Heather Randell
@heatherrandell
Associate professor in the Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota. Sociologist/demographer studying the health impacts of climate change and dams, with a focus on Brazil and East Africa.
Cute little treefrog from my hike today. I think it’s a Cope’s Gray Treefrog, which interestingly can be green!
Here's our paper. TLDR: hundreds of large dams have flooded over 1 million acres of tribal land in the US. iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1...
I have mixed feelings about zoos, but the good ones do some incredible conservation work. And I’d like to think that they get kids more interested in wildlife than they would be from just looking in a book or watching a show.
Pumas cuddling while they nap at the Minnesota Zoo. If you think big cats are cool, you should read Tigers Between Empires, about Amur tiger conservation in the Russian Far East. One of the best books I’ve read in a long time!
This is a picture of my great-grandparents, taken in NYC in the late 1800s. On the back of the photo is some writing. Anyone read Yiddish and can help translate?
My mom just showed me this kid’s newspaper that she saved from summer 1961. JFK was president and his daughter got a puppy as a gift from the Russian government. The puppy’s mom was a Russian space dog who was “shot into space by rocket and returned to Earth”. Times sure have changed!
What a beautiful woman. Yvonne was friends with the painting’s artist Max Linger, and both were members of the French Resistance during WWII. Yvonne was arrested, tortured, and died in Auschwitz in 1943.
I’m a geography lover, but somehow I only learned today that the DRC reaches the Atlantic Ocean AND that Angola has an exclave in between the DRC and Republic of Congo.
I planted one tiny squash seedling and it is currently taking over my entire backyard. Somehow from planting season to planting season I always forget that squashes do this. Next spring, someone please remind me to stick with plants that stay in the garden bed!
I love squirrels and just found the hat of my dreams in Grand Marais.
It’s funny because I’m walking in my neighborhood and literally just as I was reading this, a tiny Fiat passed by!
My entire time in Istanbul was basically spent taking pictures of cats.
If you’ve ever been to Turkey, you will NOT be surprised that it happened there.
This book gutted me. The slaughters of European Jews through decades and centuries. The indifference, at best, of much of the world. The wit and tenacity of Bundist men and women, who never strayed from their ideals of socialist solidarity. The echoes of this story today in Palestine and ICE raids.
The current Ebola outbreak is spreading faster than any past outbreak at a time the world is least willing and equipped to contain it. This is what happens with you put USAID through the wood chipper. Gift link: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...
Things we found behind the wall during our kitchen renovation: photo negatives of the family who lived here in the 1940s and 50s (which we got developed), a Christmas gift tag from the same family, and a ticket to the Festival of Nations at the St. Paul Civic Center in 1983. Score!
My kid was in a chatty mood at the park: “Mom, how about you be the night and I be the day? My name is Lighta and your name is Darka” “How bout I’m the big sister and you’re the little sister? How bout I make the rules and you don’t?” “How bout I will make dinner? We’re having broth for dinner!”
Only in Minneapolis. One of the classes in my kid’s preschool made their own version of the Walker Art Center’s spoon and cherry sculpture 🥄🍒
We are renovating our kitchen and the little construction firm we are working with is just fabulous. Plus the master carpenters currently installing our new cabinets are a woman and a nonbinary person. I love Minneapolis.
I watched a documentary about Lego on my flight home and it was super interesting. Did you know: -The name is derived from the Danish phrase “leg godt”, which means “play well”. -By 2032 they plan for all bricks to be made from sustainable materials — recycled or bio-based plastic.
I happened to start this excellent book by @mollycrabapple.bsky.social on my trip. It is about the Jewish Labor Bund, a political group started at the end of the 19th century that was “secular, socialist, and uncompromisingly anti-Zionist”.
I would have stepped right over these small bricks in the sidewalk if my Italian friend hadn’t pointed them out. They are memorials for Jews who had lived in Ferrara and Florence before being sent to Auschwitz. Only one made it out alive. Franca was 28 and Marcello was 15 when they were killed.