THUMBS UP

New community collage installed on Center Street

Thursday, the Community Collage featuring hundreds of photos was hung on the side of the Thimble Box building at 2. S. Minnesota Street. The collage was created through a collaboration with The Downtown Action Team, New Ulm Chamber and photographer Josh Madson.

Last April, Madson held a photo shoot with the public at Sweet Haven Tonics. More than 400 individuals and groups took part in the photo shoot to create the collage. This is a wonderful addition to New Ulm’s downtown.

The collage will serve snapshot of New Ulm and it’s people for years to come. A special ribbon cutting reception for the collage will be held 9 a.m., Thursday, Oct. 3.

THUMBS UP

100 Women Who Care gathers Sunday

The New Ulm 100 Women Who Care will gather at the New Ulm Country Club at 6 p.m. Sunday to award an area non-profit around $10,000. The idea behind the 100 Women Who Care program is to assist local non-profits.

Each woman who attends the event, pledges to give $100 to whichever non-profit is selected during the meeting. Each attendee may nominate an organization to receive the funds. Three nominated non-profits are selected at random to be considered for the funds.

The 100 Women meet twice a year. They last met in April and selected Adaptive Recreation Services to receive the funding. The 100 Women program is a great way to help local non-profit, but also raise awareness for other organization in need to help. The bi-annual meeting schedule helps spread out the help to many worthy organizations.

THUMBS DOWN

Book banning attempts remainsa national issue

This last week was Banned Books Week. Libraries across the country celebrate books that have faced censorship issues. Unfortunately, in the last few years the amount of censorship attempts on reading material in the United States has been on the rise.

According to American Library Association (ALA) data, there were 1,247 attempts to censor materials in the U.S. This is a small decrease from previous years, but a greater number of different books are under attack.

For comparison, in 2014 there were 183 different books facing censorship challenges. Between January and August of 2024 there were 1,128 different books facing censorship.

The one silver lining is book censorship has not come to New Ulm. New Ulm Public Library (NUPL) and Martin Luther College (MLC) have not had any attempts in the last year from group or individuals to censor reading material. Though national trends are moving toward censorship, locally people remain free to read.