Wanted: Artists to Reimagine Community, Build Future

Somewhat related to my morning comments on walking, parking, and Madison's proposed new gym, here's the Tweet of the Day from the Midwest Rural Assembly happening right now in South Sioux City

Grow more artists, not just corn and athletes. Artists are the ones who reimagine a place, help create the future.

—Becky McCray, rural economic development guru, 2010.08.16

Miracle Treat Day Lessons for Creative Community Development

When I blog about Miracle Treat Day at the Madison Dairy Queen, I try hard not to politicize the event. Madison DQ owner DeLon Mork and his crew continue to lead the nation in making the fundraiser a success: the store sold 20,955 21,405* Blizzards for the Children's Miracle Network on Thursday. Dairy Queen and the community do good for sick kids and their families—that's the main story, and all the story there needs to be.

Patience is a virtue: the line for Blizzards at 7:30 p.m. snakes around the entire inside of the Madison DQ and out the door to the sidewalk.

But if we want to broaden our focus—and I think we can without doing injustice to the event itself—the success of Miracle Treat Day in Madison has some lessons for creative community development in our small town and other rural communities.

I think a lot about how Madison and other small towns can throw successful cultural events that enliven our downtown. I don't have to think that hard: the Madison Dairy Queen pretty much shows a small town how to throw a party. What do we learn about staging good community cultural events from Miracle Treat Day?

Busy behind the counter: Madison Dairy Queen runs at full staff and then some during Miracle Treat Day

First, even when you're small, don't hesitate to think big. South Dakota has bigger Dairy Queens with more seating, more counter space, and kitchen space. That hasn't stopped DeLon and his crew from increasing sales and turnout each of the five years they've done Miracle Treat Day. Staff work shoulder to shoulder behind the counter; customers wait shoulder to shoulder at the counter and in the line that snakes through the entire store and out to the sidewalk. Customers wait patiently. Midwesterners overcome their customary outsized prairie bubbles and accept some Manhattan-style crowdedness for a few minutes. You can do more with your space than you think.

Parking is everywhere: folks parked a block or more away up Harth Avenue to come get Blizzards and enjoy the music.

Corollary: parking is not as big a deal as you think. There's no way the Madison DQ parking lot could hold all the people who come to the store on Miracle Treat Day, let alone everyone who comes to listen to the music and bring their kids for the games on adjoining Harth Avenue. If you don't have a big parking lot for the community event you're planning, do you give up? No. You make it big enough and good enough that people will be willing to walk. I saw cars parked up and down Harth Avenue Thursday night... about as far as people walk to cross the parking lot to Hy-Vee or Wal-Mart in the big city. People walk a lot farther to get to the Brookings Summer Arts Festival. Don't sweat parking! Throw a good enough event, and people will burn shoe leather to get there.

Madison police direct traffic on Highway 34 outside the Madison Dairy Queen. Note the signs and the fire truck boom, getting drivers' attention from blocks away so they know they'll need to slow down.

Culture shift: Take back the streets. All those visitors mean drivers will see something they aren't used to in a small town: lots of people walking around, enjoying themselves, and taking up valuable space on the sidewalks and the streets. We rural drivers get used to thinking of stop signs as the only obstruction to our unimpeded travel. The streets sometimes figure in our psyche as inviolable spaces for machines only.

Nuts to that. Plan that big event. Get the city to barricade a block or two. Draw a crowd that spills over from the sidewalk to the boulevard to the street. Get a couple city cops to come direct traffic. Trust me: if your town is Madison or any similar size, the police aren't too busy to come help. Besides, what more logical place for the police to do their job of protecting the public than the big event where you've got the biggest concentration of the public? Put up the signs, get drivers' attention, slow them down, remind them that the streets belong to the entire community, not just people in cars.

Solve problems. The bigger your plan, the more moving parts you install, the more unforeseen problems you'll have. This is not a reason to plan small. This is a reason to think ahead, brainstorm anything and everything that could go wrong... and still be ready to come up with solutions when the problems you inevitably can't foresee arise. Don't be scared: be excited! A big event is a chance to say, bring it on! I can fix anything!

Madison Masonic Temple gets a new elevator... with a view!

Consider Thursday: M.O.B. thought it would be cool to play some music from the roof of the Masonic Temple across from the Dairy Queen. DQ owns the temple, and DeLon said, "Sure, why not?" But dang—how do we get the band's equipment up there? Call a friend with a telehandler. Problem solved! and that great old vacant building gets its first practical use in years. Beautiful.

Oh, but wait! The music was great, but situated right across the parking lot, the music drowned out the drive-up mic. The gals in the store couldn't hear drivers' orders. Oh no! What do we do? Shut down the music? Tell Michael Hope to go acoustic?

No, we solve the problem. The drive-up gal has a headset, right? Send her outside to take orders face to face. Radio the orders inside—boom, problem solved. We keep the music going, the store provides even more personal service with a smile... and at least one lucky DQ gal gets to step out from behind the crazy counter and get some sunshine and fresh air.

Madison Dairy Queen, Miracle Treat Day, August 5, 2010.

You don't need beer. I hear lots of folks talk about how you can't make a street dance or a concert fly if you don't have alcohol. Everyone knows I'm a teetotaler, so I don't need to belabor my disgust with the "gotta have booze" mindset. Let me just remind everyone that there's not a drop of alcohol at Miracle Treat Day, and it's one of the busiest, bubbliest downtown events Madison has.

Bring downtown alive. This is the big takeaway. People want to see their community alive and vibrant. They like the transformation of a normal everyday street into a noisy, bustling place filled with music and neighbors. Give them a reason to come sit outside where they can see and be seen. Find a way to make your downtown into a gathering place.
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Update 2010.08.10: DeLon called and said they "found" 400-some more Blizzards sold on Thursday, raising the total from the originally reported 20,955. Another lesson for planning a good event: always double-check your spreadsheets! :-)

Shelter Fest, Baseball Tourney Looking for Volunteers

Crazy Days are coming up in Madison next weekend, and a couple of events are looking for volunteers.

First, Shelter Fest, the benefit concert for our Habitat for Humanity chapter, is looking for volunteers to serve as concert security and other details. If you're free Friday (July 30) at 4:30 p.m. and would like to get a free listen to Tonic Sol-fa and the Su Fu Du drum corps, give concert coordinator Erin Heidelberger a call (605-256-4737).

Also up for next weekend is the VFW teener baseball state tournament. The tournament committee is looking for volunteers for crowd patrol and other tasks for any time Friday through Sunday. The folks to call: Susan Williams at 480-0201 and Paul Hansen at 480-2021.

Engage:SD -- Rural Learning Center Offers Social Media Help for Non-Profits

The Rural Learning Center is giving me all sorts of things to think about this week. RLC's blog, Reimagine Rural, announces an interesting new project, Engage:SD. The project's purpose is to help small non-profit organizations learn how to use social media—not just billboard Web pages, but blogs, wikis, Facebook, forums, and all the other online tools people can use to interact, share, and build texts and ideas together.

What will Engage:SD actually do?

1. Engage:SD is offering eight online seminars on using online tools for branding, sustaining community conversations, and organizing non-profit action and events. These webinars run from July 27 (that's next week! sign up already!) to December 21.
   
2. They'll give five $2500 grants for technical assistance in developing social media strategy. Non-profits focusing on rural community or economic development get first dibs, but RLC is open to other applicants who can make the case that they can put a social media grant to good use.
3. They'll also host some in-person skill-building workshops where non-profit staff can come learn to use Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress, Flickr, and Delicious (what, no Blogger? ;-) )

I dig this project. It is exactly the sort of collaborative effort rural organizations need to acquire social media skills. Most rural non-profit groups are too small to have staff dedicated to marketing or Web work. Take our local Habitat for Humanity chapter: their Facebook page and website, along with their Shelter Fest online info, aren't products of rigorously designed social media marketing campaign sustained by an information systems specialist. They're all set up by my wife, the board secretary, who marshals her marketing experience, sparkly enthusiasm, and occasional Web advice from her blogger husband into Web presence for the organization. That Web presence happens because the group just happens to have a volunteer interested in that kind of work who can find a few spare moments amidst the general business of the organization to tinker online.

Engage:SD offers small non-profits like Habitat ECSD some training and practical tips that they probably couldn't afford on their own. The Rural Learning Center can snag a social media expert and share her knowledge with a whole bunch of groups at once, making a difference in a bunch of communities simultaneously in a way that scattered individual non-profits could not.

If you're running a little non-profit on the prairie, fighting the good fight for small-town arts or business recruitment or social justice, you'll want to look into Engage:SD. This program could give your group a little Web boost to help you connect with your community and get things done.

Operation Homefront Collecting School Supplies for Deployed Troops' Kids

I hate even mentioning "back to school" in July. It comes from when I was little: no thought of school until after my birthday in August!

But Patricia Stricherz sends a back-to-school note that shouldn't wait:

Operation Homefront SoDak has started their back-to-school drive to provide backpacks and school supplies to children of deployed troops.

If you would like to help, 2nd Street Diner in Madison is a drop-off location for new backpacks, as well as ABC Seamless in Sioux Falls. Another way to help is to visit the Dollar Tree Store in your area and make a dollar donation that goes to Operation Homefront for supplies.

If you are a family of a deployed military member, please call 888-293-3775 or email us at sodak /at\ operationhomefront \dot/ net to register for back-to-school supplies.

Thanks!
Patricia Stricherz
Operation Homefront South Dakota

Got a buck? A book? A backpack? Support the troops; give Patricia a shout and donate.

Minor Malpractice: KELO "Promotes" Grassroots with Top-Down Report

Minor journalistic malpractice: KELO does a story on the good work neighborhood associations can do to address specific local concerns within the big city of Sioux Falls. They mention the Whittier Resident Association, which erstwhile-blogging neighbor April Schave has discussed here on the Madville Times.

But does KELO actually visit with any of the good folk from Whittier to find out what they've done to make their neighborhood a better place or get tips on how to start and sustain a neighborhood association? Alas, no. They do the easy journalism, talking only with city officials Erica Beck and Darrin Smith. To their credit, Beck and Smith are encouraging local folks to start their own associations. But instead of directing folks to go to the center and contact the city planning department, the report would be that much better if it linked to the Whittier Resident Association so other residents could get info straight from the horse's mouth.

Community Branding: Organic, Participatory, and Conceivably Cheap!

My commentary on Brookings's $84,000 branding makeover last week brought an enlightening response from Mike Knutson and his commenters at Reimagine Rural. (If you want good rural brain food without the accusations of racism, socialism, or other isms, Reimagine Rural is for you!)

Knutson says branding is important, but community branding is bigger than what one commenter refers to as a "swoosh and a tag line." "Our brand is our collective identity," says Knutson, "expressed in many ways when people encounter our community."

I couldn't agree more. Our real brand is the total impression our community makes, formed by everything we do. It bubbles up out of our culture and commerce. Madison's brand comes not from the Marketing Committee or the friends of Prostrollo who sit around the card table and make the rules for Madison. It comes from what Casey at Classic Corner and DeLon at Dairy Queen and Shaun and Jenny at Mochavino do each day as they serve customers. It comes from the experiences professors and food service and Patti at the bookstore create for DSU students. It comes from the directions visitors get at the new public access point on Lake Madison when they ask Jim Thompson and his fishing buddies about the local housing market. It comes from the suggestions and slushballs I toss right here online.

Madison's slogan and banners are not our brand. They are the meta-brand, an attempt to describe and encapsulate our brand. Our actual brand rises organically from all the things we already do. We all participate in making that brand. That collective identity is too big, has too much cultural momentum, to be substantially changed by peripheral meta-branding efforts.

IgniteSD #2 Lights up Madison Main Street

This one's for you, Officer.... I hope it was another quiet night shift.

Hey, what was all that traffic on Main Street...

...on a sunny Tuesday night...

...making it hard to get to the counter at the coffee house?

Oh, just a bunch of people coming out to hear some visual aid speeches...

...at the best darn semi-self-organizing intellectual entertainment in the state!

IgniteSD #2 packed Mochavino here in Madison last night. Fifty-some people squeezed in, folks ranging in age from my own Divine Miss K (still in the single-digits) to my octogenarian neighbor and comrade Gerry Lange. People came from at least five counties (and some new friends, by more complicated life journeys, from Minnesota and New Hampshire!) for coffee, wine, conversation, and enlightenment.

IgniteSD's second program was filled with the Unexpected™:

1. Jon Hunter spoke of his passion for sailing (ah ha! that Madison logo does speak to us!). I learned that sails work by Bernoulli's principle: it's not push, but sideways lift!
2. Megan Nelson explained why she likes running marathons better than selling insurance.
3. Heather Mangan told us how whittling your life down to two suitcases helps you see what matters (I prefer one frame pack myself—right, Toby?—but the idea stands).
4. Chris Francis touted the upcoming first-in-the-nation White Night arts event, happening right here in Madison July 1.
5. Joe Bartmann discussed the joys of worm ranching and compost tea... and offered free livestock!
6. Kent Thompson shared bits of his experiences from eleven years of medical mission trips to Tanzania. He got back from his latest trip hardly 24 hours before speaking at IgniteSD #2.
7. Jael Thorpe extolled the virtue of being one's own boss, running for office, and not wasting time waiting for things to happen.

I'd have snapped pix of the speakers, but I was busy emcee-ing... and enjoying every presentation!

I rhapsodized about the community-building value of Ignite events after the first IgniteSD in Brookings last month. I feel the same way tonight. At Ignite, anybody who wants to speak can speak. People want to come and listen, not because the speakers are famous or rich or powerful, but because they are us. Ignite brings South Dakotans together to say things that matter. We need more of that...

...and we'll get more! Organizer John Meyer says we can expect IgniteSD #3 to take place in Sioux Falls in June! He said he was thinking holding it at an outside venue... but last night's 40-mile-per-hour gusts reminded him that keeping this event indoors is just fine. Stay tuned to IgniteSD.com (and this very blog) for updates!

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Update: IgniteSD #2 gets mention on KJAM as well.

AmpleHarvest.org Connects Gardeners and Food Pantries

Those of you gardening in today's summery sunshine surely have dancing in your heads visions of September, when you'll have more tomatoes and squash than you know what to do with.

Neighbor Rod Goeman tosses into my inbox a good idea for using your surplus garden bounty: feed your neighbors! CNN spotlights New Jersey gardener Gary Oppenheimer, who started the website AmpleHarvest.org, a national directory of food pantries. The idea is to make it easier for gardeners (Ample Harvest says there may be 40 million) to find community organizations that would be happy to supplement their usual offerings of canned and processed foods with real, fresh, honest-to-goodness food.

The Sioux Falls and Rapid City food pantries are registered on AmpleHarvest.org; Madison and Brookings still need to get their outfits online.

Come September, don't let that food rot on your vines. Pick it, click AmpleHarvest.org, and feed some hungry neighbors.

Barlow: Quakers and Tea Party Ignore "Mercy of the Web"

Reviewing the history of the press and blogs, I come upon Aaron Barlow's most recent blog post. Discussing his experiences with Ayn Rand and Erich Fromm, Barlow finds a certain social myopia shared by Quakers and Teabaggers: a failure to recognize the underpinning of their beliefs and liberties in a broader community.

I write this as two processes unfold, one personal, the other political. First, I am withdrawing all identification with the Society of Friends (Quakers), a group I have been involved with over much of my life. The sanctimony of the do-gooders who refuse to recognize that their ability to ‘be nice’ is grounded in both threat and actuality of violence at the borders of society is too much for me to digest. Second is the growing Tea Party movement, the people who believe they don’t need the web of society at all, who think they make it on their own and would be fine without governments, without others looking out for them. Neither group is willing to recognize that the mercy of the web is the only thing allowing their beliefs.

...Even when I traveled rough, the web was there for me to return to—a luxury not offered to many. I am thankful for that, and am thankful for the violence (personified by the army and the police) that makes it possible—and for the community within (personified by the government) that makes it actual. The Quakers long ago marginalized themselves by refusing to accept what violence does for them. The Tea Partiers are in the process of doing the same, by refusing to accept how strongly community underpins their lives [Aaron Barlow, "Inside the Net," One Flew East, 2010.04.14].

I want very much to believe that I am my own man, the author of my own success. But so much of who I am and what I can do—who you are and what you can do—depends deeply on who we are and what we do.

SDSU Students Donate Meal Plan Money to Food Pantry

Life meets speech class: one of my students this week gave a speech about a problem I remember well from my SDSU days: student meal plan surpluses. You live on campus. Res. Life requires you to buy a big meal plan, based on the stated fear that undergraduates might fail to respond to millions of years of food-seeking instinct and forget to eat supper at college. You suffer no such instinct-deficiency, but you're also thrifty. You skip the expensive drinks at the Student Union, microwave Ramen noodles, show Mom you love her by coming home for her tater-nugget casserole on Saturday (and bringing laundry but doing it yourself). Spring finals approach, and you've got $150 left on your food account. You can't get the money back or carry it over, since Res. Life needs to guarantee margins for your friendly neighborhood for-profit food service contractor. So you end up buying extra food you don't really need, ordering extra pizzas for group study sessions, or just letting the money go to waste.

Sixteen years after I bought my last pancakes in Medary Commons, SDSU offers a solution to meal plan waste: students can donate up to 50 percent of their meal plan dollars to the Brookings Food Pantry. KELO notes the story Friday, but The Collegian's Kate Wegehaupt has the full story:

The first donation date is Friday, April 16, followed by April 23 and 30. Students can pick up a ballot from all main dining sites, selecting the food items or dollar amount they’d like to donate to Brookings Area Food Pantry. Ballots are then turned in to drop-boxes at each dining location. From a student’s perspective, that is all the work it takes to help someone out.

After being turned in, your pencil checks translate into healthy food items that the Brookings Area Food Pantry needs most. The Monday following a donation day, SDSU Dining Services will deliver donations to the Pantry [Kate Wegehaupt, "Food Pantry Useful for Extra Flex Dollars," SDSU Collegian, 2010.03.24].

Wegehaupt reports the Brookings Food Pantry can well use this help: in 2009, the Food Pantry served triple the number of residents who use the service in 2005.

My speech student informs me that DSU is doing something similar here in Madison. It would be nice if the food plan requirements didn't impose such surpluses on pennywise students in the first place... but at least we can turn the excess funds to some good. Students, put down the extra bags of jerky from the C-Store; put that money to good use for the community!

Health Care Reform Boosts Community, Liberty... and Farms!

Harvard economics prof and blogger Greg Mankiw grumbles that health care reform represents a trade-off between community and liberty:

I like to think of the big tradeoff as being between community and liberty. From this perspective, the health reform bill offers more community (all Americans get health insurance, regulated by a centralized authority) and less liberty (insurance mandates, higher taxes). Once again, regardless of whether you are more communitarian or libertarian, a reasonable person should be able to understand the opposite vantagepoint [Dr. Greg Mankiw, "Healthcare, Tradeoffs, and the Road Ahead," blog, 2010.03.22].

I understand the opposite vantagepoint, but I see a more complex equation than "more community = less liberty." It's not a zero-sum game. Community does not take away liberty; community is the basis of liberty.

Health care reform gives us more economic liberty. Consider job lock: right now, lots of people are sticking with jobs they don't like, jobs they aren't optimally suited for, simply to cling to their employer health plans. Make health insurance easier to get and keep, and people will feel more free to pursue new jobs and even self-employment. And what's more liberating than being your own boss...

...or growing your own food?

The reforms banning practices such as denying coverage due to pre-existing conditions also will affect farmers, Tolbert said.

Doug Sombke, president of the South Dakota Farmers Union, said he likes the bill. He said his sons had trouble coming back to the family farm due to pre-existing conditions from football injuries.

“This will fix that sort of coverage and help us as young people want to come back and get into agriculture,” Sombke said [David Montgomery, "Experts: Be Patient with Health Care Changes," Pierre Capital Journal, 2010.03.23].

Young people living and working where they want: that's liberty. Even as we increase community. Neat trick!

Corporate Farming Bad for Small Town South Dakota

It's one thing to hear me complain about Big Ag and big corporations sucking the life out of rural communities. It's a whole nother thing to hear the anti-corporate line from a local economic development corporation.

Briana Hoffman, director of Deuel Area Development, Inc., follows up an ag subcommittee discussion of renting land locally with a discussion of the harms of corporate farming:

Studies show that communities experiencing “corporate” farming have similar negative effects such as lower income levels, higher poverty, higher unemployment rates, higher income inequality creating a class of “haves” and “have nots.” This richer and poorer division has created social problems and breakdowns in communities, increased stress, deterioration in relationships between producers and their neighbors, decreased civic participation. Some local governments became influenced in favor of large-scale agribusiness interests, leaving local farmers and communities feeling powerless. Other effects include lower education, environmental threats, higher teenage births, decreased health, decreased retail trade and community services, decline in real estate values. Many of these effects were not seen in one or two years, but took a decade to reveal [Briana Hoffman, "Ag... the Importance of Renting Locally," Digging into Deuel, 2010.03.01].

local governments... influenced in favor of large-scale agribusiness interests... why do I get the feeling we'll never hear that kind of language from Madison's economic development corporation?

Director Hoffman has a couple other worthwhile posts discussing agriculture and economic development: one on how churches can help new farmers, and one on helping farmers do the math necessary to stay afloat. It's all part of DADi's new effort to promote local ag development.

Briana, when Dwaine Chapel gets tired of commuting from Brookings to fix Madison every day, can we hire you?

Jesus Doesn't Save the Polis: Colorado Springs Falling Apart

Colorado Springs shows what you get if buy theocracy and anti-government conservatism: collapse of basic public services. Blessings to Pandagon for discussing this Denver Post article on the capital of Western piety:

This tax-averse city is about to learn what it looks and feels like when budget cuts slash services most Americans consider part of the urban fabric.

More than a third of the streetlights in Colorado Springs will go dark Monday. The police helicopters are for sale on the Internet. The city is dumping firefighting jobs, a vice team, burglary investigators, beat cops — dozens of police and fire positions will go unfilled.

The parks department removed trash cans last week, replacing them with signs urging users to pack out their own litter.

Neighbors are encouraged to bring their own lawn mowers to local green spaces, because parks workers will mow them only once every two weeks. If that.

Water cutbacks mean most parks will be dead, brown turf by July; the flower and fertilizer budget is zero [Michael Booth, "Colorado Springs Cuts into Services Considered Basic by Many," Denver Post, 2010.02.01].

Think government is expensive? Try anarchy.

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CNN updates with a Feb. 26 story. Note local businessman Chuck Fowler's article of faith that governments just don't work. So do you get rid of it, or do you fix it?

Small Town Development: You've Got to Want It

Sometimes even cash and free land aren't enough to keep new people on the prairie. AP reports that the town of Hazelton, North Dakota, population 240, offered free lots and $20K toward new homes and $50K toward new businesses. One Florida family—one— took Hazelton up on the offer. The Tristanis gave it a go for four years. Now, despite low taxes, low cost of living, and a good school, they've given up.

The article cites lots of reasons, like the cold and lack of jobs. But the biggest reason may be cultural:

...the family also found a cliquey community that treated them like outsiders. "For my wife, it's been a culture shock," he said.

Rural communities across the Great Plains, fighting a decades-long population decline, are trying a variety of ways to attract outsiders. But the Tristanis show how the efforts can fail even at a time when many people are desperate.

"It's been quite an experience, 50-50 at best," Tristani said. "It hasn't been easy. No one really wants new people here" [James MacPherson, "Florida Family Gives up on Small-Town North Dakota," AP via Yahoo News, 2010.02.15].

"Not everybody fits in a small town," says Tom Weiser, a Hazelton resident who helped develop the free-land economic development project. Unfortunately, that's the conclusion reached by every one of the hundreds of people he says inquired about the town's giveaway incentives.

Perhaps it is comforting to say some folks just aren't a good fit for a community. But small towns can't afford to be picky. Saying some people don't fit in our small rural communities assumes that there is a way our communities should be and that it is more important to preserve the status quo than to let our communities evolve to make a place for the new people we need to survive and grow.

Miami blogger Kyle Munzenrieder takes a harder hit at small-town culture. I won't go as far as he and pick Miami over the prairie... but he and I might agree that expecting new people to come rejuvenate your small town but not create any change is an contradictory recipe for failure.

Growth is change. You've got to want. From the sounds of it, Hazelton didn't really want it. Does your small town? How ready is your town—Madison, Howard, Flandreau, etc.—to embrace not just new homes and businesses and members of the tax rolls but new ideas and new lifestyles?

Third Places: Key Component of Rural Community Development

Mike Knutson at Reimagine Rural posts a great summary of why "third places" are essential to rural community development. Third places—you know, the coffee shop, the café, the counter at Madison's NAPA store (?)... the place in town where folks gather and swap stories and people-watch. The place that feels like your whole town's living room. The public space outside your home, outside work, where you are free to claim a seat, be seen, and connect with your community.

The kind of space to which our Chamber of Commerce and LAIC have paid little attention in their quest to make Madison better. Julie, Dwaine, Jenny and Shaun Bader, everybody else with a stake in making small towns better, read Mike's list of what third places can do for Madison, Howard, and all small towns:

1. Third places are cool…and rural places could stand a little cool.
2. Third places introduce new people to the community.
3. Third Places improve the quality of life in a community.
4. Third Places are good for tourism.
5. Third places can help improve the business climate in your small town.
6. Third places stimulate creativity.
7. Third Places help people age in place.
8. Third Places can help create jobs. (Jobs, Dwaine! Jobs!!!)
9. Third Places will never be replaced by social networking sites like Facebook.
10. Third Places help build conversation …. and conversation leads to trust.

Brilliant! Read Mike's explanations on each of these points, then come out swinging for third places in your town!

p.s.: Jenny and Shaun, as you get ready to enter the third-place business with Mochavino, Mike and I recommend you read some Ray Oldenburg.

ThePostSD.com "Story Co-op" -- Media Socialism or Deep Community?

I like The Post. In just four months, they've done some good journalism and lots of good local stories, some better than what you get from the big "local" media. Yeah, yeah, they've given me some free press... but they've given equal time to Big Ag propagandist Troy Hadrick: how's that for diversity?

I also like The Post because, like any good start-up, they are ready to change and innovate. Editor-in-Chief Heather Mangan is announcing changes that will allow more interaction between readers and writers. More interaction? Heck sounds to me like their "story co-op" concept can break down barriers and make readers and writers one and the same:




Motivating the idea of a "story co-op" is The Post's passionate sense of place. They are all about South Dakota, and they want to be the forum for sharing South Dakota's stories. Listen to what publisher Scott D. Meyer says about how The Post is about bringing South Dakotans together:



Cooperative model... creating a product that none of us can create on our own... my wingnut neighbors ought to be alarmed that online journalists like the folks at The Post are sneaking socialist ideals into God's Country. The corporate media should be more alarmed that maybe The Post—as well as the greater South Dakota Blogosphere—is doing what KSFY only pretends to when it chirps "For You!" between Breaking Action News Alerts!!!

p.s.: South Dakota's a crazy place—you ain't kiddin' there, brother Scott! Keep dreaming!

Operation Homefront SD Collects Christmas Cash by Text

Senator Thune may no longer support the troops, but Patricia Stricherz at Operation Homefront SD still does. She drops a note in my inbox to let readers know Operation Homefront is collecting money by text to provide assistance to military families and wounded vets. If the snow kept you from blowing the last of your Christmas cash at the mall yesterday, maybe you'd like to send a little Christmas jingle their way. To make a donation, says Stricherz, "Text PATRIOT to 90999 and donate $5.00 to Operation Homefront South Dakota to help us stay within our mission of supporting the troops and helping the families they leave behind."

Food Stamps, Neighbors, and Virtue

A regular argument I hear against "liberal" social programs like food stamps and public health insurance is that people need to take responsibility for their own needs, and that depending on help from others just makes people lazy.

Bob Kerrey disagreed with that notion this weekend. Of accepting the help of government health care in saving his life, he said, "It didn't make me lazy; it made me grateful."

But let's put social programs in local, South Dakota terms. KELO reports that 86,837 South Dakotans are on food stamps right now. There are 800 thousand-some South Dakotans. Look across nine checkout lanes at Hy-Vee, and odds are you and I are helping the mom and dad and kids in one of those lanes pay for their supper. Are those neighbors just lazy?

Or go to church, count nine pews. One whole pew could be eating tonight thanks to our assistance. Is that whole pew filled with lazy people, neighbors who just aren't as ambitious and virtuous as you?

It's easy to villainize people receiving food stamps or other government assistance. KELO's food stamps report doesn't help: reporter Courtney Zieller doesn't talk to anyone who's on food stamps. The folks needing assistance remain the silent, unseen other, allowing us to maintain the too-frequent assumption that if folks are down and out, they must have done something wrong. They must not be as good as we are. They must deserve their suffering.

86,837... 1 in 9 South Dakotans on food stamps: that's a lot of people to judge as lazy. Half of those recipients are kids. More than 40,000 kids—equal to the enrollment in every Class B school and all but the dozen largest Class A schools. Are those kids and their parents all lazy no-goodniks?

Or they just neighbors, working as hard as any of us, as vulnerable to the vagaries of recession, disease, and accidents as the rest of us?

Rep. Lange Flips... at Kiwanis Pancake Feed!

Mmmm... pancakes! The Madison Kiwanis Club held their annual pancake feed yesterday at the City Armory.

Full house at the armory—it was tough to find a seat! If the picture looks a little hazy, that's not my camera: that's all those yummy pancake and sausage fumes. (Kiwanians get a carbon credit exemption for these greenhouse emissions.)

Pass the bipartisan pancakes: State Representative Gerry Lange (D–8/Madison) wields the spatula while Lake County States Attorney Ken Meyer slides in with another pitcher of batter. Democrats and Republicans, Catholics and Mormons (and don't forget the atheist taking the picture!)—a little more batter, maybe add kosher sausage, and we might have a recipe for world peace.

Gerry mentioned that a fellow Kiwanian beat him to the punch on selling pancake tickets to some of his usual "customers." That got Gerry's competitive dander up: he ended up selling just shy of 300 pancake tickets, a personal record... and a good chunk of money for Kiwanis!

And props to proud papa: Today Gerry can flip for his son Roberto, who just received unanimous confirmation from the U.S. Senate to serve as a U.S. District Judge.

These pancakes brought to you by Black and Decker. Set that beater on reverse, and you get French toast.