Bob Collins
Concordia College professor W. Scott Olsen pens a terrific essay — a requiem, he says — to a just-about-gone icon of American life and, occasionally, the privacy it provided.
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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.
It’s a pretty fair bet that few people are going to feel sorry for the change that might’ve presented itself on your doorstep today.
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Don Buller, of Hendricks, MN., left nothing to chance when it came to preparing for the next life.
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Thrown into Lake Superior, a message in a bottle took 10 years to find its way to the exotic land of Michigan. Read more →
You hate to see slow, agonizing deaths. A speedy exit is probably the best way to go. Read more →
They’re pretty excited for Monday to come over in Wisconsin.
Starting Monday, they get to drink beer from Minnesota, one more brick in the wall collapsing between the two states.
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Maybe drivers get cut off. Maybe they spend too much time on smartphones, maybe the kids were screaming. Whatever.
We’re just not very good at this driving stuff.
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It’s impossible to talk about this mysterious Cessna over the skies of Minneapolis and other America cities without sounding like a soldier in the tinfoil-hat brigade. But the mystery does defy a logical explanation. Read more →
Adrian Peterson, who has refused to attend optional Minnesota Vikings practices in an ongoing contract dispute, is again using Twitter to pour gas on a fire. Read more →
While waiting for the World Series (with the Twins) to get underway, there’s not much for sports fans in the Twin Cities to do today — an off day for the local entry in the American League.
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In New Hampshire, high school seniors spent some of the year raising the $8,000 it would take for a class trip to the Adirondacks of New York, part of the perk of being a high school senior.
Then they found out their principal, Courtney Vashaw, has cancer. Read more →
If you didn’t read all the way through the Associated Press’ story on Bob Schieffer today, you might’ve missed an important cultural nugget. Read more →
Andrew Henderson and a local police department are at it again.
Henderson, who was acquitted by a Ramsey County jury last year for refusing to stop taping police and an ambulance crew in Little Canada, was detained by St. Paul police this month for taping cops conducting a seat-belt crackdown. The police weren’t wearing their seat belts, he said.
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For several decades, planning for death has been part of the health care regimen in La Crosse, not much different than having blood pressure checked. Read more →
We don’t do polls at this news organization anymore and with good reason — you can’t trust them and news organizations are risking a lot when they put that trust in the hands of third-party pollsters to issue polls under their brand. Read more →