In a way, John Larson has been involved with Magnetic Poetry longer than anyone except me. In 1994, I was still working part time at a produce wholesaler called Roots & Fruits, doing Magnetic Poetry (full time) on the side. One of my co-workers, Ruth Romano, was taking a class at Augsburg College that was focused on "the American Dream." She invited me to come visit and speak to the class as her subject, me being the supposed archetypal aspiring entrepreneur with a wacky idea and good old Yankee exuberance and ingenuity. John was one of Ruth's classmates; he was finishing up his degree while doing communications for a local company, Cultural Toys.
After class, John approached me with questions, suggestions (call Lowell Fritzke, for one thing), and a couple of big old dollops of Yankee exuberance and ingenuity of his own. We exchanged numbers and have been in business with each other in some form or another ever since. First, he was our PR guy working for Kohnstamm Communications. Later, when he started his own marketing consulting business, Bright House, he bartered a spare office from us in trade for PR and marketing work. Recently, we "hired" John as our full-time marketing director (he's actually still an independent contractor).
Interesting John Larson facts: John and his beautiful wife, Nicole, each have their own marketing/communications businesses. John grew up way up north on the rocky shore of Lake Superior, in Two Harbors. Nicole's family once owned Nelson's Office Supplies, which some of you more mature Twin
Citizens (especially U of M students) will remember. Before getting married, the two of them traveled for a year in South America. Recently, they bought a spare lot from a church, which turned out to have once been the church dump, and were forced to sue the church for pollution abatement... in an inverted variation on "The Devil and Daniel Webster," they fought God in court and won!
And thus, though he's technically never been an employee, I give you our first honorary employee profilee, John Larson!
