When Matt Mohlke was 24, he wrote ten things on a bar napkin that he wanted to do during his life. Partying with comedian Chris Rock at the Sundance Film Festival was not on the list, but then again neither was the 3,274-mile journey down the Amazon that routed him there. Mohlke was at the Sundance Film Festival to introduce Big River Man, an award-winning feature film in which Mohlke, who lives in Fountain City, Wisc., plays a cornerstone role. But Mohlke isn’t an actor. He

Zombies. The dull-eyed, people-gobbling monsters have become the darlings of American pop culture, though certainly not for their charisma. Their flesh hangs, they'll eat their own families, and they never say anything interesting, yet our love affair with them has only intensified since they first lurched across the silver screen 80 years ago. Today, straight-faced debates rage, to the tune of some 316 million Google hits, about where exactly a zombie has to be shot in the b

If there's one thing I've learned as an exhibit manager, it's to never believe for a minute that I've seen it all when it comes to trade show snafus. The reality is that there are so many moving parts in this industry that the human mind cannot even begin to calculate the number of ways in which things can go outlandishly, horribly wrong. This kernel of wisdom was thrust upon me recently when I was preparing to exhibit at a show in Las Vegas. My company, located in Tampa, FL

I woke up this morning on a concrete landing outside of the door of my guesthouse in Venice.  It was my first night there, and if I thought my neck was stiff after a transatlantic flight, I had no idea the misery concrete steps could cause me. This was not exactly how I thought my first night in Venice would go. Actually, if I prepared 100 possible scenarios, this wasn’t one of them. But there I was – cold, exhausted, cried out and bedraggled to the point that I definitely lo

Let’s face it, Winona is kind of the epicenter of everything that’s good about the Midwest. Sound like puffery? Not a bit. And let me tell you why… I had this epiphany during a conversation with a smart guy I know named Andy, who also happens to be the former executive director at the  Minnesota Marine Art Museum . We were talking about how Winona is close enough to Rochester and La Crosse to be considered sort of an added attraction for those places – how all our arts and sc