Opinion

Springing anew through the defrosted grounds of the "Northfield Blogosphere":http://northfield.org/aggregator/sources this week are entries on soccer, science, singing, and sustainability. Sweet!

More inside...

A quick round up of this weeks posts in the "Northfield blogosphere":http://northfield.org/aggregator/sources...

Issues covered in show #11 of Locally Grown, recorded in the KRLX 88.1 FM studio at Carleton on Friday afternoon:

1) The Very Short Play Festival with guest Brendon Etter (click photo to enlarge; taken at a karaoke event a month ago).

2) The proposed expansion/relocation of the Northfield Municipal Liquor Store (starting at the 19 minute mark). 

The StarTribune recently published an editorial that showcases the findings from our statewide poll of voters’ support for early education. Those polled stretched across geographic areas, party lines and socioeconomic strata. Overwhelmingly, they agreed that making sure all children in Minnesota enter kindergarten fully prepared is a top priority for the state to address now.

Northfield has an Early Childhood Initiative: a group of people who are committed to strengthening early childhood experiences in Northfield.  One third (1/3) of incoming Kindergarteners in Northfield are not prepared for kindergarten!  They have not learned basic concepts such as: under, over and through, colors, letter recongition or book skills (holding a book, opening it etc.) 

Many of us on the north side of town, especially parents of small children, were dismayed to find our only nearby park play set suitable for little children removed. The sign in the right photo (click photos to enlarge) indicates the removal was due to safety reasons, which we certainly want to respect, but the clincher is we have to wait until 2007 for a new set.  As a resident of this part of town, I always felt that compared to other areas of town, our corner of northfield offers little in terms of open, public spaces suitable for children.