Bob CollinsPoliticians have been mostly taking their victory lap in the days since the Minnesota Legislature ended its 2014 session, but there remains an issue that they can’t seem to outrun — Sunday liquor sales. 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 president of the United States took a walk yesterday. Count the number of Secret Service agents in this video, released by the White House. They walked to the Interior Department, then walked back to the White House. Enroute, we learned that the safest place, apparently, for the president to walk is in the middle Read more →
Thomas Friendman said the state, at least the one that he knew growing up, had civic leaders who felt a responsibility to do more than just make a buck, and had liberal Republicans in heavily Republican congressional districts.
Does that Minnesota still exist?
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Norman Rockwell’s The Rookie sold this morning for $20 million, NPR reports. Read more →
Ruth Ziolkowski, who died yesterday, is a vanishing breed in America; like her husband, she was willing to spend her life energy on a project that could not possibly be finished in her lifetime.
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Ben Pierce, 9, is going blind and there are a few things he wants to see before he can’t see. Read more →
What would it take for the overconnected generation to give up their cellphones?
In Kimball, Minnesota, a teacher is finding out by keeping their cellphones 24/7 in exchange for allowing the students to skip the finals in her class. Read more →
Is there room for peace in a holiday that memorializes soldiers who died in war?
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Theodore Johnson III heard from plenty of people when he wrote his NPR Code Switch blog post about the racist origins of the song that has made generations scamper for the neighborhood ice cream truck. Read more →
Despite the best efforts of his students to keep him around, the Rochester teacher who swore in class is resigning. Read more →
In a case that seemed to pit laws to protect domestic abuse victims against those designed to protect other drivers from drunks on the road, the Minnesota Supreme Court has sided with the latter.
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Happiness is vulgar in Iran. Six Iranian young people have been arrested for making a video featuring Pharrell Williams’ “Happy,” a song that people the world over have used to do something similar in breaking down the walls that humanity erects. Tehran Police Chief Hossein Sajedinia ordered the arrests, calling the video “obscene” and “vulgar.” Read more →
Without a hint of irony, the Star Tribune today pegged the economic impact of the Minneapolis Super Bowl in 2018 between $80 million and $500 million. There’s no indication whether the calculation includes the impact of being portrayed as a winter hell hole between now and then.
Let’s step back a little bit, America. The NFL’s warm-weather choices haven’t been without problems. Read more →
You’ve probably seen this video — 21 million have — of Tara the cat chasing a dog away from attacking a little boy. Last night, the cat threw out the first pitch at the Bakersfield Blaze game in California. Well, I gave it my best shot, but my humans really got in the way. Everyone Read more →
While some people in the U.S. have been focusing on the disparate treatment of women in the workplace — specifically, the newsroom — over the last week, another inequality has broken out in the open in Europe: Women in classical music, NPR reports. Read more →