About this column:
We're excited to inaugurate a new series for our Patch Readers: "Dispatches: The Changing American Dream." Every day, the national media is full of stories about how American families, businesses, and neighbors are adjusting to these trying times. There are so many changes happening so fast that it's dizzying: national debates about unemployment, foreclosures, debt, religion, government and private enterprise all touch on fundamental ways in which we see ourselves and our communities. At Patch, we want to explore that conversation on a daily basis so we can better understand how our neighbors are adjusting to the challenges and opportunities that surround us. If you would like to suggest a subject for one of our Dispatches stories, email the editor at James.Sanna@Patch.comConventional wisdom holds that flashmobs have few agricultural applications. Useful for protesters, for rioters, or practical jokers, sure, but who'd think that social media-powered organic farming would work? Local urban farmers Karla Pankow and Elizabeth Millard, that's who. They've decided they could use a few flashmobs to help their fledgling organic farm business, called Bossy Acres, get off the ground. So, on Saturday, a few dozen of their farm's friends and supporters will descend on their acreage in Dayton to help weed and generally prep the land for its first planting. Organized …
Local painter Jill Van Sickle is not who you picture when you think of a one-person remodeling crew. The petite 33-year-old with fiery red hair and a personality to match is the model image of an artist. But last winter, she traded her paintbrush for a hammer and set to work on a large scale project: a home of her own. Despite great credit and $10,000 saved up from art sales and a part-time bartending job, Van Sickle learned she’d need a co-signer to purchase a modest $80,000 foreclosed home in South Minneapolis. “When I went in, they said two years ago we would have given you a $300,000 loan…
For Bob Bayers, leaving the 9/11 Tribute Concert behind is a bit of an economic necessity. As he tries to adapt his 90-year-old hardware store to competition from a soon-to-arrive competitior store in the neighborhood, he said he needs all the time he can get. "I just can't do it at age 60," he said. "I can't do that and make sure of my livelihood. I can't do both." Bayers started he concert, held in the Lake Harriet Band Shell, in 2002 to memorialize the 2,977 people who died in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. "It was the right thing to do," he said, describing how friends—and the thought of…
