Bob Collins
What do you do if you live in northern Minnesota, the winter is long, you have a chainsaw and an old outboard motor?
You make motorized ice circles, like Mark Verm did in Nashwauk.
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.
Might a clip-on tie be a clue to the identity of D.B. Cooper?
The Cooper name is attached to the mysterious man who hijacked a Northwest Orient flight in 1971 and then parachuted out of the jet, leaving the clip-on tie on his seat — 18E. Read more →
Last week’s revelation about a private intelligence report allegedly claiming Russia has gathered compromising data about president-elect Donald Trump is challenging news organizations to figure out when they should report unsubstantiated information. Read more →
If you’re planning on walking around Duluth’s waterfront, pack your ice skates. Read more →
A moment of silence, please, for the loss of a little bit of “community” in the communities of Madison Lake, Eagle Lake, St. Clair and Pemberton. The local newspaper has shut down after 112 years. Read more →
Several fans of NewsCut’s The Art of the Obituary category have called our attention to Friday’s passing of Dr. Kay Heggestad of Madison, Wis.,who merited two obituaries in Sunday’s Wisconsin State Journal.
She wrote one of them. Her family wrote the other, to fill in the extraordinary details she left out. Read more →
It may well be that presidents age at the same clip as the rest of us and we’re just too infatuated with what we see in the mirror. But usually around this time every eight years, the toll of the presidency seems obvious.
We put them in office as relatively young and vibrant people, and they leave looking older, grayer and more worn. Or so it seems. Read more →
Remember last spring and summer when you were heading for the cubicle farm in a stuffy office and you thought to yourself, ‘Man, those folks who have outside jobs have got it made!’? They might be thinking the same thing about your job today. Read more →
Clare Hollingworth has died at 105, and there’s a fair chance you have no idea who she is. But it’s a pretty neat thing to have in your obit that you’re the one who told the world that World War II had started. Read more →
In the madness of another mass shooting, it would be a big blow for simple decency if we could find a kid’s bear. Read more →
France, bless their Franco hearts, has a new law that gives employees the right to ignore business emails after hours, but only if the company they work for has more than 50 employees. “But it is born of the enlightened view that it is actually beneficial for people not to work all the time, and Read more →
We all probably have different definitions of luxury but for a kid like me who grew up having to trudge through the woods across the street to get to the “hockey pond,” a backyard rink certainly qualifies.
So we salivate just a bit at what Shawn Carlon has done at his home in Maple Grove. Read more →
Rep. Rick Becker, R-Bismarck, says gun owners could still get a permit — and undergo the required training — if they want to. Read more →
The logic of people who think rules and signs don’t apply to them could take up an entire semester of a psychology course.
The ice at Minnehaha Falls is providing a laboratory for this inspection. Read more →
A few days before a Nobles County farmer and his would-be bride were to fly off to the Cayman Islands for a destination wedding, he presented her with an agreement protecting the assets of his farm. She signed the deal but when the marriage hit the skids, said she signed it under duress of the pending wedding, for which everyone had bought airfare and lodging.
Today, the Minnesota Court of Appeals agreed. Read more →