Bob CollinsA kangaroo cannot be a service animal. So ruled the Common Council of Beaver Dam, Wis., this week.
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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.
There was a time, whippersnappers, when we were able to get places on our bikes without a GPS. Sometimes we’d just follow a road in the general direction of where we wanted to go and usually we’d get there.
Unlike where I grew up, this is pretty easy in the Midwest, where the roads run straight north and south and east and west, just as God intended. Read more →
Only a picture of a puppy in need of a home can tug at the heart more than a hand-written note from a kid. Read more →
It’s been almost a decade since someone stole the ruby red slippers Judy Garland wore in Wizard of Oz from the Judy Garland Museum in Grand Rapids and a search of an iron pit in Itasca County has come up empty. Read more →
We’ve heard worse ideas for dealing with the invasive carp problem than this one. Turning it into a recreational activity. Read more →
Anarchy reigned in Mankato for a short time last week before authorities stepped in to curb the scourge of outdoor dining without enough live plants in the vicinity.
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The New York Times reports the St. Louis Cardinals have hacked into a player-personnel database to get secrets from the Houston Astros, one of the better teams in the American League this year. Read more →
Perhaps you’ve seen these satellite images of North Dakota in which the Bakken Oil Patch is illuminated by all of the gas flares from the wells. They’re misleading, University of North Dakota researchers say. Read more →
For a state that worships its people who made good — especially those who got out of here as soon as they could to make their fortune elsewhere — it could do more to recognize Elizabeth Strohfus of Faribault. Read more →
Unless something changes in the next few weeks, baseball will have an embarrassment on its hands.
If the voting ended today, eight Kansas City Royals will be in the starting lineup. Even Omar Infante, possibly the worst-hitting secondbaseman in all of baseball will start. Read more →
Time seems endless when you consider how long the playoffs have run. Why, I vaguely recall the Minnesota Wild even being in the postseason. Read more →
Today’s news entertainment comes from watching journalists pretend to be upholding the public’s right to know in registering their displeasure that they weren’t invited to a free concert with Prince and Steve Wonder at the White House over the weekend Read more →
The bride was attended to by hospice nurses. Her husband has cerebral palsy, the Des Moines Register reports. Read more →
Other than Bobby Hull, no player was more identified with the Chicago Blackhawks back in the day than Stan Mikita. Those were the good days. Read more →
The New York Times followed a Kentucky man with a chronic illness from the months before the national health law went into effect.
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