Cannon Falls...
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everybody’s home town!
At least that’s what it seems to be when you see the full page picture of the main street of Cannon Falls in the February issue of the prestigious business magazine, Twin Cities Business.
The only problem was that the picture was included in an article about St. James, Minnesota! It was identified as “the business district of St. James near Mankato.”
The “eagle-eye” of local Mayor Glenn Weibel brought this fact to my attention.
So I contacted Gene Rebeck, Senior Editor of Twin Cities Business magazine. He seemed to cringe on the other end of the phone when I brought up this discrepancy. I tried to comfort him, as a fellow journalist, by saying that the mistake could happen to any of us, meaning we’re under the stress of deadlines, etc. But he might have heard me chuckling and I don’t think he got much comfort out of my suggestion!
I asked him to explain how it happened.
Gene admitted he had written the information overlayed on the picture. But in the rather complicated recap of all the people involved in putting out an issue like this, both he and I decided to just say that there was a “chain of misunderstandings” in getting the picture and the article together.
He was also cringing from not recognizing Cannon Falls because he had attended Carlton College in nearby Northfield. But he hasn’t been here in about 30 years, he recalled.
Like any of us, Gene seemed to be pretty hard on himself. He promised that a correction would be published in the April issue.
The article featured a story about AgStar Financial Services, who said they bring regional financing to create capital capacity in rural areas and work along with local banks with their financing opportunities.
I then began wondering what the town of St. James thought of it’s “new” look?
Their mayor, Gary Sturm, hadn’t seen the article until now. He focused on the town pictured as St. James in the magazine and quipped, “I've been out of town for a few days and on returning home it looks like the landscape has changed substantially!”
And then he kindly added, “Cannon Falls looks like a nice rural community.”
I think we can say the same about St. James.
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