This is the time of year we here in the Greater Mankato region celebrate something that can’t be found just anywhere, the sounds of summer. Sure, there is the joy that comes each spring with the sounds of neighborhoods once again coming to life. I enjoy that immensely. But it’s the other sounds of summer in southern Minnesota I’m talking about.
I know it may sound cliché, but as I get older time really does seem to be going faster. I wake up and before I know it the day is behind me, another page on the calendar flipped, a new season starting.
Well, here we are at the intersection of another new year. A time when most start making those New Year’s Resolutions. I myself am often a victim of the resolution game, only to feel like a failure by mid-February. So this year I am going to try a little resolution reversal. Instead of making a list of things I want to do in 2017, I am going to make a list of what I’m NOT going to do.
Despite my public persona at times, I am actually a quiet person. My nature is more reserved I would say. I would rather watch and listen silently in the background than be the center of attention. But I have never really been all that shy about my love for the southern Minnesota region.
As the deadline for this issue rapidly approached, I found myself with an acute case of writer’s block when it came to this column. Panic was about to ensue. (And trust me, panic only tightens the grip and prevents any useful thoughts from getting through). So, on the eve of the deadline, I decided to just let go of the chaos in my mind, by going to the chaos of the KISS concert at the Verizon Wireless Center in Mankato.
The week this publication hits your desk, marks the week seven years ago that I moved back to Mankato. Back after a 16-year adventure that took me to California, then to Washington D.C., then all the way back across the country again to Hawaii. But seven years ago, I came home.
“Hey, Grace, I can see our house from here!” I craned my neck to look over my sister’s shoulder and out the window of the cramped Cessna Supervan 900. Sure enough, as we hovered 13,000 feet above the ground, I could faintly make out my parents’ farm tucked into the green hills of western Wisconsin.
It’s hard to believe that this issue marks the one-year anniversary for my time here as editor. Technically, I started on Jan. 2, 2015, but the first issue that was “mine” was our March 2015 spread. I remember walking into my office on Jan. 2 and thinking, “They must have made a mistake. Why on earth did they hire me?”
College kids may have gotten a bad rap recently, in the wake of campus protests and demands for things like safe
