Sunday liquor unlikely, but ‘growlers’…

Sundays? Probably not. Growlers? Maybe. The AP says: “An effort for a full repeal of Minnesota’s ban on retail sales of alcohol on Sunday appears unlikely this session, but lawmakers may give more freedom to the state’s burgeoning craft brewing movement. A House committee on Wednesday moved a bill to the floor that would allow the sale of 64-ounce beer containers called ‘growlers.’ And earlier Wednesday, a Senate committee kept alive one bill that would legalize Sunday sales by small brewers and another that would open taprooms on Sundays and also allow growler sales.”

Standards may yet come to frac sand mining. Tony Kennedy of the Strib says: “Minnesota’s Environmental Quality Board (EQB) on Wednesday adopted a ‘toolbox’ of frac sand standards designed to help local governments regulate an industry whose explosive growth in the last 18 months has brought the region riches as well as controversy. Environmentalists quickly derided the optional standards as too soft, and mining interests faulted them as overreaching.” So in other words, “real progress.”

Poor Target. Still not catching a break. Now it’s those impertinent twerps at Salon mocking our favorite discount store for its latest anti-union message to employees. Says Josh Eidelson: “Narrators tell employees — whom union organizers charge were required to watch the video in mandatory meetings — that right now, ‘We put people in jobs because they’re well-suited for them, not because of the day they happened to get hired.’ If a union came in, ‘chances are they would change our fast, fun and friendly culture, with their way of doing business.’ … ‘If Target faced rigid union contracts like some of our competitors, our ability to serve our guests could suffer dramatically — and with fewer guests, what happens to our team’?” So may I suggest, perhaps, a union for “the guests”?

Also, while not directly mentioning Minnesota … Nico Hines at “The Daily Beast” tells his readers that almost everything about the Vikings is dead wrong: “There’s not much distinction between the Viking as the violent raider and the idea of the Vikings as the peaceful trader if you’re talking about the slave trade,” [Gareth Williams, curator of the ‘Vikings: Life and Legend’ exhibit in London]  Williams told the Daily Beast. ‘We’ve got accounts in Irish, Anglo-Saxon and Frankish sources of fleets of Vikings descending on an area and carrying off hundreds of slaves at a time. It’s not far removed from what was happening on the West Coast of Africa in the 18th century.’ ” According to legend, five healthy slaves could buy you a personal seat license to a knattleiker match.

Remember these numbers … Janet Moore of the Strib says: “The renovation of Nicollet Mall — should it occur — will generate about $106 million in additional spending and 860 new jobs downtown. This was the finding of a recent study commissioned by the city of Minneapolis, and comes after the city requested $25 million in state bonding dollars for an ambitious $50 million redo that involves reconstructing and redefining the public space on the mall. The cost would be shared between public and private sources.” That’s almost as much as we’re guaranteed with a Super Bowl.

‘Bye, Fred … Mary Jane Smetanka of the Strib writes: “Edina’s Fred Richards Golf Course will close at the end of this season. Despite petitions, legal challenges and pleas from golfers young and old, the City Council voted 3-2 Tuesday night to close ‘The Fred.’ In the end, urgency to find a financial fix for the city’s municipal golf operations trumped pleas to take more time with a decision and perhaps save The Fred.”

That WWII re-enactor/”Nazi party” at the Gasthof zur Gemutlichkeit takes serious heat from a half-dozen writers in a Strib commentary: “We wonder what exactly the mostly male participants in this Nazi-themed dinner party were re-enacting. A militarized, fundamentally antidemocratic and ethnically cleansed community? A supremacist fantasy of conviviality stripped of its underlying genocidal violence and passed off as nice and normal? To witness fellow Minnesotans entertaining themselves in this fashion, no less at a restaurant named ‘Gasthof zur Gemutlichkeit’ — German conviviality inn — is nothing short of obscene.”

Jesse can go to trial. The AP says: “A judge is allowing former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura’s defamation lawsuit against the widow of slain ‘American Sniper’ author Chris Kyle to go to trial.”

A local tech original is bowing out. In the PiPress, Julio Ojeda-Zapata reports: “When Apple first began selling its pioneering personal computers in the late 1970s, its first batch of machines went to Team Electronics in the Twin Cities. Team Electronics eventually morphed into FirstTech, a Minneapolis tech dealer that has prided itself on being the world’s first Apple reseller … Soon, though, FirstTech will be no more.The independent Uptown purveyor of Macintosh  machines and Apple iOS mobile devices said Wednesday it is closing. Its last day is March 29. A going-out-of-business sale begins Thursday.”  Call if you see any deals on slightly-used Lisas.