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TUESDAY, MARCH 14, 2023 VOL. 41 NO. 22 www.quadcommunitypress.com $1.00
SUNSHINE WEEK: Local media play essential role PAGE 4
March 14 is Pi Day BY JACKIE BUSSJAEGER INTERIM EDITOR
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Why do Americans celebrate Ireland? Minnesotans have had a strong connection to St. Patrick’s Day for more than 170 years. SEE ST. PATTY’S, PAGE 6
Homegrown food expert to release new book love of plants merged with my Preserving,” and created the blog love of good food. “Minnesota from Scratch.” The Press’ asked Bruhn and Thurow the Q: What is urban homesteading? following questions in advance of MB: We really believe any home the book’s publication. can be a homestead, and we’re much more interested in supQ: How did you develop your passion porting communal abundance for food and gardening? than the idea of self-sufficiency. MB: This was a passion that slowly grew over the years. You ST: To be considered an urban/ shouldn’t expect to start doing suburban/modern day homeit all right away, learning skills steader, you do not have to be and deciding what you enjoy the completely self-sufficient. Just most is all part of the journey. simply doing more with what I fell in love with food all over you have, such as growing a again after I had my babies, I garden, or baking your own just cared so much more what bread, learning new skills, or went into their bodies, and I teaching new skills of self-suffiwas a stay-at-home mom then. I ciency to others, all means that figured I could grow more food you’re on the path of homesteadbecause I was around; it turned ing. into my happy place, and my SEE HOMESTEADING, PAGE 2
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Local food advocate Michelle Bruhn, a White Bear Lake resident, will release her new book “Smallscale Homesteading: A Sustainable Guide to Gardening, Keeping Chickens, Maple Sugaring, Preserving the Harvest, and More” on March 14. Bruhn is a Master Gardener volunteer, garden educator, farmers market manager and frequent Press Publications’ contributor. She is also founder of ForksInTheDirt. com, a local information hub for gardening topics and farm-to-table living. Bruhn wrote the book with co-author Stephanie Thurow, a homesteader, Certified Master Food Preserver and Master Gardener volunteer from Minneapolis. Thurow has authored the cookbooks “Can It & Ferment It,” “WECK Small-Batch Preserving” and “WECK Home
What other holiday, besides Pi Day, has the whimsy to serve up mathematical constants with a side of whipped cream? March 14, or 3/14, shares its first three digits with the number pi. It’s a lucky happenstance that “pi” and “pie” happen to be homophones—it’s difficult to imagine a math holiday holding its own without a little sweetening. It was physicist Larry Shaw at the San Francisco Exploratorium who planned the first large-scale celebration of Pi Day in 1988. That first celebration included marching in circles around the Exploratorium campus, followed by digging into some fruit pies. Pi Day has been an occasion to indulge in some sweets and also celebrate the complex and quirky nature of math and science ever since. It’s been a long time since some of us have been in the classroom—it might be time for a refresher of what, exactly, pi does. Pi, named for the Greek letter that represents it, is the ratio of the diameter of a circle to its circumference. If you only know how wide a circle is across, pi tells you precisely how much area it covers. It might not be something we use in everyday life, but its usefulness is all around us. It is essential in most calculations for building and construction, communication, medical procedures, music theory and spaceflight, for a few examples. Pi is considered an irrational number, which is infinite and never enters a predictably repeating pattern. Pi Day has sometimes been an occasion for schools to hold pi recitation contests, where students are challenged to memorize as many digits as they can. Since 2012, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has adopted the practice of releasing its acceptance letters on Pi Day, sometimes coordinating by the minute to most closely correspond with digits of pi and of the rival mathematical concept of tau. Most are happy to celebrate with a slice of their favorite pie from one of the bakeries or restaurants around town, but perhaps Pi Day is a time to put your math skills to the test and try memorizing a few digits of pi this year.
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