The gun that fired the first American shot of World War II will be moved from its longtime home in St. Paul this week, exactly 80 years after that defining conflict of the 20th century came to an end.

The destroyer USS Ward’s No. 3 deck gun, which a crew of St. Paulites used to sink a Japanese submarine off Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on the morning of Dec. 7, 1941, has been on display outside the Veterans Service Building on the Capitol mall for 67 years.

On Tuesday — the anniversary of Japan’s 1945 surrender to the Allied Powers — the gun will be transferred to the Minnesota Military & Veterans Museum at Camp Ripley in Little Falls, where it will take pride of place in a new 20,000-square-foot facility that is expected to open next fall, said Randal Dietrich, the museum’s executive director.

“The first thing visitors will see is this Ward gun,” he said. “It’s an opportunity and an obligation to do right by our World War II veterans — to make sure that history is preserved for the benefit of generations to come.”

The 11,000-pound gun, which was loaned to the state of Minnesota by the U.S. Navy in 1958, has served as the backdrop for World War II veteran reunions, Pearl Harbor Day commemorations and other events over the years. But decades spent exposed to the elements have taken their toll.

The state’s Capitol Area Architectural and Planning Board approved the gun’s removal earlier this year after a months-long review process.

“We are losing it to time and the weather,” Dietrich said. “The gun that announced American entry into World War II is an important artifact. It needs to be indoors and professionally preserved.”

The museum, which has taken over the loan of the gun from the state, will spend the next 12 to 18 months restoring it before installing the gun as part of an exhibit that will tell the story of the Naval reservists from St. Paul who crewed it during the war. The gun remains the property of the Navy.

Dietrich asks members of the public who would like to attend the removal ceremony on Tuesday to RSVP at mnvetmuseum.org/vjday-rsvp.

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Sadly, summer comes to an end this month. But the great news for stargazing this September is that there’s so much happening in the heavens and along with that, there’s still plenty of great summer constellations to see. Sunsets are also earlier.

The full moon this month is next Sunday. Most years, the September full moon is considered the annual harvest moon, but this one is a bit too early to be labeled as such. By definition, the harvest moon is the closest full moon to the autumnal equinox. So, the next full moon on Oct. 6 will officially be the Harvest Moon for 2025.

Saturn is returning to the early evening sky just in time for autumn. On Sept. 21, Saturn reaches what’s known as opposition, when Saturn and  Earth are at their minimum distance from each other this year, just over 795 million miles. Believe it or not, that’s considered close for Saturn. During opposition, Saturn and the sun are at opposite ends of the sky, making Saturn available all night long, rising in the east at sunset and setting in the west at sunrise. Oppositions between Saturn and Earth happen every 378 days as Saturn and Earth travel in their respective orbits around the sun.

To the naked eye, Saturn will appear as a moderately bright star barely above the eastern horizon toward the end of evening twilight. It’s easy to spot since it’ll be the brightest star-like object in that part of the sky. As tempting as it is to train your telescope on Saturn early in the evening, you’re better off waiting until at least 10 or 11 p.m. to let it get higher in the sky, above the blurring effects of our atmosphere close to the horizon. Over the last year or so, viewing Saturn through a telescope has been a bit of a bummer because its beautiful but very thin ring system, composed mainly of ice, has been nearly on edge from our vantage point on Earth. This happens about every 14 years. The good news is that the angle of the ring system will very gradually begin to open up by early December and will continue that trend until 2032. In the meantime, though, the good news is that with the ring system pretty much out of the way, you can easily see many of Saturn’s moons, especially Titan, its largest satellite.

(Mike Lynch)

The very best time for serious evening stargazing this September will be the last two and a half weeks of the month. That’s when the moon and all its light will be out of the evening sky. This is prime Milky Way galaxy time. Now, every single star we see in the sky is part of our home galaxy and relatively speaking, fairly nearby. But if you live in the dark countryside or can travel away from light pollution, you’ll see much more. Look for a milky ribbon of light reaching across the entire sky from the southwest to the northeast horizon, nearly bisecting the entire celestial dome. That’s the Milky Way band, the combined light of billions and billions of stars that make up the plane of our own Milky Way Galaxy. The brightest part of the band is on the southwest side near the horizon, where there’s a constellation that really looks like a teapot tipping toward the right. That’s the constellation Sagittarius, which, according to Greek mythology, is a centaur, a half-man, half-horse shooting an arrow. That bright puff of steam above the spout of the teapot is in the direction of the center of the Milky Way galaxy, about 26,000 light-years away. That area of downtown Milky Way would be a whole lot brighter except there’s a lot of opaque gas and dust in the way.

Elsewhere in the evening sky is a mixture of both summer and autumn constellations you can explore with the help of the attached map. Among them in the northern sky are Ursa Major and Minor, the Big and Little Bears, respectively. There’s also a sideways “W” in the northeast that outlines the throne of Cassiopeia the Queen. The great autumn constellation, Pegasus the winged horse, is rising in the eastern sky after sunset. Look for the big diamond of stars that outlines the torso of Pegasus. This is called the “Square of Pegasus.”

Attached to the left side of the big diamond is the constellation Andromeda the Princess, and within that is the Andromeda Galaxy. That’s the next-door neighbor of our Milky Way Galaxy, more than 2 million light-years away. You should be able to spot it with binoculars or a small telescope, appearing as a faint patch of light. If it’s really dark where you are you may even spot it with the naked eye.

Enjoy the longer nights of September.

Mike Lynch is an amateur astronomer and retired broadcast meteorologist for WCCO Radio in Minneapolis/St. Paul. He is the author of “Stars: a Month by Month Tour of the Constellations,” published by Adventure Publications and available at bookstores and adventurepublications.net. Mike is available for private star parties. You can contact him at mikewlynch@comcast.net.

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Almost 50 years ago, just an hour after what doctors had expected to be a normal birth, newly born Eric Franzmeier underwent surgery to correct a diaphragmatic hernia.

With such a condition, abdominal organs can move into the chest cavity, often causing difficulty breathing for newborns and high morbidity and mortality. During that surgery, doctors inserted a artificial diaphragm.

“It wasn’t any more than just a few hours later that they realized that they had to — they’d squeezed him too tight when they sewed him up — so (then) they put in a great big plastic window so you could look right into his abdomen,” said Ed Franzmeier, Eric’s dad. Every 10 days or so, they reduced its size until finally removing it. Eric still has an artificial diaphragm.

Eric Franzmeier, center, with his parents Sue and Ed Franzmeier, as friends and family gather for an early celebration of Eric’s 50th birthday in Stillwater on Saturday, Aug. 23, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

With two other young children at home, Ed and Sue Franzmeier took turns visiting Eric at the hospital every day for nearly three months, except during one heavy snowfall. For the first several weeks, the parents received “not real good news,” Sue said, such as when they were told biopsies of Eric’s liver showed no living tissue.

“Of course, we expected, well, this is the end. This is what’s going to kill him. And then changes were made by the doctors … and things did get better,” Ed said, with Eric’s liver eventually recovering.

All these years later, Eric Franzmeier, of Stillwater, is weeks short of celebrating his 50th birthday on Oct. 2.

‘Offered some hope’

Looking back, Sue Franzmeier said, “you wonder how you made it through it all.”

After his birth, Eric had a series of surgeries, Ed Franzmeier said.

“He was in the hospital for a total of 111 days,” Ed said. “And I think it was right around the 90-day mark that we were offered some hope that he was going to survive. But even at Day 111, when we took him home, they told us, ‘Take him home and enjoy him while you can because we don’t know how long he’s going to make it.’”

The Franzmeiers returned to their Maplewood home with Eric, who was nearly 3 months old.

Eric’s brother Scott Franzmeier said he remembers the community support for the family and the prayers said over the loudspeaker every day for Eric at their Catholic grade school, which Scott said he believes is a big reason Eric pulled through.

Eric Franzmeier gets a hug from his cousin, Marida Stahovich, of San Diego. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“Fortunately, we’re strong believers in Christ, and prayer carried us through. Prayer, good friends and people we worked with,” Ed said.

After Eric was home, the bank Ed worked at held a contest for a one week all-expenses-paid trip to a Florida resort, which he won. Ed and Sue, with Eric watched over by a nurse they knew, took the trip.

“I didn’t realize until we got back and we had a wonderful time that all four of the other guys wrote my name on the ticket, so that no matter which (one) was drawn, I was going to get that all-expenses-paid vacation,” Ed said.

‘Love Bus’

As Eric grew up, he spent time with his two older siblings and attended a school in Centerville. That’s when he first rode on a school bus called the “Love Bus,” known as such for its driver and aide who regularly decorated the vehicle, dressed up for holidays and made it a positive experience for the students.

A St. Paul Pioneer Press and Dispatch article from Oct. 1982, featuring a photo of Eric Franzmeier. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“Even though it is a brief ride, the trip is clearly full of love and warmth — feelings that seem to be mandated by driver Geno Domini and his aide, Marcie Mlynarczyk,” a Pioneer Press article said in 1982. A picture of 7-year-old Eric with Domini ran in the paper at the time.

“And they took really good care of the kids. It was maybe six or seven kids that rode on the bus like that and picked them up at various locations and took them out to Centerville,” Ed said.

As Eric got older, he underwent several more surgeries related to the diaphragmatic hernia and dealt with seizures. But Eric said his health is good now.

Celebration ‘a special miracle’

On Aug. 23, the Franzmeiers celebrated Eric’s 50th birthday at his Stillwater home. Though his birthday is in October, the family wanted to take advantage of the nice weather. In March, Eric also will celebrate 30 years working at the Home Depot.

“We’ve said many times … that it was a miracle he survived 50 days,” Scott said. “The fact that we’re now celebrating 50 years is just absolutely amazing.”

Notes are left for Eric Franzmeier as friends and family gather for an early celebration of his 50th birthday in Stillwater on Saturday, Aug. 23, 2025. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Just don’t remind Eric.

“My older brother says last week to me, he goes, ‘Eric, you know you’re going to turn 50?’ I go, ‘I know, can you not? Because you’re going to drive me crazy. I know,’” Eric said.

Guests at the party enjoyed NASCAR-themed cookies — Eric is a regular attendee of races and has a large collection of NASCAR shirts — and left notes with well-wishes. Pictures hung up outside showed Eric over the years, from when he was a day old to playing sports — he’s now retired from the Special Olympics — and attending NASCAR events.

A message hung up from his dad commemorated Eric’s start on “shaky ground,” but “what a Special Miracle we have in Eric.”

There’s only one living family member who can bring so many people together, Scott said.

‘He’s always smiling’

Also in attendance at the party was David Dereschuk, who works with Eric at the Home Depot. They met nearly 30 years ago at the store. Now, Eric is like a little brother, attending Dereschuk’s family gatherings or going to sports games with him. Dereschuk is “semi-retired,” he said, but makes sure he’s there when Eric is working.

Eric Franzmeier, right, talks with his longtime coworker David Deroschuk, left, as Eric’s dad, Ed, listens as friends and family gather for an early celebration of Eric’s 50th birthday in Stillwater. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

“If he wasn’t there, I’d be retired,” Dereschuk said. “He is why I go to work. He makes me feel better. He’s just, he’s always smiling. And we just have so much fun going back and forth, don’t we?”

“Yup,” Eric said.

Eric mingled with the guests, friends and family, from multiple states, who’d come to celebrate 50 years with him, ones that were once uncertain.

“I’m excited that all of them came,” Eric said.

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“It’s completely changed our lives,” said Sabine Zetteler, a London communications agency director, who last year, with her partner, Alex Booker, an artist, built a kit sauna cabin by Polhus in their backyard in the London borough of Hackney.

Looking out across serene plantings, the cabin is a slice of city solitude that Zetteler now finds hard to imagine living without. She is not alone. Demand for home saunas is soaring in Britain and the United States as interest in the ancient ritual of sweat bathing deepens.

A bathing pond designed by the architect Richard Parr at a family home in Oxfordshire, England, in July 2025. Saunas and other water-based amenities are booming in societies that once turned their backs on them. (Andy Haslam/The New York Times)

Why the resurgence? Emma O’Kelly, the author of “Wild Sauna: The Best Outdoor Saunas in Britain” and “Sauna: The Power of Deep Heat,” has spent the past five years immersed in sauna culture as both observer and participant. She sees this return to what some have described as “analog living” as a powerful antidote to modern life.

“I think post-pandemic, there has been more of a focus on health and wellness, a sense of our own mortality — and also this narrative of self-care and preventative health, rather than just reaching for a prescription,” she said, speaking of the time period after January 2022, when the vaccine had been widely rolled out and most lockdowns lifted.

Like many others, O’Kelly thinks of a sauna, especially a “wild sauna” in an outdoor setting, as a healthy third space. “It’s cheap. It’s good for you,” she said. “It doesn’t involve drinking. Going to a wild sauna for an hour is cheaper than going to the pub.”

Jane Withers, the co-author of “Social Sauna: Bathing & Wellbeing” and the co-editor of the Substack newsletter Culture of Bathing, sees the revival as part of a broader cultural and physiological shift.

“There’s more understanding from neuroscience of what happens to the brain, and why we feel this deep relaxation — a moment of euphoria,” she said. “We spend so much of our time in the digital realm. We long for an experience that’s profoundly physical, embodied in the moment. It’s about the social dimension, physical dimension and perhaps a spiritual or transformative dimension — a way of changing states.”

The pool at Ridge House and Barn, a residence in New York in the Catskill Mountains, July 28, 2025. Saunas and other water-based amenities are booming in societies that once turned their backs on them. (Tony Cenicola/The New York Times)

The roots of sweat bathing stretch across centuries. In a blog post, the British Sauna Society noted Britain’s forgotten rituals, from Bronze Age sweat lodges to the elaborate Thermae the Romans built at Bath: “Before the Romans, before the Celts — even before written language — there was sweat.”

In some countries — Finland, Morocco and Turkey, to name a few — these traditions have been upheld. In Japan, the onsen — the hot spring used in bathing — remains central to a practice that is spiritual as well as physical. Earlier this year, Yuval Zohar published “Towards a Nude Architecture,” offering a visual meditation on onsen culture in Japan and its deep-rooted connections to landscape and the body.

Elsewhere, however, many other developed nations abandoned their bathing traditions during the 20th century. “In many countries, the decline came with the arrival of domestic plumbing,” Withers said. “People turned away from public bathhouses, and they became increasingly associated with poverty and necessity. Through the 20th century, many of the ones that survived were in poorer areas. At the same time, medical interest in water therapies diminished, and support for water cures was withdrawn. And of course, AIDS certainly didn’t help, with the closure of bathhouses in the U.S. and Europe.”

The reversal in attitude is written in new products and gathering places for bathing.

In an email, Marjo Karhu, marketing and content executive at Finnmark, an English sauna company, said that the company recently experienced an 80% year-on-year rise in online sales, with demand for two- to four-person saunas especially high in London and the south of England.

The company has also worked on larger-scale commercial projects like Arc, a Roman-inspired 65-person sauna in the heart of Canary Wharf in London. In New York, a bathing club called Lore is scheduled to open in September. In an email, its co-founder James O’Reilly billed the bathing club as an alternative to bars or boutique fitness studios.

According to Verified Market Reports, the North American sauna market as of June was $1.2 billion. A report by Technavio, a market research company, predicted that this market in the United States alone will have grown by $151.3 million from 2024 to 2029.

The recent rise in sauna cabin options amounts to a juggernaut. Companies including Kohler, Koto and Thermasol are rolling out new models for domestic settings — indoor, outdoor, flat-pack and off grid.

In the absence of a traditional frigid lake or ocean, bathers who want a cold plunge after a sauna or steam are installing natural swimming ponds in their backyards. Instagram is awash with DIY efforts like the pond, some 43 feet (13 meters) long, belonging to Jon and Caroline Edwards in Gloucestershire, England. Built from scratch with a mini digger and a lot of trial and error, it is now the heart of their backyard and their lives.

“Even my 90-year-old mum gets in and writes poems about it,” Caroline Edwards said.

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Once a rarely used lawn, the couple’s backyard is now teeming with frogs, dragonflies, newts and even deer. “There’s been a definite shift,” Jon Edwards said. “People are more aware of the power of nature — and more open to these kinds of projects.”

Elsewhere in England, Richard Parr, an architect, recently completed a family home in Oxfordshire with a lily pad-fringed pond. “Swimming ponds have become an almost obligatory add-on to country living,” he said. “They’re a great alternative to traditional spas with their artificial enclosures.” But, he warned, while they may appear low-tech, they demand careful attention that involves tending plants and removing debris.

“It’s a far cry from chucking in a few chemicals and waiting for a pool company to call by,” he said. “That level of participation and understanding adds a further dimension to the enjoyment and connection with the landscape.”

At Ridge House and Barn, a residence in the Catskill Mountains designed by the architectural firm Worrell Yeung, the journey to the pool is as important as the destination. “The audible sensation of hearing your feet on gravel takes you out of that typical resort context,” said the firm’s co-founder, Jejon Yeung.

This shift away from a slick resort ambience speaks to a broader rethinking of wellness, Yeung said. “The pandemic accelerated something. What used to be seen as luxury — cold plunges, saunas, outdoor showers — is now essential. These are no longer just amenities, but spaces for restoration and routine.”

— This article, which was first published in the New York Times, is part of that newspaper’s Design special section about new design solutions for healthy living.