I don’t know what President-elect Barack Obama will ask of us but he said last night in Chicago:
This victory alone is not the change we seek. It is only the chance for us to make that change. And that cannot happen if we go back to the way things were. It can’t happen without [...]
In the never-ending and always growing area of my life known as the “to-read list”, I recently worked through another item. It was a special section on economic development in the July 28th, Wall Street Journal.
The article looked at seven cities around the world showing visible signs of economic vigor. Lessons were drawn for those [...]
Blogger Susan Lenfestey has a commentary in Sunday’s Strib titled, It’s summer, and folks are busting out all over (Barbie doll image is my selection):
Nor did we who believe in gender equality intend this to be a license to the fashion industry to market slutwear to prepubescent girls, and bondagewear to their big sisters…
It’s [...]
Minnesota Public Radio’s Public Insight Journalis (PIJ) project hosted a moderated discussion last Friday night in their UBS Forum. A group of about 20 citizens selected from their PIJ database were invited to discuss the topic: The Press and the Public: What’s the new relationship?
A group of about 10 attendees from the Journalism [...]
NY Times columnist David Brooks wrote a column earlier this month titled: The Neural Buddhists: The cognitive revolution is not going to undermine faith in God — it’s going to challenge faith in the Bible. (He references a 1996 article by Tom Wolfe, titled Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died.)
In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens [...]
I see Northfield librarian Debby Nitz has posted to the Northfield.org blog that the MN Sesquicentennial Banner will be in Northfield Thursday evening and Friday this week. I plan to be there, taking photos and contributing to the journal.
I’m all for celebrating our state’s sequicentennial but there’s another aspect to the celebration that needs [...]
Ever since Snobamagate, I’ve been thinking about the degree to which I’m a snob… and whether Northfield has more than its share of snobbish people.
Twenty-five years ago, I worked for the Faribault Public Schools as a school social worker and it struck me how frequently the snobbishness of Northfielders came up in conversations among [...]
Last summer, I made fun of Northfield United Methodist Church pastor Clay Oglesbee, shown here at the Blue Monday earlier this week, his wrist in a cast, wracked in pain.
He’s now my hero and should be yours.
Why?
Allow me to assemble the elements of the drama:
A threatening brown bat (surely Big, not Little).
A church [...]
I’ve been considering learning to use David Allen’s Getting Things Done (GTD) process for a while now. But beyond buying the book and listening to some Merlin Mann podcasts about GTD, I’ve never really tried to implement it.
But I’m at the point now where I have to admit that my life has become increasingly unmanageable. [...]
We’ve had an ongoing discussion thread on what’s great about Northfield, and the diversity of comments led me to wonder about a related topic: What was it that brought you to Northfield? Much can be attributed to the lure of the colleges, both for academic and employment purposes, but anecdotal evidence leads me to suspect [...]
My wife Robbie and I moved to Northfield in 1974, just after we got married. We raised all four of our kids here. We’re new empty-nesters but we plan to live here till we die, hopefully not real soon.
With all the recent controversies, going back to July last year, the town has gotten a considerable [...]
Whenever Thanksgiving weekend rolls around, memories of playing hockey on ponds near my house where I grew up in Eagan (then a township) come back to me. By November 1st, most of my prayers consisted of praying for cold weather. If we didn’t have thick enough ice by Thanksgiving weekend, I was sure that God [...]
Washington Post columnist David Broder has a column today titled Three Words For the Next President which begins:
Peter Hart, the Democratic pollster whose firm has interviewed thousands of voters this year, says the attributes most of them desire in a president for 2008 can be summed up in three words: transparency, authenticity and unity. [...]
I just saw Jim Bierman’s post on Northfield.org that Warren Ringlien died last week. I got to know Warren via his regular participation on the old Northfield.org ISSUES discussion list… and later discovered he was a fairly close neighbor of ours.
(I took this photo of Warren at the 2005 Home and Garden Show. Click to [...]
Last week, the Strib reprinted a column by Los Angeles Times’ Gregory Rodriguez titled Diversity may not be the answer: Just existing together won’t erase mistrust; instead, we should work toward creating an identity that includes everyone. (The Strib used the headline and tagline: Together, apart: A dissection of diversity - People in the most diverse areas [...]
Locally Grown has been chosen to test an innovative project called Representative Journalism (RepJ). Bonnie Obremski is the RepJ reporter/journalist currently assigned to Northfield.
See the complete listing of all her stories here, most current ones first.
RepJ stories by Bonnie Obremski Bruce Anderson Bill Ostrem David Bly, State Rep. 25B Ross Currier, NDDC Exec. Director Kevin Dahle, State Senator, D25 Bruce Morlan/Politics and a Pint League of Women Voters Northfield