Bob Collins
The Twins made it official this morning when they announced that former star Torii Hunter has been signed for a one-year contract.
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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.
You’re a member of the Greatest Generation and you arrive at the airport in Milwaukee after a long day at the World War II museum in Washington when you find this, as several Wisconsin vets did this week. Read more →
Audrey Kletscher Helbling, who writes the Minnesota Prairie Roots blog, has a real knack for finding the obvious characterizations of our sensibilities that most of us don’t see. Read more →
Explorers Dave and Amy Freeman have made it to Washington in their effort to canoe to the nation’s capital by canoe to lobby against copper mining around the Boundary Waters.
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It’s unlikely that Minnesotans who are hyperventilating over a proposed policy on transgender athletes in Minnesota schools will be swayed by facts, but the first woman to play on a boy’s sports team in the state is taking a shot at it anyway. Read more →
Walaker didn’t seem to be a phony, and he made North Dakota make a lot of sense to an out-of-towner. Read more →
Another first for gay men in sports today when Dale Scott became the first active baseball umpire to come out as gay. Read more →
People in southern California are sandbagging in anticipation of heavy rain.
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State school chief Kirsten Baesler and first lady Betsy Dalrymple announced a bill they will have filed that will require high school kids to answer questions on the citizenship test as a requirement for graduation. Read more →
NPR Morning Edition’s report this morning is a bit of an eye-opener, especially if you — like me — experience mass transit vicariously, through the tweets of people relaying their thoughts about the apparently-unsavory characters who ride the bus or train with them. Read more →
Lots in the online flagellation over the closing of Nye’s in Minneapolis, was a much more serious closing: The World Food Program has run out of money and has ended its role as an emergency relief provider to refugees in Syria.
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It’s been awhile since a Girl Scout has knocked on our door to sell the cookies for way too much money, because we’ve reached the age where we don’t know any Girl Scouts anymore and the Scouts mostly aren’t selling to strangers anymore. Read more →
Not at all surprisingly, the obituary appearing in the Star Tribune today for Aaron Purmort, whose ‘crimefighting’ has been well documented on his wife’s blog, is nothing short of perfect.
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The conservative group that’s opposed to the Minnesota State High School League’s proposed policy for transgender athletes has pulled another full-page ad out of the ‘say what?’ file.
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Back in my ancestral homeland, which also happens to be Arlo Guthrie’s neck of the woods, the full playing of Alice’s Restaurant was a Thanksgiving tradition. Read more →