Bob Collins
A United Methodist Church in Seattle can no longer host Boy Scout Troop 98, NBC News reports. The troop is led by a gay man.
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.
A couple of knuckleheads tinkled into a reservoir that serves as Portland’s water supply so officials last week announced they’re going to drain 38 million gallons of water. You can’t have human urine in the water supply.
What does this tell us? Read more →
School shootings haven’t become routine by any stretch, but they’ve slipped into the regular news cycle as any other news story. Read more →
It was a good run and we got some neat parades and bragging rights out of it, but democracy is dead in the United States, or so a study from Princeton and Northwestern universities tells us. Read more →
You’ve probably seen the people at the bottom of highway off-ramps, holding signs asking for help. Maybe they’re legit; maybe they’re not.
Alex Bogusky, an advertising man, tried to ignore them as much as he could. Then he started buying the signs, researched the advertising impact of them, and made better ones. Or so he thought. Read more →
Next week, Monday specifically, those of us who want just one more game of catch with our fathers will pause to mark the 25th anniversary of the release of the film, Field of Dreams. Read more →
Tony ‘The Fridge’ Morrison raises money for cancer research by running marathons with a refrigerator on his back. He says it depicts the struggle with cancer. Read more →
Last night’s temperature at Target Field at game time was 31 degrees, the coldest temperature ever recorded at the start of a game at the stadium. Good times for the announced crowd of 20,000. Read more →
If you spend any time at all on social networks, you’ve probably run across this ad in which a fake job was advertised to see who would show up to do it. Read more →
Hello friends from other states. Please come to Minnesota to visit. And you really only need to hit Minneapolis and a lake outstate and you’ve pretty much seen our state.
That’s my takeaway, anyway, from the new “Only in Minnesota” tourism commercial. Read more →
Since the pope washed the feet of Muslim men and women at a detention facility at last year’s traditional service, there was plenty of speculation about who would be recipient of the gesture this year. Now we know. Read more →
If you won an Olympic medal in one of the most famous moments in American sports history, would you keep it and pass it on to your heirs, or sell it?
Mark Pavelich, the Eveleth native who won gold with the 1980 ‘Miracle on Ice’ U.S. Olympic hockey team, has decided to sell his. Read more →
The football players at Minnesota State University Mankato may soon end their holdout over the return of head coach Todd Hoffner. Hoffner took his job back at the school, nearly two years after he was suspended and then fired for taking bath time pictures of his children. Last week, an arbitrator ruled the firing was improper. Read more →
It’s nearly time for the traditional ‘watering of the girls’ in Hungary. Read more →
The Minnesota Twins are working hard to get the snow off seats nobody will be sitting in for today’s doubleheader with the Toronto Blue Jays. Read more →