THUMBS UP

Festival season starts with Bavarian Blast

Bavarian Blast started this week marking a beginning to the season of festivals in New Ulm, “The City of Festivals.” For the next few months New Ulm will either be celebrating a festival or be preparing to celebrate a festival. Next weekend, New Ulm celebrates downtown with Crazy Days. The first weekend in August, downtown Minnesota Street will be filled with over 600 tons of sand for the 2nd annual Spikin’ in the Street sand volley ball tournament.

Only a few days after Spikin’ in the Street ends, the Brown County Fair begins. New Ulm will take a few weeks off from the festival to send kids back to school, but things will roar back to life with HermannFest the second weekend in September. The very next weekend Turner Hall is hosting a dodgeball tournament. After a few more weeks, Oktoberfest begins. Bavarian Blast ends this Sunday, but New Ulm residents won’t have to wait long for the fun to begin again.

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A New Ulm home dodges demolition

Recently, the New Ulm EDA began the processing of selling land to a developer. Currently a rental house sits on this property. The developer planned to demolish the rental house, but the City of New Ulm had a better idea. Move the house to another location. The city has a lot available at 1007 North Minnesota. Rather than have the developer bulldoze a perfectly good house, the city decided to move it. Even better, the renters of the house are planning to buy the home once it moves.

City Planner John Knisely described the plan as a win-win for the city and he is right. New Ulm has a housing shortage and this is a great–though unusual way–to help first-time homebuyers.

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Aggressive

political climate

After the attempted assassination of Donald Trump there has been calls to de-escalate the political rhetoric in this country, but this seems too little, too late. The political discourse in this country has been out of hand for years. The Jan. 6 riot on the Capitol should have been a bigger wake up call to cool the debate, but now it feels like a warm up for political violence to be the norm. This is a very concerning development, where a growing number of people have more faith in the bullet over the ballot. Another danger of the push for extremism is it polarizes many people in the middle. When the debate becomes too hostile, people walk away rather than engage and the calming voice of reason is rendered silent.