(gentle music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Off 90" is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(loon calling) (energetic music) - Cruising your way next, "Off 90".

We visit a monument in New Ulm.

We make glass mosaics with an artist in Austin.

We sit in as a student learns the piano and we socialize outside in the winter.

It's all just ahead "Off 90".

(rock theme song music) (energetic music) Hi, I'm Barbara Keith.

Thanks for joining me on this trip "Off 90".

New Ulm is one of the cities in the United States that boasts a large German population.

Back in the late 1800s, city residents erected a statue known as Hermann the German.

The statue is on the National Register of Historic Places.

We paid a visit.

- Hermann serves as a big tourism piece for New Ulm.

It's obviously not why he was built, but it serves that purpose and they would always talk about our festivals, Schell's beer, and the Hermann monument.

So Hermann is in the trio of things we're most known for.

It's built kind of like a tree, I always say.

That is a metal trunk and then branches going out from there.

People have said it's solid.

No, that's not solid, it's a sheet of copper.

It's the third largest copper sheath statue in the United States.

New Ulm is older than Germany and people, when I say that they go, "What?"

New Ulm was founded in 1854, but Germany wasn't united as a country that we know it now 'til 1871.

And so as they're starting to become united, they're starting to use Hermann as a representative of great German qualities and such.

- The history of Hermann, of course, is really the important thing.

The Romans had intent to conquer the Germanic tribes in central Europe.

And it was a man by the name of Arminius who had been held captive by the Romans, learned about their military tactics and so on and was subsequently assigned to assist a Roman general by the name of Varus to conquer the Germanic people.

And because of his Germanic background, they thought he would be an excellent assistant.

It turns out he turned to be a traitor, in a sense, to the Romans because he made worthy his service to the German-speaking people.

The tribes that tended to be conquered by the Romans were very small in the size of the Roman army.

And Arminius was able to unite them in a way that they'd become an effective force.

With some clever maneuvering, lured them into a trap at Kalkriese, which is a swampy bog area.

And about 20,000 Romans died at the hands of Germanic tribes in the year nine, when Jesus was nine years old.

- Well, I like to go back to 1848.

1848 was the year of over 50 revolutions in Western Europe to overthrow the nobility and establish a democratic form of government.

They all failed.

They got some concessions, but none of them overthrew the governments, which meant that all of the participants in the revolution were traitors.

Many were captured and killed, many were put in jail.

And the threat over the rest of them caused massive emigration from Western Europe.

Not all, but the majority came to the United States.

It's estimated that within 10 years of 1848, about three million Germans had left.

People feared all of these new immigrants are gonna dilute the culture and change the language and do bad things to the economy.

It didn't prove to be true, but nevertheless, they were prejudiced against pretty heavily.

And feeling kind of pressure on them, they formed many Sons of Hermann lodges, German fraternal organizations and kind of protective groups for themselves.

They could share their culture, they had some strength now, and could prove themselves as valid citizens.

- And one of them was founded in New Ulm here, one of these societies.

And one of our members, a local resident by the name of Julius Berndt, who was a builder, architect designer felt that it was necessary to have a monument to Hermann that would kind of be similar, but not identical to the one that had recently been built at Detmold in Germany where they thought the battle was fought.

- [Terry] Julius goes to meeting in Philadelphia and says, "Boys, look what we're gonna do.

This is, remember we talked about putting a monument up?

Here's what we're gonna do."

And they're all, "Oh, that looks great, Julius.

Yes, we'll do that.

But where will we put it?"

Oh, we have to put it in Milwaukee.

No, we gotta put it in St. Louis or at St. Paul.

Don't worry, I've got it worked out with an Oswald family.

We're putting it in New Ulm, Minnesota.

And I always imagine all the necks turning, what the heck's in New Ulm, Minnesota?

'Cause we were a small town on the prairie, they didn't know of us.

But nevertheless, I always think it's not what you know, but who you know and Julius Berndt was the man that did it.

- [Denny] The funds, though, were very difficult to come by.

And the original design had four copper lions on the four points.

They were $300 short.

So they were off of there until about 20 years ago.

(classical music) In the 1990s, we found that there were these great needs for the monument and several of us at a gathering decided maybe we ought to form a local society whose whole and purpose and intent was to concentrate more on the preservation, the conservation of this precious monument.

- Denny Warta, among others, helped form the Hermann Monument Society to help preserving Hermann, both his legacy and fundraising for maintenance of the statue.

And I've heard Mr. Warta talk about the condition it's in now and we do need help with that.

- [Denny] Hermann Fest is a fun production by the Hermann Monument Society to try to raise funds, but also to raise interest in its existence and its permanence.

It's held every Saturday after Labor Day in September.

- [Terry] And in the year 2000, our national Congress dedicated Hermann as the official symbol acknowledging the work of Germans to America.

So he was a hundred plus years ago, a national symbol, and he's been dedicated again as such.

There's a plan and how far it goes, I don't know, but there's a plan to get national monument status for Hermann.

And that will enable us to have access to federal money.

The publicity that will generate will bring up more visitation than ever.

But Hermann's an integral part to New Ulm's tourism packages.

- It's a symbol, there is no question about it.

Not only that is here, but also what it represents, the likelihood that we are and have a reputation of being the most German city in America.

Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but there's living proof or monument proof.

(inspirational music) (jazz music) - Deb D'Souza is no stranger to broken glass.

In fact, she cuts and breaks it herself all in the name of her mosaic art.

We visit her studio in her Austin home and we learn a little color theory along the way.

(gentle music) - Everyone always asks if I cut myself a lot or if I use a lot of Band-Aids or those kind of things.

And no, honestly, I have, knock on wood, I've never cut myself bad.

Hi, I'm Debra D'Souza and I am a creator of glass mosaics.

I started out making stained glass, traditional stained glass windows.

I knew that I had that love for the glass.

I like to be able to feel the texture of the glass because sometimes on one side it'll be real smooth and shiny and on the other side, it'll have more of a texture.

(glass cutting) As an artist, you always are looking for some little niche of something.

I discovered that people were actually creating paintings or mosaics out of glass.

And so that's where I started and I did my first one on my own and that was it, I was hooked.

(glass cutting) (glass clinking) A lot of it is experimenting and finding your own voice of what you want your work to look like.

I started taking classes and looking into it further and getting deeper and deeper into it.

And I ended up studying with masters all over the world, in Italy and I've done residencies in Ireland and in Belgium and studied with artists in France and throughout the US.

The nice thing about mosaic is that there's a lot of different techniques.

You have a major color and that's where the bigger pieces come in.

And then you have the supporting colors where they're littler pieces, but they still are important 'cause your eye will mix 'em all together to get the color right.

The glass itself and getting back to cutting glass and working with the glass, it's really no different than painting, you just mix it on your palette and lay it in.

(gentle music) With the mosaics that I do, I try to mix all the colors 'cause in nature and you learn this in painting, if you look at a green tree, there's every color in there.

So in order to make it realistic, you can't just use green.

You have to use purples and reds and oranges and mix the colors together.

Sometimes they just build themselves, it seems like, and you're just inspired and you just go.

(glass clinking) My favorite part of creating a piece of artwork for someone else is getting it right.

Being able to figure out exactly what they are envisioning and having our two visions be the same.

I just love the process more than the outcome.

And luckily, the outcome becomes good most of the time.

(jazz music) - She didn't see herself as a piano teacher, but Mackenzie Roberts of Dodge Center learned she likes teaching piano as much as she likes playing piano.

And she loves teaching young people.

We sit in on a lesson with a young student.

(piano playing) - I have been playing piano for goodness about 16 years now.

And I started when I was six years old.

My favorite thing is being able to pour emotion into the music and be able to communicate using something other than words.

(piano playing) "Music of the Night" from "Phantom of the Opera".

It was written by Andrew Lloyd Weber.

I'm very clearly drawn to emotional, dramatic music.

(piano playing) That's kind of where I lean.

I was vehemently against teaching before I actually started.

I was gonna be a performing artist, I was not going to teach.

I was not gonna be a teacher or a worship leader and I was adamant about it.

And then I had an opportunity to be a contracted piano teacher.

I taught that way for a few years and learned that I really loved kids and I really loved getting to teach them.

- Being able to connect emotionally well with Ms. McKenzie.

I always have a great time.

- Let's do the same thing, but this time we're going to do it with G major.

- That's probably my favorite part, being able to just be with someone who understands my love for music.

(speaking in foreign language) - Aggressively.

- Yes.

I was very passionate about getting to see those light bulb moments and just see the joy that I felt in music come alive and someone else was just beyond what I thought it would be.

I really got hooked on it.

I didn't think I was going to stick with this long term when I started, but it turned into a passion of its own.

If you can double check them, I would guess that you can get through a lot of it.

- My favorite thing about playing the piano is when everything in the piece, all the practice that I put into the piece finally comes together and it makes the song sound beautiful and I feel like my hands are just dancing over the keys.

That's got to be my favorite part ever.

For me, it's just having someone that I can look up to.

I have this one person that I haven't known for a while, but I can understand them well because of our similar interests.

- Five, six.

(piano playing) So Bre, Bre and I are very similar just in personality.

We're both very goofy and little bit scatterbrained to be honest with you.

But I love getting to connect with her just in a very real way, just a very honest way.

She's very passionate about it so I can throw some really complicated stuff at her, just complicated to play, complex ideas, complex music theory and she'll get it.

And she's just, she's an amazing student.

(piano music) There you go, good job.

- That sounds so pretty.

I love it!

- Good job, Bre.

(upbeat country music) - Rochester has figured out how to get people to socialize outside in winter.

For three days in March, Peace Plaza in Downtown Rochester was lit up with an event called Social Lights.

Let's go watch the show and mingle with the crowd.

(techno dance music) - Social Lights is a three-day light, music, small business celebration for downtown Rochester.

We are gonna have nightly stages and DJs.

We'll have five themed light bars with themed drinks to match.

And we will have beautiful illuminations on all of the buildings around this area, as well as light-up games and plenty of photo opportunities for our social media mavens out there.

(techno music continues) It's an adaptation of our traditional Social Ice that we haven't been able to do for a couple of years.

But COVID got the best of us yet again.

So we pushed it forward a month into a slightly warmer time of year.

We knew ice wouldn't be possible, so we're doing lights instead.

The Rochester Downtown Alliance is the main organizer of the event, but, of course, we can't do anything alone; this is a team sport.

The headliners at the event are our five local bars and restaurants that have each picked a unique theme for their LED panel bar fronts and the matching cocktails.

It'll be colorful and really fun.

We have Chester's.

Their theme is a tribute to first responders.

Then Victoria's, Squid Game and Tap House, Love Shack and Kathy's Disco Bar.

Old Brick House is going to have the theme of "How to Train Your Dragon".

- Wanted to keep it with that Celtic theme, stay with the Ireland general area, castles.

We came up with two specialty cocktails.

One is named the Aurora.

The other is called The Dragon's Keep, something that's gonna be delicious but keep us warm inside.

We really wanted to be a part of it this year, really kind of show who we are 'cause we're kind of the new kids on the block.

- Then we'll have the beautiful illuminations on all of the buildings, which are our sort of artwork in themselves.

We'll have light-up activities and games, including a light-up free throw contest, skip its, jump ropes.

There will be an interactive, giant scale Lite Brite that you can play with.

We will have the Kraus-Anderson fire pits.

We are going to have giant light-up letters that spell out Social Lights.

A beautiful illuminated photo booth which is probably the last remnant of the ice theme that you're going to see.

- [DJ] Rochester is showing up tonight.

- [Holly] These DJs are probably gonna lean towards top 40.

They really wanna make it feel like a fun community celebration, very accessible to all kinds of people.

- I've been waiting for this for a long time, so I got a lot of energy, a lot of hype stuff to just get the crowd going, keep them involved, and just have a great time.

A lot of top forties, high energy.

It's gonna be a lot of different remixes.

So it'll be something you know, but it'll be something you don't know at the same time.

♪ Take that ♪ ♪ Rewind it back ♪ ♪ Ludacris got the-- ♪ - [Holly] One of my favorite aspects of the event is actually the dancing.

It is incredible to see hundreds and hundreds of people together in the dance floor cutting loose a little bit.

- I think a lot of people focus on on the lights part of it.

It's social, it's to socialize.

It's to come out, have a good time, feel the vibes, feel the energy.

- We're also gonna have some vendors.

There will be Steam doing hot beverages.

Rosati's pizza and the deck truck, part of Blue Duck.

Events like this are crucial, especially after the last two years, we need to create opportunities for the community to come together.

We think it's really important to hold these events downtown.

This is really the center of Rochester.

This is where everyone can come together and feel welcome.

And it's also where our community can mingle with visitors from all over the world.

(upbeat music) (cool jazz music) - We found even more people in Rochester who don't let winter keep them indoors as we go cross country skiing at Quarry Hill Nature Center.

The park has groomed trails for all skill levels, so our crew waxed up their skis and went along.

- What I like about cross country skiing and I think most of our skiers like this, too, or they grow to like it is it's a wonderful way to enjoy winter, get outside, and stay fit.

But it's just beautiful.

There's some days it's cold and nasty, but at least we're out there making use of winter.

And when other people are groaning that, oh, it's snowing again, we're cheering and it's really fun.

Hi, I'm David Herbert, the head coach of the Rochester Nordic ski team.

I started cross country skiing a long time ago when I was in college and I liked it.

And when I came back, got a job back here, I thought I'm going to do it more.

Started competing in longer races like the Birkiebeiner and I've been doing it for over 40 years now.

I think we're a great cross country ski town and I hope someday we'll get publicized as that.

We've got three trails that have over 10 kilometers of groomed trails.

Many of the coaches on the team are also groomers.

And then in addition to those groomed trails where there's skating trails or classic trails, there's some beautiful back country skiing.

We can go out on lakes, frozen river beds.

- Hi, I'm Lori Forstie.

I am the public relations and outreach coordinator here at Quarry Hill Nature Center and I work in the ski rental room, just like the rest of our staff on the weekends and the weekdays when we're renting cross country skis.

We try to make ski rental here at Quarry Hill as easy as one, two, three.

Choose your boots, choose your skis, choose your poles, and we get you out on the trails.

We have a kind of a self-service system with lots of instruction on how to size your equipment.

Our ski rentals are classic ski rentals, which are meant to propel you in a parallel motion in a track set in the snow.

And then show you a little bit about how to put the equipment on, tell you a little bit about our trails and then you're on your way.

Here at Quarry Hill, we groom about eight plus or minus miles of trails.

The trails are set up for both classic skiing and skate skiing.

We have trails here from beginner, kind of flat terrain, little bit of slope, all the way up to trails for a more expert skier that have some pretty hefty slope to them.

Lots of opportunity for skiers of all levels.

In Minnesota, you take every chance you can to get out.

About 15 years ago, a friend of mine said, "Hey, let's go cross country skiing."

I said, "I don't know how."

She taught me in a day and I cross country ski as much as I can now.

It's a great workout in the winter time.

Freshly fallen snow and sunshine, that sort of sparkling crunch under your skis is really pretty magical.

- Hi, I'm Michael O'Connor.

I'm the president of the Rochester Active Sports Club.

The main thing we've been an active in over the last probably 20 years is development of ski trails.

So we work with the City of Rochester to do a lot of this work.

So the trails you see all around Quarry Hill here were all done by volunteers, where they cut into, to level the ground, put up bridges.

So they built a trail system in this park and in Essex Park.

- We're building out a new trail system south of town in Gamehaven where we will have snow making.

- Which will guarantee reliable ski conditions throughout the winter.

Ideal day is freshly-groomed tracks, 20 degrees, and sun.

And it's like you died and gone to heaven.

(laughing) - Perfect day to me of cross country skiing would be what I think of as warm weather, 20 degrees, fresh snow, corduroy trail just groomed and laid out and skiing with friends, skiing with skiers on the team, and listening to it and laugh and have a good time.

(ducks quacking) (wind blowing) - That's all for this episode.

See you next time "Off 90".

(upbeat jazzy music) - [Announcer] Funding for "Off 90" is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(bird squawking)