Union of Youth

The Northfield Union of Youth held its annual Senior BBQ after the board meeting on Wednesday the 28th of May. The Senior BBQ is an annual tradition that happens right after the senior Youth Board members’ last board meeting. Congrats to Tom Launer, Abe Henson, Madelyn Hartke, Kellen Kirchberg, James Wilson, Sam Dunnewold, Phoebe Currier, Gerrit Duys, Gus DeMann, Marie Fischer, and Lizzie French. You all showed amazing leadership and helped the Key assert a bigger presence in the community. You are all irreplaceable. Congrats. See you Wednesday at Commencement – 5:30-6:30 at Memorial Field. (Sorry for the bad photos – my camera died.)

FEEDBACK FENZY – be sure to catch them on the Key radio show this Saturday the 31st at 9:00am on KYMN (1080).

For more photos of the 2008 Eccentric Circus at Carleton’s The Cave click here. EC raised almost $500 for the Key this year.

This Saturday the 24th of May is the annual Eccentric Circus, a fundraiser of the Northfield Union of Youth (The Key). This year will be a battle of the bands from 4:00pm until 11:00pm. The theme is appropriately “battle”. Over ten local bands will be performing. The doors open at 3:45pm, the cost is $5 ($4 with costume). Location is THE CAVE at Carleton College (behind Evans Hall by the corner of Maple and 1st). Pizza and pop available for purchase. See you there!

On Thursday May 22nd Bridgewater Elementary School hosted an end of year celebration for a wonderful year of after school programming. Over 150 people showed up to the celebration which included Aztec Dancing, pinata smashing, clothes pin fishing, face painting, a free dinner, cotton candy, and a lot of prizes. Key Kids helped set up the event and even ran the fishing booth. A big applause goes to Kari Gorr and Lily Thiberot for organizing and running the event. For many many pictures of this event, including about 40 photos of the Aztec Dancers, please click here.
Funding for the Minnesota After-School Community Learning program is provided by the Minnesota Department of Education

Carleton’s Eighth Annual Lighten-Up Garage Sale will take place in the West Gym on Thursday, June 19 and Friday, June 20 from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. and Saturday, June 21 from 8 a.m. to noon. Saturday is a fill-a-bag sale. The sale, sponsored by Acting in the Community Together (ACT), the College’s center for community service and civic engagement, is open to the public.

Volunteers from ACT and other benefiting organizations will run the sale, with all proceeds going to Project Friendship, Northfield Area Special Olympics, and the Northfield Union of Youth (The Key). Last year’s garage sale raised $12,500 for local non-profit organizations.

The garage sale will feature clothes, linens, books, electronics, kitchenware, and other miscellaneous items donated by Carleton students following their dorm room clean-ups.

The West Gym is located on the Carleton campus off Highway 19 East in Northfield. Ample parking is available in the Carleton College Stadium parking lot. Donations for the sale are also being accepted through Wednesday, June 18, weekdays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m (please call ahead).

For more information and disability accommodations, call Carleton’s ACT Center at (507)222-7019.

The Northfield Union of Youth’s Seatbelt Challenge Team skipped a half an hour of school this Monday in order to help out with seatbelt awareness stenciling. Key Youth Board members at the High School and Artech helped pick stencil locations and helped stencil with the air brush provided by the city. The bright yellow stencils said “BUCKLE-UP” with a design of two hands buckling a seatbelt and were placed at entrances and exits at the High School and Artech. Today’s seatbelt stenciling was part of a county-wide project aimed at reducing (and eliminating) preventable teen fatalities and serious injuries in Rice County. Kathy Cooper, the coordinator for the Rice County Safe Communities Coalition (funded through the State of Minnesota Safe Community Toward Zero Death grant), helped organize today’s activities and deserves an applause for her tireless efforts. To take a look at some pictures of the event, please click here.

Members of the Northfield Union of Youth and other youth volunteers from Northfield spent much of Saturday morning and afternoon sprucing up the riverwalk and garden behind the Key. Judy Code, President of the Northfield Garden Club, helped spearhead and organize the community service event, providing the flowers and plants that were planted along the riverwalk and in the Key garden. These efforts were made, in part, because Northfield has entered the American in Bloom contest, a nationwide contest that promotes beautification (and community pride) through gardening. Other current and future projects include floral displays along Highway 3, plantings and displays in the downtown area, residential window box competitions, and further work along the river. The American in Bloom judges will be visiting Northfield July 28-29. Anyone interested in helping (and volunteering for) this cause should email northfieldinbloom@yahoo.com. A big thanks goes out to HCI for awarding an intergenerational mini-grant for the activities on Saturday the 17th.

If you would like to see more pictures please click here.

Book Club has gone bezoomy my droogies and is reading the raskazz of Alex, a nadmenny malchick of 15, living in a nightmarish and merzky England of the future. He and his droogs roam the streets at nochy performing acts of ultraviolence and the old in-out. They have bitvas with other shaikas, tolchock (and much worse) young devotchkas, then retire to milkbars to peet moloko with drencrom and vellocet and sloosky to classical music. Eventually Alex is loveted by the millicents (after he oobivats a soomka), becomes a prestoopnik at Staja, and undergoes Ludovico’s Technique, a form of brainwashing that makes him bolnoy when he considers ultraviolence and pol. The book is A Clockwork Orange and the author is Anthony Burgess. We offer no appypolly loggy but this book is very controversial and caution (and shilarny) is strongly advised. This book has been known to cause pain in the gulliver and some may feel a malenky razdrez in the guttiwuts (thus participants must assure me that their em or pee know they are reading this book). No deng or cutter needed as Book Club is always free. So itty on down to the Klootch (Key) and use your rasoodock to govoreet like this.

Three participants and instructor Kristin Ginger of The Key’s Writing Workshop program took a field trip to Kiernan’s Pub in Minneapolis on Tuesday the 13th to witness one of the fundraiser competitions for the Minnesota poetry slam team. The fundraiser (and others) are being used to help pay expenses for the trip and lodging of participants at the national competition in Madison, Wisconsin later this summer. The theme for the event was using song lyrics for the slam. Particpants slammed Paris, Modest Mouse, Sublime, Natalie Merchant, and even Dexys Midnight Runners (and many others). The Key kids not only got to watch the slam but also comprised of 3 of the 5 judges for the event.

Funding for Writing Workshop generously provided by Archie D. & Bertha H. Walker Foundation. Funding for the Minnesota After-School Community Learning program is provided by the Minnesota Department of Education. Funding also provided by the Office of Justice Youth Intervention Program.

On Monday the 5th of May, members of the NUY, along with other community organizations, were presented with their grant award from the Grace Whittier Fund Committee at the Northfield City Council meeting. The NUY received a $2000 award for their up and coming Photo Club. This money will be used for various expenses (chemicals, paper, negatives, development) and is a one-year grant. According to the City of Northfield’s website: “The Grace Whittier Fund Committee was created in 1988 as a result of a gift from long-time Northfield resident Grace Whittier. The purpose of the fund is to support recreational opportunities for Northfield youth. The City of Northfield has established a process to award grants from the Grace Whittier Fund to Northfield area organizations that provide recreational activities for youth and children.” The Key thanks the Grace Whittier Fund Committee and apologizes for rushing out of their so quickly (the kids had to run off to a United Way panel). Pictured are Youth Board members Sam Dunnewold, Mackenzie O’Connell, and Tom Launer with the Honorable Mayor Lee Lansing.