By JESSICA DAMIANO, Associated Press

No doubt you’ve seen your share of hollies this month — in wreaths and boughs or perhaps on holiday cards and catalog covers. But are they growing in your garden?

There are hundreds of holly species and hybrids hailing from China, Japan, South America, Europe and North Africa, and more than a dozen are native to the continental U.S.

Lore holds that ancient pagans fashioned the evergreen’s branches into wearable crowns and believed that displaying it indoors would repel evil spirits and hasten the return of spring. Later, hollies were adapted by early Christians, their evergreen nature symbolic of eternal life.

Although the plants can promise neither, their red berries and deep-green foliage, which mirror the traditional colors of the season, are beautiful year-round garden staples. And their berries provide an important winter food source for birds and wildlife, although most are considered toxic to humans.

This image provided by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center shows a native Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria) branch bearing a profusion of berries at the Ladybird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas on Jan. 20, 2003. (Joseph A. Marcus/Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center via AP)

The best time to plant hollies is in early spring, after the last hard freeze (if applicable) but before the heat of summer sets in. Be sure to water regularly during the plant’s first year in your garden, when its roots are working establish themselves.

With very few exceptions, hollies are dioecious, which means plants are either male or female, and in order for the female to produce berries, there must be a male growing nearby. One male can effectively pollinate about 10 female plants growing within 50 feet, sometimes more.

Plant tags don’t always note if a dioecious plant is male or female, but the variety name can help. “China Girl” is female, and to get fruit, you’ll need “China Boy.” It’s not always obvious, though; for example, “Greenleaf” is also female. If you’re unsure, ask nursery staff.

Here are four favorites to consider (and one you might want to avoid):

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Yaupon Holly (Ilex vomitoria)

This long-living species naturally occurs along the United State’s southern Atlantic coast and across the Southeast and Southwest. Choose dwarf, weeping or upright varieties to grow trees, shrubs or pruned hedgerows. Hardy in USDA horticultural zones 7-9, the unfussy natives are tolerant of both sun and shade, and thrive in any soil type and pH, as long as it is moist and well-draining.

American Holly (Ilex opaca)

Native along the entire East Coast and west to Missouri and Texas, this slow-growing, pyramidical holly can reach 25-60 feet tall at maturity. Also known as Christmas holly, the spiny-leaved plants are hardy in zones 5-9, tolerating both sun and shade but requiring acidic, moist, well-draining sandy or loamy soil.

Blue holly (Ilex x meserveae)

Also called Meserve holly, this generally well-behaved European hybrid has blue-green spiny leaves and grows 2-8 feet tall and 6-8 feet wide, and larger in some climates. Suitable for zones 5-7 (possibly 8), the shrubby plants should be planted in full sun to part shade in well-draining, moist, acidic soil.

Winterberry holly (Ilex verticillata)

Unlike the other species on this list, verticillata is a deciduous, not evergreen, plant that loses its foliage in autumn. But don’t discount its winter interest! In fact, the absence of leaves while fruiting is one of its best features, allowing its profusion of red-orange berries to take center stage on bare, thin branches.

Native to the eastern U.S. and Canada, this slow grower tops out at 3-8 feet. Plant it in zones 3-9, in sun to shade and in well-draining, moist, acidic soil.

English or common holly (Ilex aquifolium)

Native to Europe, West Asia and North Africa, English holly is spreading into wild areas and choking out native vegetation from Vancouver to the Pacific Northwest and into California.

Ironically, the qualities that made it a desirable landscape plant when it was introduced to the U.S. in the 1800s — it’s tough as nails, long-lived, evergreen and quick-spreading — are what have led to its categorization as an invasive plant in those parts of the country and a “weed of concern” in many others.

Avoid its use in problematic regions and proceed with caution in others.

The moment Mike Dibble realized that he was a long way from his boyhood home in South Minneapolis was when he found himself under a bridge in Leningrad, selling American blue jeans on the then-Soviet black market.

It was about this time of year, 1973 was becoming 1974, and Dibble was among nearly two dozen boys — most of them Minnesotans — who traveled to what was then the Soviet Union to represent the United States in what was, unofficially, the first World Junior tournament.

That fact may lead to some numbers confusion in the coming week or so as what is billed as the 50th World Juniors comes to St. Paul and Minneapolis.

“They’re advertising it as the 50th anniversary of the World Junior tournament,” said Dibble. “I said, ‘No, it’s the 52nd.’ ”

To be clear, 2026 marks the 50th anniversary of the tournament that is officially sanctioned by the International Ice Hockey Federation. But in 1973, fresh off coaching Team USA to a silver medal at the Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan, a year earlier, former Gophers standout Murray Williamson worked together with his many contacts in international hockey to put together a team for the first tournament to pit the world’s best under-20 men against one another.

Rather than the formal tryout process involving the best players from coast to coast that we see today, Williamson put together a squad from the players that he knew best. All 19 players who traveled to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) in Russia were Minnesotans. Most of them were playing junior hockey in the Twin Cities for teams like the St. Paul Vulcans and Minneapolis Junior Stars at the time.

And the rumors of a possible world tournament kept at least one local player from jumping to college too early.

“One of the reasons I played a second year of juniors was there were rumors that there was going to be a World Junior team where we were going to be able to travel to Leningrad to play in a tournament,” said Mark Lambert, now 71 and retired, living in West St. Paul. “That really sparked my enthusiasm. So, totally excited and very happy for the opportunity.”

After getting passports and visas, the players found themselves to be popular among the Russian kids because they had candy they would toss out the windows of the team bus. A few even got a taste of the black market that flourished long before the Berlin Wall came down.

“We had to get a passport, a visa. How exciting,” said Dibble, who played prep hockey at Minneapolis Southwest, then was a goalie for Wisconsin. “Back then there was no social media, but we knew you could bring blue jeans and trade from them underneath the bridge. Dan Bonk and myself brought jeans and we traded at midnight underneath the bridge in Leningrad. I got the Russian mink hat. Still have it. It was fantastic.”

On the ice, the trade-offs were more lopsided. The Americans won just one game, and lost 11-1 to Sweden, 9-1 to host Russia.

“We got blown out for sure by the Russians, and maybe somebody else, but very respectable against the Canadians, and that’s who I was really measuring our team against was the Canadian juniors,” said Lambert, who played prep hockey at St. Paul Mechanic Arts, then won a NCAA title with the Gophers.

“I didn’t know anything about European hockey, but I knew that the Canadian juniors fed our NHL league, and I knew that for us kids who wanted to someday maybe play pro hockey, we had to compete against those people. I thought we were on an even basis with them.”

They fell 5-4 to the Canadians in the only North American scuffle of the six-team tournament.

In the Americans’ finale, they faced Czechoslovakia and won 3-2 on the strength of a 50-plus save performance by Dibble, who would go on to win the 1977 NCAA title with the Badgers.

“The Russian crowd was chanting, ‘Dee-Bull, Dee-Bull,’ because they didn’t like the Czechs,” he recalled with a smile.

Of the Team USA players that year, at least four went on to play in the NHL, including former North Stars fan favorite Gary Sargent from Bemidji and Paul Holmgren from St. Paul, who spent the bulk of his career with the Philadelphia Flyers.

Williamson died in September at age 91, and of the 19 players that went to Leningrad, six of them have passed on. But with the World Juniors coming back to the Twin Cities this year, Dibble and Dave Heitz — also a goalie from Minneapolis who was a long-time NHL scout — worked to get as many of the 1974 players as they could contact back together.

In mid-December they gathered at Shamrock’s in St. Paul to share stories and show off some of their saved newspaper clippings, rosters and other memorabilia from not only their international hockey experience, but from the early days of junior hockey in Minnesota.

“Everybody that said they were coming showed up today, except for one,” Dibble said. “And they’re excited. We just should have done it 20 years ago when more of these guys were alive.”

The American team looking to three-peat as gold medalists at Grand Casino Arena — the tournament starts Friday — is Minnesota-heavy, to be sure, with seven players from the state among the 25 on the final roster. But there are also seven from Illinois, four from Michigan, two from Massachusetts, and one each from California, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Missouri.

That’s a far slap shot from 1974, when a bunch of kids from all across Minnesota took on the world for the first time.

“I know the kids now come from high schools all over, but there is a lot of tradition in St. Paul hockey, especially in the ‘70s, and the ’60s,” Lambert said. “St. Paul’s even knocked some really good hockey players out for the Olympic teams and the Gophers and even the colleges across the WCHA.”

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By ALBERT STUMM, Associated Press

Melanin Bee curves her spine like a stretching cat as she lets out a maniacal, forced laugh.

The quick-fire pattern of manufactured giggles —“oh, hoo hoo hoo, eeh, ha ha ha”— soon ripples into genuine laughter, and she giddily kicks her feet.

She’s practicing what she calls Laughasté, a hilarious yoga routine she created that is a descendant of “laughter clubs” that emerged in India in the 1990s. It feels awkward at first, but you fake it till you make it, she said.

“It’s about allowing yourself to be OK with being awkward,” said Bee, a Los Angeles comedian and speaker. “Then you’re going to find some form of silliness within that is going to allow you to laugh involuntarily.”

The laughter clubs were based on the common-sense notion that laughter relieves stress. But a good laugh is also good for your heart, immune system and many other health benefits, said Dr. Michael Miller, a cardiologist and medical professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

“Like we say, exercise at least three to five days a week,” Miller said. “Belly laugh at least two to five days a week.”

FILE – A woman wearing star-shaped glasses smiles during a campaign rally for former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Oct. 29, 2022. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)

The study of laughter

Although luminaries from the ancient Greeks to Freud have opined on the roots and implications of laughter, the modern study of laughter — gelotology — began emerging in the 1960s.

Stanford University psychologist William F. Fry, one of gelotology’s founders, drew blood samples from himself while watching Laurel and Hardy. He discovered that laughter increased the number of immune-boosting blood cells.

In 1995, Dr. Madan Kataria, a physician in Mumbai, got wind of the emerging research as editor of a health magazine while researching an article on stress management. To combat his own stress, he started the first daily laughter club in a park. It ballooned from a handful of participants to more than 150 within a month, he said.

After the group quickly ran out of jokes, Kataria created exercises that activated the diaphragm, and he incorporated yogic breathing exercises, light stretches and deliberately silly sounds and movements.

“We were faking in the beginning and within seconds, everybody was in stitches,” Kataria said.

FILE – Members of laughter clubs participate in a laughter competition for the elderly to celebrate World Laughter Day in Mumbai, India, May 6, 2007. (AP Photo/Gautam Singh, File)

Why is laughter good for you?

Miller began studying laughter in the 1990s. Showing funny movies to study participants, he found that laughter produces endorphins in the brain that promote beneficial chemicals in the blood vessels. Nitric oxide, for example, causes blood vessels to dilate, which lowers blood pressure, inflammation and cholesterol.

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The combination reduces the risk for a heart attack, he said, and the endorphins are natural pain killers.

“When you’ve had a really good laugh, you feel very relaxed and light,” said Miller, who is also chief of medicine at the Philadelphia Veterans Administration, where he is implementing a laughter therapy program. “It’s like you’ve taken pain medication.”

Forced laughter — or simulated mirth, in academia — may even be more beneficial than spontaneous laughter, said Jenny Rosendhal, a senior researcher of medical psychology at Jena University in Germany.

Rosendhal completed a meta-analysis of 45 laughter studies, among other research, and found that laughter-inducing therapies decreased glucose levels, the stress hormone cortisol and chronic pain. They also improved mobility and overall mood, especially in older populations.

Because humor is subjective, it is hard to measure. That’s why much of the more recent research has focused on laughter yoga and similar programs that provoke sustained bouts of laughter during 30- to 45-minute sessions, Rosendhal said.

Laughter yoga is particularly effective for people who might not feel like laughing, such as those struggling with depression or cancer patients, she said. With simulated laughter, the physiological mechanisms are the same, such as additional inhaling, exhaling and muscle activity that also improves mood.

“The well-being comes through the back door,” she said. “You start with an exercise, and then the spontaneous laughter comes later because it’s funny to see people laughing.”

FILE – Class members participate in a laughter yoga class on Main Beach in Laguna Beach, Calif., Nov. 29, 2006. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson, File)

How to laugh more

During a recent video call, Kataria said the trick is to learn to laugh for no reason. He and others in laughing yoga classes around the world have created hundreds of exercises that help.

The simplest: Get together with another person, look in each other’s eyes and repeat the sound “ha” for a full minute. Or try the “breathe in and laugh.” Bring your hands to your chest on a deep inhale, hold your breath for three seconds, and burst out laughing on the exhale while extending your hands forward.

In laughing yoga classes, people may pretend to greet each other like aliens, crawl around like their favorite animals, or tap their temple as if a light bulb went off, exclaiming, “Aha! ha ha ha!”

Kataria suggested bringing laughter into your daily life, even at things that might not seem funny. Demonstrating “credit card bill laughter,” he held out his hand as if looking at a statement, and burst into a roiling, infectious laughter. For inspiration, you could log into one of the three dozen free online American laughter clubs recognized by Laughter Yoga International.

“Really, it’s not about forcing yourself to laugh,” he said. “It’s like activating your laughter muscles, getting rid of your mental inhibitions and shyness. Then the real laughing is childlike laughing, unconditional laughing.”

Albert Stumm writes about wellness, food and travel. Find his work at https://www.albertstumm.com

An executive at a Forest Lake charter school was fired last month for allegedly falsifying documents.

North Lakes Academy Executive Director Cecelia Dodge was fired following a closed session of the school board, allegedly “due to the falsifications of applications for federal funds due to forging signatures of employees and insufficient enrollment,” school board officials said at the November meeting.

The charter school received a complaint about Dodge on Oct. 30, conducted an investigation of the allegations and, on Nov. 17, “the board voted unanimously to terminate her employment,” said Board Chair Morgan Borck in an email.

No details were given regarding which documents were allegedly falsified. Dodge stepped into the executive director role in October 2023.

Founded in 1999, North Lakes Academy is a K-12 charter school with two Forest Lake campuses. In partnership with its authorizer, Osprey Wilds, the academy emphasizes environmental learning, according to its website.

Financial challenges

Dodge’s dismissal comes as the public school is facing financial challenges.

“I have become increasingly concerned with the long-term viability of North Lakes Academy,” wrote Andrew Clark, managing director and research analyst for Nuveen Asset Management, which owns a majority of the charter’s outstanding bonds.

“The current budgeted loss of over $600,000 for FY26 (fiscal year 2026) is particularly concerning considering that level of deficit spending could leave the school insolvent by the end of the year,” Clark said in the October letter addressed to Dodge and Borck.

“Re-growing enrollment is imperative to the school’s long-term success,” Clark wrote.

The charter school, which opened its K-6 campus in 2019, tallied its highest enrollment of 607 students in the 2022-23 school year “and it’s been dropping each year since,” the school board said in its response to Clark.

As of last month, North Lakes Academy had just over 400 students enrolled. The charter expects its enrollment to grow to 430 students by fiscal year 2027, according to school board documents.

Merging of schools

In addition to enrollment efforts, the charter is considering merging its two campuses.

The potential merging of the two schools, a proposal called “Huskies United Under One Roof,” suggests vacating the charter’s 7-12 campus at 308 15th St. SW. before the 2026-27 school year.

Should the two campuses merge into the current K-6 building at 4576 232nd St. N., elementary-aged students would remain on the main floor with the secondary students on the second floor.

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With 12 classrooms and about 300 students on the main floor, class sizes would average about 25 pupils. On the second floor, there are 16 classrooms for roughly 500 students, which would mean average class sizes of 32 students, according to school board documents.

“A bold move like this gives us our best chance, and a very good chance to regroup from our financial challenges to become solvent and viable,” the school said in its proposal.

If the charter were to merge its upper and lower schools, it could save roughly $350,000 across staff, administration and operational costs, not including the lease price of a second building, according to the school board.

“If a change is not made, I fear that the school could close, and our investors would have to look to selling the real estate to recover as much of our investment as possible,” Clark wrote in October.