Workers started removing the fountain in Irvine Park, Saint Paul, today.  It is being shipped off to Robinson Iron Works in Alabama, where it was made, for a general refurbishment that they hope to have done by May.

This tiny tidbit of very local news may not seem important to the rest of the world, but the story of the little neighborhood of Irvine Park is rarely told the way it needs to be.  It’s just one story of urban activism among thousands but it is important because this is repeated constantly throughout the world.  The lesson is simple – if you want the really good things in life you have to make it happen.

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King Boreas.  The name doesn’t strike fear into the hearts and minds of Minnesotans because we’ve learned to live with his terrible reign.  He is the king of Winter, the tyrant we overthrow every year in the little festival we call Winter Carnival, at least in Saint Paul.  But this year he got to have his own fun over in Minneapolis. It’s good to be King.

You may think this is all legend and fun but it’s serious business. Who else but King Boreas could reach out and tear a new hole in Minneapolis right on schedule?

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Any day that starts with a nearly mandatory trip to the Apple store is not a good day. That’s my gripe for the morning as I find I have to buy another battery charger to replace the one that oh-so-easily snapped off. It’s not really a big deal except that this plug slips out so easily it probably has a lot to do with why Apple batteries don’t last very long. And here I have to buy another badly designed little thing.

“It’s Apple,” you might say, “They do stuff like that.” Well, it’s not just Apple – it’s nearly everything that wants to the latest kewl thing. The level of complexity in our world means that a lot of bits and pieces need to be put together to make things work, but they aren’t always using the best things around them. The wheel is constantly being re-invented. That’s a shame.

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Nearly all social media activists agree that success in their field requires a sense of community.  It’s the “social”, after all, that distinguishes this kind of media from older media.  Yet that means different things to different people, colored by their different experiences in life.  What does “community” mean to you?

It’s not just an idle question.  As different communities form around the ‘net people will expect different things from them following their different visions.  I’d like to know what you think “community” means.

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