A new digital day dawns at Visit Winona

It. Is. Finished.

After many, many months of copy writing and photo collecting and page organizing and teeth gnashing, Visit Winona has launched its new website in all its glory, and man, is it a beauty.

Now I tell you this for two reasons. One is I want you to go look at it, poke around, and tell me what you think. It is chalk full of everything you ever wanted to know about Winona, from our birth as a river town to the cool things you can do to fill up every day of your life. Literally. As I worked on the project with Visit Winona, even *I* was bowled over by the breadth and depth of the ways we have to entertain ourselves here – and I am the town’s No. 1 fan. OK – maybe I’m not; I mean maybe there is someone out there who actually loves Winona more than I do – it’s not like there’s been a contest or anything. But if there was, I’d be in the running. I realize I’d probably get beat in the Why I Love Winona contest by an old fourth-generation Polish woman who still fries up paczkis (those are Polish donuts, for you non-Poles), has nine children and 37 grandchildren who all live in Winona, and remembers when every Mass was in Polish… but I wouldn’t be bitter. As long as she shared some of those paczkis with me.

Anywhoo…

The other reason I’d like for you to look at it and comment back here is that, as the blog made its trek from the old hosting to the new site, I’m not entirely convinced you all went with it. I fear my RSS feed – that little bit of magic that sends you a blog when I write one because you subscribed – may have gone the way of the camelops (that’s an extinct camel-looking creature that used to live in North America, by the way. Bet you didn’t know that. Uh, unless you are a paleontologist). What I’m saying is that you may need to sign up again for the RSS subscription, but how will you even know this if you aren’t getting the blog? The whole concept is terrifying.

The only thing a writer fears more than writer’s block or the failure of spell-check is writing words that drift off into vast nothingness. So do me a favor and help me sleep at night by pinging me back in the comments if you actually got this in your email inbox. I’ll take anything – a smiley face, an X, a sentence fragment… or you could tell me what you think of the website too. First impression? Anything missing? Easy to find what you’re looking for? Anyone who’s ever worked on websites knows I’m kidding when I say it’s finished. Sisyfus has got nothing on web developers. But now that it’s up, we will tweak and nudge and juggle until you all think it’s just right.

I’m ready to start giving stuff away again (!) — on deck: Two tickets to the Great River Shakespeare Festival, which I’ll put up for grabs later this week. But first… can I get a “Hey”?