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19 hacks to keep cool when it’s super hot outdoors

Lifestyle Columns

Whatever you have planned — the beach, pool, campground, your own backyard, or pretty much staying indoors — these summer tips, tricks, hacks, and DIYs are sure to offer a sigh of relief to help you do anytime-of-year heat waves like a champ! Run cold water over your wrists Here’s a little anatomy lesson: Pulse points are the parts of your body where blood vessels are closest to the surface of your skin. If you can cool your blood at these vulnerable points, it will recirculate into the central part of your body and cool you down. Try running cold water over your wrists, right ...

Cli-Fi

Lifestyle Columns

My heart goes out to people experiencing weather-related disasters. I can try to imagine but do not know how such devastation feels. Research suggests that fictional books may be empathy-building tools. (https://bigthink.com/neuropsych/reading-fiction-empathy-better-person) Climate fiction, or cli-fi, is a form of speculative fiction that features a changed or changing climate as a major plot device. Here is a small sampling of the titles and descriptions I found searching the New Ulm Public Library online catalog at www.newulmlibrary.org. The “Parable of the Sower” by Octavia ...

Driving to the top

Lifestyle Feature

NEW ULM — After placing his ball on the tee, Ethan Schmidt looks ahead at the fairway and focuses on a tree in the distance. He then takes out his favorite COBRA driver and gets into position before hitting the ball, which now rarely fades. After a solid drive, Schmidt settles in and ...

Periodicals at the library

Lifestyle Columns

You may have noticed that your magazine subscriptions are changing. Some are no longer being published in print form and are only available digitally and others have changed their subscription schedules by publishing fewer issues per year. This has, of course, affected the library’s subscriptions as well. But, we still have thirty-one magazines available for you to check out including a new one this month, Magnolia Journal. We have the latest issue of each magazine near the public computer area for you to browse. Once the newest issue comes we barcode the older one and it is available ...

Shedding light on Fulper Pottery lamps

Lifestyle Columns

Before the use of electric lights, lamps were designed to cast as much light as possible. With the introduction of electric light bulbs, invented in 1879, lamps took on new forms and functions. In some cases, lampshades had to soften the light instead of amplifying or directing it. In the early 20th century, designers created lamps with new materials and previously unseen shapes. Fulper Pottery, established in New Jersey in 1860, started its artware line, Vasekraft, about this time. Its Vasekraft lamps had pottery shades and bases decorated with Fulper’s famous glazes. The shades had ...