Nearly 24 hours after returning from the RCGA Leadership Trip to Minneapolis and St. Paul,  a few items are still  clamoring to climb out of my notebook. Here goes one final data dump:

• These Minnesotans sure save their press clippings. St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman talked about a 1973 Time cover featuring Minnesota Gov. Wendell Anderson holding a large fish. The headline was, “Minnesota: The Good Life.” During the next panel discussion, Neal Cuthbert, a vice president of the McKnight Foundation, used a 1963 ad in Newsweek to demonstrate how the arts have put the Twin Cities on the map. The ad, bought by  a local utility to celebrate the opening of the original Guthrie Theater, featured a helpful map for readers who didn’t know where Minneapolis was.
• Rams Executive Vice President Bob Wallace doesn’t sound too enthusiastic about the prospects of bringing a Super Bowl to St. Louis. Wallace was asked to respond to a panel discussion on how St. Paul landed the 2008 Republican convention; the general topic was how mega-events can be good for a city. Wallace praised the success of the NCAA basketball tournament and Urban League convention in St. Louis, and added: “The one thing I get asked a lot is, what about a Super Bowl? Every big event doesn’t need to come into your community. I think of the Super Bowl as an event where people want to go somewhere warm.”
• St. Charles County Executive Steve Ehlmann knows his history. After a presentation on regionalism in the Twin Cities, Ehlmann remarked that, after the Louisiana Purchase,  what’s now Minneapolis had been part of a giant administrative district based in St. Charles. “Some of our political boundaries today are just as meaningless,” he said. One speaker from the Twin Cities  remarked that he didn’t think Minnesota was part of the Louisiana Purchase, but a look at maps like this one proves Ehlmann right.