- [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(inspirational jingle) - "R-Town", the show about Rochester, learns about a new exhibition at the Rochester Public Library, exploring an often hard to look at history in the United States.

And we find out about a local organization committed to improving education and the lives of area youth.

We also check out some frightfully creepy dolls and a local community coat drive.

All that and more coming up next on "R-Town", the show about Rochester.

(upbeat music) Coming to you from 125 Live in Rochester, Minnesota, "R-Town".

(music continues) In 2016, Cradle 2 Career started with a simple question, are our education investments making a difference in kids' lives here in Rochester and Olmsted County.

Here to tell us more about how Cradle 2 Career has been impacting the lives of Rochester area youth is Cradle 2 Career Executive Director, Julie Ruzek.

Welcome to "R-Town", Julie.

- [Julie] Thank You.

Thanks for having me.

- So can you tell us a little bit about what the state of education is like in the city and what challenges Cradle 2 Career seeking to address?

- Yes, absolutely.

Thank you so much for having me.

It's a wonderful job to have and to be able to speak to.

The state of education in Rochester is a complex question that's not easily answered with a brief statement.

But what I can say is that while there are positives to how students are seeing and realizing success, there are also barriers.

And so Cradle 2 Career was really established to help address those educational outcomes for children and youth in our community and to help the community come together to support students as they are matriculating through systems, a variety of systems and realizing success.

So in terms of current issues that we're seeing or the state of education in Rochester, I think we're seeing higher elevated levels of anxiety that students are coming to school with regardless of age, from our youngest students to our oldest students.

We often talk about it in education as most kids come to school with backpacks.

A lot of kids bring invisible backpacks filled with things that you can't always see, anxiety and mental health issues, the need for basic needs to be met, Just a lot of instability at home.

And all of that is impacting educational attainment and success.

And so Cradle 2 Career, while there are a variety of initiatives that are set up to provide direct service provision to students in our community, there aren't a lot of initiatives that are convening partners and cross sector partners to support kind of as a backbone and say, "What data do we need to look at that is really impacting students or specific groups of students, that we can address by changing our practice, policies, procedures, power structures, so that students can realize success in our community.

- I'm so glad you mentioned that piece about the partners and the ability to provide that backbone by doing that, convening those partners together.

Can you talk a little bit about how you work with those partners and the work that you're doing both in and outside of the school when you do that work?

- So most of our work happens outside of school buildings.

It's really working with, as I mentioned, cross-sector partners from both public, private, city, county, non-profit, for-profit partners coming together and really addressing specific data points that exist.

When we come back to just convening, we make sure that we organize our groups that are meeting together in regards to student groups.

So when we look at different student outcomes, we are currently working on convening a group around prenatal to age three, so that student outcome or child outcome.

We have a current group that's meeting around kindergarten readiness.

We have another group that's meeting around high school graduation.

And so, when we convene those partners, they all have a common interest in making sure that that specific student outcome area is addressed using a variety of pilots and strategies.

- Wonderful.

I just mentioned the education summit.

- Yes.

- You just had it last week.

Can you tell us a little bit about what the goals of that summit were and just some of the highlights?

- Yes, absolutely.

So when I came into this role, one of the policies at Cradle 2 Career is that we go public with our data on an annual basis.

And so while previous iterations of this had looked like a meeting that was sharing data, if we are really doing what we want the community to do, we really wanted this experience to be collaborative in nature.

So it shouldn't just be the staff at Cradle 2 Career talking about data in the community.

We wanted to bring a variety of partners together to be talking about what they're doing and highlighting the work that they're doing because we know, and our theme of our event was Transforming Systems Together.

We are all C2C.

Cradle 2 Career is a staff of five full-time staff.

There's no way that we're going to improve student outcomes or change systems in our community alone.

We need a collaborative to do that.

So we brought together almost 200 partners, as I mentioned, from various sectors in our community really to address a variety of topic areas, truly from cradle to career.

And the goals of that were that it's free, that it's focused on relationship building and networking and that we're providing some professional development opportunities to the community that they may not otherwise have had an opportunity to accept.

- Thank you so much Julie, for joining us, and we hope to have you back on again.

- Yes, thank you.

(upbeat music) (music continues) - Be sure to stick around.

We have much more coming your way on "R-Town".

As temperatures dip, we check out a local coat drive and we also learn about a powerful new exhibit on Black Americana from the slave era to today on view at the Rochester Public Library.

And we catch up with the Rochester Lotus Foundation to find out more about the importance of gardening and agricultural knowledge.

But up first we get our frights this Friday the 13th with the creepiest dolls in town at the History Center of Olmstead County in this week's R Culture segment.

(eerie music) (music continues) - So this is the fifth year for our creepy doll exhibit.

We choose different dolls from our collection that have been donated throughout the year.

This year, the theme is a murder mystery.

So last year's winner hosted a party and her guests have now become suspects to the crime and we invite our visitors to come and try to solve which of the dolls did it.

They will be at the History Center until the end of October, where people can come.

They are kind of throughout our museum so people can see all of our other exhibits at the same time and also pick up on the different clues we have for them to try to solve the mystery.

Our victim for our murder mystery this year is actually 2020's winner of Creepiest Doll, Blair Hanscom.

We have five new dolls, which were guests to Blair's party who have now become suspects in her murder, including Charley, the bartender, Dr. Dolor, Poppy, her cousin, Estella, a scorned bride, and Grandma Ada, a neighbor.

So there's a whole storyline that people are visit...

The visitors can come and follow and see the connections, how the dolls are made, what they're made with, where they're from.

So a lot of history behind it as well as just kind of a fun mystery for people to solve.

So there are clues throughout the exhibit cases, whether it's a potential murder weapon.

We've given them all names, kind of occupations or roles in the story.

They also have the masks that they wore to Blair's masquerade party.

We will reveal who the murderer is as well as who was voted the creepiest at the end of October.

- [Creepy Doll] At the end of October.

- [Creepy Dolls] October.

- On all of our social media.

But yeah, as people come in to see the exhibit, they themselves, they can cast a vote here in person as to who they think is the creepiest doll.

But we do have a good bit of merchandise for our creepy dolls from t-shirts to buttons to things like that.

I do know we were one of the first museums or first groups to kind of do it.

We were actually featured in like the "Smithsonian" magazine, I think.

I know we were featured in "O Magazine", Oprah's magazine.

And we've received a lot of recognition.

We also have even some international followers on our social media for the Creepy Dolls each year.

One of our board members, Christine Rule, was actually the first person who kind of brought this idea a couple years ago.

And ever since, people have just come to love it.

All of the dolls were donated to us from different residents and people.

They all have a connection back to Olmstead County.

Now I think one of my favorite things about planning like the creepy doll party or other events is being able to really engage with the community and kind of bring history and bring that to them, wherever that might be.

Obviously, we want them to come visit the museum.

But for me, that's just another kind of fun bonus of bringing that to people who might not know about us or come and visit us otherwise.

So that outreach is very important and it's something I enjoy a lot.

(eerie music fades) - [Narrator] For more information about this story and other "R-Town" features, connect with us on Facebook, Twitter @KSMQ #RTown or ksmq.org/rtown.

(upbeat music) - Hi, I'm Matt Bluhm, and I'm filling in for Danielle Teal for R-Town Spotlight.

And joining me today is Mei Liu with the Lotus Health Foundation from Rochester.

- Mhm.

- [Matt] Tell me a little bit about the Lotus Health Foundation.

- Yeah, Lotus Health Foundation is a nonprofit arm of a private practice, Rochester Clinic, where it has been around for 14 years in Rochester.

Our mission is to empower people with lifestyle medicine education to empower people to adopt a healthy lifestyle, including the nutrition, exercise, and managing stress, develop the passion, connections.

So we have a lot of initiative is just to try to make it very sustainable, affordable, and accessible for the community folks.

- And where are you located?

- We are located right by the 3070 Wellner Dr.

It's north part of Broadway.

Kind of close to the Kwik Trip gas station.

Yeah.

- And what are ways that you try to meet your goals?

- Mhm.

So we know that actually everybody has the right, the power to make the self care very affordable and tangible.

So the lifestyle medicine education purpose is to make that education information available for the public.

And beside, we inviting the national guest speaker, local guest speaker, like a physician and expert to come to share the news.

But we also have something very fun and practical, which is we set up a community garden.

And our community garden's name is called Farmacy RX.

So that's spelled as a F-A-R-M-A-C-Y.

So, just kind of a picture, the food is a medicine, so look at the those beautiful vegetable and fruits from our garden.

And just this year, we already yielded more than 2,500 pounds of food that be able to share about 10 organizations.

- That's pretty amazing.

Do you have any events or anything like that coming up?

- Yeah, well for this year, beside right now, it's Fall, that we clean up the garden.

But next year in May, the third week of May, from May 16th to 18th, now we are going to have our sixth annual community wellness symposium and gala.

And at the time that we're going to host the event right here at 125 Live.

And so a lot of well-known speakers and local speakers will come to share their knowledge.

We encourage people to watch our event.

And food is the medicine as we also have a postcard showing the good recipe of the feel good cookie that can make you feel happy.

- Well Mei, thank you very much for joining me today on R-Town Spotlight.

- [Mei] Thank you so much for interviewing me.

(upbeat music) - Hello again.

This is Michael Wojcik with your R-Town Rundown.

Going on this Saturday, it's the first symphony performance of the season.

What's really neat this year is there's going to be different maestros coming in performing.

This time it's Maestro Lin.

We're gonna have an opportunity to see four different leaders this year and see who might be leading our symphony in the future.

Also going on.

Now, next Thursday, during the week at the History Center is Fall Fest.

That'll include a variety of fall activities, including things like pumpkin carving, crafts and of course vendors.

Additionally, Sunday night, something that I have not done before, but I'm looking forward to at Treedome which is a business on the 300 block of South Broadway.

There is a Songwriters in Round event going on where there'll be three different songwriters performing some of their materials.

Now, if you really love good entertainment in the city of Rochester, I highly recommend local government.

I've been there.

I've been a part of those meetings and sometimes they get heated, but they're about issues that matter to us.

And one of the things that matters a lot to me is housing.

But it can be really hard to build housing in Rochester.

We run into NIMBYs, or not in my backyard mentality or CAVEMEN, which is citizens against virtually everything.

Or my personal favorite, BANANAs, build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.

The reality is if we don't build housing, we don't have enough places to live, housing becomes unaffordable.

And there aren't the people to create the vibrancy in places like downtown and support local organizations.

You can be a part of the message encouraging folks to build more housing in the city of Rochester.

There's a fantastic proposal on 2nd Street for 360 units of housing.

That's gonna be a discussion for the city council coming up.

I encourage you to take the time, weigh in, get involved in these because building great urban sites helps people find places to live, reduces traffic, and improves their quality of life.

This has been Michael Wojcik, and that's just a little bit of what's going on in "R-Town".

(inspirational music) - This is Danielle Teal with R-Town Walkabout.

We're at Hy-Vee Barlow with Melanie Schmidt and Chris Schmidt for the Schmidt Group Re/Max Results Coat Drive.

Are you excited?

- We're totally excited.

Look at the shoes.

We're like having fun.

- It's a little chilly right now.

So this is the perfect opportunity to kick off a coat drive and gather coats for those in need.

There's a partnership with Salvation Army.

This used to be a very small endeavor and it turned huge.

- It turned huge.

This is our sixth annual coat drive.

I've got three layers on.

I'm wearing one of the donated coats for right now.

- And Chris, why do you think it's so important to do a coat drive?

- Well, I was gonna say, when we first came up with the idea to do this, I talked to Melanie about it and she said, "Well, I'll call the Salvation Army and see if we can help in any way."

And they said, "I can't believe you're actually calling us about this, because the company that used to do a lot of the coat donations stepped out."

- [Danielle] How serendipitous?

So then you two picked up the the torch and ran with it?

- [Chris] Right, yep, yep.

- [Melanie] Yep.

And we're still running.

- [Chris] So we're a huge contributor for their distribution day.

- And the plan is to fill this truck up.

- As much as we can.

I mean, my goal in my mind is 2,000 coats this year.

- [Danielle] Okay.

- So we need your coats.

- We're also going for boots.

- Boots, hats, gloves.

- Hats, mittens.

- [Chris] Snow pants, anything that'll keep somebody warm.

The need is so much, it's so huge.

It's more than ever.

- Somebody is gonna absolutely love this.

- [Danielle] We need people like Chris and Melanie to help out.

- Yes, absolutely.

- [Danielle] So why do you think that's so important?

- Well, and a big part of it too is that it takes a village.

And we say that all the time and it sounds like a cheesy line to say, but the Army is made up of, we have maybe 18 staff people on our campus and we have maybe 3,000 volunteers, including people like Chris and Melanie who organize a coat drive.

And quite frankly, we just need people who really care about people who are in need and are willing to spend a little bit of time to be able to come out and help people with their basic needs.

This is Danielle Teal with R-Town Walkabout.

(upbeat music) - A new exhibit entitled "Testify: Americana from Slavery to Today" is currently on view at the Rochester Public Library.

Here to tell us more about this historic exhibit and its significance is Reference Librarian, Brian Lind.

Welcome to "R-Town".

- [Brian] Oh, thank you so much for having me.

- So can you tell us a little bit about the The Diane and Alan Page Collection of African American Art and Artifacts, which is where this exhibit is sort of derived and about the original "Testify" exhibit?

- Sure, the original exhibit was the actual paintings and objects and it was at the Minneapolis... Or sorry, the Hennepin rather.

Old school librarian.

The Hennepin Library downtown in 2018.

And that was the original exhibit, which was just phenomenally well received.

And I guess what happened is Justice Page was speaking at the Minnesota Library Conference just last year I believe, and they're trying to find ways to get this exhibit out across the state for people who couldn't come to the metro area and whatnot.

So they came up with an idea.

Actually, I believe it was our Southeastern Libraries Cooperating, SELCO, who's putting this on.

They give 'em a plug.

And they basically took high resolution photographs of kinda the most of the exhibit, not every single bit of it.

But they put them up into banners that could easily be transported to different libraries, especially smaller libraries that don't have the space of the central library so that people could come and see the exhibits.

And also without the trouble of having to pack up the exhibits and have this floor space and all of that that you need to.

So it was just a compact way to get those images out so that people in Minnesota could come and enjoy and learn from this exhibit.

- That's excellent.

Just the mobility of having a traveling exhibit.

Can you tell us a little bit about what Americana is and why it's important that we engage with this very difficult history?

- Sure, I mean, Americana is things associated with the history of America.

It can often be objects and different things.

It's not necessarily something that's created like a painting.

Actually the bulk of this exhibit are different artifacts.

Things like signs.

Actually, things like plates.

Just kind of common everyday objects.

But given the context of what they are and where they were, it makes them very significant.

There are some very racist images used in promotion of different products, which is quite horrifying to see and some of it's not that old.

But just those different objects really tell you a lot about a culture and a society, even if they aren't intended to.

I mean just the proliferation.

People would have these things in their everyday lives and there are things actually like...

There was a brick that was used to construct the White House that was formed and probably built by enslaved people.

It's quite something to see and think about those objects in that context.

- Yeah, it sort of brings that history sort of right in front of the audience.

I'm familiar with Americana sort of as a general term, but I also am familiar with Black Americana.

So some of those things that you are referring to that were created in the Jim Crow era, during slavery, pre-civil rights, post-civil rights even, are considered sort of part of Americana, which could be quite racist and difficult and charged, have that charge history.

- Right.

- Well I guess, before I get to the conversations that you're hoping to engage with this.

The current exhibit has some work from local artist Kurt Mueller.

How does the "Testify" exhibit also incorporate artwork from other artists?

- Actually, the one thing I love about the artwork in this exhibit is that is often where the joy is in this exhibit.

There's a wonderful painting of three jazz musicians that really is extraordinary.

There's another painting which is of African American folks who were only able to use a swimming pool one day of the week after it had been all dirtied by other people using the pool.

So something only on a Thursday.

But the images of the people in there, in the painting are just so joyful and wonderful.

One thing that's really extraordinary about this exhibit too, is there's a lot of juxtaposition of different things.

In one part of the exhibit, there are two documents hanging, one of which is a bill selling enslaved people in horrifying detail.

Then right next to that is actually a document that has documentation about the first African American union that was recognized by United States unions.

So there's a lot of things like that.

There's one other kinda juxtaposition where there's a picture of African Americans in the military and how it was okay for them to serve and to fight for the country.

And then there's a picture right above that.

It's, to me, it was the most heart wrenching of all of the images.

It's photographs of African American babies and the title underneath it is Gator Bait or Alligator Bait.

And it's just...

I mean, and just having those two images right next to each other really says a lot.

One thing I really like about this exhibit, it does have text at the bottom of each of the panels to talk about and put into context the images or the different things that you're looking at.

If you think about it, bring your smartphone.

You can actually scan a QR code and get an audio version of it.

Because it's a library, think about bringing your headphones, but if you put it on fairly low, we're not gonna have a problem with that.

But it's just, it's something where I really think you need to take some time to take in the different groups of images.

Some of them are just images of different objects together.

Some are single objects.

It's just, I dunno.

I think that people will experience a range of emotions from outrage to sadness to joy, going through the different panels of the exhibition.

- Yeah, it certainly seems that way.

I haven't gone myself to see it.

I'm very interested in this part of our history and I think I am wondering.

Those conversations, how we hold space for those conversations and what the library is hoping, people are thinking about, and ideas that are sparking for people as they visit this exhibit?

- Yeah, I guess it's not really for the library to say what other people are thinking, but I think that keeping today's events and today's...

Things that are happening today in history and realizing that doesn't come out of nowhere.

That knowing about the history and about honest things that happened and just, it really puts a lot of things that are happening today into context.

I would encourage people to come as groups.

It's really, I think, an exhibit that discussion is something I think that all of us would like to have come out of it.

Both discussion among the people who are going to see it.

We also encourage people, there's a commentary.

We would really like to hear what people think about and what they were moved by going through the exhibit.

And there's a both a card there to fill out.

Also an online one if you wanna just scan it into your phone, you can do that too.

- Fantastic, what is the future of the exhibit after it leaves?

- It's gonna be moving through different parts, different libraries throughout the system.

I do have a link on our website.

It's rplmn.org/Testify.

I believe Pine Island Library is one of the next ones.

I believe it's also going to Austin Public Library and Spring Valley.

But don't believe me, look at that link and that'll have the actual dates and information.

It will be at Rochester Public Library through October 30th.

- Wonderful, thank you so much for joining us, Brian.

I hope to check out the exhibit and thank you so much.

- You're very welcome.

Thanks for having me.

- And thank you all for joining us today.

I hope you learned as much as I did today about all that's going on in our city and the wonderful people making it happen.

For more great content produced right here in Rochester, please be sure to check us out on Facebook and Twitter at #RTown.

I'm Nicole Nfonoyim-Hara, host of "R-Town", the show about Rochester, and I'll see you next week.

(upbeat music) (music continues) (music continues) (digital tones chime) - [Narrator] Funding for this program is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.