How was your Thanksgiving?

I took last Wednesday off and spent the day with my family. After proclaiming the day Epic Wednesday “the last shopping day before Thanksgiving” we set out on our adventures.

 Scheduled for the evening was a trip to see the holiday lights in Phalen Park. It’s a drive along Lake Phalen that’s decorated by lights,joy,cheer, and corporate sponsorship.

From the Eastside Review,

For 37 nights starting Nov. 25, families will be able to drive a half-mile course within Phalen Park and view 43 different displays illuminated by LED lights, such as ice castles with snowdrift peaks, soldiers with horns, Santa Claus in a North Pole truck, and a tunnel of lights.

Sightseers will pay a vehicle entrance fee of $8 Sunday through Thursday and $10 on Friday and Saturday or holidays.

IF YOU GO:
What: Holiday Lights in the Park
Where: 1615 Phalen Drive East
When: Daily holiday tours are from 5:30-10 p.m. from Nov. 25-Dec. 31.

The profits go to to Second Harvest Heartland, Union Gospel Mission, the St. Paul Parks Conservancy Fund and UnderConstruction.  

The lights were pretty cool, but sadly my child node cried the entire ride. None the less, I only have two laments.

 1) It would have been nicer with snow. 2) We should have stopped at the cookie and hot cocoa stand near the entrance. I misheard directions. Live and learn. Or dare I say, that’s how the cookie crumbles?

So if you like holidays,charities, and festive lighting you should check it out.

More info:
Lights in the Park
For the brave, some video I shot and barely produced.

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Are you into the election equivalent of watching paint dry? The Senate recount is finally upon us and while everyone will be covering it, your best bet for the quickest non-stop coverage will be the local independent media that are all over it.

The UpTake will have live video and live-blogging of the recounting process on their front page, and you can follow along on Twitter by watching the hashtag “#mnrecount” or individual accounts: @theuptake, @chuckumentary. Of course, you can always show up in person to watch the recount, which is open to the media and the public. (If you really like The UpTake, you can hang out at their Fall Fundraiser on Friday! Disclosure: I ran around with them during the RNC.)

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The kids at MnSpeak (that’s what I’m still calling it) have already started talking about this, but I have a different angle.

When the Pioneer Press brought the Rice Street Deli’s famous Gangster Burger back to the office for this non review (they never say what it tastes like), for some reason photographer Hillery Shay decided to capture the five pound burger with a bottle of Diet Coke in the background.

Was that a joke? If your arteries can handle two half-pound hamburger patties, three six-ounce steaks, a half-pound of gyro meat, a half-pound of Italian beef and six slices of cheese, I think you can handle a full strength soda.

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Tour diary video post from Lubbock, TX band A Road Less Traveled:

They played Club 3 Degrees last Friday. I laughed out loud at about 1:40 when the live MOA rollercoaster cam shows them go upside down.

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The Minneapolis Metblog is having an open call for authors. If you’re a blogger looking for a wider audience, or simply have a desire to write about what’s happening in Minneapolis Saint Paul, keep reading:

The qualifications:

1. You need to live in or near the Twin Cities metro area - Metblogs is all about the city from the perspective of people who live here.
2. An ability and willingness to post at least three times a week. You’ve seen our stuff, so you know an entry could simply be a pic, a review of your favorite burger place or a rant about how idiotic our public transportation is.
3. A desire to cover topics you’re passionate about. We’re looking for unique voices and to more broadly represent the city.
4. Team players. Authors here don’t always agree with each other, but we’re supportive of each other’s contributions.

Besides the wide audience, the best part of Metblogs is the editorial process: there is none. As long as what you write is about Minneapolis-Saint Paul or specifically relevant to MSP readers, it qualifies. Otherwise, we’re a sandbox for writers to play in, create their own columns and write the stuff they wish existed.

This is an unpaid gig, but you have the opportunity to have your stuff read by our fabulous Minneapolitans on a daily basis. Vloggers, photographers, community journalists, gripers and anyone else with a desire to write about Minneapolis is encouraged to apply.

While already having a blog doesn’t hurt, especially to demonstrate your ability to post frequently, it’s far from a requirement. If interested, send me an e-mail telling us briefly about yourself, blog link (if you have one) and what type of topics you’d like to cover. We’ve got new authors! Hooray!

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• The Daily Planet has the scoop on what Minneapolitans need to know about education issues. School board candidates, a referendum on changing how school board members are elected (Councilmember Cam Gordon says vote yes), and a referendum on a property tax increase for school funding. I promise, you can stop all the cramming on candidates and issues in four days. Hang in there.
• CM Gordon also had the deets on reorganization in the city government that will better engage residents on the neighborhood level. “Last month, the Council voted to establish a new Department of Neighborhood and Community Relations and a new Neighborhood and Community Engagement Commission. These lay the foundation for what will likely be a similar, but significantly different, neighborhood revitalization program and a potentially much more effective City community engagement system in the future.” Sounds like the exact future of the Neighborhood Revitalization Program is still unclear.
• Amy Rea recently visited the James J. Hill House for a social studies assignment. I don’t know what her kid’s homework looked like, but Amy’s looks pretty good.
• Buy the Change (building community through commerce) wants you to truly put your money where your mouth is. They have the following goals: “To help people connect with their neighbors and people who share their values while supporting the organizations and businesses they care about.” AND “To raise awareness of the power of individual purchasing decisions and to provide tools that harness this power as a force for social change.” This video explains how it works. This better video explains how it works. They have larger goals, geographically speaking, but right now they’re heavily focused on Twin Cities neighborhoods. [Buy the Change blog] (via @MNWINwebmaster)
• Ban the Ban Minnesota is “a nonpartisan, non-profit organization dedicated to helping the people and independent small businesses in the state by providing advocacy, education and data, and information dissemination regarding smoking bans so that the real heart of the matter can be addressed; namely the issues of rights, essential liberty, and our ability to live our lives and run our businesses as we so choose. We demand that we be treated like the responsible adults that we are and be free of busybodies who think that we need to be forcibly protected from ourselves.” Those crazy Libertarians! [facebook group]
• This MnIndy item is ancient news now, but I still think it’s hilarious. “This [I Will Vote] sticker was observed Oct. 21 stuck to the parking lot surface at the K-Mart in Minneapolis — clear evidence that ACORN has been illegally registering inner-city blacktop to vote.” Why’s it gotta be blacktop?
• Leif reports that the downtown Target is now has groceries and a deli, meaning they have beaten the Lunds and Whole Foods projects to the punch (somewhat) and have probably made a whole lot of downtown residents pretty happy.
• Are you planning to take Election Day off? You work that out with your employer (they’re required by law to at least let you out to go vote). If you feel a need to declare more formally your intention to sit on the couch with CNN all day, RSVP on facebook to TAKE ELECTION DAY OFF, hosted by The Campaign for Change (Ellison, Obama, and Franken). And should you get hungry or thirsty at some point in the day, The Herkimer will be having 2 for 1s all day and all night and will also have election-type stuff up on the big screens.
• Minneapolis has a fire fighter museum? (via @g_rote)
• Growing Communities of Science is a blog chronicling one local teacher’s use of computers in his science classroom. (via Conner McCall)

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Ok, so maybe for some reason it’s 70 degrees outside today. But it’s still technically that time of year: Fall in Minnesota. Most of the leafs (leaves) are off the trees, ponds are freezing overnight, and Target has a whole section dedicated to Christmas stuff already, even though it isn’t even Halloween yet. It is at this time of year when two very different kinds of people emerge.

The first is the kind of person who lives in the moment and, despite vast amounts of knowledge, including memories from, say, six months ago, says things like “I can’t wait for it to snow!” This person represses memories of negative high temperatures, wind chills, icy roads, snow in March, snow in May, and everything else that makes a Minnesota Winter the best in the world.

The second kind of person, what is known as a “rational human being,” mopes and complains about the impending winter. They like warm, comfortable temperatures and they are sad to see them leave. For some reason.

These two kinds of people can be classified, as your favorite Congresswoman and mine might say, as Real Minnesotans and people with some very un-Minnesotan beliefs.

I often enjoy hearing Real Minnesotans and those with some very un-Minnesotan beliefs discuss Minnesota Winters. Those with some very un-Minnesotan beliefs will, very smartly and with every fact in their favor, complain about the awful winters in our state. Real Minnesotans will hear this and become incredibly defensive and dismiss all complaints, saying things like “Well, you don’t understand, it wasn’t this bad last year, this is just a fluke” or “Yes, but it makes you appreciate the summer that much more.”

I am a Real Minnesotan. I have said all these things. And you know what? It’s time to stop being so defensive about our legendary Minnesota Winters. We live here because it’s cold, damnit. I say love it or leave it. THESE COLORS DON’T RUN.

(photo came from here, btw)

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Something makes me think this was planned/planted given the clear video, access to the file footage, positioning of the Target brand on the truck to the right of the door, and fact I just saw this on WCCO.

But I’m a sucker, so thought I’d share the fun from our local retail big box chain (although this actually was at a store in Cincy). Supposedly it took two hours to repack the trucks.

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I got to see a great show last night - David Brusie at his CD Release Party - but then didn’t make it over to the Draw Fire Records Showcase which was also part of a launch for a  veggie oil bus tour to CMJ (yearly indie music conference).

Tonight however there are a couple bands are putting on shows to celebrate their CD releases.

Flin Flon Bombers CD Release - at the Kitty Cat Klub

Superman Curl CD Release - at Stasius

and also a musical/radio show live on stage about a band -

Don’t Crush Our Heart The Musical at the Ritz Theater

Sometimes I wish there was two of me so I didn’t miss anything.

Plus check out a cool video from the band Mighty Fairly -

Mighty Fairly - My America

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• The next Twin Cities Media Alliance brown bag lunch is Wednesday, 10/22, at the East Lake Library in Minneapolis, at noon, with Paul Schmelzer. TCMA’s blurb on Paul is pretty nice, so I’ll just give it to you: “Please join me for a brown bag lunch Wednesday, October 22 with Paul Schmelzer, managing editor of the Minnesota Independent, and a winner of the prestigious Premack and SPJ Page One awards for journalistic excellence. Paul coordinated the Independent’s outstanding coverage of the RNC protests - a subject you can ask him about at lunch. Paul also writes the blog Eyeteeth: A journal of incisive ideas, which appears regularly in the Twin Cities Daily Planet, and has written for Adbusters, Cabinet, Ode, Raw Vision, Utne and other publications.”
• Hennepin County has more rain barrels for sale. 18 left as of October 13. $62 each. This is your last chance. There are no more incoming shipments and no more will be sold after 2008.
• Urban Wanderlust has a list of all the goodies they’ve canned and/or frozen this year out of their garden, CSA share, or locally grown fruit. So cool. How many people even know what grows in Minnesota? I don’t.
• In case you wanted to know you can buy pepper spray at General J’s Army Surplus.
• Thinkery stops by the St Louis Park treehouse. I used to live kitty corner from that thing, but I never actually walked across the street to take a closer look at it.
• The Daily Planet’s Arts Orbit blog has an update on the behind-the-scenes situation at the Southern Theater. Drama!
• Also at the Daily Planet is an article from the MN Daily saying that, as bike commuting has doubled over the last year, so have fatalities to bicyclists. Injuries have increased as well. There have been nine recorded bike fatalities in Minnesota so far this year, vs four in 2007. (Note that that’s across the whole state.) I’d like to see a death-per-thousand-cyclist statistic similar to how they report driving fatalities. The (three, so far) commenters disagree vehemently, saying it’s been shown that injuries to bicyclists decrease as the number of cyclists decreases because everyone’s more accustomed to sharing the road. Insert “drivers and cyclists alike should follow the rules of the road” argument in which everyone blames everyone else [here].

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