Rob Hardy's blog

Crews were out this morning (Wednesday, May 16) installing the first of Northfield's sidewalk poems in the vicinity of the Northfield Public Library. The poems are winners of the first Sidewalk Public Poetry Contest in 2011, which was sponsored by the Friends and Foundation of the Northfield Public Library and the Northfield Arts and Culture Commission. As of noon, two of the poems had been installed, one on the Third Street side of the library (pictured, right), and one on the Division Street side. Places have been prepared for two more poems, another in front of the library, and one across the street in front of the Archer House. According to a member of the Arts and Culture Commission, downtown business owners have been enthusiastic about having the poems in front of their businesses.

For more good photographs of the installation, see the story on Northfield Patch.

This is Northfield’s last week to enjoy a spectacular visiting exhibit of American art at the Perlman Teaching Museum in Carleton College’s Weitz Center for Creativity. The exhibit is “Our Treasures: Highlights from the Minnesota Museum of American Art,” and it ends on Tuesday, May 8. The exhibit includes thirty works by well-known American artists like Grant Wood, Thomas Hart Benton, Romare Bearden, Christo, and Paul Manship. Among the highlights are three spectacular bronze sculptures by Manship (1885-1966), the St. Paul sculptor best known for this sculpture Prometheus, which forms the centerpiece of Rockefeller Center in New York City.

Standing in front of Bob Gregory-Bjorklund’s theater class at ARTech, I asked the students what they enjoyed most about being involved in theater. Half a dozen hands shot up. I called on a boy in the back row.

“I like how everyone works together,” he said.

The other students agreed: the best thing about being involved in theater is the sense of community it creates.

At their meeting on Thursday evening, April 19, the Northfield Parks and Recreation Advisory Board voted to recommend Riverside Park as the location of a temporary skate park for the 2012 season.  Riverside Park is the home of a preexisting asphalt pad on which (after sealcoating) the skateboard equipment can be temporarily installed.

The vote came after a discussion in which some residents of the Village on the Cannon (VOC), which adjoins Riverside Park, voiced concerns about locating a skatepark near senior citizens housing. Some of the residents of VOC fall into the category of vulnerable adults. Skateboarding advocates said they understood these concerns, and promised to work together with residents of VOC, with The Key, and with city officials, to educate skateboarders about their responsibilities.

The Parks and Recreation Board is scheduled to take up the issue of the location of a skatepark at their meeting on Thursday, April 19, at 7:00 pm in the Northfield Public Library meeting room.

Discussions about a permanent skateboard park in Northfield began six years ago, in June 2006, when a group of local youth organized the Northfield Skateboard Coalition. The Coalition, spearheaded by Joe McGowan, pitched their idea to the Northfield Parks and Recreation Board, and began fundraising for a skatepark. Between October 2006 and April 2007, $10,000 was raised through a matching grant from the Northfield Healthy Community Initiative.  In 2011, the Northfield Union of Youth acquired equipment for a skateboard park, which is currently being stored by the city. With equipment in storage, and funding due to expire, 2012 seems to be the year for a decision on a location for the skatepark.

Click "Read more" for a list of links to resources for understanding this issue.

On February 11, Andrew Wilson faced a choice. As a member of the Northfield High School boys varsity swimming and diving team, he could compete in the Missota Conference finals in Northfield, or he could head about 50 miles south to Mantorville to compete in the regional round of the Poetry Out Loud competition. Wilson chose to recite poetry.

Actually, the choice had been made three weeks earlier, when Wilson became aware of the conflict and approached Coach Davis to request permission to attend the Poetry Out Loud semifinals. It’s an indication of his character that Wilson not only obtained his coach’s permission, but was later chosen as one of the captains of next year’s swim team.

It’s an exceptional student who has to make the kind of choice that Andrew Wilson made, but Wilson—an ARTech junior who is also a star of the Northfield cross country and track teams—takes it all in stride.

“I like sports that make you push yourself to be your individual best,” Wilson says. “Sports like swimming and running—and reciting poetry.”

Editor's Note: The opinions expressed in this piece are those of an individual member of the Northfield.org board, and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the board as a whole.

Since I joined the board of Northfield.org in 2008, we have had numerous discussions about whether to allow anonymous (or pseudonymous) comments on the site. We recently moved to a new comment system (Disqus) which allows guests to leave such comments. Recently, the first pseudonymous comment, under the name “Newt,” was posted on Marika Christofides’ story about Rebekah Frumkin’s Occupy Northfield teach-in. I would like to take this occasion as an opportunity to address the issue of anonymous comments, and the standards of civil discussion that I would like to see adhered to on Northfield.org.

Later this evening, my wife and I are driving up to Minneapolis International Airport to meet our son, Will, who is returning from a year as a Rotary Youth Exchange student in Thailand. We’re excited, and curious to reconnect with someone who, undoubtedly, will be both profoundly familiar and so profoundly changed. A year abroad, immersed in a different culture, is a transformative experience.  As I prepare to head to the airport, I’m a little in awe.

“I am from the United States of America, but I feel like my soul is half Brazilian and always was,” says Aletha, who spent her Rotary year in Brazil.

What a wonderful experience: to discover that one’s soul is expansive enough to hold a new world.  How much better the world would be if it contained more such expansive souls!

One of Northfield's worst-kept secrets is Pizza Night at Red Barn Farm. The Winter Family farm on the south edge of Northfield is an idyllic place, made even more special with the addition of a wood-fired pizza oven. On Wednesday evenings and Sunday afternoons in the summer months, Tammy and Patrick Winter and their two children fire up the oven and set about the herculean task of making pizzas for the crowds of people picnicking on the lawn. Depending on when you arrive and order your pizza, it can take a while: we waited almost two hours for our pizza the first time we visited. But the relaxed and convivial atmosphere make it a pleasant wait. Adults sit on blankets sipping glasses of wine (bring your own), children run around happily, and often a band plays up beyond the bonfire of used pizza boxes. It feels like a weekly Fourth of July celebration or a family reunion. And the pizza, when it finally comes, is amazing. After Griff Wigley went for the first time on Wednesday, June 8, he reported on LocallyGrown that 130 pizzas were made. His post includes a good set of photos from that evening.

For our family, Friday is the traditional pizza night. I make my own pizza dough, and usually cook the pizza in the oven on a special pizza stone. Last night, since the weather finally cooperated, I decided to fire up the Weber grill and try making my own backyard wood-fired pizza.

One of the things I like about living in a town bookended by wind turbines is that it gives me a clearer sense of the direction of the wind. For most of the past week, the turbines have been facing into a resolute east wind, bringer of unsettled weather, clouds, and rain. But yesterday afternoon, as I walked through the Cowling Arboretum, I saw that the Carleton turbine had turned to face a north wind, and I was reassured that the forecast would deliver on its promise of clearing skies.

The wind turbines are one index of changes in the weather from day to day. The restored tallgrass prairie in the Arboretum, on the other hand, is an index of the steady progression of the seasons from spring to fall. Right now, one of the highlights of the prairie is the white wild indigo, spiking up above the prairie grasses. The characteristic yellow and orange flowers of the midsummer prairie—rudbeckia (black-eyed susan), compass plant, and various sunflowers (like the sawtooth sunflower pictured here)—have just started to bloom. Click here for a small photoset of some of the flowers blooming in the Arboretum right now.

Early this morning, my wife and I said goodbye to our oldest son, Will, as he passed through security at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to begin a twenty-four hour journey to Thailand, where he will spend the next eleven months as a Rotary Youth Exchange student. 

But the adventure really began a year ago, when Will and I met with Vicki Dilley, the Northfield Rotary Club’s youth exchange officer, to find out about the exchange program.  The months that followed were punctuated with important milestones leading toward the big day of departure.  In early November, the application was due. In early December, Will joined more than a dozen other Northfield students in Roseville for the district interviews.  In late December, Will learned that he had been placed in Thailand.

This weekend, Northfield has been host to the 2010 Vintage Band Festival.  The four-day festival draws brass bands from as far away as Helsinki, Finland.  One of the highlights of the weekend was a reenactment of a Civil War “battle of the bands,” with two bands in historical costume facing off across the Cannon River.  On the east side of the river was Newberry’s Victorian Cornet Band, from Maryland, which specializes in music from the period 1870 to 1900.  On the west side of the river was the 1st Brigade Band, from Watertown, Wisconsin, which specializes in music of the Civl War era. The band members play "over the shoulder" instruments, the bells of which face backwards toward the soldiers who were marching behind the band. You can see an over the shoulder bugle in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art here.  

Have you noticed these bug-covered, dark purple objects hanging from trees around Northfield? The Minnesota Department of Agriculture is currently conducting a survey to detect the presence of the emerald ash borer. This detection trap is hanging in an ash tree in Central Park. The emerald ash borer is an insect whose larvae tunnel into the bark of ash trees and destory the tree's circulatory system. The state's more than 900 million ash trees are at risk for infestation by the emerald ash borer.

The three 2010 Northfield High School graduates who organized the "Beat Cancer: Cancer Jam 2010" benefit—Heidi Strike, Leigh Langehough, and Rachel Hanson—have been named the recipients of the July 2010 "Making a Difference" Award by the Northfield Healthy Community Initiative.  The award "celebrates those groups or individuals in the community who have a positive influence on Northfield's youth."  For more, see Zach Pruitt's Northfield Healthy Community Initiative blog post.  

A new trail link was dedicated this morning behind Just Food Coop.  The riverside trail, linking the Mill Towns Trail to downtown Northfield, was dedicated to Maggie Lee, who cut the purple ribbon to officially open the trail.  Speakers at the event were Meg Otten, chair of the Friends of the Mill Towns Trail; Chip DeMann; Spencer Jones, the architect of the trail link; Mayor Mary Rossing; and Maggie Lee.  After the ribbon cutting, attendees were offered purple coneflowers from Mayor Rossing's garden, and invited to toss them into the river and make a wish.  

Just Food provided coffee and scones before the ceremony, and music was provided by brass from the Cannon Valley Regional Orchestra.  Coffee was offered after the ceremony on the new deck behind Butler's Steak and Ale.  Click "Read More" to view a short slideshow of the event.  For better quality photos, see the gallery in the Northfield News or Griff's set of photos on LocallyGrown.