Bob CollinsIt is increasingly a part of America’s culture that when your sports team wins a championship, you go flip cars over; burning them is optional, apparently.
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
People doing good
Some kids in Minneapolis needed a “dad” for a father-daughter dance recently, so some cops at the local station house stepped forward and stepped up. Read more →
Cesia Abigail, 25, owner of Abi’s Cafe in Minneapolis, was ready when a man named Marcus came in asking for some spare change. She gave him a job instead. Read more →
Each year, the employees and associates of StoneArch, a Minneapolis firm, spend 24 hours redesigning websites, logos, letterheads and advertising for a selected non-profit organization that usually can’t afford to do it. 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 →
Unquestionably, there are problems in schools and problems between teachers and students and parents. It’s important that those get discussed in the public sphere.
But it’s also easy to let the coverage push aside other realities that are also important to acknowledge. There are pretty great kids, pretty great teachers, and pretty great parents in the state’s schools. Read more →
Shelley Bramhoff Sikorski didn’t have a lot of time to get a picture to go viral before Facebook removed it. It was a Valentine’s card her gay son received at the Edmonton party goods store where he worked. A new manager took over recently and his hours, were cut. 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 →
You could probably have forgiven the Red Wing boys basketball team if they’d decided to sleep in last Friday. After all, they had a big game that night with long-time rival Northfield for the section championship, and Red Wing hasn’t won a championship in 12 years.
But the team had more important things to do. Read more →
Given that he was laid off during the Great Recession, it’s unlikely that Ryan McCuen, of the Clinton Township Fire Department in Michigan, has a lot of money to just throw around, even if he did start a lawn service before he was hired back last year. Read more →
On Saturday night, Sofia Andrade won $200 on a scratch ticket in the Massachusetts Lottery. It’s not a lot of money, of course, but it’s still $200 she could’ve spent on herself.
But Andrade didn’t spend it on herself. Read more →
Scott Chiples, of Stoddard, Wis., which is south of La Crosse, thinks Celeste Davis got a raw deal from the Wisconsin lottery.
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Whether it’s on a Willmar, Minn., street or the San Francisco Bay Bridge, It’s amazing how the extraordinary act of saving lives is just another day on the job for cops. Read more →
Your daily dose of bittersweetness today comes from the blizzard-weary land of Willmar, Minn., where the police department reports on its Facebook page that police officers shoveled a driveway after trying to save the life of an elderly man who had a heart attack while shoveling.
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Today’s must read is the Star Tribune’s almost unbelievable profile of Justin Lang, the Robbinsdale 30-year-old man who went house to house in North Minneapolis yesterday shoveling people out. Read more →