Only four persons from the nine-county area around Greater Mankato have been inducted into the Minnesota Museum of Broadcasting Hall of Fame. Of the four, three are Linders. Our cover story, John Linder, isn’t in the MMB Hall of Fame—yet, but he is creating lots of radio waves in our state’s broadcasting industry.
His waves aren’t tsunamis: they’re more a never-ending, behind-the-scenes ripple.
It was a dark and stormy night.
Leo Nissen was scrunched down in his black sedan, fumbling with chow mein and chopsticks and peering out from behind a Star Tribune. He was waiting for the blubbery bloke with the spaghetti hair and toothless grin—the bad guy.
The outdated notion of private counseling being an hour of pure hell with a daffy German shrink asking stomach-churning questions goes out the window for good during an appointment with Joanna Hocker. She’s a Licensed Psychologist all right, but none like most people have experienced: with her seemingly perpetual cackle of a laugh and infectious Christmas glow she’s more a cross between Phyllis Diller and JoAnne Worley (of Laugh-In fame) than Sigmund Freud and Carl Rogers, both well-known therapists.
Dan Gislason digs the Icelandic countryside. It’s a winter wonderland of crystal-clean waterfalls and gargantuan glaciers, an arctic canvas of white and lipstick red homes nestled against pastel-green Ansel Adams ridges. Iceland is a cornucopia of mentally stimulating sights and refreshing sounds—the rushing waterfall, the flapping gull, the gentle spring wind melting ice. Rural Iceland would have been a natural fit for Dan today if his ancestors hadn’t left there in the late 1800s.
Despite his training as an aeronautical engineer, Lyle Jacobson never designed soaring rockets or jet aircraft for a living. Instead, he discovered life (and opportunities) outside the realm of space.
For 24 years, he’s helped provide peace of mind to people whose feet are rooted firmly on earth, not in the stratosphere. Jacobson heads Mankato’s Katolight Corp., which supplies emergency power generation systems to customers who must continue operating despite rolling blackouts or ice storms.
On the windward side of Truman, Minn., and only ten miles north of where road-weary travellers crisscross I-90, The Whittler’s Lady Bed & Breakfast began as a monument to a homegrown lady’s poignant memories and to her wild dreams.
You can hear his high-tech tank approaching now: an Everest & Jennings electric wheelchair on commercial carpet emits a distinctive, high-pitched whirr, signalling “General” Al Fallenstein’s double-time advance to the front lines. While surveying the foxholes at 1725 Roe Crest Drive through powered-up binoculars, he really does seem like a field general leading troops into battle. And in response, the troops stiffen their resolve upon seeing his courage. All that’s missing is a tattered American war flag and a bugler’s charge.
It’s likely Al Fallenstein has never thought of himself as a corporate leader, or an inspiration, but nonetheless he is both and more. If what Napoleon said is true, namely, that “in war, the morale is to the material as three is to one,” then it’s no wonder the 85-division Taylor Corp. army has won so many corporate battles.
When Kathie Davis left her job with the Region 9 Development Commission in 1996, co-workers said “bon voyage” with a gold watch and an office chair.
Those were useful and appreciated gifts, but Davis left with something of far greater value: Her thick Rolodex, brimming with the names and telephone numbers of people she knows can make things happen in southern Minnesota and beyond. It’s the chief asset of “Resource Connections,” the company she formed after serving Region 9 from 1973-79 and 1985-96 as public information coordinator and marketing director.
Cows are boring, really.
They eat grass, mull around, and moo.
Milk is white, also boring. If it weren’t for the containers that hold it, milk would be a series of boring white puddles. It can’t even moo or chew cud. It’s Plain Jane, ho-hum, blah, vanilla, and boring, boring, boring.
