Bob Collins
Spoiler alert! There’s no evidence of a monster on the Lake of Tears.
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MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Regional history
At one time, La Crosse was the center of the clown universe. Read more →
Audrey Kletscher Helbling post reminds us there are two Minnesotas: The one where times are good, and the ones where they very clearly aren’t. Read more →
If there’s anything that can be called a slam-dunk decision, next week’s vote by the Duluth City Council to declare a monument in the city a ‘local landmark’ is it.
It’s the only monument in the country that memorializes a lynching. 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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A Mankato City Council members has started a petition calling for a presidential pardon for the 38 Dakota men who were hanged in the largest mass execution in U.S. history. Read more →
In 1950, an airliner heading for Minneapolis disappeared over Lake Michigan and has never been found. Read more →
An undignified end for ‘Old Blue,’ why is ethanol bad for everyone but farmers, websites that close at night, the racist with a black past, and the difference between men’s and women’s college hockey. Read more →
Other than 9/11, I can’t recall a sadder day in the Twin Cities than the one that happened 19 years ago today. Police received a call around 7 a.m. that a man was sleeping in a car in the parking lot of Sacred Heart Church at E. Sixth and Hope Streets. Ron Ryan, a 29-year-old Read more →
Paul TostoPaul Poberezny, founder of the Experimental Aircraft Association and one of the great American tinkerers, died Thursday. Read more →
The old Cottage Grove drive-in theater sign went up at the museum in Hastings this week where it will represent what Cottage Grove used to be before it worked hard to become everywhere else. It sits right next to the Porky’s drive-in building that used to be on University Avenue in Saint Paul. What’s at Read more →
The long reach of poverty, the last days of ‘Big Blue,’ the food-truck controversy, the wheelage tax speeds through Minnesota counties, and the car seat’s great leap forward. Read more →
In a lot of metro school districts, the last days of school often include a trip to Valleyfair or a day playing outside, what with the grades already being in and all. Out in Hendricks, Minnesota, though, the kids learn right up until the end. Each year there’s a field trip to the Lincoln County Read more →
Ode to ice