Bob Collins
Canada, which has the world’s best national anthem, is tweaking the thing to get with the times.
See if you can determine the problematic line. No peeking. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
By Bob Collins
Bob Collins retired from Minnesota Public Radio in 2019 after 12 years of writing NewsCut and pointing out to complainants that posts weren’t news stories. A son of Massachusetts, he was a news editor 1992-1998, created the MPR News regional website in 1999, invented the popular Select A Candidate, started several blogs, and every day lamented that his Minnesota Fantasy Legislature project never caught on.
Here’s today’s daily dose of sweetness, but you’ll have to wait for it. Plastic bags make lousy blindfolds. It’s unlikely, of course, that any of the kids who used them as blindfolds during a game of musical chairs as part of the Detroit Lakes schools’ Snoball week were going to die of suffocation. But some Read more →
‘Impeach’
That word on a crude sign on a lawn in La Crosse, Wis., has reinforced the First Amendment. Read more →
Graffiti on Barn Bluff’s rock face is a tradition and sometimes it can be touching, as when someone painted Prince’s symbol on the bluff not long after he was found dead. The city painted over it, and another Prince tribute was painted over that.
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Hi there, visitors. Welcome to our state. Before you unpack, please understand that one of the reasons why the locals — who love the cold, they say — are talking about how terribly cold it is today is so that you’ll think highly of our ability to ignore the cold and pretend we love it so much we dread the coming summer. Just humor us; it’s a thing.
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Life is a crapshoot. An unfair crapshoot. It’s the only way to explain two stories in the news. Read more →
Here are the topics and guests you’ll hear today on MPR News. Read more →
The plane that led the D-Day invasion has returned to the sky in Wisconsin after being rescued by aviation historians. Read more →
The court ruled in the case of Tracy Thompson, who had sought an order for protection in September 2015 against her ex-husband, John Schrimsher, based largely on allegations of domestic abuse several years earlier, including being kicked, choked, knocked over, and slapped, some of which occurred while she was pregnant. Schrimsher denied the allegations.
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Here are today’s guests and topics you’ll hear on MPR News. Read more →
The arrival of the New England Patriots and the Philadelphia Eagles at MSP this week wasn’t exactly the Beatles of 1964. Or the Minnesota Lynx 2011. Read more →
It’s a deer with the severed head of another deer. Apparently they got tangled up and somehow it got resolved. One would drag around the head of the other. Read more →
Tony Langfellow was going to work at a Robbinsdale parks warming house, but then city officials saw his YouTube video. Read more →
What was left of a Douglas DC-47 was discovered in Wisconsin in 2015. It wasn’t just an old plane, though. It was “That’s All, Brother!”, the plane that led the D-Day invasion.
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Super Bowl, Shmooper Bowl. Let’s face it: We just want to hear the national media tell us about ourselves. How do you like us? Are we nice or what? Aren’t we something about the way we live in this cold place and don’t get fazed by eight inches of snow and our kids being stuck on school buses until midnight? Read more →