Phil Cole — Litigator

Phil Cole is, and has been for a num­ber of years, one of the smartest and best lit­i­ga­tors in the state.  He is the Pres­i­dent of the Lomen Abdo Cole King & Stage­berg PA law firm.  He is a lit­i­ga­tor par excel­lence - a wise and saga­cious coun­selor — one who does not suf­fer fools kindly.

I can say this from hav­ing spent a num­ber of years on the Plain­tiffs’ side of the Min­nesota Bar — if you had Phil on the other side of the case from you, you know it was going to be a long, hard ride — you hated it, but you respected him because he was so good and he won so often.  He was the kind of guy who saw holes in your case you never, in your wildest dreams, thought of — and he exploited them to the fullest.

I can say this also from hav­ing sat in insur­ance com­pany claims com­mit­tee meet­ings with him.  He’s just as hard on his clients.  He sees the case for what it is, he’s not afraid to expose every weak­ness in his client’s case, and his advice about how to approach the case and whether to set­tle or fight is ignored only at your own peril.

My hat is off to one of the state’s great lawyers.

 

Posted in Legal Folk

Frank Harris — Executive Director Minnesota CLE

Frank Har­ris is the Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of Min­nesota CLE.  If you travel in Con­tin­u­ing Legal Edu­ca­tion cir­cles, what you will find is that Frank is regarded as one of the great­est inno­va­tors and lead­ers in the field.

Con­tinue read­ing

Posted in Business Persons, Legal Folk

Paul & Chris

Paul and Chris aren’t from Min­nesota, but I have to include them.  I met them trav­el­ing on a barge through the Bur­gundy region of France.  Paul and Chris live in Syd­ney, Aus­tralia.  They are such won­der­ful folks, I wish they were Min­nesotans, so I’m grant­ing them hon­orary Min­nesotan status!

Posted in Regular Folks

Brandon Howe — Financial Consultant

Bran­don is a Finan­cial Con­sul­tant at RBC Wealth Man­age­ment in Min­neapo­lis.  An affa­ble guy.  I enjoyed hav­ing a drink with him at the same happy hour where I met Allie Pryd and Deb­o­rah Cord­ner.

Posted in Business Persons

Cadilllac Kolstad — Musician

Andrew “Cadil­lac” Kol­stad is the scion of a musi­cal fam­ily.  His father, Papa John Kol­stad was one of the movers and shak­ers of the old Min­neapo­lis folk scene back in the days of Koerner, Ray & Glover.  (I’ll have to get a photo of Papa John on the blog in the future.)

Cadil­lac has been shakin’ his own grove in the Min­neapo­lis music scene haul­ing an old upright on a trailer behind his gold 50’s era Cadil­lac from gig to gig.  The man ain’t just show — he’s the real deal.  He lays down a boogie-woogie piano that gets peo­ple up and danc­ing.  Keep the music com­ing Cadillac!

Posted in Musicians

Bob Frey — Songwriter, Teacher

Bob Frey teaches at the Per­pich Cen­ter for Arts Edu­ca­tion in Golden Val­ley, MN.  It is is a com­pre­hen­sive, tuition-free pub­lic high school offer­ing a rig­or­ous aca­d­e­mic pro­gram, with inten­sive course­work focused in the arts.  Kids from around the state come to pur­sue their high school edu­ca­tion and their pas­sion for the arts.

Bob has a gift for song writ­ing and per­forms reg­u­larly around town.  Take a lis­ten to some of his songs on his mySpace page.  He honed his craft in the bars and cof­fee­houses of his home­town of Cleve­land, Ohio, as well as in Oxford, Ohio and Chicago for­merly fronted The Buskers.

Bob is older brother to James Frey the author of A Mil­lion Lit­tle Pieces.  You prob­a­bly know all about that controversy.

On a sad­der note, Bob’s wife Laura Fer­ster has been bat­tling, so far suc­cess­fully, can­cer.  She is still going through treat­ment with a strength and deter­mi­na­tion no doubt buoyed by Bob’s con­stant love and sup­port.  I wish the both much strength and Laura a full recovery.

Posted in Musicians, Teachers

Barbara Porwit

Bar­bara Por­wit is an artist.  Her web­site, Body Images, is aptly named because much of her art cel­e­brates the shapes and curves of the body.  She has a series that I always found par­tic­u­larly engag­ing.  It is a study of deer skele­tons.  Through Barbara’s eye they became visions of almost abstract archi­tec­tural grandeur.

Barb is also to mother of Zan­der, who is a super­hero in one her beloved paintings.

Posted in Artists

New Face of Minnesota Website

It was inevitable that I would have to move from the iWeb plat­form I was using before.  I liked how iWeb inte­grated well with Aper­ture and cre­ated a pretty nifty look­ing web­site with­out too much trou­ble, but it wasn’t a par­tic­u­larly flex­i­ble tool and by pretty much all accounts, a devel­op­ment dead-end.  With Apple hav­ing not even both­ered to upgrade it in the last iWork update, it felt like iWeb was being orphaned.

So, when the hard drive on my iMac died and I seemed to have lost con­trol of the iWeb web­sites (though I was able get pretty much all the data back — thank you Back­blaze!), it seemed time to move to a new plat­form.  So, here I am recre­at­ing the site on WordPress.

I’ve reposted all the old posts with their orig­i­nal dates and will start doing new posts soon. Enjoy!

Posted in Uncategorized

Eric Lovold — Musician, Song Writer

Eric Lovold is the front man for a great Twin Cities band, The Alarmists.  He is a gifted song writer and one of the best record­ing engi­neers around the Twin Cities.  My band did some record­ing with Eric and he is just a wiz­ard with Pro Tools.  (You can hear the results on our Face­book Fan Page.)  Christ­mas Day of 2010 some Grinch broke into his house and stole quite a bit of gear from his record­ing stu­dio.  Eric was over for din­ner the other night and could resist the old (but in very fine shape) 1925 Bald­win in the par­lor!  He makes beau­ti­ful music.

Posted in Musicians

Billy McLaughlin — Guitarist

Billy McLaugh­lin is a locally famous gui­tarist in the Mid­west.  He has a unique style using hamer-ons and –offs using both hands.  He cre­ates a harp-like sound with his play­ing.  He calls it “two-handed tapping.”

Sev­eral years ago he devel­oped a debil­i­tat­ing, espe­cially for a musi­cian, ill­ness called focal dys­to­nia.  It is a move­ment dis­or­der affected Billy’s left fore­arm and hand caus­ing two fin­gers to curl up and not respond.  Brought his solo career to a crash­ing halt.  He had to relearn to play the gui­tar back­wards to how he had played pre­vi­ously.  He describes it as learn­ing to sign your name with your non-dominant hand as per­fectly as you can with your dom­i­nant hand.  Hap­pily, he was successful.

Below is a video inter­view with Billy from a local news sta­tion describ­ing his strug­gle and victory:

Story link: MyFoxTWINCITIES.com

 

Posted in Musicians