Items of interest

At yesterday's Northfield Rotary lunch: Left: Jim Blaha, Charlie Skinner, Bob Will, Mark Mohlke, and Rick Estenson. (Skinner and Mohlke were admitted. It'll be my turn in a few weeks.) Center and right: Vicki Dilley's presentation included she and her husband Lee's Peace Corps years in Tuvalu. The basket of flags represent the countries of exchange students they've hosted at their home over the years. Click photos to enlarge.

Star Tribune: St. Olaf choir leader wins $200,000 teaching prize. "St. Olaf College choir conductor and music professor Anton Armstrong is the winner of the most lucrative award in the nation for great college teaching."

St. Olaf News Service: Anton Armstrong '78 receives $200,000 'great teaching' award

Baylor University has named Anton Armstrong, conductor of the famed St. Olaf Choir, the recipient of the 2006 Robert Foster Cherry Award for Great Teaching -- the single largest award given in the United States to an individual for great teaching. Armstrong, the Harry R. and Thora H. Tosdal Professor of Music at St. Olaf College and a 1978 alumnus, will receive $200,000; an additional $25,000 will be awarded to the St. Olaf Music Department.

I took this photo yesterday of ArtOrg Executive Director Dave Machacek taking a long gaze at one of John Berkey's pieces that recently was purchased for $25,000 by a visitor to the ArtOrg web site.

Over $100,000 of Berkey's work has been sold since the exhibition, John Berkey Observed, opened last fall at their Moving Walls Gallery. The show closes this Friday, Jan. 13, with a party, part of this weekend's Northfield Art Crawl. Berkey and his wife Demi Wahl Berkey plan to attend. See Dave's blog post for more.

I got invited to the Cannon River Watershed Partnership Open House yesterday afternoon, held to honor its new executive director, Dave "Sewer Man" Legvold, shown in the left photo above on the right with City Councilor Kris Vohs. Right photo, L to R: Hilary Ziols, CRWP's Outreach and Development Coordinator, Charley Skinner of FIT Organizations, George Kinney, CRWP Board Member. Below: Grandpa and grandma Dave and Ruth Legvold with grandsons Jorgan Legvold (8) and Kai Legvold (3).

Last night, the City Council recognized the efforts of the Veterans Memorial Committee in the planning and construction of the Northfield Area Veterans Memorial. Committee members: Will Brosz, Paul McGuire, Al Greenlee, Kenneth Grisim, William Morson, Orville Schmidt, Larry Turner.

See nine more photos on page 4 of the dedication photo album.

Northfield Union of Youth blogger Joshua Jude has posted this on their web site: Reading Workshop Continues with Albert Camus' The Stranger.

"The Key's newest program, Reading Workshop, will be following up Siddhartha with the existential classic The Stranger by Albert Camus. The books will be handed out Monday, January 9th 5:00pm at the Key. All copies are free."

The books are free because of a grant from the Northfield Healthy Community Initiative.

Carleton's KRLX radio began broadcasting last night after a holiday break. The station can be found at 88.1 FM or via live streaming. They have several RSS feeds (we aggregate their main weblog on our right sidebar) and two podcasts: News Programs and Feature Programs. And last night on the Carleton Radio Forum: "Student host Martin Miller and Carleton political science professor Al Montero [spoke] with National Review Online Editor Jonah Goldberg on his career path, the state of conservatism in the US, and the philosophies of big government and news media."

Dave and Donna Ricks and family from Northfield got a ride in a hot air balloon this afternoon from their Burnsville friends. They departed from the Carleton Rec Center and I took photos and some video of their landing near the high school at around 4 pm. Click the photos above to enlarge and see over twenty more in the hot air balloon landing photo album.

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Click the play button on the two 20 second video clips. The left clip is slightly distorted because I had to rotate it. The balloon is not as squashed as it appears. The right clip shows them demonstrating how to jump-start a balloon if the battery goes dead.

The model condo for Northfield Crossing is going up on the site of the old Community National Bank drive-up at 2nd St. and Hwy. 3.

The sign reads, "Anticipated grand opening Feb. 11."

Click to enlarge.

After belting out a rendition of "Everybody Loves Somebody," Dean Martin impersonator Tom Durkin gave an overview of his recent trip to China to the Northfield Rotary last Thursday. (Click photos to enlarge.) Tom, who also moonlights as Vice President of International Operations and Global Sourcing for Midwest of Cannon Falls, was part of Governor Pawlenty's trade mission to China in November.

For several weeks, a group or organization named "Talk Back" has been putting up posters around town and placing ads in the Northfield News. (Click photos to enlarge.) They appear to have upper/lower case fixation syndrome:

LiKe SoUp? LiKe YoUr PaJamas? WaNt to SLeEp In? LiKe CaMp ChAirs AnD CoFfee?

Anyone know what it's about? Attach a comment here or Contact Us.

Anne Bretts posted this to the ISSUES list this morning.

Twas the day after Christmas and all through old North's fields
The keyboards were silent as we kept our eyes peeled.
Our e-mails were crafted and addressed with care.
In hopes on the Issues list they would be shared.

The Northfield News is reporting this morning that David Bly has been selected as the 2005-06 Teacher of the Year by the Northfield Education Association (NEA).

Bly is an English teacher at the Area Learning Center (ALC) and has been part of the Northfield civic blogosphere since August of 2003.

New signage went up on the old Quiznos building on the Q-Block yesterday. "Wiggles & Wok" (no relation) does not appear to be a franchise, as a web search turns up nothing.

I've heard from two people on who the new owners are, but they did not want to be attributed as the source. If you have details, contact us.

A tip of the blogger hat to Dean Kjerland (Archeopaleo) and Bob Courchaine (Northfield Internetworking) for the heads-up.

Early this evening, under a slightly obscured full moon yet with big snowflakes falling, I was cross country skiing in the lower Arb and ran into Sam Demas and Laurel Bradley.

Their smiles at the scene we were experiencing were as wide as mine. (Click photo to enlarge. And yes, that's a snowflake about to land on Sam's nose.)

Laurel is Carleton's Director of Exhibitions and Curator of the College Art Collection. Sam is the College Librarian and on the board of the Northfield Arts Guild.