Locally Grown - Ross Currier, Tracy Davis, Griff Wigley

Back in June, 2011, I blogged about St. Olaf’s new bike repair stations and that we needed something like them in downtown Northfield. In mid-August, I commented: "Ross Currier told me this week that the Downtown Streetscape Task Force is considering installing one of these bicycle repair stations."

 
Yesterday, two bike repair stands were installed, one at 5th and Division under the stairs of the McClaughry Building, the other at the Division St. entrance to the Northfield Library. Each bike repair stand (Dero Fixit) includes an air pump with a gauge, and seven tools, all tethered with security cables.  You can hang your bike on the stand by its seat post so you can more easily work on it.

Props to Ross Currier and members of the Downtown Streetscape Task Force for shifting some money to do this, to TJ Heinricy and his crew at the City of Northfield Streets, Parks & Facilities Divisions for getting them installed before spring, and to Jim Fisher, Grounds Manager at St. Olaf, for bringing this concept to Northfield.

 
I noticed yesterday that the Gateway Ministry Center has opened next to Cost Cutters in Heritage Square along S. Hwy 3.  Back in 2007, I blogged that they had opened Northfield Healing Rooms in Heritage Square, also selling books, art, health products, coffee, and art. Steve Roberts and Rebecca Roberts were the pastors, according to a listing in the Northfield News. Their focus at that time:

Our mission is to help unite, equip and empower the body of Christ to promote healing as a vital part of ministry. Our focus is on the presence and power of the Holy Spirit to work through us to heal the sick and infirmed.

Now they seem to have a different focus, though it’s not clear to me what it is. Steve Roberts is still listed as the pastor but there’s no mention of Rebecca Roberts.  Their site also has a Gateway Youth Ignited page though this may be a discontinued program as their website doesn’t have a navigation option to it.

They also use the domain name gatewayawakening.net and have an affiliation with Gloryhouse International Church in Burnsville.

Shannon Hyland-Tassava will read from her new book The Essential Stay-at-Home Mom Manual: How to Have a Wondrous Life Amidst Kids and Chaos Wednesday, Feb 15, 2012 at 7:30 pm. A year ago Shannon read from Torn: True Stories of Kids, Career and the Conflict of Modern Motherhood. Tornis an anthology of essays by women about motherhood. Now Shannon has published her own book and we are happy to have her read again.

The Northfield News recently published an article about Shannon and her book. Here’s an excerpt:

Yet the job, as many know, is not glamorous nor is it a piece of cake. For many stay-at-home parents, finding a network of friends to share parenting ideas with, as Patterson did through Early Childhood Family Education, helps ease the trying times.

One such friend she encountered was Shannon Tassava, a Northfield clinical psychologist and stay-at-home mom who recently took the sharing of advice to the next level. Tassava’s book, “The Essential Stay-at-Home Mom Manual: How to Have a Wondrous Life Amidst Kids & Chaos” has recently been published by Booktrope Editions.

Mr. Northfield Entertainment Guide and By All Means Graphics owner Rob Schanilec is famous here in Northfield.

Rob has a brother named Gaylord Schanilec (Midnight Paper Sales) who’s equally famous in the town of Stockholm, Wisconsin and to some extent, the rest of the Western Hemisphere. Gaylord’s work as a wood-engraver was profiled last week in a StarTribune article titled A bookmaker, unbound.

"He’s one of the two or three finest color wood-engravers ever. He’s really that good," said Robert Rulon-Miller, a rare book dealer in St. Paul who has followed Schanilec’s career for more than 30 years. "He’s a man of many parts: engraver, printer, bookbinder, editor, writer, natural philosopher, and he brings all this stuff together into his books."

Robbie and I went to see his work and hear him speak on Saturday at the Groveland Gallery. That exhibition is profiled here on the MN Monthly site.

This is the first time Schanilec is exhibiting his prints independently from his books. Schanilec explains:

“These engravings were made for books that I’ve printed in the past 25 years. They were made to be seen within reading distance, about a foot from the reader’s face. They were sewn into bindings and destined to darkness on a bookshelf, along with their texts, until the book is opened and a reader, in due course, finds them. Now, here they are, framed on the vast white plains of these walls – like icebergs in an ocean – but emitting, I hope, the warmth of the world from which they came.”

  
I’m not sure when it happened exactly but some time in the past few weeks, a crew from the City of Northfield Streets, Parks & Facilities Divisions mowed down all the noxious trees at the south end of the pond in Hidden Valley Park. There were hundreds of small trees there, blocking the view of the pond for those of us who live on the south end.  The trees also inhibit the pond’s stormwater function.

A tip-of-the-blogger-hat to Street & Park Supervisor TJ Heinricy and his staff for doing this at several parks.

   
Some sharp-eyed citizens alerted me to more graffiti in downtown Northfield. I’m not sure if these are new or part of the outbreak I blogged about back in mid-January.

  
We spent a lot of time in bars and restaurants while vacationing on the island Vieques off the coast of Puerto Rico last week. Al’s Mar Azul was one of our favorite pubs. It’s got a great deck overlooking the ocean in the heart of Isabel Segunda, the town where we rented a house.  And it was one of two pubs that had a power generator the night the power went out on the entire island. 

   
One of our fellow patrons at Mar Azul‘s the night the power went out was Ed Conlon (Wikipedia entry), pictured on the left with former Northfielder Collin Wigley (my eldest son) and his wife Amanda. We met Ed a few nights earlier while on a tour of the Bioluminescent Bay, the best bio bay in the world. He graciously bought a few rounds of rum punches to help us through the power outage trauma.

Ed retired from the NY Police Dept. last year. He was holed up on Vieques for a few weeks, working on his third book.  You can order his books Blue Blood and Red on Red from Northfield’s Monkey See Monkey Read bookstore.

See Ed’s website and view his 2004 appearance on The Daily Show.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c Edward Conlon www.thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

I got this press release from Mr. Left-Handed Entertainment, Rich Larson, who has purchased a Locally Grown membership so he can promote events like this. I’ve added links and images to it:

February 1, 2012 – Northfield music favorites Meredith Fierke, Steve McKinstry and Dylan McKinstry will play a concert in tandem with Twin Cities legend-in-the-making Chris Koza for a night of intimate, acoustic, atmospheric pop-folk music at the Northfield Arts Guild on Friday, February 10 at 8pm.

Fierke and the McKinstrys will be previewing material from their highly anticipated new album which will be released this spring. “This is by far the best music I’ve ever made,” says Fierke. “Steve and Dylan each bring something unique to the table, and together we’re creating something that I’m very excited about. I can’t wait for people to hear these songs.”

Fierke’s previous album, 2008’s The Procession, garnered so much attention that Minneapolis radio station Cities 97 placed her song Train’s Song on the prestigious Cities Sampler. Later that year, she was named Northfield’s best performing musician by the Northfield Entertainment Guide. The extra amount of time she and the McKinstrys have taken in recording their new album has created a lot of conversation amongst the Northfield music scene. “People have been wondering what they’re up to,” said local music promoter Rich Larson. “I’ve had a chance to hear most of the new album.  The extra time and work really shows. Every song is a knock out. It’s going to be a real treat to hear this music in a great room like the one at the NAG.”

The show at the NAG is the second of a month-long tour of small coffee houses and arts venues that Koza is making throughout Minnesota. This comes fast on the heels of a two month West Coast tour with his band Rogue Valley.  “I love seeing road warrior performers like Chris,” said Larson. “The best time to catch a singer/songwriter is in the middle of a long touring cycle like the one he’s in right now. He’s had some opportunity to flesh out his music in front of a lot of different audiences, which is really the best way to develop a song. This is going to be a very good night of music.”

“The thing that really strikes me is the $10 ticket price,” said Jessica Paxton of KYMN Radio. “You’d pay $25-$30 for this exact show at the Varsity Theater in Minneapolis or the Fitzgerald in St. Paul. And, frankly, the NAG is a far more intimate setting. For fans of good music, this isn’t bargain. It’s a steal.”

The Northfield Arts Guild is located at 304 Division Street South. Doors will open at 7:30, and the music will start at 8:00. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased in advance at www.left-handedentertainment.com or at the door the night of the show. For more information, contact the Northfield Arts Guild at (507) 645-8877 or Rich Larson at (612)756-0490.

Related: see my blog post of photos of Meredith Fierke, Dylan McKinstry, and Steve McKinstry performing at the Carleton Weitz Center Theater last November.

 
I attended the Coworking Incubator/Accelerator Community Brainstorming Session yesterday in the Archer House lower level conference room, hosted by the Northfield Enterprise Center.

I don’t have time to summarize what happened (hopefully, ED Megan Tsui will do that!) but I’m guessing there will be a website within a month, as Sean Hayford O’Leary and I volunteered to get that going.

  

  

I got wind of a rumor earlier this week that a new store is to open this month in the old Digs space. Guesses are welcome.

Explorer Will Steger  had a commentary in last week’s Strib titled, Make America climate-literate. Here’s an excerpt:

It wasn’t until 2002, when the Larsen B ice shelf disintegrated from western Antarctica — an ice shelf formed more than 12,000 years ago that my expedition team took a full month to ski across — that the facts of global warming prompted me to take action. In 2006, I decided to establish the Will Steger Foundation, where we support educators, students and the general public with science-based interdisciplinary resources on climate change, its implications and its solutions. Our goal is for educators and students to achieve climate literacy.

If the nation is to address climate change, it must begin with a public that is climate-literate. Starting with our educational system is critical. Teaching and understanding climate change is a process involving scientific inquiry and educational pedagogy; it is not about politics or partisanship. There is virtually unanimous scientific agreement about climate change. Yet due to both the inherent complexity of the topic and the social controversies surrounding it, confusion and doubt often persist. Climate change is now ultrapoliticized in the United States.

I’m curious to know what Northfield’s schools (district, charter, parochial) are doing in the classrooms on this ‘ultrapoliticized’ issue of climate change.  Are our educators using materials like those available on the Steger Foundation’s education page, are they ducking the issue, or doing something in between?

Some personal background:

I got to know Will Steger back in 1993 when I was hired to advise him on internet communications for his upcoming International Arctic Expedition.  The project took a personal turn when two of my sons, Collin and Graham (then ages 16 and 12) accompanied Steger and fellow explorers to Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories for six weeks to test ham radio and internet communications with schools while his team did a training run, a "1000 mile dogsled and canoe-sled trek across the Canadian Barrens from Yellowknife, NWT to Churchill, Manitoba."

 
Steger came to Northfield in 2006 to speak about climate change and his then new Will Steger Foundation. Right photo: my daughter Gilly Wigley and her friend Brianna Spittle geting a poster signed by Steger for a donation to the foundation. Here’s the audio of Steger’s presentation:

The Northfield Enterprise Center is hosting a Coworking Incubator/Accelerator Community Brainstorming Session on Tuesday, Jan. 31, 2-4 pm in the Archer House lower level conference room.

In related news, according to Megan Tsui, NEC’s executive director, "the EDA approved the NEC’s request for $20,000 in matching funds for a grant from SMIF (also $20,000)" for the "design and development of an Incubator/Accelerator (I/A) space in Northfield. The NEC will use a Co-working model with a membership structure to help make the project sustainable for the long-term." See pages 7-14 of last week’s EDA mtg packet.

And last Friday, "Councilwoman Rhonda Pownell and several NEC Board members took a tour of CoCo Minneapolis," according to this post on the NEC Facebook Wall.

If you’re new to coworking, see all the blog posts about it here.

I entered Cannon River Watershed Partnership’s photo contest this year and whaddya know, I placed. Here are the winners in the three categories (thumbnails are linked to the large originals on the CRWP site but they still display in a slideshow here in the blog post):

Category: Family and Friends in the Outdoors
 
First Place: Laurie Johnson
Second Place: John Muellerleile

Category: Working for Our Watershed
 
First place: Glenn Switzer
Second place: Griff Wigley

Category: Nature in Our Watershed
  
First Place: Griff Wigley
Second Place: Eric Mueller
Third Place: David Charlton

The Magic Room

Up a short flight of stairs, inside a former bank in a small rural town 100 miles northwest of Detroit, there is a special place, rich in history, and 100,000 brides-to-be from across the Midwest have made pilgrimages to find it. Just 10 foot by 8 foot, it has floor-to-ceiling mirrors on every wall, carrying the brides’ images to infinity. It is called the Magic Room.

The town is Fowler, Michigan, a middle-class community with 1,100 residents – and 2,500 wedding dresses. The building is Becker’s Bridal, home to each of those dresses, a figurative blizzard of white. Jeffrey Zaslow takes readers to this remarkable small-town bridal shop to explore the hopes and dreams parents have for their daughters. He weaves this true story using a reporter’s research and a father’s heart. Jeff came to Fowler not just to write about wedding gowns and what they represent. He came to understand the women wearing them, their fears and yearnings, and through them, he tells a larger story about the love between parents and daughters today.

In this magical book, Zaslow examines women on the brink of commitment, whose stories, secrets, and memories will pull you in from the moment they first see their reflection in this iconic room.

Jeffrey Zaslow is a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Girls from Ames. Through his writing, he has told the stories of some of the most inspirational people of our time. He is co-author, with Chesley Sullenberger, of Highest Duty, and with Randy Pausch, of The Last Lecture, the #1 New York Times bestseller now translated into forty-eight languages. Zaslow is currently collaborating with Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, on their memoir. He lives in suburban Detroit with his wife, Sherry, and daughters Jordan, Alex, and Eden.

Bonus video:

 

The book is available at Monkey See Monkey Read in downtown Northfield.

Carleton professor Jeff Ondich is a GBM regular and this morning he stopped by my corner office to alert me to the ice circles forming below the Ames Mill dam. I blogged about ice circles back in 2009 but haven’t seen them since.

   
Jeff’s photos (left and center) of the ice circles with his smartphone turned out a lot better than those from my smartphone. However, he really does have zombie eyes from spending too much time in front of a computer.  In addition to being a computer science professor, he owns a language software/app company in Dinkytown called Ultralingua; they also have word game app called Accio.  Now if we could only convince him and his Twin Cities-based employees to relocated to Northfield. Hmmm.

I tried to keep blogging while away the past 8 days but alas, my motivation gradually eroded due to the constant availability of sandy beaches, rum punches, and stunning sunsets.

  
Ahhh, Vieques.

We are seeking an enthusiastic, sales-oriented individual to join our team. Prior customer service experience and recent cash handling skills are required.  Position is available at our Premier Banks Northfield location.  Position will average 30 hrs/wk. including Saturday mornings.  Schedule may vary every week.

Interested applicants may apply in person or send resume to Premier Banks, 112 East Fifth St., Northfield, MN 55057 or e-mail resume to hr@premierbanks.com.

For additional info, visit our website:   www.premierbanks.com EOE

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In Saturday’s Nfld News: Firefighters want to air concerns to Northfield council

In a Dec. 28 letter, 27 of the department’s 32 firefighters asked that the City Council schedule a work session “to discuss improvement to the road map for the Fire Department, specifically the selection or election of the fire chief and appointment of officers and the new fire hall.”

Northfield Fire Chief Gerry Franek said last week that he believes a meeting with the council will alleviate some of the firefighters’ concerns. In meetings with the city’s administrator and public safety director, who oversees the Fire Department, several firefighters have voiced their unhappiness with proposed changes the city plans to make when choosing a fire chief…

The mayor also prefers to honor the established chain of command, and continue communicating through the city’ administrator, public safety director and fire chief.

I’m way behind on understanding all the issues with the Fire Department, going back to early last year when an OSHA inspection raised issues and a subsequent report by a consultant cited criticisms.

It’s an odd request for nearly an entire department (27 people) to want to meet directly with the City Council, seemingly without the involvement of their supervisor, in this case, Public Safety Director Mark Taylor. Imagine if all the public works employees made a similar request, going around their supervisor.  Something’s amiss here and I don’t understand what it is.

Yes, I’ve blogged this before, but it bears repeating since tonight is the night.

Our NCO/Northfield.org colleagues are having a big birthday partaaaaay tonight at the Grand Event Center.

 

See:

• The Northfield.org 20th Birthday Bash! page for party details
• More on the history of NCO and the roots of Locally Grown: Happy Anniversary, Northfield.org by Marika Christofides
• Photos of NCO’s early days