We cop to feeling some hope for normalcy in the country whenever we see a president of the United Stand outside the White House while 4,000 Washington DC school kids file by to get candy from him. That some dressed like Scooby Doo, only makes us swell with pride. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Archives for October 2016
Even if they’re thousands of miles away, scores of Facebook users are trying to help Dakota Access pipeline protesters at Standing Rock in North Dakota. Read more →
One 8-year-old boy’s costume is a reminder that, for kids of any gender, dressing like a powerful politician no longer just means dressing like a man. Read more →
Steve Henneberry, who works at the University of Minnesota, drove to Chicago a few days ago even though he didn’t have a ticket to the World Series and probably couldn’t afford what the scalpers were selling them for.
But Steve had something better, it turned out. He had a long-time friend. Read more →
It’s hard to say for sure why Boyd Huppert’s story of Emmett and Erling struck such a nerve with most of us when it first aired a few years ago. Read more →
At first, it seemed like a mistake on Saturday’s (and Sunday’s) obituary page in the Star Tribune.
Two people, same picture. Some mistake. Read more →
Until the secret was revealed on Saturday, nobody knew who was behind perhaps the most popular feature in the St. Paul Pioneer Press. In revealing it, we also learned that it is on borrowed time. Read more →
This is some amazing video from a passenger aboard the American Airlines jet that caught fire while on a take-off roll at O’Hare this afternoon.
Read more →
If you’re sick of all the political campaigning and the dueling letters to the editor, it’s only because you haven’t yet met Michael Holmes, a former Red Wing resident, who suggests you pay attention to what he has to say about the race for mayor in the city. Read more →
In this space yesterday we critiqued how one news organization chose to cover a World Series without offering a proper alternative.
Here’s the proper alternative. Read more →
In the temples of baseball — the old stadiums full of tradition — it can be a fulltime job keeping fans from spreading the ashes of the dearly departed. Read more →
One of the reasons parenthood is so hard is because there are so many people in the business or pleasure of telling you how you’re doing it wrong. And there’s no greater expert on how to be a parent than the ones who’ve been doing it for a couple of years, tops.
Read more →
Like any 4th grade boy, Jalue Dorje enjoys soccer, swimming and Pokemon cards. But unlike most 9-year-olds, he is believed to be — and confirmed by the Dalai Lama himself — the reincarnation of an eminent senior lama who died nine years ago. Read more →
Sam Cook of the Duluth News Tribune, who has a way of putting his couch-anchored readers out in the woods, asks in his column today, ‘Do you want to know how the hunting has been this fall?’ Read more →
Perhaps no jury verdict since O.J. Simpson’s has sparked such a discussion on race and the judicial system as yesterday’s surprise “not guilty” verdict against the armed protesters — all white — who took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, protesting what they said was government overeach.
Read more →