The 33rd Annual Bemidji Jaycees Home, Sport and Travel Show gives visitors a sampling of the myriad opportunities available in the area.
From playground equipment to docks, kettle corn to brats, fireplaces to log buildings, the Home, Sport and Travel Show is an exhibit of diversity. The show in the John Glas Fieldhouse ran from 3-8 p.m. Friday and continues from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. today, April 17, and 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, April 18. More than 150 exhibitors set up booths Friday to show off their goods and services.
Jeri Fuller at the First Realty booth said she and her colleagues will give away bicycles to winners of the children’s coloring contest. Participant will receive a sheet of paper to design their dream home.
Other booths have visitor gifts such as lollipops and bookmarks. But perhaps the most iconic give-away is from Bob’s Econo Pump booth. Visitors there can take away rolls of toilet paper wrapped in an image of an Econo Pump truck and the slogan, “If you ain’t a-flushin’ we’ll be a-rushin’.
Many of the exhibits relate to northern Minnesota culture. Fishing Has No Boundaries has an upstairs booth, while hot tubs, patio arrangements, fishing gear, chainsaws and lawn care companies display their wares downstairs.
Some booths, such as Sport and Spinal Rehab, offer on-the-sport services such as that business’ “Free Thumper Back Massage.”
Entry to the Home, Sport and Travel Show costs $3 for a single ticket, $6 for a family ticket, with children 6 years old and younger admitted free. Those who bring Bemidji Community Food Shelf items to donate can deduct $1 from their entry fee.
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This post is from last May. I saw my first dandelions of the season and thought of what I wrote last year.
David H. South of Bemidji March 2009Photography by Julie Saari
I grew up on a farm near Guthrie. My first involvement with the timber industry was my brother and I cutting aspen off our family farm to sell to the Nu Ply plant in Bemidji. We used our Ford farm tractor and a two wheel trailer loading and unloading all the wood by hand. After we had stacked the cut pulpwood in a place a truck could reach we hired a logger who had a truck to haul it to NuPly.
After graduating from high school I continued to log some in the same way and also to work for loggers who had more specialized equipment. Until I graduated from the University of Minnesota, Forestry school, spring 1970; I worked weekends and breaks logging for myself or for loggers to pay my way through school. By the time I graduated I knew I really enjoyed logging. The development of rubber tired skidders and hydraulic log loaders had taken the backbreaking labor out of the process and made it possible to log more difficult terrain. However, before I could start logging full time I had a military obligation to fulfill........
Written by David Horn
To read the rest of David's story head over here: This is my town: Bemidji
I am not here. I am in South Dakota visiting my oldest bro. He has a new bar and wanted my other brother and I to visit for the night. We will maybe be gone 18 hrs, but I am happy to go. So, I have a guest blogger today
A guest post from 25 by 35 . Show her some love.
I have a new Pen Pal and I met her through our blogs. She has a blog about motherhood – though it’s not exactly a mommy-blog, it’s more of the identity-crisis variety, which is perhaps why I was drawn to her.
My blog is about losing 25 pounds by my 35th birthday, but I have had several blogs over the years and this particular person is the only person I know who is aware of all of them and has read them. So in a sense she knows me pretty well, all the facets of me. She swears she isn’t as complicated or complex as I am; I would disagree.
But there is something about putting pen to paper, creating ink words on a pretty piece of stationery, choosing to scribble or using your best handwriting and sealing the envelope with your very own saliva. It is something infinitely more personal than blogging, even though the subject matter is significantly less personal. What you choose to put on the two pages is telling, and the letter is touched by your hands, your eyes, your mouth and your soul.
Whereas blogging is diarrhea of the keyboard, a letter is special. It is an isolated event and it is a part of you that you give away. After it is sent, there are no edits, no second chances to re-read what you wrote, no looking back.
With blogging, you know people are reading but you don’t really know who. Even your commenters are cartoon characters; imaginary friends. But when I send my letters to Kate, I know that there will be a moment, whether it happens when she checks the mailbox or when her husband hands her a small stack of things addressed to her, that she will see that I was thinking only of her while I wrote this letter. Maybe it will give her the small jolt of electricity her letters give me; maybe I make too much of it all.
How this happened I can’t exactly say. She blogged about being lonely, or was it bored? I asked for her address. Yes, I think that’s how the story goes. So I sent her a letter.
I half expected that to be the end of it, but a week later, I checked my mail and there she was. Much more feminine and composed than she has ever laid claim to in her blog. A pretty piece of cream-colored paper with the silhouette of a lady walking her dog embossed at the top.
Blogging has been my salvation and my Achilles’ heel, the thing that sustains me and controls me. I love to write, I need to be heard, and so blogging is, in the end, a good thing.
This comes up after going to the 3D version of How To Train Your Dragon (which was totally worth the $8 a person). At the beginning of the movie a little snippet comes on asking the movie goers to recycle their 3D plastic glasses in the bins provided outside the theater doors at the end of the movie. We make it through the movie and shake off the darkness as we walk out into the light of day (it was a matinee). My children grab their glasses and search out the bin. Without thinking I toss my glasses in and my children follow suit. We have a small discussion about why they ask us to recycle the glasses and what probably happens to the glasses once they go in the bin (initiated by the kids). A man, woman, and maybe 5 yr old child come out of the theater behind us. The boy is insisting (loudly) that the glasses get recycled. "We need to recycle our glasses.... it said in the movie to put our glasses here at the end....we NEED to... THEY said...." My kids and I stepped back and watched this happen. "Put your glasses in here.... we HAVE to they said" The woman and man are looking at this child like they are not sure whose kid this is. The woman finally grabs her glasses and tosses them in. The man kinda laughs and mumbles and starts messing with his phone. Again, the boy insists. The man tiring of all this turns and says - we could use them for shows at home (HELLO DIPSH*T no you can't!!) anyway.... The boys says "Well if you aren't going to do it, neither am I" and he was just pleased as punch.
