Sandy Mansee’s tour groups have been to Bayfield, Chicago, St. Louis, Fargo and Sioux Falls.

They’ve toured the Field of Dreams in Dyersville, Iowa; Ulysses S. Grant’s house in Galena, Ill.; the Spam Museum in Austin, Minn.; and the Orphanage Museum in Owatonna. They’ve learned how candles, paint, pillows, mattresses, cardboard boxes, cement trucks, windows and baked beans are made.

“I like to learn things,” said Mansee, a tour guide for the St. Paul Public Schools Community Education program. “I’ve always been curious. I like to go to new places, and it’s always fun to go to places where the general public can’t go. There’s so much to see right in our back yard.”

Now, after more than 33 years and 300 tours, Mansee is giving up her microphone and the front seat of the bus. On Thursday, Mansee, 64, of Vadnais Heights, led her last tour for Community Education; she retires on May 30.

“It’s a special day,” said Mansee, as she greeted the 22 participants on the bus Thursday morning outside Oxford Community Center in St. Paul. “This will be my last bus tour after 33 years of working with St. Paul Community Education. … We’re going to have a great day. Please ask questions. You guys usually have questions.”

The tour participants — each of whom paid $65 for the day — joined Mansee for a guided tour of St. Paul City Hall and the Ramsey County Courthouse in downtown St. Paul, lunch on their own at Rosedale Center in Roseville, and a tour of the “On + Off Weaving” exhibit and a “behind-the-scenes look” at the Dye Lab and Dye Garden at the Textile Center in Minneapolis.

Although they couldn’t go on Thursday’s tour, longtime tour participants Ron and Marghe Tabar stopped by to give Mansee a hug and wish her a happy retirement. “We’ve been lucky to have Sandy as our tour guide all these years,” Marghe Tabar said. “She’s cheerful and well-organized. She is clear of her expectations of those on the bus. The tour days run on time, and she’s done her research.”

The couple has enjoyed — “and bragged about” — Mansee’s “Made in Minnesota” tours for many years, Marghe Tabar said.

“I’ve kept a list of most of the tours because sometimes the places we visited are unusual locations to take visitors,” she said. “Somehow she talks business owners into opening their doors to groups.”

Some of the Tabars’ favorites include: QBP (Quality Bicycle Products); the MyPillow factory; the Original Mattress Factory; Captain Ken’s Baked Beans factory; WestRock, the corrugated packaging company; Tilsner Carton Co.; Podiumwear Custom Sports Apparel; the Schwing factory, maker of truck-mounted concrete pumps; Andersen Windows; a hydroponics factory that grew fish and herbs; TruStone Coffee Roasters; Vistabule Teardrop Trailers; Minnesota Knitting Mills; BEKA Wood Products; and the U.S. Postal Service mail distribution site in Eagan.

Mishaps and Mystery Tours

Mansee organizes everything and does her research, said Rita Jondahl, 75, of St. Paul. “She knows everything, and she makes it fun. It’s nice because there are always other people around, even if you’re by yourself.”

Jeanne Driscoll, 73, of St. Paul, has taken 16 of Mansee’s tours. Her favorite tours are Mansee’s “Mystery Tours” — the ones where Mansee picks the locations, but tour participants have no idea where they are going until they get on the bus.

Mansee, whose official title is Community Education program coordinator, said she especially loved planning the Mystery Tours. “I’d plan the day, set the price, and people would sign up,” she said. “They’d have no idea where they were going. When they boarded the bus, they just trusted me to take them on an adventure.”

One of the best Mystery Tour destinations was a trip to the Minnesota Highway Safety & Research Center in St. Cloud, she said. “They actually let us drive their training course and drive the (Minnesota State Patrol) trooper cars around the track and run the sirens and the whole deal. Everybody who wanted to drive got to drive the course and be in the driver’s seat of a trooper’s car. They loved it.”

There have been some mishaps, of course. Buses have broken down. One bus driver refused to help with the luggage. Trips have had to be postponed because of bad weather. Passengers have gotten sick. Some haven’t understood the concept of being back at the bus at a set time.

Sandy Mansee, holding her signature straw hat, asks for people to gather around during a tour of the St. Paul City Hall and Ramsey County Courthouse. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

Once, during a visit to the Island of Happy Days, a historic estate on Stout Island in Wisconsin, tour participants were served beef stroganoff for lunch, Mansee said. “It was so slippery that we could barely pick it up with our forks. You had to use your fork and your spoon, and hope you got it to your mouth. Every time I see anybody who was on that tour, we still talk about that.”

Mansee once lost her voice on an overnight trip to Duluth — a major obstacle for a tour guide, she said.

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“This was back when the (St. Paul) Saints were at the Midway Stadium,” she said. “They were still very new, and you couldn’t get a ticket for all you were worth. I would take a trip to see the Saints once a season. … We would travel to support them, and then I’d fill it out with other locations along the way. We were at the Duluth game to see the Dukes one time, and we were having a great time, and it was megaphone night, so we all got free megaphones. I started cheering for the Saints. Well, there were some Duke fans across the aisle, and they were cheering for the Dukes, and we cheered so hard, I woke up the next morning, and I had no voice. It was so funny.”

Yes, Mansee said, she is supposed to talk on her trips.

“All I could do was squeak, but they laughed at me, and they just thought it was the best,” she said. “People thought it was hilarious that I enjoyed my job and I screamed and supported them so much.”

‘Enriching lives’

Mansee’s enthusiasm is infectious, said Katy Mommaerts, community programs supervisor for Community Education. Mommaerts served as Mansee’s direct supervisor for six years.

“Sandy will not plan something that she is not willing to do herself,” she said. “She will zipline, fly on a trapeze, whatever it takes.”

In addition to organizing bus tours, Mansee was responsible for coordinating Community Education’s walking tours, business and technology classes, and the 55-plus discount driving classes.

“Sandy has just been such a gift to Community Ed,” Mommaerts said. “She’s committed to the mission of enriching lives, of trying to make people feel excited about things in their community they don’t know about. It’s hard to imagine her not being here.”

Mansee grew up in Hartland, Wis., outside of Milwaukee, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in 1981 with a bachelor’s degree in recreation. She and her husband, Mark, have two sons.

Prior to joining Community Education in October 1990, Mansee worked in senior programming at Capital Community Services, which later merged with Keystone Community Services, and was the activities director at Episcopal Homes in St. Paul. “I did card clubs and exercise classes and craft activities,” she said. “I organized outings and lunches and took people walking. Not only did I organize exercise classes, I taught them.”

She organized her first tour for Community Education in the fall of 1991; the group went to the Grain Exchange and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis and had lunch at City Center, she said. “We went to Stockholm (Wis.) that winter and did a Christmas lights tour along the Mississippi River, and we had dinner at the Stockholm Cafe. Early on, we went up to Mille Lacs and did a fishing tour.”

It’s easy to spot Mansee in a crowd during a tour. She’s the one wearing a straw hat covered with dozens of enamel pins she’s collected while traveling with Community Education. Among the locations featured: Pipestone, Galena, Ashley Furniture, Al Capone’s Hideout, the St. Louis Arch, Door County, Wisconsin Dells, the Music Man Square, and the Edmund Fitzgerald Memorial.

“They can always pick me out of a crowd,” she said. “When we go to a venue, and they say, ‘Who’s in charge?’ they all go, ‘The lady in the hat.’ I love wearing hats, so I always wear this one.”

Sandy Mansee takes a picture of the 36-foot tall “Visions of Peace” statue, reflected in a marble column, while guiding a tour of St. Paul City Hall and the Ramsey County Courthouse. Mansee is retiring on May 30. (John Autey / Pioneer Press)

What makes for a good tour guide? “You’ve got to make sure everybody feels welcome and included, and you give that extra TLC,” Mansee said. “It helps if you are well organized ahead of time, trying to foresee all of the things that can or could happen. You can’t head them all off, but it’s so much easier now, compared to in the early years, because now we have cellphones, and we have texting, and we have email.

“Back when I first started leading tours, we didn’t have any of that, so when I was running behind, there was no way to reach destinations and say, ‘I’m coming, but I’m half an hour late.’ You just winged it and hoped for the best. Technology has helped a lot in that regard.”

Tour guides can’t foresee bad weather or road construction or bus breakdowns, “so you just have to be open-minded and go with the flow,” she said. “Sometimes you just have to bite your tongue because we’ve all had locations that didn’t pan out to be what you thought, or they had the time wrong, or I had the time wrong, so things can get a little wonky sometimes.”

Gerhard and Mary Jane Keilen, who went on numerous tours with Mansee through the years, said they were sad to say goodbye to her on Thursday.

“She explains everything in detail,” Gerhard Keilen said. “She’s just fantastic.”

“She’s so personable,” said Mary Jane Keilen. “She knows everybody by name. She’s so informative, and she researches everything. She’s fun, she’s patient, and she finds us the most interesting places to see. They enlighten your mind and bring a song to your heart.”

St. Paul Community Education tours

Yes, St. Paul Community Education plans to continue offering tours after Sandy Mansee retires.

Information about the tours can be found in the “Trips and Travelogues” section of its catalog.

For more information, go to commed.spps.org.

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It couldn’t have worked out much better for the Vikings on Day 1 of the 2024 NFL Draft, as they swung for the fences by taking quarterback J.J. McCarthy and edge rusher Dallas Turner. They hit a home run with those addition. There’s no doubt about it.

That aggressiveness ended up costing the Vikings all of their picks on Day 2, however, which left them watching helplessly as dozens upon dozens of prospects went off the board.

Naturally, general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah and head coach Kevin O’Connell got back to work on Day 3, following their process with hopes of adding more depth to the roster.

Here’s a look at who the Vikings selected:

Khyree Jackson (Round 4, Pick 108)

College: Oregon

Position: Cornerback

Height: 6 feet, 4 inches

Weight: 195 pounds

Analysis: He’s a giant for the position and projects as a player that could thrive in press coverage based on the physicality with which he plays the game. He also has some good speed for somebody of his stature, running the 40-yard dash in 4.50 seconds at the NFL Combine a couple of months ago. All of that fits the mold of what defensive coordinator Brian Flores is looking in a cornerback. Though he will have to work on his technique the succeed at the next level, he provides good value considering where the Vikings were able to get him.

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Just a few days ago, the least diverse city council in America unanimously passed a plan to add 163 miles of new protected bike lanes in St. Paul over the next 15 years. There currently are 65 miles of bikeways. The new 163 miles does not mean all new pavement, for that would be injurious to the Earth they are trying to save, but many of the new miles will be off-street, while other miles will be protected by concrete barriers.

Long-range plans call for the demolition of the Cathedral of St. Paul for a centralized “meet your neighbor bicycle staging and storage facility” for those without a lockable location, the closing of all north-south streets between Kellogg Boulevard and Interstate 94, the elimination of all parking lots inside the city limits, city-operated electric “chase” vehicles to patrol all 228 miles of bicycle-exclusive lanes for repairs and breakdowns, new district councils to be known as “wheel-ins” and tax subsidies for families purchasing more than two bicycles.

Summit Avenue, once thought to be historic and mindful of more halcyon days and worth saving, will become bicycle only. Bicycle bridges will be built over Lexington, Hamline, Fairview and Cleveland avenues, with Mississippi River Boulevard becoming “wheel free” by 2039. Walking only.

All of this is happening despite there being no evidence of a hue and cry whatsoever. We apparently are governed by a powerful unelected bicycle coalition who have found on the council willing partners. Anika Bowie, who did not live where she said she did when she filed to run last August and who now represents Ward 1, is particularly enthusiastic about the new plans. By switching to bicycle-only, she won’t be faced with the parking and traffic tickets she has accrued since 2021.

Curiously, it feels like many of us are not represented by this ambitious vision. For example, Cheniqua Johnson, who won the Ward 7 seat, where Jane Prince prevailed until her retirement, said she was “taken aback” by the number of responses she got from her constituents after more than a year of outreach by city staff on the St. Paul Bicycle Plan.

Three.

Johnson represents the Dayton’s Bluff, Battle Creek, Mounds Park, Highwood, Conway and Eastview neighborhoods, multiple thousands of people. And three people weighed in?

I emailed Johnson asking her to please call me. I had one question. I got a return email from “team Cheniqua” offering to connect me with Jimmy Shoemaker, St. Paul’s staff go-to for the bicycle plan. I didn’t necessarily want his answer.

Simple question. Doesn’t it seem likely, council member Johnson, that three responses after a year of proselytizing indicates that 163 miles of new bike lanes is the least of your constituents’ problems?

Might it be the least of the city’s problems? Of course, it is. We have pillaged streetlights, vacant tall buildings, shuttered small businesses, unsafe public transportation, car thefts, shootings, high prices for groceries and gas, unsustainable property taxes, jobs, baby needs a new pair of shoes.

Johnson said she was likely to vote for the bicycle plan because many low-income residents don’t have cars.

Apparently, it didn’t occur to her and her sisters on the council that three responses didn’t mean anything in the way of upending the grandiose plans. Didn’t even give them pause. Nor that not having a car or a family’s economic health wasn’t going to be fixed by a new bike lane.

Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.

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Amy Lindgren

If you’ve written a résumé lately, you’ve undoubtedly struggled over the wording and content. Creating impact while summarizing years of experience is no easy task.

While these are important challenges to address, there’s another that might matter more: Formatting. That’s because formatting is the key to navigation and readability – and if your résumé isn’t readable, what’s the point of exquisite grammar and powerful content?

Last week’s column addressed the value of longer résumés, and the importance of not cramming your content to fit the one-page “ideal.” This week, it’s time to look at the do’s and don’ts of formatting your résumé, whatever its length.

Basic formatting guidelines

— Keep 1-inch margins when possible, to create a consistent look while leaving room for note-taking.

— Choose one font only. Times, Helvetica and Calibri are all good choices that are easily read by online systems and humans alike.

— Use two type sizes – one for the section headings and one for the content. A standard combination would be 10 or 11 point for the content and 11 or 12 point for the headings, with the headings being slightly larger than the content.

— Don’t over-emphasize headings. There are multiple ways to highlight section headings – bold or italic print, all caps, underlining, larger type, etc. To avoid visual cacophony, choose no more than two and apply the choice consistently to all section headings.

— Use consistent spacing. A good rule is to add one space between each entry in a section. That is, if you have two jobs in your Experience section, there should be one extra space between them. Then, add two spaces between each section. For example, if your Education section follows your Experience section, there should be two extra spaces between them.

— Use bullets sparingly. Or dashes, or whatever symbol you’ve chosen. These are meant for emphasis, so they lose their effectiveness if every line or entry is preceded with a bullet. If your bullet list is longer than five or six entries, it’s time to create subsections.

Advanced tips

— Don’t overuse lines or other graphic elements. Besides confusing some online systems, too much graphic input can distract the reader. Stick with one solid dark line near the top to separate your name and contact information from the résumé itself, to help the reader focus on the main content.

— Speaking of graphics – resist the temptation to add little telephones and other symbols to indicate the obvious. Trust that the reader can identify your email without a tiny envelope to point the way.

— Avoid tables and probably columns as well. These are excellent tools in the right hands but generally that’s not the case. Unfortunate results can include truncated information cramped into small boxes or unbalanced tables with one extra-long entry creating awkward spacing for the rest. Instead, use hand-set tabs and margin indents to create the horizontal spacing you’re seeking.

— Balance your white space. For example, one-word lists that run vertically will result in large pools of white space on the right side of the page. This can make the résumé feel disjointed. In these cases, try running the list horizontally, with items separated by bullets or extra spaces.

— Use color sparingly. One color, used as an accent, can be quite appealing – particularly when your résumé is read on a phone or computer screen. In this case, you might use color for the section headings, or for your name at the top of each page. But avoid using color for the content, as that can become tedious to read. Also, be sure the color you choose is dark enough to be easily visible if the résumé is printed.

— Photos? Probably not. Although readers already get clues about gender or race from a candidate’s name, photos can remove all doubt, opening the door for unconscious bias. Photos can also be space and data hogs, and sometimes gum up the works for electronic systems.

If this feels like a lot of rules, you might think the solution is to drop your information into a template and be done with it. Be careful! That can work, but it usually results in even more problems as you fight with the template’s pre-set formats.

Instead, just open a fresh page on your word processing software and type out each section without worrying about format. Then you (or a skilled friend) can go back and apply these guidelines to each section or to the entire document, as the case may be. It’s worth the trouble: Once you’ve created a clean, clear format, you’ll be surprised at how well your content stands out.

Amy Lindgren owns a career consulting firm in St. Paul. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com.