Why Everybody Loves Winona, a Blog

Dear Music lovers and Music Curious,

You may have heard a little something about this already, but Winona is about to be bursting with music, and I want to give you a pass to check it out for yourself. If you’ve already been to it, then you know it’s pretty awesome. If you haven’t been, hear me out, because there are free wristbands at the end, and by the time you get there, you’ll want one.

The Mid West Music Fest will spring to life in our beautiful river town starting Thursday, April 18, and for three days, every nook and cranny in Winona will be filled with the strains of music. All kinds of music – from indie bands to folk musicians to coffeehouse-style singer-songwriters to gospel. Some of them are well known regional names, some tour nationally, some are voices you’ve never heard from far away, but all of them have been selected because they bring something special to our music scene and make this town a little bit cooler place to live.

If you think this festival isn’t for you, I’m here to tell you that the only way it’s not for you is if you just don’t like music. And that would be, well, kind of weird. But if you think it’s not for you because you aren’t 22 and into indie rock, then you’d better head over to www.midwestmusicfest.org and take a look at the lineup. How does the Saint Mary’s Jazztennial grab you? How about the Zinghoppers – big sock-puppet people that make kids bounce around? Like acappella? Check. Blues? Check. Banjos, classic rock, and reggea? Check, check, check. Bands from across the country will be converging on Winona this weekend, bringing with them all manner of music that you can roam between 14 different venues to hear.

That’s right. One wristband for $49 = three days of music and more than 100 bands. A one-day pass to all that music glory is $20. Find me that deal anywhere… because yeah, you won’t. In fact, it’s such a bargain for this collection of music that last year about 3,000 people turned out to hear it, and some came from pretty far away. Can I just say how cool it is to live in a town that people flood into because it has something they’re dying to see? Heck, I think us Winonans should swagger around all weekend puffed up with pride that our town did this. Well actually, Sam Brown and his very dedicated committee did this, but Winona is mighty happy to have some ownership of it too.

Come on. You know you have cabin fever. It’s time to get out, and I’m here to help. I have two $49 wristbands – one will get you into the whole festival – and I’m going to give them to two winners. Want one? Here is what you have to do: Leave a comment below and tell me which band you’d like to see this weekend. You can see the full lineup at www.midwestmusicfest.org, and I’m telling you, you’re going to be surprised. This will be a SHORT contest – I’m going to draw winners Thursday at noon. You can leave one comment per day, and I’ll take all the comments at the end, cut them up, and randomly draw from them.

I will post the winners on Visit Winona’s Facebook page as well as here on the blog shortly thereafter, and you can head over to the ticket office at Sum Sum Studios at 168 East Third Street Thursday afternoon to pick up your pass. And trust me, you will have a blast.

So let’s get started… I’ll go first. I am dying to see Apollo Cobra. I’d like to see Wildflower with Patti Darbo too. And those sock-puppet people do sound kind of fun…

Your turn.

April 14. It’s time, people, and God knows we’ve been waiting. In case you haven’t heard, clear your calendar for Sunday afternoon and head over to the Winona County History Center to get your Shakespeare on for 2013, because that’s where it’s all starting at the Season Preview.

Well, not really starting. It started 10 years ago with a little kernel of an idea and the sheer optimism of a few believers who said Winona had the right kind of hunger for the arts to fall in love with a Shakespeare festival, and the right mix of coolness and charm for people to come here to see Shakespeare and fall in love with Winona.

A decade later, it turns out they were right. The Great River Shakespeare Festival started out like the little festival that could – putting out productions far more impressive than a little start-up theater company had any right to, operating on a sliver of a budget where every dollar spent was a precise decision, and defying incalculable odds by gaining ground each year even as the economy around it was in a free-fall.  But it was just so good. Word spread, and patrons came. And then they came back again and again, and they told their neighbors and they brought their friends. Actors from across the country came too, and like the patrons, they fell in love with Winona and then they came back year after year as well. Each summer Winona hosts a reunion of sorts, of visitors who have put Winona on their can’t-miss list, and actors who have in many cases become Winona’s sweethearts and very nearly locals in their own right.

Ahhhhh. The actors. We have had some favorites over the seasons, and every year at this time festival fans hold their collective breath waiting for the announcement on who will be coming back. I actually haven’t breathed for a couple of days now, and Sunday had better come quick because the darkness is closing in. Yes – Sunday is the season preview for GRSF 2013, and it’s a funky little soiree that is 1) Free, 2) Fun, and 3) The time when we all sit wringing our hands at the cast announcement waiting for the directors to say the words Chrisssss Gersonnnnn…at which point I will stand up and do the wave. Probably alone. Just kidding about that – everyone knows Chris married that perky, adorable Tarah Flanagan, and so I turned in my stalker card. And put the wedding dress in plastic. But that’s fine.

On Sunday, the good people of the Great River Shakespeare Festival will celebrate with Winona the start of another illustrious season, they’ll talk about the plays to come and the people who will make it happen. It will be festive, with a cash bar, free hors d’oeuvres, and preseason ticket deals, and the room will be filled with laughter and more than a few hugs for people we have truly missed (especially if CG is there ) (I’m just kidding Chris. Please don’t get a restraining order against me).

Even if you’ve never been to a play, or especially if you’ve never been to a play, you should come Sunday. See what it’s all about. Hug somebody (haha, OK, don’t do that). Soak in a little Great River Shakespeare Festival vibe and try it on for size, and I’ll bet you’ll get a little bit of an idea what all the hoopla is about. It’s about theater, but only kind of. More so its about a group of people who made something really cool happen here, who turned an idea into a legacy, and who love Winona just as much as we do.

Know what makes Winona great? Well, a lot of things, but man do we ever have some good donuts. Not just good donuts, but the kind of good that people will write home about, that they will make a special trip for, that they will line up down the sidewalk for. Don’t believe me? Drive down Broadway some Saturday morning at about 8 a.m. and check out the line outside of Bloedow Bakery.

Saveur Magazine, an epicurean authority of global stature, just confirmed what we here in Winona have known for almost 90 years: Bloedow Bakery makes some killer donuts. As in to die for. And they just told the world about it in their March issue, which features a roundup of the 50 best donut shops in the country. And of course Bloedow is in there, because when you’re talking about that kind of lip-smacking heaven, word gets out.

No one really knows how Saveur heard about Winona’s little bakery, though it might have something to do with the fact that Bloedow’s was dubbed the best donut shop in Minnesota last year by CBS affiliate WCCO. In fact, when WCCO polled its followers asking what the best donut shop in the state was, Bloedow’s pummeled the competition with more than twice as many votes as the next runner up. I’d call that a trouncing.

So what IS it about those donuts that makes them so dang good? I just don’t know. I mean, donuts are donuts, right? They have some yeast and some sugar and some frosting and, and… But there is some kind of magic that happens when you bite into one of those things from Bloedow’s. You get teleported to a happy place where the sign posts and flowers and sidewalks are made of sugar and everyone is smiling and little birds made out of sugar are singing and you just lay on the sugar grass and savor every delicious bite…  I know. Snap out of it. But goll darn it if I wouldn’t love one of those sugar comas right now.

To be fair, it’s not all sugar. There is some donut in there too, and I don’t know what they cook those things in (in fact, I think it’s a secret) but sweet lord – the whole thing just melts in your mouth. My personal favorite – the maple long johns, of course. A-mazing. I think I can actually hear myself getting fatter when I eat them, but let’s face it, you shouldn’t go to a donut shop if you’re on a diet.

On Visit Winona’s Facebook page, the question was posed a little while ago – asking people what their favorite Bloedow donut was. Holy smokes. The answers were all over the place, and I found out about varieties I didn’t even know existed. Now, of course, I’m going to have to try them, and pretty soon we’ll need a wheelbarrow to get me around. But I’ll be smiling.

So I put the question to you — why are those donuts so good, and which one is your favorite? Share this blog with your friends, and let’s get a good old fashioned unscientific poll of our own going. In one week I’ll randomly draw from the comments and I’ll pony up for a donut gift certificate – 1 dozen of whatever you want. Let’s talk about donuts…

It’s cold. I know – the kind of cold that makes you want to hunker down under a blanket to watch a good movie. Well, here in Winona, we like to hunker down too, but we do it together at the Frozen River Film Festival, and we don’t just watch one movie – we watch about 40 of them. We celebrate our coldness. Heck, we named a festival after it. Stay tuned, and you can come celebrate too, because I’m going to give away tickets.

Oh, “films” you say? *yawn* That’s just for intellectuals and students.

Well not so fast, Danielson (that’s a Karate Kid reference for all you movie buffs). If you had never been to this film festival then you might think that. You’d be wrong, but I understand the stereotype.

Yes, these are mostly documentaries, but definitely not the kind of stuff you fell asleep to in 10th grade social studies. (Social studies teachers, don’t call me. Some of those films are really boring.) These are films about action and adventure and life and the world, and they make you happy and sad and inspired and smarter. I wish I could say richer and more successful too, but that might be taking it too far.

Like action flicks? Then you’ll love Wild Bill’s Run, a real life Arctic adventure movie about group of guys who tried to snowmobile over the top of the world in the early ’70s. There is crime. There is suspense. There is danger. Move over, Tom Cruise. Or if you’re an adrenalin junkie, Wednesday and Thursday nights’ film set has extreme skiing, highlining, backpacking, and even the guy who slacklined in on Madonna’s Superbowl half-time show.

There are films about all kinds of things that people are doing all over the world – like the girl who spent a year adventure volunteering, environmentalists who are crawling across glaciers, and traumatized soldiers who find healing on fly fishing streams in Montana. Education, health care, why the lady at McDonalds sued over hot coffee… it’s all there.

Frozen River Film Festival brings in some of the very same films that PACKED the house at the Telluride and Sundance film festivals – you know, where people like Penélope Cruz and Mickey Rooney hang out – though probably not together. And some of the films being shown this week are narrated by some of those famous people, and some have even been nominated for Academy Awards. We’re not kidding around here, folks.

And you can get a free massage or some acupuncture this weekend, take in a yoga class, or just decompress in the Rejuvenation Station. Oh yeah, and you can keep your kids busy just about all day for free with the kids film set, craft center, and outdoor obstacle course. This festival is seriously the coolest thing that will happen for 100 miles this winter, and you should be here. Quit hunkering down at home alone and come watch movies with us. You can even bring your blanket. Everything you need to know is here: www.frff.org

If I seem a little fired up, it’s because I just came home from a volunteer meeting for the festival – you’ll find me at the door ushering this weekend and introducing a film or two. And in exchange, they gave me a fist full of tickets, and I’m going to share them with you, because that’s how I am.

This will be a short contest because the time is near for the festival, so I will draw two (count them, TWO!) winners at 5 p.m. Tuesday, January 22, who will each get four tickets that can be used for any film sets, presentations, or workshops you want to attend. Use them all at once and bring friends, or keep them to yourself and attend four different things – it doesn’t matter. To enter the drawing, you have to leave a comment and tell me what film you’d like to see at the Frozen River Film Festival (hint, the schedule is on their website). You can only enter once, and the drawing will be via my very official method of cutting up the entries and putting them in a hat. I will announce your name here and on Visit Winona’s Facebook page Tuesday evening by 6 p.m., and you can swing by the Visit Winona office to pick them up starting Wednesday.

See you at the festival!

It may be frozen, but it’s still beautiful down here in our scenic corner of the state.

It occurred to me recently that if suddenly every road and airstrip leading to Winona was shut down, we would still be eating pretty well here. Strange thought, I know, but stay with me. No, I wasn’t watching Doomsday Preppers, that bizarre show where paranoid people prepare for Apocalypse by building bunkers and canning potatoes (listen, do not send me letters if you love this show. It’s weird.) I was actually stuffing my face full of the most delicious grass-fed lamb you’ve ever had – raised on the hills right outside Winona. As I sat there with my eyes shut blissfully chewing, I realized that the food available here in this Mississippi River hamlet is perhaps the most under-appreciated attraction we have.

At the top of that list is Signatures Restaurant and The Grill – its newly spawned casual eatery in the bar area. The lamb I was drooling over was off of the new Signatures menu, and it was sourced from the O’Neil Family Farms just outside of town. And let me tell you this – I know lamb – my family raised sheep for decades, and I grew up eating it like other people eat beef. So it is with a certain amount of authority that I say this was completely fabulous and I promise you, I didn’t even have better lamb at Fleur de Lys in San Francisco – an impossibly swanky restaurant with a celebrity chef and everything. Seriously. If you put my two meals side-by-side, that guy doesn’t have a thing on Jeremy, Rico, and Joe back in the Signatures trenches. OK – I’ll stop fawning – in a minute. The lamb shank was accompanied by other deliciousness – port-poached pear, roasted vegetables, horseradish-havarti potatoes… mmmmmmm. This was sexy, delightful food, and anyone who thinks they need to drive to a bigger city to find gourmet fare is craaaazy.

But what is especially awesome to me about a meal at Signatures is that the chef can tell you where everything on the menu came from, and much of it comes from right here. That’s cool.

Even cooler – if you want to make the food for yourself, you just need to go to the Winona Farmers Market for a dazzling array of locally grown goodness, from vegetables to the O’Neil Farm’s incredible lamb. Oh yeah, and honey, local jams, herbs – you can feed yourself awfully well after a trip there, even in the winter. What’s that you say? A Farmers Market in the winter? Well yes, twice a month even, except it’s inside the Winona Mall for your shopping comfort. Check it out: www.winonafarmersmarket.com/

You can also find a whole lot of local products at Bluff Country Co-op – which has a mission to buy the “least traveled” products available. It’s a double-win: you get the freshest stuff out there because it came from 12 miles away instead of 2,500, and you help a local grower, which gives you good karma. And who doesn’t need a little more of that?

And you don’t even have to go shopping if you don’t want to – you can have someone just put fresh produce in a box for you to pick up. No, seriously. You can buy into Herbal Turtle Farms, and then every week for 20 weeks of the growing season the farmers will box up a collection of the freshest produce off the farm and bring it into town for you to pick up. Wow. Eating delicious local food couldn’t possibly require less effort than that – unless maybe they’ll bring the box to your house. And cook it for you. Just kidding – I don’t think they do that, but hey, you can ask.  http://herbalturtlefarms.blogspot.com/

Oh yeah, and we’ve got a bison ranch on top of the bluffs too, and even local school kids are eating burgers from Rockie Hill Bison Farm. And apples from the area’s orchards. And vegetables from local farms. If buying local creates good karma, then the food service director for the public schools here is going to heaven for sure.

In town we’ve also got Bay State Milling grinding up local grains for flour products and mixes, as well as a whole bunch of home-grown restaurants that get some of their menu items from right here in our beautiful little corner of Southeastern Minnesota. So go ahead and shut off the roads – we’ve got fresh food down here to last us for a millennium, and the people who know to cook it. I’m just kidding – about the roads I mean. Please don’t shut them down. We have places we need to be, and we want people to come visit. And for those of you who do, come hungry for a taste of Winona – we’ll have it ready for you.

So I’ve been thinking some deep thoughts lately about our lovely little city of Winona and I’ve arrived at a fundamental question – the chicken and egg kind that has an impossibly circular answer and leaves me confounded. Instead of staring at the wall musing, I’ll pose it here, and you can tell me what you think.

By the way, if you like eggs, you can have chickens within the city limits of Winona. Did you know that? Not roosters though, because if your neighbors wanted to be woken up by crowing at the crack of dawn they’d live in the country and have their own rooster. Anyway…

The question is this: Is Winona a vibrant, thriving community because of the tourism here? Or do tourists come here because this is a vibrant, thriving community? Hmmmm…

You might be wondering what brought this question on, like did I run out of things to think about or something? Well no. I started pondering this question because I’ve been looking at the list of Visit Winona partners – businesses and organizations throughout the region who make a financial contribution at various levels to Visit Winona to help it do what it does, namely market this community to increase tourism.

There are more than 130 partners signed on as this year’s campaign winds up, many of them your expected “tourism-related” businesses. If a tourist walks through the gates of Winona (that’s a joke, we don’t really have a gate), then these businesses hope they might swing in for a homemade root beer (Lake View Drive Inn – yum) or a cup of soup (don’t go to your grave without trying the tortilla soup at Blooming Grounds, by the way) or a wander through the galleries (MN Marine Art Museum = love.) These outfits are the kinds of things that give Winona a delicious flavor tourists crave, and the businesses really want to see our beautiful city, and their businesses with it, flourish. I get it.

But a pretty impressive number of Visit Winona’s partners are not in the tourism business at all; they are banks like Winona National and Merchants, all three colleges, Winona Health, and small local businesses like Goltz Pharmacy, Great River Chiropractic, and portrait artist Mary Singer. While a tourist might occasionally look them up, it’s probably a tiny sliver of their existence, and yet they want to be partners with Visit Winona. So this got me to thinking about why, since it would seem to have scant direct effect on their bottom line. And after giving it some thought, I get this too.

It’s because they love Winona. No, really. It’s that simple. Think about it: As an industry, tourism rocks Winona’s socks off. The last study I saw tracked about 2,000 jobs in Winona County (which, let’s face it, is really mostly Winona) directly to tourism. Like directly. As in, if there were no visitors, those people would not have their current jobs. And tourists spent $93 million during the year studied visiting this beautiful river town. Seriously. AND – that’s in 2007/2008, the last time such a survey was completed. I’m sure that number is long-since trampled after we all climbed out of recession-mode and added cool new things like the Midwest Music Fest, the Frozen River Film Festival, and that adorable Trester Trolley that rolls all over town (get on that thing – it’s so freaking charming.)

So all those visitors might not have gone into Computer Dock downtown to get their computer worked on – heck, maybe none of them did – but for this business, partnership is not like a line item on their advertising campaign, it’s an investment in the effort that makes this town vibrant. A visitor buys dinner at Bub’s, the server gets a paycheck, and then can afford to go get her computer swept when it gets a virus because she accidentally clicked on that flashing link and opened a file from the bad guys. If you suck $93 million out of our local economy, there are a whole lot fewer dollars floating around to fix computers, or go to the doctor, or put money in the bank. And that’s not even counting the $2 million or so that goes straight into the community’s tax coffers.

I think the non-tourism businesses that sign up as  partners with Visit Winona get that. It’s not as simple as, “I don’t receive any tourist dollars, so I don’t need to support Visit Winona’s work.” Au contraire. They are getting tourist dollars – it just passed through the hands of someone else first.

So back to the question….

I think we can all agree that Winona is a beautiful, interesting, and vibrant community with an awful lot to offer. To visitors, it is a jewel – just look at the Visit Winona Facebook page to see how much love this town gets from around the world. In fact, only 10% of Visit Winona’s 7,000 “Likes” are from people in Winona. Interesting, huh? So in that regard, I think it would be completely fair to say that people visit Winona because it is a thriving city full of things that people love.

But I think it would be also fair to say that if you scrubbed a hundred million dollars off of our books each year (that’s a lot of zeros folks), this community wouldn’t be quite as, uh, vibrant.

Chicken, meet egg. Which came first? Well, our stunning bluffs and river came first, but let’s face it, there’s a couple hundred miles of it along this stretch with an awful lot of cities and towns to see. Winona is special because of some big thinkers here – people willing to invest in the things that transform a town from scenic to irresistible. A theater festival here, a music festival there, some restored architecture, canoe rentals, a few more shops…little by little we blossomed, and with each new bud came a new wave of visitors excited about our wares. The infusion of their tourism dollars and the growth of our community are intertwined – we built it, they came, and then we could build some more.

I think the answer is that we did this together – created this place, I mean. The big thinkers, the Visit Winona partners, the tourists who go home and rave about Winona – thanks to you all for making this an amazing place to live, even for people who are not in the tourism industry. You are why I love Winona.

I’d love to hear your thoughts about it…

Winona is a beautiful city, both on the ground and from the air~

When you live in a town for long enough, everywhere you go conjures up a memory, and when enough of those are good memories, then you just fall in love with a place over and over again. It’s kind of like a marriage – the good kind – except you don’t have to pretend you like your mother-in-law or say what time you’re coming home or… never mind – I don’t know where I’m going with this.

I had the chance to show a bunch of visiting friends around a couple of weeks ago, and I have to tell you: Looking at this community through their eyes for a few days was really kind of cool. It made me feel nostalgic about how much Winona really has become my place, and it made me feel thankful to live in a city that I like an awful lot. And when I started feeling thankful, it made me think about Thanksgiving and how this is the perfect time to reminisce about what we’re thankful for. It also made me think about turkey and why mine fell apart last year, and it made me wonder if I could buy a pie and smoosh it into a pie plate so it looks like I made it, which led me to think that I should probably drink less coffee so I could maybe focus on something for more than a minute.

But really, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, let’s talk about what gives us our memories and makes people thankful they live here, especially some of those little blessings that we’re tempted to overlook. I’ll start with my not-so-short and incredibly random list:

It took me a whole minute to get out of my driveway on Broadway this morning because there was so much traffic. At first I was irritated, and then I realized how extremely stupid I am to not remember that when I lived in the Twin Cities that would have felt like I won the lottery. In the span of 8 minutes from one end of Winona to the other I can find 95% of everything I need, from entertainment to food to the doctor – and that’s some high-quality compactness.

It took me an extra 30 minutes to get out of the grocery store the last time I was there because I ran into so many people I knew. It was unfortunate that I’d skipped things like makeup and socks that matched because I thought I could just run in quick, and so most conversations started with me having to respond, “No, I’m not sick, just lazy,” but it felt good to realize that I am a thread woven into the colorful tapestry of Winona – I’m part of this place.

I’m thankful that I never, ever have to leave Winona to feel like I’ve soaked up some great culture. My friends who came to visit could not BELIEVE that we have a place like the Minnesota Marine Art Museum here. It gives us some serious street cred from people who live in places they imagine are much more cosmopolitan than Winona. During my friends’ visit we heard some fantastic music at Ed’s No Name Bar, contemplated world-class art at the museum, and ate an entirely delicious meal out at The Grill at Signatures (chicken alfredo pizza – to die for), and I was so, so proud of this town by the time my friends were saying their goodbyes. Want to feel some swagger about where you live? Invite some friends to take a weekend road-trip here and give them the tour. You’ll be the coolest kid on the block.

I am so grateful to have so many home-grown businesses here. I generally loathe chain stores and restaurants, so I really like getting a cup of coffee in the cool vibe of Blooming Grounds, some fresh vegetables from Bluff Country Co-op, and a burger at Jefferson’s Pub. From Pootzas at Poot’s Sports Palace to the charming gifts at Pieces of the Past, I am not kidding when I say that I feel really lucky to live in a place where originality rules. And all you Starbucks/Target/Pizza Hut lovers, do not send me hate mail. Businesses like that will always have a place in a community this size – I get that. But it’s really nice to know that there is a thick slice of Winona that you just won’t find anywhere else, and it’s part of the reason people will get in the car and come here from a long way away.

I have rambled on for long enough about why I love Winona. It is your turn. What makes you thankful about this place? What fueled your best memories? Why do you love Winona?

Our beautiful Mississippi River is filled with flocks of swans moving meandering south for the winter.

Fix your hair and put on something pretty Winona because company’s coming… and this is going to be quite a visit.

In about a month Winona gets to play host to the Governor’s Deer Hunting Opener – a media blitz-o-rama that brings upwards of 150 people to town to celebrate the start of the hunting season. It’s a cool mix of journalists, legislators, DNR folks, and the good people of the Minnesota Deer Hunter Association who roll in the first Thursday in November to kick around town for a few days. Oh yeah, and the governor comes to christen the start of the season too, and you can even have lunch with him.

Over the years I’ve been to quite a few Deer Hunting Openers, and I was so freaking excited when they announced this one in Winona. It’s our first shot at the event, and Winona will get to preen in the million-candlepower spotlight of more media people than you can swing a stick at. You should not swing sticks at media people, by the way. Just sayin. OK – anyway – just picture it: writers and news crews and photographers crawling all over Winona for three days, gobbling up whatever goodness we can send their way. Sure, they’re here to see what’s going on in the world of hunting, but this is about a lot more than that. The event is about showing off our community, this beautiful place we live in, with the hopes that the word “Winona” crosses a few lips and a few editors’ desks on its way to audiences who live somewhere else.

There is an old advertising principle that says anytime someone says a product’s (or, er, a town’s) name – no matter what the reason – it is gold. It’s just recognition – validation that puts you on the mental map. Take 150 influential people, show them a good time, and it’s bound to come back to you like fishes and loaves. Maybe not in the next week or the next month, or maybe not even in the next year. But if you have planted the seed of recognition and fondness in the brain of someone who has the power to influence others, it WILL come back eventually.

You in? Here’s how you can help:

Buy a ticket for the Big Buck Luncheon Friday afternoon at the Winona Sportsman’s Club. It’s $10, and let’s face it, you’re going to spend that for lunch anyway. But with this ticket you get to sit in a room with the governor, and while you nosh, he and John Edman from Explore Minnesota and DNR Commissioner Tom Landwehr are going to talk about hunting and tourism and money, and it will be about the most interesting $10 lunch you’ve ever had. Really. After lunch, the Gould Brothers are going to put on a sharp shooting show (I dare you to try to say that fast – and right – three times. I tried just now, which makes me a complete dork. Oh, and by the way, you can’t do it. But I digress…) You can buy tickets at the Winona Visitor Center on Huff Street.

If you are a hunter, offer to host a media person or legislator in the woods Saturday morning. They are looking for hunter hosts as we speak, and they probably need a good dozen more. It doesn’t matter if you own the land, borrow private land, or hunt on state land. What matters is that you give one of our visitors the experience of sitting in the woods in Southeastern Minnesota. Not all the hunting guests will want to hunt — they could be like me and just sit in the deer stand with a camera and cry. OK, I never actually cried, but I came pretty stinking close up by Brainerd Lakes once when it was about 5 below zero. And I actually did get misty another time, but it was when I was sitting in a deer stand with former DNR Commissioner Mark Holsten and his 12-year-old son, who had just shot his first deer. It was a powerful moment, and I was grateful that they let me share it.

We need hunter hosts who are willing to share their spot just for one day in order to send media people away with stories about what it’s like to be a deer hunter around Winona.Will you take one for the team here? Winona needs you. Media people need you. I need you. Please say yes   Message me if you want a look at the form and I’ll email it to you. Or call Pat Mutter, our head guru at Visit Winona, at 507-452-0735 and she’ll hook you up.

There are other stories that will be told as a byproduct of their visit — media will be shown around to some of the most interesting and most beautiful spots in town, from the Winona County History Center and Minnesota Marine Art Museum to Garvin Heights and the Wenonah Canoe factory. If I know my hunting opener buddies, which I do pretty well at this point, there will be some other touring which may or may not involve some of Winona’s favorite liquor-serving establishments. And I may or may not be that tour guide. So if you see me out and about the first week in November with some unfamiliar faces in tow, do me a favor and be sweet to them. I will have talked you all up pretty big to them by that point, the rest will be on you to show them that yes indeed, we really do love having company.

So I’ve been sitting here wondering why one of my flowing missives was not showing up – wondering where exactly it had wandered off to, or if the cruel cyber-gods had just eaten it like a little word snack. Well I found it, and it turns out there were no cyber-gods involved, only one cyber-idiot (that would be me) who somehow inadvertently instructed this website to publish it on November 13 instead of September 13. Sorry, but that’s too long to wait for all this rambling goodness, so I now present to you The Shout-Out Blog – and stay tuned, because I want you to play along.

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When you live in a place for a while, it’s easy to take it for granted. Your favorite coffee shop? It’s always right there. The clerk at Kwik Trip? Always the same nice guy. The gold and crimson fall leaves that line our streets and hills? Yeah, they’ll be there next year too. I think after a while people tend to forget that those itty-bitty parts of our day, all pieced together, form the answer to the fundamental question: Why do I love Winona? While I was driving around the other day admiring the dazzling fall color starting to cascade across the bluffs, I was thinking about all those little nuggets of good in Winona, all the pieces of the giant puzzle that transform life from good to great here, and I came to the realization that it was probably time for some shout-outs.

Now – this is by no means a comprehensive list of everything good in Winona — I’ll be relying on you at the end to give your shout-outs to help get us there. But this is the short list of the things just in the last three days or so that have made Winona a better place for me, listed in no particular order, and written if for no other reason than I think these places have earned a cyber-hug:

Ed’s (no name) Bar. I realize I wrote a bar first but don’t judge. I just happened to be thinking about it. Ellisa, the lovely Wednesday bartender, has remembered what I like to drink since the first time I ever went in there, and she is purely delightful to sit at the bar and commiserate with. And Ed has given music back to Winona in a big way – I think lit a fire even – and I’ve really appreciated having one place to go hear such a huge variety of performers. One night it’s soulful bluegrass, another night it’s pulsating techno, and the night after that it could be straight up indie rock. It’s cool, and we’re lucky the bar is here, even if it still doesn’t have a name.

And speaking of music, also heading up my list is Sam Brown. I had the pleasure of attending a planning meeting for his Midwest Music Fest recently, and let me tell you something – this guy is going to change Winona with his dreams. The music festival has taken Winona’s budding music vibe and run with it – spreading artists all over town and literally drawing thousands of people here to experience it. And you know where it started? His head. That’s cool. And he’s opening up a little place on east Third Street for art and music called Some Sum Studio, and he’s trying to get community radio going in town, and and and… Seriously folks. If everyone in town did one tiny fraction as much as Sam has done for this community, Winona, Minnesota would rule the world.

The guys at Daniel’s Ace Hardware get my big thumbs up for being the most genuinely pleasant and helpful people who ever have to solve my problems for me. I can’t help it if I am mystified by how to get my stupid garage door opener open to change the battery, and I’m so flippin’ relieved that we have a place like this so I don’t have to. I think every town needs a hardware store like Daniel’s, filled with local guys who like to joke around a little and don’t mind walking over and getting the battery you need instead of telling you what aisle its in and sending you off wandering on your own. They’re nice, and they’re kind of funny, and they never talk to me like I’m stupid, even though sometimes I really am.

And how many towns our size can say they have a place like Jade Community Acupuncture? Sure, there are acupuncturists all over the place, but it takes a special kind of giving to be a community acupuncture provider. See, community acupuncture is designed almost exclusively for the health and well being of a community — it takes Eastern medicine and makes it accessible for all at a very low cost, despite the fact that Jade Fang will never become rich doing it. But she doesn’t care – if you talk to her about it, she will tell you she feels a calling to help people, not to be wealthy. I say a shout-out is due for that. And by the way, I never saw myself as someone who would doze in a chair with a bunch of needles stuck in me – in fact if you told me a few years ago that I would be writing this I would have laughed in your face. But between Jade’s acupuncture and Chinese herbs, I am a healthier person at a price I could afford, and it’s made a believer out of me. I’m not alone – go sit in her waiting room sometime and random people will just start talking to you about how it has changed their life, and they’re not paid actors or anything. Just farmers and housewives and senior citizens and business folks. I think they would agree — we are blessed to have this in Winona.

Bloedows. There, I said it. I ate a maple long john the other day and it made me a little misty. I have no idea what they’re putting in those things, but yeah, I’ll stand in line for one. Twitching. Everyone in line around me? Doing the same thing until they get their Bloedow’s fix. That is some crazy goodness Bloedows, and my lips thank you, but my thighs hate you.

OK – this is the shout-out column, and it’s your turn. If you are a visitor to these parts, what would make you come back? If you live here, what makes you happy that you do? Let’s hear it folks…

Cool blue heron statues all over town – another reason I love Winona.

I have to say, living next to one of the country’s most beautiful waterways has a few perks. For starters, it’s beautiful, and there is likely no one who has ever passed this way who doesn’t recall the crystalline blue water that hugs Winona. If you haven’t seen it for yourself, trust me, it’s spectacular.

But this river is not just eye candy. It’s like a whole microcosm of things to do, one of those ‘something for everyone’ places, and I really mean everyone. If you doubt – let me tell you what I saw on the river Saturday:

Weathered old men and chattering families and boats full of buddies drifted in the gentle backwaters casting for the day’s catch, but with so many nooks and crannies to explore, each seemed as if  they’d found their own perfect spot. Kayakers were out too, silently gliding through the full bloom of water lilies to create a scene that would make most postcards jealous.

Faster boats stuck to the broader channels, hauling squealing kids on tubes and flashy wakeboarders doing tricks. I was on a fast boat with a flashy wakeboarder, but doing neither of these things myself because, well, I’m terrible at it. Someday perhaps I’ll post a photo of me trying to barefoot water ski, which basically consists of me clinging with total panic to a boom off of the boat. So yeah, anyway, it’s fun to watch, but I’ll be the one with the camera.

And speaking of cameras, there is no shortage of wonder to capture out there on the Mississippi River. Besides the blooms of water lilies and plumes of wild rice and desolate swatches of uninhabited beach, blue herons dotted the shallows, eagles and flocks of pelicans soared overhead, and shy turtles on sunny logs slipped into the water by the hundreds as we cruised by.

If you want it, there is plenty of socializing to be had on the river, with popular sandbars lined with cruisers and houseboats rented for the weekend. And I’m not saying we did or didn’t go there, but there are a few watering holes along this stretch that you can dock a boat at for a cold one if you’re in the mood.

And if you get a wild hair, some helpful souls have installed a rope swing or two on some of the islands you’ll pass by. If you decide to stop for a jump, my advice is that you are NOT holding onto the knot second from the bottom when you jump out of the tree, or you will find your body being dragged across the ground before you flop face first into the water. I may or may not have done this. And it may or may not be on videotape.

But even with knees plastered with Band-Aides, the river is an awful lot of fun, and it’s big enough to share with all comers. What are you waiting for? I think everyone deserves a river day, and you can make it into whatever you want. But bring Band-Aides, just in case.

Fun on the river