CURRENT ISSUE: March 2012
Cover Story
Paul A. DeBriyn
LOCATION: mankato
The years 1987-88 weren’t particularly rosy for Newt Gingrich look-alike Paul A. DeBriyn, then chief executive officer at the rural cooperative that would become AgStar Financial Services. Nationally in those years, many rural financial institutions like his—and many family farms—were becoming unhinged as a barn door kicked in by petulant cows.
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DLC Manufacuring
LOCATION: new ulm
Exactly 165 years ago in March 1847, the last survivors of the Donner Party reached safety after spending a cataclysmal winter caught in the snowy clutches of Hastings Cutoff, a dead-end pass through the Sierra Nevada in California.
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Waseca Music Company
LOCATION: waseca
What business has been around for more than a half century, serves the music needs of several south-central Minnesota communities and is owned and operated by people who work there without pay?
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Arnold Ziffel RevisitedAs a child in a major Midwestern city, I watched Green Acres. Bumbling Eb, channel-surfing Arnold Ziffel, greenhorn Oliver Wendell Douglas (Fresh air!), and screw loose Lisa Douglas (Times Square!) were all half-brained Hooterville hoots…
(Comments: 0) Read & Comment >Hot Startz!
Hot Startz! features very new or reformed businesses in our reading area. Contact us to be considered.
Friendz Salon & Tanning
LOCATION: sleepy eye Three Sleepy Eye women opened Friendz Salon & Tanning in January at 117 Main Street West: Carolyn Baures, Lacey Braulick, and Heidi Carr.
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Bell Tower Suites
LOCATION: st. clair Tammy Spence was raised on a Good Thunder farm that instilled a “strong work ethic,” said Spence in a telephone interview. “There was no getting out of responsibility.”
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Vault Denim
LOCATION: mankato The example set for Brooke Linder while growing up in Cleveland, Minnesota, was a mother who worked five jobs. “She sacrificed everything she had for us kids,” said 26-year-old Linder in a telephone interview.
(Comments: 0) Read & Comment >Off-The-Cuff
Off-The-CuffI hope you all have been surviving March Madness. At this writing, I’m pretty sure my college team, the Dayton Flyers, didn’t make the field of 68. If it will make you feel any better, my second favorite team is the Minnesota Golden Gophers and my second favorite arena, The Barn. Similar to college basketball [...]
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