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WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2019 VOL. 121 NO. 28 www.osceolasun.com $1.00
SPORTS: Osceola girls basketball wins four MBC games in a row. PAGE 13
After polar vortex, Red Cross in need of blood BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@OSCEOLASUN.COM
Winter blasts past BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@OSCEOLASUN.COM
The American Red Cross reported its need for blood donations is high after 370 blood drives were cancelled last week. The organization estimated that nationwide some 11,500 donations were not collected due to extreme cold brought by the SUBMITTED polar vortex. In the Twin Cities metro The Red Cross has declared area, more than 4,600 blood an emergency need for and platelet donations went blood donors. Bethesda Lutheran Church is hosting uncollected due to severe a drive Feb. 7. weather. “The need for blood doesn’t stop for winter weather,” American Red Cross spokesperson Jessa Merrill said in a press release. “This month’s historic cold and snowy weather has
A previously mild winter turned into a deep freeze last week, with 30-below-zero temperatures for a two-day stretch. Schools closed throughout the region, as did businesses and government agencies across the state. The United States Postal Service suspended delivery Wednesday, Jan. 30, in Minnesota, western Wisconsin, Iowa and western Illinois. The decision delayed the delivery of mail including newspapers, but the Postal Service wasn’t the only one to halt its service.
SEE RED CROSS, PAGE 18
SEE WINTER, PAGE 16
SUZANNE LINDGREN | THE SUN
Under a thick layer of ice, water continued to flow over Cascade Falls.
Osceola snow sculptor’s team takes Winter Carnival BY SUZANNE LINDGREN EDITOR@OSCEOLASUN.COM
With a sculpture called “Turtle Island,” an Osceola man’s team won the St. Paul Winter Carnival’s snow sculpting contest for a fifth year. The team, comprised of Osceola’s David Aichinger and House of Thune teammates Kelly Thune and Dusty Thune, designed the figure to show support for clean water. It is inspired, in part, by creation stories from this continent’s indigenous cultures. “We developed a compilation of indigenous creation stories in the form of an 8-by-12-foot turtle with the face of our grandmother earth screaming at the stars of Orion as her body is bled
of oil,” Aichinger told The Sun in an email. Each of the Winter Carnival sculptures starts as an 8-foot cube of compressed snow. They’re typically carved with chisels and saws. “They’re all the same when we start,” Aichinger said, “and when they come out they’re all completely different. The snow is really heavy. Moving it is a work out and a lot of teams work into the night to finish.” The trio hollowed out the turtle’s shell as a tribute “to caves that are central to the Dakota at Bdote as the womb of the earth, with a central circle of the seven tribal fires represented by seated robed elders at its heart,” he wrote. To light those fires, the
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Team House of Thune, from left: Kelly Thune, David Aichinger and Dusty Thune. Aichinger lives in Osceola and the Thunes reside in the Twin Cities.
team carved through the mouth at the top of the shell, allowing the sun to illuminate the cave’s interior and create “a glowing orange fire at the center of the elders,” Aichinger said. At midnight, the seven stars of the constellation Orion are visible from inside the shell. House of Thune’s sculpture alludes to concerns over oil pollution, such as those voiced in 2016 at the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. “The turtle’s head and legs resolve into oil pipes to show the waters of the earth bleeding oil,” Aichinger said. “We built Turtle Island atop a black asphalt parking lot and carved away the snow SEE SCULPTURE, PAGE 24
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