With all the film crews in Northfield lately, I figured, hey, how hard can it be? So I picked up a Mini-DV camcorder earlier this week and launched my new…
Locally Grown (LoGro) Northfield Posts
Here’s my blog post of NDDC blogger Ross Currier’s photo which was posted on Josh Hinnenkamp’s Union of Youth blog, a photo of Northfield News non-blogging photographer Dan Iverson taking…
Okay Kiffi, you’ve waited long enough, it’s time I revealed the traffic statistics for Locally Grown. Hey, did you know that today is Jerry Garcia’s birthday? Jerry played an important…
With the steady increase in comments to our blog posts, it was about time we publicized our discussion guidelines instead of carrying them around in our heads for you to guess. There is now a Guidelines tab on the nav bar tab that’s at the top of every page.
And there’s a reminder with a link on the comment box itself.
A blog with comments enabled is not quite the same as a full-fledged web forum or discussion board. There are both philosophical and technical differences. I’ll explain if anyone’s interested.
Here’s the text of the Guidelines. We’d like feedback on them and are willing to consider adapting them.
When Kiffi Summa suggests that we Men of Northfield are passing the time by lying around eating bonbons, apparently in a sugar induced stupor, I must declare, “It is not…
Kiffi Summa has implied that the Locally Grown crew is a Triumvirate. I remember that concept from Shakespeare’s play, Julius Ceasar, (and maybe a government class in college), but, being…
Songs of Hope, co-sponsored by the Northfield Public Schools Community Services Division, the Northfield Rotary Club, and the Northfield News, performed on Bridge Square on Thursday night at the end…
In the comments to my previous post about Northfield/Apple Valley, Anne B. said, “I’ve been asking for two years and I don’t have a clue what you and Ross and others want the city to be.” Well, I’d certainly never try to speak for Ross and others, but I’ll take another, more comprehensive crack at the subject to see on which points we might find agreement and disagreement.
What I “want Northfield to be”, or rather, my vision for the community, is fairly straightforward, and I’ll try to limit my details to those concerned with planning and land use. Things like “quality education”, “good health care”, “controlling heroin use”, and “promoting the arts” are beyond the purview of this discussion. At least for now.
The short answer is, I’d like to see Northfield be a community that demonstrates cradle-to-grave livability based on the collective wisdom of the last five millennia or so of urbanized societies; a cohesive, functioning community of people with a multiplicity of connections to each other (education, recreation, work, civic, church, social) that go beyond the superficial.
That means a mix of ages, a mix of occupations, a mix of land and building uses….. built to a scale designed for the convenience of human beings (not for 2000 pounds of motorized steel and aluminum). This discourages isolationism and encourages interaction between residents through all seasons of life, which fosters a genuine sense of community. It’s also psychologically and socially healthy, and if done well, sustainable. No more bowling alone.
People have known how to do this for a long time, and relevant examples abound. We’ve lost a lot of that knowledge in the 20th century, particularly in the postwar era, but the tools and examples are still there, and the knowledge is being recovered. (If this is too subtle, or too vague, I’d be happy to provide an extensive reading list and point to relevant resources to elucidate the things that are implicit in these first few paragraphs. For now, I’d like to keep moving along toward a longer, more detailed answer.)
I’ve been added photo albums over the past few months to a new Locally Grown photo gallery. They’re mostly new albums, but I plan to keep keep adding albums from…