Bob CollinsKris and Mike Gutierrez, of Menomonee Falls, Wis., had their first date in 1994 at John Hawks Pub in Milwaukee. And because love is grand, they go there every March 25th to celebrate what a first date can beget. 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.
The best thing about asking a question — especially a stupid question — is that there are plenty of people who’ll gladly answer it, and make you look even more foolish in the process. Read more →
Robert Kelly, a professor of political science at Pusan National University in Busan, South Korea, and an expert on South Korea, had a lot of interesting things to say during his BBC interview on the subject today.
And nobody remembers a single thing he said. Read more →
Wisconsin sweeps cheese championshipLife is good — so far — at the venerable Minnesota high school hockey tournament. The private schools are getting knocked off — should’ve spent less time working on the hair, perhaps — and the Moorhead Spuds — the greatest team name in all of sports — are moving on. Read more →
Today’s moment of sweetness comes from PBS NewsHour, whose “Brief but Spectacular” segments encapsule everything good about public TV.
Last evening’s segment featured writer Kelly Corrigan whose father got cancer around the time Corrigan was undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. Read more →
Sixty-three years ago tonight (Thursday), Edward R. Murrow set a standard which TV journalism has struggled to equal every day since.
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Who are we?
That question seems to be the unanswered underpinning of many of the attempts to understand the nation since Election Day 2016. Read more →
We learned something fascinating today in the Grand Forks Herald story about a new license plate for North Dakota: There is a contest for the nation’s best license plate. Read more →
It’s not quite clear whether Edina thinks raising the smoking age to 21 is merely a message or whether the city believes it will make a difference. Read more →
Where is the Baby Boomer to acknowledge that his/hers is the Worst Generation? I’ll tell you where. He’s going on vacation to Florida just as soon as he finishes this post to sample the life of affluence, kept by a generation of working kids who have nowhere near the possibility of such a life thanks to the world we left. I’ll feel guilty about it when I get back. Maybe. Read more →
One of the things I love most about peeking into what people are peeking into is how different their choice of stories are from what we otherwise might think they’d be.
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Avert your eyes, golf purists. The PGA is going to allow its golfers to wear shorts, it was announced this week.
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The female members of Congress sat they wore white as a silent protest against the president and support for women’s rights.
A proposal to name Orchestra Hall after Stanislaw Skrowaczewski brought out an anonymous attack on his reputation. Read more →