• 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].

• CANDO has a new website. CANDO = Central Area Neighborhood Development Organization. [Where’s the Central neighborhood?]
• The Twin Cities Media Alliance is having its first ever membership campaign. If you join now, you’ll be a founding member (oooohhhh, aaaaahhhhh </Smurfs>). Donations accepted online. You can mail your check to their offices but honestly, if you’re reading this blog, I’m assuming you can manage the online thing. If you want to spread your local independent media love/dollars around, MinnPost would love to take your money, as would the Center for Independent Media which operates MnIndy and its sister sites. Personally, I’m discontinuing my Minnesota Public Radio membership. I’m not sure that indy media is my #1 priority, but I’d consider either (or both) of these two outfits a fair swap for MPR.
• Several bike-related items via Bicycling in Minneapolis:
  1. The West River Parkway and 2nd Street SE bike paths under the I-35W bridge have reopened.
  2. According to this Census 2007 Report (pdf), Minneapolis bicycle mode share increased to 3.8%. That’s up from 2.5% in 2006. We’re still #2 to Portland, which has a bicycle mode share of 3.9%. Y’all are riding your bikes more just because your competitive, right?
• The 8th Annual Twin Cities Book Festival is next Saturday, 10/8, 10am-5pm at MCTC. Exhibit info here. (via @alexisthegirl)

On the heels of June’s National Conference for Media Reform and last November’s stirring Life After Newspapers conference, the 4th Annual Fall Media Forum promises to be high-energy and a great opportunity to keep the discussion going about media ownership, net neutrality, evolving citizen journalism, and more.

Mark your calendar:
Saturday, October 4th, 2008
9:00am — 3:00pm
Minneapolis Downtown Central Library

The theme for this year’s event will be “Media Forum: Tools for Democracy, Strategies for Change”. Confirmed presenters include local Fox 9 news anchor Robyne Robinson and Amalia Anderson from the Main Street Project.

Registration will begin in early September. Watch for details on www.tcdailyplanet.net.