This announcement is from the Northfield Public Schools news page:

The Northfield Board of Education and district administration would like to invite parents, students and community members to participate in a broad discussion of the future of school calendars, beyond 2013-14. The first of three calendar meetings will be held from 7 to 9 p.m. on March 7 in the high school upper cafeteria. 

The March meeting will include a review of the history and elements of academic calendars around the world and in the United States. Board and administration will gather ideas from attendees about calendar features that best support student learning. Discussion will include the level of involvement that meeting participants would like to have in upcoming months. 

The Ron Griffith Young Leaders Fund announces new grant recipients, Victoria Ostenso and Ellie Youngblood, both representatives of Carleton College Student Farm.

Victoria and Ellie participated in a Sustainable Agriculture Education Conference in Corvallis, OR. Victoria and Ellie are developing a community outreach program through the Carleton Student Farm that involves teaching sustainable agriculture, plant science and cooking to Northfield area youth in the schools and summer programs. They are also working on networking with other food-related groups at Carleton and St. Olaf to fuel initiatives in the greater Northfield community.

Thursday, March 7: As a solo artist and with his bands Carp 18 and The Bottom 40, Joe Fahey has been a favorite on the Twin Cities blues and folk-rock scene for decades. An award-winning and critically acclaimed singer/songwriter, Fahey's latest release, "Bushnell's Turtle," has been featured on 89.3 The Current's "Local Show" and locally on KYMN Radio's "All-Wheel Drive." The Tavern is especially pleased to (finally) bring this talented musician to Northfield. Of particular note to fans of artists like Neil Young, Jonathan Richman, Vic Chesnutt, Wilco and Josh Ritter. www.joefaheymusic.com.

Friday, March 8: Matthew Griswold brings his bone shakin’ voodoo grooves back to the Lounge, keeping your toes tappin’ and hands clappin’ all night long. His brand of foot stompin’ folk-rock pays a tribute to the Delta Blues with a side order of thistle and shamrock. Expect a repertoire of classic covers, reinvented traditionals and well-crafted originals. www.matthewgriswold.net.

Two longtime volunteers with a Northfield Boy Scout Troop have received the Northfield Healthy Community Initiative’s “Making a Difference” Award for January/February 2013. The award celebrates those groups and individuals in the community who have a positive influence on Northfield youth.

Ed Buchwald and Clark Webster have each served as adult leaders of the Carleton-based Troop 337 for more than four decades. Buchwald, a retired Carleton College geology professor, stepped down as Scoutmaster last October but still helps out with the troop, which he started in 1968. Webster joined the troop as its committee chair in about 1970, a position he still holds.

Both men greatly enjoy camping and backpacking, which is one reason they continue to volunteer with the troop, long past the days when their own sons went through scouting. They also have found it rewarding to share their knowledge and enthusiasm for the outdoors with the boys.

The Cannon Valley Regional Orchestra will present concerts on the theme "Darkness and Light" on March 9 at 3 p.m. at John’s Lutheran Church Hall, 500 3rd Street West in Northfield and March 10 at 4 p.m. at the Paradise Center for the Arts, 321 Central Avenue North in Faribault. 

The Orchestra will render strong emotional musical statements about some of the basic moods of life, including remorse, joy, adventure, glory, and happiness. These will come to the listener through the genius of Hungarian composer Franz Liszt, German Max Bruch, and Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, whose music incorporates darkness and light in sound.

The two March 2013 concerts will feature cellist Anna Clift.  Ms. Clift will be soloist in Max Bruch’s Kol Nidrei, a musical prayer based on the Hebrew service. The cello imitates the cadences of the synagogue cantor.

"Harvest: A Community's History Founded in Bronze" will be shown four times on Saturday, March 16 on Twin Cities Public Television's Minnesota channel.

It will be shown at 1am, 7am, 1pm and 7pm.

Harvest is a documentary created by Northfield film-maker Paul Krause. It focuses on the creation of the sculpture Harvest by Ray "Jake" Jacobson.

The sculpture was created as part of the 150th anniversary of Northfield and can be found on Northfield's River Walk. The film not only shows Jake's creative genius but gives a detailed explanation of the "lost-wax" process of bronze founding.

For more information about Harvest, visit the website at www.DancingSun.biz/harvest.html

The Arts and Culture Commission (ACC) of Northfield, in partnership with the Friends and Foundation of the Library, is pleased to announce the winners of the City’s third annual Sidewalk Poetry Contest and congratulate them for their efforts.  Chosen from among 121 poems submitted for judging, nine poems have been selected for imprinting in city sidewalks.  

The Arts and Culture Commission applauds and thanks the many local poets who submitted their poetry to the competition.  We are pleased to announce the following winners, in alphabetical order, of Northfield’s 2013 Sidewalk Poetry Contest:

Scott Dominic Carpenter will read from This Jealous Earth Friday, March 8th, 7:30 pm at Monkey See Monkey Read.

A man puts his beloved pets to the knife; a family prepares for the Rapture; a woman in a department store slips a necklace into her purse. Whatever the situation, the characters in This Jealous Earth find themselves faced with moments of decision that will forever alter the course of their lives. Always moving and often touched with humor, Carpenter’s stories examine the tension between the everyday and the transcendent—our struggle to grasp what lies beyond our reach. Whether hawking body parts in a Midwestern city, orbiting through the galleries of a Paris museum or plotting sibling tortures in an Arizona desert, his characters lead us through a series of dilemmas of universal appeal.

The Northfield Arts Guild Theater will be holding auditions for the Shakespeare comedy Twelfth Night.  A much loved and hilarious offering from the Bard, Twelfth Night tells the tale of Viola, a young woman washed up on shore who disguises herself as her twin brother Sebastian.  Thought by all to be Sebastian, Viola must ward of the affections of the fair Olivia even while falling head over heels in love with the Duke Orsino. 

A recent Northfield City Council meeting included a presentation by the Dundas-based nonprofit Epic Enterprise Inc. The organization thanked the city for eight years of employing work crews made up of Epic's developmentally disabled clients.

"Hiring people with disabilities is not charity," said Kathy Topp, community employment liaison at Epic, during the presentation. "Bringing them into the City of Northfield is an exemplary act that models corporate and civic responsibility."

Patsy Dew, Assistant Director of the Northfield Senior Center, announces that the Northfield Senior Center and the Cannon Valley Elder Collegium are presenting a series intended to help people think about, and plan for, their own death.    This is a topic many would rather avoid until a health crisis forces decisions to be made.   Attending this series will help individuals identify what is important to them, what their resources are, and how to effectively communicate their end-of-life wishes.   The series may also be helpful to spouses or adult children as they anticipate the death of a family member.   The hope for the whole series is that it will engage people in significant conversation with each other, and eventually with their loved ones.  In addition we will be offering concrete tools, eg. on writing of wills, advance-care directives, etc.    

Northfield.org would like to extend its best wishes to Corey Butler, Jr., as he leaves Northfield Patch for a new position as communications coordinator for the Minnesota Society of CPAs. You can read Corey's farewell to Patch here.

Four Northfield area residents have been added to the Northfield Area Family YMCA Board of Directors.

Named to serve three-year terms on the volunteer board were:
• Kris Estenson, associate director of Employer and Alumni Engagement at St. Olaf College.
• Kris Finger, owner of the Rare Pair and co-owner of the Quarterback Club.
• Kelly Irvine, director of marketing and communications for Carlson Capital Management.
• Jim Pokorney, former Northfield City Council member and owner of Medical Elements, LLC.

On Thursday evening, February 28, at 8:00 in the college chapel, Carleton College will present the only area performance of vocalist Shara Worden and New York-based yMusic in Sarah Kirkland Snider’s song cycle Penelope. yMusic was sheduled to perform in a second performance on Wednesday night in St. Paul as part of the SPCO’s Liquid Music series, but withdrew from the performance due to the ongoing SPCO labor dispute.

Calling Snider’s work “a gorgeous piece of music,” Pitchfork critic Jayson Greene writes: “The quietly devastating song cycle Penelope begins with an unexpected homecoming. A man returns to his wife's doorstep after 20 years in an unnamed war, suffering brain damage—a shadow of his former self. The woman takes this mournful figure in gravely, sorting through her ambivalence, bitterness, and grief by reading to him from Homer's Odyssey. The story’s parallels to their lives—a husband striving heroically over vast distances and years to return to his wife—become a psychological probe for the woman to sound the depths of her shell-shocked husband’s ruined mind. Speaking to him through the poem, she is able to gently coax him back from oblivion.”

This year the Vintage Band Festival will observe the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States, a tumultuous time in American history, but also a time when musical activity grew quickly and hugely among the citizens. Many new bands formed during those years to meet the ceremonial and entertainment needs of the troops, both Union and Confederate. As the war ended and the military musicians returned home, they brought with them an appetite for band music that spawned an explosion in town bands all over the country.

Many among us grew up attending band concerts in the village square, often at a bandstand. This was the main entertainment of the week in many communities, and these concerts helped to develop generations of music listeners and prompted the inclusion of band music in the public schools. Still today, in communities like Northfield, New Prague, Cannon Falls, and Faribault, weekly band concerts can be heard on a summer evening.

The Vintage Band Festival celebrates this important music-making by inviting several community bands from Minnesota to share their music on Aug. 1-4.