EDITORIAL: Historic bridge worth saving, reusing

Aug. 12—Thumbs up to the progress on returning the one-of-a-kind Kern Bridge to a prominent local role.

The 150-year-old bridge is currently dismantled and in storage, but in a couple of years it should be reassembled in a prominent location connecting Sibley Park to Land of Memories Park.

A decade ago the future of the historic bridge, which long spanned the Le Sueur River south of Mankato, was in doubt. It had been closed in 1991 and left to deteriorate. But the state and local governments came up with some federal funding to remove and save the bridge.

Mankato ended up winning a statewide competition with a plan to use it as part of a pedestrian bridge connecting the two parks.

The city has been working on design and financing plans with the hope that piers can be put in late next year, and the bridge can be reinstalled in 2025. Once in place, it will also serve as a connection for the trail system stretching from Faribault to Mankato to Minneopa State Park.

It's an exciting project. When completed, the unique bowstring arch bridge will instantly become a regional attraction.

Bipartisan nursing home funding

Thumbs up to the bipartisan group of legislators and Gov. Tim Walz who came together this year to boost nursing home funding by $173.5 million.

That goes to help pay direct costs nursing homes face including maintenance and debt. Another $75 million was provided to help nursing homes eliminate staff shortages. Each nursing home in the state will get a minimum of $250,000 and more depending on how many beds they have filled.

The shortage of nursing home workers has limited the ability of families to find places for their loved ones. The shortage and lack of beds available were nearing a crisis level.

Walz held a news conference that included both Democrats and Republicans to highlight the funding. Republicans worked on convincing Democrats on the level of funding and bargained with their votes on the bonding bill to come to a compromise.

Taking credit will always be part of the political game, but the important issue is that nursing homes got the help they needed whether the were located in red or blue areas and whether they were in the Twin Cities or outstate.

We should reward bipartisanship as it can be rare.

A musical passing of note

Thumbs up to the lifework and legacy of Robbie Robertson, the first-among-equals in the influential rock group The Band, who died this week at age 81.

When The Beatles released "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in 1967, Bob Dylan found the album pretentious and self-indulgent. He and his backing band, including Robertson, took refuge in the cinderblock basement of a pink rental house in Woodstock, New York, making demo tapes of songs new and old.

Those basement tapes transformed Dylan's concert backers into The Band and served as the foundation of a genre that became known as Americana or roots music. They created new songs, such as "The Weight" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down," that felt even at first hearing as if they had existed forever, music that doesn't sound dated a half-century later.

Stevie Van Zant, Springsteen guitarist and amateur historian of rock, often refers to the 1960s as a unique period when the most inventive music was also the most popular. The Beatles and Dylan were obviously at the forefront of that — with Robertson and The Band right there with them.