(upbeat instrumental music) - [Male Narrator] Funding for Off 90 is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(loon calling) (upbeat rock music) - [Female Narrator] Cruising your way next Off 90, we check out Thrive 2021 Women's Conference.

We head out to Albert Lea to visit the historical Itasca Rock Garden, and Sherry Mukherjee shows us how to make an authentic cup of masala chai.

It's all coming up on your next stop, Off 90.

(upbeat funky music) Hi, I'm Barbara Keith.

Thanks for joining me on this trip, Off 90, Bridging the Gap is a statewide women's ministry from Minnesota.

They aim to encourage, equip, and empower women in multiple areas of their lives.

To help their vision come to life, they hold an annual Thrive Conference where women throughout the state can come together to worship.

(man singing "How Great Thou Art") - Bridging the Gap has been around for about 25 years, and it is a women's organization for the state of Minnesota.

- It's cross cultural, cross denominational, and cross-generational, and our mission is to encourage, equip and empower every woman on her faith journey with Jesus Christ.

- How do we do that?

We do it in many ways.

Obviously by hosting events like the Thrive Conference.

We have a boutique store with a missional effort, net profits go towards missional and anti-human trafficking efforts.

We also offer online resources and then we have online communities through Facebook.

We also started a podcast, and so that's another resource that we offer.

It's called "E to the Power of Three."

We like to offer resources for leaders and we believe every woman is a leader in some way in her home, in her friend circles, in her church, in her workplace.

The Thrive Conference is one of the annual events of Bridging the Gap, and it's our state women's conference for girls and women, ages 12 and up.

- We're gonna be doing just some really eclectic things.

It's not your ordinary go to church.

We're gonna do church, but we're gonna have fun.

- The powerful worship services have a speaker sharing a message with the hope of Jesus Christ related to the theme.

This year, the theme is greater.

(upbeat music) (man singing) We believe that God is greater than anything that any of us have experienced or could experience in a lifetime, specifically, even the last year and a half has been quite a year for so many people, but God is greater than any of the circumstances that we have been through.

So we want to celebrate together his greatness and the hope that we have in him.

- You're gonna see women coming together, worshiping together, listening to an amazing speaker.

They will be there just to do community and we'll see it over and over again.

(upbeat rock music) (man singing) - At the 2021 Thrive Conference, this weekend we have speakers, Andi Andrew, Brittany Jones, Alex Seeley, and Havilah Cunnington.

The worship team is Emmanuel Live and they're from the Emmanuel Christian Center Church in Minneapolis.

- We have Suzie Larson and Amber Grossman coming in as MCs, and they're both crazy, and they're fun.

- Kaboom.

Welcome to Thrive.

(audience cheering) - We're excited to be in the larger, beautiful, Mayo Civic Center Arena, where there's more than double the space of the amount of ticket holders right now.

- [Carol] People can move around and we can sit up in the bleachers if we need to.

- One of the things we're excited about with the Thrive Conference is to invite people to be part of the businesses in Rochester.

We want to add value to the downtown community and Rochester as a whole, and so we're encouraging people to check out all of the restaurant shops and great locations in downtown Rochester.

- It's all about a relationship with Jesus.

It's all about a relationship and we need to have relationships with other people, and those relationships need to be healthy.

When I see women's lives changed because they've come to the Thrive Conference, and not just changed for a moment, they have become a better mom, or maybe a better grandparent, or maybe a better wife.

We actually can't wait to come back next year and we've got some amazing speakers that are coming next year.

(upbeat rock music) (man singing) - Come on.

For the next 20 seconds, give the Lord a big shout of praise!

(audience cheering) (upbeat funky music) - The 38 Dakota Sioux men hanged in Mankato in 1862 inspired author, Samantha Specks to write a book, "Dovetails In Tall Grass."

It tells the fictional story of two young women, one white and one Dakota, who lived during this dark period in Minnesota history.

- My name is Samantha Specks and I'm a writer, and I recently released my first book, my debut novel, called "Dovetails In Tall Grass."

And it's based on the US Dakota War of 1862, which happened in Southern Minnesota.

(mellow piano music) Dove Tails is told through the perspectives of two young women on each side of the war.

It happened on the planes as the settlers were moving West and encountered the native people, and it was one of the first, big plains wars that occurred.

So on one side of the war, it resulted in the largest mass execution in United States history, which was the deaths of 38 Dakota Sioux men at the hands of the United States Army.

And then kind of on the other side of the war, was the largest civilian mass casualty event in the United States history, until the events of September 11th.

My story, "Dovetails In Tall Grass," the fictional story, is two young women, the Dakota Sioux woman and a settler young woman who are tied in the fate of the 39th Man.

Emma is a German immigrant who settled in the town of New Ulm with her family and lives on the family farmstead and she has dreams of leaving and becoming a teacher at that time.

And she assists in her father's, kind of part-time law office.

Through the war she has a personal experience and her own lens on what happened, and ultimately she becomes the court recorder, which they had in the military trials, and so you kind of get her perspective and how her storyline intersects with that time in history.

And then Oenikika, is the Dakota Sioux young woman, and she is the daughter of Chief Little Crow.

And so she has that firsthand exposure to what choices he was faced with as the chief, and as he went to Washington, DC and met with people and signed the treaties, and ultimately he decided to move into a white man's home and begin converting to the ways of farming.

And she very greatly resists that change.

And ultimately, was there when her father makes the fateful decision to go to war.

(moody instrumental music) I first became interested in this history, even found out about this war and what had happened, is because my grandparents and my extended family is all from Southern Minnesota, the New Ulm area, and I was riding with my parents in their car on the way to my grandparents' home on Christmas Eve, and it was dark out, and snow was blowing over the country roads, and our headlights crossed paths, right before we were turning into my grandparents' house, with a group of men riding on horseback.

They were riding in memory of a war that happened here a very long time ago.

And so I started to educate myself and read about it, just 'cause I thought that was so interesting, and found out those were the Dakota Sioux Memorial Riders who ride still every year to Mankato, to the site of the mass hangings, from South Dakota to Mankato, a 330 mile ride.

And then as I was reading, I just started thinking about how in the history books there wasn't a lot about women featured, and so I just, as I read and I read, and I read, and I read, I just kept thinking, oh, but what would a woman have been experiencing on each side.

(moody instrumental music) First off, I just hope that this time in history, they connect with it, and learn about it, and want to learn more after they finished, and I hope they go online and Google, and try to teach themselves, and compare kind of what happened in the book versus what happened in reality.

And I hope they see that it's pretty similar, but ultimately I hope they connect with this time in history.

I hope as they zoom in on certain parts of history, or what happens with the person, and as they zoom out, they experience and notice different things.

And yeah, that they're compelled by seeing how both can be true at the same time and kind of making sense of that, and grappling with that complexity.

(moody instrumental music) (upbeat rock music) - A uniquely shaped water tower stands above the old Libby Food plant on the south end of Rochester.

This water tower is painted to resemble an ear of corn.

This landmark is well loved by the Rochester community so much so that it won the 2021 Tank of the Year, People's Choice Award.

(upbeat guitar music) - The ear corn water tower was chosen by the Reid, Murdoch company after they had built the plant here to use a symbol that water tower that would represent what they are doing in the factory below.

Hi, my name is Alan Whipple.

I am the retired maintenance engineer.

I worked about 40 years for Seneca, and for Libby's, and help look after the water tower.

In the past, Reid, Murdoch in 1929 opened this plant, and of course the ear corn water tower was built in 1931, later then put in full production in 1932, the year I was born.

In 1948, the Libby McNeil and Libby Company purchased this plant.

And then in 1982 Seneca Foods Corporation, out of New York, bought this facility and upgraded to freezers and freezer storage etcetera.

The function of the water tower was to produce water for washing a peas, corn, that takes an extensive amount of water.

The tower is 149 feet and six inches tall.

The water tower itself is made out of one quarter inch plate steel.

It is 49 foot, six inches in height, and it is 15 foot, six inches in diameter.

And it holds 50,000 gallons of water.

- This company that built it made a lot of sort of iconic water towers.

So they had a wonderful designer with some imagination.

My name is Stephanie Podulke.

I'm currently the Chair of the Olmsted Board of Commissioners for this year, and I've been a commissioner for 10 years.

Olmsted County recently bought this canning site, the Seneca Canning site, so we now have a very valuable, beautiful piece of property attached to Graham Park here, and we're thinking of how we're gonna use that to best help this community out.

Well, everyone is very sentimental about this, and we got a lot, also a lot of input from the public about please don't destroy that ear of corn tower.

So that's based that the corn towers on is sort of sacred and will always be there and however we use that land, it'll have to incorporate that and work around it.

It needed repainting.

It hadn't been painted in 10 or 15 years and it was getting a little bit flaky, and they weren't sure if there was lead in that paint as well, so they used a lot of precautions, but I love what my husband said as they were up there sanding all that paint off.

He said, every one of those painters should be called Colonel Sanders.

And that is the kind of jokes that we use here in Olmsted, only because we're so corny.

If you think about this little town on the prairie, what do we have to make us special?

And one of those things was the ear of corn tower.

Then this is one thing that makes us stand out.

It's our little beacon of pride that we are a farming community here.

This is who we are.

- It is the most photographed water tower in the world.

The visitors always take pictures of the water tower to send back to their loved ones.

- [Stephanie] It's lit at night.

You could see it above the trees.

It's something that welcomes people into this town, and I think maybe if they're coming for the first time, you see that there, you might think, wow, this is a cute little town.

This was known as the fairgrounds for years because it was used heavily for that month and then not used much at all.

And it's actually Graham Park.

It's a park inside the city that was donated to Rochester by Dr. Graham and his wife.

And our hope is that this, Graham Park, will be a center of community activity, and in a green space, and that water tower will watch over it all.

(upbeat guitar music) (upbeat rock music) - In 1925, John L Christensen began to construct a small castle like building on his property just outside of Albert Lea.

As time went on, Christensen gathered more rocks and build more structures until he had an elaborate rock garden.

It became known as the Itasca Rock Garden and is now under restoration.

Let's take a look.

(upbeat minstrel music, chopping sounds, chatter) - I'm wondering if, I'm surprised they.

(women speaking) - Oh, there's a pond!

(man chuckling) Yay, the pond!

(group cheering) (upbeat minstrel music) - So John Christensen and his wife moved here in about 1924, 23-24, I believe.

John immigrated from Denmark at the age of nine with his family, spent his life on a farm in Lerdal, Minnesota, and when he gave up farming, they bought this property.

He had accrued piles of rocks throughout his farming, and so he went back to the farm and brought in the rock, and did this piece by piece.

Started with two horses, started excavating, building a fruit seller.

Once they started seeing the rock in the sunlight, apparently they liked the colors.

They liked the mix of how this was looking and it just kept growing, and growing, and growing.

So he and his wife created this, and then when he died, she remarried.

The Johnson's purchased the property then from Mrs. Christensen when she sold it, and they continued the upkeep and maintenance on the property.

- Okay.

My name's Scott Johnson and we are at the Itasca Rock Garden in Albert Lea, Minnesota.

This was owned by my grandparents in 1954 to 1985, so I'm out here trying to save it from being eaten by time.

(upbeat minstrel music) Everybody that's here today is part of my family or my extended family.

Well, I first ran into, learned about the Kohler Foundation, I was visiting my wife's brother, my brother-in-law, in Ohio, and I was looking for other attractions to go see while we were out there, and I ran across the Hartman Rock Garden in Springfield, Ohio.

And we went there and looked around and a guy came out and started talking, and he told me about the Kohler Foundation coming in and restoring the place.

And one thing led to another and here we are now, so.

- The foundation finds projects like this that have an impact on a community, on history, that are art related and they fund the restoration of these projects.

They started showing up and putting money into the home.

(upbeat instrumental music) - We're in the basement.

We've got the pipes here.

They're actually sewage pipes that he's using as supports.

But inside here, he's got all kinds of armatures and metal frameworks, and then just come over there with mortar and then inserted stones, or geodes, or whatever he had on hand.

My name is Shane Winter I'm with the Itasca Rock Garden, and we are restoring it for the Kohler Foundation, and it's going to be gifted to the historical society when we're done.

- So right now, I'm just gonna kind of back this crack with sand-epoxy mix, reinforced with fiberglass to kinda just give it some thickness in this area where it's weak.

- The first thing we did here is clear out a lot of overgrowth, 'cause we, it's really hard to know what's going on if you can't see anything.

Then we kind of determined which are the areas that need to be fixed immediately.

And that's usually based on if they're dangerous to other people.

There are a lot of areas we have here where there's stones about to fall over.

The next thing is to usually, parts will fall off.

You search very carefully around the piece and kind of label where everything is, because a lot of times you're gonna have to go back and try to figure out.

It's almost like a puzzle, where those pieces go back.

We were talking about him embedding things into the concrete to give it strength, kind of like what we would do rebar, but he was using whatever he had.

Here's a handle, you know, from a barn door or something.

I'm not exactly sure which, but you could see he's got that embedded in here.

(leaves rustling) - It was kind of magical and fun to pretend your knights and damsels in distress and all that good stuff.

- Holidays where the favorite memories.

Walking the porch and there was pies everywhere that grandma had made.

Huge turkey in the oven, tables set up everywhere, the whole family came, and they booed us kids out to go play and we'd play in the garden.

- My cousin Mark and my brother, they always locked me and my cousin up in the dungeon.

Though that was funny.

- There's a waterfall on that side.

There was a waterfall with a little pond.

There's a grotto over there, little cave with a table.

Grandma always picked up garter snakes.

She'd pick them up and she'd say, don't you hurt them!

You leave them alone!

She'd pick them up and put them in the garden.

I can tell you where my favorites are.

On the exterior, of course, the big castle.

- Everyone has memories usually of the sites that you're working in.

Anyone I've talked to in town, they always mentioned that, you know, that's where I had my photos taken for graduation, or, it's just kinda neat that people have stories about things, and they're usually very excited that you're working on something that they grew up with.

(upbeat minstrel music) (upbeat rock music) - We've reached the end of this tour, Off 90.

Thanks for riding along.

See you next time!

But before we go, Rochester chef, Shari Mukherjee, shows us how to make an authentic masala chai.

(upbeat instrumental music) - Hi, everyone.

It's Shari Mukherjee and I'm back again with another recipe.

This time I'm super excited to show you guys one of my family favorites, we are going to make Indian style masala chai.

So this is how we get started.

And this is, I just want to say, is nothing like the child you get at Starbucks, or your local coffee shop.

This is the real deal.

(woman chuckling) This is amazing.

You guys are gonna love it.

So the first thing we're gonna start, we need a pan.

So we want our pan to start a little bit over high, sorry, over medium.

So go to medium-high.

Into this, we're gonna add, for two servings, this is going to make two cups of chai.

We are gonna go ahead and add one cup of water to one cup of milk, so I do just an equal ratio.

So now, into this, we want to add some aromatics, some aromatics.

We want that masala.

Masala means spice.

So into a little mortar and pestle, again, if you don't have one of these, that's totally okay.

You just want to smash these open a little bit.

So you could do it on a cutting board with the back of the knife, safely (giggling).

Into my mortar and pestle.

I don't usually measure.

It's kind of whatever I feel that day.

So it looks like I grabbed about six or seven green cardamom pods.

My ginger.

And we're just gonna go ahead and take a little hunk off of it.

Here, I'm gonna take some cloves, again, just a small, about a teaspoon full.

I would say that's probably about, I don't know, 10 cloves.

And then go ahead and just smash it a little bit in your mortar and pestle.

The ginger, especially you want to smash.

The spices, we just kind of want to break them open.

After spices have been, you know, bruised a little bit and smashed, we're gonna go ahead and dump those straight into our milk and water mixture.

Next, we're gonna add the tea.

Now here, I'm using a loose leaf black tea.

You can buy this, I've seen it at Walmart, but it's usually, you know, at Indian stores.

I'm using Brooks Bond Red Label.

That's my favorite.

Any black loose tea will work fine though.

You obviously don't want to add like, something flavored.

This should just be plain, black, loose leaf tea.

Into that, I'm gonna add four teaspoons of my loose leaf tea.

This is just what we do here in our family.

Every family has their own recipe for tea, and, you know, makes it the way that they like.

With this, I also add four teaspoons of sugar.

I don't want to make it too sweet, so I'm actually gonna do just a little bit less than four teaspoons.

Just a little.

This will take some time to cook, but we want it to boil, so now I'm turning my heat up to high.

This is not a low and slow process.

To get the real good flavor out of this tea, we want to boil it quickly.

Now, it's a waiting game.

(upbeat traditional music) All right now our chai has reduced enough.

You can see it's a nice, golden brown.

I'm gonna go ahead and turn the heat off and I'm gonna grab our cups.

All right, so now our chai is finished.

The heat is off.

I grabbed her little strainer and our cups are here.

So what we're gonna do is put the strainer over the cup and just pour it in.

This is gonna get all the tea leaves out.

It's also going to get the spices out.

And then along with our tea, we always want to serve with a couple of biscuits, or here in America, we call them cookies for dipping.

And this is Indian style masala chai.

It is delicious.

I wish you guys could smell this right now.

It smells so good.

It's steaming hot, if you can see.

I can't help myself.

I need to take a sip.

Mm!

Seriously, the ginger, the cardamom, the clove, this to me, perfect.

It's just, I'm happy.

(woman laughing) Cheers.

(upbeat rock music) (upbeat instrumental music) - [Male Narrator] Funding for Off 90 is provided in part by the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund and the citizens of Minnesota.

(bird cawing)