Readers Write: Nature’s fireworks, bicycle infrastructure, Twin Cities Jazz Festival, U regents

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Lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to my environmental ethics and how we share our Earth with other living creatures. Can you just imagine what a mother bird in a nest of baby birds or other creatures that live near a July 4th fireworks display area might have been affected? There is some science online about how fireworks are extremely disruptive to birds and wildlife, though not enough to argue the issue. Please understand that my goal is not to advocate a ban on what some will argue is our patriotic right to celebrate future holidays as we always have. My hope is only to raise awareness and share a personal story:

It’s a few minutes past 10 p.m. on a July 4th and my 18-year-old daughter and I decide to hike up the ski hill at Hyland Hills Ski Area in Bloomington. From the top of where the chairlift drops skiers and snowboarders in winter, there is a panoramic view of the Southdale area clear to the Mississippi River. We search in the darkness for the narrow trodden path through the long grass leading to the top. The night is muggy and still, perfect for the voracious mosquitos and gnats to swarm us despite the DEET that I slathered on before I left home. With my eyes trained on the horizon, I am thrilled to see the sky lit up with brilliant light explosions from the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis, from Edina and Richfield, and from other communities south along the Mississippi River. I can feel the thump, bang and whistle from miles away.

Looking down to swat a biting bug on my leg, I notice that we are surrounded by thousands of fireflies creating their own private light show. It is a magical and spectacular sight! Quietly blinking in the night with a rhythm only lightning bugs can understand, they steal the show. Their natural light show reminds me that subtle and quiet displays of beauty can far surpass what we are taught to enjoy. We stand in awe of the power of nature and its resilience to continue its fight for survival despite awful odds.

Louise Segreto, Edina

The writer is a commissioner for Three Rivers Parks, representing District 4.

Minneapolis is widely celebrated as a national leader in bike infrastructure, but it may be time to reconsider whether these investments are serving the city as well as we think.

Over the past decade, the city has spent hundreds of millions of dollars building protected bike lanes, bike boulevards and off-street trails. While well-intended, this infrastructure serves a shrinking group of users. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, just 1.8% of Minneapolis residents now commute by bike — down from nearly 5% a decade ago. Yet these investments continue to grow.

The financial costs are substantial. A 2014 report highlighted a single $3 million bike-walk trail — at the time, the city’s most expensive. Today, estimates suggest the city has spent roughly $1.2 billion on bike infrastructure — equivalent to more than $176,000 per daily bicycle commuter. Meanwhile, roads crumble, buses slow in traffic, and residents across the city call for basic improvements in lighting, safety and sidewalk access.

There’s also a seasonal reality: During the winter, cycling drops dramatically, and most infrastructure sits underused. Minneapolis isn’t Copenhagen or Portland. Year-round biking simply isn’t realistic for many residents — especially those with long commutes, children or mobility challenges.

Safety is another concern. According to MinnPost, the city experiences an average of 243 bike-vehicle crashes annually, including a serious or fatal incident every 24 days. Many of these crashes involve intersections where cyclists ignore signals or fail to yield. Without more education and accountability, infrastructure alone can’t prevent these collisions.

This isn’t an argument against bike lanes. Bicycles deserve a place in a multimodal city. But the current approach feels out of balance.

As Minneapolis reimagines its transportation future, it must also reexamine its assumptions. Infrastructure should reflect how people actually live — not just how planners hope they might someday commute.

Greg Kline, Minneapolis

The 2025 Twin Cities Jazz Festival ran last month, mostly at St. Paul’s Mears Park. The festival has been a local favorite for 27 years, and I’ve attended faithfully.

But I am disappointed by a trend in recent TCJF events. On an aesthetic level, what has changed is an influx of another musical style, rhythm and blues (R&B) — which has its own history, heroes and memorable music. And R&B as played at this festival showed itself to be finding new directions. All to the good, except that this is a jazz festival, not an R&B festival.

Adding a distinct musical genre to it is akin to, say, adding a big dose of Nashville country music to an event billed as a bluegrass show, both styles descended from Southern white music. Similarly, jazz and R&B share many characteristics and are both rooted in Black music, but they move in parallel, independently of each other. Among the differences is that jazz is fundamentally instrumental yet with a long-running vocal tradition, whereas R&B grows out of singing and has its own instrumental style.

The festival has two performing stages, which alternate so that a performance occurs at one while the other has a pause, during which many people socialize and find refreshments. But unfortunately the two stages are within earshot of each other.

A problem arises because in recent years the 5th Street stage has been used mostly by groups that were loud and intense, with excessive amplification. In the boxed-in acoustic of Mears Park, this creates a low rumble of bass guitar and bass drum, a nonmusical din that the main-stage audience hears continually.

I’ll add that the musical works I found too long and loud were often met with enthusiastic reactions at the finish. My impression is that R&B has a considerably larger audience than jazz, yet the Midtown Blues and Funk Festival folded a couple of years ago. I suspect this partly explains the influx of non-jazz groups at TCJF.

The Twin Cities area has the resources and audiences to support both events and both styles. Music fans would benefit from a revived blues festival to complement TCJF, creating richer musical summers.

Christopher Brewster, Plymouth

Gov. Tim Walz has to fill four vacancies on the University of Minnesota Board of Regents by July 11. I hope he will vet the candidates for courage and a commitment to freedom of speech and academic freedom. On March 13, the Board of Regents introduced a new policy giving the president of the university the authority to censor speech by “units” of the university “addressing matters of public concern or public interest.” This resolution replaced — at the last minute — a resolution that had been endorsed by the faculty through the University Senate.

By the end of March, a day after the first University of Minnesota student was detained by ICE, university President Rebecca Cunningham had 11 statements erased from U websites. Most of them spoke to the dire situation for Palestinians. A couple statements, up since 2022, denounced the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The erased faculty statements had criticized the Israeli government for its actions but did not single out Jewish people or the Jewish religion for criticism or insults. The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities chapter of the American Association of University Professors criticized the erasing of the statements as censorship that violated academic freedom and freedom of speech.

The chair of the Board of Regents had argued that the move was necessary in light of the board’s “fiduciary responsibilities,” apparently in response to an investigation by President Donald Trump’s secretary of education into student protests on behalf of Palestinians. In other words: capitulation over courage.

Deborah Schlick, St. Paul