NowRUSTY of St. Paul: “When I was growing up, in the late 1950s and 1960s, we had an old, heavy Admiral TV. It had a black steel cabinet which sat up on legs. It had tubes that had to warm up before the image on the screen appeared.“Often the vertical hold would goof up, so that we had a pile of lines moving from the bottom of the screen to the top. There was a vertical hold knob to twist to adjust the problem, but sometimes it didn’t quite solve the issue. In those cases, either my dad or we boys would slap the right side of the box with an open hand as hard as we could . . . and that usually was the ticket.“Fast-forward to last week. I was having trouble with our P.O. box at the post office in the small town in northern Wisconsin where we live for half the year. I could open the door with the key as usual, but when I locked it shut, I could then open it with my fingernail placed under the corner of the door. But then I couldn’t close the do...

Muzzleloader hunter made second shot count to drop three-antlered trophy buck

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:59:37 GMT

They say the world belongs to those who show up.In this case it’s a very rare deer that belongs to Chase Mortenson for showing up.It’s a funky-looking deer at that, with a third and middle antler that gave this buck the moniker of “unicorn.” Mortenson, of Madison, Minn., dropped the 11-point buck around 4:45 p.m. Sunday just west of Granite Falls.It was the second day of the muzzleloader deer season. Chase Mortenson had taken up an invitation from his uncle Scott Mortenson to come out and hunt on his land between the city of Granite Falls and the Granite Falls Energy plant.Chase said his brother declined the invitation to come out with him, and regrets it now.Had his brother came out, Chase said his brother would have been the one in the blind from which he was able to harvest this big buck.As it was, Chase was hunkered down in the blind as strong winds ushered in eye-tearing temperatures. The blustery winds didn’t seem to bother the two big bucks that Mortenson saw around 100 to 15...

Literary calendar for week of Dec. 3

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:59:37 GMT

FITZGERALD IN ST. PAUL: Fourth in the discussion series featuring Scott Fitzgerald’s short stories, hosted by poet/baker Danny Klecko, concentrates on “The Ice Palace.” One of the St. Paul-born author’s most famous stories, published in 1920, it’s about a Southern belle who visits her fiance’s emotionally cold family during the Winter Carnival and fears she will die when she is lost in the icy depths of the ice palace. The experience convinces her she is not suited to Northern climes and she returns to her sunny home. With guests Tim Nolan, poet and curator of the Readings by Writers series, and Mark Taylor, organizer of Fitzgerald/Summit Avenue walking tours. 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 7, SubText Bookstore, 6 W. Fifth St., St. Paul.Jeremy Norton reads from his book “Trauma Sponges: Dispatches From the Scarred Heart of Emergency Response” at 6 p.m. Dec. 7, 2023, at Minnesota Humanities Center in St. Paul. (Courtesy of the author)JEREMY N...

Skywatch: The season to be under the stars

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:59:37 GMT

No matter what holidays you celebrate this time of year, there’s much to celebrate in the night sky in December. There’s even a little Christmas tree in the night sky that I’ll tell you about in a bit.We have a major and a minor meteor shower this month. It’s the annual Geminid meteor shower. It peaks on the night of Dec. 13-14. No moonlight means lovely dark skies for the Geminids this year, making catching the meteors, even the fainter ones, much easier. I’ll have much more about the Geminids in next week’s column.This year’s winter solstice is on Dec. 21, otherwise known as the official first day of winter. On winter solstice day the sun shines directly over the Tropic of Capricorn on the winter solstice. It’s the longest night of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. From then until late next June, the sun’s path among the backdrop of stars will slowly migrate northward, and the sun will appear higher and higher in the sky in the northern hemisphere, and days will get longer and ...

Repeat copper thefts darken St. Paul streets … and now hamper phone service, too

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:59:37 GMT

After sundown, James Cowles’ bike ride on Lexington Parkway and past the Como Lakeside Pavilion has become darker than ever.Street lanterns that once illuminated the way now stand useless, the access panels at their bases ripped off to expose electrical wiring that splays out haphazardly like so much spaghetti.Copper wire thieves have made short work of the lighting in and around Como Park, as well as along many of St. Paul’s other parkways and thoroughfares, cloaking much of the city in darkness by 5 p.m. That’s fueled mounting concerns about repair costs, public safety and general aesthetics.Cowles, a web developer who lives off Larpenteur Avenue, recently stopped to snap a picture of the Como Pavilion glowing eerily against the stygian backdrop of its unlit parking lot. Otherwise, “it was really pitch black,” he said, recalling the cloudy, moonless sky. “It was uneasy.”It’s not that pleas for fixes have fallen on deaf ears at City H...

Readers and writers: A trip ‘Up North’ for two great books

Published Mon, 23 Dec 2024 09:59:37 GMT

New books from two Minnesota Book Award-winning authors who live “Up North” are our treat today. Will Weaver, who calls Bemidji home, offers historical fiction with a Norwegian vibe and Douglas Wood, who lives near Sartell, tells in essays of his journey from skinny kid who suffered from ADHD to popular writer and outdoorsman. Both are published by Minnesota presses.“Power and Light”: by Will Weaver (Calumet Editions, $21.99)(Courtesy of Will Weaver.)“Those Haugens are crazy,” Dolly said. ‘”When they finally got power and light, what do they do? They nearly burn down their farm. Then the REA lineman got killed trying to help them rewire, plus one of the younger girls got her arm caught in a wringer washer and broke it. How stupid can you get? And the older brother, he was the one who made Robert the pair of boots that…” — from “Power & Light”The title of Will Weaver’s ninth book, “Power &am...