Sunday, April 25, 2010

Celebrating Earth Day At Farview Park...


Photos and blog post by John Hoff

On Earth Day last weekend, in addition to getting a tour of Connie Nompelis' rapidly-being-renovated $7,900 house, my son and I went to Farview Park and watched an educational demonstration on groundwater, which is pictured above...

At the park, Alex met "Inventor Dude," whose name escapes me, but he's well known in Farview Park as the guy who has dedicated his life to inventions which revolve around compressed air as an energy source.

Afterward, Alex told me his "Future Cities" extracurricular project involved designing a city where compressed air was used to power cars. As he always does, "Inventor Dude" had some pieces of paper with the address of his website. A shame I lost mine. If anybody knows, feel free to post the link.
This decorative tower in Farview Park replaces a historic stone tower which one stood there. You know what I say: Bring back the stone tower. In the photo above, Alex is checking out the plaque pictured below.
The photo below was taken by putting my camera lens right up to the viewing devices in the decorative tower. This shows the old stone tower which once stood on the site.

Below is my son Alex, and the top of the hill in Farview Park with the Minneapolis skyline visible in the distance. This picture reminds me of the day I took him to the top of the Space Needle in Seattle when he was only 2 years old. I held him up to see the view, and I whispered in his ear, "The world is your oyster, my son." It seems like only yesterday.

Kids. They grow up so quickly.

11 comments:

Johnny Northside said...

Henceforth, it will be the policy of Johnny Northside blog to not publish troll comments without bothering to comment on their non-publication.

MeganG. said...

I think his name is Randy Wall, or Randy Mann. I know it's Randy something.

Anonymous said...

Huh? I don't get it can you repeat that for us simple folk?

Shamika said...

How do you decide what the trolls are? Your blog will lose what got it to number one if you only posts comments that agree with you.

Don't let your critics win John, keep the "substantive" comment policy that has served you so well.

Anonymous said...

Trolls are easy to spot Shamtrolika. Somehow your comment must have gotten through the filter. Take a look around Shamtrolika. Do you honestly think JNS or any of the bloggers here are going to filter out disagreement. If so, you are blind.

JNS Reader said...

It seems to me that Johnny is more than willing to publish comments of people who disagree with him. What he's proposing to do is no longer even bother to inform us that he's removed the obnoxious, disruptive, bound-for-prison-someday children from the classroom - and I'm fine with that.

It's well known that when dealing with trolls, the number 1 rule is: DON'T FEED THE TROLLS. That's what they're here for.

John has been doing this for a while, and he's no doubt always exercised some degree of discretion when publishing comments - at the end of the day it is his blog. However, I think it's clear that he enjoys a healthy debate, and I have no doubt that he will continue to foster such an environment.

Anonymous said...

Actually this seems to indicate that is the policy to "not publish" comments from trolls but to at least acknowledgement the non-approved comment and state the reason. I think this is smart as we don't want this blog to become a smaller version of the StarTribune.com site.

"Henceforth, it will be the policy of Johnny Northside blog to not publish troll comments without bothering to comment on their non-publication. "

Anonymous said...

"Inventor Dude" is longtime Hawthorne resident Randy Mann. You can read more about his invention at http://www.mnideaopen.org/node/2653 and consider voting for it when voting begins on May 4th. There is more information to be found at http://www.pressurizedcaresystem.com/ about his compressed air idea.


KCz

MeganG. said...

Haha! Even the trolls are trying to help Johnny Northside establish the anti-troll policies.

LMAO!

Anonymous said...

Without Trolls we'd have a boring blog with Blah Blah Blah by someone named MeganG. There are not enough forks to put in my eye vs listen to her random blabbering.

Johnny Northside said...

When the troll infestation dies down, I might change the policy again to reflect that. I might start saying again when I have rejected a comment, which I prefer to do very rarely and to say so in public when I have done it.

But right now, even stating their comments have been rejected seems to feed the trolls.

I am all for healthy debate and even intensely critical comments. But some stuff is just troll doo-doo and does not deserve to be published. They can utilize their own low-traffic dreary internet troll resources.