I think this next item is really cool, Bob Collins and Mary Lucia have put their 5:15 segment online. I know with many folk Bob and Mary can inspire a love’em or hate’em situation, well you can put me in the love’em camp.
MPR News Cut: Fresh Eye on the Radio
Give it a listen.

*Update*Speaking of MPR,if you haven’t seen David Brauer’s, of Minnpost, piece on MPR Executive Pay check it out, especially the comments.

While Secrets of the City has art The Affair
AND
scandalOnline Protest Promotes Viewer Interaction

Citypages trys to help out Snoop, who was in town last night, with Advice for Snoop Dogg on getting high in the Twin Cities

My only advice to the Snoop Dogg would be don’t exhale, but I’ll bet he knows that already.

Since Crazy stays crazy

I’ll close it out with: Smart went crazy

P.S. It has my favorite free views of the city.

And a few moments ago, the National Transportation Safety Board issued a news release detailing a puzzling lapse by a Northwest Airlines flight crew over Minneapolis yesterday: On Wednesday, October 21, 2009, at 5:56 pm mountain daylight time, an Airbus A320, N03274, operating as Northwest Airlines (NWA) flight 188, became a NORDO (no radio communications) flight at 37,000 feet.

The flight was operating as a Part 121 flight from San Diego International Airport, San Diego, California (SAN) to MSP with 147 passengers and unknown number of crew.

At 7:58 pm central daylight time (CDT), the aircraft flew over the destination airport and continued northeast for approximately 150 miles. The MSP center controller reestablished communications with the crew at 8:14 pm and reportedly stated that the crew had become distracted and had overflown MSP, and requested to return to MSP.

Now, we could wait for a rational or reasonable explanation OR we could speculate wildy.

I think you know which I prefer.

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

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Enger Tower is an 80-foot (24 m), five-story blue stone observation tower atop Enger Hill in Duluth, Minnesota.[1] The tower is at an elevation of 451 feet (137 m) above Lake Superior, providing panoramic views of the Twin Ports. Each of the tower’s levels has a lookout that is accessible by stairs. A green beacon mounted on top of the tower can be seen for many miles.

MPR reports

a close look reveals trouble. A stone bench on the first level is all but gone — reduced to a few rocky shards jutting from the tower’s side. City Architect Terry Groshon points to the hole in the tower roof, where rain and fog creep through on Duluth’s colder days and to a nearby steel rail that’s half-eaten by rust. Water gets into the cracking masonry, freezes, and pops the rock and concrete out. Some people pick at the loosening stones … He doesn’t have a price tag yet, but he thinks it would take a couple hundred thousand dollars to patch it up for another decade, and over a million dollars to do it right

As a child Enger Tower was one of my favorite places to picnic and I try and make it there at least once a year. The views really are spectacular and I hope the city finds a way to fix this amazing landmark.

If you’re heading to Duluth then Enger Tower is a must visit and not just for the views from the tower. The surrounding park is beautiful and the drive along Skyway Road is breathtaking.

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Minnpost reports

A record-setting crowd visited the 2009 Minnesota State Fair’s opening day Thursday. Minnesota Public Radio captured a portion of those 114,439 people from a video camera setup near its stage at the Fair and sped up the time from opening to closing to make this 20-second video.

So you know, go get something on a stick.


(What is the dude at 1:27 up to?)

I hear Summit has beer on a stick this year. I’d like to see you drink a day’s worth of that in twenty seconds.

Seriously, do it, send me your video.

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This is another story where an airline site on the tarmac for extended periods of time while the passengers are kept inside waiting.

From the story:

When Link Christin boarded a Continental Airlines flight from Houston to the Twin Cities on Friday night, he expected to be on the ground in about three hours and ready for a comfy bed.

Instead, he was among 47 passengers who spent the night trapped inside a small airplane, parked at the Rochester airport, complete with crying babies and the aroma of over-used toilets.

The ExpressJet Airlines that operated the plane says the flight was diverted to Rochester because of Twin Cities thunderstorms, and that airline regulations prevented passengers from getting off the plane.

Christin is incredulous that the airline couldn’t figure out an option besides trapping passengers on the plane for nine hours

I have to admit, this is one of my only fears of flying. It happened to me one time on a flight to Atlanta where we couldn’t land because of storms and the plane actually ran out of fuel and was diverted to an army base in Birmingham. We refueled, and then they kept us for hours upon hours sitting on the tarmac.

I think we were supposed to arrive at MSP around 4pm and it was after midnight when we actuallly arrived.

It may just be my perception, but it seems like these types of delay have been becoming more and more frequent and some of the time it seems like an inconvenience and others it seems like a kidnapping.

What do you think?

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.

The Roots @ Riverfest

Time to get back to the Roots.

I’ll be heading back to Northern Minnesota to where it all began, for me, and doing a bunch of outdoors stuff that would make the most hipster metrosexuals cut their hair with a switchblade into a faux-granola style.

Mostly we’ll be listening to the sound of the wind blowing majestically through the pines as the loons sing their lonely North Woods cowboy song, yada yada. So if you hear about some people in the BWCA having iPod boombox wars with the loons, you’ll know who.

What are you listening to?

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On more than one occasion I’ve had to issue a chilly reminder about the lake “Don’t kid yourself, that water’s beauty is concealing a murderous personality, Lake Superior will kill you.”

This reminder was often viewed as a joke and laughed off, but it was nothing short of sincere.

In her latest post Amy Crea blogs about the book So Terrible a Storm: A Tale of Fury on Lake Superior

“Published by: Voyageur Press

It was Thanksgiving 1905 and thirty-one ships were on Lake Superior, making the season’s last, daring run–a run old salts had warned against, but to no avail against the shipping companies’ demands.  What none of the sailors knew until it was far too late was that they would soon face the worst storm ever to hit the Great Lake, a storm that nearly half of their number would not survive.

 

This is the story of that fateful storm, and of one of the worst shipping disasters in the nation’s history.  As the storm strikes without warning, readers are taken aboard the SS Mataafa as it crashes into Duluth’s piers, half of the crew freezing to death overnight as the other half survives by dancing through the dark around bathtubs set ablaze with scuttled pieces of the ship–all while 10,000 Duluthians set bonfires on shore to guide ships to safety”

Amy notes “Interested in ships, storms, the North Shore, history, or how people react under severe circumstances? This book’s for you.”
 

An excerpt from the book written by on-the-scene journalist Mary McFadden:

“Another boat is being broken to pieces by the angry seas near Lakewood, but her crew is safe and sound. Still another is beached above the canal, her crew is safe with friends. What more despoliation and tragedy awaits this morning’s knowledge cannot not be guessed. Science and human endeavor and the mighty work of human hands were flouted all day and all night by the elements gone mad.”

Well yeah, there’s that,but it sure is pretty.

What do you think about Lake Superior? Ever have a near death experience in it’s waters? Have any favorite Lake Superior get away spots?

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From the Strib:

Faced with a growing number of complaints from travelers, the Metropolitan Airports Commission is considering a $1 million proposal for new signs on the freeways approaching Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport directing drivers to “Terminal 1″ (Lindbergh) or “Terminal 2″ (Humphrey). The new signs would also list which airlines fly out of each terminal.

ONE MILLION DOLLARS!?!

Instead of blowing that much money, I have two options, and I’ll detail them:

1. FREE: Leave the signs the way they are. When you purchase a ticket, it tells you which terminal your flight leaves from. When you check-in or look up your flight online, it tells you which terminal your flight leaves from. It’s called personal responsibility and accountability. I realize those attributes aren’t getting a lot of praise from civic and national leaders these days, but c’mon people.
2. Couple Hundred Bucks: Either create a small (1) or (2) sign that is simply applied to the existing signs. Will this look a bit patchwork? Maybe. But I know for a fact nobody has an extra $1 million lying around to help clueless people find their terminals.

And here’s one more piece of brilliant brain food: No matter what, won’t the airline carriers have to update their tickets to say if you’re in Terminal 1 or Terminal 2? You’ll still have the same problem of people not knowing if they should follow 1 or 2.

p.s. I used a cool little Java applet called SignMaker to make the graphic.

This is another one – this one chronicling some dude’s move from Minneapolis to Boulder.

I like the snow casually getting thicker and thicker and then completely covering the road.