Katie and Robert Burns glided up the St. Croix River, with flutes of champagne in hand, to celebrate Katie’s 30th birthday last week.

People on shore stopped to point and take photos — with the Stillwater Lift Bridge as a backdrop — as the couple headed north.

The reason for their sudden celebrity status? They were in an authentic Venetian gondola, complete with a serenading gondolier dressed in a navy blue-and-white striped shirt and straw hat.

This year marks John Kerschbaum’s 25th year in the gondola business in Stillwater, which he lovingly calls “the most romantic city in the Midwest.”

Kerschbaum said he got the idea to launch his business, Gondola Romantica, in 1998 after seeing a photograph of a gondola in a local newspaper.

Growing up in Afton, Kerschbaum, 67, said he always loved boating on the St. Croix. He used to lead canoe trips in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and Quetico Provincial Park in Ontario.

“I saw that photo, and I thought, ‘God, that would be fun to do in Stillwater. Yeah, I could offer gondola rides,’” he said. “I got on the phone right away to canoeing buddies and boat-building buddies and said, ‘What do you know about gondolas?’ Nobody knew anything about gondolas.”

It took about 18 months, but Kerschbaum, who was then working as a tree trimmer, eventually tracked down a man in Venice – “an ex-pat named Tom” – who was willing to teach him to row a gondola in the Venetian canals and find him an authentic, used gondola to purchase.

“I suddenly found myself on an airplane to Venice to buy a gondola,” he said. “It’s been far more fun than I ever imagined.”

The total cost to purchase and ship the gondola, which is 37 feet long, 4 feet wide and weighs 1,100 pounds, was about $26,000, he said.

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“It barely fit into a 40-foot shipping container,” he said. “It was shipped to New York, put on a train to Minneapolis and then trucked to Stillwater. I just had to meet them at Wolf Marina here in Stillwater.”

Kerschbaum bought his second gondola a few years later from a retired businessman who had bought it to use on Christmas Lake in the western suburbs, he said.

“He just thought it’d be a cool thing to have, so he and his brother each brought one over from Venice,” he said. “When I got my boat here, I got a lot of press and stuff, and so he contacted me, and I gave him a couple of rowing lessons.”

When Kerschbaum’s business began to take off and he needed a second gondola, he contacted the man to see if he would be interested in selling his. “He wasn’t using it, and I had a need, so I bought it off of him,” he said.

Never fallen in

Gondolier John Kerschbaum takes Robert and Katie Burns of Inver Grove Heights for a cruise on the St. Croix River near Stillwater on Friday, May 2, 2025. Kerschbaum, 67, estimates that he has given more than 20,000 gondola rides during his 25 years in business, and witnessed hundreds of marriage proposals. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Kerschbaum stores his gondolas at his house in Stillwater Township during the off-season. The season generally runs from May through the end of October; his latest gondola ride was Nov. 7.

The flat-bottomed boats are made out of eight different kinds of wood: larch, fir, oak, elm, cherry, mahogany, lime and walnut. It takes about 800 hours to build one new, “if you know what you’re doing,” he said.

Each gondola is asymmetrical, meaning the port, or left, side of a gondola is longer and rounder than the starboard, or right, side, he said.

“It’s built with a twist, so it leans to the right,” he said. “That does two things: It makes it easier to steer, and it makes it so it won’t flip over like a canoe. You can put a couple thousand pounds of cargo in it, and once you get it going, it takes about the same amount of energy as walking to row it.”

Kerschbaum estimates he has given more than 20,000 gondola rides since 2001, and, no, he’s never once fallen in, he said.

“Not yet,” he said. “My friend Greg (Mohr), who lives in California, says there are two kinds of gondoliers: those who have fallen in, and those who are going to fall in. You never want to get too cocky.”

Some of the college kids who work as gondoliers at Gondola Romantica during the summer have fallen in. “The rule is, if you fall in at any time, you’ve got to bake the other gondoliers a rhubarb pie,” he said.

Gondolier John Kerschbaum aboard his Venetian gondola on the St. Croix River in Stillwater on Friday, May 2, 2025. Kerschbaum has been putting on the traditional black pants and striped shirt, topped with a straw hat wrapped in a red ribbon, to take guests out for 25 years. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

The gondoliers at Gondola Romantica all wear black pants or shorts, a striped shirt and a straw hat with a red ribbon.

“I probably have, like, seven or eight striped shirts in the closet to use, so I always have a clean one,” he said. “Most of them are from Venice. They’re all navy and white.”

Fun fact: The straw hat and striped shirt is actually a British sailing uniform from the early 1900s that the Venetians adopted when they started giving rides to tourists, according to Kerschbaum.

Gondoliers in the 1500s in Venice wore the clothing of the lords of the household that they served, “so I’d be a servant of the household,” he said. “Each family had their private gondoliers that roamed around. Gondoliers were elevated from a lower working class to the upper working class because everything happened on the gondola. The gondoliers knew all the family secrets.”

Memorable rides

Kerschbaum takes the gondolas out rain or shine — if his customers are willing. “Some people don’t mind the rain, and then some people will have no part of it,” he said. “Some of my nicest, most memorable rides have been in the rain.”

He once took a couple out during a “pretty steady rainfall” and headed just north of the Stillwater Lift Bridge. As he steered the gondola from the Wisconsin side of the river to the Minnesota side, the rain suddenly stopped, he said.

“The sun came out, and right over our heads, we had a double rainbow,” he said. “You know, you could almost see the pot of gold – that’s how close it was. She looks back and says, ‘You don’t get the rainbow without the rain.’”

Kerschbaum said his favorite time to go out is during the week when the river isn’t busy; nighttime rides are especially romantic, he said.

“We’ve got to talk about the stars and the moon,” he said. “Full-moon rides are awesome. First of all, you get the lights shining off the water, especially if it’s a quiet night. The water is like glass. You’re gliding along, and you got the full moon shining.”

One late October night, with his clients buried under a pile of comforters and blankets, Kerschbaum steered the gondola under a sky filled with stunning light.

“We had the river to ourselves,” he said. “The water was like glass, and the Northern Lights were out. You just couldn’t plan a night like that. It was just magical. Nobody wanted to stop, you know? I’ve never had it happen again.”

Kerschbaum estimates he has witnessed “hundreds” of proposals through the years. No one, thus far, has said “No,” he said. There have been same-sex proposals, and on two different occasions, the woman has proposed to the man.

John Kerschbaum’s Venetian gondola has its own parking spot next to the riverboats on the St. Croix River at Stillwater. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

The gondolas are docked at the municipal docks, just west of the Majestic Star dinner cruise boat and just south of the former Dock Café. “Once, this good-looking couple comes down, and this guy is squirrely,” he said. “I get him in the boat, and we’re right in front of the Dock Café, and this guy can’t stand it. He gets on one knee and proposes to his girlfriend.”

Each ride lasts either 45 minutes or an hour, and Kerschbaum will sing upon request. “I do ‘Santa Lucia,’ ‘O Sole Mio’ and the Doris Day song, ‘Que Sera Sera,’” he said.

Once, at the end of a long day, a tired Kerschbaum sang a couple of songs for a couple, but was “kind of going through the motions,” he said. “I knew I was off. It wasn’t my best performance.”

The couple clapped politely and then asked if they could sing for him.

“Well, they were freaking professional musicians,” he said. “They did a song with harmony, and it was so beautiful. God, I felt really embarrassed. He said something to me, which was very wise, and I’ll never forget. He said, ‘Music and politics are way too important to leave it to the professionals.’ In other words, sing your song. Have fun. Create a moment. You don’t have to be a professional to have fun.”

Kissing under the Lift Bridge

The Burnses, the couple from Inver Grove Heights, got to ride in the gondola named Amore. Four names – Valentina, Maria, Angela and Alicia – are engraved in metal near the bow of the boat. “The names are usually the names of the gondolier’s wife and children,” he said.

Robert Burns planned the trip as part of a surprise overnight trip to Stillwater for Katie Burns’ 30th birthday. He booked a reservation at the Lora Hotel in downtown Stillwater and made a dinner reservation.

“He planned this whole thing,” she said. “Thank goodness he has two older sisters because otherwise, I don’t think he would have come up with this on his own. It’s been a nice surprise.”

Katie Burns brought a blanket for the couple to use, and then Kerschbaum added another from his collection. He then took Robert Burns’ cellphone to snap a photo of the two before setting off.

Robert and Katie Burns, of Inver Grove Heights, kiss at the beginning of their gondola ride on the St. Croix River. (Courtesy of John Kerschbaum)

“OK, this is the one where you’re kissing,” he said, cuing the couple to kiss. “This is the one where you’re kissing.”

In Venetian folklore, if two lovers kiss in a gondola under the Bridge of Sighs, their love will last forever. Kerschbaum told the Burnses the same thing will happen if two lovers kiss in a gondola under the Stillwater Lift Bridge.

“I tell the young kids, if they’re dating, ‘If you absolutely know you don’t want true love, don’t risk it,’” he said.

The couple drank champagne left over from their wedding engagement and got to see a great blue heron, a couple of ducks and an osprey.

“It was a beautiful misty day,” Katie Burns said.

“And John was ready with a nice, warm blanket,” Robert Burns said.

The couple recognized “Que Sera Sera” when Kerschbaum sang it to them, Katie Burns said. “He sang a song that I’ve heard Robert sing,” she said. “He’s like, ‘A lot of young people don’t know this song,’ but Robert does.”

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A highlight was watching the lift portion of the Stillwater Lift Bridge being raised to let a larger boat pass underneath.

“Katie had just asked if it still went up, and I was like, ‘I think it’s still operational,’ and not two seconds later, bam! Up it goes,” Robert Burns said. “It was just like I planned it. It was fun to be under the bridge and see it from a different way. … We’d do it again in a heartbeat.”

Gondola Romantica

Where: 525 Main St., Stillwater

How much: One-hour cruise is $159.95; 45-minute cruise is $129.95

For more information: www.gondolaromantica.com

Philip Gracia was getting a haircut when a friend asked if he wanted to start a radio show.

Besides the fact that Gracia had no radio experience, he recalls saying, what would they even discuss?

This, the friend replied — what we talk about at the barber shop.

So in 2015, “Real Talk with Real Brothers” debuted on Frogtown Community Radio, which at the time was an online-only platform run by the Frogtown Neighborhood Association.

Ultimately, the show only lasted a few episodes, but within that time, Gracia had become all-in on local radio. He began hosting a weekly show called “The Midday Escape,” and in 2016, when the station got federal approval to begin broadcasting over the airwaves as WFNU-LP, Gracia was one of several volunteers who helped build the antenna.

In 2019, Gracia, Charles Moss Jr and Katey DeCelle, the station manager — who also all cohosted the show “Funk To Your Ears” — formally took over the station as a nonprofit called Frogtown Tuned-In, independent from the neighborhood association. Today, Gracia is president and CEO and DeCelle is executive director.

“We were energized by community,” Gracia said. “We wanted the community to have some ownership in it.”

The station broadcasts from the top of the Capitol Ridge building on Rondo Avenue, also home to the Radisson St. Paul hotel, and can be heard at 94.1 FM in about a five-mile radius or online at wfnu.org.

Low-power FM radio stations like WFNU, so called because they transmit a signal at a lower wattage than other commercial and community stations, are a somewhat recent development; the Federal Communications Commission first authorized low-power broadcasting in 2000 but most low-power stations, including WFNU, have only received licenses within the past decade or so. Currently, St. Paul appears to be home to two operational low-power stations, WFNU in Frogtown and WEQY on the East Side, which is operated by the local Center for Broadcast Journalism as Power 104.7.

Frogtown Tuned-In is powered by several dozen volunteer hosts that generally also produce their own shows, whether pre-recorded or broadcast live from the studio. Programming on the station includes both talk shows and music, and since most shows are weekly, every day is different, DeCelle said.

For example, on Thursdays, Karen J. ­Larson hosts the long-running community advocacy show “Living Loud with Karen J.” Conor O’Meara and Scott Applebaum go live most Friday mornings for “Conor’s Corner,” about sports and life with autism. Wesley Wright talks food systems and culture Saturdays on “The Un-Bougie Foodie,” and chef Lachelle Cunningham, who also leads Frogtown Farm and the Healthy Roots Institute, hosts “Community Roots” on Wednesdays.

And for many of the station’s volunteers, the premiere day of their show was also the first day they’d ever been on the radio, DeCelle said, which is “exactly what the station is there for.” Gracia and DeCelle provide technical training and support, so it doesn’t matter if someone starts out with no knowledge of working a soundboard, Gracia said — it’s more about their personality and connection to the neighborhood.

We’ve got their backs,” Gracia said. “And when they sit behind the mic, you can tell if they’ve got it or not. You can tell if they’ll be able to carry a conversation, be able to play music that’ll resonate with somebody; if they’re going to hang in there and do it for a period of time.”

This is the core of community radio, Gracia and DeCelle said: Amplifying the voices of people who have hyper-local stories to tell, but who might not otherwise have had the resources to reach an audience.

To that end, besides always considering proposals for new shows on the station, Frogtown Tuned-In also holds workshops for people with disabilities to learn radio skills and produce their own short radio pieces to air on the station. (The next workshop is scheduled for May 17, participation costs $20.) DeCelle and Gracia are also in the process of developing a news program that would produce original reporting focused on Frogtown and train community members as journalists.

“There are all these restaurants and businesses here that maybe people don’t want to visit because they’re not sure if it’ll be (their) cup of tea — but you just have to take the step,” DeCelle said. “Go into this business. Go into this theater. There’s an abundance of things happening here and great people, and I hope this station will be able to uplift them.”

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(Courtesy of the author)

Our family pretended its way through the meeting. No one told the truth, not fully, but we all ‘behaved.’ No one said, ‘Dad drinks too much and gets mean, Mom no longer makes sense much of the time, and the kids are suffering and probably shouldn’t be at this therapy session.’ — from “You’re Too Young to Understand”

Liz Fiedorow Sjaastad (Courtesy of the author)

When Liz Fiedorow Sjaastad was a girl, she’d ask why her parents didn’t get along and about other confusing things in her young life. The answer was always: “You’re too young to understand.”

She didn’t understand until her mother was 30 and diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder and depression that led to delusions and paranoia. Besides living with a mother who frequently wasn’t available emotionally, Sjaasad’s father was an alcoholic. But everyone, including Liz, her sister and brother, pretended everything was fine.

Published by Wise Ink Media ($20) in observance of Mental Health Awareness month, Sjaastad’s debut is heartbreaking but the chaos in her parents’ household will be familiar to anyone living with a mentally disturbed loved one.

Sjaastad’s father was a Russian immigrant and language professor. When he died, Sjaastad began writing her memoir to process years of grief and family drama. She eventually realized she was writing for everyone who has lived with similar circumstances.

The worst of the family’s crises began when they were spending a year in France while her father taught there. Far from being a great cultural experience, their time abroad brought relationships to a head. Liz’s mother took her and her siblings back home to Illinois, leaving husband/dad alone to attempt suicide.

Sjaastad’s father gained sobriety but had a stroke and her mother cared for him despite her mental challenges. And when her mother deteriorated her father became the caretaker. So although Sjaastad’s childhood was hard, her parents’ lives were a kind of love story. After Sjaastad’s father’s death, her mother’s mental illness worsened and Liz and her sister Kate were responsible for her welfare for four years.

“Those years taught me a lot about my relationship to my mom and my own family, and it opened my eyes to the staggering toll schizophrenia takes on close to a million families in the United States,” she writes.

Working on this book fueled Sjaastad’s advocacy. She spent 20 years on the board of Minneapolis-based Touchstone Mental Health and continues to share her voice to build awareness of schizophrenia. A resident of St. Paul, she had a career in organizational development before turning to writing.

Sjaastad will launch her book May 20 at Open Book, 1011 Washington Ave. S., Mpls. A social hour begins at 6:30 p.m. followed by a 7:15 p.m. reading and book signing. Reservations appreciated but not mandatory. Go to lizsjaastad.com.

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Dear President Donald Trump,

There are very few initiatives that you’ve undertaken since coming to office that I agree with — except in the Middle East. The fact that you are traveling there next week and meeting the leaders of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar — and that you have no plans to see Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel — suggests to me that you are starting to understand a vital truth: that this Israeli government is behaving in ways that threaten hard-core U.S. interests in the region. Netanyahu is not our friend.

He did think he could make you his chump, though. Which is why I am impressed by how you have signaled to him through your independent negotiations with Hamas, Iran and the Houthis that he has no purchase on you — that you will not be his patsy. It clearly has him in a panic.

I have no doubt that, generally speaking, the Israeli people continue to see themselves as steadfast allies of the American people — and vice versa. But this ultranationalist, messianic Israeli government is not America’s ally. Because this is the first government in Israel’s history whose priority is not peace with more of its Arab neighbors and the benefits that greater security and coexistence would bring. Its priority is the annexation of the West Bank, the expulsion of the Palestinians of the Gaza Strip and the re-establishment there of Israeli settlements.

The notion that Israel has a government that is no longer behaving as an American ally, and should not be considered as such, is a shocking and bitter pill for Israel’s friends in Washington to swallow — but swallow it they must.

Undermining our interests

Because in pursuit of its extremist agenda this Netanyahu government is undermining our interests. The fact that you are not letting Netanyahu run over you the way he has other U.S. presidents is a credit to you. It is also vital to defend the U.S. security architecture your predecessors have built in the region.

The structure of the current U.S.-Arab-Israel alliance was established by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger after the 1973 October War, to push out Russia and make America the dominant global power in the region, which has served our geopolitical and economic interests ever since. The Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy forged the 1974 disengagement agreements between Israel, Syria and Egypt. Those laid the foundations for the Camp David peace treaty. Camp David laid the groundwork for the Oslo Peace Accords. The result was a region dominated by America, its Arab allies and Israel.

But this whole structure depended to a large degree on a U.S.-Israeli commitment to a two-state solution of some kind — a commitment that you yourself tried to advance in your first term with your own plan for a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank next to Israel — on the condition that the Palestinians agreed to recognize Israel and accept that their state would be demilitarized.

This Netanyahu government, however, made annexation of the West Bank its priority when it came to power in late 2022 — well before Hamas’ vicious invasion on Oct. 7, 2023 — rather than the U.S. security-peace architecture for the region.

For almost a year, the Biden administration beseeched Netanyahu to do one thing for America and for Israel: agree to open a dialogue with the Palestinian Authority about a two-state solution one day with a reformed authority — in return for Saudi Arabia normalizing relations with Israel. That would then pave the way for passage in Congress of a U.S.-Saudi security treaty to counterbalance Iran and freeze out China.

Netanyahu put his own interests ahead of Israel’s and America’s

Netanyahu refused to do it, because the Jewish supremacists in his Cabinet said if he did so they would topple his government — and with Netanyahu on trial on multiple charges of corruption, he could not afford to give up the protection of being prime minister to drag out his trial and forestall a possible jail term.

So, Netanyahu put his personal interests ahead of Israel’s and America’s. Normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the most important Muslim power — built on an effort to forge a two-state solution with moderate Palestinians — would have opened the whole Muslim world to Israeli tourists, investors and innovators, eased tensions between Jews and Muslims the world over and consolidated U.S. advantages in the Middle East set in motion by Nixon and Kissinger for another decade or more.

After Netanyahu’s spinning everyone for two years, both the Americans and Saudis have reportedly decided to give up on Israel’s involvement in the deal — a true loss for both Israelis and the Jewish people. Reuters reported Thursday that “the United States is no longer demanding Saudi Arabia normalize ties with Israel as a condition for progress on civil nuclear cooperation talks.”

And now it may get worse. Netanyahu is preparing to re-invade Gaza with a plan to herd the Palestinian population there into a tiny corner, with the Mediterranean Sea one side and the Egyptian border on the other — while also advancing de facto annexation at ever greater speed and breadth in the West Bank. In doing so it will be courting more war crimes charges against Israel (and particularly against its new army chief of staff, Eyal Zamir) that Bibi will expect your administration to protect him from.

Zero sympathy for Hamas

I have zero sympathy for Hamas. I think it is a sick organization that has done enormous damage to the Palestinian cause. It is hugely responsible for the human tragedy that is Gaza today. Hamas’s leadership should have released its hostages and left Gaza a long time ago, removing any excuse for Israel to resume the fighting. But Netanyahu’s plan to reinvade Gaza is not to stand up a moderate alternative to Hamas, led by the Palestinian Authority. It is for a permanent Israeli military occupation, whose unstated goal will be to pressure all Palestinians to leave. That is a prescription for a permanent insurgency — Vietnam on the Mediterranean.

Addressing a conference on May 5 sponsored by the religious Zionist newspaper B’Sheva, Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right finance minister, spoke like a man who couldn’t care less what you think: “We’re occupying Gaza to stay,” he said. “There will be no more entering and leaving.” The local population will be squeezed into a less than a quarter of the Gaza Strip.

As the Haaretz military expert Amos Harel noted: “Since the army will try to minimize casualties, analysts expect it to use particularly aggressive force that will lead to extensive damage to Gaza’s remaining civilian infrastructure. The displacement of the population to the areas of the humanitarian camps, combined with the ongoing shortage of food and medicine, could lead to further mass deaths of civilians. … More Israeli leaders and officers could face personal legal proceedings against them.”

Indeed, this strategy, if executed, may not only trigger more war crime accusations against Israel, but will also inevitably threaten the stability of Jordan and the stability of Egypt. Those two pillars of America’s Middle East alliance structure both fear that Netanyahu aims to drive Palestinians from Gaza and the West Bank into their countries, which would surely foment instability that would spill over their borders even if Palestinians themselves did not.

This hurts us in other ways. As Hans Wechsel, a former senior policy adviser to U.S. Central Command, put it to me: “The more hopeless things seem for Palestinian aspirations, the less readiness there will be in the region to expand the U.S.-Arab-Israeli security integration that could have nailed down long-term advantages over Iran and China — and without requiring nearly as many U.S. military resources in the region to sustain.”

Follow your good instincts

On the Middle East, you have some good independent instincts, Mr. President. Follow them. Otherwise you need to prepare yourself for this looming reality: Your Jewish grandchildren will be the first generation of Jewish children who will grow up in a world where the Jewish state is a pariah state.

I will leave you with the words of the May 7 Haaretz editorial:

“On Tuesday, the Israel Air Force killed nine children, between the ages of 3 and 14. …The Israeli military said that the target was a ‘Hamas command and control center’ and that ‘steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming uninvolved civilians.’… We can continue to ignore the number of Palestinians in the Strip who have been killed — more than 52,000, including around 18,000 children; to question the credibility of the figures, to use all of the mechanisms of repression, denial, apathy, distancing, normalization and justification. None of this will change the bitter fact: Israel killed them. Our hands did this. We must not avert our eyes. We must wake up and cry out loudly: Stop the war.”

Thomas Friedman writes a column for the New York Times.

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