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In January, a special section of the newspaper called The River is Life, a magazine about the commercial, environmental, and recreational aspects of living along the Mississippi River, won first place in the Minnesota Newspaper Association contest. Because RiverTown Multimedia publishes papers in both Minnesota and Wisconsin, we are members of both states' associations, and we just learned that The River is Life won first place in the Wisconsin contest, as well. We are very excited about that.
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"There are moments in life that change our perceptions. When we are faced with difficult challenges, with scenes of beauty, with frightening emergencies, with quiet solitude, we often experience a sense of time in different ways. Sometimes it seems to speed up, to race, and in other situations, it seems to move slowly, to crawl. In Adventure Relativity: When Intense Experience Shifts Time, author Steve Gardiner takes the reader on a journey through a childhood game, a cardiac arrest, a high-altitude climb, a solo trip into the mountains, a heated run in the Boston Marathon, and other adventures that stretched his senses, pulled at his emotions, and gave him a stronger sense of meaning in life."
That's the blurb off my latest book Adventure Relativity, which is available on Amazon. I had the opportunity to interview Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers about former Wisconsin Governor and Senator Gaylord Nelson who founded Earth Day in 1970. The Wisconsin Historical Society was generous with photos. You can see the article here.
My newspaper work continues from home. The phone interviews are working better than I expected. Everyone else is working from home, too, so perhaps we all are excited to talk to someone from outside our house. Coronavirus has taken over the news cycle and most of our stories deal directly with COVID-19 or how it affects some aspect of our lives. I've written about lowering gas prices, how realtors are dealing with the stay-at-home order, and how food security is threatened by the current situation. I've been trying to get out for a walk or bike ride or both, and realized that this is a chance to look at our own neighborhoods more closely. That became the topic of an editorial.
Like many people today, the newsroom is now moving into our homes. We packed up our notebooks, computers, cameras, and supplies and took them out the door. We will be working remote indefinitely. It will be strange doing interviews only by phone and trying to find photos to accompany articles. This will be a challenge.
The Minnesota Newspaper Association held their annual convention in the Twin Cities on January 30. In the evening, they held their awards ceremony, and I placed third in the Sports Feature category for a story about a Red Wing woman who has had a successful run in a major roller derby league in Los Angeles and has skated in the National Championships and World Cup.
Last May our staff created a magazine about the commercial, recreational, and ecological aspects of living along the Mississippi River. It is titled "The River is Life," and it placed first in the Special Sections category. I was involved in five of the stories included in that publication. It is available only in print form, so I am unable to include a link here, but I am very pleased with how it turned out and how it was received, both by our readers and by the contest judges. The article in EdSurge caught the eye of the editor of educational podcasts at Class Dismissed. He interviewed me, and the result is this podcast which is Number 125 in their series. There is some introductory material which is interesting, or if you prefer to go directly to the part about SSR, it begins at 14:20 into the podcast. Nick did a great job with this.
A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by a writer from EdSurge, an online education journal. We discussed SSR - sustained silent reading, a practice that I used for 38 years in my high school English classroom. Even though I am retired from teaching, I still believe that SSR is the most important thing I did with my students to help them learn to enjoy reading and become better, more self-motivated readers. The article was published in EdSurge on October 7.
For the past 55 years, Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, has hosted the Nobel Conference, a two-day event that brings in noted speakers who focus on a single topic and examine it from many angles. This year the conference was called Climate Changed - yes, in the past tense. It featured a host of noted speakers and we really enjoyed the thoughtful discussions. Next year, the topic is cancer, and we plan to attend again. What a great idea for a conference.
As part of the 101 Things To Do in RiverTown series that I have been working on this year, I interviewed the owner of St. Croix Scuba Diving and Snorkeling in Hudson, Wisconsin. He invited me to take their introductory scuba diving class, so I did. He explained the things I would need to know to operate the breathing system, then took me to the YMCA swimming pool to try it all out. Taking those first few breaths underwater was a weird sensation, but then I got used to it and really enjoyed it. My 101 article on scuba diving will be in RiverTown publications in December.
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Photo by John Jancik
AuthorDr. Steve Gardiner is the author of six books and over 1,000 articles. |