Griff J Wigley's blog

River City Books in downtown Northfield has opened a "bargain book annex" during the month of December in the former Bagel Bros. space next door.

Left: NCO Board Member Rob Brown and his company, badbrain computers, were featured in Wednesday's Northfield News.
Right: I'm in a photo with Justin Stets and Greg Carlson in today's paper re: the Carlson Capital Management donation to NCO.
Center: Northfield News reporter Adam Johnson authored both pieces.

In the spirit of Google Holiday Logos, we have a festive N.org logo in our banner, courtesy of NCO Board Member, Tech Committee member, Library Board Member, and blogger, Adam Gurno.

In the non-Northfield media recently: Henry Fritz, Tom Meagher, Fred Sommers, St. Olaf's campus farm, Northfield

The new issue of the Northfield Entertainment Guide (NEG) is now available free throughout the Northfield area and here via PDF. (Click image to view within your browser or right-click on the image to "Save link/target as..." and then download it and view/print from your PC.)

The NEG is published by Rob Schanilec and Lora Steil at By All Means Graphics. We've allowed the NEG to use photos from N.org for several months now in exchange for a "thanks to" in the publication. The PDF has consistently been one of the most frequently downloaded files each month on N.org, so for December, we've placed a linked thumbnail in our right sidebar under the calendar. We exploring ways for this to be a mutually beneficial arrangement for NEG, N.org, and our site visitors. Let us know if you have feedback.

We recently passed the milestone of 2,000 posts to this weblog since we started it two years ago... November, 2003.

We had a record month for web traffic in November in all three major categories (click for a more complete graphic):

Visitors: 14,354
Visits: 45,564
Pages/pageviews: 231,345
Hits: Over a million but it's an irrelevant stat. Want to know more? Our web host provider says this:

Rosa Parks was arrested thirty years ago (December 1, 1955) in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give her seat to a white male passenger on a segregated bus. Last year, Northfield-based CoachCrafters rebuilt a 1956 General Motors transit bus for the 50th anniversary of bus boycott. See the story: The Montgomery Bus Project: Bringing a Piece of History Back to Life including a photo album of the project.

The Montgomery Area Transit System (MATS) unveiled the bus last year with Northfielder Wayne Wolf, president of CoachCrafters, on hand (center in photo; click for larger view.) CoachCrafters celebrated their 20th anninversary earlier this fall.

St. Olaf held the first of four concerts of their annual Christmas Festival last night. See the article titled Annual St. Olaf Christmas Festival ushers in Advent season on this year's event.

Above left photo: My wife Robbie and I attended the Northfield community leaders' dinner (a Scandinavian buffet that includes lutefisk and lefse) before the festival, courtesy of Director of Communications, Amy Gage (right).

Center photo: (Shirley and Jim Evans; Ellen and Ray Cox.

Right photo: Scott Neal and spouse Dee Dee sat in front of us at the concert.

Photos/recordings of the performance are not allowed. Photo on the left is from last year's event from their website. Radio, TV and internet broadcasts of the event will soon be available. Full disclosure:

If you have photos of the last night's Winter Walk festivities that you'd be willing to share with the community, (ones of you and your family/friends especially) please contact us.

Left: Northfield Rotary's 2005-2006 Inbound Youth Exchange Student Kirsty Greenwood from South Africa made her goodbye presentation today at Northfield Rotary's lunch. Center: Kirsty was introduced by Vicki Dilley, one of her host moms. Right: with Northfield Rotary President David Brown.

A new sponsor for the first two weeks of December: the 2005 Jingle Bell Run on Dec. 17. It's a charity event, with all registration fees going to the Jeff Amerman Pavilion at Spring Creek Park. Left photo: NCO Board member and Jingle Bell Run committee member Jonathan Jaranson with Justin Stets, Carlson Cap, in promotion high-gear at last week's Turkey Trot. (Click to enlarge.) The event is sponsored by Carlson Capital Management and the MN Center for Philanthropy.

Last night's Alberta Clipper delivered just enough snow for tonight's Winter Walk. Left photo: Bridge Square at 6:30 this morning. Center photo: No parking on Division St. downtown begins at 1 pm. Right photo from 2004: again this year, you can have your kids shot with the James Gang at the Northfield Historical Society.

See the full schedule of activities on the Chamber's Winter Walk page.

See the 100+ photos in the Winter Walk 04 photo album. See the 25+ photos in the Winter Walk 03 photo album. See the 10 photos in the Winter Walk 02 photo album.

Justin Stets and Greg Carlson (left and right in the photo - click to enlarge), principals of Northfield-based Carlson Capital Management (CCM), announced today that they were making a $7,500 contribution to Northfield Citizens Online (NCO), the non-profit organization that operates Northfield.org.

I'm more than pleased, of course.

As a co-founder of NCO, it's been a dream of mine to be able to devote more time to it and have it grow to the next level as an organization. Carlson Cap's generosity will go a long way towards making that happen.

See the PDF of the press release or keep reading for the HTML version, complete with links.

Left: Northfield's 7th annual Winter Walk is tomorrow, Dec. 1, 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. See the full schedule of activities on the Chamber's Winter Walk page. Right: The NDDC has created an extended hours poster for downtown merchants to display. Both posters are in windows all over downtown Northfield.

Santa's elves were hard at work yesterday morning on Bridge Square, constructing the house where he'll be stationed the next three Saturday mornings. Among the elves, L to R: NDDC's Dan Bergeson and Ross Currier, with City of Northfield's Resource Planning Director Howard Merriam. Right photo: Howard modeling the latest in long underwear technology.