Waveland Triangle's tennis courts are back open, which means that Linden Hills is officially home to the only public clay tennis courts in the Twin Cities. The funding for the project came from a group called Minneapolis Community Clay Courts with support from US Tennis Association grants, a Hennepin County Youth Sports Grant, Linden Hill Park Dedication fees, and the Park Board's Capital Contingency Fund.

If you're having trouble paying your mortgage, need help with housing expenses, or want foreclosure prevention advice, Hennepin County has a program that can help you out.

Minneapolis keeps a running early voting tracker that you can see here. One big caveat to this data – it's very rare that early voting trends actually predict anything about how much an area will turn out by the end of the election (please read that a 2nd time if you need to).

The big headline right now is that very few people have voted yet (only 2.1% of the city's voters, which nevertheless puts us up 50% from where we were at this point in 2017). In Southwest, Ward 8, Precinct 1 (home of Horn Towers, Hook Fish & Chicken, and across Lake St. from the Karmel Mall) has turned out earlier than anywhere else in our corner of town (10.4% of their votes are in). Citywide, it looks like areas with lots of East African voters have seen the highest turnout levels so far.

Here's some information on how to vote early if you're itching to get out there. We'll have a couple voter guides out in the next week or two, kicking off with information about the candidates for Board of Estimate & Taxation and Park Board that you asked for in our survey, if you want to wait.

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LINK ROUNDUP

A detailed topographic map of SW Minneapolis and the surrounding suburbs from 1901 (click on it to zoom in). It's amazing how the grid stops cold after the lakes. (Reddit)

There are an exciting couple of weeks of high school soccer coming up for the local teams. With the regular season wrapping up, Southwest's boys team is undefeated and ranked 5th in the state. Section playoffs start Thursday, and both Southwest (vs. Robbinsdale Cooper) and Washburn (vs. South) will be playing at home. Both teams have had great seasons and could end up facing off (for the 3rd time, following a 1-1 tie and a 2-1 Southwest victory) to go to State on Oct. 19th. Full playoff schedule is here.

On the girls side, Washburn won the conference, and their playoffs will also start on Thursday. Washburn will be at home, and Southwest will be playing at St. Louis Park. If they win out, they'll also have a shot at going head-to-head to go to State on Oct. 19th, but will have a tough road through Hopkins, who's ranked 9th in the state.

One fun tidbit – on Thursday, the girls teams from South will head to Washburn to face off at 5 PM, followed by the boys from both schools on the same field at 7 PM. Should be a fun night. (Star Tribune, MSHSL Website)

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GET INVOLVED

The Lowry Hill East (aka Wedge) Neighborhood Association is looking to fill two seats on their neighborhood board. Interested? Fill out this application by Friday at 11:59 PM. The new members will be chosen at the board meeting on Oct. 20th, and people can also be nominated from the floor at that meeting.

The Hennepin County Sheriff's office offers free online and in-person opioid education and Narcan (a medication that can help someone survive an overdose) training. This program is an important part of their strategy to fight overdoses and getting trained could save a life.

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STUFF TO DO

Happy Indigenous People's Day. Go check out the space dedicated to the Dakota people at Bde Maka Ska (and this accompanying website about the history of the art and the Dakota people in the area), see the new Okciyapi installation at the Sculpture Garden, or swing by and pick up some reading material at Birchbark Books.

Mike Duncan, who hosts the Revolutions podcast and recently wrote a book about Marquis de Lafayette, will be signing books outdoors at Magers & Quinn from 4-6 PM.