We’re in the process of doing some updating and overhauling of Northern Letter. Most of the work is being done by web designer Michael Blaha of Organic Arts, who now hails from Taos, New Mexico.

This is still an ongoing process, but it will most likely include the following:

• transferring the web hosting to Dreamhost
• updating WordPress and its plug-ins
• adding the capability to subscribe to comments via email
• improving the backup functions
• incorporating Google Analytics for site stats
• adding “Now Reading” to the sidebar, which links to Amazon.com
• adding a Paypal “donate” button

The latter two options, along with the existing Google ads, may provide some revenue for this site, though I expect any proceeds will remain small. As an “Amazon Associate,” I would receive a small percentage of the sale of books bought through the links to Amazon.

It occurs to me that selling books through Amazon is not exactly a way to support my local economy (unless the author lives here). I wonder if there is a way I could advertise the books for sale at a local bookstore?

In any case, I appreciate the skill of Michael Blaha in making all this happen. With his help, this site is improving. If you have other ideas, just let me know.

I apologize to readers for my absence from the blog. A wife ill with a cold and coping with her own deadlines, children requiring attention, work chairing a task force, travel - all these have kept me from writing new posts.

Meanwhile, the world has gone on. Minnesota has moved into spring. Earth Day arrives, and with it much concern about our world.

Thunder claps in the night here, the first thunder since last fall, I believe. The rain is falling hard.

This writing feels like rain watering my life.

Hardened soil loosens, waking dormant seeds.

It’s been too long since my last post. I was preoccupied with work connected to our city’s Task Force on Nonmotorized Transportation, which I chair. The group organized two October 3 events: Walk to School Day at the Northfield Middle School and a community meeting on biking and walking that evening.

I’ll report more on those events in another post shortly.

This blog is now featured in a blogger “spot” on the Northfield.org sidebar, under “N.org sponsors.” You’ll only see it occasionally there as it rotates through a number of different spots. Thanks to Adam Gurno for including me in this. See the Northfield.org blog and feed aggregator for a complete list of the Northfield blogosphere.

About the picture: yes, the bike helmet never comes off. You can never be too safe.

Another major Northfield web site, Locally Grown Northfield, run by Griff Wigley, alerted me to the Northfield.org update. Thanks, Griff.

This development has prompted me to add to my short list of blogs on the left sidebar. Thanks to those who have done the same for me!

In writing the previous entry I was delighted to find that the New York Times has an option for permanent links to its articles - that is, links or “permalinks” that do not expire or require the user to access a restricted archive. This is something I’ve wanted from newspapers, and according to The Next Net, the Times started doing so at the end of last year (2006). With Times articles, click on “Share” near the beginning or top of the article on that page (on the right), then “Permalink,” and you’ll have the link you want. The Times even has this cool “link generator” for finding permalinks to its articles.

From what I can tell, the StarTribune, the principal newspaper here in the Upper Midwest, does not have permalinks for its articles. For example, when I wrote about a biofuels study in an entry a few weeks ago, I linked to a Dec. 7 StarTribune article on biofuels. When I click on the link for the latter now, I get this “file not found” message: Read the rest of this entry »

This site’s Selected Entries page has been updated over the last few months. See especially my interview with Bruce Anderson of RENew Northfield, an energy visionary. That interview got me started doing advocacy for nonmotorized transportation.

I’ve also added a page for links, which has a modest two so far (!), including The Glebe Cow Drooled, a new blog by my friend Richard Cretan, who is a wonderful writer. The title is from a sentence in Thomas Hardy’s anti-war poem, “Channel Firing.”

I’ll be on a bit of a summer break for a while, enjoying a slower summer pace. Hope you can do the same if you haven’t already.

Thanks to City Pages Blotter, which included this blog as “Minnesota Blog of the Day” on July 25. It’s now listed on the City Pages Minnesota-Based Blog Directory.

I’m in the process of making some changes to the design of this blog, with the assistance of web designer and developer Michael Blaha, whose firm is called Organic Arts. Most conspicuously, Michael and I have designed a new Northern Letter logo, seen above. It includes a simple north star, appropriate given that Minnesota’s motto is “L’étoile du nord” - French for “star of the north.”  Read the rest of this entry »

In the left-hand column I’ve added “Selected Entries,” which I’ll use as a guide to my favorite or most popular posts. Often these are longer, more ambitious entries.