Bob CollinsToward the end of a three-month stay at a drug treatment facility, Zach Spieker wrote a letter to the opiates that bedeviled him, Fargo Forum reports.
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Health
John and Darcy Nelson are at a loss to explain the heroin epidemic that’s consuming Fargo, N.D., the Fargo Forum reports. Read more →
Frank and Mary Jo Havlak have been married for 63 years. Eight years ago, Mary started losing her memory. It’s Alzheimer’s. She’s still alive, but she’s gone now.
Frank still visits her every day, Joe Callendar writes in his latest Op-Doc for the New York Times. Read more →
With so much activist and media attention focused on Jamar Clark, there’s been little energy left for the community to wonder why John Birkeland of Roseville had to die because he once gave a wrong name to police. Read more →
She won an Oscar for her role as Helen Keller in ‘The Miracle Worker,’ but her legacy should be that she was also one of the first people to talk openly about her depression, which she did after she was diagnosed bipolar and tried to kill herself in the early ’80s. Read more →
Texas A&M, like a lot of universities, is a pretty big place in which individuals can get lost in the system.
So it was a big deal this week when the university learned that Jim Brewer, 57, wasn’t going to live long enough to see his daughter graduate. Read more →
If you’re lucky, when you die they’ll say something like what Conan O’Brien said last night, hours after he found out that comedian Garry Shandling died. Read more →
This was one of the more charming moments of the 2015 sports year. After more than a year of battling leukemia, NBA basketball sideline announcer Craig Sager was back on the court, his leukemia was in remission. Read more →
If there’s a red-flag word in any headline that should keep people from getting too excited, it’s the word ‘may.’
Still, this headline can still make a jaw or two drop, we learned this afternoon. Read more →
If your workplace is anything like the World Headquarters of NewsCut, you have two kinds and only two kinds of colleagues: Those that stand up at their desks and those who sit down. Read more →
These are often academic questions in the political arena, but as the state’s residents grow older, “how we die” will merit significant conversations we’re unable to have now.
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If the Rev. Amy Kosari didn’t know somebody who knew somebody, a woman with limited English ability who was shot twice in the chest recently might still be isolated on the Mayo Clinic-St. Mary’s campus. Read more →
I’ve written in this space before about the Facebook page of Kenyon police chief Lee Sjolander, whose writing reveals him as a philosopher, a healer, and counselor as well as being a cop. Read more →
Natasha Fuller, an Oakfield, Wis., first-grader, has been sick almost since she was born. For the last two years, she’s been living with her grandparents so she can get lifesaving treatment at Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee.
She’s currently in renal failure and the girl is out of options; she needs a kidney transplant.
Fortunately, the world is full of first-grade teachers like Jodi Schmidt. Read more →
Generally speaking, public radio listeners break down into one of two groups: those who are cool with Garrison Keillor singing and those who consider it fingernails on a chalkboard.
Both groups, however, are likely united with a touching moment Saturday in Milwaukee, from where A Prairie Home Companion originated.
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