Before and after pictures of a dozen 30 year old Ash trees being removed from 5th street July 25th 2008.

I work on 5th street in downtown Northfield and was privy to the vast and rapid change that took place on Thursday and Friday of this past week.  I am attaching a photo gallery of 5th street construction along with just one video of the tree felling.  There are more under my youtube collection. 

On Thursday they removed the cement from the road exposing the soil below.  I have no idea how long it had been since that dirt has seen sunlight.  An enormous piece of machinery pulled it right up and dumped it into waiting trucks.  I don't know where that cement went. 

On Friday they cut down trees.

I collect all sorts of pins, buttons, pinbacks, etc, mostly from Minnesota celebrations including Defeat of Jesse James Days, Bullhead Days, the St Paul Winter Carnival and the Minneapolis Aquatennial.  The Aquatennial started in 1940 and has had solid annual celebrations accept the 1945 and 1946 during the war.  As I write this, there are 66 pin years available and I have 60 of them. 

These are very interesting to view.  I especially love the re-occurring skipper wheel theme.  

I haven't had time to post a lot this month so far because I've been so busy shooting everything.  I've had one after another great set of photo opportunities.  Have a look for yourself.  I encourage you to post your comments on any photo for everyone to see. 

By Brothers Fish Fry in St Louis Park

Taking My Girls to the Rice County Fair

Laps for Logan

Books and Stars

It was so nice to come home Saturday night, take off a perfectly clean shirt and hang it up to be worn again.  I was out at a bar all night watching a hard rock band and there wasn't a bit of cigarette smoke in the air.  I love the smoking ban.  But, that wasn't the best thing about the evening.  My wife's brother is in a band called "Flatrate" that frequents the night clubs in the Twin Cities.  They are a 6 person band that mostly covers 93Xish (heavy modern rock) stuff, with a hand full or originals mixed in. I was very impressed with the vocals.  Russ and Jimmy team up and trade off throughout the evening.  I was especially impressed with their vocal exchanges in P.O.D.'s "South Town". (P.O.D. by the way stands for "payable on death", as in your sins, not "prince of darkness" as I once thought.  The contradiction of the two acronyms is quite the paradox though). You can listen to South town at the end of this video.  Sorry about my camera's poor sound quality.  In it's defense, it was around 130 dB. Can you also click on their photo on the right to view their site (after you look at my video and photos).

The mosquitoes stayed away, low humidity, 75 degrees, friends, family, great food, drink, some background music, meeting new neighbors, plenty of laughter, a beautiful sunset, some fireworks in the street and a front row seat to the local display.  It couldn't have been a better day.  We started the celebration in the cities at my brother Andy's house.  His oldest son has a birthday on the 4th of July (his 2nd son's birthday is on New Years Eve).  I would love have a birthday on the "fourth".  It's my favorite holiday.  The weather is always favorable and everyone is in such a good mood.  It's the "New Years" of summer.  Not to mention my love for fireworks.  I love the smell of sulfur after the blasts.  Really!  It's weird but after the fireworks last night around eleven, there was this smog-like haze of sulfur hanging around.  It's a unique olfactory experience.  Call my crazy, I know. 

I love all those John Phillip Sousa marches they play around I.D. It's so patriotic yet corny.  It's just appropriate for this day.  So, when you put all this together you have one of the most sensoral events possible.  Every sense has it's little treat all day long.  This is what makes it so memorable to me. 

In the photo below are (L to R) Esta Cox-Freeland (grandma), the my dad Al, then Chad & Juley Jenkinson with their 3 kids Sebastian, Isabella and Boden.  Then my wife Lori, me, my mom Sonja, then Bill & Pat Jenkinson (Chad's parents).  Pat & Bill live in the cities.  I grew up in Iowa with the Jenkinsons before we all moved to Minnesota in the early 80's.  We moved up here August 15th 1981.  That will be 27 years in Minnesota this summer.  I'm 35. 

This is a video of 2 "Patriots" being lit at the same time.  Caution: Loud!

AL FREELAND

I don’t claim to be an expert on this subject, but I would like to throw out a thought and see what others think. The subject is, “How green are hybrid and/or electric cars in reality?”

Earlier this year my Uncle Kent & Aunt Kay Freeland planned an outing on Lake Pepin in Lake City, MN.  They rented a large paddle boat that had been restored for use on this large waterfront.  It was a double decker with a full bar, bathrooms, retro-charm, great service, near perfect weather, friends and family and a view to kill for.  It was a perfect day and I'd like to thank Kent and Kay for everything.  Please enjoy the following photo and video albums.  Meanwhile, I am putting together a compilation of these photos and videos, that will be presented to music.  I just wanted to get these up first.

Friends and family that were aboard, please leave a comment for everyone to read.  Tell me what you thought of the trip.  Share photos if you can.

Click here to view all video

I was telling the story today and they thought it was good enough to blog on.  And if you ever read this Dr Gosen, there is no dis-respect meant as you were great to us & and an exceptional doctor.  But, your name begs the question about whether your parents meant to do this, or decided that you name would pre-destine you to be an ob/gyn. 

Dr. Gosen is pronounced "Goes-in" and Dick is short for Richard.  And if you want to get slang with it, you throw the "B" in there and it is all the more funny.  I think you catch my drift.  You just can't make this up!

Dr. Richard Gosen is an MD at Fairview.

TIM FREELAND

I am proud to talk about my families literary skills.  My dad Al, brother Andy, grandma Esta and uncle Kent have all published books over the past 10 years.  I've placed them all here in one spot and have linked them to their respective Amazon.com listing for purchase and review.  I am still working on my first book that will probably be on a topic nothing close to these and probably less interesting. Following is some background from my Dad on his writing experiences.

I always enjoyed reading juvenile or junior reader books - even as an adult.  I have never really psychoanalyzed myself as to why this is so - I just enjoy them.  An easy read - I enjoy pictures - I hate the presumptuousness of the 2000 page books??  Not sure why.  This being the case, I guess that sets the stage for the three books that I have published. 

In the early 80's I started taking canoe trips to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area (BWCA) in Northern Minnesota.  I fell in love with the area, as well as the mystic of the Indian lore, the voyager traders traveling across the landscape so many years ago, and the danger and excitement of the area.  After many years it hit me that there were many types of books written about the BWCA, but not any or at least many, written from a young reader's perspective. 

It all started for me in the June of 1994 when I was invited to "Mike's Cabin" on lake Tatonka in Waterville MN for a weekend event celebrating their annual "Bullhead Days".  Did you know they are the "Bullhead capital of the world" so their city sign proclaims. 

I was pumped to stay the weekend in the cabin.  Turns out there was no cabin.  Just a parked camper and it was full.  So, I slept in the back of a pick-up truck.  That next morning, I officially re-named it "Hart's lake shore property" so as not to mis-lead anyone else.  Truck beds are brutal. 

For 14 years I have spend the 2nd week of June in Waterville.  I started to collect their celebration pin-back buttons.  I am grateful to the Hart family for having us all down year after year.  If you know of anyone who might have buttons from prior years, please let me know!

Following is a list of traditional activities (some of which I do and do not partake in).

• Lighting off fireworks.  Some legal and some no-so-much.
• Boating on Tatonka and watching Mike do cannon-balls into the green water.
• Taking the boat through a small, shallow channel that I named "Appacolypse Now" after the familiar scenes in the afore mentioned movie. 
• Playing catch with a ball and glove with the guys.  We once had an 8-way going.
• BBQing
• Going "into town" to watch locals eat disgusting deep-fried bullheads.  (those are rough fish...bottom feeders).
• Singing karaoke at the "Corner Bar".
• 2008 was the 44th year of the celebration.

So, here it is.  Almost every photo that I've ever taken of the lake festivities.  It's fun to watch everyone change through the years.  Notice a crew of faithful that never change while the yearly guests change. Click the mosaic.

Or, you can click here to view my collection of Bullhead Days Buttons. 

I recently made a rare trip to the DQ here in town.  I love chocolate and decided to get their ultimate "whatever" since I don't often indulge.  After finishing up my "Fudge Brownie Temptation Waffle Bowl Sundae" I started to think about it's fat and caloric detail as I entered some form of diabetic shock. 

Upon finding the DQ website I was able to navigate to their nutritional information, but only after a bit of a hunt.  The first screen was a disclosure regarding saturated fat percentage laws in certain states.  That page is here.  After this I was able to view the nutritional calculator, where you choose the ingredients piece-meal after which I was able to view the results found below. 

998 calories, 50g fat with 50% of the calories coming from fat.  Well, recently, I've been on a diet restricting my daily intake to 1500-2000 calories.  The treat pretty much blew that away for the day. 

But I'll tell you.  It was A W E S O M E!!  I wish I was as exited about broccoli. 

What started out as a weekly "meeting of the minds" at the Rueb n' Stein in downtown Northfield turned into what we believe to be a unique concept.  Adam Gurno  & Tim Freeland have teamed up to launch a mostly web-based endeavor that turns old photos and any video into a custom tailored presentation for any event, set to your choice of music and fully personalized to please. 

"We really seemed to click and had unique talents that fit together perfectly," said Tim.  "We found a shared interest in entrepreneurial endeavors and quickly agreed that the path to success was to include the latest technology and had to be driven by an online presence."

The concept of their business includes taking old and new photos and video relevant to a certain person or event, for example, and artistically weaving them together  into one flowing presentation, all to the beat of your chosen musical soundtrack.  Using their own experiences along with the latest video and digital photography software, they are able to enhance, fix, alter, blend and direct the content together in ways that tell a story. 

"Tim had skills with business management, video production, advertising, sales, video archiving and photo restoration while I had experience with building online web site systems, multi-media software, video editing, artistic direction as well as working with the local Northfield Citizens Online (NCO) group and running Northfield.org," explained Adam.

Hayes Scriven contacted me a week ago exited over the corn tortilla chip that he found featuring the likeness of the great state of Minnesota.  Being a connoisseur of fine Minnesota shapes, I was pumped (see my Flickr collection of MN shapes, blog on the eastern Minnesota boarder, or blog on my Minnesota shape collection).

So, I put up this auction.  We had a bid right away.  Sweet.  We were already trying to decide what to do with the profits of this auction.  Surely there was some Minnesota-shape-cult out there (one I might join) willing to pay big bucks for this act of Boreaus-God kindness. 

But, on the last day, we were still at .99 cents.  Hayes emailed me telling me that he'd rather eat it than sell it for a buck.  I was fretting having to pack the thing and ship it, so I pulled it down, canceling the one bid.  I soon found out that the bid was that of Adam Gurno, our friend.  Good one Adam. 

Today the Twins went 5-0 in their 5 game home stand sweeping my current two least favorite rival teams, the White Sox and The Tigers.  We all know that it's only a matter of time before Detroit turns it around and ends up on top, but let's enjoy our day in the lime-light with a 1.5 game lead of the Central.  Now that I have blogged this, I have some reference to come back to later in the season when we are not on top.  Am I cynical?  Maybe a little...but this is just too good to be true given the more established talent in our division.  Maybe the ownership and management of the Twins know something that we don't.  Let's hope so.   Many said "I'll have to see" when the season began.  Could this be a pleasant surprise to rival the 2006 Twins? 

I had my first experience with "cattle handling" this weekend.  On Saturday was the 2nd annual "Healthy Kids Day" at the Northfield Middle School.  The event was great for both kids and adults with plenty of entertainment, activities and free stuff for all.  The cow, "Patty Cash" of the Northfield Downtown Development Corporation (NDDC) drew many high-fives, hand shakes, hugs and photos as we strolled around and handed out "Patty Cash's Top 10 Things To Do With Your Kids Downtown Northfield" fliers.