Bob Collins
Linda Koelman and Jeffrey Stewart had one of the most difficult jobs after the I-35W bridge collapse in Minneapolis. They had to tell 13 families that their loved one was dead. Read more →
MPR News Reflections and observations on the news
Regional history
Surely on a list of the most interesting people who ever landed in flyover country, Ila Borders must rank pretty high. She was one of the first women on a professional baseball team (women played in the Negro Leagues) when she signed with the St. Paul Saints in ’97.
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Anna Gibbs has died and if you know any history of the Ojibwe in Minnesota, there’s a fair chance Anna Gibbs had something to do with it.
The Bemidji Pioneer reports she died of liver cancer on Sunday at 72.
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At the Poor Farm Cemetery, Bob Riepe, of Perham, Minn., has thought about giving up on his one-man effort to keep up the cemetery near where the Otter Tail Poor Farm once stood. It operated from 1882 to 1936 and was abandoned until Riepe, an author, found a person he was doing research on was buried there somewhere. Read more →
St. Paul has its Peanuts characters, Chicago had its cows, Bemidji has its Paul and Babe, and Faribault has its Tilt-A-Whirl cars.
Or at least it will on Thursday when the second restored Tilt-A-Whirl car will be placed outside the State Bank of Faribault building.
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It’s not hard to figure out why the Minnesota Department of Transportation desecrated a cemetery when working on Minnesota Highway 23? MnDOT says in five years of planning for the replacement of the Mission Creek Bridge in Duluth, there was no part of the process that called for consulting with the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa. Read more →
You’ve probably heard that Minnesota Public Radio is celebrating 50 years, an impressive feat in local broadcasting. But 100 is twice as impressive, and to the east of us, Wisconsin Public Radio is celebrating too. Read more →
The closing highlights why Minnesota manufacturing jobs disappear. Factories often make things people don’t want or need anymore.
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Janis Thompson is being inducted into the North Dakota High School Track and Field Hall of Fame next month. She was a top sprinter.
She was also a cheerleader whose death at North Dakota State in 1986 made schools take another look at the stunts cheerleaders were attempting. Read more →
After World War II, area residents planted more than 1,000 trees to honor service members in a living tribute on Minnesota Highway 22 between Mankato and Mapleton. But road needs change and now the trees must go. Read more →
Sutin and his father, Julius, managed to escape from the ghetto to the forest region of eastern Poland, where Sutin became the leader of a small group of Jewish partisans who managed to accumulate arms and become a fighting force against the Nazis and the collaborating Polish police. He met his love in a bunker. Read more →
A custom rifle manufacturer has apparently decided to halt the sale of a Mankato-themed rifle after complaints that it used a noose to depict the Dakota Conflict. Mankato was the site of the largest mass execution in history when thirty-eight Dakota men were hanged.
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I didn’t move to Minnesota early enough to hear Johnny Canton play platters that matter, but every city had someone like him on the radio back in the day. Read more →
Tracy Mumford
A few favorite finds from stacks of 1930’s newspapers stuffed into the floorboards Read more →
Another long-time scribe has left Minnesota journalism.
Steve Brandt has covered Minneapolis neighborhoods, schools, and government since 1976 and if he doesn’t hold the record for longevity at local newspapers, he’s got to be close. Read more →